Friday remainders

Normally I spend my time clucking my tongue and wagging my finger at Manhattan Theatre club for soporific fare such as Rabbit Hole (like, um, below), but hey—they do get it right, now and then. Case in point: the very fine production of Blackbird over at MTC’s Stage I space, as directed by Joe Mantello. It’s grim, industrial, psychosexual, disturbing good stuff. A young woman (Alison Pill) confronts a middle-aged middle manager (Jeff Daniels) at his drab corporate office and we quickly learn that they had a previous affair—when she was twelve years old. Terse, stylized language and some excellent acting. Here’s my review on NY1. I’d love to report that David Harrower is a fresh new American talent that MTC has been nurturing for years, but he’s a 40-year-old Scottish writer, well supported over there, and Blackbird played in London’s West End before nabbing an Olivier Award in February. This NYC premiere is an Americanized version. So, it’s not like they’re producing Young Jean Lee, Elizabeth Meriwether or Melissa James Gibson. Still, a show well worth seeing.

Another theatrical treat you should catch is this Monday night’s reading of George Bernard Shaw’s  Androcles and the Lion. Part of David Staller’s impressive ongoing Project Shaw (free readings from the GBS oeuvre every month), this reading of Shaw's Roman romp features the doubtlessly varied acting talents of several prominent NYC theater critics and journalists: Roma Torre, Raven Snook, Jeremy Mccarter, Alexis Soloski, Charles Isherwood, Michael Musto, Adam Feldman, Michael Riedel, Howard Kissel, David Finkle, Eric Grode, Frank Scheck, Patrick Pacheco, Michael Schulman, Rex Reed and yours truly playing the Editor (I’m considering Standard Cockney for my accent: "Ow ah oo?"). This will be my third go at Project Shaw, and it's a lot of fun. A chance to be buffeted by Shaw's windy brilliance, to mingle with great performers and, yes, to dust off my ham-actor skillz, which have lain dormant lo these many years. I guarantee: whatever my colleagues' analytical, intellectual or rhetorical skills as writers, I will out-emote each of them with my broadly accented and over-emphatically delivered lines. Let the schmacting begin!

Comments

[Alison Croggon]

I'm yet to see a Harrower play, but I would very much like to... there was a celebrated production in Paris of Knives and Hens which made that very slim play go for five hours. According to witnesses, utterly compelling for all those five hours, and then a good proportion of the audience stayed for (literally) hours afterwards, wanting to talk about it. Well, that's the French for you...