Histriomastix

Raising Kane

Blasted, Sarah Kane's 1995 debut play which drew cries of "filth" and "disgusting" from London's critical establishment, has finally opened in New York. Ben Brantley delivers an articulate and energetic (and positive) assessment here. I like it when Brantley reviews downtown work (Elevator Repair Service, the Wooster Group, his perennial trips to Richard Foreman-land). I completely disagree with his reductive Tony-time thought piece on August: Osage County and find him too impressed by celebrities on Broadway, but when he reviews experimental work, he seems to actually enjoy his job and his writing goes up a conceptual and linguistic notch. (Don't forget: He did help to put Richard Maxwell on the mainstream map, a couple of years after we all knew Rich was doing something new.) My review of Blasted is up  here. By the way, Sarah's brother Simon snapped the picture above, showing Marin Ireland and Reed Birney, both of whom are phenomenal.

I haven't been blogging much because life and work have been keeping me busy. For those interested, my one-act opera, Fade, created with composer Stefan Weisman, will get its world premiere in London October 22. The producer is Second Movement. So far, discussions with the director, Oliver Mears, have been very encouraging. In November I will get back to my play, for which I have reams of notes for rewrites.

The dance between crrritic and creator is very interesting indeed.

Messy drama and musical makers

This week in TONY, I review The Little Flower of East Orange, Stephen Adly Guirgis' new work. I was very excited to see this one, what with a cast headed by Bug's Michael Shannon and the lovely Ellen Burstyn (above). Alas, Guirgis delivered another rambling, unfocused, falsely jacked-up urban shouting match. I really admire Guirgis; his Our Lady of 121st Street was electrifying, memorable theater and I thought his more stylized Biblical romp, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, was intriguingly flawed but bracing stuff. But I'm afraid this new work only emphasizes Guirgis' weaknesses: churning up dust in the form of embittered shouting characters when he could be drawing us into their stories; proliferating subplots that just seem like padding; and generally not charting his tale very clearly. He's a little like Adam Rapp in that way: tons of dramatic energy and solid showman-like instincts, but little patience for shaping the story for maximum impact. It's like the Rough N Ready School of American Drama. I wish that someone like Oskar Eustis could work with Guirgis on his play, let it go through a few more drafts, before releasing it on the world.

Elsewhere in TONY, there's our special package focusing on four promising lights of musical-theater of the future: David Javerbaum & Adam Schlesinger, Peter Mills, Brendan Connelly and Michael Friedman. Each story has a sound clip at the bottom. Enjoy.

By the power (not) vested in me…

Okay, I'm gonna keep this short and sweet since you should not be reading this blog (not today), but checking out what's happening over at the TONY theater page. First up, I review Edward Albee's twofer, The American Dream and The Sandbox, and a very enjoyable timewarp back to the early 1960s it is. Albee was writing in the first flush of absurdist iconoclasm, and yet he uses the forms in that then-evolving "genre"—fourth-wall-smashing, non sequiturs, calculated use of banality—to dig at a very personal emotional truth. (Hint: It helps to know that he's a bitter adoptee.) Albee doesn't shy away from his feelings or ours in pursuit some "epater le bourgeois" stylistic agenda. Two short plays about life, death, growing old and growing apart from your family. On the downside, I don't think the political dimension of The American Dream—bluntly bespoke by the title and reinforced by a set and costume design in red, white and blue—really signifies much and remains countercultural window dressing, but the language is exquisite and the actors quite fine.

Okay, also check out the theater portion of this week's feature package: Culture Report. Part 1: The Gatekeepers. We quiz André Bishop and new LCT staffer Paige Evans on the new Off-Off outlet LCT3. We get inside the day planner of St. Ann's Warehouse AD Susan Feldman.

And lastly, there's my lead essay. Teaser:

After years of private bitching and public grumbling about our nonprofit theaters’ toothless seasons, homogeneous production designs and timid, old-man marketing, I’ve finally found a person with the taste and courage to be the ideal artistic director of the 21st century: me.

You heard right; I’ve sat through enough shit (and genius) and I want some power. Give me an annual budget of $5 million, all my downtown contacts and see if I don’t make a splash.

I think this material is good reading along with recent provocative posts by Jaime Green here, Playgoer's analysis of AD salaries here, Matthew Freeman's contrarian constructive criticism here, Charles McNulty's ace reporting here, and lastly this and this.

Enjoy. Comment.

New reviews: Bride and The Four of Us

Have you checked out TONY's snazzy new theater web page? Layout is much better. Also, I control the content, pictures, placement, etc, which appeals to my megalomaniacal side. (Well, more than a side, more like 87% of me.) Anyhoo, this week I reviewed puppeteer Kevin Augustine's terrific new show, Bride. It's Terry Gilliam-meets-Brothers-Quay-and-goes-t0-theological-school. A bizarre and beautiful puppet fable about polytheism, monotheism, fathers, sons, dismembered mothers, the lot. Check it out. Also: fiendishly talented 30-year-old playwright Itamar Moses' frenemy-comedy-drama-metatheatrical romp The Four of Us. Jaime already enthused over it. Both of these are well worth your time. I had reservations about Moses' first NYC effort, the too-clever-by-half Bach at Leipzig, but the guy has got ideas and brilliance to spare.

By the pricking of my thumb…

One of the most exciting times I had in high school was performing Macduff in Macbeth. Seventeen or eighteen years old, I was filled "toe to crown with direst cruelty," overflowing with bitterness, bile and anger at the world, eager to prove myself, topple idols, self-immolate in a ball of purifying aesthetic fire. I loved nothing so much as vigorous language, sacrilege, offending the old and spouting moral absolutes. I was a bit of an asshole, I suppose. But I was earnest, and intensely in love with Art. So playing Macduff was a tremendous way to release some of the adolescent angst and all that ineffable numinous dread and joy I felt. (Amazing what linguistic aptitude, combined with virginity and emotional reticence will produce in the young mind.) I thrilled to speak Macduff's grief-stricken words upon hearing that Macbeth put his wife and children to the sword:

He has no children. All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?
…
O, I could play the woman with mine eyes
And braggart with my tongue! But, gentle heavens,
Cut short all intermission; front to front
Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;
Within my sword's length set him; if he 'scape,
Heaven forgive him too!

And then, later, when Macduff finds his hated enemy on the field:
TURN HELLHOUND TURN

Lastly, these lines struck me to the quick:

Despair thy charm;
And let the angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.

My friend Ian McCulloch played the title role, and he and I worked out a totally amateurish but brutal sword fight in which we nearly murdered each other. Heavy swords, bulky wooden shields, no training, fat blood packs taped in hidden places and lots of fucking awesome fake fighting. (I say "amateurish" but my buddy Ian reminds me that we freakin' rocked a 1988 regional theater competition and walked away with a fight-choreography award.)

Back to for the "untimely ripp'd" line. Much significance there to me…it's a long story for another blog post (or several) and eventually a book, but basically, I'm adopted. And these lines, like others spoken by Shakespearean bastards (Edmund, Falconbridge, Thersites et al.) decanted into my heart.

Anyway, this is a long, personal preamble to say that I am very familiar with Macbeth, love it, and Rupert Goold's production at BAM (through March 22) is quite, quite excellent. Besides having a rock-solid cast led by the seasoned Patrick Stewart, it is visually and conceptually right-on. It uses a Stalinist framing concept, but lets it drift into metaphor in a lovely, unforced way. And it's actually scary.

Other reviews: NTUSA's daffy, sexy-silly Don Juan, which marks the first time that fiercely inventive company is tackling a classic. It's an experiment in authenticity, besides just being hilarious and immensely well-performed by a cast that includes Yehuda Duenyas, Jesse Hawley (above), James Stanley, Ean Sheehy, Ryan Bronz, Normandy Sherwood, Matt Kalman, Aimee McCormick and Ilan Bacharach. They mashed together different translations of the Molière text, and I think they let their acting styles follow suit. Review here. Lastly, I saw the Roundabout's utterly unnecessary and yet disappointing revival of Crimes of the Heart.

Publishers Sweepstakes

New review this week of Edward Albee's Peter and Jerry: something old, something new. My NY1 review will broadcast on On Stage this weekend. Also, this is an overdue note, but I have an essay on Shining City in the latest edition of Best Plays Theater Yearbook. That was out late August. Last but not least, my companion book to the Broadway favorite Jersey Boys hit the shelves in October. I'll be appearing on Theater Talk this Friday night with the brilliant Broadway photographer Joan Marcus to discuss the making of the book with cohosts Susan Haskins and Michael Riedel.

It's not alive! Not alive!

New reviews in TONY:

Mel Brooks' schlocky megadud Young Frankenstein.

A bit more highbrow: Tom Stoppard's Rock ’n' Roll.

Jennifer Garner community-theaters her way through Cyrano de Bergerac.

And I enjoyed the Wooster Group's multitrack hyperlinked Hamlet. It's like watching a giant multimedia brain onstage thinking about Hamlet textually, but also comparing & contrasting past productions. Someone I told that to said, "Who'd want to see that?" Well, I would. It's a great show to see alone, just to sit there and scan and re-scan it.

The Scottish play and others

New reviews in this week's TONY:

The National Theatre of Scotland's terrific, sense-assaulting military drama Black Watch, in which director John Tiffany pulls out every stop and yanks out every trick in his director's bag. The war comes home to Scotland in a way that every American can relate to, sort of. Had writer-director Josh Fox been supported over the last few years by, say, the Public Theater or another Off-Broadway institution, he'd have created the American equivalent, a hard, politically informed look at our fighting men & women, and the culture that produces them and, sometimes, abandons them. (Instead, he made a movie: Check out Memorial Day on the International WOW site.) One of the things I liked best about the play is that it doesn't make apologies for the very existence of war or the need for soldiers. It takes fighting as a given. I can understand Isaac's reservations about the show, but don't share them myself.

Does that make me prowar, or just a soft, cowardly civilian who vicariates through the testicular-enlarging spectacle of well-equipped bullies? Hurrrm. But I really love Wallace Shawn.

I too felt old and out of place at the remarkably vapid Fuerzabruta.

Thanks for the shoutout, John!

Drums of the Waves of Horikawa is beautifully crafted postmodern silliness.

Watch me interview A Bronx Tale's Chazz Palminteri here. See how he resists the urge to snap my neck. This is even before my colleague Adam Feldman's um, mixed review of his show came out.

I review Adam Bock's The Receptionist on NY1's On Stage this Saturday and Sunday at 9:30am and 7:30pm.

Diiiiismissed!

Elocution lesions

In my irresistible urge to syncretize, I could say that my three reviews in this week's TONY are all about language and power.

Pygmalion—which features a bold and textually scrupulous performance by the sparky Jefferson Mays—is a prickly, funny, sad, wistful work about language as social-advancement tool (in addition to fashion and manners). David Grindley's lively revival for the Roundabout Theatre Company is as fine and faithful a take on a Shaw play as I've ever seen.

Also produced by the Roundabout (nice week it's having) is The Overwhelming (pictured above). J.T. Rogers's international thriller about the Rwandan genocide was just as wrenching and exciting on stage as it was to read. Languages multiply in the taut, harrowing script: French, English, Kinyarwandan, Spanish. Not understanding the local tongue is the metaphorical and actual problem faced by the American protagonists. In a theater scene virtually devoid of serious political drama comes this bracing, skillful, scrupulously researched portrait of Americans abroad getting a brutal lesson in history and geopolitics. While the 1994 genocide that put Rwanda on the world map remains an international problem that deserves study and healing, what's interesting about The Overwhelming is that, in some ways, Rwanda then is the exact opposite of Iraq today. Rather than a country in which the U.S. became deeply, militarily involved and lost lives and treasure, Rwanda in 1994 was a country no American knew about, cared about, or would lift a finger to help. The play has been faulted for lacking "art" or persuasive human dynamics by some critics, and a close study may yield point-by-point criticism, but I found both the play and the production wonderfully thrilling and effective. Its very existence on the landscape is a sign of health for theater of substance and conscience. Not robust health, but some health. (My NY1 On Stage review will be broadcast this weekend.)

Lastly John Jesurun's free adaptation of Sophocles' Philoktetes is a play about many things, embedded so deeply in the hypnotic, trippy, sticky, collaged, multivalent text, that I'm still parsing them days later. Comradeship, war crimes, honor, sickness—those are a few. But Jesurun tells his story in a silky, smoky, fragrant language that will leave you agog. It left the Times reviewer with nothing to say, except to reach for facile references to TV shows and sweeping, cynical generalizations about "avant-garde clichés." No one says you have to like this sort of experimental theater, but such lazy, ill-informed reviews are just embarrassing for a paper that is supposed to have some level of critical maturity and seriousness. Jesurun has been a respected artist on the scene for 25 years, both for his multimedia experiments and the strange power of his lyrical stage writing. The Times review was written with a palpable distaste for theater and a fear of appearing to take unconventional work seriously. Just imagine if such an attitude were held by its music or art critics.

Last but not least: a box on Ellen Beckerman & LightBox's intriguing new consumption-themed piece Milk 'n' Honey.

All this and freelance on the side. Yes, I've been very busy.

Weekend remainders

When it isn't busy putting the choir to sleep, political theater can become the target of two (somewhat contradictory) criticisms: It tells us what we already know from the evening news, or it mistakenly places facts and ideology above human drama. New York's theater critics are all too ready to trot out one or the other cavil rather than actually engage the ideas of a play or tip their own ideological hand as regards consumerism, foreign policy or their own niche in the ecosystem. Don't get me wrong: I know that political theater can often fail to be profoundly political or effectively theatrical, and the road to dramaturgical hell is paved with good intentions, but I've gotten to the point where I'd just like a play to at least fucking try to be relevant. To participate in the so-called discourse of the day. To rouse the rabble or fill the stage with vigorous rhetoric. To give me a sense that the playwright did his or her research, has a point of view, a firm grasp of the subject and the history of issue-driven drama, and isn't afraid both to flaunt his or her ideological bias, and challenge the same. It's been said many times in recent years, but theaters in the U.K. are simply shaming us with their engaged and passionate programming.

I know there are some polemicists or theoreticians out there who believe that political drama along the lines of David Hare or Arthur Miller is part of the problem - containing the anarchic energies of truly revolutionary thought in the bourgeois literary conventions of Ibsenite melodrama and such - but we're dealing with a cultural climate that has been bomb-blasted back to a condition where even the most rudimentary forms of political-theater pabulum are absent from the scene. We don't even have bad political theater. It's. That. Bad. I tried to sketch out the troubled scene on Salon back in June.

This is just my way of saying that J.T. Rogers' The Overwhelming is in previews at the Laura Pels Theatre. It's a Graham Greene-like tale of a white American college professor, his teenage son, and his African-American second wife in Rwanda in the weeks before the 1994 genocide. On page, I found Rogers' tale taut, informative and nicely suspenseful, with a brutal ending. I don't think it will singlehandedly revive American political drama, but it's the type of show we should see more of each season. Be curious to see how it works on stage, under the direction of the great Max Stafford-Clark. Rather surprisingly, this is a Roundabout Theatre Company production, and apparently there was something of a bidding war on the show after it opened last May at London's National Theatre. I wrote a preview of the show in TONY here. I'm looking foward to seeing it later this month.

Also in TONY: a review of the video-saturated food fight that is Ivo van Hove's engaging (if scattered) vision of The Misanthrope and my NY1 review of Horton Foote's Dividing the Estate. This weekend on NY1's On Stage (Sat & Sun at 9:30am & 7:30pm), they'll broadcast my Misanthrope review too.