Three of Britain’s leading comedians of the 20th century are the focus of Paul Hendy’s The Last Laugh, a play that harks back to Sutton Vane’s Outward Bound (1923) and Trevor Griffiths’ Comedians (1975). As the trio meets in a shabby dressing area of an uncertain venue for some kind of benefit performance, issues of what makes something funny and who steals jokes from whom, along with plenty of comic insults, arise.
Mona Pirnot’s new play, I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan, concerns the hardscrabble existence of aspiring playwrights and the passion that keeps them writing for an industry in which, as playwright Robert Anderson ostensibly said, it’s possible to make a killing but never a living. David Greenspan is the very model of a theater artist who has persevered despite dire fiscal odds. Greenspan is pretty well-known Off-Broadway and, especially, Off-Off Broadway, but he’s certainly not a household name.
In 1969 the two-year-old Negro Ensemble Company mounted the off-Broadway premiere of Lonne Elder III’s Ceremonies in Dark Old Men. “A remarkable play,” raved Clive Barnes in the New York Times. Now, in a joint presentation with the Peccadillo Theater Company and producer Eric Falkenstein, the NEC revisits this gut-punch period piece, offering a rock-solid production that hums along toward inevitable tragedy, chronicling the socioeconomic plight of Harlem in the 1950s through the deeds and decisions of one troubled family.
English dramatist Caryl Churchill is turning 87 this September. In advance of that landmark, the Public Theater is presenting Glass. Kill. What If If Only. Imp., a quadruple bill of Churchill one-acts new to New York. Like Albee on this side of the Atlantic, Churchill has always had a penchant for depicting humanity in rather abstract terms. Directed by Churchill specialist James Macdonald, these shorts are supplemented with entr’acte circus feats by a juggler (Maddox Morfit-Tighe) and an acrobat (Junru Wang). The evening’s fare may seem, at first blush, a random assortment but, upon reflection, common themes emerge.
Eliya Smith has chosen the title of her play Grief Camp cannily. The name nails down the setting and the situation, and it allows her to start the proceedings at a low key, with two of her six young people, Brad and Luna, talking in the dark after lights out. It scarcely matters that the audience can’t yet identify who is who, because the chitchat is innocuous: “Are you awake?” “I’m debating if I want to pee.” “I’m sorry about the stuff at the lake.”
Eliya Smith has chosen the title of her play Grief Camp cannily. The name nails down the setting and the situation, and it allows her to start the proceedings at a low key, with two of her six young people, Brad and Luna, talking in the dark after lights out. It scarcely matters that the audience can’t yet identify who is who, because the chitchat is innocuous: “Are you awake?” “I’m debating if I want to pee.” “I’m sorry about the stuff at the lake.”
Poor J.M. Barrie hasn’t had an easy time of it in the 21st century, with the notable exception of revivals of one-acts at the Mint Theater. The 2015 musical Finding Neverland, based on a film, focused on the dramatist’s struggle to find success after failure and the triumphant creation of Peter Pan, his classic 1904 play about the boy who won’t grow up—a play that, by the way, most of Finding Neverland’s audience had probably never seen, since nobody actually stages it. It’s known primarily through the musicalized version from the 1950s that starred Mary Martin, although the Royal National Theatre’s 1997 production, with Peter played by Daniel Evans, now artistic director of the Chichester Festival, and Ian McKellen as Captain Hook, showed the original is still a viable and glorious work.
