Boundaries of all types are tested in Ronnie Larsen’s comedic and big-hearted family chronicle, The Actors. The line between Democrat and Republican is pulled taut, as is the division between atheist and religious believer. But those are relatively minor concerns for the playwright. More to the point are the boundaries of grief and how to break through them, the borders of what constitutes a family, and what limits stage actors might burst through when their roles take over their lives. As farcical as it is melancholy, there are as many surprise door knocks in the play’s two acts and two hours as there are woeful revelations.
Near the end of the Barry Manilow musical Harmony, the surviving Comedian Harmonist Ari Leschnikoff, “a Bulgarian singing waiter” who survived the Holocaust to return to his home country, brags to a rabbi: “We saved them, Rabbi! Every Jewish person in Bulgaria! We wouldn’t let them have them! Not one!” This startling declaration, which demanded elaboration, is the foundation of The Brief Life & Mysterious Death of Boris III, King of Bulgaria. The story of Boris III might have remained a historical footnote but for Sasha Wilson, the cowriter of the piece (with Joseph Cullen), whose grandparents escaped Bulgaria during World War II. It turns out that the history of Bulgaria in the 20th century is far more complicated than the Harmony passage suggests.
An underlying anxiety is on display in Abe Koogler’s Staff Meal about the appeal of his absurdist play: exhibit A is a character listed as Audience Member in the program (Stephanie Berry), who interrupts the proceedings about 30 minutes into the show to offer a detailed explanation of why she is not pleased:
Is this a play about restaurants or the people who work there? I’d happily watch a play about that—if it was different.
Take a stand! Inspire action! Touch our hearts—or at least you should try!
We’ve given this gift to you of our evening—one of our precious few nights on this earth—and you’re showing us this?????
Ben Target’s solo show Lorenzo is an end-of-life comedy that is both joyful and surprising. Written and performed by Target (pronounced Tar-ZHAY), and directed by Adam Brace and Lee Griffiths, it is an autobiographical 65 minutes that focuses on a time when Target gave up his work as a comedian to become a live-in caretaker for an aging family friend, “Uncle” Lorenzo Wong.
Playwright Sarah Ruhl and performance-artist Taylor Mac, both recipients of MacArthur Foundation “genius grants” and past finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, are currently at the Signature Theatre for a revival of Ruhl’s 1998 adaptation of Orlando, the 1928 novel by Virginia Woolf. Mac, who’s playing the title role, is renowned as a dramatist but, on this occasion, serves strictly as an actor.
Cary Gitter’s The Sabbath Girl, produced by the Penguin Rep and currently at 59e59, is an attempt at a throwback romantic comedy, a story of two lonely souls from different cultural worlds who find each other in the big city and forge ahead in the name of love despite all the obstacles.
Lily Akerman’s The Commons should come with a trigger warning for anyone who has ever had multiple roommates in a New York City apartment. She depicts four roommates (three millennials and one Gen Xer) as they navigate the harrowing questions and minutiae of shared space—the buildup of burnt tomato sauce on a stove top, the viability of leftover jars of food, the ethics of decluttering, the disappearance of chocolate almonds, the gendering of certain chores, and, God forbid, the presence of a mouse—with various shades of aggression and passive-aggression.
Jean Dobie Giebel’s Chasing the River follows the post-incarceration difficulties of Kat (Christina Elise Perry), who returns to her childhood home to seek closure on a disrupted life. Playwright Giebel delays explaining, until the play’s conclusion, the reason Kat went to prison, and that choice is a double-edged sword. Although it creates suspense as to what really took place in her family home, keeping Kat’s crime and the backstory shrouded in mystery poses a problem for the actor who must sustain the anguish of a past life and bring it to a crescendo at the end.
Leegrid Stevens’s A Peregrine Falls, now at the Wild Project under the direction of Padraic Lillis, tells the story of a Mormon family in Austin, Texas, in 2010 and 2012, as they grapple with the aftermath of horrific family abuse. The play combines realism, in scenes taking place in hospital and state-court waiting areas and a family-owned car dealership (scenic design by Zoë Hurwitz), with flights of dream imagery and symbolism, the latter mostly conveyed by a narrator who is both within and without the story (the peregrine of the title stands for the ultimate predator, a bird who preys on other birds).
It’s not long into the new musical Darling Grenadine, after a brief direct address to the audience by Adam Kantor’s ingratiating lead character, Harry, that the first song comes, but it takes till the top of the second act to get to the song that gives the show its bizarre title. It’s an ode to the pomegranate syrup that goes into a Shirley Temple, and by that time what began as a romance of struggling artists in New York City has found an unexpected path through the shopworn trappings of such tales.
The Mint Theater Company has once again returned to excavating the long-forgotten dramatic works of Miles Malleson, a 20th-century British actor, playwright, and screenwriter. Chekhov/Tolstoy: Love Stories presents a pair of one-act dramas based on short stories by the Russian literary giants and adapted by Malleson. Audience members with passing familiarity of works by Anton Chekhov and Leo Tolstoy will surely not expect to see a rom-com double bill, and yet the plays reflect the authors’ depths of compassion and devotion to social and spiritual uplift.
Nearly two years ago Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview, which revolves around a high-stakes family dinner party, opened at Soho Rep’s theater on Walker Street. The devastating play compelled audiences to examine their attitudes toward race and class in the United States and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. Currently playing in the same theater (presented not by Soho Rep but by Page 73), Zora Howard’s Stew also centers on the stressful preparation of a meal while addressing issues confronting African Americans, particularly women, in the 21st century. Stew does not have the raw power of its predecessor, but in its assault on the senses, the play is ultimately unnerving.
The script for Simon Stone’s Medea at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) carries the notation “after Euripides.” Anyone who attends and expects tunics and armbands will therefore be disappointed: Stone has modernized the story of the spurned wife of Jason, the Argonaut who turned to the daughter of Creon for physical comfort. His version changes the names of the characters: Medea is Anna; Jason is Lucas; Creon is Christopher; and Creon’s daughter, who doesn’t appear in Euripides, is named Clara and is very much present.
An evening of one-act plays, such as those in Brecht: Call and Respond, presents considerable challenges. Playwrights and actors must develop and sustain their characterizations quickly and intensely over a shorter period of time. The umbrella title for three works, Brecht: Call and Respond includes The Jewish Wife by Bertolt Brecht, Sunset Point by Arlene Hutton, and Self Help in the Anthropocene by Kristin Idaszak (the last two were commissioned by New Light Theater Company in 2019).
How exciting and new the film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice must have seemed when it hit pre-multiplex screens in 1969. Along with such contemporary classics as Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider, and with the added inducement of major movie stars wearing few clothes, Paul Mazursky’s satire proffered trendy sex; inspired materialistic adults to question their values; laughed about pot, one of the first big releases to do so; spoofed middle-class mores; and served up newly permissible bare breasts, though not Natalie Wood’s or Dyan Cannon’s. As a time capsule, the movie holds up. But why, in 2020, do a musical version?
Buzz McLaughlin’s 1996 play, Sister Calling My Name, tells a familial story of loss, love and forgiveness. At the center is Michael (John Marshall) an English literature professor whose life has not gone according to his expectations. He has recently undergone a divorce and been denied tenure, and the last thing he wants to do is visit his mentally disabled sister Lindsey (Gillian Todd), who made his life extremely difficult growing up.
Doctors Jane and Alexander wrestles with the idea of what it means to live in the shadow of a famous parent. Written, directed and produced by Edward Einhorn, the play focuses on the life of his mother, Jane Einhorn. She was the daughter of Alexander S. Wiener, a scientist who became famous (with Karl Landsteiner) for the discovery of the Rh factor in blood, critical knowledge for the success of transfusions
Arriving during this primary season like a theatrical rejoinder to all the Democratic hand-wringing over the working class, Paris is an honest portrayal of people who need every dollar they earn. Or it’s a sly commentary on how race figures into a seemingly nonracist environment (i.e., one full of “nice” white people). Or it’s just a well-performed and engaging workplace dramedy. However it’s viewed, this sharply written, superbly acted new play provides theatergoers with a jolt from winter doldrums.
The Fellowship for Performing Arts concentrates its efforts on drama with a Christian theme. Previously it has presented an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters; Shadowlands, a 1990 drama about Lewis himself and his middle-aged romance with an American Jewish woman; and Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons (1960), about Sir Thomas More. But its current production of Paradise Lost is a heartening leap forward for the company.
Assemble is an immersive theater experience that includes secret locations, apps, audio tours and choosing various paths for each member of its audience to pursue a unique adventure. The journey begins when the rendezvous point is sent to ticket buyers the day before the performance. Some technological know-how is required, too, since audience members must download a custom-made app to their cell phones, listen through earbuds, and record actions they have performed during the show. At the check-in, a code is given to participants to enter into their phones. From there, the performance begins, and viewers are off to the clandestine space—a box store big enough to accommodate shifting locales—in Brooklyn.
It’s rare that a musical synthesizes genres and influences from popular and high culture and succeeds at integrating them all, but Romeo and Bernadette does. With book and lyrics by Mark Saltzman, and music adapted from traditional Italian melodies, this show incorporates elements of Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story, and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, with a bit of The Sopranos to boot. Northern vs. southern Italian (Sicilian) class prejudices and contemporary renditions of classical Italian operas are thrown into the mix for good measure.
In the aftermath of the 2018 high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., there came the revelation that Scot Peterson, a sheriff’s deputy stationed outside the school at the time of the attack, failed to engage the shooter, staying hidden at the base of a stairwell for some 48 minutes. Though Peterson is never mentioned, he is clearly the inspiration for Scott Organ’s poignant and piercing tick-tock drama, 17 Minutes. Tracking the steady demise of a good man who makes a bad mistake, the work chronicles a life that not so much shatters as it does dismantle, like a service revolver being disassembled one piece at a time.
Is there any way to review a show called Emojiland besides 🆕🎶📢🎨⚡? That is to say, this new musical is loud and colorful and has lots of energy, but some parts work better than others. (Hmm, there doesn’t seem to be an emoji for that last thought.)
There are numerous challenges in staging Timon of Athens, one of Shakespeare’s least produced works (perhaps not even performed during his own lifetime). It’s an invective-filled and disjointed morality tale, a story of a profligate spender let down by false friends who turns to excessive isolation and bitterness. Probably coauthored with Thomas Middleton, Timon is usually described as deficient in some way or as so odd as to defy categorization: words such as “baffling,” “curious,” “unfinished,” “abandoned,” and “mistake” populate major works of criticism. Even its place in the First Folio is dubious, as textual oddities arguably demonstrate it was not originally intended to be included among Shakespeare’s collected works.
Maz and Bricks, a production of the estimable Irish company Fishamble, draws on many of the hallmark of Irish drama in the last quarter century. Playwright Eva O’Connor tells her story, a two-hander, with vibrant narrative monologues alternating with scenes and even a double direct address from its characters to the audience. The monologue intertwining has been a staple of Irish playwriting from Brian Friel (Faith Healer, 1979) to Conor McPherson (Port Authority, 2001). The scabrous language, elevated to poetry, is equally Irish.
