Asking What If and Why Not?

Review of Kennedy: Bobby’s Last Crusade, Playhouse on Park

This election season, fraught as it is with peril—in the form of a pandemic the U.S. has handled badly—chaos—in the form of showdowns between heavily armed squads and protesters enraged by unconscionable and racialized acts of police violence—and a do-or-die aura for our beleaguered electoral system, why not return to a period just as anxious and portentous? Well, except there was no internet then.

In 1968, the Democratic party had a sitting president, Lyndon Johnson, who was becoming increasingly unpopular with many of his constituents, particularly those who wanted the undeclared war in Vietnam to end. That led to divisions within the party that, to a certain extent, never got completely healed. Senator Eugene McCarthy was running against the president on a ticket mainly aimed at young voters who had the most to lose by the war dragging on and who were becoming increasingly vocal. 1968 was the year student unrest closed many campuses during spring session, and May ’68 is well known as the fulcrum moment when protests by French students and workers shut down Paris. It was also the year of Mao’s Cultural Revolution in China.

Goaded into running by a sense that history was passing him by, Robert Francis Kennedy, brother of assassinated and much mourned president John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and former attorney general in his brother’s administration, entered the race for the Democratic nomination in March. In June, two months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy was assassinated, having just won the California primary.

David Arrow (Bobby Kennedy) in KENNEDY: BOBBY‘S LAST CRUSADE, filmed for Playhouse on Park. Photos by Russ Rowland

Kennedy: Bobby’s Last Crusade by David Arrow, who plays Kennedy, directed by Eric Nightengale, tours the series of stump speeches Kennedy made in those heady times. Much of the power of the play comes from hearing literate, compassionate speeches that don’t sound like mere rhetoric or designed merely to score points off opponents. We see Kennedy is fond of quoting “his favorite poet” Aeschylus (well, a Kennedy probably should have a tragic view of life), and that he has taken up the war on poverty that was one of the better aspects of the Johnson administration. We hear some of his candid asides on his own performance, see his personable sense of his developing public persona, and live through some touching and, now and then, light-hearted moments. The play documents how in the course of those three months Kennedy, an inheritor of incredible privilege thanks to his father’s wealth and power, transformed himself into a man of the people. It wasn’t an act, and that, if nothing else, is why people still get misty when they talk about “Bobby.”

And that’s mostly the tone of the play, a kind of tempered hagiography, with each successive speech, most in the Midwest, a stop on a kind of Via Crucis. Whatever you may think about the Kennedys, the fact of their brutal and untimely deaths—for political reasons, no matter which account of guilt you believe—makes them at once more sinned-against than sinning. We don’t hear much about what made Kennedy a man with so many enemies, nor do we get much of a sense of Kennedy as the tough and shrewd politician he was. By which I mean to say that he was under no illusions about how nasty it all could get, yet the feeling of the man the play gives us is a bit of a naïf. I don’t doubt he was overwhelmed by the Sinatra-like (or Beatles-like) hysteria he was often greeted with—remarking on how often someone in the crowd stole his shoe—but any chance he had for election meant stirring and feeding and riding just such a reaction. The five years of shock, mourning and disquiet since the death of his brother made the mere presence of a Kennedy an oracular and revelatory moment to his followers. The Kennedy phenomenon was in full swing.

David Arrow (Bobby Kennedy) in KENNEDY: BOBBY‘S LAST CRUSADE, filmed for Playhouse on Park. Photos by Russ Rowland

The two immediate targets of the excerpts we hear from Kennedy’s speeches—McCarthy and Johnson—are men Kennedy respects, though, having been in the JFK administration with Johnson, he has no illusions about the kind of hardball political animal he’s dealing with. Then, in a speech on the eve of April Fool’s Day, just days before King’s assassination, Johnson announced he would not seek or accept his party’s nomination. The ostensible reason (no, not to spend more time with his family) was to put all his efforts into ending the war. Thereby quenching, potentially, the fire of much of the McCarthy and now Kennedy campaigns. If you believed him. Eventually Vice President Hubert Humphrey would take up the mantel of running as the preferred DNC front-runner. And what we witness in the play, as history shows, is that Kennedy, in just three months, was mounting a formidable challenge. Thus engendering one of the great “what-ifs” of party politics for that generation.

And that’s the main effect of the play: inspiring—besides admiration for the articulate, thoughtful, driven Kennedy, who never loses his sense of humor—thoughts of “what if.” And maybe, “what now?” Or “why not?,” recalling the famous tagline, stolen from George Bernard Shaw, with which Kennedy ended many of his speeches during the campaign: “Some men see things as they are and ask why? I dream things that never were and ask why not?”

As Kennedy, David Arrow does a remarkable job. He has the Kennedy quaver at times, and he can drawl out certain Boston inflections well enough to bring back those familiar voices. More keenly, his Kennedy takes us into his confidence, giving a chummy backstage access to the events as he lives them. There’s an immediacy that no documentary portrayal could achieve and that makes the play riveting—which is amazing, considering that most of the time we’re listening to campaign speeches (generally one of the lowest forms of theater). There are videos to show us newspaper headlines, views of crowds, and some of the faces of key figures of the time. The set has the look of the shambles of campaign headquarters after a grueling night.

For those who remember RFK (I was eight when he died, and can still recall getting up for school on June fifth, my brother’s second birthday, with the television proclaiming the news from California of the shooting; Kennedy died in the morning of the sixth), the play helps jog the memory—like the very real unease with the length of Kennedy’s hair in those days when such things were emblems of embracing the dangerous youth culture. For those who didn’t live through those times, the play is bound to feel a bit remote—Kennedy was dead before current presidential candidate Joe Biden was elected to his first term as senator—but it may be just the thing to stir youthful belief in the power of change.

The play is apropos in the way that some of Kennedy’s characterizations of current events describe our own times, but more importantly it reminds us that political leaders can sometimes galvanize the best and brightest hopes. As Kennedy said in his early campaign speech at the University of Kansas: “…hundreds of communities and millions of citizens are looking for their answers, to force and repression and private gun stocks - so that we confront our fellow citizen across impossible barriers of hostility and mistrust and again, I don't believe that we have to accept that.  I don't believe that it's necessary in the United States of America.  I think that we can work together - I don't think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country.  And that is why I run for President of the United States.”

David Arrow (Bobby Kennedy) in KENNEDY: BOBBY‘S LAST CRUSADE, filmed for Playhouse on Park. Photos by Russ Rowland

The heartbreak of the story—which wouldn’t surprise Aeschylus—is that the gods are cruel.

Notes from Playhouse on Park:

This is a film of the play. This play was originally scheduled to be produced by Playhouse Theatre Group, Inc. live at Playhouse on Park. As a result of guidelines put forth by both Governor Ned Lamont and Actors Equity Association, the play could not be produced in front of a live audience, nor could it be filmed in CT. The play was filmed for Playhouse on Park audiences at the Theatre of St. Clements in NYC. This is the same place it had its world premiere in 2018. The film is available to stream at home between September 16 - October 4 for $20; NOW EXTENDED TO OCTOBER 11.

On Saturday, October 10, Playhouse on Park is bringing the filmed play KENNEDY: BOBBY’S LAST CRUSADE to Edmond Town Hall for The Ingersoll Auto Pop-Up Drive-In. The film will start at 7:30pm (gates open at 7pm). $20 per car. Playwright/Actor David Arrow and Director Eric Nightengale will be in attendance. We are working on a creative way to conduct a Question and Answer Session! Please plan on joining us. For tickets: here

Kennedy: Bobby’s Last Crusade
By David Arrow
Directed by Eric Nightengale
Starring David Arrow as Bobby Kennedy
Filmed for Playhouse on Park
Available for streaming: September 16-October 11, 202

Remote Post

Fully Committed, Music Theatre of Connecticut

When Becky Mode’s comedy Fully Committed was playing on Broadway in 2016, critic Charles Isherwood of the New York Times quibbled about the changed attitude toward the kind of conspicuous consumption displayed at the ultra-exclusive restaurant featured in the play at the time as compared to 1999, when the play first ran at Vineyard Theater. It was a canny reference to how context can change what we laugh at or not in a play that gently ribs a certain stratum of society.

Now, in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic that closed theaters last spring, the antics of Sam, an actor between roles who works on the reservation desk in the basement of a “world-renowned, ridiculously red-hot Manhattan restaurant,” comes freighted with not a little nostalgia. Once upon a time people gathered in theaters and in restaurants, and you could pack both to capacity. Not so now. Music Theatre of Connecticut is one of very few theaters given the go-ahead by the state of CT and by Actor’s Equity to reopen, and MTC’s in-person seating has been shrunk to 25. Others may view the show live online. Which is how I saw it on opening night.

Matt Densky as Sam in Fully Committed at Music Theatre of Connecticut, directed by Kevin Connors (photo by Alex Mongillo)

The play is a one-person show. Sam, played by Matt Densky, arrives for work in the de rigueur mask of our times, then is able to get on with his job unmasked. The play’s action, without any face-to-face contacts, seems only too apropos. In his post, a sort of remote frontlines, Sam must man all alone multiple phones spread across the space where calls overlap and interrupt. Densky acts out a tour de force of the voices and mannerisms of all the callers, while Sam deals with ricocheting situations and considerable comic crosstalk, and comes out of the whirlwind “with his soul untouched” (as The Boss might say). It’s all enacted by Densky in split-second changes that are likely to make you a bit punchy, and, while more wit in the lines would be welcome, Densky is a versatile comic actor able to score delighted laughs with shifts in voice and attitude.

Matt Denksy in Fully Committed at Music Theatre in Connecticut, directed by Kevin Connors (photo by Alex Mongillo)

There’s the fussy French Maître D, the louche head chef—who sounds suspiciously at times like a certain overbearing political figure of our day—a co-worker calling in with MIA excuses, a wise guy, a big name actress’ manager, and a dizzying array of would-be clientele, some the height of pretentiousness, others the height of cluelessness. And all of it is handled by Sam like a candle burning both ends while he also deals with a few matters on the home-front: his disarmingly sweet dad wants him home for Christmas, his acting friend is having a big break, and Sam is sweating out the wait for a potential callback at Lincoln Center. All within the realm of reality in Manhattan.

And that’s the fun of the play but also—now—its poignancy. We took all this for granted, now look. What’s more, the fact that restaurants are re-opening with much more limited seating makes vying for that one table by the window (or what have you) more anxious than ever. The play, formerly a kind of high energy lark on the madness of multitasking (in the days before ubiquitous cellphones), has been updated a bit, so that Sam’s personal calls are on cell while the landlines are all for work. We see before us a kind of wonderfully choreographed chaos. It’s still high energy, it’s still a lark, but now we’re apt to be more than a bit apprehensive about that man on the flying trapeze, so to speak. Won’t someone give Sam a break—from the calls and in his career? Won’t someone drop a food pellet to the poor creature on his dreadful treadmill?

Matt Densky in Fully Committed at Music Theatre of Connecticut, directed by Kevin Connors (photo by Alex Mongillo)

Our attitude toward the action might take its cue from what we take Sam to be. Is he an actor who has to work a desk, or a worker who wants to be an actor? Unlike on Broadway with a name actor like Jesse Tyler Ferguson giving the show some celebrity box office, here Matt Densky is a native of CT who has done comic wonders at MTC in The SantaLand Diaries and The 39 Steps (and is on pandemic hiatus from the Broadway tour of WICKED) and he makes Sam’s situation feel that much more earned. Directed by Kevin Connors on a wonderfully detailed set by Jessie Lizotte, Densky’s Sam is beleaguered but never quite beside himself. He’s got great turn-on-a-dime timing and plenty of panache. We believe he could become as good an actor as Densky is. In other words, there’s hope for the performer of even the most thankless task—at least in Manhattan. Back then.

Seeing the show online provides its own sense of paradox. What makes a theater like MTC a treat is its intimacy; every seat is close to the action. Online, the show is viewed at a distance that’s a bit like having a Broadway mezzanine seat (which critics are never given!), though the broadcast sound leaves a bit to be desired, as the surrounding space creates more distortion than the direct-feed of computer-to-computer hook-up does on Zoom streams. Perhaps that can be improved, but in any case Fully Committed—which is the catch-phrase for a restaurant totally booked—is a good choice for those of us not yet fully committed to sharing public spaces with our fellow sufferers in the current state of affairs. It’s a play rather light on plot but strong on presence, and that serves to remind us of why live theater helps make life worthwhile. And it’s therapeutic to see someone onstage again! The make-believe of theater can’t always keep chaos at bay, but theater as make-believe chaos can be an apt diversion.

Only commit.

Matt Densky in Fully Committed at Music Theatre of Connecticut, directed by Kevin Connors (photo by Alex Mongillo)

Fully Committed
by Becky Mode
Directed by Kevin Connors
With Matt Densky

Scenic/Prop Design: Jessie Lizotte; Lighting Design: RJ Romeo; Costume Design: Diane Vanderkroef; Sound Design: Will Atkin; Stage Managing: Jim Schilling

Music Theatre of Connecticut
September 11-27, 2020

From the press release:

MTC is thrilled to be reopening its doors as one of three professional theatres in the country to be given permission to host indoor events via the approval of the state of CT and Actor’s Equity Association. Alongside this reopening comes health & safety protocols to assure the safety of the audience, crew, and actors. Some of these protocols include staggered arrival based on seating, no more than 25 audience members in the theatre, and masks required at all times. Until further notice, all performances will not only be presented in person, but through live stream as well, so that the shows may be watched live from the comfort of your home. Both in person and live stream tickets are available. For more information on MTC’s reopening protocols you can go here.

The Shut In Season

Preview, under quarantine

In the poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” W. B. Yeats imagines a golden bird that will sing “to lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come.” In these days when the numbers of those contracting the coronavirus and those dying from it are still escalating, there’s a large margin of uncertainty about what is “to come.” And in the midst of so many pronouncements about what is best and what will make things worse, it seems vain, in a sense, to write about the present as anything more than “what is passing.” About “what is past” we can be clear: for theater in CT, any hope of salvaging the remainder of the 2019-20 season is “past.” What’s “passing,” it seems now, are hopes for a return to normality in fall 2020. And to come? Well, for the moment we’ll just content ourselves with what’s available online and what may arrive, in time.

It’s been over a month since I was at a public event. That event, on March 11, was the Long Wharf Theatre’s announcement of its 2020-21 season, covered here by Lucy Gellman at the Arts Paper. On that evening, Long Wharf Artistic Director Jacob Padrón was still optimistic that the theater’s next production of the 2019-20 season, Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady, directed by Ralph B. Peña, would run. Over the next few weeks, as stricter and stricter “shelter in place” directives were given, Broadway theaters shuttered, and restaurants in our area went to take-out and delivery only, the possibilities for theater resuming went from passing to past. Long Wharf cancelled its remaining shows, which included Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap, directed by Madeline Sayet. At Hartford Stage, a fine production of Jane Eyre, directed and adapted by Elizabeth Williamson, closed early, and David Seidler’s The King’s Speech, directed by Michael Wilson, was cancelled. The production of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!, directed by Artistic Director Maria Bensussen, originally scheduled for May, has been moved to the fall, October 22-November 15, and The Complete History of Comedy (Abridged), written and directed by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, originally scheduled for June, will take place October 1-11. Thus the last two shows of the 2019-20 season will run in 2020, followed by the annual production of A Christmas Carol (November 27-December 27). The 2020-21 season will then begin in January. Padrón and Bensussen, the respective Artistic Directors of Long Wharf and Hartford Stage, will be talking with longtime theater critic Frank Rizzo tonight about the current situation and their visions as new ADs at vibrant local theaters in challenging times. Go here, for the virtual edition of A Little Harmless Fun, on the website of the Mark Twain House & Museum, at 7 p.m.

The very day of the Long Wharf gathering, Yale Repertory Theatre announced, after Yale University determined it would not resume classes on campus after spring break (which ran until March 22nd), the premature end of its season, thus canceling a revival of A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Carl Cofield, and Testmatch by Kate Atwell, directed by Margot Bordelon; that announcement also meant that the final appearances onstage by students at the Yale School of Drama for spring 2020 had already occurred.

The last theatrical production I saw—Van Gogh Café at Yale Cabaret—marked the last show that will be held in the venerable basement space this season. The Cabaret, however, is not out of commission entirely. This weekend, April 17 & 18, Ain’t No Dead Thing, an original play written and directed by a.k. payne which was slated as one of the last three shows of the season, will air as a radio play, at 8 p.m. both nights. Information for tuning in can be found here. The Cab has devised its own station—KCAB—where a DJ named darealunluckymadman plays music amidst other events. The play, presented in partnership with FOLKS, is set “against the backdrop of one of the largest race massacres in U.S. history” in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. At a diner called Noa’s Ark, folks gather to envision a future for Blacks in America. The Cab’s site describes a radio play as “a dramatized, acoustic performance that allows listeners to imagine the characters and visual elements of a story through dialogue, music, and sound effects. In this moment of constant communication via Zoom, checking the news, and streaming videos, radio plays give us a break from the screen and ask us to focus on language.”

Westport Country Playhouse, which generally runs its season from spring to late fall, announced on Tuesday that it will not mount any productions until 2021. “We hope our audience will understand and support this very emotional and challenging decision,” said Mark Lamos, Playhouse artistic director, in a statement, “but we, like our sister non-profit theaters and arts organizations world-wide, feel that the predicted future is too unknowable at this point.” The first program in the Playhouse’s virtual series airs on Friday, April 17, at 7 p.m.: “Getting to Know You: A Celebration of Young Artists,” with Tony Award-winning Broadway star Kelli O’Hara, on the Playhouse YouTube channel and Facebook Live. Ten Fairfield County high school students will perform a musical theater selection and chat with O’Hara. More Playhouse-generated online events will be announced soon, here.

Just down the road from Westport, in Norwalk, Music Theater of Connecticut has been assessing the situation in order to find a date for its production of The Buddy Holly Story (if his songs don’t brighten your mood, I don’t know what will!). Originally scheduled for March, then postponed until May, the show, according to MTC’s latest announcement—on the 16th—will run from Friday, July 16, to Sunday, August 1. Kevin Connors, MTC’s Executive Artistic Director, in a release from the theater, adds: “MTC remains engaged through our online initiatives including the weekly MTC LIVE! (a new episode premieres on Facebook and at www.musictheatreofct.com/live every Wednesday at noon), our online MasterClass series this month, and our annual gala fundraiser THE MTC VOICE – ONLINE EDITION – coming up on May 9.” For more info about these and other programs, go here.

The Goodspeed Theater in East Haddam announced that its usual season of three musicals (which typically starts around this time) will be reduced to one in 2020: performances for the revival of South Pacific are scheduled to begin on Friday, September 11. The summer production of the new musical Anne of Green Gables will now move to the 2021 season. In the theater’s press release, dated April 9, Goodspeed Executive Director Michael Gennaro said, “It was heartbreaking for us to make the decision to postpone Anne of Green Gables, but it has become clear that we would not have enough time to build and rehearse the show in time for a summer opening. Our producing staff and the creative team both agree that launching a world-premiere musical takes special attention, which may not be possible until we are well past this crisis.”

The health crisis is of course impacting the economy in a drastic manner. Theaters are having to furlough and lay off employees, cancel events—such as fund-raising galas—and are losing important ticket revenues. Contributions are greatly needed and appreciated and are, in most cases, tax deductible.

On April 14, The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, in New Haven, announced its plans for the 25th season’s virtual programming: “We will celebrate our 25th anniversary with a variety of online artistic experiences, virtual food experiences, cell phone-guided walking tours, and various NEA Big Read activities. The virtual Ideas programming centered on the theme ‘Democracy: We the People’ will feature interactive events and conversations with vital thinkers, including 2012 Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco, award-winning scholar Dr. Khalilah L. Brown-Dean, NEA Big Read Author Stephanie Burt, and renowned writer Anand Giridharadas. All programming will be free.”

The statement further reads: “We are committed to the Festival's mission that arts and ideas bring people together and have a positive economic impact on New Haven. Virtual and physically distanced programming will begin online in the coming weeks on a rolling basis. Details will be announced weekly and will be shared on the Festival’s website.”

Here is a link to the International A&I onscreen announcement featuring Liz Fisher & Tom Griggs, Co-Directors of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas

So, tune into as much theater as you can, from wherever you happen to be. Stay safe, and obey your local government’s health protocols as we try to be a public in private spaces.

A Cafe with a Difference

Review of The Van Gogh Café, Yale Cabaret

FLOWERS, Ka.—For those passing through or living fulltime in the area, Van Gogh Café offers homey décor and comfort food galore. I mean, that Emmie Finckel has done wonders with the place. It’s a downhome oasis with sunny yellow walls, where Formica tables sit beside some with homemade wooden planks, where mismatched chairs of all descriptions abound, where a sturdy counter—presided over by Marc (Mihir Kumar), the proprietor—is apt to be peopled with regulars on a first-name basis, where assorted knick-knacks and bric-a-brac decorate the tables, the bathroom walls are adorned with painted hydrangeas, and the record player intuitively grasps the song you need to hear.

Clara (Shimali De Silva), Marc’s charming ten-year-old daughter, will take your order if you show up in the hour before school starts. With Marc somewhat conflicted about his lot in life, Clara is clearly the VGC’s biggest devotee, an enthusiast who finds every visitor a source of fascination and believes there’s an enduring magic in the walls of the café. Well, why not, the café was once a storied theater and who knows what feats have occurred there. For Clara, who might be nursing a hurt now that her mother has moved to New York, the possibilities of the place are endless, as anything might happen.

She may have a point, or at least that’s my takeaway from a recent visit. There were doings a-plenty. A source of considerable amusement was the way a stray gull had taken up residence on the roof, only to be befriended by Clara’s cat. The lovestruck feline kept snagging articles of clothing from Lon (Faizan Kareem), a hapless regular—a boot, a scarf, a glove—to award to the visiting bird. Eventually, a flock of gulls were hanging out there, only to be dispersed in a providential fashion through the agency of some passers-through, Kelly (Lily Haje) and Jack (Devin Matlock). The lady is an ornithologist, really!

That’s often the way things go around The Van Gogh Café, Clara insists, as, for instance the visit of the Fancy Lady (Jocelyn Knazik Phelps), a stranger who left behind some seeds that magically became gardenias which were, of course, the favorite flower of that aged actor (Danilo Gambini) who visited later, to recall his former glories and to await an old friend.

Events can sometimes be a little disconcerting—like a thunderstorm that knocked out the power and, according to Clara, made the food able to cook itself. Which was a good thing as Marc had a period there where he saw himself as a poet, a passion perhaps inspired by some changes in his romantic outlook. Then there’s the time Maria (Rebecca Kent)—she’s sort of a peremptory type, but really very nice—found herself face to face with her daughter, Ella (Jocelyn Knazik Phelps), who left years ago. And, guess what, she’s pregnant! So Maria gets to be a grandmother after all.

Meanwhile Sue (Lily Haje) and Ray (Nicholas Orvis) occasionally argue over nothing, but it’s worth it just to hear Sue get all agitated with that little piping voice she has. And did I mention the person at the table adjacent to me? A playwright (Taiga Christie) who wrote a lot at every visit—so, who knows, we may all be in a play one day. Kinda like that old Beatles song—“and though she feels as if she’s in a play / She is anyway.”

That’s the feeling at The Van Gogh Café, alright. Watch where you sit because the regulars have some chairs all to themselves, but there’s plenty of seats all around to catch the comings and goings (of which there are a lot!). I won’t say there’s never a dull moment—I mean, this is Kansas, after all—but the cheer is infectious, the locals likeable, the food not bad. (I had the Greek salad as a starter, then the roast turkey with mashed potatoes and green beans—all of which was very satisfying, but I found myself eyeing the fried mozz appetizer and the slab of meat loaf I saw on other plates). Marc, according to the regulars, burns pies more often than not, and there’s a general opinion that the lemon meringue isn’t up to what it was when his wife was on the premises. My slice was fine, though the crust was a bit heavy maybe. I hear that the coffee is much improved, though, and the waitstaff are like people you might see in a real play sometime. Speaking of actors, I’m really glad I got to see that old star’s visit. What a charming guy, so sweet and gracious! You’d never know the career he had, he was so humble. Very touching. That’s the kind of thing I’ll be dining out on for a while. Maybe even on that meat loaf . . .

Oh, and I should mention. The Café is open for dinner at 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday. It also offers a late night snack menu tonight (I guess since it’s a Friday it’s OK for Clara to be up that late.) And on Saturday, a brunch menu at noon. That features a menu and a show that schoolkids should appreciate, especially any that have an interest in theater. Like the Yale Cabaret—which has storied walls in its own right—The Van Gogh Café assumes that the magic of childhood extends into our joy in the arts, no matter how old we might be (I’m not saying—but I did know all the songs from the Sixties that record player played.)

There’s magic in theater, certainly. And there’s magic—theatrical and otherwise—at The Van Gogh Café. Get in on it while you can (like, before you grow up too much).

The Van Gogh Café
Proposed, directed and adapted by Emily Sorensen and Madeline Charne, based on the novel by Cynthia Rylant

Set Designer: Emmie Finckel; Costume Designer: Miguel Urbino; Lighting Designer: Tully Goldrick; Associate Lighting Designer: Matthew Sonnenfeld; Sound Designers: Liam Bellman-Sharpe & Bryan Scharenberg; Technical Director: David Phelps; Producers: Madeline Carey & Sarah Scafidi; Stage Manager: Zak Rosen

Cast: Taiga Christie, Shimali De Silva, Danilo Gambini, Lily Haje, Faizan Kareem, Rebecca Kent, Jocelyn Knazik Phelps, Mihir Kumar, Devin Matlock, Nicholas Orvis

Yale Cabaret
March 5-7, 2020

yalecabaret.org

The Sherlock of Swindon

Review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, CT Repertory Theatre

Simon Stephens’ Tony-winning stage adaptation of Mark Haddon’s best-selling novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is curious indeed. It’s a story full of dysfunction, including various kinds of abuse and the killing of a dog, that tries to be upbeat and heartwarming. It mainly succeeds due to inventive staging that keeps us apprised of the world according to Christopher, a Brit teen in Swindon who has exceptional math skills and is firmly forthcoming about his issues with most other things—like the colors brown and yellow, and the use of metaphors in speech, and the tendency of most humans to lie or playact—and because Tyler Nowakowski, a third-year actor in the MFA program at UConn, makes Christopher, for all his quirks, an engaging and interesting fellow to spend time with.

Christopher (Tyler Nowakowski), center; ensemble, left to right: Elizabeth Jebran, Matthew Antoci, Mauricio Miranda, Justin Jager, Nicolle Cooper, Alexandra Brokowski, in the Connecticut Repertory Theatre productioin of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The play keeps us amused by little oddities, such as having the show’s ensemble enact furnishings and appliances in the home Christopher shares with his father Ed (Joe Cassidy), and the projections by Taylor Edelle Stuart keep us impressed as they simulate the tangled signals that Christopher, described as neuroatypical, must process. A trip to London in Act Two is rendered as a near psychic overload, kept benign by the fact that Christopher has written his story for his helpful teacher Siobhan (Thalia Eddy) and she has made it into the play we’re watching. That means that Christopher is at first narrated by Siobhan reading his narrative aloud, and then enacts himself as the hero of his own story, which is a bit of a mystery story and a bit of a domestic drama.

When Wellington, the dog of his neighbor Mrs. Shears, gets impaled by a garden fork, Christopher sets off as a neighborhood sleuth. His encounters with the locals are entertaining due to the way he interacts with others, two factors being his inability to lie or to endure physical contact. He’s played with many of the behavioral tics familiar from Dustin Hoffman’s character in the film Rain Man, though the precise nature of Christopher’s condition is never gone into. As a stage character, Christopher keeps our interest because we’re never sure what he may say or do nor how he will react to others, and that makes the introduction into his view of things very lively.

Christopher (Tyler Nowakowski), Mrs. Shears (Elizabeth Jebran), and ensemble (Matthew Antioci) in the Connecticut Repertory Theatre production of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

What’s less lively is his relations with his parents, who are played as mostly patient and considerate. Exempt there’s a backstory of infidelity that Christopher’s questioning brings to light, along with outright lies and a surprising act of violence. The segment of Christopher in London, in Act II, drags because there’s so little in the way of new development, in the plot or in Christopher. At that point the big question is: will he get back to Swindon to sit for his A levels?

The problem is that the parents Ed and Judy (Margot White) are not only not very interesting, they are deliberately flattened, it seems, in an effort to present them as Christopher sees them. And since Christopher’s consciousness of others is his weak point, they mainly stand around looking pained as he acts out his inner turbulence. The encounters with strangers—such as a policeman in London (Matthew Antoci), or some people (Justin Jager and Alexandra Brokowski) waiting for the tube while Christopher hunts the tracks for his pet rat Toby (a very charming puppet by Bart P. Roccoberton, Jr.)—are much more appealing. There’s also a problem with the credibility of Judy—who tells us how hard it is to deal with Christopher—welcoming him with open arms in London, though she’s now living with a guy (Mauricio Miranda) who doesn’t want the kid around. And Cassidy’s Ed never seems troubled enough to do what the plot makes him do.

As a story, the mystery about the dog isn’t much of a dramatic crux and the domestic drama is even less of one (and it’s not really much of a spoiler to say that they are entwined, much as the absence of Mom is explained by the absence of a neighbor). The point is that Christopher, in solving the mystery, learns something about the people around him. Is it a lesson that has much purchase for him? Probably not, and not much for us either. In any case it all pales beside the question of how well he will do on his A level exam and the answer to his favorite mathematical problem. What keeps us involved is Christopher’s perspective and that’s a consistently positive aspect of the show.

Engagingly staged by director Kristin Wold with imaginative choreography well enacted by the ensemble, most of whom are MFA candidates at University of CT’s School of Fine Arts, featuring great command of the role of Christopher by Tyler Nowakowski, supported by able efforts by Equity actors Joe Cassidy and Margot White, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time works. The story of its unlikely hero shows us a that a unique sensibility can find its own way in life and flourish, and that’s not simply a curious fact.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Based on the novel by Mark Haddon
Adapted by Simon Stephens
Directed by Kristin Wold

Scenic Designer: Dennis Akpinar; Lighting Designer: Allison Zerio; Costume Designer: Sofia Perez; Sound Designer: Mack Lynn Gauthier; Technical Director: Aubrey Ellis; Dialect, Voice, & Text: Julie Foh; Movement Directors: Marie Percy & Ryan Winkles; Fight Director: Greg Webster; Projections: Taylor Edelle Stuart; Stage Manager: Tom Kosis; Puppet Designer: Bart P. Roccoberton, Jr.; Dramaturg: Eddie Vitcavage

Cast: Joe Cassidy, Margot White, Tyler Nowakowski, Thalia Eddy, Elizabeth Jebran, Mauricio Miranda, Justin Jager, Matthew Antoci, Alexandra Brokowski, Nicolle Cooper

Connecticut Repertory Theatre
UConn School of Fine Arts
February 27-March 8, 2020

The Choice Bits

Review of Cock, Yale Cabaret

The first thing you probably notice is that the stage set (by Lily Guerin) is a giant cage with four openings, one on each side, and with little seats attached to each corner. The next thing you probably notice is that the Yale Cabaret has new tables for the audience. Instead of round, they are long and rectangular, like the kind you might sit at to pass judgment. The audience is surrounding an arena where some kind of contest may take place. A cockfight, perhaps?

Cock by British playwright Mike Bartlett, directed by second-year director Alex Keegan, and proposed by John Evans Reese, who plays the only named character, John (the others are M, Daniel Liu; W, Zoe Mann; F, Thomas Pang, for Man, Woman, Father), sort of assumes that when you read or hear “cock,” you don’t automatically think of the two-legged, feathered creature. And that’s germane, certainly. But it’s also the case that a phrase like “the cock of the walk”—describing someone who struts around like he owns the place—may be implied. John is “the cock” here and as such he’s the prize to be fought over by his two lovers—M and W. The gist of it is that they discover this cock is something of a dick.

If that were all, that might be enough, but Bartlett seems to have a bit more on his mind, turning up the heat on the awkward dinner party trope and letting his characters get a bit unhinged, verbally, if not physically. The driving idea is sexual ambiguity as instanced when a member of a long-standing couple leaves that couple and opts for a lover that is not the same gender as the former lover. It may be that the locus classicus is a man, married to a woman, who, having already done the family bit, takes up with a man. Here, it’s the flip of that: John is with M; they seem to have hit a snag and John calls it quits, insisting that they are “fundamentally different” in how they approach life. While on his way to work one day, John is approached by W. They’ve noticed each other but haven’t spoken. Dancing and flirting ensues and, for the first time in his life, John confronts the question of whether he could have sex with a woman.

The play, which has been funny in showing us the sparring and at times passionate locutions of John and M—extremely well played by Reese and Lui—gets funnier when it becomes a question of John’s exploration of the—to him—unprecedented organ known by that other “c” word. Zoe Mann is wonderful as a woman being explored “like a science project” while also getting aroused. And John’s cock gets to do its cock of the walk bit as well, thus demonstrating that, for him, arousal isn’t only for gents with gents.

The dickness of John comes in his leaving W in the lurch and going back to M, then being unable to call it off with either M or W. A fact which appalls both of his lovers, since neither is inclined to accept that he might be bi and simply need a little of each (I say “each” because the play only gives him two choices). John vacillates at such a pitch that one might wonder why either M or W stays in the game. Even John wonders and the best he can determine is that it’s because of his eyes.

About that awkward dinner party. It’s offered by M (who does the cooking) as a way to let W down, and is put to W, by John, as an opportunity for a united front to end the thing with M. F, who is M’s dad and who has been invited by M as “backup,” adds to the tension with an aria about how he came to accept M with John as a genetic matter having to do with chemicals in the brain. The chemicals in his own brain seem to cause him to treat W as a manipulator and to look too often at her breasts—in W’s opinion. The outing going on at this point—of masculinist, sexist, “gay” and “straight” assumptions and prejudices—comes thick and fast. It’s mostly fun because, however you feel about these things, someone is bound to say something you’d argue with, were you in that cage.

John at one point disputes old-fashioned usages like “gay” and “straight” as though he’s about to manage a proclamation of sexual freedom. But it never quite comes to that. In fact, it ends up rather badly for John, more or less fetal while M stops just short of singing “who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

Bartlett was born in 1980, and the Eighties is when sex became “an identity,” for political purposes, and a genetic predisposition, for normative purposes, and that’s the legacy that Cock wants to engage, to question why either/or is the only thing that makes sense, sexually. As a playwright, he’s of the type for whom a stance—and a nimble tongue—is enough to merit the name “character,” so we don’t ever have to delve into why W thinks being a gay man’s first girl is “the one” for her (though I imagine she’s not alone in that), nor into why John needs M to keep him in thrall or why M needs his whipping boy.

The actors are all wonderful, and the energy crackles. The pacing is rapid-fire, and the interrelations are all vividly realized. The interaction between Liu and Reese is a driving force in the play because so much derives from an implied situation that precedes the initial break. Caustic and lambent, Liu’s M generally pushes John’s buttons in a way that must work for both. And Reese and Mann make John with W seem equally viable, not just as an escape valve, but as a way to be a different person. As the father, Pang sounds sufficiently of a different generation as to be out of place but also—in his view—the voice of normality. Finally, Reese, in Stephanie Bahniuk’s costume and hair, has a certain look and plays so convincingly the charismatic man-child that we can believe he’s the cherished fetish M and W take him for.

In the end Cock made me stand—to applaud.

Cock
By Mike Bartlett
Directed by Alex Keegan

Artistic Consultant: Yura Kordonsky; Set Designer: Lily Guerin; Costume Designer: Stephanie Bahniuk; Lighting Designer: Evan C. Anderson; Sound Designer: Bailey Trierweiler; Co-Dramaturgs: Margaret E. Douglas & Sophie Greenspan; Co-Technical Directors: Yaro Yarashevich & Andrew Reidermann; Producer: Caitlin Volz; Stage Manager: Fabiola Syvel

Cast: Daniel Liu, Zoe Mann, Thomas Pang, John Evans Reese

Yale Cabaret
February 27-29, 2020

Where Better to Make a Beginning

Review of The Zoo Story, New Haven Theater Company

How do you feel when approached by a stranger? No doubt there may be a wide variety of answers to that question, depending on who you are, where you are, and the appearance and demeanor of the stranger. Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story explores several possibilities—including uncomfortable, companionable, amused, bemused, and contentious—and drives toward a surprising conclusion.

The play’s original text dates from 1958 but was updated in 2004 and consists wholly of the encounter between Peter (J. Kevin Smith), a comfortably off middle-aged gent who works in publishing and who is seated on a public park bench in New York city, reading a textbook his company published, and Jerry (Trevor Williams), a self-professed “permanent transient” who wanders up and gets Peter’s attention, in a somewhat peremptory manner. Jerry’s appearance in the New Haven Theater Production, co-directed by Steve Scarpa and George Kulp, with his long mane of blonde hair pulled back and very casual clothing, might give some pause; then again, his early mention of some little-known fact about Freud shows the kind of verbal assurance that tends to put others at ease. He seems friendly, interested in Peter, and no more invasive than any random person you might chat with on a bus or in a bar or, indeed, on a park bench.

Jerry (Trevor Willilams), Peter (J. Kevin Smith) in The Zoo Story, New Haven Theater Company

The play is a finely tuned little machine centered on the nuances of a give-and-take where any number of social codes may be in play, where any statement becomes the material of the exchange. Jerry initially announces he has been to the zoo; he says he’s been walking north—or northerly; he says, more than once, that sometimes he “has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.” The early emphasis on Peter—his job, his marriage, his two daughters with their two cats and two parakeets, and the fact that no more children will be forthcoming—swiftly is elided to concentrate on Jerry, who shares information about his parents and his sex life and the rooming-house where he resides, way up on the upper-upper West side.

The running time of The Zoo Story, called “a play in one scene,” is about an hour, and yet it can be seen as a very compressed three act. The first act is the set-up of us getting to know a bit about Peter and understanding that he, like us, is becoming interested in Jerry, largely because of how he expresses himself. The second act is Jerry’s detailed account of his relationship to a dog owned by his landlady, a dog that regularly threatens him each time he returns to the house. The third act, with Jerry finally sharing the bench with Peter, would seem to be concerned with what happened at the zoo, a story that Jerry seemed poised to tell all along. But then doesn’t. Instead, there’s the question of the bench.

As Peter, J. Kevin Smith displays a certain patient tolerance, the feeling that most liberal city-dwellers pride themselves on perhaps. He also stays in the game by reacting to Jerry’s lengthy speeches. Jerry is emphatically not someone talking to himself. He’s speaking to Peter and Peter’s attention is of paramount importance. He’s a stand-in for the theater-goer, certainly, but he’s also a character in his own right, with his own grasp of how what Jerry says affects him. And when he finally gets riled, the play might for a moment morph into something in Neil Simon territory—The Prisoner of Second Avenue, for instance. It then takes a decisive turn away from simply needling the comic upset of a prosperous New Yorker.

Jerry (Trevor Williams), Peter (J. Kevin Smith) in The Zoo Story, New Haven Theater Company

What keeps the play in a different register throughout is Jerry. In Trevor Williams’ bravura turn, he’s a very engaging fellow, the kind of person who takes pleasure in thinking aloud and does so in an appealing way. And yet Williams, in subtle glances off or thoughtful pauses, gives us the idea that Jerry has something in mind, a point or argument that he’s building, and when he gets confrontational we’re not entirely sure it’s not a joke—or was this a territorial grab all along?

The stories Jerry tells and the persons who people them let Peter have a glimpse of a level of existence he would likely never encounter directly. That, we might think, is Albee’s point: to make a self-satisfied bourgeois meet—fleetingly but in such a way as to change their lives forever—a member of an underclass who possesses the interpersonal aplomb of a born raconteur, and maybe a steely—malevolence? Determination?

But there’s more, lots more.

The play is almost parable-like, an effect helped by the way the NHTC production, in Kulp’s set with Adam Lobelson’s lighting, surrounds the simple bench and walkway with hanging curtains and thrust seating. The everyday and the theatrical are in immediate relation. And what ultimately transpires there has a lot to do with such matters as what separates humans from animals, what constitutes connection between creatures, and what is the value and benefit of what Jerry calls “the teaching moment.” In the end, he seems sincerely grateful for what Peter has done for him. And we should also be grateful for what Jerry has given us.

The Zoo Story, as one of the simplest of stories, is also one of the deepest New Haven Theater Company has enacted. This collaboration between longtime members Kulp, Scarpa and Smith with “newer” member Williams (this is only his tenth production!) showcases the troupe’s grasp of how dialogue and interaction are what matter most in great drama. Albee’s text gives the actors playing Jerry and Peter a lot of leeway in how to make the play work—whether more naturalistic, more absurdist, and with differing degrees of subtext. What makes NHTC’s production work so well is the way Williams and Smith are both willing to play what might be some version of themselves, and then to take that where it has to go. Inevitable, but surprising. And even if you know the outcome, seeing the play get there—to watch it go a long way to come back a short distance—is the fascination of “the zoo story.”

The Zoo Story
By Edward Albee
Co-directed by George Kulp & Steve Scarpa

Stage Manager & Board: Stacy Lupo; Set Design: George Kulp; Lighting Design: Adam Lobelson; Sound Design: Tom Curley

Cast: J. Kevin Smith, Trevor Williams

New Haven Theater Company
February 20-22, February 27-29, March 5-7, 2020

Hartford Stage Takes to the Eyre

Review of Jane Eyre, Hartford Stage

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has the distinction of being one of the first great first-person narratives in British fiction and probably the earliest great first-person narrative by a female author. Most other early examples of a woman narrating her own story—Moll Flanders comes to mind—were written by a man in character as a woman. Brontë’s Jane tells her own story and addresses her “dear Reader” directly. The intimacy is key to the story. It’s a confession, of sorts, but a confession in which the point is how one becomes who one is. Jane, come from obscurity with only harmful relatives (she believes), makes her way in the world with gumption, an enduring sense of her own dignity, a passionate sense of right and wrong, a perhaps revolutionary sense of woman’s due, and an admirable way with a story.

John Reed (Grayson DeJesus), Child Jane (Meghan Pratt) in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Adapted the novel has been before, often. Many film versions—I’ve seen at least three—and no doubt stagings. At Hartford Stage, Associate Artistic Director Elizabeth Williamson directs her own adaptation and, in this era when Kate Hamill has engendered a cottage industry of comic adaptations of the kind of British—and even American—classics formerly the stuff of Masterpiece Theater (her Pride and Prejudice has been produced twice this theater season in Connecticut), it’s important to say what Jane Eyre isn’t. It’s not a light-hearted rewrite in the arch tones of contemporary feminism. It’s very faithful to our beloved Jane—and it wisely leaves out the years at the grim Lowood school, a sequence which, though based on real experience, might seem too Dickensian.

And, despite its lack of big whizbang effects (for that famed fire at Thornfield or for moody moors and encounters with a rearing horse), this Jane Eyre works. And that’s because Helen Sadler, as Jane, and Chandler Williams, as Mr. Rochester, are doing very fine work. Certainly, it’s the best romantic pairing of the season.

Mr. Rochester (Chandler Williams), Jane Eyre (Helen Sadler) in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Rochester, for starters, is a figure so familiar in his gnomic oddity as to be easily lampooned or sent-up. All the trappings of the Gothic—the peremptory Master of a mansion who has a mysterious past, the hapless but helpful governess who arrives and must somehow set things right, the knowing but not-forthcoming servants, the forbidding clime—are here, and Williamson manages to keep them in play without making them clichés. And that’s because Jane, in her forthright effort to show things as she lived them, isn’t the kind to overdramatize or satirize. Getting her tone is essential, and Williamson’s script does.

Jane (Helen Sadler), Mr. Rochester (Chandler Williams) in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Jane is right in what she thinks and says, and Sadler looks and sounds right as Jane. When she misreads something, we see her error and can watch her come to terms. Her outbursts carry a force that never gets teary or—that great Victorian affliction—overwrought. Her interactions are never too good to be true because Jane’s sense of others is apt to be realistic, for our benefit. She is cautious but not captious. And she’s stirred by her belief that Rochester might actually be her match.

And Williamson’s grasp of Brontë’s tone means that Chandler gets to render an enduring Rochester, a figure who feels like what a female author enamored of Byron and Shakespeare would fashion. He’s mercurial in temper, given to having his way, and, of course, wonderingly struck by a kind of woman he hasn’t encountered before. Chandler lets his body language and an entertaining array of vocal mannerisms create a Rochester as fascinating as Jane feels him to be.

Jane (Helen Sadler), Mrs. Fairfax (Felicity Jones Latta) in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

All the other characters are ancillary but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still real pleasure, as always, in seeing two veterans of various Connecticut stages—Felicity Jones Latta and Steve Routman—play a variety of roles. Latta is all the elder women in Jane’s life, which makes for an interesting alignment of Mrs. Fairfax, the helpful housekeeper who hired Jane; Aunt Reed, the vindictive relation who dismissed her and who on her deathbed still rejects her; Lady Ingram, the snooty mother of a belle out to snare Rochester; and Bertha, the madwoman in the attic. Routman gets to move through the distinct ranks of British society, the peasant, the military man, the aristocrat, and the cleric. Grayson DeJesus enacts two important potentially spoiler roles, quite different in effect, as Mason, the man who knows of Rochester’s past, and as St. John Rivers, the man who may have a future for Jane. Marie-France Arcilla plays Jane’s rival, her kindly nursemaid when a girl, and a servant with a secret Jane needs to know. Megan Gwyn is primarily Jane’s honorary sister in a family who helps her, and Meghan Pratt is both the child Jane, mistreated and outspoken, and little Adèle, Jane’s French-speaking charge at Thornfield Hall.

The cast of Jane Eyre in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The Hall itself is suggested, in Nick Vaughn’s set, by a handsome array of sliding partitions that can open at times to suggest a house beyond, but that can also withdraw to present a stand of trees. There are some nicely done effects with silhouettes and with a turning stage that allows Jane’s narrative to move people on and off as needed. As with Hartford Stage’s popular adaptation of A Christmas Carol, scenery is kept to a minimum and the story moves through an amorphous space that leaves much to our imaginations.

Old-fashioned? Certainly. Jane Eyre is a classic revisited for the satisfactions this intricate and involving story can still deliver and, in Elizabeth Williamson’s succinct and affecting adaptation at Hartford Stage, deliver them it does.

Jane Eyre (Helen Sadler) in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Jane Eyre
Adapted from Charlotte Brontë’s novel and directed by Elizabeth Williamson

Scenic Design: Nick Vaughn; Costume Design: Ilona Somogyi; Lighting Design: Isabella Byrd; Sound Design: Matt Hubbs; Original Music: Christian Frederickson; Wig & Hair Design: Jason Allen; Dialect Coach: Claudia Hill-Sparks; Fight Choreographer: Greg Webster; Dramaturg: Fiona Kyle; Production Stage Manager: Hannah Woodward; Assistant Stage Manager: Kelly Hardy; Production Manager: Bryan T. Holcombe

Cast: Marie-France Arcilla, Grayson DeJesus, Megan Gwyn, Felicity Jones Latta, Meghan Pratt, Steve Routman, Helen Sadler, Chandler Williams

Hartford Stage
February 13-March 14, 2020

Drag Yourself Underground

Review of Dragaret Underground, Yale Cabaret; with photographs by Linda Young

February and drag go together, if only because, in New Haven, February is often a drag, a month where—as our most recent Nobel laureate puts it—“anyone with any sense had already left town.” But at the Yale Cabaret, February is a drag in quite another sense. It’s the month of Dragaret, an annual celebration of drag performance, as, in the words of co-director (and DJ in Village-People-leather-boy retro) Danilo Gambini, an occasion to “bring joy into the conversation of consent and pleasure.” And that can be worth sticking around for. This year the theme was “underground,” as a place, co-director Alex Vermillion said, “to explore and be safe and sexy.” All are welcome to what should be seen as a “queer utopia.”

Danilo Gambini, Gregory St. Georges

Dragaret is in its eighth year and this is the third year in which Friday night’s two shows, at 8 and 11, were reserved for Connecticut queens while Saturday’s three shows, 8, 10, and midnight, were for students in the Yale School of Drama to perform. Patrick Dunn of New Haven Pride hosted the Friday night shows as Kiki Lucia, Dunn’s drag-queen persona, and David Mitsch, a third-year costume designer in YSD, hosted Saturday’s shows as Tipsy Von Tart.

Tipsy Von Tart

Both nights share great costumes, much lip-synching, surprising moves—artful ways to remove clothing seems de rigueur—and an inspired reach into a grab-bag of cultural references, styles, and personae. The main rule—tip your queens—was enthusiastically adhered to at the shows I attended (Friday, 11 p.m. and Saturday, 10 p.m.) but I have no way of knowing if the show’s mantra—“consent is sexy”—yielded its desired results.

Kiki Lucia

The CT queens of Friday night presented two entirely different shows. The show I saw had a crisp, deliberate professionalism that made for a parade of striking presentations, which included pole-dancing, striptease, and comic or emotional elements. All the performers were memorable in their own ways, but those numbers with a somewhat satiric side—such as Lotus Qween’s hilarious takeoff of Hillary (to the tune of, among other things, “Wedding Bell Blues” with its address to “Bill”) and Laiylah Alf Wa Laiylah’s evocation of Randy Rainbow’s sharp send-up of our national embarrassment, “The Don” (to the tune of “Gaston,” from The Beauty and the Beast)—were favorites for me.

Lotus Qween

Laiylah Alf Wa Laiylah

Other acts were notable for their graceful appearances, such as transgender performer Casey Fitzpatrick, and the moves of Rarity Moonchild, Xiomarie LeBeija, and Sparkle Diamond.

Casey Fitzpatrick

Rarity Moonchild

Xiomarie LeBeija

Sparkle Diamond

Frizzie Borden, billed as a bio-diva, is a woman who does drag as a woman, making a case for how diva-dom can be not only an inspiration but also an oppression. One of the more affecting performances on Friday, for me, was Rory Roux-Lay Heart’s deconstruction of her gorgeous femme persona to the tune of Bowie’s “Is There Life on Mars?”

Frizzie Borden

Rory Roux-Lay Heart

Kiki Lucia closed the show with a driven display to Cher’s “Woman’s World” with couture from The Handmaid’s Tale. A gay man dressed as a woman celebrating the power of women felt entirely appropriate, and if it didn’t, YSD night, when many more women took the stage as bio-divas, opened the question of drag as a way of positioning femininity as a performance art.

Kiki Lucia

The performance of maleness was rather less in evidence, with Jaime Hellfyre (Emma Perundi-Moon), on Saturday night, the only female-as-male performer.

Jaime Hellfyre

On Saturday at 10, our gently ironic hostess Tipsy Von Tart quipped that the jokes had already been said at the 8 p.m., implying that she might get in trouble for going off-script. She interacted with the crowd with perfect aplomb and was a welcome presence between numbers.

Tipsy Von Tart quips with “F. Murray Abraham”

Many of the acts worked as performance art, with the element of drag (however we might define that) of minimal import: JJ McGlone dressed as a solstice maiden in his hysterical evocation of Midsommar;

Midsommar Night’s Scream

The Dollar Bells cavorted in cut-offs and showed-off pole-riding skills because they can;

The Dollar Bells

Zardoz Hologram (Meg Powers) evoked Aladdin-Sane-era Bowie in makeup and her silent cyberbots (Madeline Pages and Bryn Scharenberg), while performing to his “TVC15,” complete with projections upon a TV-prop that eventually, as per the lyrics, consumed her.

Zardoz Hologram

You Can’t Be in the Show (Maia Mihanovich, Jackeline Torres Cortes, Daniel Liu, Julian Sanchez) mystified me with the import of their performance but it ended with what seemed an entirely consensual orgiastic oneness.

You Can’t Be in the Show

Stripping off a costume to reveal a decidedly different subtext was the order of the evening for many routines: Prettiest Little Devil (Zak Rosen), the only undergraduate performer, sported red wings under his gown;

Prettiest Little Devil

Georgia O’Queef (Alexandra Maurice) opened her number as a demure lady complete with picnic basket, mouthing a ‘60s torch song, only to transform before our eyes into a bumping-and-grinding diva;

Georgia O’Queef

Lady Lilith (Alex Vermillion) began zir piece as a distressed princess desperately beseeching a bald, bespectacled Dean (Matthias Neckermann) for an MFA, only to strip off all pretense at supplication in order to spank the abased academician on his leather-clad bundy, er, booty;

Lady Lilith and Dean

and Cerebral Pussy (Jessy Yates) came forward as a devotee of Jesus in a wheelchair who, filled with grace or something more carnal, took off her clothes and danced.

Cerebral Pussy

Two routines that earn special mention: the somber and studied manner in which Shabbos Queen (Adam Shaukat) put on clothes to become herself;

Shabbos Queen

and the ladies of El Cibao (Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, Nurilys Cintron, Noemi Paulino, Nefesh Cordero Pino, Jackeline Torres Cortes, Maia Mihanovich, Tyler Cruz) who performed in two different patterns of rhythmic unison and ended by waving flags of different countries.

El Cibao

Finally, our gracious hostess, Tipsy, ended the evening with a rousing performance recalling one of the greatest of all drama queens, Blanche Dubois, who seemed only too glad to depend upon the kindness of a hirsute stranger—an embodiment of the male principle as a rather randy bear (Brandon E. Burton).

Tipsy Von Tart and friend

Credit and accolades to Jimmy Stubbs who designed an impressive catwalk with wings as well as a cage for terpsichorean celebrants; Liam Bellman-Sharpe for sound; Emma Deane and Nicole E. Lang for lights; Hannah Tran for projections, and Kitty Cassetti and Aiden Griffiths for costumes that inspired—and at times left nothing to—the imagination.

Doireann Mac Mahon, Sarah Karl

For the midnight show other acts were added, but this ends my account of Dragaret 02/20. The Yale Cabaret has our permission to do it to us again next year…

Riw Rakkulchon (YSD MFA *19)

Dragaret Underground
Co-directed by Danilo Gambini and Alex Vermillion

Co-Producers: Sarah Cain and Jason Gray; Set Designer: Jimmy Stubbs; Co-Lighting Designers: Emma Deane and Nicole E. Lang; Projection Designers: Hannah Tran; Co-Costume Designers: Kitty Cassetti and Aiden Griffiths; Sound Designer: Liam Bellman-Sharpe; DJ: Danilo Gambini; Dramaturg: Madeline Pages; Technical Director: Libby Stone; Assistant Technical Directors: Doug Kester and Kat McCarthey; Stage Manager: Sam Tirrell; Assistant Stage Managers: Julia Bates and Edmond O’Neal

Hosts: Kiki Lucia, Feb. 21; Tipsy Von Tart, Feb. 22

Performers, Feb. 21: Kiki Lucia, Casey Fitzpatrick, Lotus Qween, Rarity Moonchild, Frizzie Borden, Xiomarie LaBeija, Sparkle Diamond, Laiylah Alf Wa Laiylah, Rory Roux-Lay Heart

Performers, Feb. 22: Christopher D. Betts, Brandon E. Burton, Estefani Castro, Nurilys Cintron, Jackeline Torres Cortes, Tyler Cruz, Danilo Gambini, Sarah Karl, Daniel Liu, Sarah Lyddan, Doireann Mac Mahon, Juliana Martinez, Alexandra Maurice, JJ McGlone, Alex McNamara, Maia Mihanovich, David Mitsch, Ciara Monique, Matthias Neckermann, Reed Northrup, Madeline Pages, Eli Pauley, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, Noemi Paulino, Emma Pernudi-Moon, Nefesh Cordero Pino, Meg Powers, Zak Rosen, Julian Sanchez, Bryn Scharenberg, Adam Shaukat, Alex Vermillion, Adrienne Wells, Maal Imani West, Devin White, Jessy Yates

Yale Cabaret
February 21-22, 2020

The Dating Game

Review of Pride and Prejudice, Playhouse on Park

The production of Pride and Prejudice currently running at Playhouse on Park in West Hartford does Kate Hamill proud. Adapting one of Jane Austen’s best-known novels, Hamill casts a contemporary screwball eye on the Bennet family and their efforts to wed—or not—and takes these familiar characters through their paces with a renewed sense of how wryly comical “the game” of match-making is, at all times, and how fraught with peril it can be when one’s entire livelihood depends upon it, as it does here.

Directed by Jason O’Connell, who not only played the surly Mr. Darcy to Hamill’s Lizzy Bennet in the first two productions of the play, but is married to the author, this version gets the zaniness right. A defect of the recent Long Wharf production of the same play was less zest in rendering Hamill’s brand of comedy, which sees a virtue in silliness. Here, with bathroom jokes and disco dance moves added to the gender-bending that the script calls for, the show has an irreverent and irrepressible spirit. And that’s all to the good—because this Pride and Prejudice is much more fun than most rom-coms of recent memory.

Jane (Nadezhda Amé), Lydia (Kelly Letourneau), Mrs. Bennet (Maia Guest), Charlotte Lucas (Sophie Sorensen), Lizzy (Kimberly Chatterjee) in the Playhouse on Park production of Pride and Prejudice by Kate Hamill (photo by Meredith Longo)

Once upon a time there were four young ladies named Bennet: Jane (Nadezhda Amé), the eldest and acknowledged looker; Lizzy (Kimberly Chatterjee), the bookish and ironic one; Mary (Jane Bradley), the unappealing one (though why, particularly, is never made clear, which in itself is a joke that arrives in a variety of ways); and Lydia (Kelly Letourneau), the lusty youngest. Mrs. Bennet (Maia Guest), their mother, is a nervous wreck in trying to marry them off despite the taciturn indifference of her husband (Sophie Sorensen) and the fluctuating feelings of the young ladies themselves.

The problem, of course, is the lack of beaux. And that’s where the story finds its rom-com dimensions, for we will find that everyone—except Mary—may find a someone. And that includes Lizzy’s bestie, Charlotte Lucas (Sophie Sorensen) whom Mrs. B is afraid will scarf up one of the few eligible bachelors about, before her daughters can. Bachelor #1 is Mr. Bingley (Jane Bradley) who is something of a frisky pup of a fellow, and whom his snooty sister (Matthew Krob) will keep out of the Bennet clutches no matter what. Bachelor #2 is Mr. Darcy (Nicholas Ortiz), whom Lizzy deems insufferable because of the way he dissed them at a ball. Bachelor #3 is the seemingly dashing Mr. Wickham (Matthew Krob) who has had his own run-in with the ever-unpleasant Darcy. Bachelor #4 is the hilariously unctuous Mr. Collins (Krob, yet again) who has his eye on whichever Bennet girl might not turn him down. He, a Bennet cousin, is to inherit the Bennet property when Mr. Bennet dies, due to patriarchal rules of descent. The girls, without a staunch male at their respective sides, are doomed to penury, or at least to a level of life quite below their present rank.

Jane (Nadezhda Amé), Lizzy (Kimberly Chatterjee), Charlotte Lucas (Sophie Sorensen) in the Playhouse on Park production of Pride and Prejudice by Kate Hamill (photo by Meredith Longo)

Thus it’s all a very middle-class ladies affair in which one either marries up or level or down, but no one can simply stay where they are. The bachelors—except for Wickham who is, alas, merely a lieutenant—all have anything from comfortable to extravagant fortunes. And so there are some upper-class ladies in the game as well. Miss Bingley might have an eye out for Darcy, as does Miss DeBourgh (Nadezhda Amé), daughter of Mr. Collins’ grand patron Lady Catherine DeBurgh (Kelly Letourneau) and a rather fearsome—and quite comical—wraithlike figure.

What makes Austen’s novel run is the way in which pairing off is fraught with misgivings, misunderstanding, and, sometimes, misinformation. The comedy here is to take these familiar types and tweak them toward the contemporary. So that when, for instance, Mary takes to the piano forte and sings, it will be a very emo affair. Or when the dancers hit the floor they will do The Hustle (and to see Mr. Bennet giving it his rendition is no small comic matter). There are broadly played types—such as Krob’s phrase-making Mr. Collins—and more subtle types, such as the superciliousness both female and male Krob brings to Miss Bingley and Mr. Wickham respectively. Guest’s Mrs. Bennet is fully in the spirit of both Austen’s and Hamill’s sense of a relentless woman who uses all her wits to live within the strictures set upon her—she’s seemingly a born manipulator and gossip, and is apt to love best whichever daughter marries best.

Lydia (Kelly Letourneau), Mrs. Bennet (Maia Guest), Mr. Bennet (Sophie Sorensen), Mary (Jane Bradley), Jane (Nadezhda Amé) in the Playhouse on Park production of Pride and Prejudice by Kate Hamill (photo by Meredith Longo)

Sorensen brings a twinkling irony to Mr. Bennet, and Ortiz makes Darcy a bit of a conundrum even to himself. His attempt at romance falls like a stone, and his grand comeuppance—and deliverance—arrives with a wonderful bodily tremor that fully captures a man overcome by conflicting emotions. For we must keep sight of—to render Austen faithfully—the class-bound strictures that might, at any turn, prevent a happily ever after. That’s most clear in what becomes of poor Lydia, who is kept just dim enough to not be fully cognizant of how, in “winning,” she has lost.

In the most rewarding—and demanding—double role, Bradley makes Mary not only a figure of fun but also of a kind of darkly pointed distaste, and, as Bingley, gives a very different comical turn. Dressed sometimes as both characters—or, rather, half and half—Bradley is the potentially loose cannon in every scene, and a late transition between the two roles earns a delighted burst of applause.

Miss Bingley (Matthew Krob), Mr. Bingley (Jane Bradley) in the Playhouse on Park production of Pride and Prejudice by Kate Hamill (photo by Meredith Longo)

Kimberley Chatterjee’s Lizzy, who is our heroine however much she might find that beneath her, sticks to her guns as we might well hope she will, and when she wavers does so with a forthright appraisal of herself that is a fine dramatic turn. For the only truly worthless people—in both Austen and Hamill—are those who can’t improve.

The show is well-served by an open playing space that helps to keep things lively, and by a wall of period-appropriate doors in Randall Parsons’ capable set. We have just enough suggestion of the level of comfort enjoyed at the different estates where the action takes place, and the costumes by Raven Ong have the requisite plainness—for the Bennets—with the necessary ostentation where required for the others, as for instance the ever-superlatively-announced Lady Catherine DeBourgh.

This Pride and Prejudice has laughs aplenty and an earned sense of all’s well that ends well.

Pride and Prejudice
By Kate Hamill
Adapted from the novel by Jane Austen
Directed by Jason O’Connell

Scenic Designer: Randall Parsons; Costume Designer: Raven Ong; Sound Designer: Kirk Ruby; Lighting Designer: Johann Fitzpatrick; Choreographer: Joey Beltre; Dialect Coach: Jen Scapetis-Tycer; Stage Manager: Mollie Cook; Props Master/Set Dresser: Eileen OConnor

Cast: Nadezhda Amé, Jane Bradley, Kimberly Chatterjee, Maia Guest, Matthew Krob, Kelly Letourneau, Nicholas Ortiz, Sophie Sorensen

Playhouse on Park
February 19-March 8, 2020

Have You Been to the Zoo?

Preview of The Zoo Story, New Haven Theater Company

Of late, the New Haven Theater Company has been tackling plays that require extensive sets—such as Bus Stop, Rumors, One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest—but this season, George Kulp points out, the troupe has decided to go for more minimalist sets with different configurations of audience and playing space. Kulp is co-directing NHTC’s current production, Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story, with Steve Scarpa and the play, in its more stripped-down, small cast virtues, will align with other distinctive NHTC shows, like last fall’s Retreat from Moscow or, several seasons back, Almost, Maine. The NHTC press release for the play describes it as: “Two very different men—a successful family man and an isolated loner—meet in a park, and their disturbing confrontation plays out ‘in real time.’”

The Zoo Story is the play that put Albee on the map, c. 1960. It was updated in 2004 (and first played at Hartford Stage) when the author revisited the play by writing a prequel called Homelife. The Zoo Story is a two-hander with characters named Jerry and Peter. Homelife showed us Peter talking to his wife before going to the park to read a textbook he is proofing. According to J. Kevin Smith, who plays Peter in the NHTC production, Albee adjusted some of the language in The Zoo Story, removing “stilted language” from the Fifties and “took out some obvious on-the-nose things.” Trevor Williams, who plays Jerry, said that his character’s language tends to be “zany and off” and anachronistic “even in the Fifties,” with word choices that can “sound academic or flowery.” As with most of NHTC’s triumphs, The Zoo Story is dialogue-driven. Or, perhaps more properly, monologue-driven. Jerry holds the floor most of the time, trying to interest Peter in various verbal snapshots of his life while Peter mainly stays reactive to what he’s hearing.

J. Kevin Smith and Trevor Williams of New Haven Theater Company

It’s an interesting choice, putting Smith in the reactive, mostly silent role, since Smith has a record of playing blustery, talkative, know-it-all guys, as he did in Bus Stop, as Dr. Gerald Lyman, in Cuckoo’s Nest, as Harding, and perhaps most memorably as the domineering, hectoring and fascinating Walt in Lucas Hnath’s A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney. As Kulp pointed out, Smith still has “plenty to do,” just not with speech. Scarpa, in presenting the play as a possible choice for this season, wanted “to make Peter strong,” and not a passive character. In that sense, Smith is an obviously good choice since passive isn’t his most noticeable theatrical trait. Kulp spoke of Smith’s “immediate and ecstatic acceptance” of the role.

Jerry, Williams said “is a challenge and not just technically.” He cited gratefully Kulp’s patience in helping him get to the character. He sees Jerry as “operating on a different set of rules. He opts not to adhere to the rules of socialization” but that means it’s important to “mine out what” the rules are for Jerry. Williams has become the NHTC’s go-to actor for off-the-wall or beyond-the-norm characters: he played a fantasy of a movie-star chimp in Trevor, the put-upon and marginalized Mechanic in Middletown, a surly hitman in Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter, and most recently the cunning and possibly crazy McMurphy in Cuckoo’s Nest, also directed by Kulp. Jerry may be his biggest feat yet.

For Kulp and Scarpa, key to the play is following the play’s through-line, which means following Jerry’s train of thought as he entertains, interests and intimidates Peter. “There’s a charming menace” in Jerry, Kulp said, and he finds this to be a great play for “two very talented guys” to perform.

A simple park bench. An illusion of some parklike surroundings. The audience as close to the set as they can get. A man is reading. Another man approaches him and says, “I’ve been to the zoo.”

The Zoo Story plays for the next three weekends, Thursday through Saturday. This Thursday, February 20, is “pay what you can” for tickets purchased at the door.

The Zoo Story
By Edward Albee
Directed by Steve Scarpa and George Kulp
Featuring NHTC company members J. Kevin Smith and Trevor Williams
February 20-22; February 27-29; March 5-7, 2020

Doors open at 7:30;  all performances start at 8:00 in the NHTC Theater located in the English Market (at the back of EBM Vintage store)
839 Chapel Street
New Haven, CT

Boys to Men

Review of littleboy/littleman, Yale Cabaret

A  first year playwright at the Yale School of Drama, Rudi Goblen demonstrates, in littleboy/littleman, a captivating exuberance of language. Two half-brothers, Bastian (Dario Ladani Sanchez), the elder, and Fito (Robert Lee Hart) share an apartment together—or rather, Bastian suffers Fito to stay in his apartment, on the couch. The play opens with Fito, alone in the apartment, rehearsing his street performance act, complete with red cones to separate the crowd from the playing space. The audience at the Cab stands in for the one in his head as he coaches us how to respond, urging us to—whether we like the show or not—make some noise.

Fito is making noise, and that’s one of the things Bastian will harangue him about, at length. Fito, able to give as good as he gets, will use any pretext to launch into tirades of his own, whether about a cop—a former bullying classmate of Bastian—who harasses him, or about a (literally) shitty job Bastian insists he take to help defray the costs of inhabiting the apartment (and don’t get him started on having to clean ladies’ lavatories). When he’s not lecturing Fito about not pulling his weight, Bastian can be seen and heard on a headset, either trying to find out about the delay in his petition for a name-change or trying to hoodwink clients for a “donation” to a police program to fight drugs and juvenile crime. Bastian’s impending name-change spurs some comic badinage between the brothers about ridiculous names but also gives Bastian an occasion to lecture his brother about how a Nicaraguan name is a handicap in job applications.

Like Stephen Adly Guirgis, Goblen is a playwright with a good ear for street-speak as Fito employs a mix of hiphop rhythms and Spanish phrases and, like Guirgis, Goblen likes to let his characters talk. In addition to their individual routines, Fito and Bastian share a reminiscence of a home invasion that took their grandmother’s life and left them permanently traumatized. But it’s really the fate of their mother that has unmoored the brothers. When Fito waxes poetic about the sacrifices their late mother endured in smuggling her two young sons and their grandmother into the States from Nicaragua and then raising them on her own, Bastian snaps back about the fact that Fito contributed nothing to their mother’s last days and throws him out.

There follows another street performance from Fito with audience participation (the night I saw the show, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, recently seen as Alice in Alice, the third show in the Yale School of Drama season, chose between a magic quarter and a piece of paper) and a collection at the close. The piece of paper contains a poem, a litany of situations summed up as “It’s all just a bag of halos and horns,” and offered as “a toast,/to us.”

I thought the show would end there, but we still have Fito’s final confrontation with that bullying police officer and the outcome of Bastian’s name-change to go. Goblen’s play comes packed with incident and overflows with speech. It aims for the company of other notable plays in which two males navigate a fraught relationship colored by street tensions and a variable grasp of how to get along—such as Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog and Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over—though here the status of both brothers as immigrants adds a further timely dimension.

The wealth of material in littleboy/littleman may feel a bit overwhelming in the compass in which its offered. Or perhaps a full-length play has been crammed into the Cab’s shorter running time. In any case, there could be more: it would be good to see Fito somewhere other than the apartment and the street; and with all the evocation of the mother going on, we feel the lack of a scene or two in which we get to see her for ourselves.

What really resonates here is Robert Lee Hart’s full command of Fito. He so inhabits the role that there seems no division between himself and his character, and that makes Fito’s scenes more vivid at times than the play he’s a part of. Dario Ladani Sanchez puts across the way in which Bastian, for all his better grasp of pragmatic realities, is overshadowed by his brother’s spirit. He’s best when he’s on a headset, trying to use his whitest voice to steer some cash his way.

Hart and Sanchez—who played off one another as antagonists in Seven Spots on the Sun in YSD’s 2018-19 season—make the most of Goblen’s way with words and make us believe in their grudging intimacy. Marcelo Martínez García’s set, which includes musicians on a drumkit and a bass guitar (the latter is used to great effect as the other end of a phone conversation Bastian gets caught up in), gives us a ratty apartment that’s also the street, while Emma Deane’s lighting design is—well—spot on. Second-year director Christopher D. Betts—in his third play of the Cabaret’s 52nd season—keeps the action very mobile, showing again his inspired grasp of how to use the Cab’s amorphous space to enhancing effect.

littleboy/littleman
By Rudi Goblen
Directed by Christopher D. Betts

Set Designer: Marcelo Martínez Garcia; Costume Designer: Stephanie Bahniuk; Lighting Designer: Emma Deane; Sound Designer: Anteo Fabris; Technical Director: Cam Camden; Producers: Sami Cubias & Caitlin M. Dutkiewicz; Stage Manager: Leo Egger

Musicians: Margaret E. Douglas, Tyler Cruz

Cast: Robert Lee Hart, Dario Ladani Sanchez

Yale Cabaret
February 13-15, 2020

The Passion of a Pet

Review of Sylvia, Music Theatre of Connecticut

It’s Valentine’s Day and if your sense of romance may have stalled somewhat over the years, maybe Sylvia, A.R. Gurney’s romantic comedy now playing at MTC, Norwalk, has the answer: get a dog!

Directed by Kevin Connors, Gurney’s play is affable and light. There may be a sense in which the midlife crisis faced by Greg (Dennis Holland) is symptomatic of something darker, but, in general, the play assumes that long-married couples may find themselves confronted by new tastes or long-suppressed desires or dissatisfactions that could manifest in many ways. Greg and Kate (Carole Dell’Aquila) have been together twenty years and the crisis comes in the form of an affectionate stray that Greg encountered in a park and brings home, expecting Kate to just lie down and roll over, so to speak.

Sylvia (Bethany Fitzgerald) in A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia at MTC (photo by Alex Mongillo)

The dog wears a collar with its name, Sylvia, and she is a bundle of energy and, thanks to the miracle of theater, we are privy to her thoughts. That aspect of the play—the verbalized reactions of a frisky dog—is a crowd-pleaser, however obvious. As played by Bethany Fitzgerald, Sylvia is indeed a charming pet and anyone who might look askance at a woman playing a dog shouldn’t judge until they see it done. She looks upon Greg as “God,” aims to please, gets excited by each new arrival at the apartment, wants nothing more than to stretch out upon furniture, and speaks with an intense immediacy, suitable to an animal that lives in the moment. She’s also funny and lovable and makes the play work. Yes, the dog does indeed wag the tale.

Sylvia (Bethany Fitzgerald), Kate (Carole Dell’Aquila) in A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia at MTC (photo by Alex Mongillo)

Less obvious and somewhat less successful is how to stretch such a slight premise into a two hour play, with intermission. This is not easy to do as Gurney hasn’t given Greg’s wife much of a role. Dell’Aquila manages to seem sensible rather than a wet blanket, mostly. But whether or not she has your sympathy may have something to do with how you feel about dogs, and middle-aged men, and the possibilities in life afforded to post-menopausal women. Early on, it seems we might find fun in her occupation as a high school teacher of Shakespeare, so that when she offers “thus bad begins and worse remains behind,” we might catch ourselves hoping that more Shakespearean lines or tropes will percolate through the play. Not so much; Greg never even manages to play on his wife’s sympathies by intoning “What joy is joy if Silvia be not by?” And yet that is where he’s at, you might say.

Sylvia (Bethany Fitzgerald), Greg (Dennis Holland) in A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia at MTC (photo by Alex Mongillo)

Sylvia, in her unquestioning affection, helps her master deal with his current malaise: a job that has passed him by for younger colleagues with younger ambitions, an empty nest; and a wife who is done with the “the dog phase” of her life, much as she is with the children-raising part, and, almost, the stand-by-your-man part. For her, it’s a time to get on with things she wants to do—like research; for Greg, it’s a time in which companionship of some kind is needed. While we might expect that his new-found infatuation might be a younger woman, the play cleverly assumes that a dog can be more appealing than a new paramour. If there’s a bit of winking at the notion of bestiality in Act Two, it certainly isn’t played up in this production.

Tom (Jim Schilling), Greg (Dennis Holland) in A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia at MTC (photo by Alex Mongillo)

Connors draws upon the comic abilities of MTC regular Jim Schilling to create three different characters who intervene in the hi-jinx. One—Phyllis—is a tony lady friend of Kate’s, played for laughs as a not so surreptitious tippler; another—Leslie—is a counselor of fluid gender who seems to suspect the worst of Greg’s urges for Sylvia and recommends that Kate work up the full revenge-fury of a wronged wife. As Tom, he’s a buddy-buddy bench-warmer at Dog Hill (a park where city-folk can let their canines cavort) with a male dog of his own, and the eventual coupling of Sylvia and Bowser, off-stage, might illicit a variety of comic reactions. Schilling and Holland play it mild, at every point letting us off the hook of having to view Sylvia sexually. And that’s helped by Fitzgerald’s refusal to play Sylvia as, well, kittenish. Sylvia, even when in heat, is matter-of-fact and forthright. When she curses out a cat, she’s foul-mouthed but only then, and it’s hilarious.

And that’s important because Greg is a rather buttoned-up guy and so Sylvia may well be his perfect pet. Eventually, Kate seems to see this and grudgingly allows him to have some quality time with the dog she wants him to give away. In Act Two she devises a plan that should spell the end of the spell, and we face an effectively emotional farewell. At this point, Sylvia does sound like a young woman led on by a philandering married man’s promises of a permanent relationship, but that easy identification doesn’t undermine the feeling of actual regret, which Holland depicts well.

Greg (Dennis Holland), Sylvia (Bethany Fitzgerald) in A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia at MTC (photo by Alex Mongillo)

Taking place in a tasteful living-room, with, on a raised space behind, some benches with an attractive 3-D city skyline as backdrop, MTC’s Sylvia is—like the word of praise for many a mutt—companionable. If it stirs thoughts about the mystery of attachment, all the better. A dog, after all, can never be accused of ulterior motives. She might say, with the author George Sand, “there is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.” And that two random, interspecies strangers should meet and find that is the joy and sorrow of Sylvia. Don’t be afraid to love.

Sylvia (Bethany Fitzgerald) in A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia at MTC (photo by Alex Mongillo)

Sylvia
By A.R. Gurney
Directed by Kevin Connors

Scenic Design: Jessie Lizotte; Lighting Design: RJ Romeo; Costume Design: Diane Vanderkroef; Sound Design: Will Atkin; Prop Design: Merrie Deitch; Fight Staging: Dan O’Driscoll; Stage Manager: Gary Betsworth

Cast: Carole Dell’Aquila, Bethany Fitzgerald, Dennis Holland, Jim Schilling

Music Theatre of Connecticut
February 7-23, 2020

Keeping the Faith

Review of Godspell, ACT of Connecticut

The show opens in a dilapidated church that still has lovely stained glass windows and impressive arches but with construction materials littering the floor, in Reid Thompson’s fascinating set. It’s a down-at-heels sacred building, now the home to a group of squatters, many of them children. They come from the shadows to occupy the space and then go into hiding when a troupe of would-be renovators barges in, all giddy with the place’s possibilities as high-end condos.

The newcomers discover a huddled child, then the other kids and their adult leaders present themselves, and presto! the eight interlopers—Jacob (Jacob Hoffman), Katie (Katie Ladner), Alex (Alex Lugo), Andrew (Andrew Poston), Monica (Monica Ramirez), Phil (Phil Sloves), Morgan (Morgan Billings Smith), and Emma (Emma Tattenbaum-Fine)—are transformed into disciples of Jesus (Trent Saunders) and John the Baptist (Jaime Cepero), who proceeds to give Jesus a sponge-bath.

Jesus (Trent Saunders), seated; kneeling: Andrew Poston, Jaime Cepero, Morgan Billings Smith; standing: Phil Sloves, Monica Ramirez, Alex Lugo, Jacob Hoffman, Emma Tattenbaum-Fine, Katie Ladner in The ACT production of Godspell (photo by Jeff Butchen)

In its original incarnation, Godspell, with music by Stephen Schwartz and book by John-Michael Tebelak, dates from the early 1970s and arrived in the context of the hippie movement and the effort by U.S, churches to reach out to the young (remember the invention of the guitar mass?). Jesus’s teachings—with their communal emphasis and their ethical embrace of the poor rather than the rich and powerful—and his leadership of a band of guys who gave up their day-jobs to follow him certainly had immediate appeal in that period. Which may have something to do with reviving the show now. We would seem to have reached an all-time low for ethical behavior in the U.S. of A.

The show, which acts out stories and parables derived from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, interspersed with songs, mostly of the uplifting variety, has been updated at ACT by Schwartz and director Daniel C. Levine, and that means there are topical references from our day and some new lyrics. An early example, bound to be a favorite bit, features Jesus preaching to “Save the People” while the would-be disciples keep working in comical references to major Broadway shows. Any guesses which ones?

The cast of the ACT production of Godspell, directed by Daniel C. Levine (photo by Jeff Butchen)

What really makes the show at ACT is the spiritedness of the troupe, which manages to shun for the most part the insipid cuteness that may still dog the show from the film version of 1973. Here, the cast is fun and inviting and their professionalism never flags—whether leading the group in the vibrant radio-hit “Day by Day” (Katie), or hitting a pure high note in “All Good Gifts” (Andrew), or belting out “Bless the Lord” (Morgan), or hamming up as fallen goats for “We Beseech Thee” (led by Jacob), or enacting a contrite Magdalene (Monica) in “By My Side,” or demanding we heed the teachings, in “Learn Your Lessons Well,” led by Alex, or putting audience members on the spot as Emma leads off Act II with “Turn Back, O Man.” There are also many nice touches to make the preachiness of all those parables (even a church service is generally limited to a few!) go down easier, including a biblical king (Phil) like Trump by way of Alec Baldwin, and a sleazy judge by the name of Weinstein (Phil), as well as puppetry for the story of the Good Samaritan, interesting use of a painting for a grilling by those pesky Pharisees, some nimble stepping by Jesus and Judas to strobe lights in “All for the Best,” and captivating work with lights in “Light of the World,” led by Phil.

Jesus (Trent Saunders) and Judas (Jaime Cepero) in the ACT production of Godspell (photo by Jeff Butchen)

Throughout Act One, Saunders is a genial and soulful Jesus and casting has wisely eschewed the blond heart-throb type of the most recent New York revival. Saunders is a performer of color and he brings to the role an easy-going gentleness that suits it. In Act Two, when he has to chastise—“Alas For You”—the lyrics get a bit buried by the blasting band, but his passion in the song is convincing. As John the Baptist and Judas, Jaime Cepero is a great asset as well, always commanding attention and playing like a dutiful second lieutenant even when that means a betrayal (which Judas can barely bring himself to do—Jesus kisses him rather than vice versa).

Monica (Monica Ramirez), Jesus (Trent Saunders) in the ACT production of Godspell (photo by Jeff Butchen)

Unlike Jesus Christ Superstar, which visits much of the same hallowed text, the libretto of Godspell stresses the parables of Jesus and avoids presenting his trial before Pilate. The death of Jesus is depicted, and seems a sacrificial gesture by someone whose death is meant to be a good thing. And yet, if you don’t know the story you might be baffled by the mystery of what exactly transpires. The lovely song “Beautiful City” is sung late in the show by Jesus at his most beatific and holds out the hope of “a city of man” rather than a “city of angels” (meant to be a way of saying we need to take responsibility for this world and not expect an otherworldly reward, unless it just means to imply that New York is better than LA).

With its eager effort to make the audience feel themselves in the midst of the action—and the spacious amphitheater at ACT aids greatly in that effect—and its many enthralling effects of light (Jack Mehler) and color and costuming (Brenda Phelps), its engaging cast and its very tight band, this 2020 revival of Godspell is bound to inspire more true believers.

The cast of the ACT production of Godspell, directed by Daniel C. Levine (photo by Jeff Butchen)

Godspell
Conceived and originally directed by John-Michael Tebelak
Music and new lyrics by Stephen Schwartz
ACT production conceived and directed by Daniel C. Levine

Choreography: Sara Brians; Music Supervision: Bryan Perri; Music Direction: Danny White; Scenic Design: Reid Thompson; Lighting Design: Jack Mehler; Costume Design: Brenda Phelps; Sound Design: John Salutz; Props Designer: Abigail Bueti; Production Manager: Tom Swetz; Production Stage Manager: Michael Seelbach

Band: Danny White, conductor, keyboards; Miles Aubrey, electric guitars, acoustic guitars, mandolin; Arnold Gottlieb, electric bass, fretless bass, acoustic guitar; Dennis Arcano, drums & percussion

Cast: Jaime Cepero, Shaylen Harger, Jacob Hoffman, Katie Ladner, Alex Lugo, Cameron Nies, Andrew Poston, Monica Ramirez, Trent Saunders, Phil Sloves, Morgan Billings Smith, Emma Tattenbaum-Fine

Children: Nikki Adorante, Marley Bender, Nate Cohen, Sully Dunn, Adelaide Kellen, Colby Kipnes, Jack Rand, Amélie Simard, Caroline Smith, Dean Trevisani

ACT of Connecticut
February 6-March 8, 2020

What Happens There

Review of The Lifespan of a Fact, TheaterWorks, Hartford

TheaterWorks is back with another play seemingly ripped from the headlines, though these days, in terms of their lifespan, facts could said to be on life support, or even in hospice care.

The story behind the play (what seem the agreed-upon facts): author John D’Agata, an essayist who has issues with the practices of journalism and the concept of nonfiction, wrote an essay inspired by the death of Levi Presley, a teen who jumped from the tower of the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas in 2002. D’Agata’s essay was about Vegas, suicide, and other issues he deemed relevant. Harper’s passed on the essay; The Believer took it on and assigned Jim Fingal to fact-check it. Fingal found numerous inaccuracies and questioned, rigorously, much of D’Agata’s authorial license. In 2010, The Believer published the essay, titled “What Happens There.” In 2012, The Lifespan of a Fact was published, a book that revealed the years of dickering over the essay that went on between D’Agata and Fingal, edited by Jill Bialosky. In 2018, a play by Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell based on the book opened on Broadway with an all-star cast of Daniel Radcliffe, Bobby Cannavale, and Cherry Jones.

John D’Agata (Rufus Collins), Emily Penrose (Tasha Lawrence), Jim Fingal (Nick LaMedica) in The Lifespan of a Fact at TheaterWorks (photo by Lanny Nagler)

The Lifespan of a Fact plays at TheaterWorks through March 8, directed by Tracy Brigden and starring Nick LaMedica as Jim Fingal, Rufus Collins as John D’Agata, and Tasha Lawrence as fictional editor Emily Penrose. The play adds drama by making Fingal a new recruit at a publication where D’Agata’s essay is accepted who wants desperately to please his boss—and he has only a weekend to complete the job of checking D’Agata’s facts. He contacts D’Agata, first by email then by phone and, in a nice theatrical touch, is revealed sleeping on D’Agata’s couch, having gone to Vegas—where D’Agata lives in his recently deceased mother’s home—to check on some facts such as the color of the tower’s bricks and the number of lanes involved in what D’Agata calls a traffic jam at its base. Eventually, against any kind of expectation of how editors work, Penrose shows up too. And the showdown begins: to publish or not to publish, since D’Agata seemingly won’t accept any changes. However farfetched her presence is, Lawrence’s bristly impatience, familiarity with D’Agata’s ways, and archly maternal attitudes are welcome.

Nick LaMedica, a very capable comic actor, keeps the proceedings amusing. The play focuses on his truculent insistence on holding D’Agata to account. It’s not so much a pursuit of truth as an effort to protect the world from the kind of bullshit that passes for poetic license or rhetorical sleight-of-hand and which flows blithely through much reporting, most advertising copy, and many-too-many political speeches and presidential tweets. It’s hard not to be on Fingal’s side even if he is a somewhat manic nerd. And even if D’Agata were less of the pompous ass Collins plays him as. There’s physical humor, double-takes, joking asides, and a rather sitcom sense of character and situation.

Jim Fingal (Nick LaMedica) in The Lifespan of a Fact at TheaterWorks (photo by Lanny Nagler)

Certainly, there’s enough here to wax editorial about. As a book, Lifespan might be an interesting exhibit of how two different minds interpret events and the task of turning events into writing. As a play, the treatment gives more importance and impact to D’Agata’s stunts than they outwardly merit. Some examples—such as D’Agata’s claim that a caller who hung up on him when he worked a Vegas suicide crisis line was Presley—aren’t so much factual deviations as suppositions. Something an editor should decide on the value of, for the essay, and either strike or alter or let stand. D’Agata’s sense of truth assumes that emotions are facts. What he feels he is free to write as his view of the facts. And yet the notion that his inaccuracies might cause emotional distress in others doesn’t faze him in the least. Collins makes us register that there is some issue at work in D’Agata, but the play never comes close to deciding what it might be, other than the loss of his mother.

In any case, what’s at stake isn’t so very much, ultimately. Given the kind of publication D’Agata’s piece would appear in, a writerly persona giving a “take” on the events is more or less assumed. In his own mind D’Agata may be the like of Norman Mailer, a titan of prose able to bend the facts of the world to his literary authority, or maybe a “gonzo journalist” like Hunter S. Thompson who once claimed the only source of objective reporting was a ticker-tape machine. Mostly, one assumes, that any readers who stick with D’Agata’s account from beginning to end do so because they simply love what he “does.” His writing is the kind that treats the world as if in need of an author’s intervention to make any sense at all.

In its delivery, Lifespan is one of those plays where topicality trumps any effort to make things interesting or surprising. Which is a way of saying that perhaps it hues too closely to the facts of D’Agata and Fingal and is in need of more writerly license. And yet the play does entertain and, at 85-90 minutes, does not overstay its welcome. One of its nicest theatrical touches, among several, is having the three discussants sit silently for the alleged timespan that Presley sat on the tower before jumping. It’s a moment where—with no words to describe what they feel or think—the three simply expose themselves to a fact: time passes.

Jim Fingal (Nick LaMedica), Emily Penrose (Tasha Lawrence), John D’Agata (Rufus Collins) in The Lifespan of a Fact, TheaterWorks (photo by Lanny Nagler)

The questions about exactitude that Fingal doggedly pursues are more relevant than ever in an era so given to spin and the finessing of facts. At one point, Fingal beseeches D’Agata to consider that, on the internet, anything can be fact-checked or disputed by the intrusive legions ready to find fault. And yet that argument may be in D’Agata’s favor. Since the world will twist, bend, pull apart and repurpose any statement as it likes, why not at least go on the record with the world according to John. D’Agata knows, after all, that a writer has nothing but his words, and they are only his if he believes in the purpose of each one, regardless of how well that suits someone else’s sense of what happened.

The Lifespan of a Fact
By Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell
Directed by Tracy Brigden

Set Design: Brian Prather; Costume Design: Tracy Christensen; Lighting Design: Brian Bembridge; Sound Design: Obadiah Eaves; Projection Design: Zachary Borovay; Hair Consultant: Mark Adam Rampmeyer; Production Manager: Bridget Sullivan; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

Cast: Rufus Collins, Nick LaMedica, Tasha Lawrence

TheaterWorks
January 30 through March 8, 2020

Call Me Up in Dreamland

Review of Alice, Yale School of Drama

One of the great attractions of Alice, the third show of the Yale School of Drama 2019-20 season, directed by third-year director Logan Ellis, is the prospect of hearing the songs of Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan sung by someone other than Tom Waits. (And I’m someone who loves listening to Tom Waits!)

That aspect of the show is key because the songs in Alice are sung by characters, most of whom bear some resemblance to characters in Lewis Carroll’s classic and incomparable Alice stories, Alice in Wonderland and Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass (one of the few literary sequels better than the original).

Filtering the adventures of Alice through Waits and Brennan’s Beat carnival sensibility provides a curious and delicious oddity not to be missed. Then filter those songs through arrangements by music director Dan Pardo as sung by some fine voices from the Yale School of Drama that lend them the heft and glow of opera and Broadway and that indeed should be attraction enough.

But consider: Alice, the musical, was developed by avant-garde theater director Robert Wilson, and his stamp on the proceedings, with a libretto developed by Paul Schmidt, further twists the familiar if quizzical terrain in other directions, mainly because Wilson/Schmidt are more interested in real life Alice Liddell (inspiration for our Alice) and Charles Dodgson (Carroll’s actual name) than in Carroll’s creation per se. So the space we travel through here is called Dreamland and watching the show recalled to me one of my favorite puns in Finnegans Wake about “we grisly old Sykos who have done our unsmiling bits on alices, when they were yung and easily freudened.” The Liddell/Dodgson relation is, indeed, frighteningly easy to freuden.

And that lends more than a little perfunctory psyching of the pedophiliac psyche—having to do with Dodgson’s proclivity for photographing pre-pubescent girls, sometimes nude—in what Wilson/Schmidt hath wrought. That aspect mainly impinges in the second half as the script reaches for a through-narrative to hang its symptoms upon, all hinging upon Alice solving “the riddle” of Jabberwocky (the poem of monster-decapitation Alice finds in a book) and, perhaps, beating time. That, for those in need of a plot, may serve as well as anything might, but what matters here is what Waits/Brennan did with their part in all this and it is wonderous indeed, brought vividly to phantasmagoric life by Ellis and his astounding team and cast.

The cast of the Yale School of Drama’s production of Alice, by Robert Wilson, Paul Schmidt, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, directed by Logan Ellis, February, 2020 (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

We begin with screens upon screens that replicate images of Alice (Ilia Isorelýs Paulino) to suggest Dodgson’s photographic fetish (Brittany Bland, projections). Dodgson (Sola Fadiran) opens the show with “Alice,” a song of obsession and melancholy that sets the tone at once. And yet the inspired nature of these characters and their eye-popping costumes by Meg Powers works against Dodgson as a pining pedophile bedeviled by whatever we want to imagine him bedeviled by (Dodgson, a deacon, mathematician and logician, is not a surrealist, not even avant le lettre). What the show makes us face is—yes, obsession and the melancholy of unrequited desire, but it’s the kind we’re apt to have for the figures in our dreams, which may include material from websites, films, shows, books, poems, myths, ritual, and anything in our inner grab-bag.

Mad Hatter (Julian Sanchez), Alice (Ilia Isorelýs Paulino) in the Yale School of Drama production of Alice by Robert Wilson, Paul Schmidt, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, directed by Logan Ellis, February 2020 (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Anna Grigo’s scenic design creates an open space where the various encounters—each featuring a song or a poem—take place, some—a torture-chamber-like kitchen—having a certain dimension, others— the boat/shop the Sheep (Daniel Liu) navigates—are free-standing sets in their own right. The changeableness of the set perfectly complements the amorphousness of Alice’s imagination as she moves through Dreamland. Done up like a doll, Alice is a mostly willing witness to whatever she encounters. “We’re All Mad Here,” as a song suggests, and Alice gamely takes a “when in Rome . . .” attitude to her interlocutors. Within that world, Dodgson/Carroll is perhaps the Oz-like Wizard behind it all, or at least the dream-father-figure who might help her find a way out. Since Dodgson is also the White Knight and the White Rabbit, he is a kind of all-in-all stopgap; we can call “foul” for the egotistical artist-teacher-master who must insist on his centrality in his protégé’s imagination, but we’re also encouraged to see how the Waits/Brennan songs Fadiran sings—“Fish and Bird” and “Poor Edward” particularly—give us insight into how Dodgson/Carroll understands his own plight. The first ends Act One with a sort of Never-Neverland tableau and duet with Paulino and reprises at the start of Act Two; the second comes late in Act Two and, in Fadiran’s performance, instills a moving sense of the pathos of a creator plagued by his creation.

Charles Dodgson (Sola Fadiran) in the Yale School of Drama production of Alice by Robert Wilson, Paul Schmidt, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, directed by Logan Ellis, February 2020 (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

It’s remarkable how readily Waits/Brennan find beguiling analogs for Carroll’s characters that extend our sense of their possibilities. In a show-stopping moment in Act One, The Caterpillar (Julian Sanchez, in a baroque fantasy of a costume) proclaims his alter ego “Table Top Joe,” a scatting Vegas act that might be Waits’ alter ego as well. Grigo’s design gives Sanchez a thrust space into the audience, and having the Caterpillar undulate into position while singing creates a visual and visceral feat not easy to top. Indeed, Sanchez is a major asset—he gets to wear two amazing get-ups as Mad Hatter (his work with hand-puppets is impressive)  and, with Liu, enacts a teasing number—“Altar Boys”—that, while not derived from Wonderland characters per se, plays campy fun with the clerical trappings of Dodgson as an Anglican deacon.

Other stand-out moments include the lovely, demented-Disney of “Flower’s Grave,” sung by a family of flowers (Robert Lee Hart, John Evans Reese, Jackeline Torres Cortés, Adrienne Wells); “Fawn,” in which Paulino and Wells vocalize beautifully; “Kommienzuspadt,” wherein Robert Lee Hart as the Cheshire Cat channels Waits wonderfully; “Reeperbahn,” with Jessy Yates as a kind of BDSM king on a throne of a wheelchair, stirring up tales of naughty indulgence enacted by the ensemble; “Barcarolle,” in which Liu too blends into the Dodgson persona, this time as a motherly, androgynous sheep, and finally, and very memorably, Paulino—as the aged Alice on a cane—singing “I’m Still Here” as a statement of endurance but also of immortal presence within the Dreamland that, for all we know, might go on without us. Paulino’s Alice is childlike, capricious, and slyly reactive throughout, the giddy kid we might like to be again. Being an audience to Paulino’s emotive and moving way with a song has been a joy of her time, now in its third year, at the Yale School of Drama, and her “I’m Still Here” caps that wonderfully. 

Humpty Dumpty (Jessy Yates), Alice ((Ilia Isorelýs Paulino) in the Yale School of Drama production of Alice by Robert Wilson, Paul Schmidt, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, directed by Logan Ellis, February 2020 (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

There are a few disappointments: the poems “Jabberwocky” and “You Are Old, Father William,” two of my favorites in the books (and add “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” not referenced here, as a third) sort of get lost in the sauce; the Tweedledee (Cortés)/Tweedledum (Reese) segment, while fun and silly, lacks the manic, violent quality Carroll gives it; and “Lost in the Harbour” is sung by Yates as Humpty Dumpty presented as a projection upon a large, suspended egg. The device seems to limit Humpty Dumpty who, in the book, is a key figure and whose song, here, could use more of the wistful doom found in Waits’ rendition on Alice.

As a musical, the Alice of Wilson, Schmidt, Waits and Brennan, is based on a merging of spectacle and song that creates a world more than a story. Logan Ellis and company fully fulfill that imperative, imaginatively, creatively, and with lasting impressions to spare. “There’s only Alice.”

Alice
Concept by Robert Wilson
Music and Lyrics by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan
Libretto by Paul Schmidt
Directed by Logan Ellis

Music Direction, Arrangements, and Orchestrations: Dan Pardo; Scenic Design: Anna Grigo; Costume Designer: Meg Powers; Lighting Designer: Riva Fairhall; Sound Designer: Dakota Stipp; Projection Designer: Brittany Bland; Production Dramaturg: Evan Hill; Technical Director: HaoEn Hu; Stage Manager: Bekah Brown

Musicians: Jillian Emerson, cello; Nate Huvard, guitar; Dan Pardo, piano; Epongue Ekille, violin; Calvin Kaleel, bass; Jose Key, saxophone; Leonardo Marques Starck von Mutius, trombone

Cast: Sola Fadiran, Robert Lee Hart, Daniel Liu, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, John Evans Reese, Julian Sanchez, Jackeline Torres Cortés, Adrienne Wells, Jessy Yates

Yale School of Drama
February 1-7, 2020

Long Wharf Theatre Steps Through a Door

Preview of I Am My Own Wife, Long Wharf Theatre

It was an unusual gathering on Long Wharf Theatre’s Stage II last Friday. Assembled to discuss Long Wharf’s production of Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife, which started previews this week and opens next Wednesday, was the entire creative team for the show, led in discussion by Patrick J. Dunn, Executive Director of New Haven Pride Center. In addition to Rebecca Martínez, the show’s director, and its star, Mason Alexander Park, the discussion included set designer Britton Mauk, costume designer Daniel Tyler Mathews, lighting designer Jennifer Fok, sound designer and original music composer Kimberly S. O’Loughlin, assistant director Kevin Paley, and cultural competency consultant Ianne Fields Stewart. It’s not typical by any means to meet the artists who undertake the technical feat of creating theater—most remain behind the scenes for a show’s entire run. What made the event even more unusual is the fact that Long Wharf has set a new standard by bringing together transgender artists to create the world of Wright’s Pulitzer-winning drama. The participants praised Long Wharf and its new artistic director Jacob G. Padrón for achieving a feat almost unprecedented: a play centering on a transgender person finds in this production an almost wholly nonbinary team.

And that’s significant because the version of the play at Long Wharf has been updated to reflect an awareness of trans persons lacking in the original version, which dates to 2003. The play incorporates aspects of the life of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf as revealed in her memoir, Ich bin meine eigene Frau, filtered through Wright’s interviews with Mahlsdorf and his sense of her life. Born Lothar Berfelde in Berlin-Mahlsdorf, Berfelde was imprisoned as a juvenile for the killing of his father, a Nazi who had threatened his son’s life. Released after the defeat of Nazi Germany, Berfelde became Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, residing in East Berlin throughout the era of Germany’s division and curating a museum of everyday objects. She died in 2002. The play, a one-person show, incorporates von Mahlsdorf into a story of Wright’s fascination with her life, in a script that features over thirty characters.

Jacob G. Padrón, Jennifer Fok, Patrick J. Dunn, Rebecca Martínez, Ianne Fields Stewart, Britton Mauk, Kevin Paley, Mason Alexander Park, Daniel Tyler Mathews, Kimberly S. O’Loughlin, at the Long Wharf Theatre, Stage II, January 31, 2020 (photo by Deena Nichol-Blifford)

The intention behind the changes to Wright’s play, undertaken with the author’s consent and encouragement, is to “to look carefully at how the show showcases Charlotte most positively” said Martinez. Park spoke of “two different plays”; in the original, Park said, there was a certain “sensationalism” in one actor—male—playing both male and female roles. In the new version, they said, the goal is a more faithful rendering of a “trans narrative,” to show “Charlotte’s journey and her truth.” Access to the extensive archival interviews with von Mahlsdorf led to “the discovery of Charlotte’s naughtiness,” sparking, the team hopes, “conversation around trans bodies and the sexual aspects of their lives.” Park spoke of how trans stories are “usually stories of tragedy,” and the new version of I Am My Own Wife seeks to replace a sense of “a challenging, dark life” with an experience of “an open, loving person.” The question of how a trans person lived—in Charlotte’s time—is certainly one of the fascinations of the play, and brought Wright to the topic, but the team at Long Wharf is determined that the show should speak of and to trans culture in the 21st century.

To that end, said Mathews, the costuming has become more colorful, drawing upon Charlotte’s tastes and tendencies and eschewing the black outfits adorned with pearls favored by the Broadway production that earned Jefferson Mays a Tony in 2004. There is also a collective effort to create, with sound and lighting and set design, the world of Charlotte, a collector, an antiquarian, a bon vivant, and, as Park said, “a person looking for love like anyone else.” O’Loughlin researched the recordings referenced in the script—von Mahlsburg was a collector of recordings—so that the music could be  “integrated into transitions” which feature “both ‘found’ and composed” music. Fok spoke of lighting designs “inspired by the many location shifts” in the script and an effort to present “how Charlotte sees herself contrasted with how she is seen by others.” Mauk stressed that the new production positions Charlotte “not as an object to be gazed upon, but a story to be shared.”

There has been a sense for some time in the trans community that the play needed to be revisited and the Long Wharf production is pathbreaking in meeting that challenge. Some of the changes are shifts in how the story is told, others, Martínez said, are conscientious toward the vocabulary and attitudes of trans identity today. Paley spoke of the play as not a documentary of Charlotte’s life, but one in which her spirit will be more present than in earlier productions.

Stewart pointed out that it is “not the norm” by any means that “even in shows with queer themes” so many trans artists would be brought in. She spoke of how her role as cultural competency consultant often puts her in the position of having to explain matters that are obtuse to cisgender teams and casts. Here, that’s not the issue, and that’s “refreshing,” as “the erasure of queer bodies onstage” is more typical, in her experience. Wright’s play, in Stewart’s view, can start “uncomfortable conversations,” producing “essential theater that tells stories in ethical, honest ways.”

The team acknowledged that one such conversation that needs to take place is about “the dominance of white cis men” in all aspects of theater, particularly in the technical fields. While it may seem non-controversial to bring in trans artists for a show about trans persons, restricting the expert work of trans artists to such productions relegates them to a special interest aspect of theater. It will be interesting to see if Long Wharf’s production of I Am My Own Wife, which runs from February 5-March 1, will be, as Stewart hopes, “a step through a door that leads to other things.”

Dunn, Fok, Mathews, Stewart, Martínez, Park, Mauk, Paley, O’Loughlin, Long Wharf Theatre Stage II (photo by Deena Nichol-Blifford)

I Am My Own Wife
By Doug Wright
Directed by Rebecca Martínez

Long Wharf Theatre
February 5-March 1, 2020

The Recourse of History

Review of Manahatta, Yale Repertory Theatre

Two vexed histories circulate through Mary Kathryn Nagle’s fascinating Manahatta, now playing at Yale Repertory Theatre, directed by Laurie Woolery. In the play’s present, Jane Snake (Lily Gladstone), a descendant of the Lenape tribe that once occupied a major portion of the mid-Atlantic region of what we generally call North America, is working on Wall Street, where she becomes a rising star at Lehman Brothers about the time that it all goes bust—2008. In the past, we see how Jane’s ancestors got euchred out of the island of Manahatta by Dutch traders eager to secure land holdings. The two strains act as background—or analogies—to the other story in the present: Jane’s father, who dies during surgery while Jane is getting hired by Joe (Danforth Comins), leaves to her mother, Bobbie (Carla-Rae), enormous bills and scant means to meet them. The ultimate fate of the family’s home in Oklahoma is the point to be decided; history has already shown us what happened to Manahatta and Lehman Brothers.

Jakob (Danforth Comins), Se-ket-tu-may-qua (Steven Flores), Le-le-wa’-you (Lily Gladstone), Peter Minuit (Jeffrey King), Toosh-ki-pa-kwis-i (Shyla Lefner), Mother (Carla-Rae) in Manahatta at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

And yet. The play’s nimble overlaps urge us to relive these pivotal moments in our nation’s history with at least some consideration of the Lenape’s perspective. Laurie Woolery’s inventive staging of the play does much to help achieve a porous, simultaneous effect. Huge boulders grace Mariana Sanchez’s scenic design in which a sturdy table can anchor scenes separated in space and time. A beautiful backdrop of forests is lit or projected upon to create eye-entrancing spaces that suggest the wonders of our land before development (Emma Deane, lighting; Mark Holthusen, projections), only to become a riot of numbers and digital phrases. An image of Se-ket-tu-may-qua (aka Black Beaver) hovers over the proceedings. In Nagle’s play, this leader of the Lenape in Oklahoma is the descendant of the Native American who rather unwittingly trades away Manahatta when, we suppose, he really thought he was giving hunting permits.

Jane (Lily Gladstone), Dick Fuld (Jeffrey King), Joe (Danforth Comins) in Manahatta at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Scenes in the present quickly shift to the past and back again as every actor plays a character in each time period. The most interesting overlap in that regard is Jeffrey King’s dual role as Peter Minuit, who brokers that major real estate steal, and as Dick Fuld, the man at the helm when Lehman went under. In both roles he’s apt to seal a deal with his own very fine brandy, but it’s as Fuld that he adds considerably to the show’s brio, giving the CEO a kind of devil-may-care grasp of how tenuous being on top can be.

Peter Minuit (Jeffrey King), Jakob (Danforth Comins), Le-le-wa’-you (Lily Gladstone) in Manahatta at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Another strong double role goes to Lily Gladstone as both Jane and Le-le-wa’-you. It’s not a sense of tribal ways or historical injustices that drive her as Jane, but rather her grasp of mathematics (there’s a somewhat fatuous sense that she alone adds math capabilities to a group of guys content merely to compute appreciation). Jane is winning, charming and smart, and seems fully on her way to a Working Girl (1988) moment of showing that under-represented populations can succeed in the white man’s world of cut-throat capitalism. As Jane’s ancestor Le-le-wa’-you, she amazes the Dutch by learning English and being able to trade. In both eras, Gladstone’s character is a comer.

Debra (Shyla Lefner), Bobbie (Carla-Rae), Se-ket-tu-may-qua (Steven Flores) in Manahatta at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

At the heart of the play is Carla-Rae’s Bobbie. She is about as far removed from the world where her daughter succeeds as can be, in part because Bobbie still considers the land as her ancestors understood it—which means past and present center in her as someone who will never see ownership as a matter of contracts and rights and payments. Her supportive but at times head-shaking daughter Debra (Shyla Lefner) is the character most concerned that Lenape language and customs continue in the 21st century. The play’s strong sense of how the Lenape move and speak and gesture (Ty Defoe, movement director), and of how they conduct themselves—whether in trading furs or accepting or giving wampum—adds human interest to the play’s rich theatrical space, as when Le-le-wa’-you extends her foot into a space where Paul James Prendergast’s sound design creates a running brook. Costumes, by Stephanie Bahniuk, brilliantly transition with ease between times and places and cultures.

Some elements of the production don’t fully jive—such as Steven Flores’ performance as Luke, a male admirer of Jane; the pair went to school together and Flores plays Luke as though he’s still in high school while Jane is poised and professional. Flores fares better in the past as Se-ket-tu-may-qua who seems exemplary of the tribe’s dignity, and his ultimate fate foreshadows theirs.

Michael (T. Ryder Smith), Bobbie (Carla-Rae) in Manahatta at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Other aspects of the play jive in a way that feels more than a bit contrived. It’s good to see T. Ryder Smith back at the Rep after his notable performance in Scenes of Court Life (2016) and here he helps bring needed nuance to a role that invites clichés of prejudice. As Michael, he’s both a church warden and a banker—so that we may see how he leeches away Bobbie’s property as well as her spiritual separatism; in the past, he’s Jonas Michaelius, the first clergyman of the Dutch in North America, who set about “saving” the natives’ children. In both cases, he seems to be present mostly to suggest that Christianity and toxic capitalism go hand-in-hand.

Provocative and fast-paced, Manahatta, which debuted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, does better at bringing together the worlds of Manahatta, in the 17th century, and Manhattan, in the 21st than it does at bridging the Manhattan and Oklahoma of 2008. The history in which Se-ket-tu-may-qua and his descendants figure is but sketchily suggested and there’s a sense that the story of Bobbie and Debra exists to provide a homeland backdrop to the reconquest of Manhattan by Jane. And yet, as a New York story, Manahatta isn’t likely to command much urgent attention from twenty-first-century inhabitants of the place.

Jane Snake (Lily Gladstone) in Manahatta at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manahatta
By Mary Kathryn Nagle
Directed by Laurie Woolery

Movement Director: Ty Defoe; Scenic Designer: Mariana Sanchez; Costume Designer: Stephanie Bahniuk; Lighting Designer: Emma Deane; Composer and Sound Designer: Paul James Prendergast; Projection Designer: Mark Holthusen; Hair and Wig Designer: Matthew Armentrout; Production Dramaturg: Madeline Charne; Technical Director: Yaro Yarashevich; Lenape Cultural Consultant: Joe Baker; Vocal and Dialect Coach: Louis Colaianni; Fight Director: Rick Sordelet; Stage Manager: Julia Bates

Cast: Carla-Rae, Danforth Comins, Steven Flores, Lily Gladstone, Jeffrey King, Shyla Lefner, T. Ryder Smith

Yale Repertory Theatre
January 24-February 15, 2020

Earthless is Worthless

Review of Elon Musk and the Plan to Blow Up Mars The Musical, Yale Cabaret

In Liam Bellman-Sharpe’s sci-fi musical, Elon Musk and the Plan to Blow Up Mars, Elon Musk, the entrepreneur behind Tesla, SpaceX, and other tech concerns, is a man with a mission. After commiserating with a group of billionaires—including Jeff Bezos (Eli Pauley)—who confide to us that it’s great to be rich but it’s hard to be rich, Musk (David Mitsch) comes forward with a song describing his love of Mars, a view that seems true of the actual Musk with his dream of a colony there someday.

It comes as a surprise, then, when the crew of a spaceflight to Mars—Captain (Nomè SiDone), Eyes (Madeline Seidman), Hands (Maal Imani West), Navigator (Isuri Wijesundara)—learn that Musk is aboard, that he chartered the flight, and that he has plans to destroy the Earth’s nearest neighbor. Musk’s change of heart—from colonizing Mars to destroying it—comes via “the Voice of the Night Sky,” a kind of burning-bush moment that converts Musk from a proselytizer for humanity’s destiny among the stars to a kind of interplanetary terrorist, willing to obliterate the red planet to save the blue one.

The absurdity of the musical’s plot could be said to be an intentional mirroring of the absurdity of financial titans becoming space-age saviors, but the show also features the kind of daffy shenanigans that have been the basis of grade B sci-fi films for decades. And that makes for some very entertaining bits, such as Patrick Young as a quintessential mad scientist enlisted by Musk to plumb the possibilities of antimatter, which is key to his scheme, and some offbeat satirical science presentations.

In the first, Maal Imani West delivers a “thought experiment” on how scientific breakthroughs, in affording new products, can solve problems that are more lucrative to leave unsolved. Using dentures as her example, and aided by great graphics by projection designers Erin Sullivan and Hannah Tran, West reflects on how a demand for new teeth could lead to plans to undermine tooth and bone to make the general populace dependent on new products to save them from conditions created by the breakthrough itself. Sound familiar?

Bellman-Sharpe’s target in all this isn’t simply the absurd wealth and power of Musk or Bezos but the system that has enriched and empowered them. And if their grasp of capitalist principles weren’t enough, we’re faced with their space manias as a prospect of what the rich may do when they decide they needn’t be stuck on this woefully mismanaged rock with the rest of us. As Educational Host (Isuri Wijesundra) delivers a bouncy science lesson on “slime molds” and their ability to proliferate and form bonds with the complexity “of the interstate system,” Bezos is desperately trying to reach Musk to dissuade him from making Mars extinct. The dovetailing of Bezos’ fear of capitalism imploding and the Host’s upbeat ditty about the wonders of single-cell lifeforms works as an ironic commentary on how far we’ve come—in evolutionary terms—and how far we can fall.

While not quite a full musical in its lack of a big finale musical number, Elon Musk . . . does boast the requisite romantic interlude. Here it’s a wonderfully comic and spirited encounter between Eyes and a being made of Antimatter (Patrick Falcon). The pas de deux and duet (Antimatter’s lovely voice provided by Taylor Hoffman) puts both heart into the show and a spanner in the works of Musk’s plan, as Eyes, now in love with Antimatter, wants to preserve the creature at the cost of not destroying Mars.

The show’s oddity is its saving grace, but its narrative arc tends to be a bit hodgepodge, including a vaudeville routine about speeding in space and a song by a Drag King (Maal Imani West in male drag that smacks a bit of Little Richard, with a sumptuous smoking jacket) about the world not being a place to bring children into. Thanks to West’s great singing voice, the song is a standout even if we might wonder how it fits in, exactly.

All in all, one might say, that whether you’re trying to destroy a planet or to save one, a kitchen-sink approach is best, and one wouldn’t want to underestimate the enormous profits to be made by capitalizing on either project. In Elon Musk and the Plan to Blow Up Mars the Musical, science as a means to get rich and science as a means to save the Earth and/or mankind has reached its tipping point. That timely reflection and the possibilities of a sci-fi musical with big name power players in its dramatis personae certainly gives Bellman-Sharpe’s play remarkable potential. Per aspera ad astra.

Elon Musk and the Plan to Blow Up Mars the Musical
Music, Text, and Direction by Liam Bellman-Sharpe

Choreographer: Mariel Pettee; Set Designer: Alex McGargar; Costume Designer: David Mitsch; Lighting Designer: Noel Nichols; Sound System Designer: James T. McLoughlin; Projections Designer: Erin Sullivan; Associate Projections Designer: Hannah Tran; Associate Stage Manager: Kevin Jinghong Zhu; Dramaturg: Henriette Rietveld; Technical Director: Jonathan Jolly; Producer: Carl Holvick; Stage Manager: Sam Tirrell

Cast: Patrick Ball, Patrick Falcon, David Mitsch, Eli Pauley, Madeline Seidman, Nomè SiDone, Bailey Trierweiler, Maal Imani West, Isuri Wijesundara, Patrick Young

Musicians: Sharon Ahn, keyboards; Roberto Granados, guitar (alternate); Thomas Hagen, drums; Satchel Henneman, guitar; Taylor Hoffman, vocals; Paul Mortilla, violin; Adin Ring, bass

Yale Cabaret
January 23-25, 2020

Living At Risk

Review of Pike Street, Hartford Stage

Character, we might say, is outwardly a question of manner and inwardly a question of one’s openness to others. By such a measure, Nilaja Sun’s Pike Street, at Hartford Stage through February 2, directed by Ron Russell, is full of character.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

All of its characters, enacted by Sun, the author and performer of the play, are manners she adopts at will, carrying on vivid dialogues, and Sun’s openness to others is what makes the play work. She is able to inhabit these folk because they aren’t just figments of her imagination: they are people who live a precarious existence on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an existence made perilous by the imminent arrival of a hurricane. The backstories come to light as necessary to fill us in on the situation, but the main gist is the way the impending crisis brings out the character in these characters.

Evelyn is a Puerto Rican mom, beset by the fact that her daughter Candi, fifteen, has suffered an aneurysm that leaves her confined to a chair and in need of a respirator and a dialysis machine—and, with yet another major storm on the way with its possible attendant loss of electricity, Candi is at risk. The family, which includes Evelyn’s truculent and womanizing father, Poppi, played mainly for laughs, should evacuate to a shelter, says Con Ed, but moving Candi in her chair up and down five flights with no elevator is no picnic, and the kind of callous treatment the girl suffered last time—during Hurricane Sandy—leaves Evelyn loath to endure such indignities. Her solution: a generator in the apartment should they lose power.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Other characters come and go to flesh out the proceedings, particularly Evelyn’s brother Manny, just now returned from service in Afghanistan and the source of the income the family manages on. Manny is generally an ingratiating and agreeable sort—except when indeterminate triggers set off his PTSD, making him apt to cause some havoc with local Arab merchants. Neighbors, such as senile Mrs. Appelbaum, Ty, Manny’s pot-smoking chum, and Migdalia, Poppi’s woman-for-hire, add voices and occasions for reactions, as Evelyn tries her best to be staunch and patient like her deceased mother was—a healer who ran a botanica now closed.

Sun’s sure way of conjuring these characters opens their world to us and us to their world. One of the show’s more memorable moments is when a flashback lets us see Candi, as a child, campaigning for class president and sounding like a font of wisdom.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street at Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Before the show begins, Sun sits on the set’s lone chair, shelves of candles behind her, as the audience enters, seeming to commune within herself. She opens the show by reaching out to the audience, inviting rhythmic handclaps interspersed with deep breaths, as not only a way of focusing our attention but a way of making us all alert to each other and to the transformative possibilities of her story. Being present is key to the show’s message, showing how important the cohesion of this family—any family—is, while also hitting the audience with a tragedy that comes from the everydayness of bad decisions and bad luck.

The show’s final, indelible image is of the most at-risk character’s resilience, which is also in its way a cry for help. Nilaja Sun’s Pike Street finds its passion and its humor in the trials and joys of living and creates theater that feels—in our storm-stressed times—like a humanitarian effort.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Pike Street
Written & performed by Nilaja Sun
Directed by Ron Russell

Scenic Design: Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams; Costume Design: Clint Ramos; Lighting Design: Tyler Micoleau; Sound Design: Ron Russell; Production Stage Manager: Molly Minor Eustis; Assistant Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Production Manager: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Hartford Stage
January 9-February 2, 2020