The Play That Keeps Playing

Review of Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse

What is the chief characteristic of “theatre people”? Paul Slade Smith’s play of that name, playing at Westport Country Playhouse through April 12, suggests that “theatre people” may often feel they’re in a play, so that life tends to be a matter of plots and subplots and complications that may lead to a happy ending (comedy) or an unhappy ending (tragedy). Cleverly playing on an awareness of life’s theatricality and of comic theater’s familiar tropes, Smith’s play, ably directed by Mark Shanahan, enacts the kind of fast-paced comedy that Westport Country Playhouse has a tradition of bringing off extremely well.

Margot (Mia PInero), Victor (Michael McCorry Rose), Olga (Erin Noel Grennan), Oliver (Rodolfo Soto), Arthur (Michael McCormick), Charlotte (Isabel Keating) in Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Visiting at a Rhode Island mansion to hear Broadway star Margot Bell (Mia Pinero) perform, Charlotte Sanders (Isabel Keating) and Arthur Sanders (Michael McCormick) are playwrights who hope to facilitate Margot’s participation in the play they plan to make of a new novel, The Angel in the Next Room (which, unbeknownst to Margot, has been written in dedication to her by Oliver Adams (Rodolfo Soto), a young writer in love with her). To help what the Sanderses assume to be a definite couple work together, Charlotte has arranged for Oliver to stay in a bedroom adjacent to Margot’s. Complications arise when Margot is overheard being not so angelic in the next room, much to Oliver’s dismay.

Oliver (Rodolfo Soto), Arthur (Michael McCormick), Charlotte (Isabel Keating) in Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The Sanders must rectify the situation, which means: dealing with Oliver’s despair (given several comical layers by Rodolfo Soto); enlightening Margot of the enormity of the situation (the Sanders desperately need a hit play), which causes Mia Pinero to move swiftly from grande dame to flustered ingenue; roping Oliver’s rival, the handsome, dashing and dim actor Victor Pratt (Michael McCorry Rose), into their plans—which means he may have to flap his arms like a showboating angel at some length; and enlisting all manner of help from Olga (Erin Noel Grennan), a scene-stealing and theater-deprecating housemaid who stands in at times for a playwright, a director, and an audience. The cast are all equal to their characters’ supposed real selves as well as the play-within-the-play characters they have to convince one another they understand (which is not easy!).

Charlotte Sanders (Isabel Keating), Margot Bell (Mia Pinero), Victor Pratt (Michael McCorry Rose) in Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s Play at the Castle (1924), which was popularized in English by P. G. Wodehouse as The Play’s the Thing (1926), Theatre People is set in the 1940s, the chief era for Hollywood screwball comedies, with the Sanderses sometimes flinging off sallies worthy of Nick and Nora—Isabel Keating, who plays Charlotte with a fizzy, can-do assertiveness, even resembles Myrna Loy a little, especially when some of the fizz falls flat and she has to consider that intricate plots may be easier to pull off on stage than in life. As her often bemused, confused partner who lives his life rising to her bait, Michael McCormick shows off great timing, a skeptical foil who knows how to make the most of any opening given.

Charlotte Sanders (Isabel Keating), Arthur Sanders (Michael McCormick) in Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The romantic triangle that has to center the shenanigans is never as diverting as the fiction Charlotte devises so as to tie-up everyone’s loose ends, and Margot and Victor spend the whole first act on the other side of that well-appointed wall, while Oliver is the kind of unrealistically romantic naif whom one can’t imagine writing a novel much less a good one. Such devices make “theater people” seem rather silly, but the protracted “rehearsal” that, in Act 2, makes ridiculous theater of Victor’s wooing of Margot—and creates a preposterous plot that lets Arthur literally play God—is the pay-off, and even manages to make Olga a believer in the value of theater. The value certainly includes the ability to make everything—set (James J. Fenton), costumes (Annie J. Le), lighting (Alyssandra Docherty), sound (Jill BC Du Boff), props (Anya Kutner) and hair/makeup (J. Jared Janas) as top-notch and flawless as possible as they are here.

Olga (Erin Noel Grennan), Charlotte Sanders (Isabel Keating) in Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by T. Charles Erickson

There’s a point fairly early in the play when Charlotte tries to explain theater’s attractions to a doubting Olga, whose common sense grasp of human foibles doesn’t see why anyone would want to waste time re-enacting such things. Charlotte describes how the audience at a play are able to forget the world and all its troubles while getting caught up in the lives being staged before them by living people. The words, we can imagine, are meant to have a resonance for our particular times, but can—we realize—be assigned to any time in human history. The power of theater to create a facsimile of life that can fascinate us, whether believable or unbelievable, laughable or lachrymose, keeps us returning to our seats. As the final entry in the venerable Westport Country Playhouse’s “Season of Laughter,” Theatre People capably reminds us that people who live only on stage need an audience to come alive. They need us, in other words, theater’s people.

Theatre People
By Paul Slade Smith
Adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s Play at the Castle
Directed by Mark Shanahan

Set Designer: James J. Fenton; Costume Designer: Annie J. Le; Lighting Designer: Alyssandra Docherty; Sound Designer: Jill BC Du Boff; Prop Supervisor: Anya Kutner; Wig, Hair, & Makeup Designer: J. Jared Janas; Production Stage Manager: Rebecca C. Monroe; Assistant Stage Manager: Christine Lemme; Production Assistant: Zach De Brino; Assistant Director: Anissa Felix

Cast: Erin Noel Grennan, Isabel Keating, Michael McCormick, Mia Pinero, Michael McCorry Rose, Rodolfo Soto

Westport Country Playhouse
March 25-April 12, 2025

The Art of Belonging

Review of Laughs in Spanish, Hartford Stage

Alexis Scheer’s Laughs in Spanish, playing at Hartford Stage through March 30, grabs us from the start: a blank wall where expensive artworks should be hanging and a loud, sustained scream of “fuuuuuck!” from art dealer Mariana (Stephanie Machado). ‘Tis the season of the famed Art Basel Miami Beach, and Mariana must needs sell art. The missing paintings, though, come to seem mostly a minor plot point, a way to start the action with a bit of bait-and-switch. Directed by Lisa Portes, the play begins with comic, on-the-job high anxiety, but gradually becomes a play about relationships, and family, and community values.

I might have preferred to watch Mariana deal with the art world.

Mariana (Stephanie Machado), Estella (Maggie Bofill) in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

But that’s just me: the accent here is on the accents, we might say. The play treats—with ready humor and a bubbly cast of characters—the shifting roles people play in their lives—work, family, romance—and, more particularly, the tonal shifts that come from being manifestly Latine, in some situations, and more knowingly Angloese in others. The fun of watching the play comes in seeing how the role and tone shifts are instinctive, instructive, and played for effect in a variety of social situations by this able cast.

Start with our screaming art dealer (Machado a little later does a rattled scream that easily eclipses her opening bellow): Mariana, we see, is a savvy, self-sustaining success, but success can easily totter into failure; besides the upcoming reception for art now gone, she has to deal with her assistant Carolina (María Victoria Martínez) who is a Latine artist looking for a break—and who cooly suggests her works should be hung in lieu of the purloined pieces; then there’s Mariana’s mom, Estella (Maggie Bofill), who is a celebrity because of a role she plays in a telenovela, and who is back in her old Wynwood stomping grounds for reasons of her own (but which are relevant to Mariana). Coincidentally, Jenny, Estella’s assistant, an Anglo, is a former school-chum of Mariana’s at the boarding school that absentee mom Estella sent her young daughter to. Does that backstory spell friction or romance? Meanwhile, there’s also very agreeable Juan (Luis Vega), the kind of security guard who thinks it’s no sweat when highly valuable art disappears on his watch, and who is more than cozy with Carolina.

In other words, there are past, present, and future situations aplenty. In all the busyness of the various cross-purposes, the play loses some of the charm that got us interested in the first place. The two strong characters here are Mariana and Estella, both given fascinatingly varied readings by Stephanie Machado and Maggie Bofill, respectively. The mother-daughter dynamic is the most fully fleshed-out, and watching these two work through their pasts and presents is rewarding viewing. Bofill’s Estella is the more demanding and commanding, even when she tries to be humble, and her range of ways to work a room never runs dry. Late in the play she delivers a speech/monologue that left me a little uncertain of its relevance but never in doubt that it was fun to listen to and watch.

Estella (Maggie Bofill); Mariana (Stephanie Machado), foreground, in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Machado’s Mariana can be breezy, ballsy, bitter, blithe—and believably girlish. She’s comes across as the kind of character that—if maybe not telenovela material—can be easily imagined as a sit-com heroine, cut from the Mary Tyler Moore Show mold (if that’s not too ancient a reference). This week, we see her deal with missing art, a school crush, and the fall-out from mom’s misdemeanors. Next week?

Jenny (Olivia Hebert), Mariana (Stephanie Machado) in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The supporting cast all get to have spotlight moments too: the scene of Carolina and Juan in his car with siren and lights going works as contemporary comedy-romance; Jenny’s scene with Mariana lingers maybe a bit too long in the indirection of romantic buildup but is still sweet; and anyone’s scene with Estella upgrades the play’s humor. She’s a walking, talking comic melodrama.

Estella (Maggie Bofill) in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Brian Sidney Bembridge’s scenic design is a bright open space that also shows off Hartford Stage’s spinning stage, so that we get a welcome scene change—twice—in the midst of the action. The street-art on a wall has the requisite Miami feel, I assume, and the forest of trees is foreboding and funky at once. Harry Nadal’s costumes are colorfully varied, and there are lively dance/movement routines to the original music by Daniela Hart/UptownWorks. Throughout, Lisa Portes shows a sharp sense of how to have her cast play to an appreciative audience. Most laughs land and some even simmer.

Carolina (Maria Victoria Martínez), Juan (Luis Vega) in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Laughs in Spanish shows us a vividly turning wheel that presents each character functioning in more than one environment and in more than one capacity. The point of it all, ultimately, turns on which self each character is most comfortable as; or we might say, which identity is the most authentic. The strength of Scheer’s play is that it shows we are each authentically, truthfully, actually more than one thing. The best we can do is make our various selves align with those we care about most.

Mariana (Stephanie Machado), Estella (Maggie Bofill) in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Laughs in Spanish
By Alexis Scheer
Directed by Lisa Portes

Scenic Design: Brian Sidney Bembridge; Costume Design: Harry Nadal; Lighting Design: Sherrice Mojgani; Original Music & Sound Design: Daniela Hart/UptownWorks; Dialect & Voice Coach: Cynthia Santos DeCure; Production Stage Manager: Theresa Stark; Assistant Stage Manager: Christina M. Woolard; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Maggie Bofill, Olivia Hebert, Stephanie Machado, Maria Victoria Martínez, Luis Vega

Hartford Stage
March 6-30, 2025

Don't Blame the Mirror

Review of The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre

“Dying,” the apocryphal theater saying goes, “is easy; comedy is difficult.” Farce, we might say, is even trickier. Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector dates from 1836 and is one of the classic farces of the era, a play that skewers the pretentions of provincials and metropolitans, of liberals and conservatives alike. If it’s a given that the officials in an out-of-the-way Russian village will be hopelessly corrupt, naïve and inefficient, it’s also a given that any remedy from higher up will be just as ineffectual. In Gogol’s world, humanity is ultimately at its own mercy; witless, indulgent, perverse, false, sentimental, occasionally inspired, the best and worst of our collective species wars in each individual brain and breast.

Yura Kordonsky’s adaption, which he also directs, is now playing at Yale Repertory Theatre through March 29 and aims to be as broadly comic as possible. It’s a production not without its dark side, but the manifest effect is gleeful celebration of theater as contrived spectacle.

Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre, left to right: Whitney Andrews, Darius Sakui, Brandon E. Burton (kneeling), Annelise Lawson, Edoardo Benzoni, John Evans Reese, Malik James, Grayson Richmond; photo by Joan Marcus

The distraught Mayor (Brandon E. Burton) of a nameless village has received word that an inspector, traveling incognito, will be coming to town to spy upon the local officials, who, we see, are a dissolute pack of incorrigibles: The Director of Public Health (Whitney Andrews) runs a hospital where patients die or get well because “they would have anyway”; The Judge (Darius Sakui) proudly takes bribes as suitable to the dignity of his office; The School Superintendent (John Evans Reese) is far too timid to impose any order on his teachers and resents them for acting better educated; The Postmaster (Annelise Lawson) opens and reads all mail in hopes of finding romantic billets-doux; and The Doctor (Grayson Richmond) is German, speaks no Russian, and is therefore made an authority. Then there are the townsfolk in the form of two nearly Beckettian clowns called Bobchinsky (Edoardo Benzoni) and Dobchinsky (Malik James) who vie for the thrill of spreading gossip. Finally, the Mayor’s family: Anna (Elizabeth Stahlmann), a wife and mother who resents being left out of events and sees the maturation of her daughter, Marya (Chinna Palmer), as an affront and a revolt, whereas Marya while naïve is no longer a child.

Marya, the Mayor’s daughter (Chinna Palmer), Anna, the Mayor’s wife (Elizabeth Stahlmann) in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Word comes that a stranger with a servant is staying at a local inn and has let drop that he’s from St. Pete’s (aka, St. Petersburg). This unsuspecting visitor, Ivan Khlestakov (Samuel Douglas), with his man Osip (Nomè SiDone), is trapped in town because his gambling losses have left him without funds. The officials’ efforts to bribe him relentlessly and favor him with all manner of obsequious attentions suits him wonderfully, leading to romantic entanglements and other potentially consequential exposures.

Ivan Khlestakov (Samuel Douglas), Osip (Nomè SiDone) in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

The cast—all graduates from or current students in the MFA acting program at the David Geffen School of Drama—attack the material with what might be called collective mania. At the heart of the show is Samuel Douglas’ Ivan, played as a whining, preening man-child wildly fluctuating between astonishing self-importance and trembling insecurity. His initial surprise at his fawning reception, signaled by a high-pitched laugh reminiscent of Tom Hulce’s Mozart in the film Amadeus (1984), eventually gives way to a smug superiority as he deigns to humor each official’s shameless courtship.

Marya, the Mayor’s daughter (Chinna Palmer), Ivan Khlestakov (Samuel Douglas) in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

The scene where Ivan attempts to secure a mischievously animate boot demonstrates the incredible vigor of Douglas’ physical comedy. His Ivan is a whirlwind of energetic bursts and outrageous attempts to curry favor. He boasts of being friends with Pushkin (as was Gogol) and aims to let his playwright friend Nikolai know of his adventures so they can be put into a play. While one might wish for a somewhat more temperate manner in Ivan’s bewilderment during the long leadup to Intermission, the play’s second Act finds our hero a bit more knowing if not outright Machiavellian. His turn-on-a-dime seductions of both Anna and Marya make hay of the usual love-interests of romantic plays, and are enacted with great relish.

Anna, the Mayor’s wife (Elizabeth Stahlmann), Marya, the Mayor’s daughter (Chinna Palmer), Ivan Khlestakov (Samuel Douglas), The Mayor (Brandon E. Burton) in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Other standouts are: the comic timing of the entire cast, particularly during the reading of a revelatory letter late in the play; Elizabeth Stahlmann’s grandly unhappy Anna who imperiously questions random audience members from a window, fidgets erotically before Ivan, and treats her daughter as an evil double; Annelise Lawson’s neurotic Postmaster whose literal scream for attention is one to remember and whose dimness is her greatest charm; the bluster and fawning of Brandon E. Burton’s Mayor, a figure who, through all the mannerisms of caricature, manages to be a character and the author’s deliberate spokesman at one key point; Malik James’ Dobchinsky who is so flustered by his moment in the limelight when interrogated by Anna that he spends it crawling over surprised audience members; and Edoardo Benzoni’s Bobchinsky, a peasant soul grappling for a modern sense of self, whose great claim is that he “lives here!”

Piotr Ivanovich Dobchinsky (Malik James), Piotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky (Edoardo Benzoni) in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Also for special mention: Silin Chen’s majestically dilapidated set, with exposed brickwork, a windowed room that makes for intrigue, with a sash that serves for a balcony à la Romeo and Juliet, and a stage full of eternal snow that sticks to every costume and at different points becomes medicinal or celebratory; KT Farmer’s range of costumes from the believable to the fantastic (check out those vermin), with any article apt to become a prop when suitable; Masha Tsimring’s lighting plays with situations as though a visual “score”; Minjae Kim’s sound design gives the musical score its due and includes atmospheric sound effects; Arseniy Gusev’s musical compositions shine in the gripping dream sequence before intermission, and there’s even a Pushkin poem set to music and sung with artful artlessness by Chinna Palmer as Marya.

The cast of Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; Marya (Chinna Palmer), center; photo by Joan Marcus

The sting of Gogol’s satire might seem a bit dulled by the relentless zaniness of Kordonsky’s approach, but the exuberance of the comic hijinks becomes its own rationale. If we’re never remotely in anything like a real place with real people, then we might realize that what we’re seeing is not so much Theater of the Absurd as absurd theater. While the first asks us to question everything that could give coherence to theater as a telling representation of real life, the second lets us know that such theatrical questioning is no answer.

The dark side surfaces in those eerie vermin who seem both humanoid and alien and eager to take over; in the faceless collective that threatens Ivan as his shadowy double (as the actual inspector might be), but can also stand for bureaucratic anonymity (or DOGE dodginess?); and in that final image of the swinging chandelier—ask not for whom the candles dim.

We might shape the play’s relation to the us of the US 2025 thus: if those in power are thorough idiots not to be trusted, what of the idiots who let such idiots run things?

The cast of Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Nikolai Gogol’s
The Inspector
Newly adapted and directed by Yura Kordonsky

Scenic Designer: Silin Chen; Costume Designer: KT Farmer; Lighting Designer: Masha Tsimring; Sound Designer: Minjae Kim; Composer: Arseniy Gusev; Hair Designer: Matthew Armentrout; Production Dramaturgs: Sophia Carey, Georgia Petersen; Technical Director: Cian Jaspar Freeman; Fight and Intimacy Directors: Kelsey Rainwater, Michael Rossmy; Vocal Coach: Walton Wilson; Casting Director: Calleri Jensen Davis; Stage Manager: Adam Taylor Foster

Cast: Whitney Andrews, Edoardo Benzoni, Brandon E. Burton, Samuel Douglas, Malik James, Annelise Lawson, Chinna Palmer, John Evans Reese, Grayson Richmond, Darius Sakui, Nomè SiDone, Elizabeth Stahlmann

Yale Repertory Theatre
March 7-29, 2025

Living Hell

Review of The Christians, New Haven Theater Company

“I have a powerful urge to communicate, but I find the distance between us insurmountable.” That may be the most resonant line in Lucas Hnath’s The Christians, playing for one more weekend at New Haven Theater Company, March 6-8. The words suggest the huge gaps that have arisen between “different sides” in our republic—right, left; Republican, Democrat; conservative, liberal—and, as in the play, between different beliefs within, nominally, the same religion.

The play is a serious, non-satiric, non-sentimental treatment of crisis in a religious community, and, directed by Deena Nicol-Blifford, is given another satisfyingly professional production in New Haven Theater Company’s long career. Well-cast, well-paced, with a telling grasp of how well this play works in front of a small audience, NHTC’s The Christians might convert you to the joys of small, local theater. As in the storefront where Pastor Paul’s church began, everyone present is fully visible.

The audience is the congregation, to a certain extent. We aren’t given cues, but we do watch as these somewhat theatrical church people go through their contortions. They generally speak into microphones as if their every thought must be broadcast (or in fact is, as the man upstairs is always listening). There’s a stultifying lack of humor in these characters, and a tendency to speak as if their beliefs determine the fate of humanity.

Such attitudes might be played with a sharp irony, but Hnath’s play takes these folks at their word, giving us glimpses of what it’s like to walk with Jesus every step of one’s life. Nicol-Blifford’s very capable cast convince us of the stakes here, even if we might think that whether Pastor Paul (Marty Tucker) or Associate Pastor Joshua (Gavin Whelan) believe in Hell or not doesn’t actually affect its existence or non-existence. To be fair, for the pastors the question isn’t simply whether they believe in Hell or not, but whether or not they should be trying to convince others to believe in it or not.

The play begins, riskily, with a sermon. As Pastor Paul, Marty Tucker is so spot-on believable it’s a bit uncanny. He exudes the measured cadence of a man who makes his living by public speaking, with the lofty tone of a man thoroughly wrapped-up in his own ethos. His story about wooing his wife Elizabeth (Susan Kulp) when she was a stranger on a plane, sending her a note with the quotation above, is made to stand for his ability to surmount the “insurmountable.”

Pastor Paul may be forgiven for being fascinated by the fact that others find him fascinating: his congregation has grown from less than fifty to the tens of thousands. (We’re meant to be seeing the leader of a megachurch, and I’m sure big theater productions with bigger budgets might try to recreate all the razzamatazz of church-going as arena spectacle, but the much smaller scale here means we can appreciate all the more the subtlety of the script.) Pastor Paul opens his sermon telling us that the church has overcome the cost incurred by building its grand meeting hall, and now is free of debt.

The relief of being financially solvent perhaps inspires Pastor Paul to attempt a radical change in the church’s dogma, which in effect says that a person’s soul could be in heaven, even if that person, in life, had never professed belief in Jesus Christ. The blowback on this alternative, and ostensibly progressive, creed is immediate. Associate Pastor Joshua, played with suitably dogged intensity by Gavin Whelan, takes exception, trying to quote the Bible to his purpose, but is nimbly rebuffed by Pastor Paul; Jenny (Margaret Mann), a seemingly meek and appreciative congregant, steps up to the mic with a testimonial that questions Pastor Paul’s good faith in changing course only after his congregation had sacrificed and scrimped to pay for his grand hall; Elder Jay (J. Kevin Smith), mostly supportive in private conversations with Paul, seemingly withdraws his backing when the church loses significantly more congregants than the initial fifty that had backed Joshua, now leading them as his followers.

Elizabeth (Susan Kulp), Paster Paul (Marty Tucker) in The Christians, New Haven Theater Company

In all this, The Christians stays within the bounds of religious practice and religious freedom. Few if any religions haven’t had schisms, heretics, and clashing doctrines even if not always spinning off into new faiths. We’re treated to a glimpse at how communities form and splinter, especially when it’s a matter of this charismatic leader or that. But Hnath’s play moves as well into more intimate realms. Late in the play we see Pastor Paul in conversation with his wife Elizabeth. The tension here comes from the pastor following only his own lead, keeping his wife uninformed of his intentions. What’s more, as Elizabeth presents her view, in Susan Kulp’s carefully modulated tones, we learn that she sides with Joshua on the question of Hell, and feels that her women’s Bible-study group might be a forum for her to express her dissatisfactions with her husband’s teachings.

In the end we see that, though the play concentrates on the problems that arise when a pastor veers from agreed-upon church doctrine into his own soul-searching agenda, The Christians isn’t only about religious belief or faith. Hnath’s text gestures toward the beliefs we profess but don’t really hold, the beliefs we change but conceal from others, the beliefs we use to denigrate those with other beliefs, and how hard it is to talk meaningfully about something that always, it seems, amounts to “a feeling.”

What’s bracing about the play is its sense that an inability to communicate is not insurmountable. Everyone in the play gets to state their views. The downside is that the firmer they are in their beliefs, the more the distance between their beliefs grows.

Insurmountable? As any good pastor might say, “let us pray.”

The Christians
By Lucas Hnath
Directed by Deena Nicol-Blifford

Co-Producers: Deena Nicol-Blifford and J. Kevin Smith; Stage Manager: Abby Klein; Set and Sound Design: Deena Nicol-Blifford; Lighting Design: Michael Abbatiello

Cast: Susan Kulp, Margaret Mann, J. Kevin Smith, Marty Tucker, Gavin Whelan

New Haven Theater Company
February 27 & 28; March 1, 6, 7, 8, 2025

Tend Your Own Garden

Review of Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse

At the conclusion of Voltaire’s satirical narrative Candide, the protagonist reflects that the only way to find happiness in this volatile and uncertain world is “to tend one’s own garden.” Karen Zacarías’ bright situation comedy, Native Gardens, playing at Westport Country Playhouse through March 8, directed by Joann M. Hunter, suggests—comically—that tending a garden may come with its own stress and political tensions.

Frank Butley (Adam Heller), Virginia Butley (Paula Leggett Chase), Tania Del Valle (Linedy Genao), Pablo Del Valle (Anthony Michael Martinez) in Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

Anna Louizos’ sumptuous set confronts us with two different backyards, situated in an upscale neighborhood in Washington DC. On our right, a well-appointed brick house with a stone porch on the back and a very well-tended garden full of bright blooms; on our left, a less maintained house, with siding, overhung by the leaves and branches of a large tree, and a yard with a simple table and chairs near an ivied fence. On the right live the Butleys, Virginia (Paula Leggett Chase) and Frank (Adam Heller), gray-haired, affable, Republican; Frank tends his garden assiduously, desperate to do better than Honorable Mention in the yearly neighborhood competition. On the left, live Tania Del Valle (Linedy Genao), a pregnant doctoral student, and her husband Pablo (Anthony Michael Martinez), a Chilean immigrant eager to make partner at the law firm where he works. They are the new owners of this fixer-upper, and we learn that Tania is very committed to using only indigenous plants in her gardening as she looks askance at Frank’s fussy, imported flowers and shrubs.

Even if the clash here were only about the do’s and don’ts of horticulture, the confrontation between these two couples would likely spin through a number of push-button topics designed to demonstrate the perils of neighborliness in ideologically fraught times. Early on, the talk establishes that Tania’s “people” have been on the North American continent for ages, that she is from New Mexico, not Mexico, and that Pablo hails from a world of chauffeur-driven limos and private schools. Frank and Tania seem to bond on the importance of gardening, even if their ideal gardens are very different; Virginia attempts to find common cause with Pablo by asserting that being a woman in a male preserve such as engineering—her field—is comparable to being a non-white man trying to climb the ladder today.

Pablo Del Valle (Anthony Michael Martinez), Frank Butley (Adam Heller), Tania Del Valle (Linedy Genao) in Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

Zacarías’s dialogue lets each character get across an individual perspective but without drawing major fault lines. Everyone is trying to be likeable. The real disruption occurs not for reasons of taste, or background or even political affiliation. When the Del Valles decide the chain-link fence must go, to be replaced by a wooden one that the Butleys welcome, a glance at the map of their plot indicates that their property line actually extends about two feet into Frank’s garden. Now, it’s time to bring in the rhetorical big guns—about land-grabs, borders, and squatter’s rights, about time-honored stewardship, the rule of law, and old privilege vs. new ambition.

Zacarías works in just enough issues-talk to indicate how our larger cultural surround inflects even our most trivial occupations, and Joann M. Hunter’s direction keeps everything on an even keel, so that we are intrigued more than confronted by the situation. Mention should be made too of how well the silent “workers” are played by Horacio “Joe” Cardozo and Brianna Parkin, whose very presence shows how necessary an underclass is to any upper-class assertions.

Pablo Del Valle (Anthony Michael Martinez), Frank Butley (Adam Heller) in Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

All the drama plays out with notable give-and-take—as for instance, the escalating late-night fracas between Frank and Pablo that is not without a certain self-consciousness, or the “women make nice better than men” assumptions that goad Virginia and Tania into a talk that goes delightfully off the rails. Throughout, there is a fairly nuanced sense of how these two contemporary households differ, and, most usefully, how the perspective of being near retirement vs. up-and-coming plays into the situation.

The problem, which gets uglier and less resolvable as it goes on, receives a dramatic turn that could be called “bambina ex machina.” The epilogue might seem corny in its “can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” cheer, but Zacarías seems to assume that, if we can suffer being ribbed for our eagerness to assert our distinct identities and preferences and assumptions, we can also be ribbed for our hope for happy endings. The script is resolutely fun, but rarely really funny.

Tania Del Valle (Linedy Genao), Frank Butley (Adam Heller), Virginia Butley (Paula Leggett Chase) in Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

The cast acquit themselves well, all very believable in their roles, bringing enough particularity to seem individuals rather than types. As Pablo, Anthony Michael Martinez doesn’t seem yet the slick lawyer we might expect him to become, and his effort at domestic tranquility requires much input from his wife. He seems to spend most of his time flustered. Linedy Genao’s Tania has a freshness and youth that might make us think she’ll be docile and meek, but guess again; when she cusses out Virginia in Spanish we have a glimpse of how risky it is to cross her. As Frank, Adam Heller seems a truly likeable guy’s guy, the type that inhabited many a sitcom where a family is presided over by a sometimes wise, sometimes silly successful white male (early on, Tania quips that the Del Salles are “living next-door to the Dick Van Dyke Show”); he does go on a bit too much about his damn garden contest, but that just shows he’s used to getting his way. The star of the show is Paula Leggett Chase’s Virginia, full of arch mannerisms and meaningful silences and comic timing; we see how much having an argument with these newcomers gets her juices flowing and we imagine Virginia hasn’t been this turned-on in years.

Frank Butley (Adam Heller), Virginia Butley (Paula Leggett Chase) in Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

The set, costumes, lighting, incidental music between scenes are all superb—and all serve well the expectation that theater show us a reasonable facsimile of our lives and times. Playing in Westport, we might find we do indeed recognize these characters and, with the world as dictated by Washington DC becoming daily a more alarming concern, we might find a trip back to the relative stabilities of the late twenty-teens reassuring. As Tania allows at one point, their neighbors, though Republicans, “are people too.”

Native Gardens
By Karen Zacarías
Directed by Joann M. Hunter

Set Designer: Anna Louizos; Costume Designer: David C. Woolard; Lighting Designer: Charlie Morrison; Sound Designer: John Gromada; Prop Supervisor: Anna Dorodnykh; Production Stage Manager: Abigail Zaccari; Assistant Stage Manager: Willy Kinch; Production Assistant: Mariana Jennings

Cast: Paula Leggett Chase, Linedy Genao, Adam Heller, Anthony Michael Martinez

Westport Country Playhouse
February 18-March 8, 2025

Indelible Dialogue in a Diner

Review of Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage

A diner in a failing section of Pittsburgh in 1969. The Hill District was a Black neighborhood where a local community once self-sufficient and set apart has undergone a series of hard changes due to unemployment and the “redevelopment” which destroyed the neighborhood and the storied roots of many people, not least the playwright August Wilson. Wilson’s Two Trains Running, of all his plays set in his birthplace, is particularly aware of its moment. 1969 is a point at which, for some of his characters, what once was is still real while the notable changes for the worse have become irrevocable.

Wilson not only trusts his characters to have sufficient depth to touch on the themes that matter to him, he’s also able to let action become a background to how these characters talk out their reactions, their hopes, their fears, and their grudges. While there is a strong literary command here, one would be hard-pressed to turn any character into a symbol or a stand-in for a particular ideology. Wilson’s characters always speak their individual truths, eventually, and being present while that happens is a major incentive to attend his plays.

Two Trains Running is one of the most rewarding and deeply observed plays in the canon of works by this towering American playwright. Hartford Stage’s production, playing through February 16, is not to be missed.

Memphis (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

At the center of the story is Memphis (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.), a diner owner who originated in Alabama and plans to return to property there, someday. He’s still got the deed, he insists. Key to his current situation is whether to sell out, now that the neighborhood barely sustains his business and, if so, for how much. His pride in his past accomplishments and in his once central place in the local community sustains him as hard times come on. His diner is still a gathering place, but the regulars are not exactly boon costumers.

Foreground: Holloway (Jerome Preston Bates); background: Memphis (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.), Sterling (Rafael Jordan) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Chief among them is Holloway (Jerome Preston Bates), the main source of local history and the one best able to articulate the grievances of the area; Wolf (Postell Pringle) is younger, a hip numbers runner who flits in and out to drum up business and to take messages on Memphis’s pay phone, much to the proprietor’s annoyance; a newcomer is Sterling (Rafael Jordan), recently released from the penitentiary and desperate for work and for any kind of welcome to give him a sense of belonging. They are joined at random moments by: Hambone (David Jennings), a character afflicted by mental troubles who carries a long-standing grievance against a white employer for the unsettled payment of a ham for work done; and West (Jeorge Bennett Watson), the only well-to-do local Black businessman because, as an undertaker, he is never without work. Finally, there’s Holloway’s only worker, the harried and patient Risa (Taji Senior) whose presence strategically offsets the men’s club ambience at the diner. She bears self-inflicted scars on her legs that suggest a backstory the others aren’t quite willing to face.

The excellent cast renders these characters in all their verbal glory. The Hartford Stage playing space in Lawrence E. Moten III’s realistic design gives ample area for director Gilbert MacCauley’s subtle choreography of action that lets us follow interplay that happens both before our eyes and in our ability to follow a speaker’s manner and particular logic. The way these characters talk to each other is the marrow of this play, and it’s a memorable experience to hear Wilson’s dialogue given its full dimensions. Lighting (Xavier Pierce) and Costumes (Devario D. Simmons) provide visual cues that give extra weight to the personalities on display.

Memphis (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.), Wolf (Postell Pringle) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

As Memphis, Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., has the necessary presence, showing us a man both genial and anxious, able to muse aloud and to denounce the failings he sees in others, while demanding his due. Whether or not his grasp of reality is as unflinching as he thinks it is becomes a plot point when it comes to his evaluation of the diner. His crony, Halloway, a fixture at the diner, is a captivatingly mercurial figure in Jerome Preston Bates’ rendering; his intonations are like a jazz player, riffing on repetitions like Halloway’s recurring praise of Aunt Ester, a legendary figure of the neighborhood known for her wisdom and clairvoyant insight. Postell Pringle’s Wolf is pitch perfect in his facial reactions—like his ability to stare daggers—his vocal sallies, and his general demeanor: the way he looks through the glass door, up and down, before he puts a foot out tells us a lot about the kind of hustle he’s on.

Sterling (Rafael Jordan) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

As the two younger characters who might form a couple, Sterling and Risa seem perhaps the more formulaic aspects of the play, and yet Wilson has a way of making them both very individual and surprising. As Sterling, Rafael Jordan is earnest and dogged, getting on others’ nerves at times, and yet trying to find some way to please; he’s also a loose cannon because the others don’t know exactly what all he might get up to doing. His preening insistence that Risa will marry him once his number comes in provides the play with some romantic comedy elements, and the interplay between Risa and Sterling finds touching use of Gregory Robinson’s original music. Taji Senior gives Risa a mixture of skepticism and sympathy toward the others that makes her at times a stand-in for the audience, trying to assess which of these very voluble men, all assertive and bossy with at least a pretense of charm, is most worth our trouble.

Risa (Taji Senior) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The main figure of sympathy is Hambone, who seems to live on handouts and disability payments while reciting his credo: “He gonna give me my ham.” David Jennings quite simply owns this role, his performance is forceful, funny, dramatic and fully engaged. As West, the least sympathetic if only because the most well-off, Jeorge Bennett Watson has the dignity of a professional and a long-tested patience that could make him our stand-in as well. His gentle hat-roll late in the play shows that even an undertaker can be playful.

Memphis (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.), Hambone (David Jennings) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

August Wilson, who was born in 1945 and died in 2005, wrote a play for each decade of the twentieth century, each of them packed with characters who have compelling realism and archetypal power. This play has long seemed to me one of the more enduring, if only because the 1960s have played such an major part in influencing American culture through the end of the twentieth century. Two Trains Running manages to dramatize cultural forces of the time while avoiding some of the more obvious clichés of the period. It is a treasure of a play, full of history, grievance and hope, and brought to indelible life at Hartford Stage.

Foreground: Risa (Taji Senior), West (Jeorge Bennett Watson); background: Sterling (Rafael Jordan) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

August Wilson’s
Two Trains Running
Directed by Gilbert McCauley

Scenic Design: Lawrence E. Moten III; Costume Design: Devario D. Simmons; Lighting Design: Xavier Pierce; Original Music & Sound Design: Gregory Robinson; Wig, Hair & Makeup Design: J. Jared Jonas; Intimacy Coordinator: Kelsey Rainwater; Vocal Coach: Cynthia Santos DeCure; Casting: Alaine Alldaffer & Lisa Donadio; Production Stage Manager: lark hackshaw; Assistant Stage Manager : Adalhia Ivette Hart; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Jerome Preston Bates, David Jennings, Rafael Jordan, Postell Pringle, Taji Senior, Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., Jeorge Bennett Watson

Hartford Stage
January 23-February 16, 2025

Trouble in Paradise

Review of Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre

Set in the area of New York City called San Juan Hill in 1927, Steve Carter’s Eden draws us into the tensions between two neighboring families, tensions that stem from class and racial distinctions in the Black community. The main thematic concern of Carter’s play is how divisive cultural conceptions can undermine racial solidarity. It's a worthwhile historical lesson since, for those who didn’t spend much or any time in the twentieth century, the lack of specific ethnic or national identifications in blanket terms like “white” and “black” and “POC” lends itself to an unnuanced view of such identities. Carter’s lively, incisive, well written and engaging play, directed with superlative pacing by Brandon J. Dirden at the Yale Repertory Theatre through February 8, takes us back into U.S. history with the kind of command of period and personality that we find in peers like Arthur Miller and August Wilson.

Nimrod (Juice Mackins), Solomon (Prentiss Patrick-Carter), Agnes (Alicia Pilgrim), Annetta (Lauren F. Walker) in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

As Miller and Wilson often do, Carter sets his play in a very specific time and place and focuses on a particular family. The Bartons consist of a father, Joseph (Russell G. Jones), and a mother Florie (Christina Acosta Robinson), who are West Indian, with two daughters, Agnes (Alicia Pilgrim) and Annetta (Lauren F. Walker), born there as well, and two sons, Nimrod (Juice Mackins) and Solomon (Prentiss Patrick-Carter), who were born in New York. The immediate contrast, played for laughs by the young boys, is the difference between the way the former islanders speak and the way the local Black youths (at the time designated “Negroes”) speak. It’s a cultural difference the young people can view as significant or not, but in their home their father is adamant that his children will not mix with “these people.” American Blacks, in his view, are inferior to Blacks from the Indies.

Annetta Barton (Lauren F. Walker), Eustace Baylor (Chaundra Hall-Broomfield in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Of course this culturally exclusive prejudice will be tested by the familiar “melting-pot” conditions of life in New York City, for the boys, and by the thorny issue of who gets to decide whom marriageable daughter Annetta, eighteen, will marry. Joseph Barton favors Mr. Wallace, a bachelor friend and successful store-keeper, old enough to be Annetta’s father but “pure” in his bloodline; Annetta, in the course of the play, falls for Eustace Baylor (Chaundra Hall-Broomfield), a young man who comes from the U.S. south and is living across the hall with his aunt Lizzie Harris (Heather Alicia Simms).

Carter deftly constructs scenes that illuminate this world and, while the plot developments are hardly surprising, real drama comes from getting to know these characters, and seeing how they come better to know themselves and each other.

Florie Barton (Christina Acosta Robinson), Joseph Barton (Russell G. Jones) in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

There are wonderful, fully involving performances throughout. Christina Acosta Robinson is superb as Florie Barton; seemingly a self-effacing wife and mother, she comes on strong near the end of Act I and completely alters the family dynamic in Act II. Robinson plays her as a woman awakened to her own missed potential by witnessing her husband’s brutal mistreatment of Annetta. Russell G. Jones conveys what Joseph imagines to be tough love and high standards with a patriarchal superiority he deems unquestionable. More than a little tyrannical, he fears the scrappy street ethos of the U.S. will undermine his values, and of course he’s right, but how that plays out is key to the drama Carter finds in questions of social mobility and constructions of racial identity.

Joseph Barton (Russell G. Jones), Annetta Barton (Lauren F. Walker), Florie Barton (Christina Acosta Robinson), Eustace Baylor (Chaundra Hall-Broomfield) in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

As the young couple yearning to breathe free, as it were, Lauren F. Walker’s Annetta presents the mix of innocence and knowing charm that easily stirs Eustace, played by Chaundra Hall-Broomfield with the kind of heartening self-confidence and easy manner we expect will carry the day. The scenes of confrontation with Mr. Barton have a grim inevitability since neither man can admit the other’s view.

As Aunt Lizzie, Heather Alicia Simms brings a further dimension to the story as a woman much more experienced in how immediate and provisional love can be, but also how life-altering. A conversation in Act II between Lizzie and Florie goes a long way in undermining Mr. Barton’s sense that there should be significant difference between the women due to birth and circumstances. They align in a wish to see the couple succeed.

Florie Barton (Christina Acosta Robinson), Lizzie Harris (Heather Alicia Simms) in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Ultimately, this cannot be a “happily ever after” story because the faultlines are too clearly marked. The difficulties of living with the hand one was dealt go beyond the bounds of this story for each character. Carter has the skill to conjure the relations that are meaningful for each character, letting us see how all are affected by such conflicts.

The scenic design by George Zhou, costumes by Caroline Tyson, lighting by Ankit Pandey all contribute significantly to the play’s strong naturalistic affect, creating spaces—including an impressive rooftop set—that feel fully inhabited. Aided by Ein Kim’s poetic projections and Tojo Rasedoara’s sound design and original music, the production is a triumph of subtle tech touches.

Eden’s title refers to Joseph Barton’s sense that the promised land, ultimately, is Africa, the land of his origins, following the views of his hero Marcus Garvey whose photo is prominently displayed in the home. Carter’s play shows how the realities of place have a way of taking precedence over ideological considerations, providing a view of how history is often shaped by unexpected affinities and differences.

Joseph Barton (Russell G. Jones), Solomon Barton (Prentiss Patrick-Carter), Nimrod Barton (Juice Mackins) in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Eden
By Steve Carter
Directed by Brandon J. Dirden

Scenic Designer: George Zhou; Costume Designer: Caroline Tyson; Lighting Designer: Ankit Pandey; Sound Design and Original Music: Tojo Rasedoara; Projection Designer: Ein Kim; Hair and Wig Designers: Krystal Balleza and Will Vicari; Production Dramaturgs: Austin Riffelmacher, Tia Smith; Technical Director: Nickie Dubick; Fight and Intimacy Director: Michael Rossmy; Vocal and Dialect Coach: Paul Pryce; Casting Director: Calleri Jensen Davis; Stage Manager: Hope Binfeng Ding

Cast: Chaundre Hall-Broomfield, Russell G. Jones, Juice Mackins, Prentiss Patrick-Carter, Alicia Pilgrim, Christina Acosta Robinson, Heather Alicia Simms, Lauren F. Walker

Yale Repertory Theatre
January 16-February 8, 2025