“On the Aisle with Larry”

Lawrence Harbison, our very own critic, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about THE TEMPERAMENTALS and LEVITTOWN.

Jon Marans’ The Temperamentals, at the Barrow Group Theatre, has become something of a sleeper hit. Apparently, it opened up as a showcase and then Daryl Roth swooped in and funded an open-ended extension. I was finally able to see it, and it knocked me out. It’s a beautifully-written, superbly acted and directed look at a forgotten moment in the history of our country. Great plays tell stories that needed to be told. This one’s a doozy.

Back in the day when gay people had to stay firmly locked up in the closet, they developed a code, sort of a secret language with which they could communicate with each other. A common euphemism for “gay” was “temperamental.” This is a play about what it meant to be “temperamental,” when that could get you beaten up or even thrown in jail. It tells the story of two courageous men, a teacher named Harry Hay and a young Austrian fashion designer named Rudi Gernreich (who later became famous in the 1960’s as a top mod designer and the creator of the notorious topless swim suit) who, in the late 1940’s-early 1950’s founded the first gay rights organization. That their efforts to change our laws and public consciousness about homosexuality fizzled out does not denigrate their courage.

An intrepid cast of six men play many different roles, though Thomas Jay Ryan (as Hay) and Michael Urie (as Gernreich) play their characters throughout. The effect is as if you are seeing a large cast play, and Jonathan Silverstein’s direction here is stunning. All the actors are wonderful, but Ryan and Urie really score as the two leads.

Whether you’re temperamental or not, don’t miss this one.

I also enjoyed Marc Palmieri’s drama Levittown, at Theatre at St. Clements. This is a compelling dysfunctional family drama (haven’t seen one of those in a while) set in the locale of cookie-cutter homes on Long Island and focuses on three generations of a troubled family. Son Kevin has dropped out of college and come home, not knowing what his next step in his life will be. His Mom is a new-age whacko, but the good news is his sister Colleen, ever the family black sheep, seems to have pulled her life together and is planning to get married. Kevin thinks that now is the time for a reconciliation between Colleen and their father, who left his family years ago. Dear old Dad, it turns out, is a deeply troubled man who simply cannot forgive Colleen for the angst she put him through, and Kevin’s good intentions almost pave the road to hell.

There’s nothing much that’s new here, but Palmieri has a strong empathy for his characters (even the horrible father) and George Demas’ direction is very subtle and very strong. The actors are uniformly terrific. I particularly enjoyed Tristan Colton as Kevin, and Susan Bennett as Colleen. The real standouts in the cast, though, are Curzon Dobell as the Dad, Dane Knell as crusty old Gramps and, above all, Tyler Pierce, who plays two roles and who absolutely bowled me over. What a terrific actor!

If you’re a “downtown theatre” aficionado, this one ain’t for you; but if you like plays with strong stories and compelling characters which are firmly grounded in the real world, check this one out.

THE TEMPERAMENTALS. Barrow Group Theatre.312 W. 36th St.
TICKETS: www.smartix.com. 212-868-4444
LEVITTOWN. Theatre at St. Clements. 423 W. 46th St.
TICKETS: 212-352-3101

“On the Aisle with Larry”

Lawrence Harbison brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about TWELFTH NIGHT and ARCHBISHOP SUPREME TARTUFFE.

When the New York Shakespeare Festival announced that it was offering Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, I must confess my first thought was, “Again?” I have seen at least six productions of the play in the past twenty years, three of them at the Delacorte. Well, the current production, directed by Daniel Sullivan, more than justifies Yet Another look at this wonderful play. It’s my favorite of all my Twelfth Nights, and in my top five all time great nights of Shakespeare.

Sullivan has set the play vaguely in the Empire period, though some of Jane Greenwood’s beautiful costumes evoke the era of Hogarth, on a rolling countryside of a set by John Lee Beatty, which Sullivan uses to hilarious effect. In this most musical of Shakespeare’s comedies he has employed the talents of a wonderful band called Hem, whose music sounds Irish country, and who interact with the actors to a most amusing effect.

And then: those actors! Anne Hathaway is a charming Viola. She inhabits her role better than anyone else I’ve seen, and she has a lovely singing voice. She’s that rarity, a movie star with real stage chops. She is matched by Audra MacDonald as Olivia, who starts out austere and instantly turns giddy when she falls for young Cesario, in Orsino’s service, who is of course Viola disguised as a man. Easily transitioning from demonically intense Charlie Fox in Speed-the-Plow to Orsino, lovesick suitor to Olivia, Raúl Esparza once again demonstrates that he is one of our finest stage actors. And then: those clowns! Never have I seen them funnier. Jay O. Sanders plays Sir Toby Belch as if he were as kin to Falstaff as he is to Olivia and Hamish Linklater is a scream as that archetypal wimp Sir Andrew Aguecheek. David Pittu is hilarious as Feste, and Julie White an absolute delight as Olivia’s serving lady Maria.

This is one special evening, folks. It’s worth waiting in line for hours and hours.

Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe (at the Clurman Theatre) sounded to me like a very promising premise. This play easily can be adapted to changing times and mores. Several years ago, Circle in the Square did an amusing adaptation of the play by Freyda Thomas called Tartuffe: Born Again, in which John Glover played a wily televangelist. Here, the play, adapted by Alfred Preisser and Randy Weiner, has been set in Harlem in the 1920’s-30s, and Tartuffe is a blatant rip-off artist whose only god is lucre, who makes Rev. Ike seem like Billy Graham. Much of the evening consists of the “Archbishop’s” services, which feature scantily-clad chorus girls shaking their tail feathers as the preacher duns us for more money to help support his profligate life style. His biggest supporter, Orgon is emptying his coffers and giving it all to his “church,” much to the dismay of his family.

Part of the problem with the show is that the Archbishop’s “services” tend to seem more of the same after a while, and I don’t think the basic premise works all that well. Tartuffe is too obviously a con artist for the play to have much credibility. Still, the performers are high-energy – particularly André De Shields in the title role, and Kimberly Glennon’s costumes are a hoot.

I sat there rolling my eyes for much of the show; but I have to report that the black folks in the audience were yukking it up.

I am ordinarily not much of a fan of one-person plays, which are ever more ubiquitous these days because they are the cheapest plays to produce; but I like Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre a lot, so I wasn’t going to hold it against them that they’re ending their season with a monodrama, in this case The Amish Project written and performed by Jessica Dickey. In fact, I was eagerly anticipating this one, because I have been hearing some very good things about it.

About three years ago, a man invaded an Amish schoolhouse, expelled all the boys and proceeded to shoot the girls. This tragedy inspired Dickey to spend time in Pennsylvania talking to the locals, Amish and non, and the result is this collection of monologues in which she plays seven characters in all. I was surprised, and grateful, that Dickey does not indulge in pop psychology to explain away this horrific event. She is more interested in its effect on the lives of the people affected by it – including the wife of the shooter. This all coalesces into a question too inscrutable for our secular culture to fathom: how could the Amish, whose children were murdered, forgive their murderer and try to assist his wife?

As is Naomi Wallace’s Things of Dry Hours at New York Theatre Workshop. This takes place in the 1930’s in the deep south and concerns a negro communist agitator who lives with his daughter who don’t give a hoot about the revolution. A young white man arrives on their doorstep, claiming to be on the run from the bosses’ goons and asking for sanctuary. Reluctantly, it is granted, and the agitator proceeds to try and educate his guest in the philosophy of communism as expounded by Mark and Engels in The Communist Manifesto and by God in The Bible.

Of course, the daughter falls for the guest and, of course, its revealed he’s not who he says he is. This sounds kind of dull; but Wallace’s scenes are taut and dramatic. She only falters when she resorts to narrative monologues directly addressed to the audience. The play is bookended with these, which are unnecessary and, well, boring.

The cast, under Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s rather languid direction, works wonders with this intense, occasionally turgid play. Delroy Lindo is magnificent as the black communist and Roslyn Ruff is fierce as his angry daughter.

The opening of a new play by Theresa Rebeck is always a cause for celebration. This is one of the American Theatre’s smartest, and funniest, playwrights. Her latest, Our House at Playwrights Horizons, does not disappoint. It’s required viewing for anyone concerned about what has been happening to news on television, and about the spread of so-called “reality television.”

Jennifer Ramirez is the hot, rising star of TV news. She anchors the morning news, but the head of programming, a manic, slimy character named Wes, has bigger plans for her. He decides to make her a feature of his network’s hottest reality show, “Our House,” unconcerned that reality TV isn’t really “news” – at least as Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkeit would have conceived it.

Between scenes involving Jennifer, Wes and the unctuous head of news Stu, we are given scenes in a real house, in which reside four people. One of them is a TV nut named Merv, who apparently does nothing but sit around the house all day watching reality TV, much to the dismay of Alice, who hates it that the TV is on 24/7 and who keeps the house books. Mel is over $4,000 behind in his contributions to the house expenses, and Alice wants the other denizens to boot him out. So, Mel comes downstairs with a gun and shoots Alice and the other woman in the house, Grigsby. “What do you want?” pleads Vince, the only unscathed resident. “I want to talk to Jennifer Ramirez,” says Mel. What ensues is a taut hostage negotiation drama, as the network sends Jennifer into the house to get the exclusive story. Of course, the network’s numbers go through the roof.

Michael Mayer’s production is flat-out brilliant, and his cast is across-the board wonderful. Christopher Evan Welch is scarily terrific as Wes, and Morena Baccarin is scarily robotic as Jennifer. Jeremy Strong, as Merv, is scary, too – because he is so likeable, albeit in a nutcase kind of way.

I also recommend Coraline, an MCC production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre – particularly if you are in the mood for Something Completely Different. This is a horror yarn about a little girl who finds herself in a parallel universe on the other side of a bricked-up doorway, where she is the daughter of a sinister Other Mother and Father. Will she escape back to the safety of the real world, or will she been turned into a tortured spirit like the other children she meets in her nightmare?

David Greenspan has adapted a weird children’s novel by Nail Gaiman, and there are several very creepy songs by Stephin Merritt. Jane Houdyshell, a wonderful character actress in her 50s (that’s my guess) plays Coraline, and she makes you believe she is this little girl. David Greenspan himself plays the Other Mother, and he is as weird and sinister as you might expect.

Finally, I caught Naked Angels’ production of Artistic Director Geoffrey Nauffts’ Next Fall, at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre (Playwrights Horizons’ upstairs space, although this is not a PH production), which reminded me a lot of the sort of play I used to see regularly at the late lamented Circle Rep, no doubt because of the presence in the cast of Circle Rep veteran Cotter Smith, who has been doing television and some film lo these past 15 years or so, and whose return to the New York stage is most welcome.

We are in a hospital waiting room with the family and friends of Luke, a young actor who has been in an accident and is in a coma. There’s his father and his step-mother, his boyfriend, his ex-boyfriend, and a female friend who runs a candle shop where he works as his day job. There are flashbacks involving Luke and the current boyfriend, a 40 year-old nebbishy sort, and these form the heart of the play’s conflict. Luke, you see, is a sincere Christian; whereas the boyfriend, Adam, is a cynical atheist. Talk about an odd couple! Adam thinks Luke is seriously wrong-headed; Luke worries that Adam is damned to hell because he doesn’t accept Christ as his savior. There is much to savor in the debate between these two men; but these scenes in the waiting room are great, too.

Patrick Breen and Patrick Heusinger and wonderful as the contentious lovers Adam and Luke, and Cotter Smith is most impressive as Luke’s Dad, a stuffy conservative type clearly unhappy with his son’s lifestyle. Connie Ray provides a lot of the comic relief as Luke’s step-mom, and there is excellent work as well here from Sean Dugan as the ex and from Maggie Corman as the candle selling, self-described fag hag. Sheryl Kaller’s direction is first-rate.

“Who is this guy?”

For over thirty years Lawrence Harbison was in charge of new play acquisition for Samuel French, Inc., during which time he was responsible for the first publication of plays by such luminaries as Jane Martin, Don Nigro, Tina Howe, Theresa Rebeck, José Rivera, William Mastrosimone, Charles Fuller, and Ken Ludwig, among many others; and the acquisition of many musicals such as Smoke on the Mountain, A…My Name Is Alice, Little Shop of Horrors and Three Guys Naked From the Waist Down. He has a B. A. from Kenyon College and an M.A. in theatre from the University of Michigan. He is currently Senior Editor for Smith & Kraus, Inc., the nation’s largest theatrical trade publisher, for whom he edits annual anthologies of best plays by new playwrights, best ten-minute plays, best monologues for men and for women and best stage scenes. For many years he wrote a weekly column on his adventures in the theater for two Manhattan newspapers, the Chelsea Clinton News and The Westsider. He has also served as literary manager or literary consultant for several theatres, such as Urban Stages and American Jewish Theatre. He is a member of the NYC press corps and is an Outer Critics Circle member. He has served many times over the years as a judge and commentator for various national play contests and lectures regularly at colleges and universities. He loves to hear from readers – particularly if they disagree with him. E-mail him at LHarbison1@nyc.rr.com

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”

—– George F. Will

Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carré ought to exert quite a fascination for fans of this great playwright. It hails from the latter part of his career when he had fallen out of critical favor (to say the least), and was a very notorious Broadway bomb. Still, there have been two notable productions in New York of this fascinating work, one at the WPA Theatre and now the current incarnation at Pearl Theatre Co.

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Apparently, Williams began work on this play before he achieved fame with The Glass Menagerie, when he was living in a seedy boarding house in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It is an intensely autobiographical work, even more so than The Glass Menagerie, and it contains prototypes of many of William’s great themes explored to better effect in his best work. Its central character, known here only as The Writer, is a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality even as he searches for his voice as a writer. Clearly, the characters in this play are based on people Williams knew, and individually they are indelible portraits of human flotsam and jetsam, slowly swirling down into the maelstrom of fate and bad luck.

I can assume that the play’s frank treatment of homosexuality was part of the reason it did not find favor the first time it was produced, but the main reason the play doesn’t quite work is that its structure is so episodic. Many of the individual scenes are top-drawer Williams; but the play overall has no dramatic focus.

It’s not helped much by the scene design concept, which looks extremely Off Off Broadway bare-bones. It’s just a collection of dilapidated furniture strewn about the stage, which never manages to suggest either the Quarter or this particular place therein. Part of Williams’ point is that his characters live lives of lonely, quiet desperation in cubicle-like rooms. If one cot serves as everybody’s bed, you not only confuse the audience but you undercut the claustrophobic existence of these lost souls. Was this a deliberate choice on the part of the director, Austin Pendleton, or did Pearl just plain run out of dough at the end of the season? Hard to tell. Either way, the production is a scenic jumble, redeemed only by some really fine acting from the likes of Pearl veteran Sean McCall as The Writer; George Morforgen as a dying, elderly painter; Carol Schultz as the landlady, Rachel Botchan as a good girl from up North wallowing in sexual ecstasy like Stella Kowalski with a brutish barker at a Bourbon Street strip show, and from Pamela Payton-Wright and Beth Dixon as two destitute old ladies desperately trying to preserve the tattered remnants of their gentility.

The Broadway transfer of Next to Normal is, on the other hand, not to be missed. This musical about a wife and mother struggling with severe bipolar disorder and depression was small in scale at Off Broadway’s Second Stage; whereas at Broadway’s Booth Theatre it is magnified into a poignant musical tragedy.

Brilliantly directed by Michael Greif, Next to Normal features a heart-rending performance by Alice Ripley and superb supporting work from all the cast. I was bowled over by Aaron Tveit as the teenaged son who, it turns out, is a phantom in Mom’s deranged imagination, her creation of what her dead baby would look and sound like now.

I also enjoyed Lloyd Suh’s American Hwangap, a co-production by Ma-Yi Theatre Co. and The Play Co. at the Wild Center in the East Village, a cozy and very pleasant playhouse new to me. It has been beautifully directed by Trip Cullman, one of my favorite “downtown” directors who can’t seem to break out of downtown but who very much deserves to.

The play’s about a 60 year old Korean man who deserted his family in America years ago to return to Korea after he suffered the disgrace of losing his engineering job. He has returned at the invitation of his ex-wife for his “Hwangap,” a traditional Korean 60^th birthday party, much to the chagrin of two of his three children. There’s his son Ralph, who lives in his Mom’s basement and who is determined to prolong his adolescence for as long as he can (he’s almost 30); his daughter Esther who can’t let go of her anger towards her father; and oldest son David, a successful investment banker who just doesn’t give a you-know-what.

James Saito is magnificent as the Dad, embodying a man who just plain let his life get away from him in a very moving manner. Michi Barall and Peter Kim are wonderful, too, as Esther and Ralph; and Hoon Yi is simply astounding as older brother David.

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day, when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry.”

—– George F. Will

Welcome to my new blog! At this time of year, everyone is publishing their “Top Ten” lists. This has been an extraordinary theatrical season, so coming up with such a list is quite a challenge. I have had many more than just 10 extraordinary evenings of theatre. Nevertheless, here are my faves:

THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN by Martin McDonagh at Atlantic Theatre Co. This was a superb revival of a wonderful play by one of the English theatre’s greatest playwrights directed by Gerry Hynes and with a mostly-Irish cast.

SPEED-THE-PLOW. Another revival, this one by David Mamet, directed brilliantly by Atlantic Theare’s Artistic Director Neil Pepe, which revealed the play as far more than just a satire of Hollywood. Pepe’s production illuminated the moral dimension in this variation on the parable, “But what shall it profit a man to gain the world world but lose his soul?” I saw Willliam H. Macy as Bobby Gould. He was phenomenal.

BILLY ELLIOT. Yes, this is as extraordinary as you’ve heard. When I first saw it in London 3 years ago, I thought that all the stuff about the miners struggling to keep their jobs would seem rather arcane over here. How much has changed since then! Millions have lost their jobs since last fall, with more layoffs no doubt to come. BE is extremely moving, and Stephen Daldry’s production is amazing. And that Elton John score! I saw Kiril Kulish as Billy, and he was just fabulous.

THE NORMAN CONQUESTS. Also a revival, of three interlocking plays by England’s greatest contemporary comic playwright, with a cast of 5 wonderful Brit actors directed by Matthew Warchus. If you can see all 3, do; but if you can see only one I recommend ROUND AND ROUND THE GARDEN.

GOD OF CARNAGE. Also directed by Matthew Warchus. Quite a year for the Brits on Broadway! This is a funny/searing look at two couples trying to decide what to do about a playground incident involving their sons. The absolutely perfect cast: James Gandolfini, Jeff Daniels, Marcia Gay Harden and Hope Davis. Not to be missed!

SHREK. This is a wonderful adaptation of the movie by David Lindsay Abaire, and Jeanine’s music is delightful. Brian D’Arcy James and Sutton Foster are two hoots as Shrek and Fiona. Great fun!

BECKY SHAW. This is the gifted Gina Gionfriddo’s breakthrough play, winner of this year’s prestigious John Gassner Award. It was an extended hit at Second Stage, featuring a wonderful cast. My faves were David Wilson Barnes and Annie Parisse; but everyone was great.

RUINED. Lynn Nottage’s multiple award-winning (including the Pulitzer Prize) drama at Manhattan Theatre Club about a madam running a brothel in the midst of civil war in the Congo. Saidah Arrika Ekulona was superb as the madam, of sort of modern-day Mother Courage.

THE GOOD NEGRO. Tracey Scott Wilson’s insightful drama about the early days of the civil rights movement, focusing on a minister clearly based on Martin Luther King who here was seen warts and all.

50 WORDS by Michael Weller. Disgracefully overlooked at awards time, this was a harrowing look at modern marriage as seen in that of a couple whose marriage spark has almost gone out. Norbert Leo Butz and Elizabeth Marvel were unforgettable.

REASONS TO BE PRETTY. Originally produced off Broadway by MCC last season, this marks Neil LaBute’s long-overdue Broadway debut. Terry Kinney’s poduction is first-rate, as is his absolutely perfect cast. My faves were Thomas Sadosky and longtime “downtown” theatre star Marin Ireland.

Well, that’s my list. What do you think of it?