The Playfixer

Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about GIRLS IN TROUBLE, NEXT FALL, LENIN’S EMBALMERS, ALICE IN SLASHERLAND and CHING CHONG CHINAMAN. 

Jonathan Reynolds, who has lately been making quite a name for himself as a proponent of right wing politics in the theatre, has outdone himself with his latest, Girls in Trouble at the Flea Theatre. As we all know, women have an inalienable right to choose abortion, and anyone who takes on that viewpoint is at best a crank and at worst The Enemy. Reynolds has done just that in Girls in Trouble, and has been fielding angry verbal brickbats tossed at him by audience members at talk-backs after the performance. Talk about daring to walk into the lion’s den! 

The Flea likes to produce provocative plays. This one’s a doozy. It’s actually three inter-related one-acts. In the first a college student, whose father is a high official in the Kennedy administration, is driving a girl he has impregnated to get an (illegal) abortion. He gets lost, and when he finally arrives the abortionist, a black woman with a young daughter, has to rush things, with tragic consequences. In the second act, the abortionist’s daughter, now grown up, is performing at what appears to be a poetry slam, and reveals that she has gotten pregnant but plans to have an abortion just to stick it to her boyfriend, who has gone cold on her. The final act is the Main Event. In it, a TV chef who mixes politics in with her recipes finds herself confronted by a radical pro-life proponent, who gains entrance to her home by posing as the doctor who is performing an abortion for Our Heroine, who has too much going on in her life right now to deal with having and raising another child. The “doctor” turns out to be the woman from the poetry slam. What ensues is a knock-down drag-out debate about the ethics of abortion. Many people will consider the mere fact that this is even being debated onstage an outrage. Not me. I like a good argument. I only wish this part of Reynolds’ play were better— I found its resolution hard to believe. That said, Jim Simpson’s production is excellent, and the actors are terrific. 

Geoffrey Nauffts’ Next Fall has transferred from Off Broadway to Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theatre. God bless Elton John and his “partner,” David Furnish, who put up a big chunk of the dough for this transfer. Next Fall is a beautifully-written play about a gay odd couple, Adam and Luke. Adam is 40; Luke’s in his early 20s. Nothing unusual about that. What is unusual is that Luke is a sincere Christian, whereas Adam’s an atheist. Whoever heard of a gay play which takes Christianity seriously? 

When the play begins, Luke is in a coma after being hit by a car. His mother and father are at the hospital, along with friends Holly and Brandon. Adam’s there, too. Mom and Dad don’t know that Luke is gay. He never got around to coming out. While everyone waits for news about Luke, Nauffts takes us back in time to scenes which show when Luke and Adam met, when they fell in love, when they moved in together. These scenes develop the Christian vs. Atheist agon, as Adam finds much of what Luke believes hard to fathom. 

Naked Angels’ Off Broadway production, beautifully directed by Sheryl Kaller, has transferred intact, sans stars (just really good stage actors like Cotter Smith as Luke’s Dad, Connie Ray as his Mom and Patrick Breen as Adam). It’s a don’t-miss. Support the American Play on Broadway! 

For that matter, support the American play Off Broadway, too, where there have been several new openings of note, such as Vern Thiessen’s Lenin’s Embalmers at Ensemble Studio Theatre, a mordant farce (is that an oxymoron?) about the two Soviet scientists who came up with  way to embalm the instigator of the Russian Revolution but who subsequently ran afoul of Stalin and wound up in the Gulag. 

Billy Carden’s production starts out almost as pure Marx Brothers, and then proceeds to get darker and darker. It’s brilliant, as are Zach Grenier and Scott Sowers as the two embalmers, Richmond Hoxie as Stalin and Peter Maloney as Lenin, who’s dead but who pops up from time to time, often to tell pithy Soviet jokes. 

This one’s a don’t-miss.

As is Qui Nguyen’s latest, Alice in Slasherland, at Here. Nguyen specializes in campy send-ups of pop culture in the tradition of the Ridiculous Theatre Co., though Nguyen demonstrates time and again that camp doesn’t necessarily have to be gay. This is camp for straight people – young straight people, weaned on comic books and slasher and kung-fu films. 

Director Robert Ross Parker perfectly captures Nguyen’s outrageous style, as does his talented cast, several of whom I have seen and enjoyed before in other Nguyen plays, produced by his company, Vampire Cowboys. 

Alice in Slasherland is Great Fun. Even geezers like me can dig it. 

Sadly, Lauren Yee’s Ching Chong Chinaman, produced by Pan Asian Rep at the West End Theatre, is not so much fun. It’s about a Chinese American family which has a Chinese immigrant living with them, imported by teenaged Upton to do his math homework so he can focus on an online video game he’s playing 24/7. 

Lee’s style reminded me of Nguyen’s – very broad and campy. Unfortunately, May Adrales has directed the play as if it were a bad TV sitcom, when the outrageousness such as that employed by a Robert Ross Parker would have been more effective. 

Pan Asian Rep is the granddaddy of Asian American theatre in New York. They’ve been around for over 30 years. Since then, other companies such as Ma-Yi and NAATCO have come along, and I would say their productions make Pan Asian’s look like amateur night – except that would give a bad name to the amateurs. There is a deep talent pool here of Asian actors. Howsacome Pan Asian Rep never seems to tap into it?

 “Who is this guy?” 

For over thirty years Lawrence Harbison was in charge of new play acquisition for Samuel French, Inc., during which time his work on behalf of playwrights resulted in the first publication of such subsequent 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 musicals such as Smoke of the Mountain, A…My Name Is Alice, Little Shop of Horrors and Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down.  He is a now a free-lance editor, primarily for Smith and Kraus, Inc., for whom he edits annual anthologies of best plays by new playwrights and women playwrights, best ten-minute plays and best monologues and scenes for men and for women. 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. His new column, “On the Aisle with Larry,” is a weekly feature at www.smithandkraus.com. 

He works with individual playwrights to help them develop their plays (see his website, www.playfixer.com). 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 both the Outer Critics Circle and the Drama Desk. 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 holds a B.A. from Kenyon College and an M.A. from the University of Michigan. 

He is currently working on a book, Masters of the Contemporary American Drama. 

“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

Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in the theatre world. This week, Larry tells you about the HUMANA FESTIVAL.

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During a break in the Humana Festival of New American Plays, presented each spring by Actors Theatre of Louisville, Marc Masterson, ATL’s Artistic Director, conducted a panel discussion on the topic of ensemble-created theatre. Panelists included representatives from the companies which presented this kind of work at the Festival (the Rude Mechs from Texas and refugees from the defunct Theatre de la Jeune Lune, from Minneapolis), a guy who books it and a guy who funds it. During the discussion, Masterson announced that it is his intention to give a third of the slots at the Festival each year to this kind of theatre. From his point of view, this is an exciting new way of creating theatrical events; from the point of view of the vast majority of Festival attendees, these are wasted slots. 

Theatre is ephemeral enough as it is without presenting work which has been created by a company and which is specific to its members. What often results is theatre about the process of creating theatre, as was the case with the Rude Mechs’ The Method Gun, which tried hard to satirize theatre folks’ fascination with methodology, usually of one guru. In this case, a group of actors are trying to keep the memory of their deceased acting teacher alive by performing some of her acting exercises while they rehearse a version of A Streetcar Named Desire which eliminates the characters of Stanley, Stella, Blanche and Mitch. I guess this was supposed to be funny; but it wound up being mostly inane. About halfway through, two male members of the company walked in completely naked, each with a bunch of helium-filled balloons attached to his male member. Why? Nobody knows … 

Former Jeune Lune Artistic Director Dominique Serrand presented another ensemble work, Fissures (Lost and Found), which appeared to be about the fallibility of memory. It consisted of scenes and monologues in which the actors (I cannot call them “characters”) revealed, over and over again, that we often misremember the past. Oh really? Do tell…

This non-play was occasionally funny, but quickly become tedious once the audience realized that, in Gertrude Stein’s immortal phrase, there was no there there. 

I find it most unfortunate that a festival which was created to foster the new American play is now slotting non-plays like The Method Gun and Fissures. Fortunately, these ensemble events almost always are short. Unfortunately, they never have intermissions. So, a word to the wise: unless you are the sort of theatergoer who actually likes this kind of theatre, be sure to ask for a seat near the exit door, so you can ditch unobtrusively. 

On the plus-side, at least Masterson didn’t bring back Anne (The Emperor has no clothes) Bogart and her SHITTI Company this year. Thank heavens for small favors … 

Of the actual plays presented at Humana this year, most everybody liked Scott Organ’s Phoenix and Deborah Zoe Laufer’s Sirens; few liked Dan O’Brien’s The Cherry Sisters Revisited or Lisa Dillman’s Ground. The Cherry Sisters was about five sisters determined to break into Vaudeville. The problem is, they have no talent whatsoever. The play is much better in the second act, when the sisters do become successful (as Tiny Tim or Florence Foster Jenkins were successful), because then it turns dark. The first act is about how talentless  they are. It is very difficult to make deliberately bad performance anything other than Just Plain Bad, and director Andrew Leynse just couldn’t solve this problem with O’Brien’s play. He wasn’t helped much by his cast, none of whom were particularly effective. 

Ground was an interesting though flawed play about illegal immigration. Well – if it were about that it would have been much more interesting. It’s about a young woman who comes home to her recently-deceased father’s pecan farm on the Mexico/U.S. border. Chuy, a longtime farm hand, has been running the farm, and running illegals through the farm, much as dear old dead Dad did. Set against him is the leader of a vigilante group willing to take any measures to prevent illegals from getting across the border and who is trying to get control of the land, and a local border patrol cop of Mexican ancestry who goes by the gringo name “Carl” instead of his real name, Carlos. He’s just trying to do his job. This all leads to a tragic denouement. The problem with the play is that Ms. Dillman has made the dead Dad’s daughter the central character, but she’s not particularly interesting as she’s rather passive. The real central character should have been Chuy, who is shot accidentally by Coop, the right-winger vigilante. Then the play could have risen to the realm of a powerful tragedy, though it would have to have had a better production than the one Mr. Masterson has given it on the awkward, ugly, cheapie set by Scott Bradley. 

Phoenix was a two-hander about a man and woman who have a one-night stand. She gets pregnant. She is an unsympathetic character fairly oozing negativity and pessimism. He is a Nice Guy and the Eternal Optimist. She wants to get an abortion, which as we all know is solely her choice to make. He bends over backwards to be supportive; but eventually tries to persuade her not to do it which, of course, ends what could have been a sweet love story. Or does it? Organ not only subtly undermines the irrefutability of a Woman’s Right to Choose but asks some troubling questions about why the Contemporary Woman thinks carrying a baby to term, giving birth and committing to a family is just Too Much Of A Bummer. In other words, Phoenix was, for me, refreshingly politically incorrect. It was also very well-directed by Aaron Posner, with wonderful performances by Suli Holum and Trey Lyford. 

The Festival’s smash this year was Ms. Laufer’s Sirens, about a middle-aged couple, Sam and Rose Abrams, who don’t have much of a marriage anymore. She’s a ball-buster; he’s a wimp. Sam is a one-hit-wonder songwriter whose one hit was a song about Rose written in his 20s, which has paid the bills ever since. In search of inspiration, he has lately been trolling the internet looking to meet young women. Well, Sam and Rose book an Aegean cruise, during which Sam hears beautiful, ethereal singing (which sounds a lot like his famous song). He jumps overboard, and winds up on the Island of the Siren, whose song lures men to their deaths, as we know from the Odyssey. Sam has two choices – he can either have passionate sex with the Siren, after which he’ll die, or he can eschew the sex and starve to death. Well, it turns out that the Siren has become obsessed with a Game-Boy which washed up on her beach, and she plays it 24/7 – when she’s not luring men to their deaths. When its batteries die, she lets Sam escape in order to bring her more batteries. Back home, the widow Rose is preparing for a date with her college honey Richard, when who should show up but Sam. She goes off on the date anyway, dressed as a hot teenager. Richard shows up at their rendezvous looking exactly the same as he did 25 or 30 years ago (he’s played by a young actor who looks 20 but walks like he’s 50). Will Rose come to her senses? Will Sam stand up to her? Will the Siren ever get her batteries? 

Ms. Laufer has a wonderful theatrical imagination and a fine comic sense. Casey Stangl’s direction was delightfully inventive, and Mimi Lieber and Brian Russell were hilarious as Rose and Sam. Also terrific were Lindsey Wochley in three roles (including the Siren); and incredibly handsome young Ben Hollandsworth was a hoot as Richard. 

The Humana Festival is always great fun, even if all the plays aren’t all that great. Let us pray that Marc Masterson comes to his senses and stops giving away those valuable Humana slots to artsy-fartsy nonsense.

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“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

Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about YANK,BRACK’S LAST BACHELOR PARTY, A LIE OF THE MIND, A BEHANDING IN SPOKANE  and EQUIVOCATION.

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Yank! a musical by David Zellnik (book & lyrics) and Joseph Zellnick (music) at the York Theatre Co., has a decidedly different take on the so-called “Greatest Generation.” It’s about gays in the military during World War II and focuses on a young gay man who finds the journal of a kindred spirit who served in the army in the Pacific arena in WWII, a young man named Stu who goes in sexually indeterminate but who realizes the truth about himself when he falls in love with a hunk named Mitch (also indeterminate) and then meets a sexually aggressive reporter named Artie who seduces him and then hires him to be his photographer so they can trot around interviewing and photographing servicemen and, of course, have sex all over the Pacific. 

My companion of the evening, a playwright who happens to be a Club Member himself, was a little uncomfortable with the stereotypical gay characters and felt that the show reinforced the belief that all gay guys just wanna have sex, even when they’re supposed to be doing something serious, like fighting a war; but we both agreed that the show grew stronger in the second act, when the real homophobic persecution began. 

The songs are for the most part charming, and Bobby Steggert is very winsome in the central role of Stu. Ivan Hernandez, apparently a straight guy, was totally believable as Mitch and Jeffry Denman was hilarious as the unapologetically sexually predatory Artie. 

Yank! has been extended into April and is well worth checking out – particularly if you’re a Member of the Club. 

Between acts of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler Judge Brack hosts a stag party in honor of Hedda’s husband, George Tesman. When Tesman comes home from this party, the sparks begin to fly, leading to the play’s tragic denouement. Sam Marks has envisioned what might have transpired at Brack’s soiree in his fascinating Brack’s Last Bachelor Party, produced by Babel Theatre Project at 59 E. 59 Theatre C. On hand are Brack, Tesman and Eilert Lovborg, whose manuscript Tesman finds increasingly disturbing. It’s a kind of 19^th Century “Future Shock,” and every time Lovborg reads from it Tesman is projected into the future, where he sees a wife who is a miserable, unhappy woman, played by the actress who will appear as Hedda in the play’s final scene. 

If you view Hedda Gabler as a harbinger of things to come this makes perfect sense. Marks cops out, though, when he finally leaves the party and brings Tesman home to his Hedda, transforming him from a stuffy 19^th Century husband to a contemporary Nice Guy, who comes home to his wife to try and work things out, when what was called for was Total War. The ending’s a cop-out. 

Nevertheless, the actors are terrific. This one is worth seeing. 

The New Group’s revival of Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind, at the Acorn Theatre, has been wildly praised, and its run is completely sold out. I appear to be the solitary dissenter. I have seen the play twice now ( I saw the original production), and I still think it is a retread of themes and characters handled better in earlier Shepard plays, with a lot of wheel-spinning. Add to this the portentous/pretentious imitation-aboriginal music by Gaines and you just have a production that plays at times almost as a parody of Shepard-ism. 

The show is much better in the second act, though, and the performances, under Ethan Hawke’s direction, are excellent. Don’t beat yourself up, though, about not being able to get in to see it. 

After announcing about five years ago that he wasn’t going to write any more plays, Martin McDonagh has changed his mind, and the result is A Behanding in Spokane, at the Schoenfeld Theatre. This, too, feels like parody; but fortunately it’s pretty damn funny. It’s about a creepy old dude who has spent 47 years travelling the country in search of his lost hand, which was severed when he was 16 by a gang of hillbillies (in Spokane???) when they held his arm on a rail as a train ran over it. 

This is an admittedly ludicrous pretense for a play; but McDonagh milks it for all it’s worth, helped enormously by Christopher Walken as the one-handed dude. I doubt if there is any other actor who could have pulled this role off, because nobody does creepy/weird better than Walken. My problem with the play is that, in the end, it really isn’t about anything. It’s a great situation, with no meaning and, hence, no payoff. 

Finally, I saw one of the best plays and productions I have seen this season – Manhattan Theatre Club’s wonderful production of Bill Cain’s fascinating Equivocation, at City Center Stage One. 

King James’ Main Man Sir Robert Cecil wants to commission William Shakespeare to write a play based on a book supposedly by the King himself about the recent failed Gunpowder Plot, in which a group of radical Papists tried to blow up Parliament. Shakespeare’s company could use the money, and they are anxious to get on the King’s good side; so Shakespeare, who has never written a contemporary play, begins by interviewing the remaining few conspirators, who are being tortured in the Tower. What he finds out about the Gunpowder Plot will surprise you, though it will be no surprise that he never writes the play, realizing that if he does he and his company will be in deep trouble. Instead, he pulls out an unfinished play about a Scottish thane who murders his way to the Kingship of Scotland, throwing in some witches (the King loves witches). This mollifies King James, and Shakespeare and the guys escape a very sticky political wicket. 

Gerry Hynes’ production of this brilliant play is brilliant as well, as are John Pankow as Shakespeare (here called “Shagspeare”), Michael Countryman as Richard Burbage and as a Jesuit priest implicated in the Plot whose ability to equivocate cannot save him, and David Furr as an actor in the company who feels he should be playing better parts, a tortured conspirator and a creepily jolly, lusty King James. 

This one’s an absolute don’t-miss.

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“Who is this guy?For over thirty years Lawrence Harbison was in charge of new play acquisition for Samuel French, Inc., during which time his work on behalf of playwrights resulted in the first publication of such subsequent 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 musicals such as Smoke of the Mountain, A…My Name Is Alice, Little Shop of Horrors and Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down.  He is a now a free-lance editor, primarily for Smith and Kraus, Inc., for whom he edits annual anthologies of best plays by new playwrights and women playwrights, best ten-minute plays and best monologues and scenes for men and for women. 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. His new column, “On the Aisle with Larry,” is a weekly feature at www.smithandkraus.com. 

He works with individual playwrights to help them develop their plays (see his website, www.playfixer.com). 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 both the Outer Critics Circle and the Drama Desk. 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 holds a B.A. from Kenyon College and an M.A. from the University of Michigan. 

He is currently working on a book, Masters of the Contemporary American Drama. 

“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

Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about CLYBOURNE PARK, MEASURE FOR MEASURE, GOOD OL’ GIRLS, HARD TIMES, 4PLAY and BLIND.

 Bruce Norris, a former actor (I saw him several times at Circle Rep), has fast become one of our finest playwrights. All of his plays premiere at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Co. and one, The Pain and the Itch, was a critical and popular success in 2006 at Playwrights Horizons, and I chose it for my annual Best New Playwrights Anthology. If you thought The Pain and the Itch was terrific, wait ‘til you get a load of his latest, Clybourne Park, which has just opened at Playwrights Horizons and which has already been extended.

Remember the Younger family from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun? They have bought a house in an all-white Chicago neighborhood, and a member of that neighborhood’s homeowners association, Karl Lindner, visits them to try and persuade them not to go through with this. Norris has set his play in that neighborhood, in the home that the Youngers have bought. In this first act, Lindner visits the sellers, Russ and Bev, to plead with them not to sell their house to a black family. Russ will not succumb to Lindner’s arguments, not because he is all that hot to promote racial justice but because he is going more than slightly bonkers living in the house where his son has recently killed himself.

 The second act flash-forwards fifty years. Clybourne Park is now, predictably, an all-black neighborhood. As blacks moved in, whites moved out. Now, a white family has moved into the house, and plans to renovate it into a “McMansion” – which might lead to “gentrification” – i.e., more white families moving into the neighborhood, thus driving up property values and pricing out black families who live there. A black man and his wife visit the white couple to plead with them not to go thorough with their plans.

 Jeremy Shamos and Annie Parisse play Lindner and his wife in the first act, and the white couple in the second. Both are extraordinary, as is FrankWood, who plays Russ. In fact, all the actors are wonderful, under Pam MacKinnon’s fine direction.

 Don’t miss this one!

 Theatre for a New Audience has a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Duke Theatre. The play is generally lumped together with Shakespeare’s comedies, but it is also known as a “problem play,” an appellation I have never fully understood. Anyway, director Arin Arbus has taken a somber approach to the play, emphasizing its angry satire of Puritan hypocrisy but undercutting the comedy.

 Jefferson Mays plays Duke Vincentio, who takes a sabbatical from his power to pass in disguise amongst his people in order to learn what is really going on in Venice. He lives his trusted aide Angelo in charge, who proceeds to actually enforce the laws to their letter and turns Venice into a puritanical totalitarian dictatorship.

 Mays is terrific as the Duke, and creepy Rocco Sisto is perfectly cast as Angelo. After that, the cast is some good, some not so good. Elizabeth Waterston is OK as Isabella, the novice nun who tried to save her brother Claudio, condemned to death for committing fornication, but she is vocally rather weak. Alfredo Nasciso plays the lowlife Lucio as a goodfella, which means he is just not funny, in a sardonic role which ought to provide much mirth.

I would say, do check out Measure for Measure, though. It is a solid, if uninspired, production of a play we rarely get to see; and Mays, one of our finest stage actors, is superb.

 Good Ol’ Girls, a new musical produced by Roundabout in the Black Box, is an odd hybrid of spirited New Country songs and confessional stories. The stories are adapted by Paul Ferguson from material by Lee Smith and Jill McCorkle. The songs are by Matraca Berg and Marshall Chapman, a team of top Nashville songwriters. The show tries hard to be sort of a combination of the caustic wit of A … My Name is Alice (which premiered in this very space years and years ago) and the down-home bonhomie of Pump Boys and Dinettes, but it just winds up being something of a downer.

 The songs are terrific, but the stories are all narrative monologues, and the evening just comes to a crashing halt whenever they start up. If they were funny, they might work; but these stories are almost all about very unhappy ladies. They are mostly bummers.

 The other problem is the performers, none of whom are real country singers. Which makes the whole evening sound rather bogus. You could skip this one.

 Pearl Theatre Co., now in residence at City Center State II, has a brilliant production up and running of Stephen Jeffreys’ dramatization of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. This seems to me an excellent choice, given the hard times we are currently experiencing.

The intrepid cast of six, under J. R. Sullivan’s inventive direction, play what seems like a cast of thousands in this story about the denizens of an industrial village in the north of England. There are the haves and the have-nots, caught in the grip repressive laws designed to keep them poor and subservient, and Dickens has a lot to say about the Industrial Age’s belief that the only things that matters are facts and figures. The novel, and the play, are an Ode to Joy, and to basic human compassion.

 The cast is uniformly wonderful. I enjoyed particularly Pearl veterans Bradford Cover, as a rapacious, soulless industrialist, T.J. Edwards as a local school teacher who believes only in the truth of facts and Sean McCall as his rebellious ne’er-do-well son.

 This one’s a don’t-miss!

 I also enjoyed the new Flying Karamazov Brothers’ goof at the Minetta Lane, called 4Play. Paul Magid, the sole original member of the group, a tall, pony-tailed Groucho of a guy, is still throwing them pins as well as he ever did, joined by three young guys who fill in ably for those Brothers now departed.

4Play is a hilarious mix of world-class juggling, goofy dancing and deliberately awful jokes. The little kids in the audience the night I attended the show loved it. These are some wild and crazy guys!

 Craig Wright’s new play, Blind, is a modern adaptation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos. We are in the boudoir of Oedipus and Jocasta. Thebes is going to hell outside. Plagues, starvation, civil unrest – the works. Jocasta wants them to get the hell outta Dodge; Oedipus wants to stay.

 Since both characters know from the get-go that “the Gods” have brought all this misfortune on Thebes because Oedipus has killed his father and married his mother, this play lacks the climax of a tragic recognition, and is just mostly wheel-spinning until the King and Queen decide to have torrid sex on the floor, during which she blinds him and he strangles her. Kinky!

Wright’s language is in ineffective mix of the stately and the vulgar, and more than one time this leads to unintended laughs. Mostly, the two actors scream at each other. Of the two, Veanne Cox fares the best. Ordinarily cast in wry comic roles, here she displays the vocal chops and emotional depth of a fine dramatic actress. The Oedipus just comes off as a rather uninteresting juvenile.

I have often wished the Dramatists Guild would declare an Official Moratorium and modern adaptations of Greek tragedies. They never seem to work, mostly because these ancient plays have little in common with what we consider to be effective drama. Even our most abstract plays basically employ psychological realism in characterization.

Craig Wright is usually a wonderful writer, whose plays I have very much enjoyed in the past, but Blind is one of the most insufferable plays I have seen this season.

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CLYBOURNE PARK. Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42^nd St.

            TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com 212-279-4200

MEASURE FOR MEASURE. Duke Theatre, 229 W. 42^nd St.

            TICKETS: www.dukeon42.org  646-223-3010

GOOD OL’ GIRLS. Black Box Theatre, Harold & Miriam Steinberg Center      for  Theatre., 111 W. 46^th St.

            TICKETS: www.theatremania.com 866-811-4111

HARD TIMES. City Center Stage II, 151 W. 55^th St.

            TICKETS: 212-581-1212

4PLAY. Minetta Lane Theatre, 18 Minetta Lane

            TICKETS: www.ticketmaster.com 212-307-4100

BLIND. Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, 224 Waverly Pl.

            TICKETS: www.smarttix.com 212-868-4444

.

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 COMMON AIR, AS YOU LIKE IT, TIME STANDS STILL, HAPPY NOW? ReENTRY, BLACK ANGELS OVER TUSKEGEE, and A CABLE FROM GIBRALTAR.

The Common Air, Alexander Lyras’ latest solo show at the Theatres at 45 Bleecker, is typical of this gifted performer’s work. Lyras, who co-writes his plays with Robert McGaskill, is a dark satirist, rather like Eric Bogosian. The Common Air is a series of interlocking monologues which buzz around a central event, in this case a purported terrorist attack on Kennedy airport which affects the days of disparate characters, from a manic middle-eastern cab driver with what he believes is a great idea for a reality TV show to a gay businessman to a war vet, etc., all of whose lives intersect in or near the airport. Lyras and McGaskill are brilliant writers, and Lyras is one heckuva performer.

The Common Air is several cuts above your usual one-man show.

And, Sam Mendes’ fascinating production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, at BAM’s Harvey Theatre, is several cuts about your usual Shakespearean production. This is part of the Bridge Project, wherein a repertory cast of American and British actors play Shakespeare at BAM and then in London (next up: The Tempest). There seems to be a trend a-borning to find dark undertones in Shakespeare’s comedies. Theatre for a New Audience has taken a similar tack with its fine production of Measure for Measure, which I will be writing about next week. Shakespearean production is, at best, a reflection not only of Shakespeare’s time but also of our own. It’s the winter of our discontent, even in the Forest of Arden.

The Duke’s court, where the play begins, is a dark, sinister place. We feel we are in a totalitarian state. When the action shifts to the Forest of Arden, we find not a sylvan glade, but a wintry, seemingly impenetrable forest, where the exiles shiver in the cold. It’s a novel concept, which works well though it does tend to undercut the laughs sometimes.

Mendes’ cast is superb. I particularly enjoyed Juliet Rylance’s perky Rosalind, Christian Camargo’s well-spoken yet insecure Orlando and Stephen Dillane’s archly pessimistic Jacques. Thomas Sadosky is excellent, too as Touchstone, and Alvin Epstein is very touching as old Adam.

This one’s a don’t-miss

As is Donald Margulies’ Time Stands Still, produced by Manhattan Theatre Club at the Friedman Theatre on Broadway. Laura Linney and Brian D’Arcy James star as a couple who come home from the war only to war at home. She is a photographer who was almost killed in an IED explosion which killed her Iraqi translator. He is a journalist whose career is floundering and who wonders, what is the point of reporting incessantly the suffering of the victims of war? Also in the play are a photo editor and his much younger girlfriend.

Linney and D’Arcy James are very compelling in their roles, as is Alicia Silverstone in hers. Eric Bogosian is, as always, excellent but here he is playing a solid, rather nice guy; in other words, he does a fine job in a role that many other actors could have played. He is rather wasted, I thought. Daniel Sullivan, who seems to be one of the few directors who gets to direct plays on Broadway these days, has done his usual excellent work.

Time Stands Still is a fine new play by one of our best playwrights, and not to be missed.

Also not to be missed: Lucinda Coxon’s trenchant comedy Happy Now? produced by the always-reliable Primary Stages at 59 E. 59 Theatres. Coxon is a hot, up and coming British playwright. This is, to my knowledge, the first British play Primary Stages has ever produced. Since this production is “In Association With,” I assume it has been enhanced by commercial producers. To whom we should be grateful in this case. This is a terrific play about a woman who has a good career, a loving husband and two children, who can’t stop asking herself the Big Question: Is this all there is? Is this my life, my one and only life?

Liz Diamond, a fine director who most likely will never get to direct plays on Broadway since apparently only Sullivan and Doug Hughes qualify for that, has done a superb job with Coxon’s funny/poignant play, and Mary Bacon is giving a breakthrough performance as Kitty, Our Anti-Heroine. Everybody in the cast is wonderful, though I enjoyed most particularly Quentin Mare’s performance as Miles, a friend of Kitty’s husband who is an alcoholic. Seldom have I seen a stage drunk so convincing.

Again, this one’s a don’t-miss.

Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez, two refugees from The Civilians, have a Civilian-esque documentary play, Re-Entry, up and running at Urban Stages. They have interviewed Marines and their families and have put together an evening, largely comprised of monologues, about the harrowing experience of war, and about the difficulties of returning to civilian life. Sanchez has directed this with a gifted hand, and the evening features performances which are very strong; particularly, that of Joseph Harrell, a career Marine now turned actor who really is The Real Deal.

Re-Entry helps us to understand the sacrifices our service men and women make. It is not a pro or anti-war play. It accepts war as a given, and examines its effect on the combatants. It is riveting.

Layon Gray’s Black Angels Over Tuskegee, at the Theatre at St. Luke’s, is also a military drama. It tells the story of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, a squadron of Black fighter pilots who served in North Africa and Italy during World War II. The first act gives us six men at a testing center in Utah, where they hope to pass the examination which will get them into the war as pilots. The second act shows them during the war.

It’s a compelling story, tied together by lengthy expositional monologues by a man who turns out to be a descendant of one of the six airmen. The device pays off at the end, but along the way it just serves to halt the play in its tracks; or, rather, to ground the planes, as do numerous stories Gray gives his characters to tell, about Important Events which happened in the past. Had Gray pruned much of this expositional material an overlong play would have been much better. What makes me give this one a thumbs-up though are the terrific performances by the cast.

Finally, I saw Daniel Meltzer’s dark comedy A Cable from Gibraltar, at the Medicine Show Theatre, directed by Robert Kalfin. This is a suite of three related one-acts which focus on a somewhat archetypal Man and Woman. When we first meet them they are newborns in a hospital ward who try to understand the difference between “M” and “F.”

In the second act they become a couple while fishing, though they part when she receives a cable instructing her to travel to Gibraltar. In the final act they are two semi-senile generals on opposite sides of a conflict which has gone on forever, so long that no one remembers what started it.

A Cable from Gibraltar functions both as a comedy about the difficulty men and women have in communicating with each other and as a poignant meditation on the faultiness, and yet the persistence, of memory, written in an arch, faux British style which makes it seem somewhat like Samuel Beckett as adapted by Noel Coward, or perhaps vice-versa, and Kalfin has perfectly captured this odd style in his staging. His actors are excellent, too.

This one is definitely worth checking out.
______________________________________________________

THE COMMON AIR. Theatres at 45 Bleecker, 45 Bleecker St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com 212-239-6200
AS YOU LIKE IT. BAM Harvey Theatre, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn
TICKETS: 718-636-4100
TIME STANDS STILL. Friedman Theatre, 261 W. 47th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com 212-239-6200
HAPPY NOW? Primary Stages, 59 E. 59th St.
TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com 212-279-4200
Re-ENTRY. Urban Stages, 259 W. 30th St.
TICKETS: www.smarttix.com 212-868-4444
BLACK ANGELS OVER TUSKEGEE. St. Luke’s Theatre, 308 W. 46th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com 212-239-6200
A CABLE FROM GIBRALTAR. Medicine Show Theatre, 549 W. 52nd St.
TICKETS: www.smarttix.com 212-868-4444

“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

Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about THE COMMON AIR, AS YOU LIKE IT, TIME STANDS STILL, HAPPY NOW? ReENTRY, BLACK ANGELS OVER TUSKEGEE and A CABLE FROM GIBRALTAR.
_______________________________________________

The Common Air, Alexander Lyras’ latest solo show at the Theatres at 45 Bleecker, is typical of this gifted performer’s work. Lyras, who co-writes his plays with Robert McGaskill, is a dark satirist, rather like Eric Bogosian. The Common Air is a series of interlocking monologues which buzz around a central event, in this case a purported terrorist attack on Kennedy airport which affects the days of disparate characters, from a manic middle-eastern cab driver with what he believes is a great idea for a reality TV show to a gay businessman to a war vet, etc., all of whose lives intersect in or near the airport. Lyras and McGaskill are brilliant writers, and Lyras is one heckuva performer.

The Common Air is several cuts above your usual one-man show.

And, Sam Mendes’ fascinating production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, at BAM’s Harvey Theatre, is several cuts about your usual Shakespearean production. This is part of the Bridge Project, wherein a repertory cast of American and British actors play Shakespeare at BAM and then in London (next up: The Tempest). There seems to be a trend a-borning to find dark undertones in Shakespeare’s comedies. Theatre for a New Audience has taken a similar tack with its fine production of Measure for Measure, which I will be writing about next week. Shakespearean production is, at best, a reflection not only of Shakespeare’s time but also of our own. It’s the winter of our discontent, even in the Forest of Arden.

The Duke’s court, where the play begins, is a dark, sinister place. We feel we are in a totalitarian state. When the action shifts to the Forest of Arden, we find not a sylvan glade, but a wintry, seemingly impenetrable forest, where the exiles shiver in the cold. It’s a novel concept, which works well though it does tend to undercut the laughs sometimes.

Mendes’ cast is superb. I particularly enjoyed Juliet Rylance’s perky Rosalind, Christian Camargo’s well-spoken yet insecure Orlando and Stephen Dillane’s archly pessimistic Jacques. Thomas Sadosky is excellent, too as Touchstone, and Alvin Epstein is very touching as old Adam.

This one’s a don’t-miss

As is Donald Margulies’ TIME STANDS STILL, produced by Manhattan Theatre Club at the Friedman Theatre on Broadway. Laura Linney and Brian D’Arcy James star as a couple who come home from the war only to war at home. She is a photographer who was almost killed in an IED explosion which killed her Iraqi translator. He is a journalist whose career is floundering and who wonders, what is the point of reporting incessantly the suffering of the victims of war? Also in the play are a photo editor and his much younger girlfriend.

Linney and D’Arcy James are very compelling in their roles, as is Alicia Silverstone in hers. Eric Bogosian is, as always, excellent but here he is playing a solid, rather nice guy; in other words, he does a fine job in a role that many other actors could have played. He is rather wasted, I thought. Daniel Sullivan, who seems to be one of the few directors who gets to direct plays on Broadway these days, has done his usual excellent work.

Time Stands Still is a fine new play by one of our best playwrights, and not to be missed.

Also not to be missed: Lucinda Coxon’s trenchant comedy Happy Now? produced by the always-reliable Primary Stages at 59 E. 59 Theatres. Coxon is a hot, up and coming British playwright. This is, to my knowledge, the first British play Primary Stages has ever produced. Since this production is “In Association With,” I assume it has been enhanced by commercial producers. To whom we should be grateful in this case. This is a terrific play about a woman who has a good career, a loving husband and two children, who can’t stop asking herself the Big Question: Is this all there is? Is this my life, my one and only life?

Liz Diamond, a fine director who most likely will never get to direct plays on Broadway since apparently only Sullivan and Doug Hughes qualify for that, has done a superb job with Coxon’s funny/poignant play, and Mary Bacon is giving a breakthrough performance as Kitty, Our Anti-Heroine. Everybody in the cast is wonderful, though I enjoyed most particularly Quentin Mare’s performance as Miles, a friend of Kitty’s husband who is an alcoholic. Seldom have I seen a stage drunk so convincing.

Again, this one’s a don’t-miss.

Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez, two refugees from The Civilians, have a Civilian-esque documentary play, Re-Entry, up and running at Urban Stages. They have interviewed Marines and their families and have put together an evening, largely comprised of monologues, about the harrowing experience of war, and about the difficulties of returning to civilian life. Sanchez has directed this with a gifted hand, and the evening features performances which are very strong; particularly, that of Joseph Harrell, a career Marine now turned actor who really is The Real Deal.

Re-Entry helps us to understand the sacrifices our service men and women make. It is not a pro or anti-war play. It accepts war as a given, and examines its effect on the combatants. It is riveting.

Layon Gray’s Black Angels Over Tuskegee, at the Theatre at St. Luke’s, is also a military drama. It tells the story of the famed Tuskegee Airmen, a squadron of Black fighter pilots who served in North Africa and Italy during World War II. The first act gives us six men at a testing center in Utah, where they hope to pass the examination which will get them into the war as pilots. The second act shows them during the war.

It’s a compelling story, tied together by lengthy expositional monologues by a man who turns out to be a descendant of one of the six airmen. The device pays off at the end, but along the way it just serves to halt the play in its tracks; or, rather, to ground the planes, as do numerous stories Gray gives his characters to tell, about Important Events which happened in the past. Had Gray pruned much of this expositional material an overlong play would have been much better. What makes me give this one a thumbs-up though are the terrific performances by the cast.

Finally, I saw Daniel Meltzer’s dark comedy A Cable from Gibraltar, at the Medicine Show Theatre, directed by Robert Kalfin. This is a suite of three related one-acts which focus on a somewhat archetypal Man and Woman. When we first meet them they are newborns in a hospital ward who try to understand the difference between “M” and “F.” In the second act they become a couple while fishing, though they part when she receives a cable instructing her to travel to Gibraltar. In the final act they are two semi-senile generals on opposite sides of a conflict which has gone on forever, so long that no one remembers what started it.

The play is written in an arch, faux British style which makes it seem somewhat like Samuel Beckett as adapted by Noel Coward, or perhaps vice-versa, and Kalfin has perfectly captured this odd style in his staging. His actors are excellent, too.

This one is definitely worth checking out.
_______________________

THE COMMON AIR. Theatres at 45 Bleecker, 45 Bleecker
St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com 212-239-6200
AS YOU LIKE IT. BAM Harvey Theatre, 651 Fulton St.,
Brooklyn
TICKETS: 718-636-4100
TIME STANDS STILL. Friedman Theatre, 261 W. 47th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com 212-239-6200
HAPPY NOW? Primary Stages, 59 E. 59th St.
TICKETS: www.ticketcentral.com 212-279-4200
BLACK ANGELS OVER TUSKEGEE. St. Luke’s Theatre, 308
W. 46th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com 212-239-6200
A CABLE FROM GIBRALTAR. Medicine Show Theatre, 549
W. 52nd St.
TICKETS: www.smarttix.com 212-868-4444

“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

“Who is this guy?”

For over thirty years Lawrence Harbison was in charge of new play acquisition for Samuel French, Inc., during which time his work on behalf of playwrights resulted in the first publication of such subsequent luminaries as Jane Martin, Don Nigro, Tina Howe, Theresa Rebeck

Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about CIRCUMCISE ME, VENUS IN FUR, A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, ROUGH SKETCH and My trip to Vermont.
_________________________________

My theatergoing was quite eclectic last week, ranging from stand-up comedy (Circumcise Me) to gut-wrenching tragedy (A View from the Bridge). All in all, it was a very satisfying week. I ended it by venturing far afield, to the frozen mountains of Vermont, where I saw two terrific productions, one of a new play. We tend to believe that we in New York have a monopoly on good theatre. Not so.

Yisrael Campbell is, to say the least, one of a kind. He’s an Orthodox Jewish stand-up comedian, living in Jerusalem, who was born and raised as Christopher Campbell before he converted to the Jewish faith. He tells you how this came to pass in his hilarious stand-up act, Circumcise Me, which has been extended into mid-May at the Bleecker Street Theatre.

Searching for an alternative to a life of drinking and drugs, Campbell found it in Judaism. After taking lessons from a Reformed rabbi, he converted – which involved a ritual circumcision (just a little snip, as he was already circumcised). Reformed Judaism didn’t quite cut it for him, though, so he converted to Conservative Judaism – which involved yet another ritualized snip – only to come to the realization that to be a True Blue Jew he had to convert yet again – he had to become Orthodox. You guessed it: he had to be snipped again. He now looks like one of those guys you see selling diamonds in W. 47th St., or on the street in Crown Heights or Midwood. The hat, the long black coat, the beard, the temple curls – the works.

Campbell’s tale of how this came to pass, of how and why he followed his bliss, is hilarious. Mazel tov, Yiz – you’re one funny schlemiel.

CSC is an off Broadway company which specialized in productions of classic plays by Famous Dead Europeans. Recent FDEs include Shakespeare and Chekhov. The problem with this business model is that plays by FDEs usually have large casts, at least by present-day standards, which are expensive. With David Ives’ Venus in Fur, the company has saved its dough for the Ostrovsky play they’re doing in the spring by presenting a play with only two actors, a play within-a-play adaptation of a notorious novel from 1870 by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, from whose name the term “masochism” derives.

Rather than adapt the novel in a straightforward way, Ives has set the play in an audition room, where a director is casting the role of Vanda in his own adaptation of Venus in Fur.
He has seen scads of actresses but nobody has impressed him. He’s about to head home when a dizzy, ditsy actress arrives with a satchel full of excuses as to why she’s late. He’s tired and wants to go home but she is relentless, so finally he agrees to give her a shot. Gradually, he and she get into the play, becoming their roles; and, gradually, we begin to wonder, who is this woman? Is she just a scatter-brained actress, is she spying on the guy for his girlfriend, or is she Something Else Entirely? I love a good mystery, don’t you? And Venus in Fur is a doozy.

Walter Bobbie’s direction is just wonderful, as are the two actors, Wes Bentley and Nina Arianda, the latter of whom has the showier role so, in the true tradition of Critics’[ Darlings, she has gotten the raves. Both deserve them.

This one’s a don’t-miss.

As is Gregory Mosher’s compelling production of Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, at the Cort Theatre, which emerges here as Miller’s best play after Death of a Salesman and The Crucible.

The play is set in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood and focuses on a longshoreman, Eddie Carbone, who has taken in a raised his niece, Catherine. His tragedy is that he lusts after her, and this leads to his doom.

Live Schrieber, as Eddie, demonstrates once again that he is one of our finest stage actors, able to segue almost effortlessly from The title role in the Scottish Play to the provocative radio host in Talk Radio to the suave Ricky Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross to the sullen Eddie Carbone. This man, it seems, can play anything –so it’s no surprise that he is terrific in this play.

The big surprise is Scarlett Johanson, who plays Catherine beautifully, with a sweet innocence which belies her screen persona as a glam femme fatale. Jessica Hecht is solid, as she always is, as Eddie wife Beatrice, and there is fine work here too from Michael Cristofer as the lawyer Alfieri, who functions as something of a Greek Chorus, as well as from Corey Stoll and Morgan Spector as two illegal Italian immigrants, Rudolpho and Marco, staying with the Carbones. When Rudolpho and Catherine fall in love, and Eddie is faced with losing Catherine, Miller’s tragedy spurs towards its endgame.

You missed Shawn Nacol’s fascinating Rough Sketch, at 59 E. 59 Theatres, as it closed 31 January. This terrific play was about two animators at a studio which makes children’s cartoon films. Although they have worked side-by-side for several months they have never actually spoken to each other until both come in while the office is closed during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Both are oddballs, obsessive about their work. They start out with diffidence, proceed to passion and wind up fight-to-the finish enemies, as each has a different attitude about the meaning of the work they do.

Nacol’s writing was fresh, funny and full of insights, sort of like David Hare on speed, and Ian Morgan’s direction was clever and matched the script perfectly. The two actors were mighty fine. Matthew Lawler was exceptional. Tina Benko was phenomenal.

Sorry you missed this one.

Finally, I journeyed up to Burlington, Vermont at the behest of a local playwright to meet with a group of VT playwrights and see the playwright’s new play. I was surprised to find the area a hotbed of theatrical activity, most of which is at the amateur level – which is to say everyone does it for love, not for pay, and which is not to say that the quality of the work was not up to what we here would consider professional standards.

After meeting with the playwrights, telling my jokes and wowing them with my vast knowledge and Good Advice, I saw a terrific play by local playwright Maura Campbell called Rosalee Was Here, about a disturbed teenaged girl and a teacher’s valiant attempts to save her. Liz Gilbert, the teenager who played this girl, was astonishing.

The next night I went to Vermont Stage Company in Burlington to see their production of Stephen Temperley’s Souvenir, about the deluded, tone-deaf soprano Florence Foster Jenkins. This was the fourth time I had seen the play, and it has never failed to amuse me. I saw it at the York Theatre and on Broadway – both with Judy Kaye, and then at the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia with Ann Crumb – and VTSC’s production was as good as any of these. In some ways, Nancy Johnson was the best Flo or all those I have seen – she certainly was the funniest – and Carl J. Danielsen was a scream as Cosme McMoon, Mrs. Foster Jenkin’ accompanist who narrates this odd tale.

NYC sharpies who denigrate “regional theatre” don’t know what they’re talking about.

CIRCUMCISE ME. Bleecker Street Theatre, 45 Bleecker St.
TICKETS: 212-260-8250
VENUS IN FUR. CSC. 136 E. 13th St.
TICKETS: 212-677-4210
A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE. Cort Theatre, 138 W. 48th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com 212-239-6200
ROUGH SKETCH and ROSALEE WAS HERE. Alas, closed.
SOUVENIR. Vermont Stage Co., 110 Main St., Burlington, VT
TICKETS: 802-863-5966

“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

Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about SMUDGE, LOVE LOSS AND WHAT I WORE, ZERO HOUR, LITTLE GEM and PRESENT LAUGHTER.

Rachel Axler’s Smudge, at the Women’s Project’s Julia Miles Theatre, is another impressive production from this company, which seems to be thriving under the leadership of Artistic Director Julia Crosby. It’s beautifully directed (by Pam MacKinnon) and wonderfully acted. But, for me, it was awfully hard to watch.

The play is a comedy on a horrifying subject. A young couple has a baby, who is horribly deformed, and we observe their attempts to cope with this terrible situation. Nick does it by pretending there is nothing wrong; whereas Colby copes by pretending that there is no monster baby in her home. Gradually, both go rather bonkers, before retreating into imaginative ruminations about the future life of their daughter.

Cassie Beck and Greg Keller are tremendously compelling as Mommy and Daddy, and Brian Spambati contributes several hilarious turns as Nick’s bombastic brother, Pete.

If you can take the subject matter, this one is worth checking out.

Love, Loss, and What I Wore has been running a while at the Westside Theatre. I finally caught up with it last week, and had a very good time. Nora and Delia Ephron have adapted Ilene Beckerman’s book of interviews with women about their struggles with fashion. Five women sit on stools with scripts on stands, performing various roles. I was one of the few men in the audience. I felt like a spy.

As for said audience, it was yucking it up with guffaws of recognition as Katie Finneran, Michele Lee, Debra Monk, Ellis Ross and Casey Wilson enlightened us about the various travails women experience in their quest to find the right shoes, handbag, dress, etc. If you’re a guy you surely have experienced this with the women in your life, so you might find the show even funnier than did the ladies in the audience.

The above fivesome are in the show through 31 January, to be replaced by Carol Kane, Janeane Garofalo, Caroline Rhea and others.

Zero Hour has also been running a while, at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, and I finally caught up with this, too. It’s a one-man show, written and performed by Jim Brochu, who looks and sounds astonishingly like Zero Mostel. We are in Z’s studio, his sanctum sanctorum where he engages in his first love, painting, when an interviewer (unseen) from the New York Times arrives. Z proceeds to tell the guy his life story, much of which focuses on his travails when he was black-listed. He gets pretty worked up about this, and a lot of shouting goes on – but that’s the way Mostel was, always larger than life.

We also get wonderful anecdotes about A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Fiddler on the Roof, even as we learn to our surprise and dismay that Mostel hated The Producers; though why, he doesn’t say.

Brochu is absolutely wonderful in the show. Highly recommended!

Elaine Murphy’s Little Gem, at the Flea Theatre, is an import from last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Carol Tambor, an American producer, has made it an annual rite to import what she feels was the best Fringe production. Here, she presents Ireland’s Guna Nua Theatre Company in the play, which consists of interlocking monologues by three generations of women – a grandmother, her daughter and the daughter’s daughter. These stories are most compelling; but they are just that – stories. I am starting to get a bit concerned that I am seeing so many plays these days which are narrated. This seems to be a genre particularly popular with Irish writers (Conor McPherson comes to mind). What usually makes these narrative plays work is the acting, and the actors here do not disappoint. They are simply wonderful.

Little Gem appears to be something of a hard-to-get ticket. It’s worth the extra effort, though.

Finally, I quite enjoyed Roundabout’s revival of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter, at the American Airlines Theatre. In fact, of the three productions I have seen of this show-biz comedy, this one is much the best.

Victor Garber stars as Garry Essendine, an aging London matinee idol. Garry is always “on” – even when he is at home, and as he prepares to go off on a tour of Africa he must contend with a feisty secretary, his devoted ex-wife, an ingénue who is in love with him, the wife of his producer who throws herself at him and an almost demented playwright who is a fanatic fan.

Nicholas Martin, the director, keeps this craziness running along smoothly and wittily, and the cast is just great; starting with Garber, who is having great fun with this role of an actor who is always acting. Also wonderful is Harriet Harris as his secretary, and Brooks Ashmanskas is hilarious as the demented playwright/fan.

Present Laughter is great fun. Don’t miss it!

SMUDGE. Julia Miles Theatre, 424 W. 55th St.
TICKETS: 212-757-3900
LOVE, LOSS AND WHAT I WORE. Westside Theatre, 407 W. 43rd St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com. 212-239-6200
ZERO HOUR. Theatre at St. Clement’s, 423 W. 46th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com. 212-239-6200
LITTLE GEM. Flea Theatre, 41 White St.
TICKETS: 212-352-3101
PRESENT LAUGHTER. American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St.
TICKETS: 212-719-1300

“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

Lawrence Harbison,The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about SMUDGE, LOVE LOSS AND WHAT I WORE, ZERO HOUR, LITTLE GEM and PRESENT LAUGHTER.

Rachel Axler’s Smudge, at the Women’s Project’s Julia Miles Theatre, is another impressive production from this company, which seems to be thriving under the leadership of Artistic Director Julia Crosby. It’s beautifully directed (by Pam MacKinnon) and wonderfully acted. But, for me, it was awfully hard to watch.

The play is a comedy on a horrifying subject. A young couple has a baby, who is horribly deformed, and we observe their attempts to cope with this terrible situation. Nick does it by pretending there is nothing wrong; whereas Colby copes by pretending that there is no monster baby in her home. Gradually, both go rather bonkers, before retreating into imaginative ruminations about the future life of their daughter.

Cassie Beck and Greg Keller are tremendously compelling as the Mommy and Daddy, and Brian Spambati contributes several hilarious turns as Nick’s bombastic brother, Pete.

If you can take the subject matter, this one is worth checking out.

Love, Loss, and What I Wore has been running a while at the Westside Theatre. I finally caught up with it last week, and had a very good time. Nora and Delia Ephron have adapted Ilene Beckerman’s book of interviews with women about their struggles with fashion. Five women sit on stools with scripts on stands, performing various roles. I was one of the few men in the audience. I felt like a spy.

As for said audience, it was yucking it up with guffaws of recognition as Katie Finneran, Michele Lee, Debra Monk, Ellis Ross and Casey Wilson enlightened us about the various travails women experience in their quest to find the right shoes, handbag, dress, etc. If you’re a guy you surely have experienced this with the women in your life, so you might find the show even funnier than did the ladies in the audience.

The above fivesome are in the show through 31 January, to be replaced by Carol Kane, Janeane Garofalo, Caroline Rhea and others.

Zero Hour has also been running a while, at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, and I finally caught up with this, too. It’s a one-man show, written and performed by Jim Brochu, who looks and sounds astonishingly like Zero Mostel. We are in Z’s studio, his sanctum sanctorum where he engages in his first love, painting, when an interviewer (unseen) from the New York Times arrives. Z proceeds to tell the guy his life story, much of which focuses on his travails when he was black-listed. He gets pretty worked up about this, and a lot of shouting goes on – but that’s the way Mostel was, always larger than life.

We also get wonderful anecdotes about A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Fiddler on the Roof, even as we learn to our surprise and dismay that Mostel hated The Producers; though why, he doesn’t say.

Brochu is absolutely wonderful in the show. Highly recommended!

Elaine Murphy’s Little Gem, at the Flea Theatre, is an import from last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Carol Tambor, an American producer, has made it an annual rite to import what she feels was the best Fringe production. Here, she presents Ireland’s Guna Nua Theatre Company in the play, which consists of interlocking monologues by three generations of women – a grandmother, her daughter and the daughter’s daughter. These stories are most compelling; but they are just that – stories. I am starting to get a bit concerned that I am seeing so many plays these days which are narrated. This seems to be a genre particularly popular with Irish writers (Conor McPherson comes to mind). What usually makes these narrative plays work is the acting, and the actors here do not disappoint. They are simply wonderful.

Little Gem appears to be something of a hard-to-get ticket. It’s worth the extra effort, though.

Finally, I quite enjoyed Roundabout’s revival of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter, at the American Airlines Theatre. In fact, of the three productions I have seen of this show-biz comedy, this one is much the best.

Victor Garner stars as Garry Essendine, an aging London matinee idol. Garry is always “on” – even when he is at home, and as he prepares to go off on a tour of Africa he must contend with a feisty secretary, his devoted ex-wife, an ingénue who is in love with him, the wife of his producer who throws herself at him and an almost demented playwright who is a fanatic fan.

Nicholas Martin, the director, keeps this craziness running along smoothly and wittily, and the cast is just great; starting with Garber, who is having great fun with this role of an actor who is always acting. Also wonderful is Harriet Harris as his secretary, and Brooks Ashmanskas is hilarious as the demented playwright/fan.

Present Laughter is great fun. Don’t miss it!

SMUDGE. Julia Miles Theatre, 424 W. 55th St.
TICKETS: 212-757-3900
LOVE, LOSS AND WHAT I WORE. Westside Theatre, 407 W. 43rd
St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com. 212-239-6200
ZERO HOUR. Theatre at St. Clement’s, 423 W. 46th St.
TICKETS: www.telecharge.com. 212-239-6200
LITTLE GEM. Flea Theatre, 41 White St.
TICKETS: 212-352-3101
PRESENT LAUGHTER. American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St.
TICKETS: 212-719-1300

“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

Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what’s hot and what’s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about THIS, BRIEF ENCOUNTER, FASCINATING AIDA, PRINCES OF WACO and EARNEST IN LOVE.

Melissa James Gibson first hit the radar screen a few seasons back with what I take to be her first play, (sic), a title which made no sense to me. Anyway, she got a lot of traction with this play, and critics were impressed with her use of an unusual dramatic structure and “inventive language.” I myself was not impressed. I felt the play was boring and impenetrable. Imagine my surprise when I found her new play, This, at Playwrights Horizons, not only to be penetrable but actually entertaining and interesting, though I wouldn’t call it the best new play of the season, as did Mr. Ish in the NY Times.

There’s not much of a plot; but what there is is choice. The first part takes place at a party held by Marrell and Tom, a married couple with a baby, to which have been invited their friends Jane and Alan, and a French doctor named Jean-Pierre. Jane is a recent widow. Alan is a bitchy, alcoholic gay dude and JP has been invited as a potential New Guy for Jane. Later, Tom hits on Jane, his wife’s best friend, and begins an affair with her. Of course, the you-know-what hits the fan.

Ms. Gibson writes witty dialogue. She also writes in this new-fangled faux free verse style, even eschewing punctuation, which manages to come out sounding like good old fashioned Circle Rep realism. She, like Sarah Ruhl, seems to be heading in the direction of The R-Style, which must concern their “downtown” fans but which makes their work far more accessible to the rest of us.

Daniel Aukin’s direction was superb, and his cast excellent. I particularly enjoyed Julianne Nicholson’s performance as Jane. She had a lost quality which I found most appealing.

This will have closed by the time you read this. I hope you saw it, and am sorry if you missed it. Now about that title. This? Could have just as easily been “That.” Or (this). What’s up with this meaningless titling???

I appear to be one of the few people I know who has not seen the David Lean/Noël Coward film “Brief Encounter,” so I went to St. Anne’s Warehouse, which was presenting a British company called Kneehigh Theatre’s production of Emma Rice’s stage adaptation of Brief Encounter with no preconceptions. My friend Tondelayo, who loves the film, felt that Ms. Rice had deconstructed it/sent it up, almost in the manner of Ann Bogart, although she agreed with me that, unlike a typical Bogart/SITI event, the production was terrific. My companion SJ, who also loves the film, loved what Ms. Rice did with it, both as adaptor and director.

As for me, this was one brilliant piece of theatre. Whether or not it had much to do with the film.

Ms. Rice made terrific use of film, occasionally having her actors step right into the screen, which I found delightful. Her actors also performed several songs by Coward before, during and after the show, which was also delightful. And her pair of lovers, Laura and Alec (Celia Johnston and Trevor Howard in the film, Hannah Yelland and Tristan Sturrock here), were just wonderful.

Kneehigh Theatre operates in Cornwall, but occasionally brings its production to London. Few of us ever get to Cornwall; but next time you’re in London if Kneehigh is there don’t miss them.

FASCINATING AIDA was back recently, at 59 E. 59 Theatres. I somehow missed them before, so I took this opportunity to find out what all the buzz was about. They are an all-female British comedy group which specializes in satiric songs, which they write themselves, and which were for the most part very witty. These reminded me a lot of good old Tom Lehrer-style songs. For variety, they threw in two “serious” songs both of which, for me, were the highpoints of the evening.

I assume they’ll be back. They are definitely a don’t-miss.

Robert Askins’ Princes of Waco which is, I think, still running is a rather improbable drama about a troubled teen who falls in with a middle-aged man who turns out to support himself by petty thievery. He sets the kid up, and steals his girlfriend. When the kid gets out of the slammer, he’s boiling for revenge.

There was some good writing here, and I loved the actors – particularly, Megan Tusing as the girl and Christine Farrell as a bartender who’s seen everything and doesn’t give a damn about any of it.

Finally, Irish Rep is presenting a fine production of the Anne Croswell/Lee Pockriss musical adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest, Earnest in Love, which is a hit and which has been extended. Amazingly, Ms Croswell, who wrote the book, has managed to include all of Wilde’s greatest lines while managing to find space for the songs, which are wonderfully witty.

My problem with the show was only that the actors were so wonderful, I wished I could see them in The Importance of Being Earnest. Beth Fowler, in particular, is a terrific Lady Bracknell, a steely-eyed battleaxe in the manner of Judi Dench in the recent film of the play, though she doesn’t do much with the performance-defining handbag line, and Peter Maloney is the best Chasuble I have ever seen. Well, I had another problem, too. As usual, director Charlotte Moore completely ignores the small audience to the side of the stage, directing as if she were in a traditional proscenium theatre, which she is not. This was fine for those of us sitting in the main section; but those sitting off to the side spent the evening looking at the actors’ backs.

So – by all means don’t miss this charming production; but if they try to sell you a seat on the side, tell them no thanks, you want to look at the actors’ faces, not their backs.

THIS. Playwrights Horizons. Alas, closed.
BRIEF ENCOUNTER. St. Ann’s Warehouse, 39 Water St., Brooklyn.
TICKETS: Alas, all remaining performances are sold out, but a
small number of “Rush” seats are available starting
one hour before the performance. You have to get
there and stand in line.
FASCINATING AIDA. 59 E. 59. Alas, closed
PRINCES OF WACO. Ensemble Studio Theatre, 549 W. 52nd St.
TICKETS: www. ensemblestudiotheatre.org. 866-811-4111
EARNEST IN LOVE. Irish Repertory Theatre, 132. W. 22nd St.
TICKETS: 212-727-2737

“Who is this guy?”

For over thirty years Lawrence Harbison was in charge of new play acquisition for Samuel French, Inc., during which time his work on behalf of playwrights resulted in the first publication of such subsequent 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 musicals such as Smoke of the Mountain, A…My Name Is Alice, Little Shop of Horrors and Three Guys Naked from the Waist Down. He is a now a free-lance editor, primarily for Smith and Kraus, Inc., for whom he edits annual anthologies of best plays by new playwrights and women playwrights, best ten-minute plays and best monologues and scenes for men and for women. 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. His new column, “On the Aisle with Larry,” is a weekly feature at www.smithandkraus.com.

He works with individual playwrights to help them develop their plays (see his website, www.playfixer.com). 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 both the Outer Critics Circle and the Drama Desk. 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 holds a B.A. from Kenyon College and an M.A. from the University of Michigan.

He is currently working on a book, Masters of the Contemporary American Drama.

“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