{"id":184,"date":"2010-09-22T16:52:58","date_gmt":"2010-09-22T20:52:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/?p=184"},"modified":"2010-09-23T11:15:36","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T15:15:36","slug":"on-the-aisle-with-larry-21-september-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/?p=184","title":{"rendered":"“On the Aisle with Larry” 21 September 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lawrence Harbison<\/em><\/strong>, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what\u2019s hot and what\u2019s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about THE LITTLE FOXES, THE REVIVAL, EXIT\/ENTRANCE, ROADKILL CONFIDENTIAL, AN ERROR OF THE MOON, underneathymybed, BOTTOM OF THE WORLD, WIFE TO JAMES WHELAN <\/strong>and SECRETS OF THE TRADE.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, the summer doldrums are gone and the Jewish holidays passed, so the New York theatre season is exploding with new activity, some of it terrific, some of it not-so-terrific \u2013 as usual. I have been going to the theatre almost every evening (and some matinees). Here\u2019s my Report from the Front.<\/p>\n

The New York Theatre Workshop has brought back Dutch director Ivo van Hove, this time to direct Lillian Hellman\u2019s The Little Foxes. <\/em><\/strong>The first time they brought Ivo over, his deconstruction of A Streetcar Named Desire <\/em>was very controversial. Many people walked out at the interval; most of them subscribers, some of whom were so pissed off that they cancelled their subscriptions (so I\u2019m told). I was with them.<\/p>\n

Van Hove specializes in Famous Old Plays, which he stages in a very eccentric way, so that the Main Event of his productions is not the play, but his take on the play. This style is pretty much universal in Europe, but not all that common here (Peter Sellars\u2019 abominable destruction of Othello<\/em> last season notwithstanding). I deplore it, because I\u2019m with Shakespeare, who not only wrote \u201cThe play\u2019s the thing\u201d but had Hamlet instruct the players to do the lines he\u2019s inserting into The Murder of Gonzago<\/em> as he wrote them. To my mind, a stage director is not a Creative Artist, he\u2019s an interpretive artist, and the assumption, I take it, that few really care about what the playwright intended; but if they do, they\u2019ve seen that Famous Old Play so often that they\u2019re clamoring for a Fresh Take on it, such as our Ivo can supply in spades, is egotistical and Just Plain Wrong in extremis<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That said, I went with dread to The Little Foxes<\/em>; but I found myself actually getting with the program. I wound up rather liking it! Astounding, but true. It\u2019s not Lillian Hellman\u2019s The Little Foxes<\/em> but, rather van Hove\u2019s adaptation (which I do wish they would put in the program). Van Hove has condensed the three acts into one long act, playing with the passage of time in a fascinating way. This works very well. It also eliminates an interval in which to ditch \u2026 Gone are the period clothes and southern accents of the feuding Hubbard clan. The scenery is a purple velour-covered box set with what I can only describe as a sort of Elizabethan \u201cinner above\u201d upstage center, in the center of which is a video screen on which we view characters moving about offstage.<\/p>\n

The acting style van Hove calls for is very melodramatic \u2013 lots of shouting and bouncing off the walls. In the hands of a less-adept cast, this would be unwatchable; but not here. Elizabeth Marvel (Regina) is as usual, well, marvel-ous; though don\u2019t go expecting anything remotely resembling Tallulah or Bette. I also liked Cristin Milioti as Alexandra and Tina Benko as Birdie. Both have moments of towering rage which rise to the level of Marvel\u2019s. I wasn\u2019t taken with Christopher Evan Welch\u2019s Horace, but I must assume he was a puppet to Puppeteer von Hove. For Some Strange Reason, he\u2019s not in a wheelchair, though there is a line referring to it, and he appears to have consumption rather than a bad heart. Why? Nobody Knows \u2026<\/p>\n

Still, this is a fascinating production, both intellectually and emotionally stimulating. I guess, once in a while, Ivo is OK. I wouldn\u2019t want a steady diet of this sort of thing, though. Lillian Hellman is certainly rolling over in her grave.<\/p>\n

Project Y Theatre has been around for a while, but not only have I never seen one of their productions, I never heard of them. Amazing, but true. They have a new production running at the Lion Theatre of Samuel Brett Williams\u2019 The Revival<\/em><\/strong>, and it\u2019s terrific.<\/p>\n

The play\u2019s about a Baptist preacher in a small town in Arkansas. He\u2019s Harvard-educated, and is trying to save the church his father founded, which has been hemorrhaging congregants, by asking them to think more deeply about their faith when, of course, they want\u00a0 less thought, more emotion, more testifying, more \u201cPraise Jesuses.\u201d At a church supper, he meets a young drifter who comes in for a meal, and is smitten with him. He lets him stay in a cabin he owns, and they begin a torrid lover affair which, if exposed, could ruin him.<\/p>\n

Williams had me gripped right up until the end, when he resolves his plot with a non-credible twist; but director Michole Biancosino has put up a superb production. All the actors are wonderful; but Trent Dawson as the preacher and David Darrow as the drifter are even more so.<\/p>\n

This one is well worth checking out, and Project Y is now on my A-List.<\/p>\n

The First Irish Festival is going on now, at various venues. I saw Aidan Matthews\u2019 Exit\/Entrance<\/em><\/strong> at 59 E 59 and am seeing Trans-Euro Express<\/em> this weekend at Irish Arts.<\/p>\n

Exit\/Entrance<\/em> is about two couples \u2013 or is it? In the first act, an elderly couple are preparing to commit suicide. Why? Nobody Knows. Next door, a young couple is moving in. In the second act we meet the young couple, newlyweds who are starting their life together. Both men and both women have the same first name. Both women speak in an Irish accent; both men, in an American accent. Why? Nobody knows. There is much wheel-spinning in each act, and very little dramatic action. A friend of mine sitting nearby commented during the interval that the playwright must have seen or read too much Enda Walsh, an Irish playwright whose plays are all like this.<\/p>\n

The actors are pretty much OK, Linda Thorson in the first act much more so; but I found this play to be pretty much insufferable. A definite must-miss.<\/p>\n

Clubbed Thumb, one of my favorite \u201cdowntown theatre\u201d groups, is back with Sheila Callaghan\u2019s Roadkill Confidential<\/em><\/strong>, at 3LD Art & Technology Center. The play\u2019s about an \u201cartist\u201d whose latest project involves scooping up road kill and making a kind of sculpture out of it. One of the animals has been infected with a deadly virus and a Sam Spade-like FBI agent thinks maybe a terrorist is at work, so he\u2019s on the trail of the artist.<\/p>\n

I have enjoyed several of Callaghan\u2019s plays in the past, but this one is Just Plain Silly. It\u2019s wonderfully staged, though, by\u00a0 Kip Fagan, and the actors are excellent. A good production of a not-so-good play.<\/p>\n

Luigi Creatore\u2019s new play An Error of the Moon<\/em><\/strong>, at the Beckett Theatre, is about the Booth brothers \u2013 Edwin and John Wilkes. It appears to take place in a dressing room in some sort of Limbo, where Booth is forced to relive the awful events leading up to his brother\u2019s assassination of Lincoln. Why? Nobody knows. John Wilkes is a zealot, obsessed with revenge. Edwin is a mewling alcoholic whose obsession is his determined belief that his brother is having an affair with his wife. He\u2019s Othello to Johnny\u2019s Iago.<\/p>\n

Well, this is poppycock. I have nothing against a playwright using dramatic license to play fast and loose with the facts, but certainly not to this degree. I might have been willing to go along with it if the actors were better. The set and projections were terrific though. If you\u2019re one of those theatergoers who likes to leave the theatre humming the scenery, you might well want to check this one out. For everybody else, it\u2019s a must-miss.<\/p>\n

As is Florencia Lozano\u2019s underneathmybed <\/em><\/strong>(really, folks, that\u2019s the title as printed in the program), at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre. It\u2019s a drama about an Argentine family living in the U.S., where they\u2019ve come to escape the brutal Argentine dictatorship, which has been \u201cdisappearing\u201d thousands of people. The central character is a young girl who\u2019s obsessed with another young girl back home who was able to get a message out about her torture and imprisonment. Though her two sisters have become Americanized, she can\u2019t forget the past, and neither can her father, who rages incessantly about the political situation back home. Unfortunately, his tirades are delivered almost exclusively in Spanish, and there are large sections of the play spoken in that language \u2013 which is fine if you speak Spanish, but if you\u2019re a Gringo who no habla Espanol<\/em> much of the play is incomprehensible. What almost saves this is, as usual, is the excellent cast.<\/p>\n

If you understand Spanish you might like this play; if you don\u2019t, it\u2019s a must-miss.<\/p>\n

Also eminently missable is Lucy Thurber\u2019s Bottom of the World<\/em><\/strong>, at Atlantic Stage II. The play takes place simultaneously in two time frames. In the present, a young woman is looking for love; of course, with other women. Her sister, recently deceased, has published a novel about farm people many years ago. Although she\u2019s dead, Our Heroine and her sister interact, going over sections of the novel, which we see staged. These are also about love lost and won.<\/p>\n

Thurber is trying to be Just Too Damn Clever, and the two halves of the play don\u2019t fit together very well. The actors are good though. I wasn\u2019t wild about the set, which features raw lumber splayed out as a sort of half-proscenium. What does this mean? Nobody Knows \u2026<\/p>\n

The Mint Theatre\u2019s Wife to James Whelan<\/em><\/strong>, by Teresa Deevy is, like almost all of the Mint\u2019s plays, a forgotten gem. Deevy was a highly-regarded playwright whose plays achieved great acclaim at Dublin\u2019s Abbey Theatre. When W.B. Yeats, the company\u2019s founder and Artistic Director, retired, the new management rejected this play and it wasn\u2019t produced until years later, after Deevy\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

Mint\u2019s Artistic Director, Jonathan Bank, has directed a superb production of this play about a man who achieves success away from home, in Dublin, and returns to found a successful business. The Love of His Life, Nan, refused to wait until he achieved success and married another man, who died leaving her destitute. When he returns, a success, Whelan is very much in play with the town women; but he has no time for them because all he cares about is his business. He could rescue Nan by marrying her; but that he doesn\u2019t is his tragedy, and hers.<\/p>\n

The actors are wonderful, the production\u2019s wonderful \u2013 don\u2019t miss this one.<\/p>\n

Finally, I am belatedly writing about Jonathan Tolins\u2019 terrific Secrets of the Trade<\/em><\/strong>, which ran at Primary Stages but is now closed. Noah Robbins starred as a young theatre geek who just might possibly be a Future Genius. When he\u2019s 16, he writes a letter to a famous Broadway director, asking to meet him, and receives no reply. Two years later, the director replies, and invites him to come to his office in New York. The director is a brilliant man. He\u2019s also gay. He takes an interest in the kid, and becomes his mentor. We begin to wonder exactly what the nature of his interest is, particularly when we realize that he waited to invite the kid to New York to meet him until Our Hero was at the Age of Consent<\/p>\n

Matt Shakman\u2019s direction was superb, and the production featured wonderful performances by Robbins and, as the mercurial director, John Glover. I hope you got a chance to see this one. If you didn\u2019t \u2013 bummer!<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/td>\n\n\n\n\n
THE LITTLE FOXES. <\/strong>NY Theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th<\/sup> St.<\/p>\n

Tickets: www.telecharge.com<\/a> or 212-239-6200<\/p>\n

THE REVIVAL. <\/strong>Lion Theatre, 410 W. 42nd<\/sup> St.<\/p>\n

Tickets: www.telecharge.com<\/a> or 212-239-6200<\/p>\n

EXIT\/ENTRANCE. <\/strong>59 E 59 Theatres, 59 E. 59th<\/sup> St.<\/p>\n

Tickets: www.ticketcentral.com<\/a> or 212-279-4200<\/p>\n

ROADKILL CONFIDENTIAL. <\/strong>3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich St.<\/p>\n

TICKETS: 212-352-3101 or 866-811-4111<\/p>\n

AN ERROR OF THE MOON. <\/strong>Beckett Theatre, 410 W. 42nd<\/sup> St.<\/p>\n

TICKETS: www.telecharge.com<\/a> or 212-239-6200 or 800-432-7250<\/p>\n

underneathmybed. <\/strong>Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, 224 Waverly Pl.<\/p>\n

TICKETS: www.smarttix.com<\/a> or 212-868-4444<\/p>\n

WIFE TO JAMES WHELAN. <\/strong>Mint Theatre, 311 W. 43rd<\/sup> St.<\/p>\n

TICKETS: 212-315-0231<\/p>\n

SECRETS OF THE TRADE. <\/strong>Primary Stages. Alas, closed.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawrence Harbison, The Playfixer, brings you up to date with what\u2019s hot and what\u2019s not in New York. This week, Larry tells you about THE LITTLE FOXES, THE REVIVAL, EXIT\/ENTRANCE, ROADKILL CONFIDENTIAL, AN ERROR OF THE MOON, underneathymybed, BOTTOM OF THE WORLD, WIFE TO JAMES WHELAN and SECRETS OF THE TRADE. Well, the summer doldrums […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}