{"id":224,"date":"2010-12-11T07:57:37","date_gmt":"2010-12-11T11:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/?p=224"},"modified":"2010-12-11T07:58:51","modified_gmt":"2010-12-11T11:58:51","slug":"on-the-aisle-with-larry-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/?p=224","title":{"rendered":"“On the Aisle With Larry” 10 December 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 BREAK OF NOON, HAUNTED, MISTAKES WERE MADE, THE RED SHOES, ROSMERSHOLM, PLAY DEAD, BEING SELLERS, NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND, GHOSTS IN THE COTTONWOODS <\/strong>and LINGUA FRANCA.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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

In Neil LaBute\u2019s The Break of\u00a0 Noon<\/em><\/strong>,\u00a0 which is running until 22 December at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, a flawed everyman named John Smith finds himself the sole survivor of a horrific mass-killing where he works. A deranged man came in and started shooting, murdering 37 people. As the play begins, he\u2019s telling an unseen police interrogator what happened. It seems that he heard the voice of none other than God, reassuring him that he would be\u00a0 saved from death. I know, I know — ridiculous, right? That\u2019s what they said when Saul came back from Damascus, changed his name to Paul and started raving that the late Mr. Christ appeared to him.<\/p>\n

MORE<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Smith decides that God wants him to try and be a better person and to go out into the world and exhort his fellow man (and woman) to do the same. He starts with his estranged wife. She is unwilling to forgive and forget. He moves on to his mistress, who thinks he\u2019s crazy. He makes the rounds of TV talk shows, where he is ridiculed, of course \u2013 because as we all know (and if we don\u2019t, we should), belief in God is the delusion of people who live in Red States, who are a bunch of dimwits.<\/p>\n

The Break of Noon<\/em> is an incredibly daring play to be putting on in Gomorrah-on-the-Hudson, because it asks us to believe that God does exist, and that He still cares about the human race, enough to speak directly (as opposed to metaphorically) to someone, and ask him to tell others what happened to him. Predictably, the reviews have to varying degrees ridiculed the play (as in, \u201cIs he kidding<\/em>?\u201d), just as John Smith is ridiculed. Imagine my surprise \u2026<\/p>\n

Jo Bonney\u2019s production is Just Plain Brilliant. David Duchovny plays Smith with an appealing mixture of bewilderment and passion, and Amanda Peet, Tracee Chimo and John Earl Jelks \u2013 each playing two roles \u2013 are excellent.<\/p>\n

At the end Smith, speaking to an unseen group of people who have come to hear him preach, reveals the full, miraculous details of what happened to him on that fateful day, and what I can only describe as a miracle occurs, laughable if you think the play is laughable but jaw-droppingly moving if you do not.<\/p>\n

The Break of Noon<\/em> is the best new play of the season.<\/p>\n

Haunted, <\/em><\/strong>by Irish novelist\/playwright Edna O\u2019Brien (at 59 E 59), is pretty damn good, too. It\u2019s a, well, haunting portrait of a man who can\u2019t stop lying to his wife and, ultimately, to himself. Mr. Berry, a pensioner, sits home with little to do but tend his garden, read his Shakespeare and fantasize while his wife is off at work. He meets a charming young woman and takes her under his wing, so to speak. This becomes an obsession, as he lies to her (he tells her is wife is dead) and to his wife, digging himself in deeper and deeper until, finally, he\u2019s found out.<\/p>\n

Mr. Berry could be perceived as rather creepy \u2013 but not in Niall Buggy\u2019s moving performance. Also terrific are Brenda Blethyn as Mrs. Berry and Beth Cooke as Hazel, the object of Mr. Berry\u2019s obsession. Braham Murray\u2019s production is brilliant. This one\u2019s a don\u2019t-miss.<\/p>\n

Craig Wright\u2019s Mistakes Were Made<\/em><\/strong>, at the Barrow St. Theatre, is essentially a one-man play about a Broadway producer named Felix Artifex whose current project is an epic about the French Revolution. He spends all his time on the phone, trying to get a Hollywood star to commit to the project, dealing with his ridiculous demands for re-writes, and trying to persuade the playwright (who lives in the Midwest somewhere) to make said re-writes. He also has to deal with a crisis situation going on in the Middle East involving his far-fletched plan to come up with the financing for the play.<\/p>\n

The problem with the play is that it reflects a Broadway reality that simply doesn\u2019t exist. There are no Felix Artifexes anymore, and there haven\u2019t been for decades \u2013 wheeler-dealer showmen who single-handedly put shows on Broadway. The director, Dexter Bullard, and the set designer, Tom Burch, appear to be aware of this, as the set looks like the kind of office a Broadway producer in the 1920s might have inhabited. The only thing that sets the play in the present is Our Hero\u2019s wireless telephone headset, the crisis happening offstage involving shadowy Muslim insurgents and the producer\u2019s desperation to woo the movie star by hook or by crook.<\/p>\n

So, Mistakes were Made<\/em> requires a huge suspension of disbelief on the part of the audience; but what makes the evening work ultimately is the hilariously manic performance by Michael Shannon as Felix Artifex.<\/p>\n

Emma Rice and Knee High are back at St. Ann\u2019s Warehouse with a weird rendition of the classic Andersen story The Red Shoes.<\/em><\/strong> This couldn\u2019t be more different in tone than Brief Encounter<\/em>, also directed by Rice, but it\u2019s equally visually arresting. Her The Red Shoes <\/em>is most dark and disturbing \u2013 nothing like the classic film. It\u2019s like Andersen\u2019s story as adapted by Samuel Beckett.<\/p>\n

You would think that a play by a Great Playwright which requires only six actors and a single set would be produced regularly; yet the Pearl Theatre\u2019s production of Ibsen\u2019s Rosmersholm<\/em><\/strong> is the first production I have seen of the play in many years of theatre-going. There\u2019s a reason why the play is so rarely produced.<\/p>\n

Rosmersholm<\/em> is about the head of a great, long-prominent family. Rosmer has recently given up the priesthood and finds himself the rope in political tug of war between the conservatives in his town and the progressives. The political debate in the first act gives the play a startling contemporary relevance; but unfortunately, the play descends into melodrama in the second act and has an ending second only to The Master Builder <\/em>in awfulness. The climax happens offstage as the housekeeper says to the audience, Oh my goodness \u2013 guess what\u2019s happening offstage! D-minus in Playwriting 101, Henrik!<\/p>\n

Director Elinor Renfield has done a pretty good job, though, with this creaky, ultimately ridiculous play, and all the actors are excellent.<\/p>\n

If you go to see Play Dead<\/em><\/strong>, at the Players Theatre, don\u2019t expect a play. What you\u2019ll get is an engaging grand guignol show, performed by a charmingly creepy fellow named Todd Robbins, who wrote it in tandem with Teller, who has directed. Since Teller\u2019s involved, you know you\u2019re going to get some great illusions, and Robbins and Teller do not disappoint. Audience members are invited\/dragged up on stage to participate in many of the illusions, which involve several ghosts and a lot of blood.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re in the mood to be creeped-out, Play Dead<\/em>\u2019s your show.<\/p>\n

Being Sellers<\/em><\/strong>, part of the Brits Off Broadway festival which also includes Haunted<\/em>, is a one-man play by Carl Caulfield about the late British film actor Peter Sellers. It is set in a hospital room on the last day of Sellers\u2019 life. David Boyle, who plays Sellers, looks a little like him, though at a younger age. Sellers is obsessed with his mother, to whom he carries on a running monologue, as he relates\/enacts various events in his life. The portrait of Sellers which emerges is of a deeply-troubled, rather unpleasant man.<\/p>\n

You would think a play about Peter Sellers would be funny, but this one isn\u2019t particularly, partially due to Boyle\u2019s performance. To put it bluntly, Boyle is no Peter Sellers.<\/p>\n

This closes Sunday, 12 December. If you missed it, you didn\u2019t miss much.<\/p>\n

You also didn\u2019t miss much if you missed Notes from the Underground<\/em><\/strong> at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, adapted by Bill Camp and Robert Woodruff (who also directed) from Dostoevsky\u2019s novella. It was mostly narrated, and was about a thoroughly unpleasant fellow who is universally loathed. You know why? Because he\u2019s loathsome and insufferable. He wouldn\u2019t have been sufferable for 10 minutes, let alone the almost two hours this evening took before it was finally, thankfully, over.<\/p>\n

There was weird music, performed live, as well as weird projections. None of this helped. The evening was interminable. Its one saving grace was the performance of Merritt Janson. She was one of her onstage musicians for most of the play but, briefly, she left her station to play a pathetic prostitute who is used and abused by the narrator character. She broke my heart, even though Woodruff completely botched the staging of the scene when she comes out of the brothel to the narrator\u2019s lodgings in hopes that he\u2019ll save her from a life of despair, only to have to endure a horrifyingly abusive rant from this asshole. When you have an actor with the kind of haunting, tremendously expressive eyes of a Merritt Janson, Bob, you don\u2019t have her facing upstage as her brief candle of hope is brutally, callously snuffed out.<\/p>\n

Adam Rapp\u2019s Ghosts in the Cottonwoods<\/em><\/strong>, presented by The Amoralists at Theatre 80, also closes on Sunday 12 December. It\u2019s an early Rapp play, directed by the author, about a poor woman who lives in a cabin in the titular woods with her son. They are awaiting the return of her older son, who has escaped from prison. When he arrives, there is a horrifying climax.<\/p>\n

Rapp\u2019s direction is excellent, and there are fine performances from all the actors, with the exception of the actor who plays the younger son, who speaks so quickly and so quietly and with such poor diction that he is unintelligible most of the time.<\/p>\n

Peter Nichols\u2019 Lingua Franca<\/em><\/strong>, also part of the Brits Off Broadway Festival at 59 E 59 and now closed, was a wonderful play about teachers at an English language school in Florence in the 1950s. Beautifully directed by Michael Gieleta, it featured a cast of top-notch British actors, all of whom were superb.<\/p>\n

If you saw this, lucky you. If you missed it \u2013 bummer.<\/p>\n

THE BREAK OF NOON. Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher St.<\/p>\n

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

HAUNTED. 59 E 59 Theatre A, 59 E. 59th<\/sup> St.<\/p>\n

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

MISTAKES WERE MADE. Barrow St. Theatre, 27 Barrow St.<\/p>\n

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

THE RED SHOES. St. Anne\u2019s Warehouse, 38 Water ST., Brooklyn<\/p>\n

TICKETS: 866-811-4111<\/p>\n

ROSMERSHOLM. City Center Stage II, 130 W. 56th<\/sup> St.<\/p>\n

TICKETS: 212-581-1212.<\/p>\n

PLAY DEAD. Players Theatre, 115 McDougall St.<\/p>\n

TICKETS: 800-745-3000.<\/p>\n

BEING SELLERS. 59 E 59 Theatre C, 59 E. 59th<\/sup> St.<\/p>\n

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

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND. Baryshnikov Arts Center. Closed.<\/p>\n

GHOSTS IN THE COTTONWOODS. Theatre 80, 80 St. Mark\u2019s Pl.<\/p>\n

TICKETS: 212-388-0388<\/p>\n

LINGUA FRANCA. 59 E 59. Alas, closed.<\/p>\n

“It requires a certain largeness of spirit to give generous appreciation to large achievements. A society with\u00a0a crabbed spirit\u00a0and a\u00a0cynical 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.”<\/strong>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

—– George F. Will<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\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 BREAK OF NOON, HAUNTED, MISTAKES WERE MADE, THE RED SHOES, ROSMERSHOLM, PLAY DEAD, BEING SELLERS, NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND, GHOSTS IN THE COTTONWOODS and LINGUA FRANCA. In Neil LaBute\u2019s The Break […]<\/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\/224"}],"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=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":226,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions\/226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/playfixer.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}