Sam Shepard's A PARTICLE OF DREAM (OEDIPUS VARIATIONS) at the Signature Theatre

     Anyone who has followed Sam Shepard's career knows that much of his work has offered versions of the Oedipus story. There are many versions of conflicts between fathers and sons as well as many versions of sexy, powerful matriarchs. It's not surprising that at this stage of his career, Shepard would take on a more direct telling of Sophocles' tragedy. Well, not so direct really.
     As the subtitle suggests, the ninety-minute play is a series of short variations of the drama of Oedipus Rex. Some seem to be fairly direct translations of key moments in Sophocles' tragedy. Others, taking place in the contemporary Mojave Desert seem to place the tale in the world of contemporary television, as a forensics expert picks through the evidence left at the scene of Oedipus's murder of his father. Some of the imagery is familiar from other Shepard plays. The setting is a bloody slaughterhouse and our Oedipus (the great Stephen Rea) wears blood-spattered overalls. Jocasta (Brid Brennan) appears in a blood-colored velvet gown, as if she is part of Sophocles original. Tiresias (Lloyd Hutchinson) looks like a homeless man. Most of the variations are soliloquies, underscoring the fundamental isolation of these characters. As usual in a Shepard play, music (here a live cello and slide guitar), play an important role in creating the mood of each scene and bridging the scenes.
     The question Shepard asks here, is what good does tragedy do? Does it offer catharsis? Does it offer an apt metaphor for the human condition? Do we learn anything from watching it being reenacted? Shepard doesn't answer the question so much as poke and probe at his own fixation with this particular story.
     Shepard wrote this play for the Derry-based Field Day Theatre Company, run by Stephen Rea. Four of the actors in this eight-actor cast are from that company. Rea, Brennan and Hutchinson are familiar faces in British theatre, television and film. They and their American colleagues are excellent and the always-resourceful Nancy Meckler has staged the work effectively. Nonetheless, it all left me a bit cold. From the polite applause at the end, I would say that this was true of much of the audience. Perhaps it was a mistake to see this a few hours after seeing the powerful OUR LADY OF KIBEHO.
A PARTICLE OF DREAD contains some beautiful writing and is given an excellent production. Unfortunately, it doesn't engender much feeling.
 A PARTICLE OF DREAD (OEDIPUS VARIATIONS). Signature Theatre. November 29, 2014.

OUR LADY OF KIBEHO by Katori Hall at the Signature Theatre

     I am fascinated with the number of plays now running in New York that touch on religious issues. GRAND CONCOURSE deals with issues of faith and mercy in a Catholic soup kitchen in the Bronx. THE OLDEST BOY centers on the reincarnation of a Tibetan Lama in a young Tibetan-American boy. OUR LADY OF KIBEHO dramatizes the documented and Vatican-approved visions of the Virgin Mary experienced by three adolescent schoolgirls in Rwanda in 1981. There's not a moment of cynicism in these plays about the possibility of the validity of Catholicism or Tibetan Buddhism.
     I can't praise OUR LADY OF KIBEHO highly enough. Katori Hall has created a riveting drama. Michael Grief has given it the production it deserves and the large cast couldn't be better. The play takes place in a small Catholic girls school in the remote Rwandan village of Kibeho. The school is run by a young Tutsi priest, Father Tuyishime ((Owiso Odera) and a stern Hutu nun, Sister Evangelique (Starla Benford). The power arrangement at the school is typical of Catholic gender hierarchy, but also typical of the power dynamics of Rwanda in 1981, when minority Tutsis held the positions of power. When the play begins, one girl, Alphonsine (Nneka Okafor) has already started having visions. Eventually two other girls begin experiencing similar visions. There's nothing particularly special about these girls. They don't even like each other. Why would they be chosen as the vessels of Mary's intercession? Sister Evangelique thinks these visions are either teenage pranks or signs of diabolical possession. However, the visions become more and more miraculous (and theatrically spectacular), so Father Tuyishime and his superior, Bishop Gahaminyi contact the Vatican. The bishop sees the possibility of Kibeho becoming another Lourdes, thus making Rwanda a tourist destination. Anyone who knows the history of Marian visions (the most famous ones involve prophesies of bloodshed) or the recent history of Rwanda, knows that the outcome is not likely to be so positive.
     I don't want to be a spoiler. Suffice it to say that OUR LADY OF KIBEHO is a taut dramatic thriller, but far more than that. It gives us a picture of the conflicts that were ingrained in Rwandan society at the time as well as a fascinating glimpse into Catholic doctrine. More important, it dramatizes the possibility of the miraculous in the most unlikely places. Michael Greif has given this rich, powerful script the production it deserves. He uses all of the Irene Diamond Theatre -- stage, side stages, crossovers, aisles, to surround the audience with this drama. The projections and special effects offer theatre magic. Rachel Hauck's set, full of moveable parts, allows the drama to move at a relentless pace. With some clever doubling, the cast of fifteen seems to be much larger. The music (Michael McElroy) and sound design (Matt Tierney) add to the other-worldy quality of this theatrical saga.
     It's almost impossible to single out individual performances. Everyone in this ensemble is superb. The highest compliment I can give is to say that the ensemble acts as if they have been working together for years.
      OUR LADY OF KIBEHO is simply one of the best productions of the year.
OUR LADY OF KIBEHO. Pershing Square Signature Center. November 29, 2014.
   

HONEYMOON IN VEGAS by Jason Robert Brown and Andrew Bergman

     HONEYMOON IN VEGAS is an old-fashioned Broadway musical comedy on steroids. Everything is too loud, and most of the cast is working too hard to "sell" this show. There's almost an air of desperation about it. In other words, it is too much like Las Vegas. There's an overture with the band front and center on stage amid a lot of colored lights. The overture is trying to be a version of the overture to GYPSY, the best Broadway overture ever written, but this overture is so loudly miked than even in the 6th row, I could not hear live sound from a fifteen piece band. The opening number, "I Love Betsy", is tuneful and clever, but there's so much scenery changing and bad choreography (in general, the choreography is one cliche after another), that it is difficult to pay attention to what is a good song. In general the ensemble is allowed to engage in a shameful amount of amateurish mugging and, far be it for me of all people to say it, but some of the gentlemen of the ensemble behave as if they are in a Howard Crabtree musical.
     I had never seen the film on which the show is based (I'm allergic to Nicholas Cage). The book Andrew Bergman has crafted from the movie is sporadically funny. We've seen the monster mother bit many times before (think BYE BYE BIRDIE, where it was much funnier), but this mom has been dead for years and still haunts our hero, Jack Singer (Rob McClure). Jack would like to marry his sweetheart Betsy (Brynn O'Malley), but thanks to Mom, he has panic attacks. When they go to Las Vegas to get married, ace gambler Tommy Korman (Tony Danza) thinks Betsy is the spitting image of his beloved late wife and hatches an elaborate scheme to steal her from Jack. The problem with Bergman's book is that it would be funnier, and Tommy a funnier character, if the audience were in on his plot. The show sticks to Jack and Betsy's point of view, so the big moments don't land the way they should. I was shocked to look at my watch at the end of Act I and see that it was less than 70 minutes long. It seemed much longer. The second act needs editing.
     On the whole, Jason Robert Brown's score is tuneful and masterful. He's best at the book numbers, weakest at his imitation of old time Vegas floor show numbers. It's great to have a show with virtually no reprises, but the best songs occur early in the show. We all know he's the best lyricist working now, except for someone with the initials S.S., who hasn't written a new show in ages.
    Rob McClure really carries the show. He's a charming stage presence, he sings effectively, he has excellent comic timing and he moves well. Most important, he has personality. In the old days, he would be a Broadway star. Alas, that doesn't mean anything now. Tony Danza does the laid back Dean Martinish schtick. He's not much of a singer and he fakes his way through a short tap routine. The problem is, he's not funny enough, not enough of a comic foil to McClure's Jack. Danza walks amiably through the show. That isn't totally Danza's part -- the book and the direction don't help him. Brynn O'Malley is OK -- there's no unique personality there, just a competent performer going through all the motions.
     There's lots of pretty, old-fashioned painted scenery (Anna Louizos). Gary Griffin certainly keeps everything moving, but it's all a bit frenetic. There's nothing original in his direction, no sign of a unique vision, just the old "faster, louder."
     After reading Ben Brantley's rave review of HONEYMOON IN VEGAS's Paper Mill Playhouse tryout, I thought I had to see this one. I didn't see the same funny, masterful show he did. Maybe the suburban air of Millburn, New Jersey weakened Brantley's critical faculties. Then again, I've recently liked two musicals he didn't like.
HONEYMOON IN VEGAS. Nederlander Theatre. November 28, 2014.

THE INVISIBLE HAND by Ayad Akhtar at New York Theatre Workshop

     Pakistan seems the best setting these days for depictions of moral ambiguity. We see it played out brilliantly in this season's episodes of HOMELAND, where there is no side without both good guys and bad guys. Ayad Akhtar's engrossing THE INVISIBLE HAND, set in Pakistan, is a hostage drama with a twist. Nick Bright (Justin Kirk), a banker who is second in command at the Islamabad branch of Chase, has been kidnapped (By mistake, actually -- they wanted his boss). He now sits in a room somewhere in the hinterlands. Yet when we first see him Dar (Jameal Ali), his guard is cutting his fingernails while Nick asks him about his family. We get our first hint of what is to come when Dar tells Nick that instead of visiting his mother on Sunday, he took Nick's financial advice, invested in a truck and started selling potatoes. Nick may be a prisoner, but he's  brilliant, articulate man who converts his captors to capitalism. They may hate the idea of interest (against the teachings of Allah), but they fall in love with the concept of easy profit. Nick makes a deal with his captors, Imam Saleem (Dariush Kasani) and his young disciple Bashir (Usman Ally), that if Bashir will assist him, he will earn his ten million dollar ransom for them. Bashir is an angry young man from Hounslow, a suburb of London near Heathrow Airport that is filled with South Asian immigrant families (many work at the airport). Angry and wounded at the racism of England, he has come to Pakistan to work against the west and the vestiges of colonialism. Nick gives Bashir a crash course in the power of money, the invisible hand that rules everything, and in investment banking. Bashir becomes totally seduced by money. Where Nick is shrewd and cautious, Bashir is greedy. Where Nick still believes in rules, Bashir is ruthless. To say more would give away too much. Suffice it to say that the play becomes a commentary on the West's influence over the East (Though he would hate to admit it, Bashir, after all, is an Englishman, not a Pakistani), and money's influence over everything. What happens when capitalism is imported to a lawless society? What we see through the arguments with the Imam, who wants to use the money to do good in his region, is that money itself can become a religion.
      THE INVISIBLE HAND is a fascinating play of ideas couched in the conventions of a thriller. Director Ken Rus Schmoll has maintained the tension and tempo the play demands. There is an unnecessary bit of theatrical spectacle at the beginning of Act II (money spent for no reason); nor did the play really need a scene change. The cast was excellent. Justin Kirk is one of our best actors. He knows how to be totally natural on stage even in a role as talky as this one. He captures Nick's passion for his work, his basic decency, and his horror at cruelty. Usman Ally is appropriately intense as Bashir, a man fueled by anger. Ally is terrific in the scene in which he discovers the powerful rush of making big bucks in a few minutes. Dariush Kasani's Imam can seem a quiet man of God, but turn suddenly into a man who can exercise brutal power.
     Don't miss this one!
THE INVISIBLE HAND. New York Theatre Workshop. November 24, 2014.      

STRAIGHT WHITE MEN by Young Jean Lee at the Public Theater

     STRAIGHT WHITE MEN is an homage to American domestic realism and in a tradition of plays about male angst such as Jason Miller's THAT CHAMPIONSHIP SEASON. The straight white men in Lee's play may be beer-guzzling, but they are not the ignorant bozos of much "guy" narrative on film, television or on stage. These guys are well educated, highly articulate and they understand the new rules of political correctness. They play a home-made revised version of monopoly called "Privilege"that both validates and mocks politically correct concepts of race and gender. It's Christmas time and three grown sons have come back home to celebrate with widowed Dad, who is a retired engineer. The youngest son is a tenured professor, the middle son a banker. Only Matt, the oldest son, is incapable of fitting in twenty-first century capitalistic society. He's not even particularly good at being counter-cultural. At the moment, he has a temp job for a charity and is living with his father. All three sons are now single (one s divorced). Some of what we see is the usual regression of adults who return home for the holidays. These men can bond through familiar rituals of horseplay and teasing. When words are added, arguments ensue.
     The major conflicts begin when Matt breaks down and cries at Christmas Eve supper (take-out Chinese). Jake, the middle son, praises Matt's heroic resistance to the system. Younger son Drew wants Matt to get help, to find out the cause of his malaise. Father referees until the climactic scene. The crux of these family conflicts is whether failure by the standards of American capitalism is tolerable. Along the way there are a lot of humorous barbs thrown at upper middle class assumptions. These guys see themselves as liberal, as right thinking politically. Are they on the most basic issues?
     STRAIGHT WHITE MEN is a fascinating ninety minutes of theatre, a twenty-first century version of the kind of work Arthur Miller did after World War II -- there's a kinship between these brothers and the brothers Biff and Happy in DEATH OF A SALESMAN. As usual, Lee has directed her own work and done so beautifully. The brothers (Gary Wilmes, Pete Simpson, James Stanley) seem so natural that one feels almost like a voyeur. Austin Pendleton is either trying for his idea of naturalistic acting (more likely) or is fumbling for lines -- the effect is the same and the play would be five minutes shorter and tighter without his dithering over lines. Just about every speech is preceded by some arm flailing then some "uh"s before he gets around to the line. I thought that kind of method acting had been thrown onto the dustheap of theater history.
     Well worth seeing.
STRAIGHT WHITE MEN. The Public Theater. November 22, 2014.

Terrence McNally's LIPS TOGETHER, TEETH APART at Second Stage

      I have always thought that LIPS TOGETHER, TEETH APART was one of Terrence McNally's best plays. It's a unique combination of Chekhov and American domestic drama with some poetic touches added. The play is very definitely a product of that horrible decade when AIDS was killing so many young men. LIPS TOGETHER, TEETH APART in its strongest moments is a meditation on mortality. It focuses not on gay men -- they are an unseen, but heard presence surrounding the characters -- but on two straight couples sharing a house in the gayest section of Fire Island on July 4. Sally Truman, the central character, has lost her brother to AIDS. She was not able to deal with his gayness or the fact that he had a male lover who became more important to him than she was. Her brother left her this Fire Island house, which only intensifies her grief, her anger and her discomfort at his sexuality. She is sharing the house on this weekend with her husband Sam, his hyperactive sister, Chloe, and her husband John. Chloe and Sam are trying to deal gracefully with the fact that Sally and John have slept together. John has recently discovered that he has cancer of the esophagus. We watch the ways in which the fears and anger of these four people erupt. This is a Terrence McNally play, however, so there are lots of funny moments. Where a more realistic playwright would invent ways for characters to reveal their deepest thoughts to other characters, McNally believes that people, even spouses, hide their most powerful feelings. McNally's characters have soliloquies in which they tell express their fears and hostilities.  The play is very demanding of its cast. The original cast at the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1990 had three of the best actors for this sort of serious comedy: Nathan Lane, Christine Baranski and Swoozie Kurtz. Anthony Heald played John, who is a kind of straight man. Unfortunately, the cast at Second Stage was not of this calibre and the play suffered as a result.
     Sally and John are the more outwardly serious characters. America Ferrara, as usual, was touching as this emotionally fragile woman who is grief stricken for her brother, guilty about her feelings about him and about cheating on her husband, and fearful of her pregnancy (she has had several miscarriages). Ferrara captured all the conflicting feelings of her character. Her explosion in the final act was totally convincing. Austin Lysy captured the eternal preppy in John and his misdirected rage, though he had some technical problems with his long soliloquies. The weak links were Michael Chernus and Tracee Chimo as Sam and his sister Chloe. Few actors are capable of the range of Nathan Lane -- capable of his ability to turn on a dime emotionally. I never felt the fear or vulnerability of Chernus's Sam. John says that he is the most emotionally exposed and vulnerable. I didn't see that at all. Where we should have seen the pain and fear under Chimo's constant talk and performing -- her need to be noticed and loved -- we just see an irritating person. Director Peter Dubois cast these people, so the buck stops there. The production was routine -- no new insights into the play, standard predictable blocking and uncertain tempo. The play deserves better than this production.
LIPS TOGETHER, TEETH APART. Second Stage Theatre. November 22, 2014.

THE OLDEST BOY by Sarah Ruhl at the Lincoln Center Theater

     This is an interesting but somewhat unsatisfying play that never digs deeply enough into its subject matter, thus veering dangerously close to a Lifetime movie.
     "Mother" (Celia Keenan-Bolger) -- you're always in trouble when characters are listed this way in the program -- was a graduate student in English who never finished her dissertation after her adviser died. Her mentor's love of literature and skepticism of the fashionable theorists in the department (I know how this feels) was an inspiration to her. Right after he died, Mother went into a Tibetan restaurant and immediately fell in love with the owner (James Yaegashi). She was engaged and he was about to enter an arranged marriage to please his family, but "Mother" won out. When the play begins, they have a three-year-old son. Into their world come two Tibetan monks who tell Mother and Father that their son is the reincarnation of the older monk's Lama and teacher. The evidence is convincing enough to lead to a crisis for the parents -- do they allow their son to be taken to a monastery in India or to they fight to keep him? Mother says at one point that motherhood is a bigger idea than any religion. I won't spoil the play by recounting what happens. I will say that an absorbing first act is followed by a weak second act and a conclusion that isn't the least bit conclusive.
     I am delighted to see a play that takes religion seriously. Father was born Buddhist and Mother has been drawn to Buddhism, but beyond the idea of reincarnation, we are given little sense of the religion. Motherhood, which is placed in conflict with the claims of the monks, seems a vague concept to be placed against Buddhism. It's a feeling, not a theology, so no dramatic argument is possible beyond the claims of sentiment.
     Rebecca Taichman's production is so beautiful that it carries one along over the potholes in the script. The son is portrayed by a puppet and voiced by a grown man, as if we are hearing -- and seeing -- the voice and body of the Lama who has been reincarnated in the boy. Celia Keenan-Bolger gives a heartfelt performance. Handsome James Yaegashi doesn't plumb much emotional depth. Jon Norman Schneider and James Saito are charming as the monks, but I wish Ruhl has done more with these characters. Three "chorus" members help with the puppet and some splendid theatrical effects.
     I enjoyed THE OLDEST BOY, but will remember visual moments more than the substance of the play. Once again Sarah Ruhl skirts the intellectual and emotional potential of her material. The play is too nice.
THE OLDEST BOY. Lincoln Center Theater Mitzi Newhouse Theater. November 19, 2014.