I'm combining my comments on these plays for three reasons: we saw them on the same day, they are both riffs on classic American domestic drama and they both present versions of the death of patriarchal values.
THE HUMANS takes place in a shabby, two-level apartment in Chinatown occupied by twenty-something Brigid Blake (Sarah Steele), a college graduate looking for an interesting job but supporting herself as a bartender, and her thirty-eight year old boyfriend Richard Saad (Arian Moayed), who is studying to be a social worker but also will at forty have a trust fund. Although the apartment is almost bare, Brigid and Richard are hosting her family for Thanksgiving dinner. The family consists of father, mother, grandmother, who is in the throes of dementia and an older sister Aimee (Cassie Beck), who has severe colitis and has lost her job and her girlfriend. Brigid's family is suffering from the current heartless state of the American economy. Through a foolish decision, Erik, the father (Reed Birney), has lost his job at a parochial school and now works part-time at Walmart. Deidre, Brigid's mother (Jayne Houdyshell) has hit the glass ceiling in her office job. Erik and Brigid cannot afford proper care for his mother (Lauren Klein). Aimee's law firm is not at all sympathetic with her health problems. Brigid holds down two bartending jobs to make ends meet.
The real problems are spiritual. Richard has suffered severe depression. Erik, who at first tries to maintain his authority as head of the family and his Scranton values is reduced to a state of terror by the end of the play. The terror comes from within and from without. Brigid and Richard's apartment seems to have a sinister life of its own. It is filled with mysterious loud noises. Kitchen utensils fall off the counter for no reason. Doors close on their own. Lights go out. THE HUMANS is a scary play about how little we really control our own lives. It begins as domestic comedy, but is by the end really terrifying. The person who most experiences the menace is the patriarch, Erik, who is at first full of fatherly advice and judgment, but who ends up cowering in terror. Erik has lost his moral authority and has lost his way.
What help is the family? There's much talk in the play of the importance of family, but each of the characters is really isolated, mired in his or her own crises. this all makes the play sound like a grim exercise, but THE HUMANS is also very funny. It's a warm, sympathetic play that shows sympathy for all the characters, even Erik, who causes the financial crisis that entraps his wife and mother.
Joe Mantello has directed a pitch-perfect production. The cast is a brilliant ensemble. SPecial kudo's to Fitz Patton's scary sound design.
THE HUMANS is scheduled to transfer to Broadway after it's Roundabout run. It will be a major contender for the Tony Award. See it at the Laura Pels rather than one of those user unfriendly Broadway theatres. Above all, see it.
When the curtain opens on Taylor Mac's HIR, we see a house filled with stuff strewn everywhere. In one corner sits Arnold (Daniel Oreskes), the patriarch, who has recently suffered a stroke, wearing a dress, clown makeup and a clown wig. His wife Paige (the fabulous Kristine Nielsen), is running around like Lucy Ricardo on speed. Their son Isaac (Cameron Scoggins) has just been thrown out of his military job of picking up body parts because of drug problems and is about to return home. Isaac returns hoping that domestic order will save him from his addiction and the horrors he has seen on the battlefield. When he sees the chaos and his father's condition, he runs to the sink and vomits. Isaac's teenage sister is now his brother Max (Tom Phelan).
During the course of the play we discover that Arnold was a tyrannical patriarch who violently abused his children and his wife. Now that he is physically and mentally weakened, Paige has replaced order with what she sees as creative chaos. She refuses to perform the domestic duties of a conventional wife and champions the radical gender politics of her transgender son. Even though he knows that his father was a monster, he wants the patriarchal order re-established leading to a battle between him and his mother.
HIR veers from zany sitcom to horrifying domestic tragedy. I was reminded of the classic "son comes home from the war" plays, David Rabe's STICKS AND BONES and Arthur Miller's ALL MY SONS. Mac's play is funnier, more absurdist, than either of these plays. Everyone has a bit of monster inside, though Max, the transsexual is the only character who seems to feel both a need from liberation from traditional gender roles and compassion for those trapped within them. Arnold may have been a monster, but Paige is also monstrous.
Niegel Smith has given the play the over-the-top production it needs and has cast the play perfectly. Kristine Nielsen gives another magnificent performance; first zany, then powerful and a bit terrifying. Cameron Scoggins matches her energy as her son and nemesis. Tom Phelan gives a sensitive performance as Max, who will need to escape his mother in order to survive. Phelan has an amazingly expressive face.
Both these play are worth seeing, but if you can only see one, don't miss THE HUMANS.
Monday, 16 November 2015
Thursday, 12 November 2015
ALLEGIANCE, the new musical
Can one make an upbeat musical about a very sad page in American history, our inhumane treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II? These innocent people were treated like prisoners of war, robbed of their homes and trapped in what amounted to concentration camps. Not much to sing about there. ALLEGIANCE, with a book by Marc Acito, Jay Kuo and Lorenzo Thorne and music and lyrics by Jay Kuo, tries to do this with mixed success. The musical model was obviously the Boubil-Schoenberg score for LES MISERABLES. I don't dislike Boubil-Scoenberg's collaborations as much as some of the New York critic do, so I can't automatically fault Kuo for his choice of styles. The score is tuneful and energetic and never gets syrupy like the weakest moments in LES MIZ. The banal lyrics are the problem.
The central character is Sam Kimura, played as an old man by George Takei and in flashback (the bulk of the show) by Telly Leung. Sam is a rebellious young man who lives with his traditional, authoritarian father (Christpher Nomura), his lovable old grandfather (Takei again) and his sister Kei (Lea Salonga), who has had to act like a mother to him (his mother died in childbirth). When the family is sent to an internment camp in Wyoming, Sammy falls in love with a white nurse (taboo back then), and idealistically decides that the one thing that will redeem his people is if young Japanese-Americans like him battle for America in the war. His nemesis is a young firebrand Frankie (Michael K. Lee) who starts an anti-draft movement in the camp. after all, why should these ill-treated prisoners die for the US, which is treating them so badly? Of course, Sammy's sister falls in love with Frankie. Sammy's father refuses to sign an oath of loyalty to the US and is imprisoned. Sammy cuts off all relations with his sister. My problem with ALLEGIANCE is that my sympathies were with Frankie and Sammy's father, not with Sammy, whom I thought was naive and intolerant of the anger felt by the internees. Sammy becomes a war hero, an image of the patriotic Japanese-American, but he seems blind to the nasty racism he and his fellow Japanese-Americans have suffered.
Stafford Arima has directed a lovely, well paced production. Donyale Werle's sets are simple but effective, lit beautifully by Howard Binkley. The cast is uniformly excellent. Takei is charming, of course. Lea Salonga's voice is still a thing of beauty. Telly Leung makes on care about Sammy, even though he's a bit sanctimonious. The rest of the cast is fine.
FUN HOME and HAMILTON have set an almost impossibly high standard for new musicals. ALLEGIANCE is not quite up to that standard, but it's well worth seeing for the performances, the music and the important, if shameful piece of American history it dramatizes.
The central character is Sam Kimura, played as an old man by George Takei and in flashback (the bulk of the show) by Telly Leung. Sam is a rebellious young man who lives with his traditional, authoritarian father (Christpher Nomura), his lovable old grandfather (Takei again) and his sister Kei (Lea Salonga), who has had to act like a mother to him (his mother died in childbirth). When the family is sent to an internment camp in Wyoming, Sammy falls in love with a white nurse (taboo back then), and idealistically decides that the one thing that will redeem his people is if young Japanese-Americans like him battle for America in the war. His nemesis is a young firebrand Frankie (Michael K. Lee) who starts an anti-draft movement in the camp. after all, why should these ill-treated prisoners die for the US, which is treating them so badly? Of course, Sammy's sister falls in love with Frankie. Sammy's father refuses to sign an oath of loyalty to the US and is imprisoned. Sammy cuts off all relations with his sister. My problem with ALLEGIANCE is that my sympathies were with Frankie and Sammy's father, not with Sammy, whom I thought was naive and intolerant of the anger felt by the internees. Sammy becomes a war hero, an image of the patriotic Japanese-American, but he seems blind to the nasty racism he and his fellow Japanese-Americans have suffered.
Stafford Arima has directed a lovely, well paced production. Donyale Werle's sets are simple but effective, lit beautifully by Howard Binkley. The cast is uniformly excellent. Takei is charming, of course. Lea Salonga's voice is still a thing of beauty. Telly Leung makes on care about Sammy, even though he's a bit sanctimonious. The rest of the cast is fine.
FUN HOME and HAMILTON have set an almost impossibly high standard for new musicals. ALLEGIANCE is not quite up to that standard, but it's well worth seeing for the performances, the music and the important, if shameful piece of American history it dramatizes.
Sunday, 8 November 2015
Stan Richardson's VERITAS presented by The Representatives
Some years ago I read THE CRIMSON LETTER, a somewhat plodding history of the homosexual scandals at Harvard in the early 1920s. Stan Richardson's VERITAS, co-directed by Richardson and Matt Steiner, is an absorbing docudrama based on the book. The play was presented in two large rooms in the crypt of an Episcopal Church east of Union Square. One enters a dimly lit room and is offered a glass of wine. After being divided into groups an actor escorts one's group into the large room where the first half of the play is set. At intermission the audience is moved into another room for the hearing scenes, then back to the first room, which has been reset for the epilogue. Basically the play is divided into three sections. Part one gives us a picture of a group of gay students and young faculty who gather at a dormitory room for parties with bootleg booze, dancing and sex. When one of the group commits suicide, the suicide's brother discovers a cache of letters and exposes the group to the Harvard administration leading to investigation and expulsion of most of the group. An epilogue gives us a sense of what happened to the men after Harvard.
The book may have been dry, but the play is absorbing, not only because of Richardson's fast-moving script, but also because of the clever, fluid direction. The ensemble of ten actors create a vivid picture of what it meant to be a wealthy, privileged homosexual in a period when homosexuality was considered sick, sinful and, if possible, unspeakable. These entitled men simply think they are above the law until the light is shown on their activities. Even then, the more aristocratic feel superior to the investigation. Part of the fascination of the piece is that we don't see much of the anguish that gay people can feel in an age in which we were despised. We don't see much internalized homophobia -- except in the offstage suicides. These men were in some ways exceptional. We also see that, though they played together, they didn't necessarily like each other very much.
I admired the fact that Richardson didn't present these men as gay martyrs. This is not a sentimental play. Some of the men aren't particularly likable. Nonetheless watching this secret society is fascinating.
VERITAS had a very limited run. I hope it returns in an equally appropriate space.
STEVE by Mark Gerrard presented by The New Group at the Signature
STEVE is an intelligent, witty, heartfelt comedy of manners about gay midlife crisis, that point where having everything you thought you wanted doesn't seem to be enough, when you know you're not young anymore and, if you ever thought you were sexy, you don't feel sexy anymore. The play shows us how this midlife crisis affects two gay couples. The central character is Steven (Matt McGrath), an aging chorus boy in a longterm relationship with a successful lawyer, Stephen (Malcolm Gets). In the way of affluent gay couples, they have a lovely Manhattan apartment and an eight-year-old son, whose biological mother is Steven's best friend Carrie (Ashlie Atkinson), a lesbian now terminally ill with cancer. The play begins on Steven's 47th birthday, when he discovers that Stephen has been engaged in a sexting relationship with half of the couple they spend most of their time with. The knowledge of this betrayal sends Steven into a tailspin and briefly into the arms of a cute young Argentinian waiter. Meanwhile Steven and Stephen's friends Matt and Brian (Mario Cantone and Jerry Dixon) have brought home their young physical trainer for an ongoing threesome in order to keep their relationship alive.
This is the slightly dark side of the idealized picture of gay married life presented in Terrence McNally's MOTHERS AND SONS. Many a heterosexual has gone through what Steven and Stephen are experiencing, a seventeen year itch, but Mark Gerrard shows that with the acceptance of gay marriage, there will also be the bumps in the road any couple face.
The play is filled with the argot of a certain gay age group who survived AIDS. Banter is laced with references to show tunes and bitchy quips about theater and theater people (Steven, Carrie and Matt were in the business). Yet it all seems natural to the characters. There's bickering, but also a good deal of love. The playwright and the superb director Cynthia Nixon have filled the play with music. The cast sings show tunes as the audience enters the theater and, as a wonderfully camp curtain call, performs "So Long, Goodbye" from THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
Everyone is good, but special kudos to Ashlie Atkinson and Matt McGrath. We've seen the chubby lesbian gay man's best friend before, but the script makes her more than a stereotype. In the midst of the romantic-sexual turmoil of her gay male friends, Carrie is facing imminent death. Somehow losing herself in her friends' relatively trivial crises keeps her from thinking too much about hers. What can one say about Matt McGrath's performance? Steven could be irritatingly self-indulgent, but McGrath makes us care about him despite his faults. After all no one is as aware of his faults as he is. There's a wonderful ruefulness to his performance.
Delightful.
STEVE. The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center. November 5, 2015.
This is the slightly dark side of the idealized picture of gay married life presented in Terrence McNally's MOTHERS AND SONS. Many a heterosexual has gone through what Steven and Stephen are experiencing, a seventeen year itch, but Mark Gerrard shows that with the acceptance of gay marriage, there will also be the bumps in the road any couple face.
The play is filled with the argot of a certain gay age group who survived AIDS. Banter is laced with references to show tunes and bitchy quips about theater and theater people (Steven, Carrie and Matt were in the business). Yet it all seems natural to the characters. There's bickering, but also a good deal of love. The playwright and the superb director Cynthia Nixon have filled the play with music. The cast sings show tunes as the audience enters the theater and, as a wonderfully camp curtain call, performs "So Long, Goodbye" from THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
Everyone is good, but special kudos to Ashlie Atkinson and Matt McGrath. We've seen the chubby lesbian gay man's best friend before, but the script makes her more than a stereotype. In the midst of the romantic-sexual turmoil of her gay male friends, Carrie is facing imminent death. Somehow losing herself in her friends' relatively trivial crises keeps her from thinking too much about hers. What can one say about Matt McGrath's performance? Steven could be irritatingly self-indulgent, but McGrath makes us care about him despite his faults. After all no one is as aware of his faults as he is. There's a wonderful ruefulness to his performance.
Delightful.
STEVE. The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center. November 5, 2015.
Sunday, 4 October 2015
Caryl Churcill's CLOUD 9 at the Atlantic Theater Company
Well, half of CLOUD 9.
Five years ago, James Macdonald directed Mike Bartlett's terrific play COCK at the Royal Court Upstairs in London, then later recreated the production with a better American cast at the Duke on 42nd Street. For that production Macdonald turned the theaters into makeshift wooden ampitheatres, temporary theaters-in-the-round. The production was minimalist -- no furniture, no props, plain lighting. This worked for COCK. Now Macdonald has used the same approach for his revival of Caryl Churchill's 1979 play, CLOUD NINE. COCK was relatively short. CLOUD NINE isn't, and in an uncomfortable, cramped hot space, it seems even longer. The poor lady next to me took ill and there was no way for the poor dear to get out. This sadistic seating wasn't at all justified by a poorly directed production.
CLOUD NINE is Churchill's satire on British sexual mores. It was written at the beginning of the Thatcher era. The first act is set in colonial Africa in the Victorian era. A man in drag plays Betty, the unhappy Victorian wife; a woman plays Betty's gay son. The native servant is played by a white man. The characters may spout Victorian values, but underneath the language there is sexual chaos. The imposition of conventional morality is particularly evident in the marriage of a gay man and a lesbian that ends the first act. The sex/gender order must be maintained at any cost. The second act is set in the present (1979) and shows the confusion beneath the new sexual revolution. Until now, I have always found the first act to be amusing; the second act to be tiresome.
A revival of a play can demonstrate its flaws as well as its virtues. Despite an able cast, this revival had no tempo. The first act of CLOUD NINE has to move quickly. It is farce, after all. This sluggish production in an uncomfortable space made one aware how repetitive that first act is. It seemed to go on forever. There were long pauses that certainly aren't written into the script. I have never heard so few laughs during CLOUD NINE's first act. It isn't the cast's fault. Clearly this one is down to the director.
I was not the only person to leave at the intermission.
CLOUD NINE. Atlantic Theater Company. October 4, 2015.
Five years ago, James Macdonald directed Mike Bartlett's terrific play COCK at the Royal Court Upstairs in London, then later recreated the production with a better American cast at the Duke on 42nd Street. For that production Macdonald turned the theaters into makeshift wooden ampitheatres, temporary theaters-in-the-round. The production was minimalist -- no furniture, no props, plain lighting. This worked for COCK. Now Macdonald has used the same approach for his revival of Caryl Churchill's 1979 play, CLOUD NINE. COCK was relatively short. CLOUD NINE isn't, and in an uncomfortable, cramped hot space, it seems even longer. The poor lady next to me took ill and there was no way for the poor dear to get out. This sadistic seating wasn't at all justified by a poorly directed production.
CLOUD NINE is Churchill's satire on British sexual mores. It was written at the beginning of the Thatcher era. The first act is set in colonial Africa in the Victorian era. A man in drag plays Betty, the unhappy Victorian wife; a woman plays Betty's gay son. The native servant is played by a white man. The characters may spout Victorian values, but underneath the language there is sexual chaos. The imposition of conventional morality is particularly evident in the marriage of a gay man and a lesbian that ends the first act. The sex/gender order must be maintained at any cost. The second act is set in the present (1979) and shows the confusion beneath the new sexual revolution. Until now, I have always found the first act to be amusing; the second act to be tiresome.
A revival of a play can demonstrate its flaws as well as its virtues. Despite an able cast, this revival had no tempo. The first act of CLOUD NINE has to move quickly. It is farce, after all. This sluggish production in an uncomfortable space made one aware how repetitive that first act is. It seemed to go on forever. There were long pauses that certainly aren't written into the script. I have never heard so few laughs during CLOUD NINE's first act. It isn't the cast's fault. Clearly this one is down to the director.
I was not the only person to leave at the intermission.
CLOUD NINE. Atlantic Theater Company. October 4, 2015.
Saturday, 3 October 2015
Robert O'Hara's BARBECUE at the Public Theater
Robert O'Hara, one of the most interesting contemporary American, playwrights, is fascinated with cultural collisions. In BARBECUE, his latest play, fully of dizzying, surprising reversals, he turns the tables on a common trope of American theater, particularly musical theater, the appropriation of African-American culture by white cultural institutions and gives us a bizarre depiction of an African-American taking a piece of white popular culture and turning it into something that gains her the greatest award Hollywood has to offer. But what does one make of an African-American singing star-turned-film actress who claims that because she is now a big star, she can no longer be considered Black? She has risen above racial categories. This film star has obviously never heard Viola Davis's recent Emmy Award acceptance speech.
It is difficult to discuss O'Hara's play without being a spoiler. We begin at a family barbecue at a state park somewhere in middle-America. The dysfunctional family is what can be called white trash. Drink and drugs seem to be a family problem, particularly for Barbara. The family outing is supposed to be an intervention to get her to go to a rehab clinic in Alaska to give up drugs and booze. After a blackout, the saga continues, but with a Black family. You'll have to see the play to understand.
O'Hara's BARBECUE is both hilarious and thought provoking. Yes, it's about family dynamics. It's also about celebrity, American myths of success and racial and gender identity. It's about labels we impose on others and labels we impose on ourselves. Above all, it's great fun. O'Hara's theatrical world is always a bizarre cartoon-like distortion of reality.
Director Kent Gash and the large cast has given the play an excellent, perfectly paced production. Clint Ramos's set is both convincingly realistic and artificial--perfect for the play. Paul Tazewell's costumes are funny when they need to be and totally appropriate.
Highly Recommended.
It is difficult to discuss O'Hara's play without being a spoiler. We begin at a family barbecue at a state park somewhere in middle-America. The dysfunctional family is what can be called white trash. Drink and drugs seem to be a family problem, particularly for Barbara. The family outing is supposed to be an intervention to get her to go to a rehab clinic in Alaska to give up drugs and booze. After a blackout, the saga continues, but with a Black family. You'll have to see the play to understand.
O'Hara's BARBECUE is both hilarious and thought provoking. Yes, it's about family dynamics. It's also about celebrity, American myths of success and racial and gender identity. It's about labels we impose on others and labels we impose on ourselves. Above all, it's great fun. O'Hara's theatrical world is always a bizarre cartoon-like distortion of reality.
Director Kent Gash and the large cast has given the play an excellent, perfectly paced production. Clint Ramos's set is both convincingly realistic and artificial--perfect for the play. Paul Tazewell's costumes are funny when they need to be and totally appropriate.
Highly Recommended.
Thursday, 1 October 2015
Topher Payne's PERFECT ARRANGEMENT at Primary Stages
I wasn't a fan of Topher Payne's ANGRY FAGS, an overlong mess of a play, which I saw in Atlanta, Payne's home town. I had higher hopes for PERFECT ARRANGEMENT. After all, it is being produced in New York by Casey Childs' Primary Stages, a classy outfit. As someone who has been writing on gay drama for a quarter of a century, I always try to muster high hopes for any play about gay history or the experience of gay men. Alas, PERFECT ARRANGEMENT is another mess. It has moments and a few laughs but Payne hasn't decided what kind of play he is writing--sitcom, melodrama or preachy history. It is possible for situation comedy to deal with serious issues. Norman Lear proved that on television decades ago. My problem with PERFECT ARRANGEMENT is that when the play goes preachy toward the end, I found the message to be historically naive and a bit offensive. More on that anon.
It is 1950 in Washington D.C. in the midst of the Joe McCarthy reign of terror. McCarthy and his cronies have just decided to expand their target from communists to "security risks" (read homosexuals). Bob Martindale (Robert Eli), is a State Department personnel officer assigned to root out the perverts with the help of his trusty secretary, Norma Baxter (Julia Coffey). Robert, a gay man, and Norma, a lesbian, have created a "perfect arrangement" for living with their lovers. Robert has married Norma's partner Millie (Mikaela Feely-Lehmann), and Norma has married Robert's partner Jim (Christopher J. Hanke). The couples live in adjoining apartments connected by a secret door inside the closet (got it?). This is a clever situation for situation comedy and when PERFECT ARRANGEMENT begins we are in sitcom land as the couples entertain Bob and Norma's boss and his ditzy socialite wife Kitty (Jennifer van Dyck). Costume designer Jennifer Caprio has clothed the women in extravagant fifties outfits -- a lot of money was well spent on the costumes. The talk at this little gathering sounds like the banter of women in television commercials of the period. When it is announced that Bob and Norma will be handling the "security risk" cases, the stakes rise for this little "family", as they call themselves. Enter Barbara Grant, Millie's ex, who is about to be investigated and fired, and the situation becomes even more difficult.
Payne can't decide whether to stay in the realm of situation comedy or to write a melodrama. The play veers back and forth between genres. A masterful playwright like Branden Jacobs-Jenkins could have balanced the two masterfully as he has done in works like APPROPRIATE and AN OCTOROON. Of course, there is a very fine line between farce and melodrama. Payne's characters are cardboard thin. They are nothing more than their particular dilemma so there can't be much in the way of character development. This is why the character changes in the last fifteen minutes of the play seem to come out of nowhere. Yes, Bob has a serious ethical problem. In essence, he is asked to investigate and fire fellow homosexuals, but he is never developed as a character, so the audience can't quite be asked to judge him one way or another. His main objective is to protect his "family." A simpler answer than Payne provides is for Bob to quit. History shows, alas, that the nasty job would quickly be taken over by someone else.
Payne inserts a lot of serious issues here, not only the dilemma of gay people in the McCarthy era when thousands were purged from government jobs (check out the documentary on Yahoo), but also the limited role of women in the 1950s. I believe he would serve these issues better through comedy than the preachiness that takes over in Act Two. Moreover, I was a bit put off by Payne's historically naive negative judgment of Bob at the end. This is 1950, Topher, and folks had little choice but to find a way to stay in the closet or lose everything. Payne thinks these folks can just take to the streets and change official homophobia overnight. History proves such a notion is plain stupid. On the way home, I couldn't help but compare Payne's naive sense of gay history and gay politics with Roland Emmerich and Jon Robin Baitz's clunky film, STONEWALL. The participants in the Stonewall riots, which took place nineteen years after the 1950 of PERFECT ARRANGEMENT, were basically folks with nothing to lose. As playwrights Doric Wilson and Terrence McNally have pointed out in their plays STREET THEATRE and SOME MEN, middle-class gays worried about the negative effect the riots might have on their closeted lives. Payne's characters would try to hold on to what they had and who can blame them? Well, a number of folk in the theatre last night clearly could as they applauded the sermonette that attacks Bob's family for playing it safe. Come on--what would those applauding audience members have done in those circumstances? You had to be there--or at least have an understanding of what it was like to be there--to judge these characters so simplistically.
PERFECT ARRANGEMENT is an example of how mediocre drama can simplify issues in ways that can be infuriating.
I saw an early preview. The cast clearly needs more time to settle in. Right now they all seem tentative. My general impression is that the director, Michael Barakiva, hasn't been much help in imposing a style on the play. The actors seem more comfortable with the melodrama than with the sitcom. They need to watch more 1950s television. Neil Patel's set looked suspiciously bare to me, more hotel room then home. Wouldn't Bob and Millie have some pictures of themselves as a couple around as set dressing? The costumes are fabulous.
PERFECT ARRANGEMENT. Primary Stages at The Duke on 42nd Street. September 30, 2015.
It is 1950 in Washington D.C. in the midst of the Joe McCarthy reign of terror. McCarthy and his cronies have just decided to expand their target from communists to "security risks" (read homosexuals). Bob Martindale (Robert Eli), is a State Department personnel officer assigned to root out the perverts with the help of his trusty secretary, Norma Baxter (Julia Coffey). Robert, a gay man, and Norma, a lesbian, have created a "perfect arrangement" for living with their lovers. Robert has married Norma's partner Millie (Mikaela Feely-Lehmann), and Norma has married Robert's partner Jim (Christopher J. Hanke). The couples live in adjoining apartments connected by a secret door inside the closet (got it?). This is a clever situation for situation comedy and when PERFECT ARRANGEMENT begins we are in sitcom land as the couples entertain Bob and Norma's boss and his ditzy socialite wife Kitty (Jennifer van Dyck). Costume designer Jennifer Caprio has clothed the women in extravagant fifties outfits -- a lot of money was well spent on the costumes. The talk at this little gathering sounds like the banter of women in television commercials of the period. When it is announced that Bob and Norma will be handling the "security risk" cases, the stakes rise for this little "family", as they call themselves. Enter Barbara Grant, Millie's ex, who is about to be investigated and fired, and the situation becomes even more difficult.
Payne can't decide whether to stay in the realm of situation comedy or to write a melodrama. The play veers back and forth between genres. A masterful playwright like Branden Jacobs-Jenkins could have balanced the two masterfully as he has done in works like APPROPRIATE and AN OCTOROON. Of course, there is a very fine line between farce and melodrama. Payne's characters are cardboard thin. They are nothing more than their particular dilemma so there can't be much in the way of character development. This is why the character changes in the last fifteen minutes of the play seem to come out of nowhere. Yes, Bob has a serious ethical problem. In essence, he is asked to investigate and fire fellow homosexuals, but he is never developed as a character, so the audience can't quite be asked to judge him one way or another. His main objective is to protect his "family." A simpler answer than Payne provides is for Bob to quit. History shows, alas, that the nasty job would quickly be taken over by someone else.
Payne inserts a lot of serious issues here, not only the dilemma of gay people in the McCarthy era when thousands were purged from government jobs (check out the documentary on Yahoo), but also the limited role of women in the 1950s. I believe he would serve these issues better through comedy than the preachiness that takes over in Act Two. Moreover, I was a bit put off by Payne's historically naive negative judgment of Bob at the end. This is 1950, Topher, and folks had little choice but to find a way to stay in the closet or lose everything. Payne thinks these folks can just take to the streets and change official homophobia overnight. History proves such a notion is plain stupid. On the way home, I couldn't help but compare Payne's naive sense of gay history and gay politics with Roland Emmerich and Jon Robin Baitz's clunky film, STONEWALL. The participants in the Stonewall riots, which took place nineteen years after the 1950 of PERFECT ARRANGEMENT, were basically folks with nothing to lose. As playwrights Doric Wilson and Terrence McNally have pointed out in their plays STREET THEATRE and SOME MEN, middle-class gays worried about the negative effect the riots might have on their closeted lives. Payne's characters would try to hold on to what they had and who can blame them? Well, a number of folk in the theatre last night clearly could as they applauded the sermonette that attacks Bob's family for playing it safe. Come on--what would those applauding audience members have done in those circumstances? You had to be there--or at least have an understanding of what it was like to be there--to judge these characters so simplistically.
PERFECT ARRANGEMENT is an example of how mediocre drama can simplify issues in ways that can be infuriating.
I saw an early preview. The cast clearly needs more time to settle in. Right now they all seem tentative. My general impression is that the director, Michael Barakiva, hasn't been much help in imposing a style on the play. The actors seem more comfortable with the melodrama than with the sitcom. They need to watch more 1950s television. Neil Patel's set looked suspiciously bare to me, more hotel room then home. Wouldn't Bob and Millie have some pictures of themselves as a couple around as set dressing? The costumes are fabulous.
PERFECT ARRANGEMENT. Primary Stages at The Duke on 42nd Street. September 30, 2015.
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