The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence Deserves the Attention of Smart Theatergoers

 

Whoever is picking the plays for Playwrights Horizons clearly wants the people who see them to come out thinking hard and talking seriously about them. 

So far this season, the company has produced Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play (the after-the-apocalypse tale about a world in which “The Simpsons” sitcom is a sacred text that I didn’t initially warm to—click here for my review—but I’m still thinking about three whole months after having seen it) and The Patron Saint of Sea Monsters (a trying-too-hard-to-be-clever black comedy that I disliked so much, I left at intermission).  

Now comes The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence, three thematically-linked and interwoven stories about the push and pull of relationships that managed to both challenge and charm me. 

Central to each story is someone named Watson. In one, it is Thomas A. Watson, the assistant to whom Alexander Graham Bell placed the world’s first telephone call. In another, it is Dr. John Watson, the trusty sidekick and Boswell to Sherlock Holmes.  And in the third, it is both a robot cousin to the IBM supercomputer that won the TV game show “Jeopardy!” and a sweet IT guy who bumbles into a romantic triangle.

 

Similarly, all the women in these three-character tales are named Eliza and all the other males are called Merrick. This could be confusing but sharp direction by Leigh Silverman,  smart costumes by Anita Yavich and a fast-moving team of dressers do a great job of keeping each narrative distinct while still allowing them to combine into a resonant meditation on the roles desire and need play in our quest to connect with one another.   

But of course, major credit must go to playwright Madeleine George, who came up with this period-jumping piece that boasts the same mix of post-modern cheekiness and heart that has made George Saunders' collection of short stories one of the most acclaimed books of this year.  

Madeleine George's exploration of love is so heartfelt that although she's a newlywed, I found myself wondering if she'd written the play to help her move past a bad breakup or a relationship she still regrets. She doesn’t pretend to have answers to the questions her play poses but she clearly delights in pondering them (click here to read an interview with her).

 

Yet the biggest hand must be saved for the three-member cast of David Costabile, Amanda Quaid, who was so very good in the play Cock and is becoming an actress worth seeking out, and most of all, John Ellison Conlee, who is giving one of the best performances of the entire year.

Now, this is where I say that this isn’t a perfect play.  Cause it's not. It trips over its own feet in places (including with the too cutsie title).  And there’s a coda that saps some of the momentum that has come before it. 

But there’s also an earlier scene in which IT guy Watson declares his love for modern-day Eliza that is going into my pantheon of all-time great romantic scenes alongside Bette Davis and Paul Henreid sharing a cigarette in “Now Voyager,” John Cusack holding up a boom box outside Ione Skye’s room in “Say Anything,” and Fosca’s singing “Loving You” in Stephen Sondheim’s Passion. 

That scene alone is worth making the effort to see The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence before it closes on Dec. 29. 

Hurrahs for Celebrated Moments in the Theater

Last night my theatergoing buddy Bill and I went to see an NT Live encore presentation of  the 50th anniversary celebration that London's National Theatre threw for itself last month.  And although I hadn't intended to write about it, I can't resist saying a few words because it was such great fun.  

There were video clips of performances by the company’s founder and guiding spirit Laurence Olivier and live appearances by actors who have been company members over the years from Maggie Smith (also utterly delightful in a clip from the 1964 production of Hay Fever, directed by Noel Coward) Derek Jacobi, Judi Dench and Olivier’s widow Joan Plowright to Adrian Lester, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddelston and Joey, the equestrian puppet from War Horse. 

 

I saw some of the later productions—The History Boys (terrific to see the play’s author Alan Bennett ably filling in for the late Richard Griffiths, who died earlier this year) One Man, Two Guvnors; Jerry Springer-The Opera.

And I wish I’d been able to see some of the earlier ones: the company's inaugural production of Hamlet with Peter O’Toole in the title role and Rosemary Harris as Ophelia, David Hare’s The Absence of War and, of course, all of Smith's Hay Fever.  

 

You can get a peek at several of them (as I did) with the iPad app “50 Years of the National Theatre” that the National released last month (click here for it) or with the wonderfully detailed and illustrated program from the Nov. 1 anniversary celebration (click here for that).  

And if your nostalgia runs more towards domestic theater, the folks at Marriott Hotels have put together a great interactive timeline of some of the best Broadway musicals from 1937’s Pins and Needles to the current day’s Kinky Boots,” (which you can see by clicking here).

How "Macbeth" Vanquishes Ethan Hawke

You’ve got to love Ethan Hawke.  Or at least I do.  I can’t think of another actor working today who displays such obvious love for the theater—from his choice of challenging roles in plays ranging from Chekhov to Stoppard to the comradely slaps on the back he gives his fellow actors at curtain calls to his enthusiastic participation in cast parties (my husband K and I spotted him at one at the West Bank Cafe and he wasn’t making one of those obligatory drive-by appearances; in fact, he was just about the last person to leave).

As I said, you gotta love the guy. So it pains me to say this but it’s hard to love Hawke’s interpretation of Macbeth in Lincoln Center Theater’s new production of Shakespeare’s tragedy about the overly ambitious nobleman who murders his way to the Scottish throne.  

There has been a rash of Macbeths over the last few years—Patrick Stewart, Alan Cumming and Kenneth Branagh in an acclaimed production due here this summer—and each actor has burrowed into the character’s troubled soul. Hawke, however, isn’t able to breach the surface.  

In fact, the whole production, directed by the usually reliable Jack O’Brien is, as a famous line from the play says, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Just as David Leveaux did with his production of Romeo and Juliet (which is closing this weekend, a month ahead of schedule) O’Brien has filled the stage with dazzling things to look at.

Seemingly real flowers wither and decay in the blink of an eye. Blazing torches, lasers and other fancy lighting by Japhy Weideman create an appropriately eerie mood. 

And the stunning gowns Catherine Zuber has designed for Lady Macbeth are to die for (although her costumes for the men are all over the place—“Game of Thrones” leather for daywear and “Downton Abbey-style” frock coats for evening).

Where the production really falls down is in its performances. Nearly everyone on stage, most egregiously Hawke, races through his or her speeches as though afraid of forgetting the lines. 

Moreover, their voices not only lack projection but, with a few exceptions (Richard Easton’s dignified Duncan, Daniel Sunjata’s macho Macduff [click here for a Q&A with him] and, most especially Bianca Amato as an affecting Lady Macduff) they’re missing resonance and emotion as well.

It may be unfair to make comparisons to the Twelfth Night and Richard III that Mark Rylance has brought to Broadway from London’s Globe theater, but speech after speech in this Macbeth made me wonder if that old canard about American’s being unable to do Shakespeare as well as the Brits might be true. 

Except that Lady Macbeth is played by the celebrated British actress Anne-Marie Duff, who, in her American debut, fares little better. Her sleepwalking scene left most of the audience yawning.

As always, the crowd pleasers are the three witches who predict Macbeth’s fate. O’Brien has cast men—Malcolm Gets, John Glover and Byron Jennings—in the roles and they, particularly Glover, camp it up. 
   
But, as my sister Joanne said, at least they’re lively (click here to read about them).  Apparently deciding to make full use of the best card he's been dealt, O'Brien has added them to almost every scene. So, after a while, even they wear out their welcome.

Still, there is one area in which Hawke acquits himself well.  Popular with young women, who love his romantic movies “Before Sunrise” and "Before Sunset;” and with guys, who like his turns in horror films like “Sinister” and “The Purge,” he is drawing a young and racially diverse audience to the Vivian Beaumont theater where the production is scheduled to run until Jan. 12. The college-age girls sitting next to me swooned every time Hawke came onstage.

Theater lovers who are fussier about their Shakespeare would probably do better to head to the Belasco Theater, where the Rylance productions are playing in rep.  Or to wait for some other chance—and I'm sure it will come—to love Hawke again.

Why I'm Going Along with "And Away We Go"

People who love theater love shows about the theater.  Which is why there are so many backstage musicals, dramas and comedies from 42nd Street to the upcoming Bullets Over Broadway, from The Seagull to Noises Off.   

And it’s also why my theatergoing buddy Bill and I, diehard theater junkies, tramped over to the far western stretch of 42nd Street to see The Pearl Theatre Company’s production of And Away We Go, Terrence McNally’s chronicle of significant moments in theater history, which opened this week for a very limited run that’s scheduled to end Dec. 15.

I had been expecting a cavalcade of scenes similar to the ones in David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre in which two actors dress up in an assortment of costumes to perform mock versions of plays that range from farce to melodrama. And Away We Go’s posters, with actors decked out in brocaded 18th century garb, seemed to promise something like that. 

But, with mixed results, McNally and director Jack Cummings III take a distinctly different approach.

And Away We Go does offer a waiting-in-the-wings look at performances ranging from the ancient Greek festivals at which mask-wearing members of the chorus invoke the mercy of the gods to the late 20th century morality plays in which AIDS-ravaged young men yearn for the deliverance of angels.

There are also stops in between at Shakespeare’s Globe, the Comédie-Française, the Moscow Art Theatre and the Coconut Grove Playhouse where Waiting for Godot made its American debut in 1956.  But, be it due to budget constraints or aesthetic preference, very little is done to simulate any of those settings.

Instead, the set, designed by Sandra Goldmark, looks like a ramshackle prop shop, crammed with period furniture, old lighting equipment, leftover costumes and casts of actors’ heads. It’s all great fun to look at and provides an entertaining alternative whenever the play's action flags.

The actors walk onto the stage in contemporary clothes, which they wear throughout the next 100 minutes, whether they are recreating a scene at the 16th century dining table of Richard Burbage, who originated the roles of Hamlet, Othello and Richard III, or a samovar break during a rehearsal for a Chekhov premiere around the turn of the last century.

This all puts a lot of burden on the performances. And, alas, the acting by six members of The Pearl's resident company, including two newcomers, is uneven.

Stripped of the conventional ways—costumes, makeup, props—to create their characters, the actors lean heavily on ethnic accents to distinguish the different people they play in each scene. But some focus so much on getting the intonation down that they forget it’s equally important to get the words out in a way that the audience can understand them.

They’re also called upon to be emotionally fluent as the scenes flow into one another, changing settings with no advanced warning. And here again, the results are spotty. Some actors hit the comedy too hard, while others make the pathos too hammy. One of the few to navigate a steady course through it all is the company’s longtime leading man Sean McNall.

And yet, it’s hard to resist McNally’s obvious love of actors and his deep appreciation for the survival of their art form. He lards And Away We Go with references to the precarious nature of the theater that draws intentional comparison to The Pearl’s own financial situation, which has been so shaky that it prompted an emergency letter to the company’s subscribers earlier this year (click here to read about it).

I usually hate that kind of meta stuff and I’ll confess that these embedded pleas for support did take me out of the play. But in the end, I got on board because I, too, want the theater—including The Pearl and its continuing commitment to performing classics like the Greeks, Shakespeare and Chekhov—to keep going and going.

"The Snow Geese" and "The Winslow Boy" Aren’t Flops But They Aren’t High-Fliers Either

Are theater producers becoming like their counterparts in the movie business and saving their best stuff for the time closest to awards season?  I ask because this is the second fall in a row in which the shows—at least the new ones—have been really disappointing. 

Sure, there’s a lot of excitement over this season’s prestige productions—Cherry Jones and Zachary Quinto in The Glass Menagerie, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz in Betrayal, Mark Rylance doing both Twelfth Night and Richard III and the “X-Men” (and RSC vets) Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in rep with Waiting for Godot and No Man’s Land—but those are all revivals.

Eight original productions have opened since the romcom First Date arrived in August and they haven’t fared nearly as well. Two (Soul Doctor and A Time to Kill) have already closed and two others (First Date and Big Fish) have posted notices and will shut down at the end of the holidays. 

 

Meanwhile, limping along with the crutch of subscription audiences are the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of The Winslow Boy, which will end its scheduled run on Dec. 1, and MCC and the Manhattan Theatre Club’s joint production of The Snow Geese, which will fly off as originally announced on Dec. 15. 

They’re both nicely designed productions (I'd happily move into either of the homes created onstage) and cast with accomplished actors (a special shout-out to Michael Cumpsty in The Winslow Boy and Victoria Clark in The Snow Geese) but both shows are as bland as pabulum.

 

My husband K is a big Terence Rattigan fan and so we had high hopes for the revival of The Winslow Boy, Rattigan’s 1946 play about a father’s ruinous quest to preserve his family’s honor by clearing the name of his teen son who has been expelled from a prestigious military academy after being accused of stealing. 

 

Three movies have been made from this Edwardian-era morality tale, which Rattigan based on a real-life case. And the story not only has “Downton Abbey” appeal but juicy roles for all eight members of the cast, most particularly the father and the boy’s older sister.  Alas, it is there where this production falls down.  

 

I’m a big fan of the masterly actor Roger Rees (who’s been great in projects ranging from his Tony-winning turn as the title character in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby to his appearances as Sam Malone’s millionaire rival on TV’s “Cheers") but he’s miscast here (click here to read an interview with him). 

 

The father’s transformation from a bastion of overbearing rectitude to a man broken by his own bullheadedness is supposed to provide the play’s emotional arc but Rees, under the shaky direction of Lindsay Posner (click here to read her take on the production) is never able to summon up the requisite arrogance and the tragedy is softened without it.  

 

Similarly, the sister Catherine starts off as a dilettante who dabbles in suffragist causes but ends the show as a woman whose political mettle has been finely honed. But Charlotte Parry starts off iron-willed and has nowhere to grow. The Winslow Boy shaped by these performances isn’t bad but it fails to stir the heart.

 

The Snow Geese doesn’t generate much passion either. Although set in the same era around World War I, it's a brand new play by Sharr White, who won acclaim for last season’s production of The Other Place, although not from me (click here to read my review).

 

The story purports to be about a fortysomething widow whose idyllic life is shattered by the death of her husband and the unexpected debts he’s left behind. But the play is also yet another homage to Chekhov (seagull, snow geese, get it?) complete with a country home setting, world-weary relatives and a resident doctor, played here with customary finesse by Danny Burstein. 

 

The widow is played by Mary-Louise Parker, who looks lovely in the gowns Jane Greenwood has designed for her but neither Parker nor director Daniel Sullivan seem to have worked out what else the role demands (click here to read an interview with the star).

 

Further complicating matters is the fact that Parker, although an age appropriate 49, looks too young to be the mother of grown sons. This adds to the play’s general confusion because Evan Jonigkeit and newcomer Brian Cross (click here to read a piece about him) often look as though they might be her lovers instead of her sons. 

 

On the other hand, there are flashbacks to scenes with the husband that are equally confusing because they add so little to the storytelling.  In fact, I’ve no idea what White is trying to say at all. The Snow Goose is the kind of play that were it a movie would probably be released in the the stay-at-home months of winter.

Who's Won the Chance to Hail Macbeth?

It’s a little surprising to me but you guys seem to prefer free cast recordings and tell-all books to free theater seats. Still, a couple of you did write in for the giveaway of two free tickets to see Lincoln Center Theater’s new production of Macbeth, directed by the ever-inventive Jack O’Brien and starring the always-passionate Ethan Hawke.

Once again, everyone who responded to my giveaway question about who last played Macbeth on Broadway got it right and once again the right answer was Alan Cumming. So after the usual ritual (I put names in hat, my husband  K plucks one out) the winner is Ron Kaehler.

Kudos to him and to the rest of you who participated in this giveaway go-around. And here are a couple of consolation prizes for everyone:

The first is a brief sneak peek at the meet-and-greet between the press and the cast (which in addition to Hawke, includes Richard Easton as the doomed King Duncan; Brian D’Arcy James and Daniel Sunjata as Macbeth’s comrades-in-arms-turned-rivals Banquo and Macduff; Malcolm Gets, John Glover and Byron Jennings as the witches; young Jonny Orsini as the eventual victor Malcolm and Anne-Marie Duff as Lady Macbeth). You can view it by clicking here.

The second is a 30-minute interview with Hawke about his career and how he got into acting, which you can see here.

And if all of this makes you eager to see the production, which just opened on Thursday and is scheduled to run through Jan. 12, you can get a discount off the ticket price if you use the code:  MACBLOG89.

And Now a Giveaway for the Scottish Play

Theater lovers who love Shakespeare must be thrilled with this season, which has turned out to be the theatrical equivalent of a greatest hits album featuring nearly all the Bard’s most beloved plays. 

So far I’ve done a Twelfth Night and a Richard III (which I actually see tonight) in repertory on Broadway, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and a Julius Caesar off-Broadway, two Romeo & Juliets, one on and one off Broadway, and the NT Live simulcast of Othello.
  

Next up for me is Lincoln Center Theatre’s production of Macbeth, starring Ethan Hawke and the multi-Olivier Award-nominated actress Anne-Marie Duff as the murderously ambitious thane and his wife. Plus there's a badass all-male trio of witches played by three of New York’s most badass character actors: Malcolm Gets, Byron Jennings and John Glover (click here to read a preview piece about them).

And seeing what theater people call "The Scottish Play" could be next for you too because the folks at Lincoln Center have given me two free tickets to give away.   

But we’ll have to move fast because the tickets are only good for performances until Dec. 14 and the reservations must be made by Dec. 4. 

 So, email me the name of the last actor to play Macbeth on Broadway at jan@broadwayandme.com (sorry about the technical glitch; the address is jan@broadwayandme.com) by midnight this Friday, Nov. 22, and I’ll go through my usual ritual of picking a name out of a hat and then will announce the winner on Saturday.