A Tardy Celebration of 18 Years of B&Me

Even though these are crazy times, I don’t know how I let last week’s anniversary of Broadway & Me slip by. I started writing here on Feb. 14, 2007, which means it’s now been 18 years (and eight days) that I’ve had the joy of sharing my thoughts with you about the shows I've seen, theater books I've read, theater movies I’ve watched and theater podcasts I’ve listen to.

This past year was a tough one for me personally and more than ever I leaned on theater (and of course on my ever-supportive husband K) to lift up my spirits. And theater delivered in more ways than I could have anticipated. One of them was being asked to serve as the chair of last year’s jury for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, which went to Eboni Booth’s lovely play Primary Trust. 

I was also delighted to be asked to be a nominator for the Lortel Awards that celebrate off-Broadway shows, which often are among my favorite shows. And I continue to enjoy joining my friend Patrick Pacheco to talk about the New York theater season on occasional episodes of his TV show “THEATER: All the Moving Parts” (our spring preview is coming up soon).

And thanks to BroadwayRadio top gun James Marino, I've continued hosting the podcasts Stagecraft, which features interviews with playwrights and musical book writers about their new shows on both Broadway and off-Broadway; and All the Drama, which devotes each episode to one of the Pulitzer Prize-winning plays. Plus James has also frequently invited me to fill in on the network's flagship "This Week on Broadway" podcast when one of its regular commentators Peter Filichia or Michael Portantiere can't make it (click here to listen to my most recent time on the show). 

In addition to writing here, I also still post articles almost daily on the Flipboard site and even added a new magazine to keep up with all the recent news about Wicked. And I’ve migrated over to BlueSky to chime in on its discussions on all kinds of theater-related subjects. But I think that maybe my favorite thing I’ve done over the past year was to launch Broadway & Me Quickies, mini-reviews of shows I’ve seen that can be read in about a minute. 

My favorite thing about these anniversary posts is that they give me the chance to once again thank those of you who over the years have subscribed to and read these postings, listened to my podcasts, befriended me on Facebook, checked out my Flipboard magazines or more recently found me on BlueSky. And I also want to welcome those of you who may have just stumbled onto this blog for the first time. I'm grateful for all of you and, of course, for the theater we all love and nowadays need more than ever.

 

 

 

"My Man Kono" Tweaks the American Story

A thank you to the National Endowment for the Arts is prominently displayed on the cover of the program for My Man Kono, the new show that Pan Asian Repertory Theatre opened this week at A.R.T./New York Theatres.  

I winced when I saw it because now that the Trump administration has ordered the NEA to eliminate its grant program for underserved communities, withhold funds from organizations that promote diversity, equity and inclusion and discourage projects that criticize America in anyway, it’s unlikely that the NEA will be funding shows like My Man Kono anytime in the near future.

For playwright Philip W. Chung’s drama chronicles the real-life story of Toraichi Kono who immigrated to this country around the turn of the last century, worked as a chauffeur and general factotum for Charlie Chaplin and then just before WWII, was accused of being a spy for Imperial Japan. It’s a piece of American history little-known to most of us and Chung has gone all in on the research. Maybe too much so. 

The play, told in flashbacks, unfolds like the term paper of a student determined to earn an A+ in AP History. Chung makes the grade (it is instructive to learn that being relocated to internment camps wasn't the only hardship Japanese-Americans experienced before, during and after WWII) but Chung scores considerably lower when it comes to crafting a dramatic narrative. 

Because the play covers six decades of Kono’s life, the incidents he encounters and the people he meets are only sketchily drawn. And because seven of the eight-member cast play multiple roles it’s hard to latch on to any of them, be it Kono’s long-suffering wife or the third-rate actor who becomes his nemesis.  

Charlie Chaplin does stand out but that’s probably because most people who see the play will already have their own ideas—mainly positive—about the silent-movie icon. Chung and his director Jeff Liu know this and so they drop Chaplin into as many scenes as they can (his image even dominates the show’s logo). 

Conlan Ledwith does a good job of capturing the comedian’s onscreen mannerisms and real-life vocal patterns but devoting less space to Chaplin might have made more room for Chung and Liu to develop Kono’s character. 

Brian Lee Huynh gives an earnest portrayal of Kono but the Wikipedia entry I read when I got home (and the somewhat  rakish photo that accompanied it) suggests that the real Kono was a more dynamic and complex guy who naturally charmed officials both here and in Japan and who also delighted in his proximity to celebrity and the power that comes with it. 

But Chung has other things on his mind. The show's second act focuses on the 1948 deportation hearing on Kono’s involvement in passing military secrets to the Japanese. Chung clearly wants to use the case to illustrate the bias against immigrants and the anti-Asian racism that have long been a part of the American story. But in doing that he tamps down Kono's personality and leaves the question of his culpability in the espionage up in the air. 

Which is a shame because Kono’s story and those of other people from underserved or under-observed communities whose experiences also played a role in shaping the America of today are worth fully exploring—despite flaws in the subjects or in the storytelling—and there may now be fewer opportunities to get them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"The Antiquities" is Superbly Up-to-Date

History, they say, is written by the winners and the winners in Jordan Harrison’s thought-provoking new play The Antiquities are the artificial intelligence entities that the play imagines will eventually replace human beings. The time seems to be somewhere in the late 22nd century and the setting is a history museum that gives the play its full formal title: A Tour of the Permanent Collection in the Museum of Late Human Antiquities. 

And so each of the play’s scenes represents an exhibit centered on a distinct time period, ranging from 1816 to 2240, in which humans wrestle in one degree or another with technology. The first exhibit is a re-creation of the now legendary evening in which Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and their friend the physician John Polidori challenged one another to come up with the best horror story. Mary won with her tale "Frankenstein" about a scientist who uses his skills to give life to an inanimate creature.  

Other exhibits focus on rural 19th century laborers adjusting to factory work, a 20th century family getting its first dial-up computer, 21st century techies fine-tuning the voice for a Siri-like digital assistant and a writer a few decades later consulting with her doctor about a digital implant that will make her smarter.

In each case trade-offs are made. The humans in every era believe that the new technology will make life easier, longer and perhaps may even develop a way to make them immortal. But at the same time, they are also giving up more and more control to the inanimate but increasingly powerful entities they’ve created.

Now I don’t usually go in for this kind of speculative sci-fi stuff but Harrison is the author of Marjorie Prime, a drama about a future in which holograms of the dead serve as companions to those left behind. It was so finely and sensitively rendered that it was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (click here to read my review of it).  

And Harrison is just as effective here, refusing to give in to the usual dystopian tropes that fuel so many current movies and TV series but also sidestepping the future-is-ours optimism that dominated so much of the last century.  Instead he asks what makes humankind believe that evolution stops with us? (click here to read more of what he has to say).

He's aided by a cast of nine incredibly ambidextrous actors, who, with the help of Brenda Abbandandolo’s sly costumes—and what must be an army of quick-change dressers—transform themselves into dozens of distinct characters, sometimes so completely that they’re not recognizable from one scene to the next.  

The show’s set design by Paul Steinberg is sleekly futuristic, its lighting by Tyler Micoleau is nimble and its sound design by Christopher Darbassie creates a subtle soundscape that is just slightly—but totally appropriately—off-kilter. 

Holding it all together is the sure-handed direction of David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan. I have no idea how they divided their directorial duties but the result is seamless. Without undermining the seriousness of the questions Harrison’s script raises or fabricating feel-good answers, they find a way to make room for the humor and the sexiness he’s also tucked into it. 

It's anyone's guess what some entity in the future might make of this play, a co-production of Chicago's Goodman Theatre, the Vineyard Theatre and Playwrights Horizons that has just been extended at Playwrights Horizons through March 2, but right now it’s a superb demonstration of what humans can do.  

 

"A Knock on the Roof" Pushes too Hard

When the Palestinian playwright Khawla Ibraheem began working on her one-woman show A Knock on the Roof a decade ago, it was a 10-minute monologue. Now the show, which is currently playing at New York Theatre Workshop, runs about 85 minutes and I wish I could have seen the shorter version. I don’t mean that to be a slam against the current show’s message. I’m just lamenting how it goes about delivering it.

The title refers to the Israeli military’s practice of dropping a small “warning” bomb on the rooftop of a building in Gaza or the West Bank to alert the inhabitants that they have just a few minutes to get out before a larger bomb will destroy the entire structure and everything in it. 

This story about one woman's attempt to live an ordinary life in the face of such extraordinary circumstances is particularly resonant right now after 15 months of Israel’s scorched-earth response to Hamas' Oct. 7 assault has led to the deaths of over 45,000 Palestinians and the displacement of nearly 2 million others.  

Ibraheem’s character Mariam is the young middle-class mother of a six-year-old son who has become obsessed with how she might respond to the “knock.”  And so she begins to rehearse grabbing up her son along with whatever necessities she can stuff into a backpack and making practice runs to see how far away she can get from danger. 

It’s a compelling set-up. And it’s a welcomed reminder that there are real people behind the statistics we see on the news, people who worry about serious things like how to deal with aged parents and frivolous ones like which skin care regimens really work just the way those of us in far less fraught situations do.

But Ibraheem and director Oliver Butler who is credited with developing this longer version with her (click here to listen to an interview about how they did it) don’t seem to know what to say once they’ve gotten our attention and so they just keep repeating the same things over and over again. 

My friend Lisa suggests that the repetitions might represent Mariam's mounting mania. It's a good theory but if that's the case, I wish Ibraheem and Butler had been able to make that clearer.

Instead, they introduce some other characters—Mariam’s mother who further complicates things by moving in with her daughter and grandson, her husband whose constant calls from abroad where he's studying become another hassle and their young son—but since Ibraheem is the only performer, she has to portray all of them, and I'm afraid she doesn't always make them distinct enough. 

To be fair, Ibraheem is an engaging performer but her accent and the pitch of her voice can make it difficult to understand some of the dialog, regardless of who’s supposed to be speaking.  And I just got tired of watching her pretend to run on NYTW’s bare stage. 

There are a few attempts to more actively involve the audience (some members are seated onstage, the lights are often left up and Ibraheem occasionally asks questions like how many underwear should she pack and then waits for people to answer) but, at least at the performance I attended, those interactions were awkward. The show's surprise ending was strained too.

A story as intrinsically powerful as this one doesn’t need a lot of gimmicks. It doesn’t need to be drawn out either. As the saying goes, sometimes less can be more.