Thankful Thoughts for This Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! 

It’s been a crazy month. An avalanche of shows have been opening both on and off Broadway. I’ve seen 20 of them over the past four weeks—some good, some just OK, a few actually great and, to be honest, at least one that was dreadful. But I’ve been so busy seeing them (and trying to tend to the other things in my life, including squeezing in a birthday celebration for my husband K who has very patiently put up with all this theatergoing) that I haven't had the chance to write here as much as I would have liked.

However I did manage to share some thoughts about a half dozen shows on Broadway & Me Quickies, my collection of short reviews that I hope give a sense of what’s good and not so good about the productions I’ve seen for folks who may not have time to get through longer reviews (you can check those quickies out by clicking here).

And last Sunday, I joined my BroadwayRadio pals James Marino, Peter Filichia and Michael Portantiere on the “This Week on Broadway” podcast to talk about a few of the season’s big shows, including Chess, Oedipus and the Tom Hanks’ play This World of Tomorrow (you can hear all of that by clicking here).

Finally, I do try to keep up with the news about what’s going on in the theatrical world and to share it in my Flipboard magazine, which you can read by clicking here. And I've created a Substack archive of all the episodes of "All the Drama," my podcast on Pulitzer Prize-winning plays and musicals (I’m really excited about the one for December that's going to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Hamilton and hope you’ll check that out)

So although I’m a bit tired—and despite the ongoing challenges in the world—I’ve a lot to be thankful for, including those of you who read this blog and listen to my podcasts. And I’m hoping that your holiday weekend is filled with loved ones, good food and drink, lots of laughter and maybe some theatergoing too.   

"Kyoto" is a Call to Action on Climate Change

The only thing small about Kyoto, the latest import from Britain that opened this week at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse theater, is its one-word title. Everything else is outsized: the show runs nearly three hours, it features a cast of 14, it has two authors (Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson) and two directors (Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin). And its subject is the 10-year struggle to get the nations of the world to come together on a plan to address the outsized issue of climate change. Those negotiations resulted in the titular Kyoto Protocol that was finally adopted in 1997 but which the U.S. Congress still has yet to ratify.

Now negotiations surrounding an international treaty would hardly seem to be compelling theater. And a lot of complicated information about climate science and bureaucratic procedures does get tossed around. Yet I found this to be a fascinating evening of theater. 

Murphy and Robertson, who a few years ago dramatized the international immigrant crisis with their much-acclaimed immersive piece The Jungle, have centered this story around Don Pearlman, the real-life American lawyer who became an oil industry lobbyist and the chief mastermind when it came to thwarting any efforts to address climate change (click here to read more about him). 

In the tradition of Shakespeare’s Richard III, Pearlman serves as the show’s narrator and its primary villain. The American actor Stephen Kunken portrayed Pearlman when this production played to sold-out audiences in London and he’s come home with it, offering the kind of seductively wily performance that makes you root for his character even though you know you shouldn’t.   

Most of the production takes a Brechtian approach to telling Pearlman’s story. Characters don’t have names but are identified by the countries they represent at the series of conferences held over the years to address the climate problem. 

And under Daldry and Martin's energizing direction both the delegates’ language and their movements are often highly stylized. Believe it or not, one of the most amusing scenes in the play is one in which the delegates debate grammar.

Video projections, aided by Aideen Malone's excellent lighting, help to establish the location of each meeting and provide context about what’s going on in the world at the time. The audience is pulled into playing a role too. When you enter the theater, you’re handed a badge that identifies you are as one of the groups attending the proceedings. I was an NGO. 

A few audience members are also seated at the big round table that is scenic designer Miriam Buether’s main set piece. At times they’re instructed to take an even more active part in what’s going on. The ones at my performance looked to be having a great time.

The actual actors also hand up a few cameo appearances of recognizable personalities who turn up at the various conferences: the German chancellor Angela Merkel, the film director Werner Herzog and the then-U.S. vice president Al Gore. 

But besides Pearlman the only characters we really get to know are Raúl Estrada-Oyuela, the amiable Argentinian diplomat who chairs the Kyoto meeting (Jorge Bosch reprises his Olivier-nominated performance) and Pearlman’s wife Shirley, who becomes increasingly horrified as she learns how far her husband will go to undermine any and all attempts to cut back on the damaging use of oil and other fossil fuels.

Played in a finely understated performance by Natalie Gold, Shirley Pearlman serves as a stand-in for those of us who are too often willing to look the other way from the climate threat for the sake of personal convenience and she's a reminder that we should be paying better attention if we have any interest in keeping the planet habitable for future generations.

And here's where I should confess that I have a weak spot for big one-word, state-of-the-world plays like Oslo, Patriots, Ink and my personal favorite Enron, which ran for just 16 performances back in 2010. Even when flawed, these shows make me reckon with my own role in the world, which is what I think good theater should do. 

Still reviews for Kyoto have been mixed and the response from the audience the night I saw the show was muted. Which is ironic because that kind of apathy is the point of the play.

 

 

Going Solo: "The Least Problematic Woman in the World," "Other" and "Did You Eat?

One-person shows are popping up everywhere. And it makes sense that they should.  They’re comparatively cheap to put on since by definitiion there’s only one performer to pay and the costume and set—when there is a set—are usually simple, all of which matter in this high-cost theatrical environment. Plus as United Solo, the theater festival currently running at Theatre Row through Nov. 23, demonstrates, these shows come in lots of different forms: stand-up routines, formal recitations, full narratives in which the one actor plays many characters and, increasingly, confessional pieces in which the performer shares past trauma. 

The latter seem to be the one breaking out of the festival circuit and I recently saw three of those autobiographical works in well-established off-Broadway venues. As I watched those shows, I found myself wondering why the performers were telling me such intimate things, whether it was difficult for them to relive those painful experiences night after night and, finally, why I should care about any of it. Yet each audience was full and many people seemed moved by what they were seeing. You may be too so here’s a sneak peek at each of them:

The show: The Least Problematic Woman in the World @ the Lucille Lortel Theatre

The performer: The social media personality Dylan Mulvaney, who chronicled her gender transition on TikTok

What she shares: The 28-year-old recounts her full life as a trans woman, from her childhood days desperately wishing she could dress as a girl right up through the controversy when MAGA conservatives threatened to boycott Bud Light after the beer brand featured Mulvaney in a social media promotion. Her show works because Mulvaney is not only naturally engaging but also a trained musical-comedy performer who appeared in The Book of Mormon and she uses all of her skills to give her current audience a good time so that even before the show starts, she wanders around in an angel-winged costume to take selfies with fans. Tim Jackson has directed the show smartly and both the set (primarily a pink Barbie’s Dream House interior) and her costumes are just tacky enough to fit in with the sweetly campy vibe. Plus there are nifty original songs by such well known composers as Ingrid Michaelson and Six creators Toby Marlow & Lucy Moss. 

Did I care:  Yeah. Although with an official 75 minute run time—that can stretch past 90—the show is too long but trans people are under serious threat right now and having someone like Mulvaney standing centerstage and proudly telling her story is meaningful.

 

The show: Other @ Greenwich House Theatre

The performer: Tony winner Ari’el Stachel, who won a supporting actor award for his performance in The Band’s Visit

What he shares: Shame is the motivating factor driving Stachel’s show. It charts his struggle with severe anxiety, which he traces all the way back to when he was diagnosed at just five with obsessive-compulsive disorder and which now manifests itself in panic attacks that can cause sweat to literally drip off the actor whenever he’s feeling stressed, including when he's onstage (many hankies were soaked as he blotted off the perspiration at the performance I attended). But the show is also fueled by the lifelong uneasiness and shame Stachel has felt about his racial identity as the son of a light-skinned Ashkenazi Jewish-American mother and a darker-skinned Yemenite Jewish father who bore a resemblance to Osama bin Laden, the latter a real problem in the wake of 9/11 when schoolmates started calling young Ari a terrorist. And so over the years, Stachel has claimed at various times to be white or black and he has faced push back when he has been cast in roles that others considered to be rightfully theirs. This show, under the tight direction of Tony Taccone, is his declaration that he is no longer ashamed of who he is or how he presents and is now on his way to making peace with himself.

Did I care: Kind of. I wish Stachel had settled on one of his issues and really dug deep into it. Instead, right now the show seems more like a therapy session than a performance piece. And to my shame, I have to confess that I was put off by all the visible sweating.

 

The show: Did You Eat?

The performer: Korean-American actor and writer Zoë Kim

What she shares: Emotional hunger and how to survive an abusive childhood are the subject of this autobiographical piece by Kim who grew up in Korea as the only child of parents who desperately wanted a son. And then when she migrated to the U.S. to attend school in her teens, she continued to be plagued by the obligations and oppression of her home culture that prized male children. Director Chris Yejin and choreographer Iris McCloughan have put together a production that uses English, Korean (subtitles are projected on screens) and stylized movement to tell Kim’s often harrowing story, which includes a kidnapping and a murder attempt.

Did I care: Not enough. Kim is a lovely performer but her story seems too specific to her and at the same time she skips over too many important plot points (how did she survive so much physical abuse without people noticing? how did she meet the man who helped her to heal?) The result is that I spent more time wondering how things could have happened than I spent truly feeling for what had been done to her.