At Home with "The Orphan's Home Cycle"

Movie fans have sequels and prequels, TV viewers have long had mini-series and now, we theater lovers have marathons. The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard’s grand trilogy about 19th century Russian intellectuals, was the must-see event of the 2006-2007 season and set off the current hunger for interconnected plays that can be seen over several nights or all in one day. Since then, it seems, each season has had to have one.  Or two. I’m as greedy as the next theatergoer so I lapped up, in one sitting, both the delicious The Norman Conquests last season and the wonderful The Brother/Sister Plays that just closed at the Public on Sunday. Now, I’ve sampled the latest epic, The Orphan’s Home Cycle, nine short plays by Horton Foote that the Signature Theatre Company is offering in three parts over its entire season. 

This past Saturday, while the big snow storm blanketed New York and much of the eastern seaboard, my friend Joy and I spent six hours in Signature’s Peter Norton Space, watching the first two parts, The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Marriage, were moved by what we saw and are already looking forward to the third installment, which is scheduled to begin on Jan. 7.  That last part, The Story of a Family, will play in repertory with the others through March 28, with all-day (11 a.m. to 11 p.m.) marathons scheduled for Feb. 6, Feb. 27 and March 6. 

Foote, who died earlier this year at the age of 92, based the plays on the life of his father, from the elder Foote's hardscrabble boyhood at the start of the 20th century to his days as a young father on the eve of the Great Depression. People tend to say that Foote’s plays are Chekhovian because they’re usually set in country towns (in Foote's case, the fictional Harrison, Texas) involve genteel families grappling with a changing world and don’t have much action.  This time, however, there’s a Dickensian quality to Foote's tales.

In the first two parts of The Orphan’s Home Cycle, Horace Robedaux, the stand-in for Foote’s father, is abandoned as a 10 year-old after his father dies from drink and his mother remarries a man who doesn't care for the boy and so leaves him to fend for himself. Along the way to manhood, Horace works for a crazed plantation owner who works his land with black convicts, courts a widow with small children and eventually elopes with a wealthy man’s daughter. And I’m leaving out lots of other stuff.

All these stories started out as full plays that Foote wrote in the 1960s and ‘70s and many of them have been performed over the years but in 2007, Hartford Stage, perhaps inspired by The Coast of Utopia’s success, commissioned Foote to adapt the plays into the current cycle.  He is said to have  completed drafts of all nine by the time he died in March. But Foote was a meticulous and fully-engaged playwright, who regularly attended rehearsals and even showed up at nightly performances of his plays (my husband K and I spotted him at the back of the audience when we saw Dividing The Estate last year) and I can’t help thinking that he might have done additional work on The Orphan’s Home Cycle.

I haven’t seen any of the full-length versions of the plays but there is an unpolished quality to these shorter ones.  Cuts are noticeable in some cases.  There’s too much exposition in others.  And yet, the power and emotional honesty of Foote’s storytelling comes through. It’s helped in large part by Michael Wilson’s quiet but elegant direction and the pitch-perfect cast he’s assembled, lead by Bill Heck, who plays the grown-up Horace (and his dying father) and Hallie Foote, the playwright’s daughter, who like all of the 20 other actors in the plays, assumes multiple roles and who remains the best interpreter of her father's work (click here to read an excellent New York Times profile about her). No one else speaks Foote's language, as distinctive in its way as David Mamet's is in his, the way she does, although I thought I heard a couple of the actors trying too hard to imitate her.

Watching Horace’s story unfold over six hours, allowed Joy and me to immerse ourselves in the world Foote created and to get to know his characters in an intimate way.  But if marathon's aren't your thing (or you can't get a ticket to this one) and you have to choose just one of the three parts, see The Story of a Childhood.  All three of its plays are devastatingly good.  

It’s unlikely that you had a family life as difficult as young Horace’s but it’s virtually impossible to watch his story in these plays without thinking about stories of your own relatives, their idiosyncrasies and their sometimes unintended cruelties.  “It’s a reminder," Joy said during one of the intermissions between the plays "that all families are crazy.”  That's an oddly comforting thought and one that kept me warm as I made my way home through last weekend's blizzard.

The Sparseness of "The Cherry Orchard"

There should be no such thing as the definitive production of a play. Particularly not one by Shakespeare. Or by the Greek playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Or by Chekhov. And yet, a few days before I went to see The Bridge Project’s production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, I watched the 1962 Royal Shakespeare Company version of the play that was recorded for the BBC. It starred Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud, Dorothy Tutin, Ian Holm and Judi Dench. And although a recorded version of a play almost always suffers in comparison to a live one, watching that nearly 50-year old interpretation of the final play Chekhov wrote before his premature death at 44 may have ruined me for any other.

That’s certainly how I felt as I sat at BAM’s Harvey Theater watching the recently opened production of The Cherry Orchard, directed by Sam Mendes, with a new translation by Tom Stoppard and a cast lead by Sinéad Cusack, Simon Russell Beale, Rebecca Hall, Richard Easton and Ethan Hawke. The Bridge Project is a collaboration between artists on both sides of the Atlantic and the same production will be presented over the next six months at The Old Vic in London, as well as in Singapore, New Zealand, Spain, Germany and Greece. It’s a noble idea. The people involved are first rate. Most of the critics have raved. And yet, I was unmoved.

I confess I’ve always had a harder time with Chekhov than with Shakespeare or even the Greeks. But I loved the limited-run production of The Seagull that opened on Broadway last fall. The Cherry Orchard's story about people living above their means and poised on the brink of great societal change seemed even more timely. And the talented folks involved in the production made it all the more appealing. The minute I first read about the show, I emailed my pal Bill to see if he were interested and then ordered tickets for us to see it.

We met at the theater in downtown Brooklyn an hour before the 7:30 curtain. Zagat lists some nearby restaurants but all I ever see are fast food joints when I’m walking from the subway to the theater. So Bill and I decided to grab a bite at the lobby bar in the Harvey. According to a recent article in the British newspaper The Guardian, eating at theater bars has become increasingly popular in London (click here to read an evaluation of some of them).

I wish the practice would catch on here since a bar meal tends to be cheaper than one at a restaurant, not an inconsiderable benefit in these pinched-purse times. The Harvey bar’s menu is mainly sandwiches but my pulled pork was tasty and Bill seemed to enjoy his roast beef. There was Junior’s cheesecake for dessert and you can’t beat that. The small plastic cups of wine—though overpriced—didn’t hurt either.

If only the show had been as satisfying. Don’t get me wrong, there were good things about it. Cusack was touching as Madame Ranevskaya, the middle-aged aristocrat who is so unable to adjust to the changing times and her declining fortunes that she plans a party instead of tending to the threatened auction of her estate. Cusack was so poignant that Bill wondered at intermission why she isn’t better known in this country like her equally talented contemporary Helen Mirren.

The always formidable Beale captured the ambivalent mix of reverence and resentment in Lopakhin, a former peasant on the family estate who has become the wealthiest man in the area. But Morven Christie failed to convey the endearing distractedness that the young Judi Dench brought to the role of Anya, Ranevskaya’s daughter, and she didn't replace it with any other distinctive quality. Similarly, while Paul Jesson was fine as Ranevskaya’s prissy brother, no one does prissy like Gielgud.

I know. It’s silly to compare. And maybe the current cast members will grow into their roles and make them their own as they explore their characters over the weeks and months to come. But there are other things that are totally fair game to criticize. Mark Bennett’s incidental music called far too much attention to itself. Mendes’ visual imagery paid far too much homage to The Coast of Utopia. The entire production seemed much like the magic tricks the family governess performs in the show: well executed and yet failing to amaze.

Tweaking the Tonys

O.K. So, the ratings for Sunday night's Tony Awards broadcast, which faced-off against both the finale of "The Sopranos" and the NBA finals, were down 20%. And it's true there were only a few surprises when the awards were announced because, as predicted, The Coast of Utopia and Spring Awakening took most of the prizes. But it was still a terrific celebration of Broadway.

I loved the wacky way Julie White burbled on when she accepted the Best Actress award (which was a surprise) for the long closed The Little Dog Laughed; and the exultant little jig Bill T. Jones did when he literally danced down the aisle to collect his award for the cathartic choreography he created for Spring Awakening; and the defiant passion of Bill Haber's explanation about why he decided to produce the WWI drama Journey's End despite the fact that no production of the 78 year old play has ever made money; and Frank Langella's eloquent tribute to his fellow actors when he claimed the Best Actor award for his performance in Frost/Nixon [click here to read all the speeches]; and the movie trailer-style film clips of all 35 shows from the past season—the hits and the misses. I just wish there had been more award categories.

I'm not suggesting that the Tonys go the way of the Grammys with 3,917 different categories or the Olympics which is so eager to appear hip that it seems ready to declare a competition for one-handed fry pan sautéing. But as Broadway adds new elements to make itself more relevant to 21st century audiences, I think the people who create those parts of its magic should be recognized along with their peers. I'm speaking primarily of the projection designers and the sound designers, particularly those who compose scores for straight plays. This isn't a radical proposal; the Tonys have a history of creating awards—and abolishing them (Best Conductor got pushed off the podium after 1964). There are currently 25 categories and there were only 11 when the prizes were first given out in 1947. A Best Play award wasn't included until the next year and one for Best Musical wasn't introduced until 1949 (Kiss Me, Kate got that one). The award for lighting was added in 1970, one for orchestrations in 1997 and the Special Theatrical Event, won this year by ventriloquist show Jay Johnson: My Two and Only, was established just in 2001.

If the Lighting Designer deserves a nod, and I totally agree that Kevin Adams contributed to the gestalt of Spring Awakening, then why shouldn't the Sound Designer be eligible for one? And it's not just because my husband K is a pit musician that I think the guys who write what's called the "original music" for straight plays should be recognized. The swirling overture Mark Bennett wrote for The Coast of Utopia played when each of the show’s record 7 awards was announced on Sunday night and hearing it transported me instantly back to the experience of that remarkable trilogy. In movies, they call it a soundtrack. The people at Ghostlight Records are calling Bennett's score "music from the play." Whatever. They released an album of it yesterday. Like me, you probably missed the launch party at the Lincoln Square Barnes and Noble in Manhattan but all of us, even the people who determine Tony categories, can get the CD at a local B&N or at Amazon.com.

The Harrowing Flight of "Blackbird"

There are some people who just have to see a new movie on its opening weekend. And that's kind of the way I am about shows. I like to go during previews or in the first week or so after a show has opened before there's been so much talk about it that the chance to discover its pleasures for myself has been ruined. But there's so much to see in New York, especially in the spring when at least one show a week opens on Broadway alone, that I can't always see every one of them as soon as I'd like. Which is why my friend Ellie, the one-time actress, and I didn't get to the Manhattan Theater Club's sold-out production of Blackbird, until the show's closing weekend.

When I arrived at the theater, Ellie was standing outside talking about the show with Tony Kushner, the author of Angels in America. I stepped away, not wanting to know too much of what he thought about Blackbird but I couldn't help hearing him say that he'd seen the show before and found it so devastating that he'd come back. Blackbird, the story of what happens when a middle-aged man and the 12-year old girl he sexually abused meet 15 years later, seems to have that kind of effect on people. It was a hit at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005; won the Laurence Olivier Award for best new play in London last year, and this production, starring Jeff Daniels and Alison Pill, pleased most of the New York critics as well.

Everything seemed right about it. Director Joe Mantello coaxed out all the notes of ambiguity in the appropriately-named David Harrower's script. Set designer Scott Pask, who had five new shows on Broadway this past season, including his collaboration with Bob Crowley on The Coast of Utopia, created a pitch perfect environment for the uneasy pair. As did Laura Bauer's understated costumes. Paul Gallo's lighting and Darron L. West's audio design leant particular support. And yet none of it would have worked without the raw and vulnerable performances given by Daniels and Pill, an angular-limbed, baby-faced 21 year-old star in the making who last year won a Tony nomination for The Lieutenant of Inishmore and has already signed-on to star with Bobby Cannavale in Mauritius, a black comedy scheduled to open on Broadway in October.

At the end of Blackbird, my fellow audience members, seemingly as devastated as Kushner had been, sat in silence and only started to applaud when the actors stumbled onto the stage for their bows. I say "stumbled" because I can't remember seeing actors more drained by the emotional journey they had just taken. Daniels and Pill had stripped themselves naked and there simply hadn't been enough time between the final fade out and the curtain call for them to cover their exposed nerve endings. They starred at us with dazed expressions. They bowed, but they didn't touch hands as actors often do. And then, struggling to summon up the last of their strength, they almost staggered off stage. I don't know if their response was the same at every performance, or if it would have been the same if we'd seen them earlier in the run or if it was the accumulation of the emotional toll of the last three months but I do know that the fearlessness of their performances left me devastated.

Walking the Plank with "The Pirate Queen"

After years and years in which one person shows and two handers have made up too large a part of its diet, with even the musicals tending towards small portion productions like Grey Gardens and Avenue Q, Broadway seems to be bingeing on big cast shows this season. There are 44 actors in The Coast of Utopia, 38 in Les Misérables, and 34 in the straight play Inherit the Wind. But not even 41 hard-working singers and dancers are enough to make a satisfying meal of The Pirate Queen, the Les Miz duo Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s musical version of the story of Grace O’Malley, a 16th century Irish proto-feminist and nationalist who not only commanded a ship of pirates but maneuvered a face-to-face summit meeting with Queen Elizabeth I.

I didn’t go to the show with high expectations. I’d heard about the poor notices it got during its fall tryout in Chicago. And even though I don’t read reviews until after I’ve seen a show, I had a sense that the New York critics weren’t much happier with the changes that show doctors Richard Maltby (pitching in on the book and lyrics) and Graciela Daniele (helping out with the staging) had made for the Broadway production. So when I called to invite my niece Jennifer to see the show, I warned her that it probably wasn’t going to be the best time she’d had in the theater. Jennifer, who’s now 27, has been going to the theater since before she was old enough to read a Playbill and she has very strong opinions about what she likes (Spring Awakening) and doesn’t like (Tarzan) but she’s obsessed with the Tudor era and so I thought she might see something in the show that others hadn’t. She didn’t.

It wasn’t a total washout. We both enjoyed the Irish step-dancing numbers choreographed by the Riverdance folks, who also produced the show. And we got a kick out of the over-the-top costumes that Martin Pakledinaz created for Queen Elizabeth. But neither the book nor the music did much for us. In fact, the show proved to be the theatrical equivalent of the proverbial Chinese meal that leaves you hungry an hour later—on the bus ride home neither of us could remember even one song from the score. And if you believe New York Post theater columnist Michael Riedel, The Pirate Queen’s landlord is hungry for something else too. Riedel reports (click here to read it) that agents for Live Nation, which owns the Hilton Theater where the show is playing, recently showed the space to director Susan Stroman as a possible home for the new Mel Brooks show, Young Frankenstein. Undaunted, The Pirate Queen’s producers are maintaining their swashbuckling attitude and posting daily entries to their website. Take a peek (click here to visit it); it’s more entertaining than their show and a lot cheaper.

Stranded on "The Coast of Utopia"

As the lights dimmed at the conclusion of The Coast of Utopia: Salvage you could feel an armada of emotions ripple across the audience at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. There was deep admiration for the artistry and stamina of the actors who gave life to the characters in Tom Stoppard’s epic trilogy covering 30 years of the political and romantic affairs of the 19th century Russians who planted the seeds for what would eventually become the Russian Revolution. There was a certain smugness, too, for being among the select few who had managed to see the theatrical event of the season. There was also a rueful wondering if the nearly eight hour venture had been worth it, if Stoppard couldn’t have had his say in a shorter amount of time. And for me there was a touch of envy. I didn’t want to be in the audience; I wanted to be onstage or even backstage, just part of that incredible ensemble.

After months of rehearsals and performances, the 44 members of the cast appear to have developed a camaraderie that is palpable. They seem to revel in the challenge of the work, in the pleasure of being among others for whom the play is the thing. They look like they are having great fun. And none more so than Ethan Hawke, who plays the high-spirited anarchist Michael Bakunin. At each of the gorgeously choreographed curtain calls I saw, themselves more entertaining than many plays I’ve seen, Hawke seemed to hum with an uncontainable joy. As he walked off the stage, he’d slap a fellow actor on the back, or loop his arm around the shoulder of another, or grin and wink at a third too far away to touch. I don’t know if his exuberance is a genuine reflection of the delight he takes in being part of such a once-in-a-career experience or the residual bonhomie of his character. But it made me smile, even as the third part of the trilogy seemed to run out of steam.

A Safe Haven in "The Coast of Utopia"

It’s hard to figure out what the New York Times has against Tom Stoppard. Or against Russian intellectuals. Or against the New York theater-going public for that matter. Back in November, while the first part of Lincoln Center Theater’s production of Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia was still in previews, the Times’ Williams Grimes wrote an article warning theatergoers that they’d need to do some advanced reading if they wanted to understand Stoppard’s three linked plays about the circle of 19th century Russian intellectuals who laid the ground work for the next century’s Russian Revolution. The 11-book reading list Grimes assembled ranged from Isaiah Berlin’s Russian Thinkers to Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. My husband K is no slouch in the serious reading department and has worked his way through Plato and Aristotle, most of the Russian novelists and a big chunk of the American literary canon, but after reading Grimes’ piece, he decided that he didn’t have enough time to do the homework for The Coast of Utopia and opted not to go.

Then in February, after having seen the second installment of the cycle, the paper’s second string theater critic, Charles Isherwood, weighed in to say that he found the plays “a bore.” Well, I, too, have now seen both the first and second parts of The Coast of Utopia and I don’t know what the Times is talking about. The production, dazzlingly directed by Jack O’Brien, is one of the most thrillingly theatrical experiences I’ve seen, not only in this season but in this decade. The always brilliant set designer Bob Crowley has, with Scott Pask, created gasp-inspiring images that will linger in my mind’s eye for years to come. The 40+ member cast includes a Who’s Who of the leading young theater actors of our time including Billy Crudup, Jennifer Ehle, Ethan Hawke, Martha Plimpton and Brian F. O’Byrne. Yes, it takes some time to figure out all the characters and their relationships to one another but because the narrative plays out over three parts, there is time to figure that out. And yes, there are major philosophical issues to ponder like the role of literature in cultural identity and the role of rich men in proletarian revolutions, but there are also laugh out-loud jokes and who's-bedding-whom storylines that are as accessible as those on Desperate Housewives.

I haven’t been able to persuade K to change his mind about seeing the shows but hundreds of other people who love theater have ignored the Times and are flocking to the Vivian Beaumont and clamoring for tickets to the all-day Saturday marathons when all three installments play in sequence from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Celebrities are turning out too. Lauren Bacall and historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and his wife, sat across from me at Part 1, The Coast of Utopia: Voyage, just a few weeks before Schlesinger’s death on Feb. 28. Bill Clinton attended, and got a standing ovation, the night my friend Bill saw Part 2, The Coast of Utopia: Shipwreck. The biggest cheers, though, go to a theatrical experience that engages the eye, the mind and the imagination.