The Humble Appeal of "One November Yankee" and "Harry Townsend's Last Stand"

Yes, I know it’s not a Saturday when I usually post but the holidays and other end-of-the-year obligations have turned my schedule topsy-turvy. So I’ve decided to invoke my old practice of posting on a Wednesday because I’ve been thinking a lot about how we New York theater lovers sometimes forget that we aren’t the only ones in the country who appreciate theater. And just as folks in Texas love corn dogs and people in Philadelphia revere cheesesteaks, theater lovers elsewhere sometimes develop a taste for shows that don’t necessarily appeal to New York palates but still please others.

For example, the San Francisco-based playwright Lauren Gunderson has never had a show produced on Broadway or by one of the city’s big off-Broadway companies but she is now the most produced living playwright in the country, with 33 productions scheduled for the current season, including The Half-Life of Marie Curie, which ends its run at the Minetta Lane Theatre this weekend but will soon be available on Audible.

I’ve recently seen two other shows by playwrights who also seem to be thriving in other parts of the country but are newbies to the New York stage. And despite having attracted big-name casts, their shows—One November Yankee and Harry Townsend’s Last Stand—have been as warmly received by my critical brethren as corn dogs might be at a vegan banquet.

One November Yankee, which is running at 59E59 Theaters through this weekend, bares some of the blame for its opprobrium. The two-hander is a gerrymandered trio of vignettes featuring rotating sets of brothers and sisters.

Each of the pairs here are played by the ‘80s-era TV stars Harry Hamlin and Stefanie Powers. They both look great, each has done some theater in the past and neither embarrasses him or herself this time out (click here to read an interview with him). But, alas, the production around them doesn’t hold up its end.

Playwright Joshua Ravetch, whose program bio lists previous stage collaborations with Holland Taylor, Tyne Daly and Carrie Fisher, has directed One November Yankee himself and seems to have been oblivious to the limitations imposed by the small theater space in which he had to work.

A big yellow plane, its call letters give the show its title, dominates the set. The aircraft is supposed to be a conceptual work that an artist has created for a show at MoMA curated by his older sister; their anxiety over the show's opening gives the first scene its storyline. In the next, the plane is the downed vehicle in which two other siblings are stranded when it runs out of gas on the way to their father’s second wedding.

And the plane is lastly the wreckage that is just one of the things another brother and sister discover while out on a hike. But mainly the plane takes up so much space that there’s little left for Hamlin and Powers to maneuver around in. Even worse, however, is the fact that Ravetch hasn’t figured out how to transition from one scene to the next.

A screen is set up at stage right and flight-related images projected there are supposed to hold the audience’s attention while the actors race off to switch costumes and wigs. But the projector broke down during the performance my theatergoing buddy Bill and I attended, leaving stretches of nothingness.

Ravetch’s apparent desire to show the ineffable bond that exists between siblings is a worthy subject and one only sporadically explored onstage, as opposed to the more clichéd Cain-and-Abel style rivalries that usually pop up in family dramas. 

And despite some very lame jokes, this production might have been effective if he’d brought in a more skillful director. Instead, audiences leave the theater trying to hammer his jigsaw pieces into some kind of meaningful whole.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, George Eastman’s Harry Townsend's Last Stand has the kind of clear narrative that often gets dismissed as “too on the nose.” This two-hander tells the story of an aging widower who is living alone in the Vermont vacation cabin he once shared with his beloved wife. But now in his 80s, he’s become dangerously forgetful. The play opens when his son arrives from California, intent on moving his dad into an assisted living community.

It’s obvious from the start how this is going to turn out but I didn’t mind taking the journey. And nor, judging from the grunts of recognition, did the audience that saw the show with me. Yes, it’s a familiar tale but that doesn’t mean that people dealing with this issue—as grown children or the parents they’re worried about—won’t find inspiration and maybe even a bit of solace from seeing it.

As the aged father, Len Cariou, himself 80, had a few moments when I couldn’t tell if the character or the actor was struggling to remember what to say but that only added to the poignancy of his performance (click here to listen to an interview with him).

Meanwhile. Craig Bierko offered stalwart support as the son. And together, under the sympathetic direction of Karen Carpenter, they crafted a convincing portrait of a moment that not even familiarity can attenuate.

And isn’t that one of the things art is supposed to do: show us how to cope with the stuff life throws at all of us.

Turning on the Ghost Light

It’s been a while since I last turned on the ghost light that theaters use when they’re temporarily empty but I’m doing it now. That's mainly because I’ve been running around seeing so many shows (while trying to squeeze in the demands of the rest of my life) that I simply haven’t found the time to write about any of them this week. But if you’re still interested in reading something theater-related by me, I hope you’ll check out the story I wrote for TDF Stages about Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven, the new Stephen Adly Guirgis play that will make its world premiere next week. You can find it by clicking here.

The Irish Rep's "Pumpgirl" Drives Too Hard

The monologue play is an odd hybrid. Unlike traditional monologues in which one actor talks directly to the audience, it usually features three or more performers. But unlike traditional plays, the actors in these shows seldom interact with one another even though the stories they’re telling overlap to form a single narrative.

These presentations can be big shows like The Lehman Trilogy, the three-and-a-half hour saga of the rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers investment firm that wowed London audiences last year, enjoyed a sold-out run at the Park Avenue Armory last spring and is scheduled to start a Broadway run in March.

But they’re more often intimate dramas that are relatively easy to produce, which may be why they’ve recently been sprouting up like kudzu. The Irish Repertory Theatre had a surprise success last summer with Elaine Murphy’s Little Gem and Keen Company’s also successful production of Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney just closed a few weeks ago.

Now, the Irish Rep is doing Pumpgirl by the Irish playwright Abbie Spallen (the Irish seem to have a particular fondness for this genre) that is running in the Irish Rep’s underground studio space through Dec. 29.

Set in a contemporary Northern Irish border town, Pumpgirl tells the story of a guy named Hammy, who is married to a woman named Sinead and carrying on with the titular but otherwise unnamed young woman who works at the local gas station. 

Each is frustrated by the limited opportunities that life is offering and aching for the thrill of a visceral connection. And all three will pay dearly for the latter.

Multiple soliloquies like these may be inexpensive to produce but they’re also tricky to stage. Should they be presented as naturalistic pieces, complete with scenery and exits and entrances by the characters  Or should they be treated more expressionistically on bare sets with the actors remaining onstage even while pretending to be unaware of one another?

Director Nicola Murphy tries to split the difference. She’s allowed set designer Yu-Hsuan Chen to create three separate playing spaces: the home where Sinead waits for Hammy, complete with a kitchen where she prepares evening tea for their two unseen kids and a bed where she spends sleepless nights; Hammy’s beloved car and the somewhat anachronistically old-fashioned gas station where Pumpgirl works.

It’s fun to see the bags of Taytos, the popular Irish snack food, displayed at the station but they look as though they’ve been there since the company started in 1958 and this is supposed to be the present. 

But the greater problem is that the three sets are too much to crowd into a theater that holds about 60 people. Sinead’s bedclothes pool sloppily onto the floor, almost daring audience members not to trip on them on the way in and out of the theater.

Seating is general admission but the way things are setup require lot of neck craning no matter where you sit. My theatergoing buddy Bill and I got there early and chose what seemed to be a good spot but I still missed a lot of the action in Hammy’s car. And that’s not all I missed.

The actors stay onstage even when they’re not speaking. Lighting helps directs the focus but my eyes kept wandering to the silent figures sitting in the semi-darkness. And I have to confess my mind wandered occasionally too.

The actors—Hamish Allan-Headley as Hammy, Labhaoise Magee as Pumpgirl and especially the lively Clare O’Malley as Sinead —are all very good but Murphy has them speak with pronounced Irish accents that aren’t always easy to parse. 

I lost whole paragraphs of dialog as I tried to decipher the words being said. Which is a shame because Spallen fills their speeches with wit, pathos, vivid images and sly pop cultural references (click here to read more about her).

Originally produced at the Edinburg Fringe Festival in 2006 (and later at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2007) Pumpgirl took on the devastating effects of toxic masculinity long before the phrase became fashionable. 

So the play has a lot to say and Spallen not only knows how to say it but also how to build an almost Hitchcockian sense of suspense. I left the theater feeling that the play might have worked better as a short story—or in a less fussy and clearer-spoken production.