In Memoriam: Cicely Tyson

 

Deeply mourning the death of the great Cicely Tyson, a trailblazer and role model in so many ways.

Raves for "Ratatouille: The Tik Tok Musical"

I had planned to write a review of Ratatouille: the Tik Tok Musical, the delicious online presentation that began as a 15-second video created by a fan of the Disney animated film about a rat who dreams of becoming a French chef and grew into a 60-minute show performed by a cast of Broadway regulars led by Titus Burgess and Andrew Barth Feldman that will be available online through the end of this holiday weekend.  But then I read my blogger pal Jonathan Mandell's review of the show and it said literally everything I intended to say so instead of trying to find new ways to express that, I'm going to (1) urge you to read Jonathan's review, which you can do by clicking here and (2) to see the show, which is also serving as a fundraiser for The Actors Fund, which you can do by clicking here.  Both are great ways to start off what we're all hoping will be a happy new year.

10 Spots of Theatrical Joy in a Dire Year

This is the time of year when people like me create lists that tout the best things we’ve experienced in the areas of interest we followed over the last 12 months. But it’s hard to put the word best in the same sentence with anything connected with this year so defined by illness, death, social isolation, racial reckoning and an election that’s left the country as polarized as ever (USA Today just reported that 78% of Republicans still don’t believe that Joe Biden was legally elected president). So shows I saw before the pandemic closed all theaters here in New York now seem as though they existed in a different world. But maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing.  

The challenges of this year could force producers and artistic directors to adapt in ways that will make theater better once the quarantine ends.  Like maybe some of the online productions that sprouted up will continue, allowing theater to be more accessible to those who can’t get to a theater easily or who can’t afford to go or who haven’t felt comfortable once there.  And maybe theaters will learn to be truly inclusive, telling all kinds of stories that showcase a multiplicity of experiences and that are told by an array of voices.

In the meantime though, there have been some things that have given me theatrical joy even in this distressing year and I want to celebrate and thank them. So on this list are five shows I saw in a theater at the beginning of the year and five I saw on my computer or TV screen later on.  They are, in the order of my seeing them:

AMERICAN UTOPIA: I actually saw David Byrne’s exhilarating staged concert twice: once when my theatergoing buddy Bill and I went to one of its final performances at the Hudson Theatre before its scheduled close in February and then again when a filmed version started streaming on HBO in late summer. It’s kind of hard to explain why watching a dozen people of different colors and genders clad in matching gray suits play their instruments and dance around a stage could be so invigorating but each viewing made me feel so very good to be alive. An encore live production has already been scheduled for next fall but if you're an HBO subscriber, you can see the film now by clicking here.

DARLING GRENADINE: The Roundabout Theatre Company’s production of Daniel Zaitchik’s chamber musical about a man struggling to overcome alcoholism and the woman who loves him struggling not to be an enabler might not have muscled out bigger musicals if they’d had a chance to open but its charming performances and imaginative staging left me with a smile on my face that lingered for days.

HAMLET AT ST. ANN'S WAREHOUSE:  Worn down by seeing one so-so production after another, I’d sworn off Shakespeare for a while—and especially off seeing Hamlet. But my curiosity about the notion of the British actress Ruth Negga playing the role without regard for gender drew me to St. Ann’s where Ireland’s Gate Theatre production ran through March 6. And my reward for going was being able to witness how Negga’s intelligent and unsentimental performance turned what is too often an old war-horse into the thoroughbred that the Bard meant it to be.

THE HEADLANDS: Christopher Chen’s noirish murder mystery at LCT3 was both a meditation on assimilation, identity and the stories that define all of us and a showcase for its all-Asian cast to show off the full and impressive range of their talent.  And its inventive video projections not only provided the sets for the scene but established the mood of the entire piece.

THE HOT WING KING: Definitions of black masculinity were viewed through the experiences of a loving gay couple and their extended family and friends as they all prepared for a culinary competition in this deliciously funny but deeply affecting play by Katori Hall whose run at Signature Theatre was cut too short when all the city’s theaters closed March 12.

TAKE ME TO THE WORLD: A SONDHEIM 90TH CELEBRATION: The lockdown came 10 days before Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday, which was supposed to be celebrated with the opening of avant-garde director Ivo van Hove’s reinterpretation of Sondheim’s first Broadway show, West Side Story. So, led by Raúl Esparza, a group of the composer’s friends—AKA everyone who is anyone on Broadway—threw him a virtual party instead and filled it with heartfelt encomiums and one-of-a-kind performances of selections from his singular songbook. It’s the kind of event that I would have been unlikely to attend in person and so felt grateful that technology allowed me to revel in it, which you can do too by clicking here.

BILL IRWIN'S IN ZOOM: In the time-honored spirit of the show must go on, theater folks began performing online within days of the theater lockdown. Among the best of that early crop was an original 10-minute piece that Irwin put together with the help of San Diego’s The Old Globe. He and fellow funny man Christopher Fitzgerald explored and expanded the boundaries of the then-novel Zoom, demonstrating that theater no longer had to be restricted by geographical location and that even a safely-distanced production could offer up some great physical comedy.  You can check it out by clicking here.   

IN CAMERA: London’s The Old Vic presented this series of small-cast plays that were performed live in its empty theater for viewers who bought hefty-priced tickets that allowed them to see a specific performance on their computers at home. So far I’ve seen Three Kings, Stephen Beresford’s one-man show in which Andrew Scott gave a brilliant performance as a man coming to terms with the estranged father whose love he’s always craved, and Faith Healer, a revival of Brian Friel’s three-hander about an itinerant con man who travels around Ireland pretending—to his audiences, his long-suffering wife, devoted manager and to himself—that he can heal the afflicted. The performances by Michael Sheen, Indira Varma and David Threlfall left me gob smacked. You can see for yourself why if you purchase (the much cheaper) tickets for recorded encore presentations of those productions, which you can find here.

RUSSIAN TROLL FARM:  This comedy, created specifically to be seen online, has been my favorite virtual theater experience so far. Working with TheaterWorks Hartford, TheaterSquared in Fayetteville, Arkansas and the Brooklyn-based Civilians, playwright Sarah Gancher imagines the lives of the Russian hackers who spread false information on social media leading up to the 2016 presidential election that put Donald Trump in the White House.  Like so many digital workers, hers are driven to get as many clicks as they can and the hilarity stems from watching how they—a terrific cast, by the way—do it. The show’s limited run has been extended through Jan. 14 and you can buy $20 tickets here.

MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM: Part of Denzel Washington’s effort to film all 10 of the plays in August Wilson’s "American Cycle," this Netflix production about a day in the life of the legendary blues singer was in the works way before most of us had even heard of the coronavirus or of George Floyd, whose death under the knee of a Minneapolis cop gives poignant relevance to this rumination on how Black people have been treated in this country. Reuben Santiago-Hudson massaged the script for the screen, squeezing it down to 90 minutes and adding an effective coda. George C. Wolfe directed and Viola Davis and the late Chadwick Boseman lead an excellent cast as Rainey and Levee, the young trumpet player in her band who wants to make a different kind of music. If you have a Netflix account you can treat yourself to it by clicking here.

Wishing You As Merry a Christmas...

...as is safely possible this year:

 

A Solo "Christmas Carol" for A Solitary Time

Christmas as we know it—the tree, the cards, the carol singing—began during the early Victorian age and perhaps no one popularized those now-familiar traditions more than did Charles Dickens with his 1843 novella “A Christmas Carol.” It famously tells the tale of the miserable and miserly Ebenezer Scrooge who is visited and reformed on Christmas Eve by three ghostly spirits. The book was an instant hit and staged adaptations immediately followed; by the next year there were at least eight different productions running in London. 

Over the decades, zillions more versions have followed on both stage and screen, with Scrooge being portrayed by such diverse performers as Alastair Sim, George C. Scott,  Robert Guillaume, Jim Carrey, Susan Lucci, Vanessa Williams and the cartoon characters Donald Duck and Mr. Magoo. 

Last year, Broadway hosted a production led by Campbell Scott in a British panto-style version of the play originally adapted by Jack Thorne and directed by Matthew Warchus for London’s The Old Vic Theatre, which is presenting a fully-staged streamed version this year, starting Dec. 12 (click here to read more about it). 

The story of Scrooge, his poorly treated clerk Bob Cratchit and Bob’s crippled but generous-hearted son Tiny Tim is now a Christmas season perennial at both big and little theaters throughout the U.S. and the U.K. (click here to read how some theater companies are currently tweaking their versions in these pandemic times.)  

But from the very start when Dickens himself performed staged readings of the story, some of the most popular productions have been one-person shows in which a sole actor performs the more than 50 characters in the narrative. 

It’s hard to think of a contemporary actor more suited to that task than Jefferson Mays, a Tony Award winner for his performances in the one-man show I Am My Own Wife, in which he took on some 40 characters, and for the musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, in which he played 10 members of a highly eccentric (and hilarious) family.

And Mays is again wonderful in the streamed production of A Christmas Carol directed by Michael Arden, adapted by Arden, Mays and Mays’ wife Susan Lyons and filmed under Covid precautions in an empty theater in Upper Manhattan in October. 

While they’ve hewed close to the original narrative and prose, the trio has leaned into the psychology and sociology of the piece, highlighting the correlation between the way a child is treated and the man he becomes and emphasizing the ways in which the poor can be permanently crippled by the disregard of those who have money and are intent only on having more. It’s a take that Dickens, himself a progressive reformer, would have appreciated. 

A master showman himself, Dickens would also have applauded Mays' performance. Ever nimble, the actor morphs easily from one character to the next with just the twitch of an eyebrow or a change in the pitch of his voice. He hits all the poignant notes of the morality tale as Scrooge acknowledges his sins but he’s a particular delight in lighter scenes such as Scrooge’s memory of a party he attended in his youth that allow the actor to kick up his heels a bit and indulge the more antic side of his wit. The jig he does with himself as both Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig is a treat in every way.

I just wish the rest of the production around him had been as dexterous. Too many of the choices distract from rather than enhance the presentation. I get that the low lighting helps set the slightly spooky mood that the story calls for but in this case, it also makes it hard to see what’s going on. Similarly, manipulating the sound of the ghosts’ voices made it hard to understand what they were saying. 

And there was absolutely no need for the fuzzy video projections that play behind Mays at the party scene; his performance had already elegantly established the time and place. Meanwhile, the emo music by the pop-rock musician Sujfan Stevens not only seems anachronistic for the period but downright gloomy, even at the—177 year-old spoiler coming—happy ending.

Still, it’s hard to ruin A Christmas Carol and its moral of redemption through giving to and caring for others shines through. Tickets for this version of the tale, which will run online through Jan. 3, cost a hefty $50, plus fees that tack on another $7 (click here to get them) but the show can be viewed multiple times and part of the money will go to some 50 regional and community theaters across the country that are struggling because of the pandemic.  

If that’s still too dear for your pocketbook, there are many other options, including an updated musical version called Estrella Scrooge: A Christmas Carol With A Twist produced by Abingdon Theatre Company, with tickets starting at $29.99 (click here for more information) and a streamed Primary Stages benefit reading of the Dickens' tale, directed by Theresa Rebeck and starring Raúl Esparza as Scrooge that will cost $100 for the live Dec. 16 performance but will be available for free from Dec. 17-20 (find out more about that by clicking here).

As Tiny Tim might say, God bless them everyone.

Thanksgiving Even in These Pandemic Times

Let’s be honest: it’s been a tough year.  For the world. For the nation. For the theater community. And yet, there are still things for us theater lovers to be grateful for, be it the promise of the coming anti-Covid vaccines, the results of the recent election, the fact that the actors’ unions have made peace so that more theaters around the country can stream shows for all of us to see or that the social media platform TikTok has gone Broadway with mini musical videos including a star-studded Thanksgiving special put together by James Corden (which you can see by clicking here). So I’m sending out cheers for all of that and prayers that next year all of us can gather easily with our extended families and friends. In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving.   

Thoughts on Some Offerings of Theatrical Methadone for Those Missing Live Theater

A Zoomed scene from the staged reading of Lisa Loomer's docudrama Roe 

It hit me unexpectedly. I’d been going along for the past seven months telling myself that I didn’t really miss theater because there was no theater to miss once COVID restrictions shut down all the stages here in New York. So I just scratched my occasional theater itch by watching a few things online and reading some books about theater, including a couple of plays. But then, all of a sudden, I started missing theater with an almost physical intensity. 

And that ache got me hunting for some kind of theatrical methadone, something that might substitute for the real thing and relieve the withdrawal symptoms I’d begun to feel. Most of the things I found dealt in one way or another with politics (it seems as though there’s no getting away from it nowadays) and nearly all had star-studded casts (one of the few silver linings of this quarantine period is that almost every actor is at home and available). 

What follows is an account of my theatrical quest over the last week or so as I listened to audio plays, watched Zoom-style readings and even saw a few fully-recorded productions. 

I started by listening to It Can’t Happen Here, an adaptation of the 1935 Sinclair Lewis novel that Berkeley Rep. turned into an audio play that some 100 other theaters around the country are co-sponsoring because its story about a populist demagogue who wins the U.S. presidency and then imposes fascist rule by suspending constitutional rights seems uncomfortably timely. Berkeley Rep’s recently-retired artistic director Tony Taccone and playwright Bennett S. Cohen did a terrific job of streamlining Lewis’s talky jeremiad (I confess I couldn’t make it through the novel) into a compelling cautionary tale.  And the cast, ably directed by Lisa Peterson and led by David Strathairn as a small-town newspaper editor who joins the fight to restore democracy, was top-notch. The show runs nearly three hours and I listened straight-through. You can catch it until Nov. 8 by clicking here.

Next on my schedule was BAM’s presentation of That Kindness by Eve Ensler, who now goes by the sole letter V. As she did with The Vagina Monologues, the playwright interviewed a series of people about their experiences, in this case nurses caring for people stricken by the coronavirus, and assembled what they told her into a series of affective monologues. And she’s also assembled a fantastic crew of actors to perform them, including LaChanze, Rosie O'Donnell, Billy Porter and Marisa Tomei. Yet I’m chagrined to say that as important as the issue is, as heart-rendering as the stories told and as fine as the performances, I only made it about half way through the one-hour presentation, whose depressing tone never varied and so wore me down. But you have the chance to see if you’re more empathetic than I proved to be by clicking here through Nov. 3.

It’s too late for you to catch Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, an all-star production (really, the cast included Morgan Freeman, Katie Finneran, Vanessa Williams, Reed Birney, Phylicia Rashad, Stacy Keach, and Matthew Broderick) that was presented by the streaming series called Broadway’s Best Plays because it had a limited three-day run that ended Oct. 17. Vidal’s play about the competition for their party’s presidential nomination between a too-principled patrician and a do-anything-to-win pragmatist is one of my favorite shows about politics (click here to see a list of others I like) and I was eager to see how it would play out as a virtual work in which the performers interacted with one another entirely through Zoom. The answer: not bad. John Malkovich was an odd choice for the Adlai Stevenson-like patrician but Zachary Quinto was pitch-perfect as the Richard Nixon-like opportunist. And it was actually fun to watch how director Michael Wilson and a crackerjack team of designers created backgrounds and bits of business that attempted to make it look as though cast members shared the same spaces. 

Lisa Loomer’s Roe, a docudrama about the woman behind the Supreme Court case that made abortion legal in the U.S., is a play I’ve been wanting to see since it debuted at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2016 as part of that company’s "American Revolutions" series. The mission of its plays is to “establish a shared understanding of our nation’s past while illuminating the best paths for our nation's future.” So I happily paid $15 for a ticket to see the three-day run presented by WAM Theatre in Lenox, Massachusetts. Loomer’s ambitious piece covers issues of class, race and religion and has characters breaking the fourth wall to comment on their actions or to predict their fates but the performances (actually staged readings with scripts in hand) turned out to be sadly uneven. Director Kristen van Ginhoven and scenic designer Juliana van Haubrich obviously worked hard to show how imaginative a virtual production can be but I’m still waiting for a more definitive production—and hoping it can be a live one.

If Richard Nelson’s The Apple Family Plays and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America had a love child it might be Shipwreck, the ambitious drama by Anne Washburn that she's adapted into an audio play The Public Theater is presenting as a multi-part podcast (which you can find by clicking here). Shipwreck divides it attention among a group of clueless white liberals who gather for a weekend at an old Vermont farmhouse built in 1776, Oval Office meetings that Donald Trump has with George W. Bush and former FBI director James Comey (colorblind casting has the African-American actors Philip James Brannon playing Bush and Joe Morton playing Comey) and the musings of a Midwestern farmer who defies all stereotypes. It’s talky and pretentious, but in all the right ways. It’s also one of the rare displays of culture over the past four years that doesn’t treat Trump as a buffoon or a cartoon but as someone to be seriously reckoned with. Under Saheem Ali’s lucid direction, Bill Camp’s Trump is controlled and chilling.

Even the Mint Theater Company, which specializes in works by forgotten playwrights, has climbed up on the politics bandwagon. Its new streaming series kicked off this week with a presentation of Conflict, a 1925 play by the British actor and playwright Miles Malleson that centers on the rivalry between a conservative Tory and a liberal Labour Party candidate. It should have been just what the doctor ordered for me because the Mint is streaming its full 2018 production and like most Mint shows the sets and costumes are comely and the acting classy (click here to see it for yourself). But I have to admit that although over the years I’ve enjoyed many Mint shows, including this one, they’ve always made me a bit uncomfortable too.  And now as the country as a whole and the theater world in particular are wrestling with the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement, I know why: nearly all the Mint shows come from the era of drawing-room plays when accents were expected to be posh and casts, with the exception of a servant role here or there, entirely white. This production tries to sidestep that by casting a woman of color as one of the toffs but I couldn’t help wondering why in its nearly 30-year history the Mint has yet to do a play by a black or brown playwright since so many of them have also been forgotten.

Finally, I watched the HBO production of David Byrne's American Utopia, movie director Spike Lee’s filmed version of the show whose Broadway run ended in February. A naturalized citizen, the Scottish-born Byrne has always been unabashed in his love for this country and astute in his critiques of it. His show, a rock concert inventively choreographed by Annie-B Parson and performed by a talented and multicultural band of musicians, is the same. One song celebrates immigration, another pays tribute to black victims killed by police and Byrne makes a direct appeal to the audience to vote in the coming election. But despite such serious topics, the vibe is uplifting and even celebratory. I left the theater feeling exhilarated when my theatergoing buddy Bill and I saw one of the final performances of the live run and I found myself wanting to get up and dance as I watched the streamed version (which you can see by clicking here). Plans have been announced for the show to return to Broadway next fall but for now, this is a fine substitute.

So there you have it. That’s seven shows I've seen over the last 10 days, making it seem almost like old times when I was heading out to the theater nearly every night of the week.  Almost.