Theater Review: The Brother/Sister Plays

Sphere: Related Content

The Brothers Size

Telling the Stuff of Life through the Senses
By Lauren Yarger
Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s prose, spiritual songs, African rhythms and direction that enhances dreamlike storytelling combine to make The Brother/Sister Plays at the Public Theater a sensory delight.

The work, presented in two parts, combines three of McCraney’s plays about the African-American experience of a group of people living in the projects in the “distant present” of San Pere Louisiana : In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size and Marcus, or the Secret of Sweet.

In part one, directed by Tina Landau, we meet Oya (an effervescent Kianné Muschett) who gives up an athletic scholarship to stay with her dying mother Moja (Heather Alicia Simms). Her aunt, the non-nonsense Elegua (Kimberly Hebert Gregory) come to look after her when Moja dies, and doesn’t approve of the man in her life, Shango Sterling K. Brown), whose wandering eye won’t let him settle down and give Oya the baby she so desperately wants. Timid Ogun Size (Marc Damon Johnson) steps in when Shango leaves and offers her a life with him.

Landau creates physical mirrors in actors behind the action, moving, sighing and singing to create a dream-like quality to the story. James Schuette’s simplistic scenic design lighted by Peter Kaczorowski enhance the mood.

The second play, directed by Robert O’Hara, follows the story of the Size brothers, Orgun and Oshoosi (Brian Tyree Henry) and their friend Elegba (Andre Holland). This middle segment is the richest as far as character development. Orgun tries to help his recently paroled brother stay out of trouble, and when they have to part, the emotions are raw. In part 3, Elegba’s son Marcus (Holland) comes to terms with the fact that his father was "sweet" (gay) and with his own sexuality.

The performances of the principle actors, as well as the ensemble, many of whom play multiple roles in the saga, are strong and believable. McCraney’s storytelling devices of having the characters speak their stage directions as well as the too frequently used answer to a question, “How could he/she not?” grow tedious in the four and a half hours that make up the entire work, but these are minor flaws in an otherwise satisfying work. If you take out the sensory devices for telling the story, you’re left with a tale of a bunch of folks who make poor choices and have to deal with the consequences, which puts these tales into an “everyman” category, rather than just the genre of Afican-American experience.

The Brother/Sister Plays run Off-Broadway at the Public, 425 Lafayette Street, NYC through Dec. 20. For tickets, call 212-967-7555.

Christian might also like to know:
• Language
• Sexual dialogue
• Hoodoo
• God’s name taken in vain
• Sexual dancing
• Homosexuality
• Homosexual activity

Theater Review: The Orphans' Home Cycle

Sphere: Related Content

Jenny Dare Paulin and Bill Heck. Photo by T. Charles Erickson.

Foote's Orphans' Home Cycle is 'Don't-Miss' Theater
By Lauren Yarger
If you're going to spend nine hours in the theater, I can't think of a better place than the Off-Broadway's Signature Theatre, where Horton Foote's saga of the journey of Horace Robedaux (Bill Heck) from boy to manhood plays through March 28.

The beautifully staged piece is directed by Michael Wilson, artistic director of Hartford Stage, which collaborated with Signature on this production and presented it prior to its New York run.

The saga, condensed by the author from nine of his plays into a three-part nine-hour play, is presented as three separate plays or as marathons of all three. It's not like some of the other shows presented in parts like the Brother/Sisters Plays or last year's The Norman Conquests where it doesn't matter in which order you see the pieces. See these in order so you can savor Foote's masterful storytelling.

The sets by designers Jeff Cowie and David Barber are fabulous. After the ninth play ends, I guarantee you'll wish there were more.

For a review of part one, The Story of a Childhood from the Hartford run (same cast/crew) click here.
Part 2: The Story of a Marriage opens Dec. 3 and Part 3: The Story of a Family opens Jan. 7.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit http://www.signaturetheatre.org/. The theater is located at 555 West 42nd St.

Cirque du Soleil Returns to Randall's Island with OVO

Sphere: Related Content

Ants act. Photo:Benoit Fontaine © 2009 Cirque du Soleil Inc.

Cirque du Soleil will return to New York with its latest big top touring production OVO under the trademark blue-and-yellow Grand Chapiteau (Big Top) at Randall’s Island Park for a limited engagement beginning Friday, April 9.

Cirque Club members have exclusive online access to advance tickets with special discounts at www.cirquedusoleil.com.

The name OVO means “egg” in Portuguese. This timeless symbol of the life cycle and birth of numerous insects represents the underlying thread of the show. Graphically, OVO hides an insect in its name: The two letter “Os” represent the eyes while the letter “V” forms the nose.

The show is a headlong rush into a colorful ecosystem teeming with life, where insects work, eat, crawl, flutter, play, fight and look for love in a non-stop riot of energy and movement. The insects’ home is a world of biodiversity and beauty filled with noisy action and moments of quiet emotion. When a mysterious egg appears in their midst, the insects are awestruck and intensely curious about this iconic object that represents the enigma and cycles of their lives. It’s love at first sight when a gawky, quirky insect arrives in this bustling community and a fabulous ladybug catches his eye – and the feeling is mutual.

Some 54 performing artists from 13 countries perform acrobatic stunts and dance integrated by director Deborah Colker, the first female Director at Cirque du Soleil.

James Barbour Sets Holiday Concerts in NY, LA

Sphere: Related Content Broadway star James Barbour (Tale of Two Cities) will repeat last season’s sold-out holiday engagement at Sardi's with Holiday Concert 2009 in both New York and Los Angeles.

The New York concerts will begin on Friday, Dec. 11 at Bill’s 1890 Restaurant & Café, 57 E. 54th Street, between Park and Madison, and will continue through Saturday, Dec. 19 with musical direction by opera’s revered Constantine Kitsopoulos.

The evening will feature a musically inspired reading of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem “The Night Before Christmas” which the scholar/philanthropist wrote for his nine children in 1822 while they lived at 57 East 54th St., the building which now houses the café.

New York tickets may be purchased at a http://www.smarttix.com/%22%3Ewww.SmartTix.com or by calling 212-868-4444. Evening performances are at 7:30 with a matinee at 3 pm on Saturday, Dec. 19.

The Los Angeles schedule will offer one concert only on Monday, Dec. 21
7 pm at The Colony Theatre, 555 N. 3rd St., Burbank, CA with musical direction by multiple Grammy Award nominated composer, producer, songwriter, arranger and rock impresario Peter Wolf.

LA tickets may be purchased at http://www.colonytheatre.org/ or by calling 818-558-7000 (Ext. 15)

Both concerts are being produced by Treehouse Entertainment Inc. and
Roberta Nusim for TMA (Theatrical Marketing Associates) and will feature special guest appearances by Broadway and Hollywood luminaries to be announced in the coming weeks.

For a review of Barbour's 2008 holiday concert at Sardi's in New York, click here.

Theater Review: Idiot Savant

Sphere: Related Content

Willem Dafoe and Alenka Kraigher (Photo: Joan Marcus)

Call Me an Idiot, but I Didn’t Get It
By Lauren Yarger
I knew it was going to be “out there” and “brainy,” but within the first 30 seconds of Richard Foreman’s Idiot Savant starring Willem Dafoe in the title role Off-Broadway at the Public Theater, I had a sinking feeling in my gut that this was not going to be a fun time at the theater.

I was right, and if my seat had been on the side of the house by the exit door, I probably would have bolted, because truth be known, this type of avant-garde theater really is not my cup of tea. I like to be able to follow a plot, or in this case, for the play to actually have one, instead of trying to figure out what the heck is going on for 80 minutes (no, there’s no intermission. It’s not a good idea to put one in these types of plays because most of the audience might leave.)

Now I’m a theater critic, and I could put on my theater critic’s cap, stroke my chin while trying to look knowledgeable and say something brainy like, “deep … interesting … thought-provoking … engaging” or some other description that wouldn’t actually require me to try to explain what took place, but I’m not that kind of critic. I’m truthful, and truth is, I didn’t get it, but I’ll do my best to convey what I experienced and let you decide whether you get it.

Dafoe plays the Idiot Savant, in whose mind, we have somehow landed. That mind, as designed by Foreman, who also directs, includes Dafoe clad in an outfit that’s a cross between Samurai warrior and court jester, a lot of black and white shapes, numbered, padded mirror backs into which Savant slams himself from time to time and other strange props, as well as some other characters.

Enter the Guenevere-looking Marie (Alenka Kraigher) clad in a long, black velvet gown and Olga (Elina Lowensohn) who wears riding pants and a sort of breast-plate-looking bodice thing. There also are some servants (Joel Israel, Eric Magnus and Daniel Allen Nelson) who move a lot of the props around and who occasionally come out with bows and arrows threatening to shoot the others. The costumes, which made me want to laugh, are the fault of – I mean designed by – Gabriel Berry.

“What makes chosen words magic?” Marie asks.

“Who among us is prepared for an explanation,” Savant replies.

Well, I was, for one, especially since the question was asked at super-slow speed in a creepy kind of hushed way.

“The experts are confused,” bellowed an off-stage, god-like voice. He kept saying that throughout the play, apparently to remind us that experts are confused about what really takes place in the mind of an idiot savant. The experts weren’t the only ones confused, I thought. Another voice screamed, “Watch Out!” at intervals. At least this was a good warning, I thought, hoping folks outside the theater could hear it and act appropriately before entering this madness.
Loud music pulsed while everyone polished the numbers on the mirror backs. A black table symbolized mental stability.

“I understand,” said one of the women. I wanted to laugh out loud.

The Savant dons a yellow, polka-dotted jacket to protect himself from words and people. I found myself wishing for a jacket that could protect me from the rest of this play which seemed more and more like one of those a 1960’s weird theatrical performances with bongos that you swore someone on drugs had written while having a really bad trip and that really wasn’t all that thought-provoking, but you felt stupid if you said so because everyone else seemed to get great meaning out of it (perhaps because they were high also).

At one point, the two women became spiders and a masked man carrying a bird cage walked by. Then the women felt the need to show their bras and the voice said, “The secret is no longer hidden, friends. Rejoice! Rejoice.”

By now, I was having a hard time containing my laughter and the play’s shift into more brainy questions like "is this play really happening," "does the Savant really exist" and "how many versions of him might there be" failed to interest me at all.

My favorite part was the appearance of a large duck who was likened to a god, but which looked more like a mutant fly. The characters feared him until they realized they could eat duck. The duck said he would prefer a roast beef sandwich, then played some golf. I was eternally grateful my friend, Ron, was not attending the theater with me that night, because the duck would have been the end of any control over the laughter and the ushers would have had to roll two convulsing, sputtering, laughing people out of the theater.

I think I wore out the muscles controlling my left arm by longingly looking at my watch every minute of the 80 making up this particularly painful ring of theater critic hell. If you see a plot or great dramatic prose in anything I have described, you’re smarter than I (and please send me your contact information so I can send you in my place to review the next one in this genre). Foreman is considered by many to be a genius in the creation of avant-garde theater. As for me faithful readers, call me an idiot, but I didn’t get it.

Idiot Savant runs through Dec. 20 at the Public, 425 Lafayette Street, NYC. Tickets are available at 212-967-7555.

Christians might also like to know:
• Language
• Bras revealed

Theater Review: Nightingale

Sphere: Related Content A Pleasant Story Leaves Us Wanting a Little More
By Lauren Yarger
At a difficult moment in her life, actress Lynn Redgrave went searching for some help and found herself at the grave of the grandmother she barely knew, looking at a blank tombstone whose information had been erased by acid rain.

She saw the blank surface as a way to create a story about Beatrice, so that her story would not be lost. The result is Nightingale, a one-woman show, written and performed by Redgrave while sitting at a writing desk on the Off-Broadway stage at Manhattan Theatre Club.

Redgrave narrates and assumes the role of Beatrice as a young girl, as a young bride and as an older woman trapped in a loveless marriage while occasionally interjecting pieces of information from her own life when they parallel her grandmother’s experiences.

It’s a nice blend of fiction and fact told in front of a folding screen decorated with scenes of English country life (Tobin Ost, scenic design), directed by Joseph Hardy. We follow the sheltered and naïve Beatrice through her courtship with Redgrave's grandfather, Eric, with whom Beatrice is careful not to do more than hold hands, because kissing might result in a baby. We’re there on her wedding night when she follows her mother’s advice to “close your eyes and think of England” and share her loss years later, when she finds love with a farmer, but barely recognizes her need to be with him.

Beatrice lives her life through her youngest child, Robin, on whom she dotes while ignoring her other son and finding constant fault with her daughter, Rachel. She appears to be very unhappy all through her life.

The tale is intriguing and moving, but fails to put writing back on the tombstone since this isn’t really Beatrice’s tale; it’s a life Redgrave has written for her. The work might better have been formed as a piece about an altogether fictional woman. Redgrave’s personal interjections, while themselves interesting and moving, heighten the need to have an actual grandmother to walk along side her granddaughter.

Redgrave does a nice job of bringing the remade Beatrice and her various moods to life, however, with the help of some subtle lighting changes (Rui Rita, design). Over all, it’s a pleasant 80 minutes that will make you miss your grandmother.

Nightingale runs through Dec. 20 at New York City Center Stage I, 131 West 55th Street, NYC. Tickets are available at 212-581-1212 or http://www.mtc-nyc.org/

Christians might also like to know:
• Some sexual dialogue

Theater Review: The Understudy

Sphere: Related Content Performances are Fun, but the Plot Needs a Few Pages of Reality
By Lauren Yarger
If a long-lost, three-hour masterpiece of confusion by Franz Kafka were discovered, how could you make it a commercial success on Broadway? Just cast two hot Hollywood stars.

That scenario, not far from the reality of this season’s Hollywood-star-driven productions on the Great White Way, is the basis for Theresa Rebeck’s play The Understudy, presented Off-Broadway by the Roundabout Theater, and while it loses touch with reality in a few places, it is entertaining if you’re in the theater business. If you’re not, just enjoy the performances.

Justin Kirk is Harry, a down-on-his-luck actor who has been cast as understudy to one of the Kafka play’s stars, Jake (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), whose most recent film earned him millions for delivering riveting lines like, “Get in the truck!” amidst a lot of explosions and action-packed plot. Harry’s a little jealous of that. OK, he’s a lot jealous of that, especially since he had tried out for the action movie part and didn’t get it.

He did land this understudy part, but there probably is no chance Harry will ever get to go on, unless Jake, who also understudies the play’s other Hollywood star whose movies gross even more than Jake’s, has to go on for him. The truth is that if either of the film stars can’t go on, the theater audience probably will walk out and demand refunds.

He and Jake butt heads during a put-in rehearsal where the understudies runs through their scenes on stage. The process is made more difficult when the harried stage manager, Roxanne (Julie White) turns out to be "harried" in more ways than one: he's her ex who left without explanation two weeks before their wedding.

Trying to put her personal feelings aside and deal with things like a pot-smoking techie (an unseen character named Laura) who keeps bringing up the wrong lighting and sound cues while moving the wrong set pieces onto the stage (the at-night stage set and the accompanying sets for the Kafka play are designed by Alexander Dodge), Roxanne tries to appease big-star Jake while keeping the “let’s-try-it-another-way” Harry on book.

White is a lot of fun playing the range from neurotic stage manager to broken-hearted bride. She is the epitome of frustration, offering body language, facial expressions and changing tones of screaming to try to get through the rehearsal (if you’ve ever been in charge of a rehearsal like this, believe me, you feel her pain).

Kirk, who ironically sounds a lot like a big movie star, namely his voice reminded me of Tom Hanks, has a comparable talent for timing delivery and makes the most of his lines. He had me laughing out loud when he tried to hit his mark in the light while uttering a Kafkaesque line about the light being lost. A scene with Gosselaar involving some hand slapping and paper stamping is almost slapstick.

Both White’s and Kirk’s performances can go over the top, however, and should have been reined in by director Scott Ellis.

Gosselaar gives Jake depth, so we believe that the pretty-faced and attractively built star, whose physique is showcased in jeans and a T-shirt by costume designer Tom Broecker, reveres the horrible-sounding Kafka piece because he wants to do something deeper than “get in the truck!”

The play’s biggest weakness, however, is its plot, which Rebeck hinges on implausible coincidences to make it easy to write: Harry just happens to be Roxanne’s ex and she doesn’t realize this until he arrives because he had changed his name (but he, when told to report for this rehearsal doesn’t recognize her name?); would a Hollywood star of Jake’s caliber also be understudy to the other Hollywood star in the show (not likely, but this justifies Jake’s being at the rehearsal); how many times can the characters go off in search of props or to use the bathroom only for those left behind on stage to discover that their revealing conversations or actions have been overheard by the other on the theater’s intercom system which for some reason is on for the rehearsal (a lot of times, apparently); would a pot-smoking techie who can’t do her job really remain employed (and while Roxanne is up in the booth fixing Laura’s mistakes, why doesn’t she switch off that darn intercom?)

Overall, The Understudy isn’t as deep as Kafka, but thankfully it can be an entertaining time at the theater.

The Understudy runs through Jan. 17 at the Laura Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St., NYC. Tickets are available by calling 212-719-1300. For a special group discount for our readers, click here and be sure to indicate that the religious organization you wish to support is Masterwork Productions.

Christians might also like to know:
• Language