All in the Family

Review of All My Sons, Hartford Stage

“Patriotism,” Samuel Johnson once quipped, “is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” Thinking of Arthur Miller’s second play All My Sons, now in a powerful revival at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen and starring Marsha Mason and Michael Gaston, we may wish to alter the adage, replacing “patriotism” with “family.”

Joe Keller (Michael Gaston), Kate Keller (Marsha Mason) in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Meet the Kellers: Joe (Michael Gaston) is a friendly, neighborhood patriarch relaxing in his backyard; he welcomes the neighborhood doctor, Jim Bayliss (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.), sharing his pipe tobacco; he entertains a local boy, Bert (Malachy Glanovsky), with plots to police the neighborhood and slap any malefactors, who might, for instance, say a dirty word, into the jail he claims to harbor in his basement. And Joe has a son, Chris (Ben Katz), who has served responsibly in the recent war (the setting is 1946 Ohio), and seems a chip off the old block. While we’ve no grounds to think we may be trespassing into O’Neill territory, we might reasonably suspect that the trouble in this affable collective will have something to do with Mom—Kate Keller (Marsha Mason).

Even before we meet her, we hear Joe worrying over how she will respond to the loss of a tree that split and fell over during the previous night’s storm. The tree was planted in honor of Larry, the younger son who went to war and has been MIA for over three years. Kate believes he will still turn up.

Kate Keller (Marsha Mason), Ann Deever (Fiona Robberson) in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Marsha Mason’s Kate Keller is the worried heart of this play, a woman who, it seems, has endless faith, and who navigates through the affronts the family has suffered with her dignity intact. A major factor is how she stood by Joe when he went to prison briefly. As a military supplier, Joe’s company sent substandard parts to the U.S. Airforce during the war. Twenty-one U.S. planes and pilots were lost as a result. Joe was cleared; Steve Deever, his partner, is still serving time. But if we think Kate is the staunch supportive type, watch how rigid she becomes when she realizes Chris wants to marry Ann Deever (Fiona Robberson), the gal Larry left behind and Steve’s daughter. Later revelations will expose Kate as not only deluded in her hopes but also complicit in the shirking of responsibility that marks the elder generation in this play. It’s a complex role that has been played by Joan Plowright, Dianne Wiest, Sally Fields, Annette Bening, and others. Mason, a four-time Oscar nominee for Best Actress, has down the matronly tone that makes Kate seems a hostess to the world, but also the tough streak that makes us think no one could ever put one over on her. Her ultimate vulnerability comes with her own realization of how firmly she believed one lie so as to not have to face a harsher truth. It’s a riveting dramatic moment.

Kate Keller (Marsha Mason) in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Melia Besnussen’s firm hand on Miller’s play lets the script yield up its plot points with a steady pace, so that we get to take the measure of each character as, first, at their best and most outgoing and then, gradually, as the deniers and shirkers who have been covering up their guilty knowledge. The key exception is Ann’s brother George (Reece Dos Santos) who visits in Act II straight from his father’s jail cell with an ax to grind. The Deever kids had abandoned their father, it seems, in his disgrace, but now George has a new take on things. He comes on as the one who will finally make Joe confess he played Steve false, and, like Kate, he feels that a marriage between Ann and Chris would be a further outrage.

George Deever (Reece Dos Santos), Ann Deever (Fiona Robberson) in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

But watch how easily Kate is able to smooth over George’s ire, getting him to suddenly admit that he’s only really felt at home at the Kellers’. It’s a telling moment because the course of the play will turn on a dime and go the other way—into all the reasons we can’t trust our fondness for the Kellers. And once the full weight of the past asserts itself, we may find ourselves questioning the fantasy of home and of belonging that the play wants us to get beyond. For Miller’s play has its eye on war profiteers and all those who use “serving their country” as an excuse for all kinds of malfeasance. But the play also candidly confronts the comfortable lies that people use to defend themselves against inconvenient or even catastrophic truths. Joe’s excuse for his behavior comes down to the sorts of things we’ve heard from serial killers like Tony Soprano or from wheeling-and-dealing vipers like Logan Roy: I did it for my kids, I did it for my family. How can we deny the strength of the plea?

Joe Keller (Michael Gaston), Ann Deever (Fiona Robberson) in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Wartime demands that one stick it to one’s enemies in the name of survival and victory, but when one is sticking it to one’s partners and to one’s customers and, mortally, to one’s own country can one still tout survival above all? Any such victory feels horribly hollow. And that’s where Miller’s play takes us, as any sense of just deserts is apt to make us wonder what really could be fair or just for the people in this play.

There is much to note here that is first rate. Riw Rakkulchon’s set is a stunning use of the space, with clearly delineated segments while also fully naturalistic, as a comfortable yard behind a house that can be entered (some interesting effects are achieved by letting us see actors inside the house), with a wide expanse of water fading into sky behind. In addition to the house, actors can enter or leave the scene in three directions, making for very lively coming and going as neighbors drop in or depart, or when tensions provoke a character to storm off. Mary Louise Geiger’s lighting gives both the broad strokes of time of day and also the more subtle lightings that enhance particular scenes, and the lighting within the house has the feel of coziness that seems just right. An-lin Dauber’s costumes are period without seeming unduly dated, and have an earnest Sears & Roebuck style, but for dressier moments—as when Kate gets set for a night out.

Dr. Jim Bayliss (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.), Kate Keller (Marsha Mason) in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

As the other star of the show, Michael Gaston’s Joe is impeccably presented, his gruff bonhomie quite likeable, his efforts to defend himself from any soul-searching full of a maudlin conviction that sentiment should be on his side. His final realization of the effects of his duplicity make for a staggering tearful moment. In the film made of the play, Edward G. Robinson, as Joe, can’t help but seem sinister and the soundtrack adds to the effect. Gaston’s Joe is much more credible as a living instance, perhaps, of Hannah Arendt’s notion of “the banality of evil.” 

Chris Keller (Ben Katz), Joe Keller (Michael Gaston) in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

More than able support comes from Ben Katz as Chris, whose outburst at his father is an emotional highpoint, full of rage, frustration and the kind of hurt love that hopes a failure can be made better; Fiona Robberson is quite memorable as Ann; though her role is often subdued, the times when she seems ready to fly off the handle have great snap and drive. As George Deever, Reece Dos Santos gets to sway our sympathies toward the Deevers while also letting us feel George’s ambivalence, now that he finds himself welcomed in the place he left behind. Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., is also notable as Dr. Jim Bayliss, who gives us the tone Miller likes to sound, of a depressed Chorus whose sense of how dark fate will ultimately will out fills out the play. And Malachy Glanovsky hits perfectly the childish enthusiasm of Bert, giving us, early on, a reason to like Joe Keller.

Bert (Malachy Glanovsky), Joe Keller (Michael Gaston) in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Vibrant, gripping, relevant to the anxieties that should make any community or family question its unexamined truths, All My Sons is for everyone.

All My Sons
By Arthur Miller
Directed by Melia Bensussen

Scenic Design: Riw Rakkulchon; Costume Design: An-lin Dauber; Lighting Design: Mary Louise Geiger; Original Music & Sound Design: Lucas Clopton; Wig, Hair, & Makeup Design: J. Jared Jonas; Fight Director: Ted Hewlett; Voice & Dialect Coach: Julie Foh; Casting: Alaine Alldaffer; Youth Coordinator: Shelby Demke; Production Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Assistant Sage Manager: Theresa Stark; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Marsha Mason, Michael Gaston, Yadira Correa, Reece Dos Santos, Ben Katz, Fiona Robberson, Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., Dan Whelton, Caitlin Zoz, Malachy Glanovsky

Hartford Stage
April 11-May 5, 2024

If You Can't Stand the Heat. . .

Review of The Hot Wing King, Hartford Stage

Cooking is a lot like theater: you need the right mix of the right ingredients. Katori Hall’s Pulitzer-winning play The Hot Wing King offers light, sassy dialogue among a joshing group of gay men, a splash of impromptu musical numbers, a deep soak of caring and confrontational talk, and an infusion of spicey issues of gender, race, and sexuality. Directed by Christopher D. Betts, the play is a study in how friendship and erotic relations and family obligations can all simmer together, involving us all in the way they play out. It’s a heady mix that drew enthusiastic responses from the matinee crowd Sunday at Hartford Stage where it plays through March 24.

Cordell (Bjorn DuPaty) has left behind a wife and sons in St. Louis to move in with his lover Dwayne (Calvin M. Thompson) in Memphis. Dwayne is a hotel manager with a nice house where Cordell, as yet unemployed, feels his second-class status. Cordell’s chief way of asserting himself as the action opens is in concocting recipes for hot chicken wings and entering his creations in a local contest. To that end, Dwayne and two of their friends, Isom (Israel Erron Ford) and Big Charles (Postell Pringle) are pressed into service to help—whether it’s dismembering chickens or stirring a huge vat of sauce counter-clockwise for five hours or soaking wood chips. Cordell is a man with a mission and much of the first half hour or so is mostly the gossiping, joking, preening and one-upping of this colorful group of friends and lovers.

Big Charles (Postell Pringle), Dwayne (Calvin M. Thompson), EJ (Marcus Gladney, Jr.), Isom (Israel Erron Ford, seated), Cordell (Bjorn DuPaty) in The Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Plot points begin to surface when we learn that Dwayne has guilty feelings for having called the police to help his distraught sister, who had mental troubles and addiction problems, and was killed in the confrontation. His sister’s son, “EJ” (Marcus Gladney, Jr.), eventually shows up seeking asylum from a makeshift household with his father TJ (Alphonso Walker Jr.), a hustler viewed as “a thug” by the genteel types in Dwayne’s home.

TJ (Alphonso Walker Jr) in The Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Tensions percolate aplenty: besides Cordell’s feeling that Dwayne makes all his own decisions as though they are not in a relationship, there’s also Cordell’s feeling that he can’t take on helping out Dwayne’s nephew when his own sons won’t even speak to him for abandoning their mother. Meanwhile whatever Big Charles and Isom have going has its own prickly edges, and EJ, who has been known to pilfer in the past, has possible behavioral issues. TJ has his own issues with his son spending so much time around gay men.

Isom (Israel Erron Ford), Big Charles (Postell Pringle), Cordell (Bjorn DuPaty), Dwayne (Calvin M. Thompson) in The Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The verbal hectoring and ribbing can sometimes run a bit thick, and I suspect that Dialect and Voice Coach Cynthis Santos DeCure had quite a job keeping everyone on point for the local accent which, coupled with the slang and street phrases, can make one wish for subtitles at times. Then too this is a physically busy play, with well-orchestrated use of space and body language, and lots of movement throughout Emmie Finckel’s well-appointed two-level set, including a side basketball patio where some of the more intense dialogues take place. Jahise LeBouef’s costumes sport vibrant colors, and there are interludes at a piano and jokey song performances with cooking implements as microphones. Shortly before the break there’s an “oh no” moment that earns gasps, setting up comic repercussions in the second half.

As we settle in after intermission it’s easy to feel at home with these folks, and we want to see how their ad hoc household is going to work out its snags. To that end, there are great moments from both Marcus Gladney, Jr., as EJ, who finally has to dump on his uncle for not respecting him; and from Alphonso Walker Jr. who gives TJ a deeply thoughtful portrayal, quite welcome for its gravitas. Anything but grave, Israel Erron Ford’s Isom is the live-wire, life-of-the-party type with the accessories and attitudes to match; he’s also got moves and a voice that convince us he might be more than all show. Postell Pringle’s Big Charles is the kind of guy who is generally taxed with “keeping it real,” a sports-watching couch potato who gives a regular Joe feel to the group.

Everett “EJ” (Marcus Gladney, Jr.), Cordell (Bjorn DuPaty, foreground) in The Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

As the sparring couple trying to make things work, Cordell and Dwayne can both feel a bit immature, but also familiar enough in their uncertainty about to how to cope with what they feel. There’s an intimate moment between them at one point that goes a long way to help us see that their bond is real, even if their day-to-day situation has them doubting it. And both Bjorn DuPaty and Calvin M. Thompson walk well the throughlines of high comedy and the deep dives of feeling that their roles require.

Dwayne (Calvin M. Thompson), Cordell (Bjorn DuPaty) in The Hot Wing King at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Lively and colorful like a party you were glad you got invited to, The Hot Wing Kings also feels at times like an insular gathering where you’ve got to bring a certain spirit—and not just an enthusiasm for wings—in order to gain admittance. Even at its most carefree, the tone seems aimed to prove something, such as the way these lives matter and the way they have to find—even within a certain amount of sit-com trappings—a valid way to represent truth.

The Hot Wing King
By Katori Hall
Directed by Christopher D. Betts

Scenic Design: Emmie Finckel; Costume Design: Jahise LeBouef; Lighting Design: Adam Honoré; Sound Design: Kathy Ruvuna; Dialect and Voice Coach: Cynthis Santos DeCure; Casting: Aliane Alldaffer; Production Stage Manager: Bernita Robinson; Assistant Stage Manager: Makayla Beckles; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Bjorn DuPaty, Israel Erron Ford, Marcus Gladney Jr., Postell Pringle, Calvin M. Thompson, Alphonso Walker Jr.

Hartford Stage
February 29-March 24, 2024

The Woes of the Father

Review of Simona’s Search, Hartford Stage

There’s a Biblical saying (from Deuteronomy) about the sins or iniquities of the fathers being visited upon the sons unto the third or fourth generation. In Simona’s Search, a world premiere play at Hartford Stage directed by Melia Bensussen, playwright Martin Zimmerman considers the possibility of a genetic link whereby the trauma of the parent is visited upon (or inherited by) a subsequent generation. It’s an intriguing idea, and might satisfy, one suspects, the longing for a genetic explanation for melancholy, depression, and states of anxiety and discontent that must have come from somewhere.

The play presents us with a trauma event of sorts—but it’s Simona’s, not her father’s. Having been warned not to come into her father’s room while he’s asleep, Simona (Alejandra Escalante), nine, not only does that, but brings in her friends who are visiting for a birthday celebration, and if that’s not violation enough, she hops on unsuspecting pop and puts her hand over his nose and mouth. Papi’s reflex reaction is to whack her across the room. Only someone who had experienced unspeakable horrors would behave that way, apparently. At least that’s Simona’s conclusion.

Simona (Alejandro Escalante) in Simona’s Search at Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

The father, played well with sympathetic indulgence and weary wariness by Al Rodrigo, is reticent about his past, so much so that it could be he’s covering up something terrible. Or it could be he just doesn’t like talking about life in his unnamed birth country. Because of what she reads as a teen, Simona diagnoses his problem as post-traumatic stress disorder and sees herself as a victim of transgenerational trauma. Though Papi would like her to study physics and seems to consider the questions it poses as the most significant in the world, she’s having none of it. Only what goes on in the psyche is worth her time. Their clash, though, isn’t portrayed as simply a difference in temperament or desire; instead, Simona takes the attitude that what her father seems to care about is only a smokescreen for what he won’t admit.

Corroboration comes from an experiment she reads about because Papi seemingly plants an article on genetic experiments among other clippings he saves for her about research in physics. Simona learns that second-generation lab rats were born with a fear of the smell of a certain flower blossom inculcated in their parental generation through the administering of electric shock. If that’s possible, then why not a daughter who inherits the dread of traumatic events her father experienced but never told her about?

Simona (Alejandro Escalante), Papi (Al Rodrigo) in Simona’s Search, Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Regardless of the merits of this explanation in real world terms—and the playbill provides supporting evidence—it’s a bit of dead letter, dramatically. Simona speaks and acts from a foregone conclusion, and since she narrates most of the play, we have only her version of events. Escalante gives Simona a very earnest, measured tone that makes her vulnerable moments seem like approximations for the sake of effect. Little action is directly depicted, except Simona’s reticence with a sympathetic boyfriend, Jake (Christopher Bannow). Father and daughter are mostly at loggerheads and just when you think maybe they will have a scene together that amounts to something, it dissipates into more narration.

Jake (Christopher Bannow), Simona (Alejandro Escalante) in Simona’s Search at Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Simona remains isolated by her trauma; her attempt to seek help is handled by a very facile and uninterested doctor (Rodrigo) who views her on-again, off-again haunting by a shadowy figure in her imagination as an hallucination. For Simona, it can only be a residual image of an interrogator who brutalized her father during an inferred incarceration. In a sense, Simona’s unwavering interpretation of what is causing her suffering becomes a form of obsession. The play starts to feel like listening to a recounting of personal and familial grief at an AA meeting, without being able to intervene or ask questions or even offer solace.

Bensussen does all she can to interject visual and theatrical interest into such a heavily verbal play: Hartford Stage’s space is put to good use with lively choreography by Shura Baryshnikov and projections by Yana Biryukov that can be both lovely—the blossoms—and eerie—that shadowy figure; Yu Shibagaki’s scenic design makes the shows few props seem to have metamorphic properties, while the lighting design by Aja M. Jackson and the sound design by Aubrey Dube are superb.

The show’s best theatrical moment is an interlude with a romantically inclined, French-accented, human-sized lab rat (Olivera Gajic, costume design) who steals the show. As the rat, Christopher Bannow shows yet again what a versatile actor he is, always a major asset to any production he’s in (as for instance last year’s Wolf Play at MCC in New York). The scene works because of the careful choreography and because of a sense of absurdity, fun, and weirdness—the flipside, I suppose, of a traumatic visitation.

Whatever we make of such an interlude is up to us as viewers, which is a lot better than having someone onstage telling us what everything must mean. I left the play not so much impressed by Simona’s search for the truth as cautioned by her certainty.

Papi (Al Rodrigo), Simona (Alejandro Escalante) in Simona’s Search at Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Simona’s Search
By Martin Zimmerman
Directed by Melia Bensussen

Choreographer: Shura Baryshnikov; Scenic Design: Yu Shibagaki; Costume Design: Olivera Gajic; Lighting Design: Aja M. Jackson; Sound Design: Aubrey Dube; Projection Design: Yana Biryukova; Casting: Alaine Alidaffer; Dramaturgy: Kristin Leahey; Production Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Assistant Stage Manager: Julius Cruz; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Christopher Bannow, Alejandra Escalante, Al Rodrigo

Hartford Stage
January 18-February 11, 2024 

A Troubling Trouble in Mind

Review of Trouble in Mind, Hartford Stage

The purpose of theater in both addressing a public and creating a viable theatrical space in which talent is showcased and convincing dramatic or comic roles are enacted is under scrutiny in Alice Childress’ complex, satiric, and politically motivated play from 1957, Trouble in Mind. Within this exploration of the rigors of a professional production—we’re supposedly watching the rehearsals for an upcoming Broadway show, Chaos in Belleville—there is plenty of room for Childress to examine the plight of theater in her day, which turns out to be not very different from the concerns of our day. The plight of trying to do truth while at the same time shackling a play’s messages and meanings to holdover clichés, stereotypes, or to whatever new theatrical mannerisms (in this case Method Acting) have arisen to christen a new era looms large. In our day, the question of diversity on all fronts has all but ended any notion of theatrical unity; in Childress’ time, the process of chipping away at the Great White Edifice on the Great White Way was just getting underway.

The cast of Trouble in Mind at Hartford Stage, directed by Christopher D. Betts (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Childress, who spent a long time as an actress herself, knew the lingo, knew the backstage chat and sparring, and had observed and experienced the little indignities and the overweening egoism of actors’ lives. What helps sustain our interest in this collection of actors--Wiletta Mayer (Heather Alicia Simms), Sheldon Forrester (Michael Rodgers), Bill O’Wray (James Joseph O’Neil), Judy Sears (Sarah Lyddan), Millie Davis (Chelsea Lee Williams), and John Nevins (Sideeq Heard)—is the way they play with the parts in the Belleville play and play their own roles in the process of creating theater. So, while Judy might seem at first a perky airhead, that’s partly because her ingenue role expects it of her; meanwhile, a practiced dissembler like Sheldon Forrester—the elder in the company—knows how to act “the darkie” in a way that puts white egos at ease, while also asserting himself—via voice and histrionic presence—as an actor in the grand manner. Bill O’Wray, a soap opera star, treats every role as a job he pretty much plays the same way, not interested in interacting with the cast or exploring method; Millie Davis shows off gaudy jewelry to convince her colleagues she doesn’t really need to act, so well-off is her husband, and so maintains a certain aloofness; John Nevins is the newbie, earnest and ingratiating but his ambition—to use the play as a vehicle to launch his career—is as real as anything. Then there’s Wiletta Mayer, who reluctantly emerges as the conscience of the cast, a role for which she hasn’t fully explored all the implications.

We first meet Wiletta as she arrives earliest to rehearsal. This gives her the opportunity to interact with Henry, an aging theater-hand who remembers a grand theatrical moment in her past career—for which he designed the lighting. With that exchange, Childress stresses her sense of theater: it’s ephemeral even at its best, and yet—as an experience—it can create a longstanding awareness shared by these two who achieved something together even if only meeting for the first time. The tension between who they are at their best—in the theater—and who they are otherwise (just folks) is clear from the start. That contrast inspires mostly comic deliveries, but Betts downplays Childress’ satire as though the target of playing at playing is too easy and too readily assessed. What does emerge is that “Tomming”—assuaging white egos by playing up to them, like an “Uncle Tom”—is key to success for black actors but that some version of such dissembling (kissing-ass) is an element generally present wherever hierarchies preside. So that Eddie (Adam Langdon), the white put-upon assistant to the white director Al Manners (John Bambery) is pretty much always “Tomming,” as is Henry.

In my view, the biggest problem with the Hartford Stage production of this intriguing play is John Bambery’s Al Manners. Having seen a very nuanced rendering of this character in another production, I have a hard time getting a read on why Manners is so incessantly tiresome. Bambery approaches his lines as if hacking away at blocks of ice, whereas the character—as a director who feels he’s actually progressive while having to deal with indignities on all sides (from an ex-wife, from his producers, from his cast, and his underlings)—has a trajectory to run: from seeming to know how this works to not having a definite conviction any longer. It’s worth mentioning the weak point of the production because it seems to me that the strength of the real director’s approach is Christopher Betts’ willingness to push this play until “not having a definite conviction” is a state of affairs that can’t really be improved and can only be endured.

Early on, Manners tries to lord it over Wiletta, after she sings a song in the play with the kind of subdued, spiritualist fervor she knows he wants. Not content, he eggs her on with “word association” and other Method techniques to make her question and “justify” her choices. The next rendition has a different register, much closer to “we shall overcome,” a rallying cry. Manners rejects the innovation at once and so the cast (and us) see that he’s all bluster, not really wanting to find new possibilities in trite material. It’s a fully present moment, convincingly played.

John Nevins (Sideeq Heard), Sheldon Forrester (Michael Rodgers), Al Manners (John Bambery), Eddie (Adam Langdon), Judy (Sarah Lyddan), Wiletta (Heather Alicia Simms) in the Hartford Stage production of Trouble in Mind (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

More questionable is a key moment in Act Two: the play—Chaos in Belleville—is an “anti-lynching” play in which a young black man gets lynched (though other outcomes might be possible). Someone says that none present have ever seen a lynching and that’s when Sheldon Forrester speaks up. He has, and proceeds to describe what he saw. In Rodgers’ delivery as Forrester, the tale takes on a rhapsodic feel, working against the excruciating detail of what he tells. It’s as if Betts has chosen to let Forrester—a thoroughly theatrical presence—turn actual oppression into aria (as theater will do again and again). The point is that Childress’s play, in openly questioning, through Wiletta Mayer, all the givens of a play like Chaos in Belleville, with its crowd-pleasing and guilt-assuaging BS, also questions how to render the theatrical reality of her own play, a question that Betts’ production worries to the end.

According to Arminda Thomas’ account in the show’s playbill, the play’s ending continued to be an issue. When the play was bound for Broadway, Childress baulked at the suggested ending (the actors all agree with Wiletta against Manners) and the play was not produced; as late as 1992, for a London production, Childress reworked the ending. The problem of the ending, we could say, is that the play can’t solve it. No actor, no director hired to put on a particular play can really change it to make it their own play. What is needed is a black female playwright able to write a better play than Chaos in Belleville, and—while she knows she is that playwright—Childress chooses to write a play that dramatizes that need rather than resolving it. At play’s end, it’s not Wiletta we have to believe in but in Childress, in Lorraine Hansberry, in Adrienne Kennedy, in Suzan-Lori Parks. We know they are coming, but they’re not there yet (in the play).

By restaging this early confrontational play, Betts lets us work through the problems that won’t go away: How to authentically enact what you never experienced when so many want to own a particular history? The cast becomes more and more convinced that they don’t know how the play should be rendered, as if in a proto “We Are Proud to Present a Presentation…” (which Betts directed while a graduate student), and Childress knows there is real drama in that realization. Or: How to put audiences on the hook and then let them off the hook so that they go away feeling vindicated for their sensitivity? That element—which we can say is still the earmark of the successful play able to enact uplift from suffering—is already questioned by Wiletta’s different renderings of a song, or by her choice at the end of making a speech where the principal of radical theater requires her not to do it “in character,” but however she happens to feel right now, as we conclude. And how we feel about that is all about whether or not we are with her as she grapples with the constraints and the freedoms her playwright and her director (Childress and Betts) put upon her.

The “trouble” of Trouble in Mind is that it’s purpose is to trouble the waters, not resolve the issues. Our task is to watch the agitation and think through its implications. To keep all that trouble in mind, until it does someone some good.

Trouble in Mind
By Alice Childress
Directed by Christopher D. Betts

Scenic Design: Baron E. Pugh; Costume Design: Jahise LeBouef; Lighting Design: Emma Deane; Sound Design: Kathy Ruvuna; Wig Design: Carissa Thorlakson; Dramaturg: Arminda Thomas; Casting Alaine Alldaffer; Production Stage Manager: Avery James Evans; Assistant Stage Manager: Anaïs Bustos

Cast: John Bambery, Sideeq Heard, Richmond Hoxie, Adam Langdon, Sarah Lyddan, James Joseph O’Neil, Michael Rodgers, Heather Alicia Simms, Chelsea Lee Williams

Hartford Stage
May 25-June 18, 2023

Time Well Spent at Hartford Stage

Review of The Winter’s Tale, Hartford Stage

What better to do on William Shakespeare Day (April 23—date of the Bard’s death and, traditionally, date of his birth) than to see a Shakespeare play? Hartford Stage Artistic Director Melia Bensussen has mounted the first Shakespeare production at the theater since the shutdowns of 2020. It’s a welcome return and an interesting choice of play.

The Winter’s Tale presents a heady mix that incorporates tragic conflict, dramatic shifts and reversals, antic songs, stressed lovers, comic interactions and magical reconciliation. Bensussen’s direction is straightforward and aimed to help viewers focus on the action. There is little of the lengthy speechifying that is so key in many of Shakespeare’s plays; here, there is much more interaction than introspection. Nor is there much of the anachronism that directors often like to visit upon Shakespeare so as to “bring him up to date.” Bensussen’s approach suggests that the play is intriguing enough to be mounted in its unique spirit of theatrical variation.

Polixenes (Omar Robinson), Hermione (Jamie Ann Romero); background: Leontes (Nathan Darrow), Mamillius (Jotham Burrello) in The Winter’s Tale at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The story concerns Leontes, King of Sicilia (Nathan Darrow), and his friendship with, and sudden passionate jealousy of, Polixenes, King of Bohemia (Omar Robinson). They’ve been friends since boyhood, but, during Polixenes’ protracted visit to Sicilia, Leontes takes it into his head that Polixenes has been lover to Queen Hermione (Jamie Ann Romero), insisting that the child she is pregnant with was sired by Polixenes rather than himself. Leontes is even a little doubtful about his beloved son Mamillius (Jotham Burrello). Leontes is so far gone, he plots his friend’s death, the death of Hermione’s child, newborn, and scorns an oracle from Apollo that tells him he’s completely wrong about everything. His courtiers try to dissuade him, and Paulina (Lana Young), Hermione’s staunch defender, gets into a fierce argument with Leontes, to—seemingly—no avail.

Paulina (Lana Young) and Leontes (Nathan Darrow) in The Winter’s Tale, at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The jealousy plot occupies the first two Acts which move at considerable speed because what might have filled an entire tragedy is here simply the set-up for the second half of the play—most of which takes place in Bohemia, sixteen years later. The Sicilian segments are ably played by Nathan Darrow, as a truculent, tormented Leontes; Jamie Ann Romero as a winningly girlish Hermione who transforms into a figure of great dignity and stoicism; Omar Robinson as a benign friend who has to swerve into hasty self-preservation; Lana Young as a feisty Paulina who speaks with the most moral force in the play; and, in a role easy to overlook, Carmen Lacivita as Camillo, a “king’s man” who switches which king he serves and is a model of probity in one of those radical shifts otherwise known as a Shakespearean plot; only Jeremy Webb’s Antigonus seems a bit more colorless than required—but that may be due to a deliberate differentiation from Webb’s turn as the much more broadly played Shepherd in Bohemia who finds Perdita (Delfin Gökhan Meehan), the abandoned child of Leontes and Hermione.

The cast of The Winter’s Tale, in Bohemia, at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The Bohemia segments switch into a somewhat overstated comic tone to underline the fact that the mood of the play has changed drastically. It works for Webb’s Shepherd and son—called “Clown” in the list of characters—enacted by John Maddaloni with great energy and spirit. It works less well for our lovers, Perdita and Florizel (Daniel Davila Jr.), the latter trying to give too much contemporary swagger to his sound. The lovers are young, yes, but that doesn’t mean they are our youthful contemporaries. That element hovers about Perdita as well, so that her main scene feels pitched to score more mirth than it contains.

Clown/Shepherd’s Son (John Maddaloni), Autolycus (Pearl Rhein) in The Winter’s Tale, Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

No matter, the winning figure of the Bohemia segments is Pearl Rhein’s memorable Autolycus. Rhein has the full measure of this engaging, theatrical, slippery pick-pocket, so that the Bohemia segments have not only the requisite comic feel but also the welcome musicality—as Autolycus is a tuneful rogue (applause to Pornchanok Kanchanabanca’s music and sound design and music director Liam Bellman-Sharpe). The lightness of the stage business, including a song of rivals Mopsa (Ama Laura Santana) and Dorcas (Hannah Moore), shows as it should Shakespeare’s way with comic timing.

The play winds up in Sicilia, as it must, to come full circle and right as many wrongs as possible. But Shakespeare’s idea was to let some major moments of melodrama happen offstage, narrated by comic figures who keep saying “words fail to describe,” even as they try to. It works on the page and could work onstage with enough comic wit to bring it off. Bensussen instead uses a neat device wherein the characters whose actions are being narrated do the narrating—which helps greatly those viewers for whom some of the names and relations might otherwise prove slippery.

Hermione (Jamie Ann Romero), Leontes (Nathan Darrow) in The Winter’s Tale, Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The great reveal scene also comes off well, helped by staging that sets the statue of Hermione in a special space behind and above the main playing area. Otherwise, Cameron Anderson’s set design is sparse and open, with a tall leafless tree that later lowers and flowers. If quibble I must, I’ll direct my discontent at Whitney Locher’s costumes: there’s a handsome Edwardian cast to it all that makes these characters seem to belong in a Merchant-Ivory production, with Paulina looking a bit the schoolmarm; one might say that any play that gives credence to the ancient god Apollo might be best set a bit more pre-modern. And Autolycus in long underwear?

Perdita (Delfin Gökhan Meehan), Hermione (Jamie Ann Romero) in The Winter’s Tale, Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Those visual disconnects (in my eyes anyway) aside, this is a vibrant, near textbook-perfect run at one of those plays that delights, dismays, confuses and convinces as only a playwright confident he can do as he likes would try to bring off. In the space between Act 2 and Act 3, Pearl Rhein, as Time, puts it succinctly: allow the liberties taken if you’ve ever spent time worse than this; if you never have, “he wishes earnestly you never may.” You could indeed spend your time much worse, and no doubt have. Shakespeare’s ghost need not worry: Hartford Stage’s production of The Winter’s Tale spends its time well.

The Winter’s Tale
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Melia Bensussen

Choreography: Misha Shields; Scenic Design: Cameron Anderson; Costume Design: Whitney Locher; Lighting Design: Evan Anderson; Original Music & Sound Design: Pornchanok Kanchanabanca; Music Director: Liam Bellman-Sharpe; Wig Design: Carissa Thorlakso; Fight Director: Ted Hewlett; Voice & Text Coach: Julie Foh; Dramaturg: Victoria Abrash; Production Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Assistant Stage Manager: Theresa Stark

Cast: Andrew Black, Jotham Burrello, Nathan Darrow, Daniel Davila Jr., Carmen Lacivita, John Maddaloni, Delfin Gökhan Meehan, Hannah Moore, Pearl Rhein, Omar Robinson, Jamie Ann Romero, Ana Laura Santana, Carson Timmons, Jeremy Webb, Lana Young

Hartford Stage
April 13-May 7, 2023

The Bit About the Kid

Review of The Art of Burning, Hartford Stage

Now continuing its world premiere after a run in Boston, directed by Hartford Stage Artistic Director Melia Bensussen, Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning mines both the comedy and the drama of unsuccessful marriages, while giving a refreshing emphasis to a teenage daughter caught in the crossfire. Along the way the play explores what constitutes stability and sustainability—not only in relationships but in our inter-relations with others as a measure of how we choose to live in the world. At the heart of the play is the fraught question of how parents manage their priorities in life while beginning to see what’s owed the next generation. 

Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky), Mark (Michael Kaye), Jason (Rom Barkhordar) in Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Poised on the New Brutalist stylings of Luciana Stecconi’s set of hard surfaces and sharp corners, with an effective lighting grid in the floor to signal scene shifts, the play opens with Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky), an artist and mother, in prickly colloquy with Mark (Michael Kaye), a friend and attorney placed in the position of mediating her divorce from his friend Jason (Rom Barkhordar). Such a setup would generally bespeak a friendly dissolution of the marriage, and such may have once been expected, but things have taken a turn for the darker and more dramatic: Patricia has recently seen fit to set fire to Jason’s antique rolltop desk in the backyard, inviting their daughter Beth (Clio Contogenis) to join her in the conflagration and even to roast marshmallows in victory over Dad. Not something Jason, a very self-centered guy, is likely to take easily. The cause? Another woman, of course. 

Jason (Rom Barkhordar), Katya (Vivia Font), Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky) in Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Of the six characters in The Art of Burning, three are given scenes of considerable manic intensity; the other three, while emotive—the “other woman” Katya (Vivia Font)—and blustery (the men), are mostly foils. That leaves Patricia and Beth and Mark’s wife Charlene (Laura Latreille) to up the ante, displaying Snodgrass’s gift for the escalating harangue. Contogenis’ angsty cri de coeur against the parental generation for not stewarding the world in a more forward-looking manner pushes buttons with timely panache. Charlene, when she finally gets let off the leash, is even funnier; confronted by her husband for her alleged animadversion to musicals, she asserts what we might call the carnal attraction of good plays.

Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky), Charlene (Laura Latreille) in Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Then there’s Patricia. Her big turn-the-tables scene is more complex in terms of comic ingredients and doesn’t score quite as readily. In part that’s because using Medea even by way of reference (and Snodgrass likes references) creates a tension between the scene before us and something the playwright might be wanting us to understand that the characters don’t. The problem is that the possible misinterpretation (by both Mark and Jason) is improbable (guys, dried blood turns brown, red paint stays red!) and so not really funny, though Krstansky makes the most of Patricia’s exulting in their stupidity. A Pyrrhic victory, perhaps, as it’s hard to feel quite the same way about the play after that scene.

Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky), Mark (Michael Kaye), Jason (Rom Barkhordar) in Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Indeed, the conflict between what works as characterization and what doesn’t nags at the play. It’s there when Beth, generally a sympathetic character, berates her well-intentioned mother for not grasping the devastating internet exposure the gaffes of her disastrous date will likely receive—but Beth’s worldly assumption of that likelihood (already knowing about such exposures) rather belies the naivete with which she approached her date. It’s as if she’s a child of the 1950s while at the movies with her date and an app-savvy child of the 2020s when reacting to her mom’s reaction. It’s not that she can’t be both, I suppose, but somehow the comedy gets skewed, in part because we can’t want to see the teen as the butt of the joke (can we?). And yet there is potential for a steely sort of comedy to work all through the play. 

Which is a way of saying that The Art of Burning isn’t working on all its burners. Comedy requires a pacing that keeps us alert to the satiric possibilities in almost any speech or action, but there’s a sense of emotional baggage weighing down Snodgrass’s sallies, as played here. I couldn’t help feeling that there might be a funnier version of this play possible, if we were permitted to see how comically clueless the entire cast is. In this version, the play aims to vindicate Patricia, as artist and mother and wronged woman who overcomes the wrong to get on with her life, and that’s fine though it also requires us to side with her less attractive manipulations. The note struck, too often, is that criticizing one’s predicament obviates having to take any blame for getting into the predicament. A sentiment all too common in retrospects on failed marriages, no doubt, but not quite as sharp as one might hope. 

Beth (Clio Contogenis), Patricia (Adrianne Krstansky) in Kate Snodgrass’s The Art of Burning at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The ending makes us wonder more than a little why we spent so much time dwelling on the disagreements of this mostly disagreeable quintet (sparing Beth, as one hopes to spare the child and spoil the rod).  There’s a kind of catharsis in airing such griefs, I guess, but not the kind “the Greeks” (who get more than one mention) had in mind: no one in this much aggrieved collective comes close to seeing their lives as “fate.” There’s always someone else to blame, thank gods. 

The Art of Burning
By Kate Snodgrass
Directed by Melia Bensussen

Scenic Design: Luciana Stecconi; Costume Design: Kara Harmon; Lighting Design: Aja M. Jackson; Original Music & Sound Design: Jane Shaw; Wig & Hair Design: J. Jared Janas; Fight Director: Ted Hewlett; Production Stage Manager: Kelly Hardy; Assistant Stage Manager: Emily Pathman

Cast: Adrianne Krstansky, Michael Kaye, Rom Barkhordar, Vivia Font, Clio Contogenis, Laura Latreille

Hartford Stage
March 2-26, 2023

The Play's the Thing

Review of The Mousetrap, Hartford Stage

Famed mystery writer Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap is probably best known for being the longest-running play in British history. It ran continuously from 1952 until the pandemic of 2020 briefly closed it. It reopened in May 2021. Perhaps that significant blip in shows is reason enough to mount a local production. In any case, though I’ve heard of the show my whole life, I’ve never seen a production before the current one at Hartford Stage directed by Jackson Gay.

The other famous thing about the show is that everyone who sees it is exhorted by a note written by Christie herself, read at the final curtain, not to reveal whodunit. And, indeed, going in, I had no idea who the culprit would be. It may be that curiosity—learning the facts of the case—and secrecy—not sharing them—has done much to keep audiences attending. If there’s something very quaint about the play—and there is—it has to do with the fact that Dame Christie set the bar for the “gathered all in one place for a period of time” murder mystery and to attend the play is to be at once reminded of all the fun tropes of the genre.

Such as: a handsome space in which characters can enter and exit in various directions (kind of like all those doors in the Clue boardgame); Riw Rakkulchon’s set is simply fun to look at, with a huge picture window framing diagonal trees, a big fireplace, back stairs, various couches and settees, and plenty of antlers. It looks like a ski lodge or a sitting room at the Overlook Hotel (and, indeed, there’s a hell of a snowstorm happening outside); so: yes, another trope: the trapped until further notice visitors are left to their own devices, and part of each “device” is how each looks, as furnished by Fabian Fidel Aguilar’s apt and inventive costumes; then add the furtive qualities of the guests at this guesthouse, none of whom seem quite on the up-and-up.

The cast of The Mousetrap at Hartford Stage, directed by Jackson Gay; photo by T. Charles Erickson

And that’s the mainstay of the play and the quality this production plays with the most. We hear—from a radio—that there’s been a murder in London and that there is a suspect at large. The description of the suspect could fit almost any of the guests and even the host, Giles Ralston (Tobias Segal) who, with his wife Mollie (Sam Morales), are newbies to the hotel business and this is their first go-round. Key to the shenanigans here is that we don’t quite believe anyone is bona fide, but the question, then, is motive.

And here the story probably would work better in narrative prose than in scenic dialogue, because we have to learn about events that motivated the first murder, having to do with local child abuse and a malevolent judge and, perhaps, grown survivors of the original infractions who may be enacting revenge. Turned into a play, the murder mystery’s device of letting suspects “hold the floor” until we think we know whether they could’ve “done it” or not becomes the main driving force. We, as audience, simply kill a few hours watching these Brit types perambulate and asseverate—earning our laughs by being silly and flighty and odd.

We’re helped in our sleuthing by the presence of Detective Sargeant Trotter (Brendan Dalton, energetic and emphatic if a bit in over-his-head) who arrives on snow-skis and has the wherewithal to try to figure out who everyone is and what connection they may have to the murder. A second murder, in situ, heats things up because now a murderer is clearly among them and anyone connected to the deceased persons is likely next or the culprit.

Foreground: Christopher Geary as Christopher Wren and Sam Morales as Mollie Ralston; background: Tobias Segal as Giles Ralston in The Mousetrap, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

As the suspects/guests, Christopher Geary as Christopher Wren is a comical study in nervous mannerisms that might betoken guilt or just a lot of sensitivity; even more ominous is Jason O’Connell’s creepy but amusing Mr. Paravicini, the only guest who didn’t book ahead but instead arrived because his car allegedly overturned in a snowdrift; Ali Skamangas, as Miss Casewell, seems to have issues stemming from darkly hinted-at early trauma (otherwise she seems to be pretty well-wrapped compared to the two just mentioned); as the constantly fault-finding Mrs. Boyle, Yvette Garnier doesn’t quite have the grasp of the diction the others have—which may or may not be a clue; as Major Metcalf, Greg Stuhr is sturdy and serviceable, and tends to be more observer than observed. The host couple are affable but don’t really come forward as take-charge types, and so seem to be in constant reaction mode.

Jason O’Connell as Mr. Paravicini in The Mousetrap at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The tone veers around a bit between farce and suspense but the main note director Gay achieves is a tongue-in-cheek rendering of all the aforementioned tropes. It’s all in fun, ultimately.

And so, all in all, it’s a diverting evening, as they say. The fun is in the feeling of revisiting a sense of theater that comes with its own requirement to settle in and watch it unfold at a pace that works against our current theater’s effort to score with every breath. There is no real subtext here other than the fact that persons aren’t always who they pretend to be and that playing at anything, occupationally, is a role. Even being a killer is a part that one only takes on by enacting it—one could otherwise be as bland as milk. That, I suppose, is the attraction of a mystery and, in this sprawling production at Hartford Stage, part of the mystery is how Christie’s play plays so well after all this time. 

Ali Skamangas as Miss Casewell (supine) and Sam Morales as Mollie Ralston in the Hartford Stage production of The Mousetrap; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The Mousetrap
By Agatha Christie
Directed by Jackson Gay

Scenic Design: Riw Rakkulchon; Costume Design: Fabian Fidel Aguilar; Lighting Design: Krista Smith; Original Music & Sound Design: Broken Chord; Wig & Hair Design: Carissa Thorlakson; Vocal & Dialect Coach: Thom Jones; Fight Director: Ted Hewlett; Casting: Alaine Alldaffer; Production Stage Manager: Avery Trunko; Assistant Stage Manager: Noam Lautman; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast:
Brendan Dalton, Yvette Ganier, Christopher Geary, Sam Morales, Jason O’Donnell, Tobias Segal, Ali Skamangas, Greg Stuhr

Hartford Stage
October 13-November 6, 2022 

May the Farce Be With You

Review of Kiss My Aztec, Hartford Stage

Hartford Stage ends its 2021-22 season with Kiss My Aztec, a raucous celebration of comedic theatricality. John Leguizamo has adapted his screenplay co-written with Stephen Chbosky into a spoof-fueled musical. The book is by Leguizamo and Tony Taccone, who directs the show; the music is by Benjamin Velez with lyrics by David Kamp, Velez and Leguizamo. Leguizamo, a Columbian-American comedian, film actor, and Tony-winning Broadway performer/playwright, is known for exploring his ethnicity in his plays, while also being familiar for his flamboyant characterizations in films (two of my favorite Leguizamo roles were directed by Baz Luhrmann, and Luhrmann’s work seems to have inspired some of the frenetic staging of Aztec). Thanks to the skills and stage brio of its fifteen-person cast, the show’s energy never flags and its aural and visual inventiveness makes Kiss My Aztec, even at two-and-a-half hours, feel freewheeling and fun.

The Spanish ensemble cast of Kiss My Aztec at Hartford Stage, directed by Tony Taccone (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Aztec is Leguizamo’s effort to apply the irreverent vibe that made Broadway hits of The Book of Mormon (2011) and Spamalot (2004) to the colonization of the Americas by the Spanish and the resistance by the Aztecs. While it shares in the zaniness of those earlier shows, aided by the rap energies unleashed on Broadway by Hamilton (2015), Aztec suffers a bit, in comparison, from the lack of cohesion of its target. Whatever their degree of historical validity, topics like the Arthurian legends, the founding of the Mormon religion, and the struggles of the founding fathers in the U.S. lend a definite gravitas for a satirist to dismantle.

Lacking such a sturdy scaffold for his spoofs, Leguizamo draws on older vibes—I was reminded at times of musical-comedy epics of inspired silliness such as The Court Jester (1955), starring Danny Kaye. Which is to say that an easy target is costume drama in general, marked by the “thees” and “thous” and “eths” of mock-Shakespearean lingo. Aztec also features fast-paced verbal sparring and songs that move the plot along while also mocking the familiar tropes of expository songs. The music is bright with the brio that comes from throwing every relevant style into the mix, so that every number almost speaks a different idiom. The Latinx aesthetic of the show is palpable in its percussive music—Roberto Sinha, music director, and Wilson R. Torres, additional percussion arrangements—and amazingly vibrant costumes and set (Clint Ramos, both). As has been a hallmark of several successful Hartford Stage productions, it’s simply fun to watch the show happen.

Maria-Christina Olivera as Tolima in Kiss My Aztec, Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The story? We open with a look at how “White People on Boats” are always bad news for indigenous populations, then focus upon a group of Aztec caricatures who are intending to stave off an invasion by Spanish caricatures—including the Inquisition, and the imposition of all things Spanish, like tapas, by Rodrigo (played for all its worth by Matt Saldivar), viceroy in the New Land, who resides in the citadel with his oft-belittled son Fernando (Z Infante, a master of the slow burn). The witch-savant of the Aztecs, Tolima (Maria-Christina Oliveras, perfect for the part) gives a prophecy to El Jaguar Negro (Eddie Cooper, a sturdy leader) and his followers about a “great brown hope” that may rise up and expel the invaders under a blood red moon. To that end, Colombina (Krystina Alabado, very lively), a warrior who rebels against traditional female roles, and Pepe (Joel Perez, like a cross between Elliot Gould and Will Farrell), a sock-puppet-wielding clown (or “Punk-ass Geek-A”) who dotes on her, seek entrance to the citadel to assassinate Rodrigo.

Columbina (Krystina Alabado) confronts Rodrigo (Matt Saldivar) as Pepe (Joel Perez) looks on, and guards interfere in Kiss My Aztec at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Their task will involve disguises, of course, and the introduction of a host of gags, from a phallic codpiece brandished by “the fixer” Pierre (Richard Ruiz Henry, priceless), to hypnotized-slap routines, to rap-throwdowns. And dances and sacrifices and skirmishes. Along the way there is also time for all kinds of romantic entanglements—whether its Cooper wildly inappropriate as a lovestruck Inquisitor dallying with Fernando in “Tango in the Closet,” or Spanish princess Pilar (Desireé Rodriguez, hilarious) refusing Sebastian (Z Infante), while pining for revelatory “dark meat”; likewise, Sebastian, tired of incestuous couplings for the sake of bloodlines, pines, complete with back-up singers, for a new girl from the new world;  meanwhile Rodrigo confesses to Columbina his desire to be spooned. And don’t forget the big showstopping romantic longings of “Chained Melody” where the yearnings of Columbina and Pepe find a literal and lyrical expression.

Krystina Alabado as Columbina and Joel Perez as Pepe during their big romantic number in Kiss My Aztec at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Kiss My Aztec not only has the makings of a Broadway show, it feels like it already is one. It may be true that it’s nothing new—except for its choice of which formerly marginalized population to appropriate and give a heroic-ironic treatment to—but the show is fully at home in our moment when the complex histories of immigrant and indigenous populations continue to strive for a hearing on various fronts. As a comedy, Aztec keeps its eye on ways to mock stereotypes and wring laughs out of unexpected mashups, while perhaps chuckling up its sleeve at the audience’s willingness to be so easily entertained, still.

Z Infante as Sebastian with KC Dela Cruz, Angelica Beliard, and Geena Quintos in Kiss my Aztec at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

One could say that the irreverence of plays like Aztec has attained a certain reverence on Broadway, their frames of reference capable of  mocking any piety. Though there may come a point at which a new tonality will arrive, for now It’s still a treat to see cultural associations, historical footnotes, ideological appropriations and a host of progressive and regressive social attitudes given the bawdy, slangy 21st century-treatment, with song. The main target here is people with no sense of  humor.

Columbina (Krystina Alabado) and Rodrigo (Matt Saldivar) in Kiss My Aztec at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Kiss My Aztec
Book by John Leguizamo and Tony Taccone
Music by Benjamin Velez
Lyrics by David Kamp, Benjamin Velez and John Leguizamo
Based on a screenplay by John Leguizamo and Stephen Chbosky
Directed by Tony Taccone
Choreography by Mayte Natalio

Scenic and Costume Design: Clint Ramos; Lighting Design: Alexander V. Nichols; Sound Design: Jessica Paz & Beth Lake; Wig & Hair Design: Charles G. LaPointe; Puppet Design: James Ortiz; Music Supervision & Co-Incidental Music Arrangements: David Gardos; Dance, Vocal & Co-Incidental Music Arrangements: Benjamin Velez; Orchestrator: Simon Hale; Music Director: Roberto Sinha; Additional Percussion Arrangements: Wilson R Torres; Production Stage Manager: Jeffrey Rodriguez; Stage Manager: Amanda Michaels; Assistant Stage Manager: Hannah Woodward

Orchestra: Roberto Sinha, conductor/keyboard; David Kidwell, keyboard; Oscar Bautista, guitars; Amanda Ruzza, bass/synthesizer; Rosa Avila, drums; Wilson Torres, percussion; John Mastroianni, woodwinds; Don Clough, trumpet/flugelhorn; Scott Cranston, trombone

Cast: Krystina Alabado, Angelica Beliard, Chad Carstarphen, Nicholas Caycedo, Eddie Cooper, KC Dela Cruz, Richard Ruiz Henry, Z Infante, Jesús E. Martinez, Maria-Christina Oliveras, Joel Perez, Geena Quintos, Desireé Rodriguez, Matt Saldivar, Brittany Nichole Williams

Hartford Stage
June 1-26, 2022

Making It In America

Review of Dishwasher Dreams, Hartford Stage

What do stand-up comics do when they’re off the circuit? Some become Hollywood movie stars or join seasons of sitcoms on one platform or another. But what about the minority comic whose ethnicity, in white-dominated popular culture, seems to suit him only for bad guys or guys whose comic range is to be a walking cliché? Maybe they create a theatrical monologue that lets them tell their story while entertaining audiences with a view of Show Biz a bit more multicultural than the norm.

In Dishwasher Dreams, now playing at Hartford Stage through March 20, Alaudin Ullah (aka, Aladdin) tells us about his family, his childhood, his career. It’s not so much a story of slings and arrows—though there are slurs and sorrows—as it is a fond journey with moments of grief and glee along the way, much as anyone’s life is. The difference is in the details, but that too is part of what makes America American: immigrant stories—no matter the immigrants’ origins—play out in the pop culture grab-bag that we all live in and with. As a second-generation son of South Asian immigrants living in Spanish Harlem, Ullah has a beguiling grasp of street energies and the kind of “melting pot” mix that spices many an urban environment. But he’s also an entertainer who rose up through the ranks in comedy clubs—beginning with Don’t Tell Mamas, with a largely gay and drag clientele—and onto cable programs on Comedy Central (Ullah’s reminiscence about cable TV coming to the projects will strike a chord with anyone who remembers TV before and after cable). So he’s also uniquely poised to tell us something about America and what it means to find a niche in which to be successfully entertaining.

Alaudin Ullah, foreground, and Avirodh Sharma in Dishwasher Dreams, Hartford Stage; photo by Michael Brosilow

Ullah’s manner finds humor in most situations, such as the identity issues that come with being Muslim in the U.S. As a faith that is sometimes mistaken for an ethnicity, Ullah can insist he’s “about as Muslim as Pee Wee Herman,” but that doesn’t mean he won’t be asked to “do a Muslim accent.” His family are Bengalis, from the part of India that won independence and became Bangladesh when Ullah was not yet a teen. Important to the story is how Ullah characterizes his background, such as how his father chose to leave his village because of a belief in America as a land of opportunity where a job as a dishwasher and a mice and roach-ridden apartment in Spanish Harlem equal a dream come true. So when Ullah finds himself living rough while trying to break into Show Biz, he’s got a model to follow.

Ullah’s acculturation lets him mock such staples as the familiar glitzy dance moments—in place of depicting sex—in the Bollywood films his family goes on outings to see, and to find great admiration in the stark beauty of Satyajit Ray’s Apu films, which happen to be set near the village Alaudin’s father emigrated from. Moments of name-checking Indian culture are more than matched by young Alaudin’s greatest U.S. enthusiasm: The New York Yankees. The scenes depicting—early and late—Ullah’s part in the collective euphoria surrounding Reggie Jackson are highpoints as the comedian is able to channel his inner twelve-year-old and lights up the stage with his love.

Tenser matters are provided by the comedian’s mother’s illness and darker themes emerge from a family visit to Bangladesh where Ullah encounters a cousin whose fate weighs heavily. At such moments the aural presence of Avirodh Sharma, playing hand-drums on stage throughout the show, is greatly effective, punctuating Ullah’s monologue and creating atmosphere, a language of percussion that supports and comments.

Avirodh Sharma in Dishwasher Dreams, Hartford Stage; photo by Michael Brosilow

And that’s to the good because Alaudin Ullah’s monologue can at times feel rather static. Director Chay Yew has Ullah move about the stage to signal changes in locale and mood, and Ullah sometimes stands on a chair or crouches to give variety to his presence, all of which, including the tasteful lighting by Anshuman Bhatia and the handsome wooden stage by Yu Shibagaki, helps to keep us focused and responsive. But if you’re used to comedians who flaunt fluid movements in the midst of fast-paced commentary and asides, you might find Ullah’s routine to be a bit over-rehearsed and even a bit too earnest.

Alaudin Ullah in Dishwasher Dreams, Hartford Stage; photo by Michael Brosilow

Ullah wisely keeps to the end his most comic bit, where he gooses the stereotypical image of the Southern Asian immigrant while at the same time wryly asserting the special privileges that come with assimilation via Show Biz. It works, because Ullah is willing to see that the laugh is on him as well.

Dishwasher Dreams
Written & performed by Alaudin Ullah
Directed by Chay Yew
Music by Avirodh Sharma

Scenic Design: Yu Shibagaki; Costume Design: Izumi Imaba; Lighting Design: Anshuman Bhatia; Composer/Arranger: Avirodh Sharma; Assistant Director: Christopher Rowe; Assistant Lighting Design: Daniel Friedman; Production Stage Manager: David Castellanos; Assistant Stage Manager: Theresa Stark; Artistic Producer: Rachel Alderman; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scot

Hartford Stage
February 24-March 20, 2022

Passing a Reignited Torch

Review of Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous, Hartford Stage

Hartford Stage has a stable tradition of offering literate plays handsomely mounted, and the current production, Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous by Atlanta-based playwright Pearl Cleage, directed by Susan V. Booth, lives up to that expectation. What’s more, as a plus for theater fans, the play’s story centers on feminine—and feminist—expression and generational rivalry in the theater. It opens with a deliberate quotation of a Bette Davis movie line (previously lifted by Edward Albee) and then kind of reverses the situation of All About Eve (one of Davis’ landmark roles) so that, here, the up-and-comer proves more sympathetic than the great actress. And the cast of four engaging African American women bring it—with laughs to spare.

Seated: Anna (Terry Burrell), “Pete” (Shakirah Demesier); standing: Betty (Marva Hicks), Kate (Cynthia D. Barker) in Hartford Stage’s production of Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The basic situation: Anna Campbell (Terry Burrell) has become a grand dame of classic theater, noted for roles like Medea and Hedda Gabler, but she’s been living in Europe due to the outraged reception of her notorious one-woman show back in the ‘90s. Dubbed “Naked Wilson,” the show featured Campbell, in the nude, reciting famous speeches from August Wilson plays, speeches all written for African American male characters. The implied criticism: Wilson, for all his greatness, downplayed the importance of women in his dramas and in Af Am cultural life in general. Now, a theater festival in Atlanta, organized by Kate Hughes (Cynthia D. Barker), an energetic young producer, wants to revive “Naked Wilson” and give Campbell an honorary award.

All well and good—except Campbell assumes this is her chance to give a farewell performance of her signature play, while at the same time claiming nudity as something that doesn’t only encompass younger women. Hughes, however, has hired a young “performance artist” (actually more of a stripper and pornographic movie actress) “Pete” Watson (Shakirah Demesier) to perform “Naked Wilson” nude, though Watson isn’t exactly versed in dramatic monologues nor Wilson’s plays. A further key role in Cleage’s play, that of Betty Sampson, Campbell’s assistant and companion, is provided by Marva Hicks who is able to hang fire and comment, both verbally and silently, to great effect.

Marva Hicks as Betty Sampson in the Hartford Stage production of Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The plot of Cleage’s play, then, is essentially a sit-com: how to disabuse Campbell of her mistake without alienating her, and how to finesse what is bound to be a culture-clash between a diva of the theater and a demoiselle of the skin trade. Cleage beefs up the basic comic premise with some very tangible issues, most having to do with how one generation copes with the next.

At the heart of the play is the question: “must we eat our young?” It’s a way of depicting the tendency of those now able to rest on their laurels to undermine the tastes, talents and prestige of those still trying to make a name. That situation, we might say, is perennial; no matter how much the up-and-coming generation resents the suppressions foisted on them by their elders, they will almost certainly behave similarly once they become elders.

By taking on the plays and reputation of August Wilson, even if with admiration tinged with a certain comic deflation, Cleage adds a further dimension to the play’s intergenerational struggle. Wilson was the dominant African American playwright of the 1990s and in some ways still is. In the past decade (during which I’ve reviewed theater in Connecticut), his plays have been on offer most seasons and I’ve seen them at Hartford Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, and of course, Yale Repertory Theatre, where a number of them had their debuts. He is a grand old man of American theater and yet—unlike some others, such as Tennessee Williams or Eugene O’Neill—his female roles tend to be much slighter. Thus Campbell’s protest play is a point well-taken, for not only do female actors get short-changed in Wilson’s plays, arguably, but—with strict gender distinctions in casting—female actors never get to deliver the speeches Campbell performed in her piece.

In choosing a performer such as “Pete” (her given name, Precious, already sounded like a stripper name, to her, so she went for something apposite), Hughes opens the door to performance beyond the bounds of classic theater. Certainly, such was implied in Campbell’s use of nudity as an avant-garde gesture intended to break through certain stodgy assumptions about theater, but, Campbell claims, the real point was hearing a very capable actress deliver Wilson’s lines. Hughes could’ve gotten a worshipful stage-actress understudy-type to take on “Naked Wilson” but chose instead a woman with some of the same “stop-at-nothing” fire Campbell once had. As Campbell, Burrell makes us believe in both the greatness of her skills and the wearying anxieties of having to carry on past her “day.” And Demesier’s Watson has the nonchalance of whatever is “now.”

Terry Burrell as Anna Campbell and Shakirah Demesier as Precious “Pete” Watson in The Hartford Stage production of Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The best parts of the play come when Campbell and Watson are finally face-to-face. In fact, there’s a bit of a lull after the initial setup of the situation that could be mitigated by quicker pacing (but, given that the play comes in at about 100 minutes, it’s not as if it drags). Watson is the kind of performer who baulks at nothing and has the confidence that comes from “clicks” (or internet attention) rather than the traditional gatekeepers of artistic success. Campbell, increasingly insecure in this new world, still knows what she knows: great theater isn’t made by amateurs. A resolution, if it’s to come, will have to allow both sides of the generational divide to respect and appreciate the other. And the terms of that rapprochement are what make this play signify. What’s more, Hicks—as the true elder here—gets to steal the show with a concluding song and comment that’s “just showing off” very gamely indeed.

Warmly entertaining with some jabs and bristles, Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous is funny, not mawkish, and happily gorgeous: the $500-per-night suite where Campbell and Sampson hang out is quite a spread, in Collette Pollard’s design, and Kara Harmon’s costumes are all very becoming, especially the knock-out red number “Pete” sports during a believably “gone viral” moment late in the play. If, in the end, Cleage’s play plays to our classic theater preferences over the grittier, more showy aspects of today’s entertainment culture, well, that’s what Hartford Stage audiences are there for. 

The cast of Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous
By Pearl Cleage
Directed by Susan V. Booth

Scenic Design: Collette Pollard; Costume Design: Kara Harmon; Lighting Design: Michelle Habeck; Sound Design: Clay Benning; Wig Design: Lindsey Ewing; Production Stage Manager: Anna Baranski; Assistant Stage Manager: Samantha Honeycutt

Cast: Cynthia D. Barker, Terry Burrell, Shakirah Demesier, Marva Hicks

Hartford Stage
January 13-February 6, 2022

Auld Acquaintance

Review of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play, at Hartford Stage

Hartford Stage’s holiday offering this year takes a break from the annual staging of A Christmas Carol—a Ghost Story in favor of a more streamlined, less effects-laden show. Instead of flying ghosts and bedecked sleighs and the full trappings of a Dickensian Christmas, we have Joe Landry’s adaptation of an American classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, the Frank Capra film from 1946 that centered on how a potential business catastrophe at Christmas cemented the values of the postwar community of Bedford Falls, NY. The film, which is generally playing somewhere on television at Christmastime, showcases James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore and a host of beloved actors who have become indelible figures of a bygone small-town America. Landry’s adaptation is actually set in a radio studio as a live broadcast, so that a town’s worth of characters can be played by five skilled voice actors: Jake Laurents (Gerardo Rodriguez), Freddy Filmore (Michael Preston), Sally Applewhite (Shirine Babb), Lana Sherwood (Jennifer Bareilles) and Harry “Jazzbo” Heywood (Evan Zes), with an onstage Foley—or sound effects—artist (Leer Leary) providing crucial backup. 

The cast of It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen & Rachel Alderman; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Directed by Melia Bensussen and Rachel Alderman, the joys of the play take place on several levels. First, there’s the show-biz aspect: we’re watching ostensible radio actors ham it up for a live audience, complete with an applause sign so that the listeners at home will know we’re there and loving it. Thus, we, the audience, are playing an audience and responding accordingly. Related to that is the fact that the actors—invisible to those fictional listeners—are visible to us, even when they almost miss cues or carry on sotto voce chats in the background or one-up each other with glares and snickers or flirt with body language. And on that score, keep an eye on Lear Leery—he’s not only a one-man sound-board, he’s also an onlooker who knows the show frontwards and backwards and reacts accordingly. Then there’s the story itself, which is heartwarming and corny and quaint and magical, all at once. The radio actors know all that and also that it’s a lot of fun to do. It helps to know the story as well as the actors do (I do) but even if you don’t, you can get caught up in trying to imagine the different characters these quick-change voices bring to life. They’re all there: George and Mary Bailey, Uncle Billy, Ma Bailey, brother Harry Bailey, Old Man Potter, Mr. Gower, Mr. Martini, Violet Bick, the Bailey kids, and of course Ernie and Bert as well as a host of background voices.

Jennifer Bareilles, Shirine Babb, Michael Preston, Evan Zes and Gerardo Rodriguez in It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play; photo by T. Charles Erickson

George Bailey, chief exec at a struggling Building and Loan he inherited from his dad, is suddenly vulnerable to take over and even extortion because his daft Uncle Billy mislaid a sizable deposit that has fallen into the hands of the grasping and covetous town big wig Old Man Potter. George’s night of despair on Christmas eve earns him the intercession of “angel second class” Clarence Oddbody. The two main roles of George and Clarence are enacted by Gerardo Rodriguez as Laurents and Evan Zes as Heywood. The chemistry is good and Rodriguez brings a bit more gravitas to George than is sometimes the case. He’s a take-charge guy who we expect will battle his way out of any difficulty. Zes’s Clarence is less flighty than the original and is more like someone who has entered a movie he was watching and wants to see if his intervention will work or not. And it’s a great treat to see Michael Preston (recently Hartford Stage’s Scrooge) do the hat and voice-switching necessary to enact a heated exchange between Potter and Uncle Billy.

Leer Leary in It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The first two thirds of the play provide the backstory and that’s when the radio show elements are foregrounded. It’s all got a nostalgic tinge—including ads with jingles set to Christmas tunes—and provides a spirited evocation of the effects of radio, the spectacle of live performance, and the fun of mixing both at once. What’s particularly lively in this production are how the personalities of the radio actors inflect the roles they play with their voices so that interesting frictions occur with the actors letting viewers in on their own responses to the roles (especially effective there are Bareilles and Babbs whose Applewhite and Sherwood clearly have some issues).

Evan Zes (Clarence) and Gerardo Rodriguez (George Bailey, back) in It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Director Bensussen and Alderman shift the play’s mise en scene when Clarence enters the story. Trap doors and an upper platform come into use and suddenly we’re aware that we’re watching a play on the Hartford Stage, and that the show’s spatial concept extends beyond the borders of the radio studio. It’s a very effective way to register the difference of a world without George Bailey. The play has moved from being a comic evocation of familiar types and the kind of dramatized moments radio highlights with sound and music to an actual play that borders on a tragedy of lost opportunity. The world with no George in it—fighting the good fight for his community, his family and friends—is a darker, more dangerous place. Unlike the Scrooge story, where the fear of leading a selfish, wasted life shocks an old miser into generosity, the crux of It’s a Wonderful Life is that commitments and obligations are the stuff of life and anyone who has lived has affected other lives in indelible ways. The emotional tone of the play is served well by the closing sing-along of Auld Lang Syne, a tribute to the townfolks’ old acquaintance with one another and ours with them.

Jennifer Bareilles, Gerardo Rodriguez and Evan Zes in It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play; photo by T. Charles Erickson

In 1946, when It’s a Wonderful Life first played in movie theaters, there had been a loss of nearly 300,000 U.S. citizens who didn’t return from the war. As of today, the casualties from Covid-19, in the States alone, is over 800,000. The commemoration that closes the play isn’t just “sentimental hogwash,” as Mr. Potter would claim, but rather a way of saying we’re lucky to be here and we’d like to remember those who aren’t, thanking them all for their wonderful lives.

Shirine Babb in It's a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play; photo by T. Charles Erickson

It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play
Adapted by Joe Landry
Based on the story, The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern
From the screenplay by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra, and Jo Swerling
Directed by Melia Bensussen & Rachel Alderman

Scenic Design: Stephanie Osin Cohen; Costume Design: An-Lin Dauber; Lighting Design: Evan C. Anderson; Sound Design: Frederick Kennedy; Wig & Hair Design: J. Jared Janas; Dramaturg: Zoë Golub-Sass; Production Stage Manager: Kelly Hardy

Cast: Shirine Babb, Jennifer Bareilles, Leer Leary, Michael Preston, Gerardo Rodriguez, Evan Zes

Hartford Stage
November 26-December 26, 2021

Paradise Enough

Review of Ah, Wilderness!, Hartford Stage

The Hartford Stage production of Ah, Wilderness!, a rare Eugene O’Neill comedy, directed by the theater’s new artistic director Melia Benussen, was initially scheduled for Bensussen’s first season, back in 2019-20. It would’ve been the season’s finale. The COVID pandemic tabled those plans, causing Bensussen’s debut to be pushed back to the 2020-21 season that never was. Now, the production opens the 2021-22 season, a symbol of theater’s endurance and a return to a kind of normality. In any case, it’s a welcome experience: sitting again in the Hartford Stage theater and experiencing a handsomely mounted production of a classic play somewhat revised for our times.

The cast of the Hartford Stage production of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!, directed by Melia Bensussen, 2021

The play itself may seem a somewhat odd choice. But for the references to Yale, New Haven, Waterbury and other Connecticut places that situate the play squarely in our vicinity, we might wonder why this play now. That local aspect—the homefield advantage?—is reassuring in its way. We know how much the recent distress over the pandemic came down to how well discrete municipalities handled the challenge. Connecticut didn’t do as badly as some. Why not a look back at one of the state’s local heroes? The O’Neill family spent summers in New London and their Monte Cristo cottage is the presumed setting for Ah, Wilderness!, set on a Fourth of July weekend early in the twentieth century. The play itself dates from the 1930s, and so the very notion of “dated” is built into its thematics, so to speak.

And that’s because, first of all, this is O’Neill’s somewhat light-hearted and ironic look back at his early years when he felt himself schooled by the likes of such literary luminaries as Ibsen, Shaw and Strindberg. Richard Miller, his alter ego here, is played by Jaevon Williams as somewhat prissy and comically self-important. It’s necessary to the play’s tone that we find his pretentions laughable, even if we might find acclimation to the stodgy standards of the time a let-down in any hero. What saves the play, and what might come as a surprise given the way intergenerational conflict is generally dramatized in O’Neill and others, is how Richard’s parents are depicted. Suffice to say, we’re in the realm of situation comedy of the “father knows best” variety.

The task of representing a sympathetic, generous, patient and amused elder generation is ably handled by Michael Boatman as Nat Miller, the family’s patriarch. In a time when “patriarchal” is not only a dated concept but one roundly denounced, Boatman reminds us of how ably the position could be inhabited. Nat sticks up for his errant son when required—against the censorious father (Joseph Adams) of Richard’s love interest—and knows well enough that youth is a period of trial and error where the errors are part of the project of growing up. It’s a benign play that ends on just the right note of long-standing love, tolerance, and belief in a shared life together: the sort of things we like to think we mean when we talk about “family values.”

The cast of the Hartford Stage production of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!, directed by Melia Bensussen, 2021

Other elements in the play are apt to be problematic, but then they no doubt always were. Key on that score is Sid (McCaleb Burnett), the familiar figure of the drunken Irishman, here bringing in some necessary verbal humor and a personality that doesn’t fit with the respectable face the family wears for social status—Burnett shines in the big “family at the table” set-piece. The sentimental interest in this character—who woos relentlessly Lily (Natascia Diaz), the sister of Mrs. Miller, to earn a by-now inevitable rebuff—likely has shifted. Where the sympathy may once have been with the erring bachelor in need of a good woman to save him, it’s likely we find ourselves sympathizing all the more with a good woman who can’t find any other suitor than this ne’er-do-well and who can’t have any life outside a domestic setting. Such are the times of the play and such are the social strait-jackets that O’Neill delineates while trying—for romantic comedy purposes—to offer a view where “meant for each other” doesn’t equate with “lacking any other options.”

The youngest generation is well-served by Katerina McCrimmon as younger sister Mildred; she squirms about on the couch at one point with the kind of eager-to-break-out-of-it-all energy that makes us wonder what a play focused on her might become. As it is, the play’s tour of the naughty “house of ill repute,” where Richard nearly gets seduced by Belle (Brittany Annika Liu), and then gets into a fight trying to protect her honor, which she finds ridiculous, is never particularly comic or dramatic. Likewise the scene between Richard and his love interest Muriel doesn’t quite connect either. Both Belle and Muriel are played by Liu and she is not really convincing as either the Virgin or the Whore, those two poles by which female behavior was judged at the time. It’s not O’Neill’s intention to lampoon these clichés outright and so we have to accept them in the light of the naturalism he inherited from his literary heroes. And yet . . . it seems that one way to breathe new life into the play is to find a way to make Richard’s scenes with the women riskier or funnier or, indeed, more romantic. Much of the problem lies with Williams’ over-earnest Richard, who even when drunk is so far from dissolute that it all seems little ado over less.

Richard Miller (Jaevon Williams) and Muriel Macomber (Brittany Annika Liu) in the Hartford Stage production of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!, 2021

The lack of strong focus in the young persons’ scenes makes all the more important the older couple’s coping with their errant son. As the matriarch Essie Miller, Antoinette LaVecchia is lively in her fussiness and sense of rightness, and in the play’s close her seconding of her husband shines with a wisdom gained from a lifetime of intimacy. Ah, Wilderness! may be rom-com, but the romance is with family and the enduring couple at its heart, and with the feints and fits and starts by which that desiderata can be achieved. Quaint? Yes, but then, like the play’s fulminations about socialism spreading in the U.S, some attitudes are perennials. Ah, Wilderness! takes its title from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, beloved of Richard, in those famous lines about a book of verses, a jug of wine, a loaf of bread—and thou—that close with “Wilderness were paradise enough.” The upshot is that every successful couple finds paradise in the wilderness, and the wilderness can best be enjoyed together.

Essie Miller (Antoinetta LaVecchia) and Nat Miller (Michael Boatman) in the Hartford Stage production of Ah, Wilderness!, 2021

The play, which is a treat to watch on James Noone’s open, vertical, many-layered set, reminds us forcefully that some things just don’t fit on screens: live, multi-character theater on a grand stage notably. It’s great to be back at Hartford Stage, and it is time well-spent to revisit the past as shaded by the present. With its perfect tech—lighting by Wen-Ling Liao and costumes by Olivera Gajic, with hair, wigs and make-up by J. Jared Janis, and sound by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen—Melia Bensussen brings a neglected O’Neill comedy to life, featuring the very welcome addition of period songs sung by the cast, with live piano provided onstage by Yan Li. The songs keep the times alive but also indicate the commonality that the play—with its multi-ethnic cast—achieves without foregrounding any specific American ethnicity. From each according to ability? Paradise enough.

Ah, Wilderness!
By Eugene O’Neill
Directed by Melia Bensussen

Joseph Adams, Michael Boatman, Annie Jean Buckley, McCaleb Burnett, Natascia Diaz, Antonio Jose Jeffries, Tanner Jones, Antoinette LaVecchia, Brittany Annika Liu, Myles Low, Katerina McCrimmon, Stuart Rider, Jaevon Williams

Scenic Design: Jim Noone; Costume Design: Olivera Gajic; Lighting Design: Wen-Ling Liao; Sound Design: Rob Milburn & Michael Bodeen; Music Director/Pianist: Yan Li; Wig, Hair & Makeup Design: J. Jared Janas; Fight Choreographer: Ted Hewlett

Hartford Stage
October 14-November 7, 2021

The Shut In Season

Preview, under quarantine

In the poem “Sailing to Byzantium,” W. B. Yeats imagines a golden bird that will sing “to lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come.” In these days when the numbers of those contracting the coronavirus and those dying from it are still escalating, there’s a large margin of uncertainty about what is “to come.” And in the midst of so many pronouncements about what is best and what will make things worse, it seems vain, in a sense, to write about the present as anything more than “what is passing.” About “what is past” we can be clear: for theater in CT, any hope of salvaging the remainder of the 2019-20 season is “past.” What’s “passing,” it seems now, are hopes for a return to normality in fall 2020. And to come? Well, for the moment we’ll just content ourselves with what’s available online and what may arrive, in time.

It’s been over a month since I was at a public event. That event, on March 11, was the Long Wharf Theatre’s announcement of its 2020-21 season, covered here by Lucy Gellman at the Arts Paper. On that evening, Long Wharf Artistic Director Jacob Padrón was still optimistic that the theater’s next production of the 2019-20 season, Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady, directed by Ralph B. Peña, would run. Over the next few weeks, as stricter and stricter “shelter in place” directives were given, Broadway theaters shuttered, and restaurants in our area went to take-out and delivery only, the possibilities for theater resuming went from passing to past. Long Wharf cancelled its remaining shows, which included Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap, directed by Madeline Sayet. At Hartford Stage, a fine production of Jane Eyre, directed and adapted by Elizabeth Williamson, closed early, and David Seidler’s The King’s Speech, directed by Michael Wilson, was cancelled. The production of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!, directed by Artistic Director Maria Bensussen, originally scheduled for May, has been moved to the fall, October 22-November 15, and The Complete History of Comedy (Abridged), written and directed by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, originally scheduled for June, will take place October 1-11. Thus the last two shows of the 2019-20 season will run in 2020, followed by the annual production of A Christmas Carol (November 27-December 27). The 2020-21 season will then begin in January. Padrón and Bensussen, the respective Artistic Directors of Long Wharf and Hartford Stage, will be talking with longtime theater critic Frank Rizzo tonight about the current situation and their visions as new ADs at vibrant local theaters in challenging times. Go here, for the virtual edition of A Little Harmless Fun, on the website of the Mark Twain House & Museum, at 7 p.m.

The very day of the Long Wharf gathering, Yale Repertory Theatre announced, after Yale University determined it would not resume classes on campus after spring break (which ran until March 22nd), the premature end of its season, thus canceling a revival of A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Carl Cofield, and Testmatch by Kate Atwell, directed by Margot Bordelon; that announcement also meant that the final appearances onstage by students at the Yale School of Drama for spring 2020 had already occurred.

The last theatrical production I saw—Van Gogh Café at Yale Cabaret—marked the last show that will be held in the venerable basement space this season. The Cabaret, however, is not out of commission entirely. This weekend, April 17 & 18, Ain’t No Dead Thing, an original play written and directed by a.k. payne which was slated as one of the last three shows of the season, will air as a radio play, at 8 p.m. both nights. Information for tuning in can be found here. The Cab has devised its own station—KCAB—where a DJ named darealunluckymadman plays music amidst other events. The play, presented in partnership with FOLKS, is set “against the backdrop of one of the largest race massacres in U.S. history” in the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. At a diner called Noa’s Ark, folks gather to envision a future for Blacks in America. The Cab’s site describes a radio play as “a dramatized, acoustic performance that allows listeners to imagine the characters and visual elements of a story through dialogue, music, and sound effects. In this moment of constant communication via Zoom, checking the news, and streaming videos, radio plays give us a break from the screen and ask us to focus on language.”

Westport Country Playhouse, which generally runs its season from spring to late fall, announced on Tuesday that it will not mount any productions until 2021. “We hope our audience will understand and support this very emotional and challenging decision,” said Mark Lamos, Playhouse artistic director, in a statement, “but we, like our sister non-profit theaters and arts organizations world-wide, feel that the predicted future is too unknowable at this point.” The first program in the Playhouse’s virtual series airs on Friday, April 17, at 7 p.m.: “Getting to Know You: A Celebration of Young Artists,” with Tony Award-winning Broadway star Kelli O’Hara, on the Playhouse YouTube channel and Facebook Live. Ten Fairfield County high school students will perform a musical theater selection and chat with O’Hara. More Playhouse-generated online events will be announced soon, here.

Just down the road from Westport, in Norwalk, Music Theater of Connecticut has been assessing the situation in order to find a date for its production of The Buddy Holly Story (if his songs don’t brighten your mood, I don’t know what will!). Originally scheduled for March, then postponed until May, the show, according to MTC’s latest announcement—on the 16th—will run from Friday, July 16, to Sunday, August 1. Kevin Connors, MTC’s Executive Artistic Director, in a release from the theater, adds: “MTC remains engaged through our online initiatives including the weekly MTC LIVE! (a new episode premieres on Facebook and at www.musictheatreofct.com/live every Wednesday at noon), our online MasterClass series this month, and our annual gala fundraiser THE MTC VOICE – ONLINE EDITION – coming up on May 9.” For more info about these and other programs, go here.

The Goodspeed Theater in East Haddam announced that its usual season of three musicals (which typically starts around this time) will be reduced to one in 2020: performances for the revival of South Pacific are scheduled to begin on Friday, September 11. The summer production of the new musical Anne of Green Gables will now move to the 2021 season. In the theater’s press release, dated April 9, Goodspeed Executive Director Michael Gennaro said, “It was heartbreaking for us to make the decision to postpone Anne of Green Gables, but it has become clear that we would not have enough time to build and rehearse the show in time for a summer opening. Our producing staff and the creative team both agree that launching a world-premiere musical takes special attention, which may not be possible until we are well past this crisis.”

The health crisis is of course impacting the economy in a drastic manner. Theaters are having to furlough and lay off employees, cancel events—such as fund-raising galas—and are losing important ticket revenues. Contributions are greatly needed and appreciated and are, in most cases, tax deductible.

On April 14, The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, in New Haven, announced its plans for the 25th season’s virtual programming: “We will celebrate our 25th anniversary with a variety of online artistic experiences, virtual food experiences, cell phone-guided walking tours, and various NEA Big Read activities. The virtual Ideas programming centered on the theme ‘Democracy: We the People’ will feature interactive events and conversations with vital thinkers, including 2012 Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco, award-winning scholar Dr. Khalilah L. Brown-Dean, NEA Big Read Author Stephanie Burt, and renowned writer Anand Giridharadas. All programming will be free.”

The statement further reads: “We are committed to the Festival's mission that arts and ideas bring people together and have a positive economic impact on New Haven. Virtual and physically distanced programming will begin online in the coming weeks on a rolling basis. Details will be announced weekly and will be shared on the Festival’s website.”

Here is a link to the International A&I onscreen announcement featuring Liz Fisher & Tom Griggs, Co-Directors of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas

So, tune into as much theater as you can, from wherever you happen to be. Stay safe, and obey your local government’s health protocols as we try to be a public in private spaces.

Hartford Stage Takes to the Eyre

Review of Jane Eyre, Hartford Stage

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has the distinction of being one of the first great first-person narratives in British fiction and probably the earliest great first-person narrative by a female author. Most other early examples of a woman narrating her own story—Moll Flanders comes to mind—were written by a man in character as a woman. Brontë’s Jane tells her own story and addresses her “dear Reader” directly. The intimacy is key to the story. It’s a confession, of sorts, but a confession in which the point is how one becomes who one is. Jane, come from obscurity with only harmful relatives (she believes), makes her way in the world with gumption, an enduring sense of her own dignity, a passionate sense of right and wrong, a perhaps revolutionary sense of woman’s due, and an admirable way with a story.

John Reed (Grayson DeJesus), Child Jane (Meghan Pratt) in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Adapted the novel has been before, often. Many film versions—I’ve seen at least three—and no doubt stagings. At Hartford Stage, Associate Artistic Director Elizabeth Williamson directs her own adaptation and, in this era when Kate Hamill has engendered a cottage industry of comic adaptations of the kind of British—and even American—classics formerly the stuff of Masterpiece Theater (her Pride and Prejudice has been produced twice this theater season in Connecticut), it’s important to say what Jane Eyre isn’t. It’s not a light-hearted rewrite in the arch tones of contemporary feminism. It’s very faithful to our beloved Jane—and it wisely leaves out the years at the grim Lowood school, a sequence which, though based on real experience, might seem too Dickensian.

And, despite its lack of big whizbang effects (for that famed fire at Thornfield or for moody moors and encounters with a rearing horse), this Jane Eyre works. And that’s because Helen Sadler, as Jane, and Chandler Williams, as Mr. Rochester, are doing very fine work. Certainly, it’s the best romantic pairing of the season.

Mr. Rochester (Chandler Williams), Jane Eyre (Helen Sadler) in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Rochester, for starters, is a figure so familiar in his gnomic oddity as to be easily lampooned or sent-up. All the trappings of the Gothic—the peremptory Master of a mansion who has a mysterious past, the hapless but helpful governess who arrives and must somehow set things right, the knowing but not-forthcoming servants, the forbidding clime—are here, and Williamson manages to keep them in play without making them clichés. And that’s because Jane, in her forthright effort to show things as she lived them, isn’t the kind to overdramatize or satirize. Getting her tone is essential, and Williamson’s script does.

Jane (Helen Sadler), Mr. Rochester (Chandler Williams) in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Jane is right in what she thinks and says, and Sadler looks and sounds right as Jane. When she misreads something, we see her error and can watch her come to terms. Her outbursts carry a force that never gets teary or—that great Victorian affliction—overwrought. Her interactions are never too good to be true because Jane’s sense of others is apt to be realistic, for our benefit. She is cautious but not captious. And she’s stirred by her belief that Rochester might actually be her match.

And Williamson’s grasp of Brontë’s tone means that Chandler gets to render an enduring Rochester, a figure who feels like what a female author enamored of Byron and Shakespeare would fashion. He’s mercurial in temper, given to having his way, and, of course, wonderingly struck by a kind of woman he hasn’t encountered before. Chandler lets his body language and an entertaining array of vocal mannerisms create a Rochester as fascinating as Jane feels him to be.

Jane (Helen Sadler), Mrs. Fairfax (Felicity Jones Latta) in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

All the other characters are ancillary but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still real pleasure, as always, in seeing two veterans of various Connecticut stages—Felicity Jones Latta and Steve Routman—play a variety of roles. Latta is all the elder women in Jane’s life, which makes for an interesting alignment of Mrs. Fairfax, the helpful housekeeper who hired Jane; Aunt Reed, the vindictive relation who dismissed her and who on her deathbed still rejects her; Lady Ingram, the snooty mother of a belle out to snare Rochester; and Bertha, the madwoman in the attic. Routman gets to move through the distinct ranks of British society, the peasant, the military man, the aristocrat, and the cleric. Grayson DeJesus enacts two important potentially spoiler roles, quite different in effect, as Mason, the man who knows of Rochester’s past, and as St. John Rivers, the man who may have a future for Jane. Marie-France Arcilla plays Jane’s rival, her kindly nursemaid when a girl, and a servant with a secret Jane needs to know. Megan Gwyn is primarily Jane’s honorary sister in a family who helps her, and Meghan Pratt is both the child Jane, mistreated and outspoken, and little Adèle, Jane’s French-speaking charge at Thornfield Hall.

The cast of Jane Eyre in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The Hall itself is suggested, in Nick Vaughn’s set, by a handsome array of sliding partitions that can open at times to suggest a house beyond, but that can also withdraw to present a stand of trees. There are some nicely done effects with silhouettes and with a turning stage that allows Jane’s narrative to move people on and off as needed. As with Hartford Stage’s popular adaptation of A Christmas Carol, scenery is kept to a minimum and the story moves through an amorphous space that leaves much to our imaginations.

Old-fashioned? Certainly. Jane Eyre is a classic revisited for the satisfactions this intricate and involving story can still deliver and, in Elizabeth Williamson’s succinct and affecting adaptation at Hartford Stage, deliver them it does.

Jane Eyre (Helen Sadler) in Elizabeth Williamson’s adaptation of Jane Eyre at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Jane Eyre
Adapted from Charlotte Brontë’s novel and directed by Elizabeth Williamson

Scenic Design: Nick Vaughn; Costume Design: Ilona Somogyi; Lighting Design: Isabella Byrd; Sound Design: Matt Hubbs; Original Music: Christian Frederickson; Wig & Hair Design: Jason Allen; Dialect Coach: Claudia Hill-Sparks; Fight Choreographer: Greg Webster; Dramaturg: Fiona Kyle; Production Stage Manager: Hannah Woodward; Assistant Stage Manager: Kelly Hardy; Production Manager: Bryan T. Holcombe

Cast: Marie-France Arcilla, Grayson DeJesus, Megan Gwyn, Felicity Jones Latta, Meghan Pratt, Steve Routman, Helen Sadler, Chandler Williams

Hartford Stage
February 13-March 14, 2020

Living At Risk

Review of Pike Street, Hartford Stage

Character, we might say, is outwardly a question of manner and inwardly a question of one’s openness to others. By such a measure, Nilaja Sun’s Pike Street, at Hartford Stage through February 2, directed by Ron Russell, is full of character.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

All of its characters, enacted by Sun, the author and performer of the play, are manners she adopts at will, carrying on vivid dialogues, and Sun’s openness to others is what makes the play work. She is able to inhabit these folk because they aren’t just figments of her imagination: they are people who live a precarious existence on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an existence made perilous by the imminent arrival of a hurricane. The backstories come to light as necessary to fill us in on the situation, but the main gist is the way the impending crisis brings out the character in these characters.

Evelyn is a Puerto Rican mom, beset by the fact that her daughter Candi, fifteen, has suffered an aneurysm that leaves her confined to a chair and in need of a respirator and a dialysis machine—and, with yet another major storm on the way with its possible attendant loss of electricity, Candi is at risk. The family, which includes Evelyn’s truculent and womanizing father, Poppi, played mainly for laughs, should evacuate to a shelter, says Con Ed, but moving Candi in her chair up and down five flights with no elevator is no picnic, and the kind of callous treatment the girl suffered last time—during Hurricane Sandy—leaves Evelyn loath to endure such indignities. Her solution: a generator in the apartment should they lose power.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Other characters come and go to flesh out the proceedings, particularly Evelyn’s brother Manny, just now returned from service in Afghanistan and the source of the income the family manages on. Manny is generally an ingratiating and agreeable sort—except when indeterminate triggers set off his PTSD, making him apt to cause some havoc with local Arab merchants. Neighbors, such as senile Mrs. Appelbaum, Ty, Manny’s pot-smoking chum, and Migdalia, Poppi’s woman-for-hire, add voices and occasions for reactions, as Evelyn tries her best to be staunch and patient like her deceased mother was—a healer who ran a botanica now closed.

Sun’s sure way of conjuring these characters opens their world to us and us to their world. One of the show’s more memorable moments is when a flashback lets us see Candi, as a child, campaigning for class president and sounding like a font of wisdom.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street at Hartford Stage, photo by T. Charles Erickson

Before the show begins, Sun sits on the set’s lone chair, shelves of candles behind her, as the audience enters, seeming to commune within herself. She opens the show by reaching out to the audience, inviting rhythmic handclaps interspersed with deep breaths, as not only a way of focusing our attention but a way of making us all alert to each other and to the transformative possibilities of her story. Being present is key to the show’s message, showing how important the cohesion of this family—any family—is, while also hitting the audience with a tragedy that comes from the everydayness of bad decisions and bad luck.

The show’s final, indelible image is of the most at-risk character’s resilience, which is also in its way a cry for help. Nilaja Sun’s Pike Street finds its passion and its humor in the trials and joys of living and creates theater that feels—in our storm-stressed times—like a humanitarian effort.

Nilaja Sun in Pike Street, at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Pike Street
Written & performed by Nilaja Sun
Directed by Ron Russell

Scenic Design: Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams; Costume Design: Clint Ramos; Lighting Design: Tyler Micoleau; Sound Design: Ron Russell; Production Stage Manager: Molly Minor Eustis; Assistant Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Production Manager: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Hartford Stage
January 9-February 2, 2020

What's Next on the Local Theater Scene

2020 has launched and the Connecticut theater season resumes this week.

New Haven:

Local theater troupe The New Haven Theater Company features a staged reading for three nights this weekend—Thursday, January 16 through Saturday, January 18—at English Markets Building on Chapel Street. The work is a new play in development by NHTC member Christian Shaboo. The Three Wisemen is about a young man facing uncertainty in his romantic life who takes to the road with the titular “wisemen”—his longtime roommates—to confront the ghosts of his past. The reading, directed by Shaboo, features NHTC regulars George Kulp (seen this past fall in Retreat from Moscow) and John Watson (last seen in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest last season), as well as Aleta Staton, who appeared in Doubt in 2015, and newcomers Ny’Asia Davis, Solomon Green, and Eric Rey. For tickets for the limited seating go here.

At New Haven Theater Company this week only!

Tickets are also available for the next full production at NHTC: Steve Scarpa, who directed Our Town, Proof, and Waiting for Lefty and appeared in Middletown, A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay on the Death of Walt Disney, The Seafarer, and Doubt, among others, will direct J. Kevin Smith, who played the title role in Lucas Hnath’s …Death of Walt Disney, and Trevor Williams, who played Randall McMurphy in Cuckoo’s Nest, in Edward Albee’s Zoo Story, for three weekends, February 20-22 and 27-29, and March 5-7. This will be the first rendering of an Albee play by NHTC. (preview)

Yale Cabaret resumes its 52nd season at 217 Park Street this weekend—Thursday, January 16-Saturday, January 18—with a production of Is God Is by Aleshea Harris, directed by third-year Yale School of Drama director Christopher D. Betts. Betts directed the Cab’s season’s bracing opener, Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present a Presentation about the Herero of Namibia, formerly known as Southwest Africa, from the German Südwestafrika, between the years 1884-1915 as well as two shows last season. Harris’ play, which was staged at SoHo Rep in 2018, is described as “a modern myth about twin sisters who sojourn from the Dirty South to the California desert to exact righteous revenge against their father in an epic saga” that mixes tropes from “Spaghetti Westerns” and Afropunk culture (review). Next up at the Cab is a brand new musical by third-year sound designer Liam Bellman-Sharpe called Elon Musk and the Plan to Blow Up Mars: The Musical which explores the catchy idea that to prevent the colonization of Mars we must destroy the red planet to save the blue one. Thursday, January 23-Saturday, January 25 (review); for tickets and more information, including dining reservations, go here.

At Yale Cabaret this week only!

The Yale Repertory Theatre returns later this month with its third show of the season: Manahatta, a play by Mary Kathryn Nagle, former Executive Director of the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. In the play, set in 2008, a female descendant of the Lenape tribe—who were forcefully removed from the island of Manahatta by the Dutch in the 1600s—works on Wall Street during the mortgage crisis that opened questions of land ownership—and capitalist greed—anew. Directed by Laurie Woolery, who directed the play in its world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2018 and directed El Huracán, the Rep’s inventive season opener of 2018-19. Friday, January 24- Saturday, February 15 (review); in previews until Thursday, January 30; for tickets and more information go here.

The third and last show of the Yale School of Drama season plays in early February: Alice, Robert Wilson’s experimental treatment of Alice in Wonderland, with cabaret-style songs by Tom Waits, will be directed by third-year director Ellis Logan. Saturday, February 1-Friday, February 7 (preview) (review); for tickets and more information go here.

At Long Wharf Theatre, the third show of the season runs through February. Directed by Rebecca Martínez, I Am My Own Wife is Doug Wright’s Pulitzer and Tony-winning one-person play about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, a transgender woman who survives the Nazi and Communist regimes in East Germany. Mason Alexander Park—who has played a variety of genderbending roles such as the Emcee in Cabaret, Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, and Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch—plays Charlotte and more than thirty other characters embodied in the role (preview). Wednesday, February 5-Sunday, March 1; in previews until Wednesday, February 12; for tickets and more information go here (review).

Mason Alexander Park

Hartford:

Hartford Stage’s first show of 2020 is in previews and opens this week. Directed by Ron Russell, Pike Street is Obie-winning playwright and actor Nilaja Sun’s solo show in which she plays dozens of roles in a story of struggle, survival and redemption for three generations of a Puerto Rican family on New York’s Lower East Side. In previews since January 9, the show opens on Friday, January 17 and continues through Sunday, February 2 (review); for tickets and more information go here.

Opening night this Friday at Hartford Stage!

Playhouse on Park in West Hartford continues its 11th season with Tenderly: The Rosemary Clooney Musical which features Susan Haefner, who originated the title role, as Rosemary Clooney. The show by James Yates Vogt and Mark Friedman is directed by Kyle Brand, who directed an energetic Avenue Q at Playhouse on Park in 2017, and depicts both the successes and struggles of Clooney’s long career, including such signature hits as “Come On-a My House,” with music direction by Robert James Tomasulo and choreography by MK Lawson. Previews are tonight—January 15—and tomorrow night with the opening reception on Friday, January 17; the show runs until Sunday, February 2; for tickets and more information, go here.

TheaterWorks returns at the end of the month with its second subscription show of the season. The Lifespan of a Fact by Jeremy Karekan & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell is a CT premiere and the play was a NYTimes Critics’ Pick during its Broadway run in 2018. Directed by Tracy Brigden, who directed the delirious Hand to God at TheaterWorks in 2018, the play is a comedic treatment of the “current media tug of war” about so-called “fake news” and the way in which spin affects the status of facts. The three-person cast features actors with CT work in their resumés: Nick LeMedica starred in TheaterWorks’ Hand to God; Tasha Lawrence starred in A Doll’s House, Part 2 at TheaterWorks in 2019 and in The Roommates at Long Wharf in 2018, and Rufus Collins was in Long Wharf’s The Old Masters in 2011. Thursday, January 30 to Sunday, March 8; Press night: Thursday, February 8 (review); Pay-What-You-Can: Thursday, January  30 and Wednesday, February 5; All-Free Student Matinee: Saturday, February 8; for tickets and more information go here.

One Big Happy Family

Review of Cry It Out, Hartford Stage

Human services. What does that phrase make you think of? Care of the sick, disabled, elderly? What about the form of care that is among the most time-consuming and anxiety-ridden: the care of newborn children. Molly Smith Metzler’s Cry It Out, now at Hartford Stage in a delightful production directed by Rachel Alderman, gets the rigors of the latter “service” exactly right, making comic drama of the way we tend to make light of all the potential heartache that comes with being the adults in the room.

The show features my earliest choice in this season of Connecticut theater for outstanding performance: Rachel Spencer Hewitt plays new mom Jessie with a voice pitched perpetually in wonderment at what’s become of her. She’s a  latter-day “angel in the house,” a doting mother who nearly lost her baby pre-birth, a successful lawyer (this could be partnership year) who is learning she might rather remain at home, and sometimes she can let herself go, abetted by the brash, comic, and spot-on support of Evelyn Spahr’s Lina, the next-door new mom. This can-do duo becomes regulars in the backyard playground, a circular arena of scrappy grass beneath silhouettes of townhouses, with a graceful space between, in Kristen Robinson’s handsome set. There these breast-feeding buddies find that, despite their differences in background and paygrade, they can actually talk to each other about the one thing they both really care about: being a mom.

Jessie (Rachel Spencer Hewitt), Lina (Eveylyn Spahr) in Hartford Stage’s production of Cry It Out, directed by Rachel Alderman (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

What makes the play work so well is the way these two gifted performers, under Alderman’s feel for human foible, fully inhabit Smith Metzler’s funny and perceptive script. Jessie and Lina could be caricatures but they are knowing enough to know that, and that gives them a personal irony and exuberance that’s fun and infectious, even when they have to vent about things like Lina’s alcoholic mother-in-law or Jessie’s husband’s sudden need to have a cottage on Montauk next to his parents. The first scene plays out best simply because we’re happy to overhear the way these two outgoing women get on.

Mitchell (Erin Gann) in Hartford Stage’s production of Cry It Out (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The complications come in two forms. One is the need to return to work—Lina’s date is already set—to keep both two-income households running, and that means the days of their joyful routine are numbered. The other is an odd request from the well-heeled neighbor up the hill. Mitchell (Erin Gann), a nice suit in a rush to make a train, barges in on them like a walking explosion of awkwardness, his gesturing hands and glancing eyes moving everywhere at once. His request: could he set up a playdate between his wife, a new mom having trouble coping (despite a support staff), and these two comfortably at-home mommies?

When we finally meet his wife Adrienne (Caroline Kinsolving), she’s the proverbial third wheel. She’s not into anything the others are into, she exudes professional froideur, and she’s exactingly rude and contemptuous. At first we might think this very successful jewelry designer is only there to be a foil, giving Lina someone to mock and Jessie someone to feel sorry about. And she is that, but she’s also going to give the requisite speech that lets us know what makes the mean girl mean. That moment, near the end, is not all it could be—Kinsolving keeps Adrienne cool even when she’s literally throwing eggs—but her speech does offer a cautionary point about stones and living in glasshouses.

Lina (Evelyn Spahr), Jessie (Rachel Spencer Hewitt), Adrienne (Caroline Kinsolving) in Hartford Stage’s production of Cry It Out (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Underneath all the banter and the angst about letting down the child is, perhaps, some idea like Tolstoy’s famed line: “all unhappy families are unique in their unhappiness.” Which is to say that not only do we all fail to be perfect parents, but that the way each of us fails isn’t something that can be fixed by some all-purpose remedy. Like the “cry it out” method of getting an infant to go to sleep, the choices parents make tend to be policed in odd ways by an implied collectivity. In watching parents with their children (or, in this case, hearing discussions of spouses and children), there’s always a detail or two that screams “socialization.” And that’s what keeps us in this game. Whether or not you are a parent, some version(s) of a parent raised you. And you wonder how it might all have gone differently.

And if you are a parent it’s hard to imagine that you won’t find much here to amuse you and maybe choke you up. In particular, Smith Metzler is able to evoke—in Spencer Hewitt’s giddy domestic rapture, self-conscious but pure—what it’s like to spend time with an infant on a daily basis. If you haven’t had that pleasure in a while, be prepared to have your memory renewed. And if you have, maybe even more so.

Jessie (Rachel Spencer Hewitt), Lina (Evelyn Spahr) in Hartford Stage’s production of Cry It Out (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Smith Metzler is also sure enough of her material—and of an audience at child-rearing age—to end with an interrogative. Many plays today try to prod us into thinking about the practices of exclusion and inclusion in our society. Cry It Out takes that question down to a basic formulation: how long should we keep our children to ourselves and how soon should we put them out there with everyone else?

Cry It Out
By Molly Smith Metzler
Directed by Rachel Alderman

Scenic Design: Kristen Robinson; Costume Design: Blair Gulledge; Lighting Design: Matthew Richards; Sound Design: Karin Graybash; Dramaturg: Shaila Schmidt; Casting: Laura Stancyzk, CSA; Production Stage Manager: Kelly Hardy; Assistant Stage Manager: Chandalae Nyswonger; Production Manager: Bryan T. Holcombe

Cast: Evelyn Spahr, Rachel Spencer Hewitt, Erin Gann, Caroline Kinsolving

Hartford Stage
October 24-November 17, 2019

Man of La Plancha: a New Quixote for a New Era

Review of Quixote Nuevo, Hartford Stage

From the moment the “calacas” take the stage, in a display of eye-catching costumes by Rachel Healy that evoke the imagery of the North American southwest and the ancient culture of Mexico, Quixote Nuevo explodes with color and movement. In Octavio Solis’ heartfelt modern reimagining of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, directed with vitality and poetry by KJ Sanchez, the demonic troupe’s energy comes from the disturbed mind of Jose Quijano, played by veteran TV actor Emilio Delgado with charming pathos and humor. A timely comedy with true mythopoetic power, the show runs at Hartford Stage until October 13, following its world premiere at the California Shakespeare Festival last year.

Quijano’s delusions, as he takes to the road as a modern-day Quixote in search of his muse Dulcinea, are profoundly disturbing to others and vastly entertaining to the audience. The “others” include his sweetly diffident niece, Antonia (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera); his abrasive sister, Magdalena (Mariela López-Ponce); his well-meaning but timid priest, Padre Perez (Orlando Arriaga), and his earnestly out-of-her-element psychiatrist, Dr. Campos (Gisela Chipe). After seeing how ill-served Quijano, a retired literature professor losing his mind, is at home, we’re ready to ride off with him, as he takes to his adult-sized tricycle adorned with a horse’s skull, garbed in a pastiche of armor that includes a rotary fan as breastplate.

Jose Quijano/Don Quixote (Emilio Delgado), front; Papa Calaca (Hugo E. Carbajal), rear, with the cast of Quixote Nuevo at Hartford Stage (photos by T. Charles Erickson)

He soon enough finds his Sancho Panza in Manny Diaz, a vendor of paletas, played by Juan Manuel Amador with engaging comic nuance. And their first adventure is at a karaoke dive where many of the actors already introduced play slumming locals in an establishment run by Bruno Castillo (Ivan Jasso) and Rosario Castillo (Krystal Hernandez). Bruno graciously agrees to dub Quixote with a sacred relic: the trigger finger of Pancho Villa, a prop that will come back in Part 2 to hilarious effect thanks to Diaz. The remaining cast member is Hugo E. Carbajal who plays Papà Calaca—Death, in other words—with magnetic stage presence as a surprisingly simpatico wraith always hovering on the edge of Quijano’s awareness.

Manny Diaz/Sancho Panza (Juan Manuel Amador)

One of the great attributes of Cervantes’ classic tale of an aging Spanish landowner who believes he lives in a world of knights-errant and chivalry is how episodic it is. Quixote’s is a story of seemingly random encounters and the schema is easily adaptable by Solinas to a different series of adventures—such as an encounter with Cardenio (Arriaga), a grieving refugee in a mountainous region, or a battle with an overbearing border guard (Carbajal) and a joust with a surveillance balloon. The current and longstanding problems at the U.S. and Mexican border is key to the background ambiance of Solis’ play, and the device of Quixote chimes well with a felt need to find sustaining myths for our country and our times.

Jose Quijano/Don Quixote (Emilio Delgado), center, with the cast of Quixote Nuevo

The notion of a Tejano—a Mexican-American from Texas—as an American Everyman plays into our country’s fondness for myths about the West, even as the play finds a way both to inhabit the specific region and to take stock of the many tropes we already know so well. Solis’ jokes about Iron Man or Games of Thrones are tellingly apt. A latter day Quixote might believe he’s a Marvel superhero or living in one of the regions depicted in George R.R. Martin’s saga of warring houses. The point is that we’re always willing to enter a fantasy world, if only to suspend belief in the distressing times in which we live.

The weakest aspect of the play—tellingly—is the effort to people Quijano’s and Diaz’s village, La Plancha. The characters have little to sustain them beyond manner—whereas the people met on the road or in Quijano’s fantasies are suitably defined by the encounter. The play ends—after two and a half hours—somewhat abruptly, after evoking the challenge of a wall that may or may not exist. But then the end of any version of Quixote tends to be a compromise with dramatic necessity: the story must end somehow. Death is the end of delusion.

The music by David R. Molina and Eduardo Robledo lends much flavorful atmosphere as does Takeshi Kata’s chameleonic vista of sky and clouds, lit by Brian J. Lilienthal. If the changing colors and cloud consistencies on display doesn’t make you long for desert regions, you’re even more of a northeasterner than I am. The wide-open spaces of the set are graced when needed by a bar or miniaturized storefronts signaling distant streets. It’s a wonderfully imaginative use of the Hartford Stage’s amphitheater.

An entertaining epic on aging that looks at how the life of the mind—as a theater of consoling fictions—both sustains us and deceives us, Quixote Nuevo shows us, in the inspirations and confusions of its professor as paladin, the enduring humanitas of the humanities.

Jose Quijano (Emilio Delgado), Antonia (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera)

Quixote Nuevo
By Octavio Solis
Directed by KJ Sanchez

Scenic Design: Takeshi Kata; Costume Design: Rachel Healy; Lighting Design: Brian J. Lilienthal; Composer & Sound Design: David R. Molina; Co-Composer: Eduardo Robledo; Music Director: Jesse Sanchez; Fight Director: Ted Hewlett; Vocal & Dialect Coach: Robert Ramirez; Dramaturg: J. Sebastián Alberdi; Production Stage Manager: Rob Chikar; Assistant Stage Manager: Kasson Marroquin

Cast: Juan Manuel Amador; Orlando Arriaga; Hugo E. Carbajal; Gisela Chipe; Emilio Delgado; Krystal Hernandez; Ivan Jasso; Mariela López-Ponce; Gianna DiGregorio Rivera

Hartford Stage
September 19-October 13, 2019

Get In The Act: The Fall Theater Scene in Connecticut

Preview: Fall Theater Season, 2019

Labor Day has come and gone, and “back to school” weather in Connecticut actually felt like early autumn, for a change. And my email inbox’s increase of press releases indicates that the theater season of fall 2019 is tuning up. The “twenty-teens” are coming swiftly to a close, while the next presidential election is barely more than a year away as we start to wonder who is at “20/20” for 2020.

Here is a glance at the upcoming shows on the Connecticut theater scene (touring Broadway shows exempted) for the next four months between now and the beginning of that oddly doubled year—the last one was 1919!

Yale Cabaret, the black box in a basement on Yale campus where theater leaders of tomorrow make extracurricular theater as students at the Yale School of Drama, begins its 52nd season this week (see Lucy Gellman’s coverage at Arts Paper ); the incoming team are Artistic Directors Zachry J. Bailey, a third-year in Stage Management, Brandon Burton, a third-year in Acting, and  Alex Vermilion, a third-year in Dramaturgy & Dramatic Criticism, together with Managing Director Jaime Totti, a fourth-year joint candidate for an MFA in Theater Management at the School of Drama and an MBA at the School of Management. The 2019-20 season kicks off, September 12-14, with We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, from the German Südwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915 by Pulitzer Prize-winner Jackie Sibblies Drury, a lecturer in playwriting at YSD, directed by Christopher Betts (Directing, ’21); the play dramatizes the difficulties of authentic representation in a tale of genocide by staging the play’s rehearsal; next, September 19-21, is Waste \\ Land: Climate Change Theatre Action 2019, an anthology mixing short plays by international playwrights and pieces written by students, the show is curated and directed by members of Beyond Borders, a new affinity group for international students at YSD; then, October 3-5, the Cabaret returns with benjisun presents bodyssey, a movement-and-puppetry piece created by Benjamin Benne (Playwriting ’21) and Jisun Kim (Dramaturgy & Dramatic Criticism ’21); first seen in the TBD festival of rough drafts last season, the expanded version further explores themes of the human body and the world it inhabits (review). For a preview of the shows from October 24 through December, go here.

Goodspeed, the venerable musical theater on the Connecticut River in East Haddam, has had a very successful 2019 season so far: its revival of the classic The Music Man won the CT Critics Circle Award for Best Musical; its new musical Because of Winn Dixie enjoyed an extended run, and now it brings the season to a close with Billy Elliott, Book & Lyrics by Lee Hall, Music by Elton John; an audience choice, the original Broadway show won 10 Tonys, adapting a popular film about a young boy in a tough North England mining town who dreams of becoming a dancer. September 13-November 24 (review).

Originally the first self-supporting summer theater in the country, Ivoryton Playhouse has been running versatile full seasons since 2006 under Executive Director Jacqueline Hubbard; the last two shows of the 2019 season, which began in March, are Sheer Madness by Paul Portner, a lively—and long-running—comedy-mystery in which audience members spot clues, question suspects, and solve the case, complete with improvised topical humor from the cast, September 18-October 6, and Woody Sez – The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie, an involving celebration of the songs of Woody Guthrie, the anti-fascist folk-bard of Depression-era America, devised by David M. Luken, who plays Woody, with Nick Corley, Darcie Deauville, Helen J. Russell, and Andy Tierstein, October 23-November 10.

Like my own reviews of New Haven theater, Playhouse on Park in West Hartford, founded in 2009 by Co-Artistic Directors Sean Harris and Darlene Zoller and Executive Director Tracy Flater, is entering its second decade; the spacious stage in the Playhouse thrust space, which has housed some memorable productions such as The Diary of Anne Frank (2017) and The Scottsboro Boys (2019), will present the “inspired madness” of Dan Goggin’s Nunsense, a spirited musical in which singing nuns raise fun and funds to bury their deceased sisters, September 18-October 13 (review), followed by Barbara Lebow’s A Shayna Maidel; Dawn Loveland Navarro directs the tale of a patriarch and his two daughters—as children, one escaped the Holocaust with him, the other had to survive it—meeting again after many years, an exploration of “family, faith and forgiveness,” October 30-November 17 (review).

Following the departure of its celebrated Artistic Director, Darko Tresnjak, Hartford Stage opens its 56th season, the exciting first season for new Artistic Director Melia Benussen and new Managing Director Cynthia Rider; first up is Quixote Nuevo by Octavio Solis, a contemporary reimagining of Cervantes’ immortal Don Quixote, now set in a Texas border town, directed by KJ Sanchez; the production is in association with Huntington Theatre Company and Alley Theatre, September 19-October 13 (review); the next two shows will be directed by Rachel Alderman, Artistic Associate (and a founding member of New Haven’s innovative Broken Umbrella Theatre): Molly Smith Metzler’s Cry It Out, a recent comedy about four parents negotiating “the power of female friendship, the dilemma of going back to work after being home with a newborn, and the effect social class has on parenthood in America,” October 24-November 17 (review), and the fun, elegant, and ghostly A Christmas Carol, the traditional holiday favorite of spiritual redemption from Charles Dickens by way of Michael Wilson’s inventive adaptation, November 29-December 28.

Originally a dance hall built in the 1920s, later—in the 1970s—a skating rink, and, since the 1990s, a theater, Waterbury’s Seven Angels Theatre in Hamilton Park, boasts a good sound system, great for concert-style shows such as Million Dollar Quartet (2017) and The Who’s Tommy (2018); the 2019-20 Mainstage season opens with Honky Tonk Laundry, by Roger Bean Take, a tuneful tale of two gals running a laundromat, featuring the music of a slew of female Country Music legends, such as Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline, Carrie Underwood, Trisha Yearwood, and Reba McEntire, September 26-October 20; then, November 7-December 1, it’s Matthew Lopez’s hilarious, crowd-pleasing tale of how a straight married guy—a struggling Elvis impersonator—must learn to walk the walk of a stylish drag queen in The Legend of Georgia McBride.

Founded in 1987 as a small, black box equity theater together with a school of the performing arts, Music Theater of Connecticut in Norwalk, just past the Westport border, follows the gripping productions—Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Cabaret—of its strong 2018-19 season with the ambitious musical adapted from E. L. Doctorow’s historical pastiche, Ragtime, with Book by Terence McNally, Lyrics by Lynn Ahern, and Music by Stephen Flaherty, a story of multicultural America, involving African Americans in Harlem, white upper-class suburbanites in New Rochelle, and East European Jewish immigrants, September 27-October 13 (review); then, November 8-24, it’s Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias, the story of small-town life in Louisiana as lived and learned by a group of women for whom the local beauty salon is a kind of clubhouse beyond the purview of the fellas (review).

At Westport Country Playhouse, Mark Lamos is in his second decade as Artistic Director, continuing to produce an able mix of sumptuously mounted classics, such as Romeo and Juliet (2017) and Camelot (2016), notable new work like Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand (2016) and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Appropriate (2017), and rousing crowd-pleasers like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights, which began the 2019 season in April; the season has two more shows: Lamos directs Mlima’s Tale by two-time Pulitzer-winning playwright Lynn Nottage, a fable about a Kenyan elephant, Mlima, a species facing extinction in a world of capitalist greed and economic desperation, October 1-19 (review); and Brendan Pelsue’s new translation and adaptation of Molière’s dark comedy Don Juan about the legendary libertine facing the consequences of his faithless lifestyle, directed by David Kennedy, November 5-23 (review).

ACT (A Contemporary Theatre) of Connecticut opened the doors of its own theater in Ridgefield in June 2018; the stylish, open stage, with amphitheater seating, has so far only five theatrical productions to its credit as founders Katie Diamond, Executive Director, Daniel C. Levine, Artistic Director, and Bryan Perri, Resident Music Supervisor, continue their mission to bring Equity, Broadway-caliber productions to CT’s northwest. The second season opens with Alan Menken and Harold Ashman’s ever-popular and entertaining The Little Shop of Horrors, a macabre musical comedy about a lovable schlemiel, his demanding man-eating pet plant, Audrey II, and the girl he loves, October 3-November 3 (review).

In the northeast part of the state, The Connecticut Repertory Theater is the production component of the Department of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut in Storrs; CRT productions are directed, designed by, and cast with visiting professional artists, mixing Equity actors, faculty members, and UConn’s most advanced theater students. The 2019-20 season of six shows leads off, in the Harriet S. Jorgensen Theater, with Chekhov’s masterpiece The Cherry Orchard, a more apt choice for our times than the playwright’s more oft-produced The Seagull; the production, adapted by Jean-Claude van Itallie and directed by John Miller-Stephany, features Mark Light-Orr as Gayev and Caralyn Kozlowski as Ranevskaya, October 3-13; later in the month, in the Studio Theatre, is Sarah DeLappe’s spirited The Wolves, directed by Julie Foh, in which a girls’ high school soccer team copes with the tensions of coming of age, October 24-November 3; Shakespeare in Love, a stage adaptation of the Oscar-winning romantic comedy film by Tom Stoppard, Lee Hall and Marc Norman, about the young Shakespeare’s writer’s block and inspiring tryst with Viola, a titled woman with an overweening love of theater, plays the Harriet S. Jorgensen theater November 21-December 8, directed by Vincent Tycer, its Equity cast still to be determined.

In New Haven, James Bundy has been the Artistic Director of Yale Repertory Theatre, the theater in residence for the Yale School of Drama, and the Dean of Yale School of Drama since 2002, fostering theatrical talent and showcasing top professionals; the first show of the 2019-20 season is the World Premiere of Girls, the always challenging Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ modern adaptation of Euripides’ The Bacchae, a popular go-to classic of our moment, this time with “a killer DJ, bumping dance music, and live-streaming video,” October 4-26 (review), directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, an inspiring Directing alum of YSD (2012) who teamed with Jacobs-Jenkins for War at Yale Rep in 2014; The Plot, by the always rewarding Will Eno, has its World Premiere November 9-December 21 (review), directed by Oliver Butler, who won the OBIE for directing Eno’s Open House at the Signature Theatre; Eno’s previous play at Yale Rep was The Realistic Joneses (2012).

The first two thesis productions at the Yale School of Drama, in which third-year Directing students work with a cast and technical team comprised of—generally—current YSD students, will run in the closing months of 2019 as well: Kat Yen directs Anne Washburn’s post-apocalyptic Mr. Burns, a post-electric play, in which collective memories of shows on The Simpsons become the basis of an epic myth, October 26-November 1 (preview) (review); and, December 14-20, Danilo Gambini, the Co-Artistic Director of the 2019 Yale Summer Cabaret season, directs Fun Home (preview) (review); Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori’s musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s graphic-novel memoir of her early life, her coming out, and her fraught relationship with her closeted gay father won the Tony Award for Best Musical of 2015.

At New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre, last season was still transitioning after the ousting of longtime Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein in 2018; now the implementation of the vision of new Artistic Director Jacob G. Padrón is underway, “Grounded in the past, leaping into the future,” though the season that will be entirely his own won’t arrive until 2021-22 (read Frank Rizzo’s talk with Padrón at Newhavenbiz). The 2019-20 season opens with the World Premiere of Ricardo Pérez González’s On the Grounds of Belonging, October 9-November 3 (review); directed by David Mendizábal, the story tells of a forbidden love between a white man and a black man in 1950s’ Jim Crow Texas; oft-produced actor-playwright Kate Hamill has become a veritable industry of quirky, third-wave feminist adaptations of the kinds of nineteenth-century classics formerly the stuff of Masterpiece Theater productions; her third effort, and second Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice fills Long Wharf’s second slot, November 27-December 22 (review).

In downtown Hartford at the historic City Arts building on Pearl Street, TheaterWorks has been producing theater since 1985; the 2019-20 season will open in the newly renovated but still very intimate theater space, after staging several of last season’s shows at the Wadsworth Atheneum’s auditorium; the opener is American Son, Christopher Demos-Brown’s topical drama, on Broadway last season, about a mixed race couple’s grim night of truth when their son gets stopped by police, October 18-November 23 (review); the last show of 2019 will be “Hartford’s twisted holiday tradition,” Rob Ruggerio’s Christmas on the Rocks in which a battery of playwrights devise futures for the figures many of us spent far too many Christmases with; so here’s to all those for whom “the holidays” were as much—or more—about repeat-viewing of “holiday classics” as about spending time with loved ones, December 1-29.

I’ll be reviewing many of these shows, so stop back and follow links to the reviews as they come in, and make the most of the rest of 2019 . . .

The Kid is Alright

Review of The Flamingo Kid, Hartford Stage

Darko Tresnjak, who steps down as Artistic Director with the conclusion of this season, ends his tenure at Hartford Stage on an upbeat note. The Flamingo Kid, a new musical based on the fondly regarded film by Garry and Neal Marshall from 1984, re-teams Tresnjak with Robert L. Freedman, Books and Lyrics, who wrote the Book and co-wrote the lyrics for the Tony-winning A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, one of the director’s prior big successes.

This time the comedy is not quite as wildly inspired, but the show is vastly entertaining, with the kind of witty lyrics—often adding a deliberate flavor of Jewish Brooklyn missing from the film—that musicals about coming of age should have. Scott Frankel, of War Paint and Grey Gardens, wrote the music and there’s a nice range of musical inspirations, all feeling at home in 1963, the year of the action. That’s the summer, of course, between the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. A great time to be young and alive after the U.S. got the U.S.S.R. to backdown and before the country, in the view of many commentators, lost its innocence.

Steve (Ben Fankhauser), Hawk (Alex Wyse), Jeffrey Winnick (Jimmy Brewer) in Hartford Stage production of The Flamingo Kid (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The Flamingo Kid is rich with the kind of associations many of us have with the era, not least in pitting the bedrock values of the working lower middle-class, here instanced by the Winnicks in Brooklyn, with the leisure-time instincts of the upper middle-class out on Long Island. It’s still a time when such might occasionally rub shoulders, and when the so-called American Dream offered the notion that a kid who has to earn his way could still work his way up in pay and respect.

The story, which begins on the Fourth of July weekend and ends on Labor Day weekend, takes the side of the young, ethnic up-and-comer, Jeffrey Winnick (Jimmy Brewer), over the self-important blowhard Phil Brody (Marc Kudisch), owner of some luxury car showrooms, whose spell the young man falls under, while also falling for Brody’s niece, Karla (Samantha Massell). Freedman’s script takes a few potshots at those who put salesmanship over sincerity and elevate winning by any means over winning fairly. There’s even a little wink in having Karla reading Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique on the beach, a bit of cultural unrest that finds its answer in the actions of Brody’s wife Phyllis (Lesli Margherita) late in the play.

Phyllis Brody (Lesli Margherita) (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Indeed, one way the musical stretches beyond the movie is in its interest in the older generation. The film is concerned almost wholly with Jeffrey’s effort to prove himself, moving from the plans of his gruff but loving father, a plumber, to the slick and glib mentorship offered by Brody, “the King” of the gin game at the El Flamingo Beach Club. Freedman gives standout numbers to Mr. Winnick (Adam Heller), “A Plumber Knows,” and his wife Ruth (Liz Larsen), “Not For All the Money in the World,” and to Mrs. Brody, whose “The Cookie Crumbles” is a word-to-the-wise aimed at Karla, full of the cynicism of the neglected wife. Meanwhile, Brody gets to make the most of “Sweet Ginger Brown,” his tagline, a song that comes back for a rousing reprise in Act II.

For excitement, there are big dance numbers like “Another Summer Day in Brooklyn,” “Rockaway Rumba,” and even a visit to the track with “In It to Win It.” Gregory Rodriguez adds much pizzazz to Act II as the lead singer of Marvin and The Sand Dunes, singing “Blowin’ Hot and Cold.” Comic highlights are provided by Brody’s card-playing pals who are apt to carp at “The World According to Phil,” and by the MILFs of the day who can’t get enough of Jeffrey as the cutest “Cabana Boy.” The romantic plot is handled by “Never Met a Boy Like You,” wherein Karla is smitten, and it plays out with the sweetness of the sweetest summer romance, featuring a see-saw and a lifeguard stand and a painted moon over a painted sea.

Jeffrey Winnick (Jimmy Brewer), Karla Samuels (Samantha Massell) (photo by T, Charles Erickson)

Is the show sentimental and nostalgic? You betcha, so much so it feels like a return to an earlier time not only in its setting—which is fetchingly colorful in the set by Alexander Dodge and the costumes by Linda Cho, two longtime exemplars of excellence at Hartford Stage—but in its grasp of how to combine family and fun and romance with the kicks of kids and the fretting of elders. The movie was an Eighties’ nod to the way Fifties Hollywood informed so many of the movers and shakers of the era. As a musical in our day, The Flamingo Kid treats perennials like first love and first major summer job the way the Golden Age of television might and lets us enjoy the ride for all it’s worth.

Phil Brody (Marc Kudisch) and Jeffrey Winnick (Jimmy Brewer) (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The first Act may run a bit long and, in general, there’s a sense, in each Act, that the search for a close is a problem that derives from the arc of numbers in a musical more than from the story per se. Freedman wants to keep the emphasis on “Fathers and Sons,” a theme that shows up strong at the end with the show’s penultimate number. Which makes it an ideal show running up to Father’s Day on June 16—indeed, the show has been extended from June 9, its original ending date, to June 15. Bring the folks, or the kids, as the case may be.

Jeffrey (Jimmy Brewer) and Arthur (Adam Heller) Winnick (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The show’s secondary theme—what makes for marital happiness in two couples of different socio-economic situations and how the difference affects a young, formative couple negotiating both worlds—plays out as a fond look at how much we owe to where we’re from—and how much we all love summer getaways. As a musical getaway, The Flamingo Kid is hot, and that’s cool.

The Flamingo Kid
Book & Lyrics by Robert L. Freedman
Music by Scott Frankel
Based on the motion picture The Flaming Kid, screenplay by Neal Marshall and Garry Marshall, story by Neal Marshall
Directed by Darko Tresnjak

Choreography: Denis Jones; Scenic Design: Alexander Dodge; Costume Design: Linda Cho; Lighting Design: Philip Rosenberg; Sound Design: Peter Hylenski; Projection Design: Aaron Rhyne; Wig & Hair Design: Charles G. LaPointe; Makeup Design: Joya Giambrone; Dance & Vocal Arrangements: Scott Frankel; Music Director: Thomas Murray; Orchestrator: Bruce Coughlin; Fight Choreographer: Thomas Schall; Dramaturg: Elizabeth Williamson; Production Stage Manager: Linda Marvel

Orchestra: Conductor: Thomas Murray, Keyboard: Paul Staroba; Percussion: Charles DeScarfino; Reed 1: John Mastroianni; Reed 2: Michael Schuster; Trumpet: Seth Bailey, Don Clough; Trombone: Jordan Jacobson; Horn: Jaime Thorne; Violin/Viola: Lu Sun; Guitar: Nick DiFabio; Bass: Roy Wiseman; Keyboard Programmer: Randy Cohen

Cast: Ben Bogen, Jimmy Brewer, Lindsey Brett Carothers, Ben Fankhauser, Michael Hartung, Adam Heller, Jean Kauffman, Ken Krugman, Marc Kudisch, Liz Larsen, Taylor Lloyd, Omar Lopez-Cepero, Lesli Margherita, Samantha Massell, Anna Noble, Erin Leigh Peck, Gregory Rodriguez, Steve Routman, William Squier, Kathy Voytko, Price Waldman, Jayke Workman, Alex Wyse, Kelli Youngman, Stuart Zagnit

Hartford Stage
May 9-June 15, 2019