Lives at Risk

Review of Sanctuary City, TheaterWorks, Hartford

The fragility and vulnerability of teenagers, as well as their resilient toughness and hopefulness and humor, enlivens the first half of Martyna Majok’s Sanctuary City, now playing at TheaterWorks, Hartford, directed by Jacob Padrón and Pedro Bermúdez. Set from 2001 to days before 2007, the play begins as an engaging treatment of two young lives—B (for Boy) and G (for Girl)—under much stress. Living in Newark, New Jersey, while attending a local high school, both B (Grant Kennedy Lewis) and G (Sara Gutierrez) are at risk because neither is a citizen of the United States. What’s more, G and her mother are often battered by the man they live with. It’s the violence at home that sends G scurrying up the fire escape and through B’s bedroom window, and we may think we’re watching a story of young love burgeoning under fraught circumstances.

B (Grant Kennedy Lewis) and G (Sara Gutierrez) in Sanctuary City at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by TheaterWorks)

Much of the first half lends itself to that reading because the story is scripted as a palimpsest of distinct moments that become almost like “routines”—such as what excuse bruised G will use to not attend school (she’s pretty much agreeable to anything but “lice”). The two kids, at greater risk of deportation in the upsurge in surveillance and prosecution (and persecution) of aliens after 9/11, are navigating not just their place in the social fabric, but their relation to each other. Always platonic, at times sibling-like, their interactions also have touches of flirtation and a wide range of intimacy. The set and reset and re-reset rhythm of their interchanges is swift and pointed, though the device of lights and sounds to separate scenes comes across almost as a sci-fi effect (unintentionally, I assume). It all culminates in a wonderfully enacted visit to a prom, that goes from skepticism to enthusiasm in almost strobe-like glimpses.

B (Grant Kennedy Lewis), G (Sara Gutierrez) in Sanctuary City at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by TheaterWorks)

B and G are mostly in the same boat until G’s fortunes change. Her resourceful mother not only walks out on the abusive guy but also attains naturalized citizen status and, by doing so before G turns eighteen, automatically makes G a U.S. citizen. We see that B is not entirely elated by G’s good fortune, nor by his mother’s return to the unnamed country she hails from, nor by further good fortune that comes G’s way (acceptance and scholarship at an unnamed school in Boston—we do learn that it has “books and trees”).  B, who has offered asylum to G when she needs it, and has helped her anyway he could, has plenty of concerns of his own not easily solved.

Henry (Mishka Yarovoy), G (Sara Gutierrez) in Sanctuary City at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by TheaterWorks)

And what of G? Her plan to help B results in the play’s most repeated routine: answering prodding and sometimes loaded questions about their alleged relations as a married couple. G, it seems, is willing to marry B to make him a citizen, but when she leaves for college, everything still hangs in the balance.

The second half takes up when G returns, three and a half years later, in response to a distressed phone call from B a month previous. The facts behind the call upset G and made her send B a letter that broke off their marriage plan; meanwhile, B spiraled into depression. G is seemingly back to make good the original plan, but B may have moved on.

In the extended scene that is the second half, the tensions that have intruded into that early rapport get the main emphasis. And that involves B’s boyfriend Henry (Mishka Yarovoy) who is hostile to G, while G can be rather callous herself. Mainly what the second half exposes is B’s weakness and self-serving willingness to make others defer to his needs. It’s a character study, ultimately, and Grant Kennedy Lewis’ B is played so neutrally and behaves so passively most of the time, we may find it hard to make a clear assessment of his nature.

B (Grant Kennedy Lewis), Henry (Mishka Yarovoy) in Sanctuary City at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by TheaterWorks)

Plot has been called the revelation of character and the plot of Sanctuary City seems aimed to bring the true desires of these characters to light. At the same time, while the play makes its setting in time and its characters’ status as not enjoying the full rights of straight, white citizens key to what occurs, there’s more to the story. Think of how the lovers in Romeo and Juliet can fall in love and even marry but, within the political and familial context of their lives, can’t make that marriage public. Here, B and G can marry, publicly and for reasons that are politically beneficial, but aren’t in love and won’t ever be. But that doesn’t mean they don’t love each other. And what Majok’s play very subtly lets us witness is how hard it can be to let go of whom you love and to live up to what love demands.

B (Grant Kennedy Lewis), G (Sara Gutierrez in Sanctuary City at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by TheaterWorks)

These lives at risk are faced with how much they are willing to risk emotionally. Sanctuary City is full of glimpses of not only what these lives are like, but also of what they might be like. The frustrations, the dreams, the hopes, the hard realities all circle in an out of these resonant interactions. Gutierrez, in particular, adds great fascination as she lets us see all kinds of shades and sides of G’s character, a character who, we are well aware by play’s end, is still a long way from fully mature. The male characters are less varied, but Yarovoy’s Henry seems perfectly cast as the somewhat fussy law-student he is; his little gasp when he sees the label of the wine G brought is so spot on it’s quite a laugh in a tense scene.

Padrón and Bermúdez have created a much busier production than the script calls for: there are hanging curtains to screen the at-times relevant, at-times distracting videos meant to give us a sense of the urban surround. The decision to have B and G sit on the floor during one scene adds a further distraction as sightlines become a problem. You may suddenly find yourself with an obstructed view. Perhaps this staging’s finest touch is the video of an open window, which has meant so much in both these young lives, that suddenly gets closer to us and seems to beckon as a way out.

Sanctuary City
By Martyna Majok
Directed by Jacob G. Padrón and Pedro Bermúdez

Set Design: Emmie Finckel; Costume Design: Sarita Fellows; Lighting Design: Paul Whitaker; Sound Design: Fabian Obispo; Projection & Video Design: Pedro Bermúdez; Casting Director: Stephanie Yankwitt/TBD Casting; Stage Manager: Tom Kosis; Intimacy Coach: Marie Percy; Assistant Set Design: Juhee Kim

Cast: Sara Gutierrez, Grant Kennedy Lewis, Mishka Yarovoy

TheaterWorks, Hartford
March 29-April 25, 2024

The Treasures in Trash

Review of The Garbologists, TheaterWorks, Hartford

Collecting garbage, or, to use the more dignified name, sanitation, may be the quintessential thankless task. Not only do many people not respect it as a livelihood, but many more don’t really want to think about it. They just want trash, garbage, waste, to disappear, no questions asked.

Lindsay Joelle’s The Garbologists, playing this month at TheaterWorks directed by Artistic Director Rob Ruggiero, gives us a bit of a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the world of trash hauling. Even more, it asks us to consider the complexities of workers’ collaboration and of the empathy and enmity that can happen on the job. And when it’s a manifestly dirty job, the stakes are more fraught. The play centers on the relation between two sanitation workers or, as they jokingly refer to themselves at one point, “garbologists”: Danny (Jeff Brooks), a talky, mansplaining white guy who is an outgoing, knowledgeable veteran of the route, and Marlowe (Bebe Nicole Simpson), a somewhat withdrawn woman of color who is a newbie to the job. The two actors are perfectly cast and bring rewarding personality to the roles.

Marlowe (Bebe Nichole Simpson), Danny (Jeff Brooks) in The Garbologists at TheaterWorks, Hartford

Staged with great ingenuity by Ruggiero and his team—Marcelo Martínez García, Set Design; Joseph Shrope, Costume Design; John Lasiter, Lighting Design; Germán Martínez, Sound Design—The Garbologists gives us realism and a certain rugged romanticism. The truck’s cab, where much of the interaction takes place, provides an arena for fluctuating communications; the hopper of the trash truck figures prominently in a few scenes, as do the bags of trash to be collected, along with, at times, more surprising finds; a cozy bar is conjured up quickly for that afterwork drink that will either bring Danny and Marlowe closer or give them ample reason to resent one another more. And in the midst of what Marlowe (and we) learn about trash collecting, there is plenty they learn about each other.

As a series of vignettes driven by dialogue, The Garbologists is a welcome and entertaining reminder that, as fiction-writer Elizabeth Bowen once said, “dialogue is what characters do to each other.” There is action in the play, but most of what happens acts as an occasion for response, for discussion, for argument, and for reminiscence. Both can be snarky and temperamental, both have back stories that contribute to their day-to-day whys and wherefores, and there are certain mysteries to be understood, such as why Marlowe, with double degrees from Columbia and parents who are professors, is working on a trash truck. And why has she been assigned to Danny? And what happened to Danny’s former partner?

Marlowe (Bebe Nicole Simpson), Danny (Jeff Brooks) in The Garbologists at TheaterWorks, Hartford

The main flaw with the play comes from one of those big reveals that is meant to make it all make sense but that actually impairs the play’s sense of reality, much as all those abounding coincidences in novels of earlier eras can make readers of today feel themselves dupes of the author’s need to tie-up all loose ends. Here, it’s more like desire for a heart-tug moment defeats the steady verisimilitude the play had been building up. It’s one thing for characters to veer about emotionally, making us catch up with what is really going on with them. It’s another to feel that a key point is not acknowledged by the characters until the plot requires it.

But that’s simply to say that the play wants to make a dramatic connection between these two unlikely companions that it hasn’t really earned. What these fine character-turns by Jeff Brooks and Bebe Nichole Simpson do earn is our attention and affection and thanks for making visible workers who, as playwright Lindsay Joelle comments in the playbill, are often treated as invisible.

As is said at one point, “there’s treasure in trash”—which does seem to come true—but there’s also treasure in observing the quirks and compassion and compromises of people dedicated to doing their jobs as best they can, in anything but optimum conditions. For its 90 minutes with no intermission, The Garbologists makes the business of garbage a pleasure to behold.

The Garbologists
By Lindsay Joelle
Directed by Rob Ruggiero

Set Design: Marcelo Martínez García; Costume Design: Joseph Shrope; Lighting Design: John Lasiter; Sound Design: Germán Martínez; Casting Director: JZ Casting: Geoff Josselson, CSA, Katja Zarolinski, CSA; Stage Manager: Tom Kosis

Cast: Jeff Brooks, Bebe Nicole Simpson

TheaterWorks, Hartford
February 1-25, 2024

Slings and Arrows in Chicago

Review of The Salvagers, Yale Repertory Theatre

Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

It’s winter in Chicago and Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman) is back home after taking a degree in theater in North Carolina and then trying his luck in New York. We’re introduced to him as he shovels snow while snow still falls on a striking set (B Entsminger, Set Design) that conjures up the beauty of winter as well as the sheer weight of tons of snow. And Boseman dances, full of energy that needs an outlet. He’s not finding it in theater—as a dreadful audition we get to witness shows us—and he mainly works in a restaurant, smokes on break with Paulina Kenston (Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew), a chatty co-worker, and gets into grudge matches with his dad, Boseman Senior (Julian Elijah Martinez), a well-meaning but overbearing locksmith, and visits with his ooey-gooey mom Nedra (Toni Martin), a postal worker who feeds him pie and plays a little ritual of “so good” hugs. The Salvages are separated because—among other things—Nedra realized she’s a lesbian.

Nedra Salvage (Toni Martin), Boseman Junior (Taylor A. Blackman), Boseman Senior (Julian Elijah Martinez), Paulina Kenston (Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

In short, the main attraction of Harrison David Rivers’ The Salvagers, directed in its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre by Mikael Burke, is that we feel for Junior but realize—at 23—he’s got to grow up out of this, now, and the question is: will he, and, if so, how will he? And, if not, how bad will it be?

Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman), Paulina Kenston (Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

There are lots of plot points circling around that might land as a way of giving Boseman Junior direction. Maybe he will get a part in a play. Maybe he’ll get serious about Paulina—when the co-workers start to click, Junior’s mom catches on right away because her son’s mood is so improved. Maybe he’ll finally have it out with dad in some way more mature than the sullen sniping he generally indulges—and maybe Elinor Witt (McKenzie Chinn), that woman dad’s now seeing (after a cute meet when Boseman Senior opens her lock for her), will be some kind of catalyst, for bad or good. Rivers, whose intense, focused play This Bitter Earth played at TheaterWorks, Hartford, in 2022, is good at letting characters reveal themselves to us by how they pitch themselves to other characters, which works great for the two women trying to get to know Boseman Senior and Junior, respectively, but is harder for the Salvage family itself. Key to their problems is that Junior thinks he already knows all about his parents, but does he?

Nedra Salvage (Toni Martin), Boseman Salvage Senior (Julian Elijah Martinez) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

I do wish that the answer to that question took a slightly different direction than it does, as the “big reveal” is just a bit too dramatically fraught. It does the work it has to do, plotwise, as a big “hello!” to Junior, but opens up questions the story we’re given never addresses. There’s a sense at times that the plot may veer toward soap opera catastrophe, a world in which trauma is a badge of authenticity even if it feels a bit piled on.

Boseman Junior (Taylor A. Blackman), Boseman Senior (Julian Elijah Martinez) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

What keeps us in the story is the fine work by this ensemble of actors. As Boseman Senior, Julian Elijah Martinez fully inhabits a part that can be a bit underwritten. He doesn’t get major speeches, but works the small, intense moments of interaction, like mocking and helping his son while the latter has trouble with his bootlaces. A great scene later in the play has Senior and Junior one-upping each other on chin-ups: it’s wonderfully indicative of how they do and don’t get along, and how much they are cut from the same cloth. As Nedra, Toni Martin has to walk a fine line: she’s encouragement itself to her son but at the same time has to be believable as a woman who is living a lie. It’s a tough sell, and we could use a few scenes that let us see her as she really is. In supporting roles as the women trying to get to know the somewhat taciturn Boseman Salvages, Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew keeps us guessing about Paulina: she likes dumping on brunchers, regales Junior with lines from King Lear at will, and is able to get through Senior’s wall when necessary (and so seems like she was simply written to inhabit this play with no other purpose in life); McKenzie Chinn, as Elinor, is more upfront: she meets Senior, likes what she sees, goes for it, and then must confront the suppressed story that hangs over the family. She’s the one who, ultimately, must be won over if any good is going to be salvaged from the situation the Salvages are in.

Elinor (McKenzie Chinn), Boseman Senior (Julian Elijah Martinez) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Special mention goes to Taylor A. Blackman who makes Junior a memorable example of untapped talent, depressed ambition, callous immaturity, and—to cite his man Hamlet—“that within which passeth show.” Hamlet mourns for a dead father and a mother unfaithful to her deceased husband’s memory; Junior mourns for—maybe—some time long past when he believed in his parents as a couple, or when he thought he might actually get along nicely without them. Now, back in Chicago and at dad’s, like a certain depressed prince returned to Denmark, the best he can hope for, seemingly, is discovering how rotten things really are. Blackman makes Junior a problem to himself that we ache to see solved.

Paulina Kenton (Mikayla LaShae Batholomew), Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

Director Mikael Burke, who did a great job this year with the fast-food kitchen dynamics of Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s at TheaterWorks, Hartford, works the action and movement of this play to telling effect, including overlapping scenes in different locations that serve well the play’s steady forward pace. The kinetic qualities that Blackman displays so well are echoed by stage techniques—including mini-films by John Horzen and a sliding chair to simulate a subway ride—that show the kind of largess Yale Rep can bring to family drama. Kudos as well to Lighting Designer Nic Vincent for snowfalls that are poetic though not unduly sentimental. It’s not a winter wonderland feel here, but the play does make us appreciate how much we need humane warmth in a cold world.

Boseman Salvage Junior (Taylor A. Blackman) in The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Salvagers
By Harrison David Rivers
Directed by Mikael Burke

Choreographer: Tislarm Bouie; Scenic Designer: B Entsminger; Costume Designer: Risa Ando; Lighting Designer: Nic Vincent; Sound Designer: Stan Mathabane; Projection Designer: John Horzen; Production Dramaturg: Eric M. Glover; Technical Director: Luke Tarnow-Bulatowicz

Cast: Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew, Taylor A. Blackman, McKenzie Chinn, Toni Martin, Julian Elijah Martinez

Yale Repertory Theatre
November 24-December 16, 2023

A Pride and Prejudice to be Proud of

Review of Pride and Prejudice, Hartford Stage

The 60th anniversary season of Hartford Stage is off to a crowd-pleasing start. Playwright and actress Kate Hamill specializes in lively, contemporary adaptations of classic novels. Her bright and fun take on Jane Austen’s beloved Pride and Prejudice is given a fully frenetic realization by director Tatyana-Marie Carlo. The cast is having so much fun it all feels quite infectious.

Lydia (Zoë Kim), Mary (Madeleine Barker, back), Mrs. Bennet (Lana Young), Lizzy (Renata Eastlick) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The plot, as you may already know, is about those Bennet sisters (here four instead of Austen’s five) residing in Regency era England. Not badly off, the young ladies are doomed to penury whenever their aloof, paper-reading pater (Anne Scurria) kicks off. A cousin—the daffy curate Mr. Collins (Sergio Mauritz Ang)—will inherit. And so Mrs. Bennet, played to the hilt and then some by Lana Young, urges upon her daughters any suitor likely to remain smitten long enough to reach the altar. Besides Collins, there’s also the very well-to-do Bingley (also Ang), and the perhaps not all he should be Wickham (also Ang), a mere lieutenant with whom Mr. Darcy (Carman Lacivita) has had disagreeable dealings. Darcy himself, the only potential suitor not played by the versatile and quite comic Ang, is given all the priggish airs you might expect in Lacivita’s icy performance. Watching him thaw despite himself is much of the fun.

Lizzy (Renata Eastlick), Jane (María Gabriela González) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

As the sisters, María Gabriela González is a lovely Jane, the one deemed a catch due to her looks, and she’s also able to twerk on beat; as Lizzy, the main heroine, Renata Eastlick is sensible and likeable, her intelligence and ease of manner making her the best Lizzy I’ve seen (this is the third version of Hamill’s play I’ve reviewed); as Lydia, the youngest, Zoë Kim somehow manages to be a credible fourteen year old, crazily spirited with a feisty naivete that Lydia would like to think precocious; then there’s Mary, whom Madeleine Barker plays as a cross between the Addams family’s Morticia and that girl that crawls out of the TV set in The Ring—a kind of funny, frightening and striking character that has to be seen to be believed (and enjoyed).

Miss Bingley (Madeleine Barker), Mr. Darcy (Carman Lacivita) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Other characters played by this energetic cast include: Madeleine Barker’s supercilious turn as turbaned Miss Bingley, sister of Bingley—who tends to approach romance as would an affectionate pet; Anne Scurria scurrying between wearing Mr. Bennet’s pants and neighboring would-be bride Charlotte Lucas’s skirts; Zoë Kim, moving effortlessly between Lydia pouting and preening to the imperious mien of Lady Catherine de Bourgh (deep fanfare!); and last but not least, María Gabriela González’s hilariously unearthly sounds as Miss de Bourgh, a neurasthenic shambles swaddled like a mummy and, in Lady Catherine’s view, the perfect match for perfectly detached and unattached Mr. Darcy.

Miss de Bourgh (María Gabriela González, back), Lady Catherine de Bourgh (Zoë Kim) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The show opens with one of those mannered dances dear to the period, a signal that Carlo’s take is not going to foreground the gamesmanship that Hamill herself underscores via Lizzy’s comments on marriage as a contest with winners and losers; rather, the Hartford Stage production seems rather to concern itself with ritual and theatrics, seeing in the mating game the setting for so much of our ideas of how to act, look, dress, speak, move and so forth. Watching the varied displays of this busy staging is to glimpse what it’s like to live in a culture where someone is always watching, where public events—like balls (and how Mrs. Bennet loves balls!)—are occasions as deliberate as putting on a play. It’s all show-biz? Yes, and then some.

Lizzy (Renata Eastlick) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Lizzy, famously, is having none of it, until . . .  As her doting dad says on two occasions, “ask not for whom the bell tolls.” When Lizzy has to confront her own feelings she has to do so without the kinds of pretense that serve so well the game or ritual or manner of this comedy of manners. Did anyone ever get so great a reaction from setting a sheet of paper in front of a sodden suitor?

Mr. Darcy ( Carman Lacivita), Lizzy (Renata Eastlick) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Such are some of the many delights enacted here. Prepared to be tickled by things like Mr. Bennet brandishing a wig atop a stick draped with tatters of fabric to stand in for Mary (Barker then onstage as Miss Bingley), or the many times a little bell is rung to precede a visitor/suitor or other perhaps game-changing announcement, or the many times a cast member must react with surprise, shock or horror at the sudden appearance of Mary—as well as matters a bit more subtle, such as the way Lydia precipitates herself into wedlock not thinking that in “winning” (by being the first daughter married) she has lost something she might only begin to understand now; or the way Charlotte finds a way to live with Mr. Collins, as he crows offstage about his garden growths; or the way Mr. Bennet imagines it is just possible he may outlive his dutiful wife, who is always so concerned with how the family will manage without him.

The cast of Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Such matters used to be called “the war between the sexes,” but Austen and Hamill know it’s not an outright war so much as an ongoing negotiation that both sides engage in for the thrill of it all. Otherwise, what is there to do?  That question can’t honestly be asked in a culture where women cannot inherit and must marry so as to survive, where work, as such, is beneath everyone at this level of society, and so ladies must hitch their star to a man who has property or who is likely to rise socially. Sinecures are nice as well. While Austen’s novels tread this terrain with a knowing wink or grimace at all the subterfuges needed to achieve secure ends, Hamill can let it all hang out, placing the skirmish front and center with a kind of “on your mark, get set, go” urgency.

The cast of Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

The matches made are the same but the spectacle they make is the fun. Ably supported by Hartford Stage’s large open playing space—making a drawing room or garden or ballroom very much a playground—decorated with Scenic Designer Sara Brown’s sense of how to create visual interest (early on, there aren’t enough chairs to go around so Lizzy must push a cushion to center stage), the show also benefits from Shura Baryshnikov’s varied Choreography, Aja M. Jackson’s subtle Lighting Design, original music and sound design by Daniel Baker & Co (there are also a few popular songs that anachronistically surface for comic effect), and, particularly, Haydee Zelideth’s fantasies of era Costumes, the colors tend to be rich—like Lizzy’s true blue Plain Jane gown—and patterns abundant, and where, as was true to the time, the flouncier your skirt the higher you stood in status so that Lady Catherine wears clothes that might well swallow a lesser being. Meanwhile, Sergio Mauritz Ang gets to appear as curate, soldier, and affable love-smitten coxcomb by turns, switching costumes and mannerisms as needed. It’s dizzying.

Mr. Bennet (Anne Scurria, back), Mary Bennet (Madeleine Barker) in Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice at Hartford Stage (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Mary—ever ready to announce an apothegm scored from the manners on display around her—at one point points out the difference between pride and vanity. No one listens, but we hear her, and her comment serves well the entire production. To be vain is to be concerned with what others think of you; to be proud is to esteem yourself for your own virtues. Tatyana-Marie Carlo’s version of Kate Hamill’s Pride and Prejudice, from Jane Austen’s novel, at Hartford Stage through November 5, has much to be proud of.

Pride and Prejudice
By Kate Hamill
Adapted from the novel by Jane Austen
Directed by Tatyana-Marie Carlo

Choreographer: Shura Baryshnikov; Scenic Design: Sara Brown; Costume Design: Haydee Zelideth; Lighting Design: Aja M. Jackson; Original Music & Sound Design: Daniel Baker & Co.; Wig Design: Earon Nealey; Vocal & Dialect Coach: Jennifer Scapetis-Tycer; Fight Director: Teniece Divya Johnson; Casting: Alaine Alldaffer; Production Stage Manager: Anaïs Bustos; Assistant Stage Manager: Theresa Stark; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Sergio Mauritz Ang, Madeline Barker, Renata Eastlick, Maria Gabriela González, Zoë Kim, Carman Lacivita, Anne Scurria, Lana Young

Hartford Stage
October 12-November 5, 2023

Lizzie, Get Your Axe

Review of Lizzie, TheaterWorks, Hartford

In Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892, Lizzie Andrew Borden, 32, was accused of killing her father and stepmother, both brutally murdered, then acquitted. As the presumed murderer, Lizzie Borden became the stuff of legend and folksongs, of movies and novels and other dramatizations, such as Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer, Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt, now playing at TheaterWorks, Hartford, directed by Lainie Sakakura with musical direction by Erika R. Gamez.

With such a famous story—even in its own day it made the papers in a sensationalist manner—it's hard to say exactly what the fascination is: one element is the unsolved crime aspect: if not Lizzie than whom and how? Another is the crime that goes unpunished: if Lizzie did it, she got away with it and lived—happily or not—until age 66, dying with a considerable fortune and no deathbed confession. Then there’s the angle that seems to appeal most over the years: she did it, and got away with it, but why and how? And those questions let us be sleuths, to devise “what really happened,” and pop psychologists of persons we never met, to find out motives “beneath the skin.” Irresistible, right?

Sydney Shepherd as Lizzie in Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks at TheaterWorks, Hartford, directed by Lainie Sakakura (photo by Mike Marques)

As Lainie Sakakura’s director statement puts it: “Lizzie delves into the mysterious mind of Lizzie Borden and speculates about her possible motivations: loss of inheritance, sexual oppression, abuse . . . madness.” Or: why stop with one motive when you can try ’em all? And yet motives have a way of not supporting one another. Caring about being cheated out of your inheritance isn’t madness, neither is retribution for sexual abuse; madness would be thinking such things were happening when they weren’t.

The show might make for a more macabre-fun Halloween evening if it threw out motives and simply made Lizzie a cold-blooded killer as might belong in an Alice Cooper song or a murder ballad. But the plot-driven lyrics tend to ask us to connect the dots and arrive at a reading of Lizzie (Sydney Shepherd) as a full-blooded and bloody heroine. The authors want her guilty but more sinned-against than sinning, her broken axe maybe even a righteous sword in the fight against oppression. Her parents are not characters in the show and so we only have inference about who they were.

Brigid (Nora Schell), Emma (Courtney Bassett), Lizzie (Sydney Shepherd), Alice (Kim Onah) in Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

Not really a “rock concert,” then, which may have a structure but not usually a plot. The first part of Lizzie is enacted in period costume with a lot of projections on and flanking a wall of doors. Camilla Tassi’s projections have to convey mood and setting, as Brian Prather’s set is otherwise mostly bare stage with a riser, and the projections have a lot of presence that make for visually busy scenery, often having to do with birds, which are identified with Lizzie’s emotions. Settings include different parts of “The House of Borden,” and a loft in the barn where Lizzie bonds with pigeons her dad later kills, either because he’s disgusted by the birds or by what Lizzie and her lovestruck neighbor Alice Russell (Kim Onah) do up there. In the later going, when the band is revealed and Saawan Tawari’s costumes go for Goth-Noir, there is still a lot of story to get through, including the trial and its aftermath.

Emma (Courtney Bassett), Lizzie (Sydney Shepherd), Brigid (Nora Schell) in Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

The other two characters onstage in this four-woman show are Lizzie’s older sister Emma (Courtney Bassett) who mainly stirs the cauldron that is Lizzie’s seething nerves, and Brigid (Nora Schell), aka Maggie, the Irish tell-all servant who keeps an eye on everyone and has her own view of what’s really going on. She’s a bit of a Greek chorus but, as such, her role could be more developed as a consistent perspective on the events is what the show lacks. Brigid could be a welcome touch of realism to act as foil to the authors’ Lizzie fantasies.

As with most rock operas worthy of the name—such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy—there are songs that are plot devices and there are songs that can detach from the story and stand on their own, more or less. Here, standout instances of the former would be “Why Are All These Heads Off” or “What the Fuck, Lizzie?" while of the latter would be the rocker "Sweet Little Sister,” with Emma as lead, and Alice’s plaintive but lovely “Will You Stay?”. All four performers in the show are distinctive and entertaining and fun to listen to—as is that rocking band, with particular mention for drummer Molly Plaisted. Onah puts a lot of soul in her singing which helps considerably as do Schell’s upper range blasts. Shepherd brings the requisite rock star wail to her sound which—if you’re of a certain age—may have you reliving some of those Heart fantasies you had as a teen. Meanwhile, Bassett—in the show’s latter going—fully rocks her couture, looking the type of woman David Bowie may have wished he was on occasion.

An unexpected high point is the choral song “Watchmen for the Morning” which at least points to a higher common cause for the Borden sisters; the song lets us stand for a moment in that space where one’s legal guilt or innocence is a matter of what others determine, and where—maybe—one’s existential guilt or innocence can be left to the Lord’s plan.

All in all, it’s an entertaining show, though its details could be considered a bit harrowing and it’s not “all in fun.” Real people really died in the house of Borden, and Lizzie either had real grievances that drove her to murder, or else imagined ones, or else . . . she didn’t do it at all. But Lizzie’s Lizzie, who has grievances and a lover and a sister and motives and opportunity, is still claiming she didn’t do it—in the play—while asserting—rock concert-style—she sure did, fuck yeah. Uplifting? Maybe. Uplifted, at least—like an axe to grind.

Alice (Kim Onah), Lizzie (Sydney Shepherd) in Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

Lizzie, A Rock Concert in 40 Whacks
Music by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer and Alan Stevens Hewitt
Lyrics by Steven Cheslik-Demeyer and Tim Maner, and Alan Stevens Hewitt
Book by Tim Maner
Directed by Lainie Sakakura
Music Director Erika R. Gamez

Set Design: Brian Prather; Costume Design: Saawan Tiwari; Lighting Design: Rob Denton; Sound Design: Megan Culley; Projection Design: Camilla Tassi; Hair & Make-up Design: Ashley Rae Callahan; Dialect Coach: Johann Morrison; Stage Manager: Tom Kosis

Conductor/Keyboard 1: Erika R. Gamez; Guitar 1: Billy Bivona; Guitar 2/Keyboard 2: Jeff Carlson; Bass: Christie Echols; Cello: Esther Benjamin; Drums: Molly Plaisted

Cast: Courtney Bassett; Kim Onah; Nora Schell; Sydney Shepherd

TheaterWorks, Hartford
October 6-29, 2023

SHOWTIMES:
Tuesdays – Thursdays  |  7:30pm
Fridays |  8:00pm
Saturdays |  2:30pm & 8:00pm
Sundays |  2:30pm

Making It Work

Review of Clyde’s, TheaterWorks Hartford

Lynn Nottage, two-time Pulitzer-winner for her plays, keeps it lighter than usual—and shorter!—in Clyde’s, more or less a sit-com with some serious overtones, now playing at TheaterWorks. The show, at 95 minutes, is more condensed than well-known Nottage plays like Sweat and Intimate Apparel, but, like them, explores a particular working world with great fidelity to the kind of lives lived there. In this case, it’s a greasy spoon called Clyde’s, a favorite with truckers, where Clyde (Latonia Phipps) lords it over a crack kitchen staff who have all served time in prison and who all dream of better things.

Directed by Mikael Burke with wonderful economy of movement on a small set, one of the show’s great attractions is how this deft ensemble maneuvers the very detailed and well-though-out kitchen area designed by Collette Pollard. It’s great theater and it’s a delight to experience the kitchen staff’s efforts to satisfy the churlish Clyde while also working through all their various issues.

Letitia (Ayanna Bria Bakari), Rafael (Samuel María Gómez), Jason (David T. Patterson) in Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s at TheaterWorks Hartford, directed by Mikael Burke (photo by Mike Marques)

There may be a romance blooming between romantic Rafael (Samuel María Gómez)—at least if he has his way—and more down-to-earth Letitia (Kashayna Johnson, filling in for Ayanna Bria Bakari the night I saw the show); new employee Jason (David T. Patterson), replete with White Supremacist tattoos apt to aggravate this non-white staff, has to find his footing and, though by his own admission prone to violence, becomes something of a placid devotee of Montrellous (Michael Chenevert). The eldest, Montrellous, a kind of guru of the sandwich board, is out to prove that freedom is a question of the right choices, which extends from how one lives to what one eats: the right bread, the right ingredients, the right condiments. Indeed, much of the dialogue will be enough to make any foodie’s mouth water (my advice, have at least a decent snack before you see the show). Montrellous’ philosophy is the basis for a kind of holistic approach to work and eating that may allow his fellow workers to rise above Clyde’s ongoing disparagement.

Rafael (Samuel Maria Gomez), Jason (David T. Patterson), Montrellous (Michael Chenevert) in Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s at TheaterWorks Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

Having said all that, there’s not a lot more to say, in terms of story. Which is why I mentioned “sit-com”: the predominant feeling is that we are spending time with these characters, getting to know them as they get to know each other and (as in your favorite workplace comedy) what we learn will be sometimes amusing—as for instance, Rafael’s BB gun bank hold-up—and sometimes wrenching, as for instance Montrellous’ tale of a bad decision followed by a real act of sacrifice. The main plot point, I’d say, is whether or not Clyde will relent and actually try one of Montrellous’s unique sandwich productions.

Clyde constantly puts down the crew—individually and collectively—and won’t entertain any notion that they are earning respect (not even after a newspaper write-up designates the kitchen’s productions as “sublime”) nor that any of them should have any feeling but a squalid sort of humble gratitude to her for giving them jobs and keeping them on. She’s a bully and an asshole and she loves it. Latonia Phipps luxuriates in the part but I have to say it got a bit one-note. It may be the point that Clyde doesn’t soften or sympathize (“I don’t do pity,” she boasts), but that only means we—like her employees—get sick of her that much quicker. In the words of that Nobel Laureate: “I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes: you’d know what a drag it is to see you.” (The only thing that makes us glad to see Clyde again? the costume changes! Alexis Carrie, Costumes.)

Clyde (Latonia Phipps) in Lynn Nottage’s Clyde’s at TheaterWorks Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

But aren’t bosses often a drag? I can attest it’s so, and so it is here. Do we like the other characters? Yes, and it’s fun seeing/hearing who gets feedback—as cheers, laughs, applause—from the live audience. That “you are there” element works to great effect in TheaterWorks’ small theater and small but very lively stage. I’ll say my favorite character the night I saw the show was Kashayna Johnson’s Letitia (wonderfully filing in as an understudy); she has the best vantage on her co-workers, seeming to have the insight to grasp who they really are and who they’re trying to become, even as she herself is working to be better. She’s the soul of the place even more than Montrellous. As the latter, Chenevert has the requisite thoughtfulness and measured movements of a man who could’ve been so much more and might yet be, but his detachment doesn’t make him as sympathetic. Gómez's Rafael is winning and outgoing, and his outbursts of feeling do a lot to drive up the drama. As Jason, Patterson broods well but also has a great sense of comic timing, making Jason’s arc of change the most fun to watch.

But don’t take my word for it: get into TheaterWorks and spend some time watching this crew for yourself—if you can tear yourself away from the latest from Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig. Anyway, those films will likely be here for weeks. Clyde’s has been extended but only has one more week left!

Clyde’s
By Lynn Nottage
Directed by Mikael Burke

Set Design: Collette Pollard; Costume Design: Alexis Carrie; Lighting Design: Eric Watkins; Sound Design: Christie Chiles Twillie; Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Associate Set Design: Delena Bradley; Intimacy Coordinator: Marie C. Percy; Casting Director: TBD Casting/ Stephanie Yankwitt, CSA

Cast: Ayanna Bria Bakari, Michael Chenevert, Samuel María Gómez, Kashayna Johnson, David T. Patterson, Latonia Phipps

TheaterWorks Hartford

July 7-30, 2023, extended run to August 5th

Touch and Go

Review of The Rembrandt, TheaterWorks Hartford

The question of how one reacts to a work of art concerns Jessica Dickey’s The Rembrandt, now playing at TheaterWorks Hartford. It’s a play that also addresses themes of mortality and care, and questions of philosophy and poetry and what we leave behind. It may sound awfully heavy, but Dickey’s play, directed by Maria Mileaf with an excellent cast, strives to put such matters in the everyday environments of work and domesticity, to make art and all it entails a part of life.

It's a goal only partly achieved because something gets in the way, more than a little. And that’s the art of theater as a way of staging incidents and events so that we believe them or question them, go with it or work against it. Dickey, we could say, courts a certain amount of resistance to how she navigates her four slightly heterogeneous segments. But we can also say that the disjunctions sometimes seem more like dysfunctions.

We begin in a nicely appointed museum space (Neil Patel, Set Design) where Henry (Michael Chenevert), a slightly pretentious but likeable guard interacts with Jonny (Brandon Espinoz), a less educated and more forthright armed guard. The patter illuminates certain things about Henry: his male partner has a terminal illness, and he hasn’t been maybe the caliber of caregiver that Jonny expects; also, that Henry finds being on the job—he arrives early so he can be in the dark with the art—a kind of satori or special space that Jonny, for whom this is just a job primarily, doesn’t quite share.

Enter a “copyist” named Madeline (Amber Reauchean Williams) who is there to try to render a copy of Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer” (which hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) and who has recently experienced the loss of her grandmother, the kind of “patron of the arts” that Henry has evoked, in a comical but on-the-money commentary very apropos to the dwindling “Old School” resources of theaters and museums and other arts institutions.

So, two characters enthralled by art; another less so but a conscientious worker. Enter a new employee: Dodger (Ephraim Birney), whose mohawk is supposed to suggest, perhaps, a kind of non-conformity that might be meaningful. It is, but how successful and motivated his challenge is is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

The unexpected element then intrudes: after a well-played scene that acts as something of a coup de théâtre, we travel through time to the world of Rembrandt (Chenevert), his former servant now mistress Henny (Williams), and Titus (Birney, playing a child without really making that clear), son of the artist and his deceased wife, Saskia.  Why we’re there, but for an impressive set change, feels whimsical at best, though the idea seems to be that treating art objects as cult items undermines human access. That may have something to do with it, arguably.

Even less clear is why Titus’s contact with the bust of Homer brings in a soliloquy from Homer (Michael Bryan French) wherein philosophy and poetry are pondered as human artifacts that may have personal meaning but that aspire to something more universal. And that seems to be the note that draws us back to Henry’s story as he finally chooses to spend what time is left with the dying Simon (French), also a poet and the one character who actually has some comical things to say—the bit about the pistachio pudding is a high point.

While Dickey’s throughlines can be a bit oblique, the good news is that the play keeps us guessing and maybe wondering along with it. Give it credit for not being predictable even if unpredictability in itself is no great aesthetic achievement. Also give credit to the cast. One reason I might be so dissatisfied with the Rembrandt portion is that I was so impressed by how well Chenevert and Williams enacted Henry and Madeline as characters with some common ground and maybe things to learn about one another. Instead: an earthy patriarch and his doting familiars, some rambling by an alleged “father of poetry,” and, finally, more of Henry, now abetted by his spirited lover, nearing the grave.

Through it all, what emerges best is probably Dickey’s main concern: how do we say we care—about other humans, about art, about the things that we collectively and sometimes personally value? Art is important here because it plays different roles for different people for different reasons, and yet it is something we can participate in collectively—like theater.

The Rembrandt
By Jessica Dickey
Directed by Maria Mileaf

Set Design: Neil Patel; Costume Design: Katherine Roth; Lighting Design: Matthew Richards; Sound Design: Bart Fasbender; Projection Design: Camilla Tassi; Stage Manager: Tom Kosis

Cast: Ephriam Birney; Michael Chenevert; Michael Bryan French; Brandon Espinoza; Amber Reauchean Williams

TheaterWorks, Hartford
April 21-May 14, 2023

Someone's in the Kitchen with Julie

Review of The Queen of Basel, TheaterWorks Hartford

It’s Art-Basel in Miami Beach, Florida, and a party is surging in some high-rent, relentlessly bougie hotel. The incredibly well-appointed set, though (by Rodrigo Escalante), is a disused kitchen in the hotel. It’s a sink and a metal prep table, with shelves, boxes, bottles of disinfectant and cleaners, an old oven and other disject membra from staff (including a providential bottle of cooking wine). And that’s where sweetly apologetic Christine (Silvia Dionicio) leads Julie (Christine Sprang) to recover from the fact that Christine accidentally upended a tray with gin-based drinks on Julie’s terrific dress (Harry Nadal, costume design).

Julie (Christine Sprang) in The Queen of Basel at TheaterWorks Hartford, directed by Christina Angelis (photo by Mike Marques)

We start with dialogue that shows the two women bridging the class chasm between them, for Julie, we learn, is the daughter of the hotel’s owner, a big playa, and his daughter—Vassar grad with MBA from Harvard and top in her class—is not the clueless heiress we might expect. Or is she? As things go on, we find that Julie, for all her big talk of backing entrepreneurs of color, lives and invests on daddy’s dime. (Mom, Julie lets us know later while presenting her badge of authentic non-whiteness, was Columbian, and, to know Julie has suffered, we must understand Mom died of breast cancer, also that she gave up her dream of being an OBY-GYN to marry Daddy Bigbucks. We can say that Bettis’ way with backstory is to make sure it always scores points for grievance.)

Christine (Silvia Dionicio) in The Queen of Basel at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

But the real nitty gritty on Julie doesn’t fully start coming out until after Christine’s boyfriend, John (Kelvin Grullon), arrives at his girlfriend’s summons. He, an enterprising Uber driver, thinks he’s picking up a fare. Instead, he’s going to get involved in a lengthy heart-to-heart or head butt to head butt or verbal hand-to-hand combat or maybe even an erotic pas de deux with Julie, behind Christine’s hard-working back. She, in her heels, stockings, shorts, and low-cut blouse, has to be out there in party-hard land. John, for the run time of the show at least, has no particular place to go. Julie won’t leave until her fiancé comes to pick her up, but just now he’s involved in some kind of deal with daddy and can’t even bother to send her a text…

Julie (Christine Sprang) and John (Kelvin Grullon) in The Queen of Basel at TheaterWorks Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

The one place where plot development seemed to hint at coming alive was when Christine—while John was out finding out that, sure enough, his car got towed—admits that Julie’s daddy, her boss, gave her some serious cash to get Julie out of the place. Even more reason not to budge, we suppose, but what keeps John hanging on? Must be lust.

Fine, if that’s who this guy is, but he—part Cuban, part Haitian—is supposed to have a heart Christine trusts—like, with her five-year-old daughter and getting Mama out of Venezuela and into the U.S. So we might wonder why he’s acting this way. The reason is because the whole play is a riff on August Strindberg’s masterpiece from the 1880s, Miss Julie, wherein a landowner’s lackey, though supposedly going to marry the kitchen maid, tries to assert himself with the big man’s mid-twenties daughter during her father’s absence at Midsummer festival, a woman he has ogled since she was a child and he was a teen and who is now ready to play with fire to the full extent the stage will allow. Strindberg’s John has nowhere else to go; Bettis’ John should really go see about his car.

What keeps him there, we suppose we’re to suppose, is the alternatively winning, whining, high-handed, woe-is-me, and who-the-hell-are-you badinage from our new Ms. Julie. It’s fun to listen to, for the most part, and Christine Sprang as Julie is great to watch. She makes the most of all the self-satisfied primping our girl gets up to and she’s even better at delivering putdowns and pickup lines as though she’s heard and seen it all. She’s a force to be reckoned with and John, we reckon, is enthralled or just dying to prove something. Grullon’s John isn’t an easy read, though I’d be happier with him if he weren’t Christine’s boyfriend and was just an unsuspecting Uber driver finding himself face to face with a poor little rich girl ready to get wild. Still, “young men will do it if they come to it,” as Ophelia always says.

Without giving it all away let’s just say it doesn’t end as direly as Miss Julie does, though who among us knows how deadly are the thousand and one cuts of death by paparazzi? Strindberg’s play shows that, within the mores of his day, once an upper-class woman steps out of the societal boundaries, she either becomes an outcast/outlaw or dies—Bettis’ Julie lives to belt from the bottle again, we have no doubt.

John (Kelvin Grullon), Christine (Silvia Dionicio), Julie (Christine Sprang) in The Queen of Basel at TheaterWorks Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

Meanwhile, what about John and Christine? Well, what’s love got to do with it? Christine, to ring real changes on Strindberg’s oblique view of the shocks that shake the subaltern’s heart, gets a heartfelt, stressful, tear-fueled aria—in Spanish, which John doggedly translates for those of us stuck with some version of the King’s English—that describes horrors aplenty in her lengthy backstory for Julie’s benefit (as in: that hotel worker you didn’t bother to tip—who knows what they endured to end up at this job?). This to inspire sorrowed sympathy before she delivers her coup de grace to that man-borrowing harpie.

Christine gets the last laugh and that should count for something. Silvia Dionicio seems most at home as the confrontational Christine at the end (in her downhome street duds) but the hoops the character leaps through to be all the play wants her to be feel more and more contrived with her every “just at the wrong moment” appearance. It might be better if Bettis struck the Strindberg scaffold entirely and tried to figure out who these characters really are.

So: the play, if you don’t overthink it, is a lively three-hander with gestures toward social justice. Not only that, it spins a theater-classic into our day so that it can be about “real people” (as in: people who didn’t live 140 years ago in a Scandinavian country) and can sketch out how all are victims of patriarchal white capitalism with its sexism, racism, and jobs below the poverty line.

It's theater. Why that harsh aftertaste? It’s good for you!

The Queen of Basel
By Hilary Bettis
Directed by Cristina Angelis

Set Design: Rodrigo Escalante; Costume Design: Harry Nadal; Lighting Design: Emma Deane; Sound Design: Germán Martínez; Intimacy Director: Lauren Kiele Deleon

 Cast: Silvia Dionicio, Kelvin Grullon, Christine Spang

TheaterWorks Hartford
February 3-February 26, 2023 

Celebrate Good Times!

Review of Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, TheaterWorks

Fairly early in Matthew López’s Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, now playing at TheaterWorks in Hartford directed by Rob Ruggiero, Rachel, a drunken wedding planner who was not hired to plan—nor asked to be a bridesmaid at—the wedding of Zoey, a “best friend” from college, sounds off on a live mic. She wants us to know that elaborate weddings, no matter how well planned and “perfect,” do not equate with a happy marriage. She insists that more effort should be put into marriages, not weddings. It’s a tirade that is aimed, we don’t doubt, at the state of her own marriage, but it also might make us wonder: if weddings do indeed get too much attention, why play out the all-too-familiar tropes of big wedding receptions in a new play?

The answer, I suppose, is that we’re all ready to be amused by what can go wrong. Will we be embarrassed, titillated, angered, made to cringe or squirm, forced to laugh or cry or to drink heavily? Certainly that and more happens to all the characters we meet. More—who we don’t see—are potentially even more put out.

Blair Lewin as Rachel in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding by Matthew López, at TheaterWorks, Hartford, directed by Rob Ruggiero (photo by Mike Marques)

We meet six people at this 200-person reception: Zoey’s friend Rachel (Blair Lewin); Rachel’s husband Charlie (Daniel José Molina, but on the night I saw it played by understudy Stephen Stocking); Sammy (Hunter Ryan Hedlicka), their gay friend from college, all seated at and grousing about their table far from the main table, though—as they come to appreciate—near a neglected bar presided over by a bartender Sam thinks is hot. Then there’s the DJ (Esteban Carmona), surly about the fact that his musical tastes and the bride’s don’t match; the first-time wedding planner, Missy (Hallie Eliza Friedman), a cousin of the bride who is very much out of her depth, and eventually the bride herself, Zoey (Rachel B. Joyce).

López keeps the funny lines flowing in the early going, with wisecracks that land well from an able cast. I was so taken with the repartee I was beginning to suspect we’d meet a table full of mixed couples who would be outing and dissing each other and catching up on sequels to their lives in the 1980s. It’s like we’re eavesdroppers at the table and that’s appealing, hearing the dirt and the gripes and the envy and the drinking challenges and so on.

Esteban Carmona as DJ, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka as Sammy, Blair Lewin as Rachel, Daniel José Molina as Charlie in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

It’s 2008 now and this age group is having to adjust to being grownups. Sammy’s partner has been invited to DC to serve in the Obama administration, so we get table chat that includes references to Sarah Palin and W. and the economic crash. Not enough to make a strong point about the generation we’re viewing, though the music on the soundtrack will treat many audience members to nostalgic twinges, I’m sure.

Lopez writes gay characters well and Sammy is the one with the more interesting things to say, as when he upbraids Charlie for not having sex with Rachel for six months. Sammy’s disquisition on same-sex coupling’s greater difficulties compared to hetero-sex makes a point and Herdlicka’s manner makes it comical. And that’s where López’s script is at its best, trying to account for how lust, love, desire and romance and their lack surface in different ways in different people.

Hallie Eliza Friedman as Missy, Esteban Carmona as DJ in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding at TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

The parts of the play that worked less well for me were all about the wedding itself, most having to do with predicaments referred to more than witnessed. The hapless party planner isn’t that great a gag; the DJ, who is at first fractious, actually becomes, thanks to Carmona’s casual cool, a welcome perspective; Sam fades, but for his heroic credit card, and Charlie goes from possibly a foil to one of those guys who thinks he and his alienated wife can “fuck it out.” At times, we might feel the use of sturdy cliché is beneath López and beneath at least some of the audience: straight couples not having sex after a few years of marriage; gay couples having sex as much as is humanly possible; straight-laced women eager to get high with a bad boy, etc.

Rachel B. Joyce as Zoey (foreground), Blair Lewin as Rachel, Hallie Eliza Friedman as Missy (background) in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

And then there’s Zoey: I believe that Rachel B. Joyce incarnates the character perfectly, a woman who really did fantasize a perfect wedding from an early age, never mind a perfect marriage. She’s silly, preening, and the sort of person you’d rather not be trapped near at an event. Her best bit—and probably the play’s most memorable theatrical moment—finds her and Rachel sitting on the floor of the ladies room licking chocolate cake off her gorgeous wedding gown.

The best role is Rachel’s, more or less, and in the end she’s the one who seems to have the furthest to go to find some notion of happiness. Seeing Rachel become a saving grace—after the belligerent salvos in her toast—is one of those turn-arounds that doesn’t make much difference. The night I saw the show, at least a few in the audience seemed to feel an implied potential seduction of Charlie by Sammy, in the hotel room Charlie rented intending a sexy frolic with Rachel. Now that might have made Zoey’s wedding an affair to remember!

Daniel José Molina as Charlie, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka as Sammy in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

We all know wedding receptions can be awkward, corny, nostalgic, romantic, silly, maybe even sublime—if you’re easily impressed. But mainly they tend to show that, when it comes to showbiz, we’re all amateurs. Generally, everyone tries to put a good face on whatever is happening so as not to ruin someone else’s big day. That’s not the case here, as a “good face” rarely shows itself. And so audiences will have to decide how much fun it is to be witness to the fiasco, from bad playlists to delayed (and too few) dinner servings, to mishaps with “cake shoving,” smartphone mix-ups, thrown food, tequila belted from the bottle, and true-confession moments about both same-sex and mixed-sex couplings, and, hanging over it all, what it means to pair up and to make a public celebration of it.

I suppose you could say that Zoey’s Perfect Wedding is a bit like any party—if you don’t have high expectations, you won’t be as disappointed, and if you can look on the bright side—the laughs, the chat, maybe the music—you might even enjoy it more than you don’t.

Esteban Carmona as DJ in Zoey’s Perfect Wedding, TheaterWorks, Hartford (photo by Mike Marques)

Zoey’s Perfect Wedding
By Matthew López
Directed by Rob Ruggiero

Set and Lighting Design: Brian Sidney Bembridge; Costume Design: Harry Nadal; Sound Design: Melanie Chen Cole; Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert

Cast: Esteban Carmona, Hallie Eliza Friedman, Hunter Ryan Herdlicka, Rachel B. Joyce, Blair Lewin, Daniel José Molina

TheaterWorks
April 30-June 5, 2022

Seasonal Cheer

Christmas on the Rocks, TheaterWorks

 Merry Covid Christmas! The best meme I’ve seen on the current mood is “Don we now our plague apparel” above masks hung like stockings. Still, it is the holiday season and that means certain tried and true Christmas favorites are available in the online streaming environment.

One such is Rob Ruggiero’s durable Christmas on the Rocks at TheaterWorks. The show works because it assumes that much of the cultural glue of Yuletide, among the TV generations anyway, was provided by the Christmas perennials: the programming that the networks foist upon viewers every year when December rolls around. These are the kind of shows often called ‘beloved,’ but they can also cloy as time goes by, except, maybe, with children still experiencing their buoyant wonder for the first time.

Which is a way of saying that the tone of Christmas on the Rocks—the whole thing takes place in a bar—is for adults, particularly adults who may have soured on ersatz Christmas cheer somewhere around the turn of the millennium. So be prepared for nuttiness, desperation, depression, laughs and, through it all, the kind of warm, fuzzy values that Christmas shows foster to raise the spirits of us fellow humans.

This year, Love Boat regular Ted Lange is back as the bartender just trying to get through his Christmas eve shift, when what to his wondering eyes should appear but … Ralphie (from The Christmas Story), Zuzu (from It’s a Wonderful Life), Herbie the elf/dentist (from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), Karen (from Frosty the Snowman), Tiny Tim (from A Christmas Carol), Clara (from The Nutcracker), and Charlie Brown (from A Charlie Brown Christmas), who is joined by a special someone. This year Jen Harris again plays all the female guests, Randy Harrison returns as Ralphie and Tiny Tim, Matthew Wilkas plays Herbie, and Harry Bouvy plays Charlie Brown.

The innovation in our distanced days is that this time Lange, who is in California, provides the voice of the Bartender while the camera gives us the latter’s POV on the evening. It’s more static than watching the play onstage, and of course we miss Lange’s non-verbal reactions, but it does make for an even stricter intimacy. We see what the camera shows us and all the visitors are perforce addressing us directly. It’s another example of TheaterWorks’ grasp of the necessary artistry of taping theater for streaming purposes.

The seven cleverly scripted scenes are written by seven playwrights, with Harris and Wilkas teaming up on Scene Four, “My Name is KAREN!”, and Jacques Lamarre authoring two: Scene Two, “It’s a Miserable Life,” and Scene Seven, “Merry Christmas, Blockhead.” The best scenes are those in which Lange has more to do verbally, so that he is actually interacting rather than just passively viewing. It’s best when he’s trying to understand the plight of his customer, as in Scene One—“All Grown Up,” by John Cariani—and Scene Two. Both of those are entertaining because Ralphie and Zuzu are seen as suffering, as grownups, from the long shadow of the heart-warming anecdotes of their childhood. It’s good stuff, in the early going, and it pulls us in.

In Scene Four, the Bartender is gagged and bound as Harris’s Karen interacts with her online fanbase. The streaming POV this year lets us be at times the online audience and at times the Bartender, seamlessly. It’s a wild and over-the-top performance, so manic that we welcome the more modulated and touching Scene Five—“God Bless Us Every One”—in which Lange comes on strong in taking Scrooge’s part against Tiny Tim’s flippant dismissal.

Watching this year, I felt that Harrison’s departure out that door, as a re-inspired Tim giving his trademark sign-off (too bad the kid didn’t copyright that saying!) would be a satisfying and resonant ending. The last two episodes—Harris’s nutty Clara and Bouvy’s dullsville Charlie Brown—tended to dampen my spirits rather than raise them. One might reflect that there’s a reason Charlie Brown never had a solo show—he’s just not funny! Granted, On the Rocks wants to end with its one romantic moment, and it’s never wrong, I guess, to aim for the “date” tie-in (not something that’s going to be a factor for me, frankly). To my mind, it might be time to shake up the formula with a different sequence of scenes. Even some versions of A Christmas Carol, after all, alter the sequence of ghosts.

In any case, ‘tis the season to seek out distractions from the sad state of affairs in our poor beleaguered country, and maybe from the same-o, same-o replays of the too-often viewed and overly familiar paeans of our snuggly past and other reassuring panaceas. In becoming a seasonal staple, Christmas on the Rocks has it both ways, drawing us in by reactivating braincells that have stored these stories for decades, and then giving us something a bit different, like when someone spikes the cookies instead of the eggnog. In the end, it wants us to believe that, even if all those folks in those fairytales didn’t live happily ever after, they can still have a good time. And give us one too, with just enough ho-ho-ho’s to make the season bright . . . or at least less dim.

Christmas on the Rocks
Conceived and Directed by Rob Ruggiero|
Written by: John Cariani, Jenn Harris & Matthew Wilkas, Jeffrey Hatcher, Jacques Lamarre, Theresa Rebeck, Edwin Sánchez

Set Design: Michael Schweikardt; Costume Design: Alejo Vietti; Lighting Design: John Lasiter; Sound Design: Michael Miceli; Wig Design: Mark Adam Rampmeyer; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

Cast: Harry Bouvy, Jenn Harris, Randy Harrison, Matthew Wilkas, And Ted Lange

TheaterWorks
Streaming December 1-31, 2020

Life With Father

The Who and the What, TheaterWorks

Ayad Akhtar writes plays in which dialogue has a way of being emotional, at times amusing, and often freighted with the weight of ideological themes. His plays Disgraced and The Invisible Hand both had powerful stagings in Connecticut, the latter at Westport Country Playhouse and at TheaterWorks in Hartford. Now TheaterWorks brings us The Who and the What, which dates from 2014.

Before discussing the play, a word about how the production is brought to its audience. Staged at TheaterWorks, directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar, the four-person play has been taped for online viewing with considerable skill. Which means credit for camera director Dan Garee and cinematographers Evan Olson and Ally Lenihan, S.R.’s sound design and the video production of Miceli Productions. If you’ve ever watched plays videotaped for television—which used to be a fairly common event—you’ll find the TheaterWorks production as capable and professional as most you may have seen. Except, instead of a soundstage in a studio, the play uses TheaterWorks’ stage, with set design by Brian Prather (adapted from Michael Schweikardt’s design), costumes by Mika Eubanks, and lighting by Amith Chandrashaker. It looks and sounds like a TheaterWorks show, viewed in one’s own home.

Mahwish (Sanam Laila Hashemi) in The Who and the What, by Ayad Akhtar, directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar, TheaterWorks

The play takes place in a few key locations, mostly domestic interiors and park benches, as Akhtar’s script covers several years in a succinct presentation of what could be called scenic highlights. The details of these characters’ lives could sustain much further explication but Akhtar is a playwright able to make exposition and backstory come out in the course of dialogue. It’s a method that lets each scene portray what is dramatically relevant to the story at hand. And the story has several dramatic cruxes.

To begin with, it’s the story of Afzal, a doting but also domineering Muslim father, played by Rajesh Bose with a wonderfully compelling sense of how bullying is often a matter of both sweetness and implied threat. He has two daughters, Zarina (Jessica Jain), the elder, and Mahwish (Sanam Laila Hashemi). Mahwish already has a fiancé approved by Afzal, so now his task is to find a mate for Zarina so she can marry before her younger sibling does. We later learn that Zarina did have a beau interested in marrying her but he was rejected by Afzal because he was a Christian.

Right there, of course, we’re in a conservative “old world” way of doing things, which we imagine will not sit well with daughters raised in America. Yet what interests Akhtar is how the twin engines of “modern” and “traditional” drive the contemporary Muslim family. The play opens with Afzal meeting with Eli (Stephen Elrod), a blind date for Zarina that Afzal has arranged by pretending to be Zarina in an online dating service! The fact that Eli, who sees this meeting as awkward if not grotesque, manages to deal with this romantic vetting in a way that doesn’t antagonize Afzal means that maybe he’s got son-in-law potential. And Afzal is at his charming best in his man-to-man chats with Eli. The tenor of such talks—after Eli does indeed become his son-in-law—never preclude Afzal’s sense of what is right for the couple and how his daughter needs to be handled so that her willfulness, as a modern woman, is properly “broken.”

Afzal is a widower who has become a success managing a fleet of cabs in Atlanta, and his great ambition is that his daughters start families of their own. His machinations to achieve that end, we might guess, will be the subject of the play as he offends against his daughters’ progressive views. To further that plot line, we hear that Zarina—Harvard educated with an MFA—is working on a book on gender politics. The scene where she has a first date with Eli, as a subservient gesture to her father, runs a potential minefield as Eli is white, a convert to Islam, and possibly more enthusiastic about the faith than Zarina herself. Which leads us to the main plot point: Zarina’s book isn’t simply critical of such practices as arranged marriages and wearing the hijab. It’s a novel in which the prophet Mohammad is viewed as a man with a man’s many imperfections and at times hurtful attitudes toward women.

Eli (Stephen Elrod) and Zarina (Jessica Jain) in Ayad Akhtar’s The Who and the What, directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar, TheaterWorks

The possible tensions between Eli and Zarina increase once he reads her manuscript, and their arguments about the portrayal of the prophet constitute another of the play’s interests: how sacred materials become profane within a secular form like the novel. The contentious nature of this couple is evident from the start and Jain and Elrod are fun to watch as they try to score points off one another. Zarina knows she’s writing fiction but sometimes speaks as though her version of Mohammad is truer than the one received from the traditional and pious anecdotes shared by the faithful. Eli shows himself to be able to reason within a dialectics in which fiction can feel true and received truth may not be fact. Not so Afzal who sees the book as a blasphemous affront, and the play—in Bose’s strong performance—does not shortchange his visceral outrage. That the denigration of the prophet (as he sees it) is also a denigration of the father is the obvious subtext to his rage.

Zarina (Jessica Jain), Mahwish (Sanam Laila Hashemi), Afzal (Rajesh Bose) in Ayad Akhtar’s The Who and the What, TheaterWorks

What holds our attention (admittedly, a deliberately secular “our”) in the play is less the question of how or whether holy figures can be portrayed in speculative ways, and more the question of how these two women navigate the fraught terrain of life with father. The play’s situation certainly feels genuine, keeping in mind clashes of Islamic fundamentalism and Western satire as for instance the much publicized fatwa against the novelist Salman Rushdie in 1989 for depictions of the prophet Mohammad in The Satanic Verses or the Charlie Hebdo killings in 2015. Afzal’s fear that Zarina will suffer persecution or assault for her novel, if published, certainly are justified. But the play, whose title is the same as Zarina’s book, doesn’t take on the task of showing us media response and cultural backlash, other than in passing reference. Instead, it remains focused on the seismic disturbances in the family unit. Which might make us wonder whether the book itself is something of a McGuffin. It doesn’t really matter except that it brings Zarina’s questions to light for her husband and her father to read and react to. The arguments would likely have come about even without such an overt questioning.

Well-staged, well-played, well-taped, The Who and the What is also well-written in giving us “the who” of these characters and “the what” of the differences in viewpoint, orientation, and expectation that make for family drama across generations and between cultures. The who and the what of the book Zarina writes may carry huge impact or seem much ado about nothing, depending on one’s view of Mohammad and the Muslim faith, but it’s importance could be made more of as something beyond a family matter. What’s more, the episodic nature of the play creates an effect a bit like watching “season highlights” of an ongoing TV serial or sitcom. We get the scenes wherein something major happens, but not the scenes that help to create genuine interest in these characters. The play ends with a punchline, a “joke’s on Afzal” jab that might be easily followed by “tune in next week.”

The Who and the What
By Ayad Akhtar
Directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar

Set Design: Brian Prather (adapted from a design for the stage by Michael Sweikardt); Costume Design: Mika Eubanks; Lighting Design: Amith Chandrashaker; Sound Design: S.R.; Video Production: Miceli Productions; Production Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

 Cast: Rajesh Bose, Stephen Elrod, Sanam Laila Hashemi, Jessica Jain

TheaterWorks
November 15-28, 2020

What Happens There

Review of The Lifespan of a Fact, TheaterWorks, Hartford

TheaterWorks is back with another play seemingly ripped from the headlines, though these days, in terms of their lifespan, facts could said to be on life support, or even in hospice care.

The story behind the play (what seem the agreed-upon facts): author John D’Agata, an essayist who has issues with the practices of journalism and the concept of nonfiction, wrote an essay inspired by the death of Levi Presley, a teen who jumped from the tower of the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas in 2002. D’Agata’s essay was about Vegas, suicide, and other issues he deemed relevant. Harper’s passed on the essay; The Believer took it on and assigned Jim Fingal to fact-check it. Fingal found numerous inaccuracies and questioned, rigorously, much of D’Agata’s authorial license. In 2010, The Believer published the essay, titled “What Happens There.” In 2012, The Lifespan of a Fact was published, a book that revealed the years of dickering over the essay that went on between D’Agata and Fingal, edited by Jill Bialosky. In 2018, a play by Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell based on the book opened on Broadway with an all-star cast of Daniel Radcliffe, Bobby Cannavale, and Cherry Jones.

John D’Agata (Rufus Collins), Emily Penrose (Tasha Lawrence), Jim Fingal (Nick LaMedica) in The Lifespan of a Fact at TheaterWorks (photo by Lanny Nagler)

The Lifespan of a Fact plays at TheaterWorks through March 8, directed by Tracy Brigden and starring Nick LaMedica as Jim Fingal, Rufus Collins as John D’Agata, and Tasha Lawrence as fictional editor Emily Penrose. The play adds drama by making Fingal a new recruit at a publication where D’Agata’s essay is accepted who wants desperately to please his boss—and he has only a weekend to complete the job of checking D’Agata’s facts. He contacts D’Agata, first by email then by phone and, in a nice theatrical touch, is revealed sleeping on D’Agata’s couch, having gone to Vegas—where D’Agata lives in his recently deceased mother’s home—to check on some facts such as the color of the tower’s bricks and the number of lanes involved in what D’Agata calls a traffic jam at its base. Eventually, against any kind of expectation of how editors work, Penrose shows up too. And the showdown begins: to publish or not to publish, since D’Agata seemingly won’t accept any changes. However farfetched her presence is, Lawrence’s bristly impatience, familiarity with D’Agata’s ways, and archly maternal attitudes are welcome.

Nick LaMedica, a very capable comic actor, keeps the proceedings amusing. The play focuses on his truculent insistence on holding D’Agata to account. It’s not so much a pursuit of truth as an effort to protect the world from the kind of bullshit that passes for poetic license or rhetorical sleight-of-hand and which flows blithely through much reporting, most advertising copy, and many-too-many political speeches and presidential tweets. It’s hard not to be on Fingal’s side even if he is a somewhat manic nerd. And even if D’Agata were less of the pompous ass Collins plays him as. There’s physical humor, double-takes, joking asides, and a rather sitcom sense of character and situation.

Jim Fingal (Nick LaMedica) in The Lifespan of a Fact at TheaterWorks (photo by Lanny Nagler)

Certainly, there’s enough here to wax editorial about. As a book, Lifespan might be an interesting exhibit of how two different minds interpret events and the task of turning events into writing. As a play, the treatment gives more importance and impact to D’Agata’s stunts than they outwardly merit. Some examples—such as D’Agata’s claim that a caller who hung up on him when he worked a Vegas suicide crisis line was Presley—aren’t so much factual deviations as suppositions. Something an editor should decide on the value of, for the essay, and either strike or alter or let stand. D’Agata’s sense of truth assumes that emotions are facts. What he feels he is free to write as his view of the facts. And yet the notion that his inaccuracies might cause emotional distress in others doesn’t faze him in the least. Collins makes us register that there is some issue at work in D’Agata, but the play never comes close to deciding what it might be, other than the loss of his mother.

In any case, what’s at stake isn’t so very much, ultimately. Given the kind of publication D’Agata’s piece would appear in, a writerly persona giving a “take” on the events is more or less assumed. In his own mind D’Agata may be the like of Norman Mailer, a titan of prose able to bend the facts of the world to his literary authority, or maybe a “gonzo journalist” like Hunter S. Thompson who once claimed the only source of objective reporting was a ticker-tape machine. Mostly, one assumes, that any readers who stick with D’Agata’s account from beginning to end do so because they simply love what he “does.” His writing is the kind that treats the world as if in need of an author’s intervention to make any sense at all.

In its delivery, Lifespan is one of those plays where topicality trumps any effort to make things interesting or surprising. Which is a way of saying that perhaps it hues too closely to the facts of D’Agata and Fingal and is in need of more writerly license. And yet the play does entertain and, at 85-90 minutes, does not overstay its welcome. One of its nicest theatrical touches, among several, is having the three discussants sit silently for the alleged timespan that Presley sat on the tower before jumping. It’s a moment where—with no words to describe what they feel or think—the three simply expose themselves to a fact: time passes.

Jim Fingal (Nick LaMedica), Emily Penrose (Tasha Lawrence), John D’Agata (Rufus Collins) in The Lifespan of a Fact, TheaterWorks (photo by Lanny Nagler)

The questions about exactitude that Fingal doggedly pursues are more relevant than ever in an era so given to spin and the finessing of facts. At one point, Fingal beseeches D’Agata to consider that, on the internet, anything can be fact-checked or disputed by the intrusive legions ready to find fault. And yet that argument may be in D’Agata’s favor. Since the world will twist, bend, pull apart and repurpose any statement as it likes, why not at least go on the record with the world according to John. D’Agata knows, after all, that a writer has nothing but his words, and they are only his if he believes in the purpose of each one, regardless of how well that suits someone else’s sense of what happened.

The Lifespan of a Fact
By Jeremy Kareken & David Murrell and Gordon Farrell
Directed by Tracy Brigden

Set Design: Brian Prather; Costume Design: Tracy Christensen; Lighting Design: Brian Bembridge; Sound Design: Obadiah Eaves; Projection Design: Zachary Borovay; Hair Consultant: Mark Adam Rampmeyer; Production Manager: Bridget Sullivan; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

Cast: Rufus Collins, Nick LaMedica, Tasha Lawrence

TheaterWorks
January 30 through March 8, 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.

It Seems Society is to Blame

Review of American Son, TheaterWorks

A woman sits alone checking her cellphone in the waiting area of a Miami police station. She’s clearly upset. An officer finally appears and confirms that her missing son’s car has been involved in an incident, with no further information. The woman is black, the officer, a baby-faced newbie, is white. Her efforts to get some definite information—such as her son’s whereabouts—meet with patient, evasive feints and excuses. We can believe the officer simply doesn’t know or that he doesn’t want her to know. She should just wait for the officer in charge.

Scott Connor (J Anthony Crane), Kendra Ellis-Connor (Ami Brabson) in TheaterWorks’ production of American Son (photo by Lanny Nagler)

Who arrives first is her estranged husband, an FBI agent and white, whom—while the woman is away getting a drink of water—the officer mistakes for the awaited Lieutenant and so immediately reveals more than he told the woman and also his discomfort with the aggressive black woman. Contrived? Yes, and what’s more it makes for a fuzziness that the play—American Son by Christopher Demos-Brown, now playing at TheaterWorks, directed by Rob Ruggiero—wants to maintain as a strength. Instead of giving us the officer’s clearly marked preference for speaking to a white father rather than a black mother, we get a deeply dumb mistaken identity.

Despite that and other ham-fisted efforts to push its audience’s buttons, American Son does one thing well: it dramatizes, thanks to Ami Brabson’s performance as Kendra Ellis-Connor, a mother’s mounting frustration at not getting answers, her terror at her worst fears, and her educated contempt for the automatic racist assumptions of by-the-book Officer Larkin (John Ford-Dunker). The anxiety parents feel for teens launching into adult life in these highly violent times is rendered well, and, as we learn more and more about the son’s recent actions, the fear of what might befall a black youth in an expensive car feels like a fait accompli given the times we live in.

And yet Demos-Brown’s script tries hard to place this investigation of racial profiling and police malfeasance in a neutral area where mistakes happen, and all are to blame. It implies that the real fault lies with how this interracial couple failed their son.

Scott Connor (J Anthony Crane), Kendra Ellis-Connor (Ami Brabson) in American Son, TheaterWorks (photo by Lanny Nagler)

Kendra Ellis-Connor is a smart, articulate psychologist. Her profession seems to have been chosen so she can mouth Psych 101 assessments of the difficulties an 18-year-old is having because his white father left his black mother for a white woman. And yet she finds it impossible to speak to the plodding Officer Larkin with anything less then barely suppressed hysteria, or, when asked to describe her son, she veers from rejection of his presumed tats, earrings and gold teeth, to his fondness for Emily Dickinson and “Puff the Magic Dragon.” (Demos-Brown’s idea of how to cut tension is to employ bathos. It’s his go-to tone more than once.)

The father, Scott Connor (J Anthony Crane), not only spells “privileged white” with his look and every word and move (Crane is very well-cast and looks the part), he’s very manly in his plans for his son’s future and in his testosterone-fueled rage at, first, that plodding officer, and, second, the lieutenant on the case, Stokes (Michael Genet), who is black. The tension in the fight scene, no matter how well enacted, feels like an imposition. Much of the escalation in anger has to do with a video clip on a smartphone that we can’t see and can barely hear. Suffice to say, it adds a sense of emergency.

Scott Connor (J Anthony Crane), Officer Paul Larkin (John Ford-Dunker) in American Son, TheaterWorks (photo by Lanny Nagler)

The earlier discussions between Scott and Kendra about their son, Jamal (including a reminiscence about how they disagreed about naming him!), pile up into a sketch of the only black kid at an elite school where he’s forced to be “the face of the race”; he resents his father’s desertion and, in retaliation, has begun to act “ghetto,” including a bumper-sticker on the Lexus his dad bought him that might be deemed incendiary to law officers. He’s a cipher at the center of all this.

As Officer Larkin, Ford-Dunker seems as doughy as the Dunkins he likes to imbibe. One suspects, from the first scene, that there might be a version of this play in which Officer Larkin can be perceived as hostile to or at least uncomfortable with black women, but director Ruggiero seems to steer this version of the play so that the officers are seen as exemplars of dogged patience rather than anything more abrasive. Even Stokes, who explodes at Scott’s provocations, maintains his professionalism, mostly. As Stokes, Genet is good with the man-to-man tone in his effort to calm Connor down, which only infuriates the unruly agent more, and his interactions with Brabson, in a bit of who can out-black whom, have the impatient energy of a decent man tired of being seen as a bad guy.

Kendra Ellis-Connor (Ami Brabson), Lieutenant John Stokes (Michael Genet) in American Son, TheaterWorks (photo by Lanny Nagler)

The end of all this—including an unlikely interlude in which Kendra asks Scott why he spoke to her when they first met—is a foregone conclusion. Still, Demos-Brown seems to pride himself on creating the most implausible, but just possible, scenario as the gotcha moment his play aims toward.

Which may invite one to reflect whether the outrageous injustices and bad choices that occur in real life become anything more than a basis for melodrama when invoked through contrived situations and ill-conceived characters. When awful things happen in life, survivors often remark “it felt like a movie” to underscore its seeming unreality. Rarely, if ever, does one say, if felt like a contrived one-act, but that’s what Demos-Brown provides, turning national tragedies into topical theater.

American Son
By Christopher Demos-Brown
Directed by Rob Ruggiero

Set Design: Brian Prather; Costume Design: Herin Kaputkin; Lighting Design: Matthew Richards; Sound Design: Frederick Kennedy; Fight Director: Michael Rossmy; Production Manager: Bridget Sullivan; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

Cast: Ami Brabson, J Anthony Crane, John Ford Dunker, Michael Genet

TheaterWorks
October 18-November 23, 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 . . .

Short and Sweet

Review of Girlfriend, TheaterWorks

At 80some minutes, Girlfriend, the newish musical at TheaterWorks, directed by Rob Ruggiero, is short, and, with the music from Nebraska-born musical artist Matthew Sweet featured, it is certainly Sweet. The play, by Todd Almond, is indeed sweet as its boy meets boy story set in Alliance, Nebraska, 1993—while it has drama—is mostly easygoing. The two characters are Will (David Merino), a gay senior in high school, and Mike (CJ Pawlilowski), a still closeted senior. Mike’s opening overture to Will is the gesture of giving him a tape of Matthew Sweet’s LP, Girlfriend (released 1991). The duo’s story is set to Sweet songs mostly from that album.

If this sounds to you like a rather thin Book—take a bunch of songs and construct a story to accompany them—then you and I agree. Unlike some instances of rock we might imagine, Sweet’s songs have the strength of being unprovocative. They can be somewhat propulsive, like the title song, and somewhat lyrical, like “Your Sweet Voice,” and one or two—“Winona,” “Evangeline”—have interesting lyrics. The live band playing them at the back of the stage—Evan Zavada, conductor, keys, vocals; Billy Bivona, guitar 1; Julia Packer, guitar 2, vocals; Adam Clark, bass, vocals; Elliot Wallace, drums—can be as fun to watch as the play’s action.

Will (David Merino), Mike (CJ Pawlikowski) and the band in Girlfriends, directed by Rob Ruggiero, at TheaterWorks, photos courtesy of TheaterWorks

The story is comprised of very static scenes: Will in his bedroom with his boombox; Mike in his with his more imposing all-in-one stereo; the friends sitting in Mike’s car at a drive-in, watching the same film—about a superhero alien whose alter-ego is a nun named Evangeline—night after night. Eventually (spoiler alert!) they do get to Mike’s bedroom while his somewhat domineering father is away (we never meet him, but he seems to be pressuring Mike into maintaining relations with his girlfriend, whom we also never see).

The play insists on being a two-hander so any schoolmates who might sneer at this budding romance never show up. Any threat to the status quo that this same-sex couple poses must be imagined (mostly rude stares from the other guys on the baseball team Mike plays on). All of which is deliberate. This romance isn’t about overcoming parental disapproval (which certainly factors in for all sorts of couples for all sorts of reasons) or about overcoming peer pressure (ditto), but about whether or not Mike really loves Will.

Will (David Merino)

Will, who is played with disarming, outgoing cheer and charm by Merino, is clearly the girl in this relationship. He sits at home waiting to be asked out; when he is, he always goes. His passivity might be seen as comic, or pathetic. Here, it just is. The implication is that, as a gay boy in a predominantly hetero culture, he has to take what he can get. What he gets is Mike’s vacillations. Is giving music to someone a sexual overture? Depends. Is going to the drive-in together an invitation to make-out? Depends. What the play mostly explores is the gray area of that “depends.” Will lets us know he’s up for it but not enough to make a first move. As Mike, Pawlikowski plays obtuse well. The guy acts like leading Will on is the last thing on his mind, though of course it’s the first thing on Will’s. Whether or not Mike can admit that or not is really the only question here.

It’s all coy and almost-not-quite closeted. We’re waiting for a big breakup or big breakthrough. Things don’t get nasty, but they do get a little more complicated: Mike is off to college; Will, apparently, can’t think of anything better to do than stay in this Nebraskan town some 300 miles from the university in Lincoln. Was this all just an experiment for Mike before moving on?

Mike (CJ Pawlikowski)

Almond’s approach to dialogue is to stick with the demotic. These guys need those songs because they have nothing much to say. The best dialogue is Will trying gently to suggest that the movie isn’t all that good. Indeed, we might easily believe Mike is actually straight since he has so little of interest to say. Will, whatever he may feel for Mike, is clearly slumming.

The opening weekend matinee I saw featured an audience comprised mostly of people who might well have grandchildren the ages of these characters. They seemed warmly touched by the romance. The play might strike with a bit more force played for an audience closer to the boys’ ages. In fact, that would be the perfect audience for this play—and, I suppose, fans of Matthew Sweet’s Girlfriend. The band do the songs justice, Merino and Pawlikowski have suitable singing voices, and the sound design, by Joshua D. Reid, is perfectly adapted to the Wadsworth’s auditorium.

Will (David Merino), MIke (CJ Pawlikowski) and the band

Girlfriend
Book by Todd Almond
Music & Lyrics by Matthew Sweet
Directed by Rob Ruggiero
Music Direction by Evan Zavada

Set Design: Brian Prather; Costume Design: Blair Gulledge; Lighting Design: Rob Denton; Sound Design: Joshua D. Reid; Hair: John McGarvey; Production Manager: Bridget Sullivan; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

Cast: David Merino; CJ Pawlikowski

Band: Evan Zavada, conductor, keys, vocals; Billy Bivona, guitar 1; Julia Packer, guitar 2, vocals; Adam Clark, bass, vocals; Elliot Wallace, drums

TheaterWorks
At the Wadsworth
March 22 to April 28, 2019

Look Who's Back

Review of A Doll’s House, Part 2, TheaterWorks

Lucas Hnath’s popular revisiting of one of Henrik Ibsen’s best-known plays—A Doll’s House—receives two productions in Connecticut this season. First up, it’s at TheaterWorks, directed by Jenn Thompson, through February 24, and as the season closer at Long Wharf in May (the two productions are not related).

Alexander Hodge’s set for A Doll’s House, Part 2, at TheaterWorks (photos courtesy of TheaterWorks)

On the intimate stage at TheaterWorks, on a set by Alexander Hodge that combines Ibsen-era furnishings with a modernist design of neon frames, a series of encounters that mark the return of the former Mrs. Nora Helmer (Tasha Lawrence) to the home she walked out of—so defiantly, memorably, and, one thought, irrevocably—are front and center. The force of the knock upon the door that opens the play relies on our grasp of how final that very door’s slam, back in the 1870s, had been. What follows brings to light all that was never said between the Helmers before, and much that serves to fill in the blanks of what has happened since Nora’s last appearance in the house.

The knock is answered by the housemaid Anne Marie (Amelia White), shocked and surprised to see her old mistress, and the way the two navigate the great gaps in what they know of each other gets us off to a vivid start. Nora, who is dressed expensively in Alejo Vietti’s period costume, has much to pride herself on. She is a success—an author of novels for a dedicated female readership. When she treats Anne Marie to a quick précis of how her books attempt to blow the lid off the inequities of marriage, we’re glad of the housemaid’s subtly caustic responses. Nora has become rather pedantic, and it’s up to Anne Marie to express our lack of amazement in her views. White turns in a finely modulated performance: as the first character to use the profanity so automatic in our day, she deftly takes up a contemporary view that feels earned—and armed against Nora’s rhetoric.

Nora (Tasha Lawrence), Anne Marie (Ameila White)

The question that would nag at an audience of Ibsen’s day (and ours)—what of the children?—shows up almost automatically as we listen to Nora justify her moves and her total remove from the lives of her two sons and a daughter, an infant when Nora left. Nora doesn’t want to make their acquaintance and wouldn’t be paying this visit at all but for a major complication. Though freed of the tasks of motherhood and the duties of a wife, Nora has recently found out to her dismay that she is still legally married to Torvald. This makes her guilty of fraud, to say nothing of being liable to charges of moral turpitude, for having conducted herself as a single woman all these years. When Anne Marie rebukes Nora for the fact that it fell to her to be the caregiver to her absent mistress’s children, we glimpse the class element in Nora’s privilege, a factor that doesn’t always surface in more celebratory receptions of Nora’s act of abandonment.

The tension between the satisfactions of Nora’s rebellious act, in the original, and her status as a matter-of-fact business woman trying to get on with her career, in the sequel, lands as a look askance at how far she still has not gotten. That aspect of Hnath’s script plays believably as sequel, as Torvald (Sam Gregory), when we meet him, is as completely self-absorbed as ever. Gregory gets in a few nicely deadpan non-reactions to the new Nora, and, by the end, there is a grudging kind of rapport. That’s the note that resonates longest after the play ends; like a fulfillment of how children might wish their separated parents would find closure.

Emmy (Kira Player), Nora (Tasha Lawrence)

Which brings us to the Helmer’s child, Emmy, featured in the play, in Kira Player’s strong performance, as a very self-possessed and decisive young woman, much more so, we should see, than Nora was at her age. And yet what Emmy is determined to do is marry, as if in contempt of all her mother has learned and achieved. While not quite a battle of wills, there is a sense that the two women are facing off over a vision of what fulfillment means and how to attain it. The subterfuges proposed on how Emmy might aid her mother in getting around her father (Torvald has no interest in giving Nora a divorce) give us more a sense of strategy than of character.

There’s an odd tension between Hnath’s script and the naturalistic style of Thompson’s direction. The script’s rhythms, one senses, could be delivered without so deliberate a sense of a plausible social space somewhere between Ibsen’s time and ours. Any awkwardness in that overlay should be intentional but in the TheaterWorks production significantly abrasive tones rarely surface. Not even Torvald entering with a gushing head wound upsets the even-handed mise en scène.

Nora (Tasha Lawrence), Torvald (Sam Gregory)

Tasha Lawrence plays Nora as a strong-willed woman with scant sympathy for what others might expect of her. She has struggled to attain her self-possession, so that relinquishing it for a more emotionally needy version of herself is not in the cards. Lawrence sheds tears only once, late in the play, and the brief loss of composure is telling. Nora has realized she’s freer than she had imagined, that—in the manner of a modern woman of the 21st century—she must make her way without the sentimental attachments that still cling to her in the Helmer household. The fact that Torvald, after all this time, is finally able to accept her departure doesn’t arrive as quite the heavy-handed moral it might have. Gregory does fine work as a man who, almost too old to care, can still be amazed by the way a woman—and that his wife—can shake him. Their closing dialogue is the best part of the play, which at times can feel like a scene trying to stretch itself into a full-length play.

An interesting revisiting of familiar territory, Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2 is never as striking or illuminating as one might like. It seems at times to run a checklist of possible complications while making sure its heroine’s heroism is never compromised by anything like regret.

A Doll’s House, Part 2
By Lucas Hnath
Directed by Jenn Thompson

Set Design: Alexander Hodge; Costume Design: Alejo Vietti; Lighting Design: Philip Rosenberg; Sound Design: Broken Chord; Wig Design: Mark Adam Rampmeyer; Assistant Director: Eric Ort; Associate Set Design: Ann Beyersdorfer; Production Manager: Bridget Sullivan; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

Cast: Sam Gregory, Tasha Lawrence, Kira Player, Amelia White

TheaterWorks
January 17-February 24, 2019

Beat Those Christmas Blues

Review of Christmas on the Rocks, TheaterWorks

What are some of your favorite memories of the Christmas holidays? If the list includes such things as the black boot of Santa waving in the face of a young boy before he plummets down a slide at a department store North Pole, or a cartoon boy with a blanket intoning words about the true meaning of Christmas, or the beleaguered manager of a Saving and Loan fixing to jump off a bridge into icy waters, or a sickly boy enlivened by “the pudding singing in the copper,” or a young girl accosted by giant mice, or a cartoon snowman cavorting as the “baddest belly-whopper in the business,” or a distraught young reindeer facing cruel taunts due to his beaming nose, then TheaterWorks has the show for you.

With Christmas on the Rocks, director Rob Ruggiero has brought together different playwrights to create dialogues for characters from Christmas classics. This year, the list entails A Christmas Story, It’s a Wonderful Life, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, A Christmas Carol, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. For many of us, Christmas has taken its tone from such entertainments for as long as we can remember. So, we might ask ourselves, how would those familiar characters experience Christmas now, in 2018?

The show’s title “on the rocks” is apropos. Not only have the holidays become rocky terrain—which they pretty much were even in the original stories—but the entire action of the play takes place in a cozy little corner bar, presided over by Tom Bloom as the bartender. If the setting and the pace of featured character actor skits doesn’t bring to your mind Art Carney as the barkeep on the Jackie Gleason Show, then you’re probably younger than I am. The shtick is familiar, the exchanges between each guest and the barkeep anything but.

The jokes tend to assume familiarity with the shows from which these characters originate, which is fair enough. Playing off to the side on big screens, before the play starts, is a loop of clips from the requisite features to help jog your memory, should that be necessary. Each respective playwright takes the material and runs with it, adding absurdist humor, many a knowing chuckle, and some outright hilarity. There’s also a touch of the Christmas blues throughout so that the show caters to those of us who find Christmas—in its commercial insistence—a bit too incessant.

The Bartender (Tom Bloom), Ralph (Randy Harrrison) in TheaterWorks’ Christmas on the Rocks

This year, the effervescent Randy Harrison—of the TV show Queer as Folk—plays all the male guests, while Jenn Harris—a talented comedienne who puts me in mind of the irrepressible Ruth Buzzi—plays the females. John Cariani’s “All Grown Up” starts things off with the Ralphie facing the fact that he’s a fictional character everyone knows thanks to “the movie.” Because the story of Ralph is so richly told in the original, there’s plenty to work with. Harrison is a believable grown-up Ralphie, getting laughs from his true feelings about that bunny suit.

Zuzu (Jenn Harris)

The part of Zuzu in It’s a Wonderful Life has less to offer, but Jacques Lamarre rises to the occasion with “A Miserable Life” which lets us see the grown Zuzu, forever haunted by those damn bells that signal an angel getting wings. Her paranoia, in Harris’ hands, is quite funny in a quirky way. Harris really comes into her own with “My Name is KAREN!” which she co-wrote with Matthew Wilkes. Karen, you might not remember, is the little girl who accompanies Frosty through his life and death adventures in the Rankin/Bass cartoon. Here, she has become an online celebrity of sorts, taking the followers of her video postings on a retributive journey that includes tying up the hapless bartender with Christmas lights. She’s a memorably psychotic rendering of the Christmas spirit, complete with screen projections from her cell phone, which she speaks to as an audience and trusted confidante. Then, as the girl from the Nutcracker ballet, Harris turns in a frenetic performance in Edwin Sánchez’s “Still Nuts About Him,” complete with comic Russian accent, some not so chaste moves, and a great deadpan.

The Bartender (Tom Bloom), and Clara (Jenn Harris)

Harrisons’ best role is as the put-upon dentist Hermie from Rankin/Bass’s stop-motion puppet production of the Rudolph story, adapted from the famous song. In Jeffrey Hatcher’s “Say It Glows,” the character of Hermie, a bit awkward and whiny in the original show, hasn’t changed much. But he is much more “out” than he was as a kid, understandably, and that’s the main takeaway: that wanting to be a dentist wasn’t the only reason Hermie was a “misfit,” and Harrison does this queerer version of Hermie proud, complete with a “Tooth Fairy” T-shirt. Here, growing up and coming of age seems an improvement rather than a downer. It does get better.

The Bartender (Tom Bloom), Hermie (Randy Harrison)

Something maybe not so true for the grown-up Tiny Tim, who Harrison plays like a Cockney who might once have joined a punk band. In Theresa Rebeck’s “God Bless Us Every One,” Tim is down on the whole Christmas bit, seeing Ebenezer as an old gent who cracked and went about handing out money recklessly. Here, the dialogue with the bartender proves the most meaningful. Often, he’s merely a genial looker-on at someone who briefly takes over the place, but with Tiny Tim he gets to debate the merits of the Scrooge story, which shows, yet again, that Dickens is a hard man to beat when it comes to Christmas.

The Bartender (Tom Bloom), Tiny Tim (Randy Harrison)

The Charlie Brown segment—“Merry Christmas, Blockhead,” by Jacques Lamarre—is something of an anticlimax, if only because a soured Charlie Brown seems less suitable than the other transformations, and being married to Lucy a bit of a stretch. His unexpected encounter with a special someone gives us a romantic close, a nice way to end, but with less of the edginess that sustained the more offbeat laughs.

A fun shot of cheer—with some of the bite of holiday hangovers from yesteryear—Christmas on the Rocks, like the shows it recalls, is the stuff of a collective fantasy that’s been dancing in our heads like sugarplums at least since “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Love Christmas or dread it, this show has a place in your holiday traditions.

Christmas on the Rocks
An Offbeat Collection of Twisted Holiday Tales by
John Cariani
Jenn Harris & Matthew Wilkas
Jeffrey Hatcher
Jacques Lamarre
Theresa Rebeck
Edwin Sánchez
Conceived and Directed by Rob Ruggiero

Set Design: Michael Schweikardt; Costume Design: Alejo Vietti; Lighting Design: John Lasiter; Sound Design: Michael Miceli; Wig Design: Mark Adam Rampmeyer; Production Manager: Bridget Sullivan; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

Cast: Tom Bloom, Jenn Harris, Randy Harrison

TheaterWorks
November 27-December 23, 2018

To the Fishing Cabin

Review of The River, TheaterWorks

Sigmund Freud called it “repetition compulsion,” the psychological condition of having to repeat a traumatic event. It may involve revisiting the place where the event occurred, or trying to recreate a situation through specific actions. A popular depiction of the condition can be seen in Alfred Hitchcock’s highly praised film Vertigo. That film might come to mind when watching Jez Butterworth’s fascinating and mysterious play The River, now playing at TheaterWorks, directed by Rob Ruggiero.

The setting—a fishing cabin “on the cliffs, above the river” in some out-of-the-way English dell—finds a suitable rustic charm in Brian Prather’s handsome set. It’s a homey place for The Man (Billy Carter) because he’s been coming there to fish for sea trout since he was a boy when his uncle was “the man” on the place. As the play opens we get one of those nice jolts that maintaining the fourth wall can still deliver. The Woman (Andrea Goss) is looking right out over the audience in TheaterWorks’ intimate space. She’s gazing raptly at a gorgeous sunset, and tries to entice The Man to share in the moment. “I’ve seen it,” he says, fussing with his gear for the big fishing trip, then proceeds to describe the sky with fulsome words, without looking, and creates a verbal painting.

The Woman (Andrea Goss), The Man (Billy Carter) in TheaterWorks’ production of The River

He’s got a knack for poeticizing, and at one point, trying to convince The Woman she needs to be a part of his fishing expedition, he asks her to read a Ted Hughes poem from a book. She, on the other hand, would rather stay in the cabin and read Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. At that point we might be afraid, indeed. “They’re going to the lighthouse, will they get there?,” she asks, half-facetiously. And then the pair go fishing, but what happens?

Butterworth, for all that he might be writing this play tongue-in-cheek, has taken on an interesting assignment: how to convey obsession, loss, hope, love, and the playfulness of seduction while maintaining the mystery of such experiences? All the while keeping the glory of fishing—and the nature of sea trout has its metaphoric application—before us as, well, what it’s like to try to catch something wild and fleeting.

The Man (Billy Carter), The Woman (Andrea Goss)

We might begin to think—after we meet The Other Woman—we’re in a Gothic story, a kind of Bluebeard-as-fishing-story that will reveal some awful truth about a serial killer. That would be a blunter version of what Butterworth offers. Instead, we’re contemplating something almost as off-putting: serial seduction, the strange-to-relate way that a search for true love—or an effort to recapture a previous moment—involves a set script. All we need to do is find the right actor for the part we’ve written in our heads.

That might sound like a very dark play, and in some ways it is. The brooding tone is leavened by the characters of the women. As The Woman, Andrea Goss is slyly mocking at times, apt to fear that The Man has plans more romantic than she’s prepared to accept. The Other Woman is played by Jasmine Batchelor as even more engaging, enough to make us think she may be “the One” after all. She brings a winning outlook to her match with The Man, even if she does catch a fish by a method forbidden in his code.

The Other Woman (Jasmine Batchelor), The Man (Billy Carter)

The Man could be a crashing bore, so set in his ways, but Billy Carter—in a role that Hugh Jackman played on Broadway—keeps us guessing about his motivations and where his heart really lies. He can be taciturn as well as rhapsodic. And he has to gut a fish on stage if only so we can watch him interact with his favorite species. He’s deliberate, almost devout. Later, he draws The Other Woman’s portrait with a similar concentration. The play asks us to see him as the women do: as someone who attracts interest but who also seems to hold others at bay, which only adds to his allure. His manliness may be the theme most at issue here, a studied self-sufficiency that requires a certain elusiveness in his prey, and his bride.

The Man (Billy Carter), and the fish

Every date between strangers is a kind of try out, we might suppose, but The River keeps an archly archetypal quality in play. A few oddities—like a scene about a bird getting into the cabin that plays the same for both women, each told “it’s happened before”—keep us guessing, waiting for a reveal that makes all the pieces fit. And fitting oneself to someone else is what successful romance is all about. 

Director Rob Ruggiero keeps the tension palpable, and the sound effects in Frederick Kennedy’s sound design, including a subtly hypnotic song, add an eeriness. The River makes the most of the scenic quality of theater, so that each new scene, playing with our sense of how narrative unfolds, establishes a static moment without a clear relation to before and after. It’s “the still point of the turning world,” while it lasts.

The River
By Jez Butterworth
Directed by Rob Ruggiero

Set Design: Brian Prather; Costume Design: Tricia Barsamian; Lighting Design: John Lasiter; Sound Design: Frederick Kennedy; Associate Director: Taneisha Duggan; Production Manager: Bridget Sullivan; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth; Dialect Coach: Johanna Morrison

Cast: Jasmine Batchelor, Billy Carter, Andrea Goss

 TheaterWorks
October 4-November 11, 2018

A Satanic Sock-Puppet

Review of Hand to God, TheaterWorks

A hand-puppet goes rogue with hilariously scary results in Robert Askins’ Hand to God, now playing at TheaterWorks, directed by Tracy Brigden. Brigden directed the show at City Theatre in Pittsburgh and several veterans of that cast are in the production at TheaterWorks, which features a gripping intimacy that fully exploits the play’s foul-mouthed charm.

Key to the production’s success is Nick LaMedica’s simply stupendous turn as Jason, the bashful and depressed son of a Sunday school teacher, Margery, who is trying to put together a hand-puppet performance among her charges, and as Tyrone, the hand-puppet with a mind and voice of its own that takes over the play like a male monster of the Id. At first, Tyrone, like a ventriloquist’s dummy with the dirt on its master, is simply a bit too forthright in expressing what Jason would rather not say, then, after Jason fails to destroy him, he sprouts fangs and turns Jason into his aghast appendage.

Tyrone/Jason (Nick LaMedica) (Photos courtesy of TheaterWorks)

As Margery, Lisa Velten Smith is also perfectly cast, with a surprising mix of religious fervor, impatient mothering, and volcanic passions. Her husband, Jason’s father, has died recently and the loosely-structured plot uses that event as a way of explaining the wild mood swings of his surviving family. Both mother and son are seemingly schizophrenic in veering between their normal, mealy-mouthed personae and the extremes of their out-of-control acting up. It may be a bit too-too to have mother and son both fly off into surprising behavior—on paper—but on stage it works because the manic version of Margery, and Tyrone, as the vicious version of Jason, are so much fun.

Jessica (Maggie Carr), Tyrone/Jason (Nick LaMedica)

And the rest of the cast is not just a bunch of straight-persons to these hyperbolic hi-jinx. As Jessica, Maggie Carr is a great comic asset, playing a mostly imperturbable teen whose lending a hand-puppet in an explicit seduction scene with Tyrone is one of Act Two’s high-points. Miles G. Jackson plays Timmy as a tough kid with feet of clay, or maybe just a confused teen with the mercurial nature that implies. He’s got a crush on Margery, resents Jason, and sneers at everything, that is until Tyrone shows his bite is as good as his bark. And as Pastor Greg, Peter Benson’s musing tone keeps the unctuous platitudes of the local religious leader from being a mere cliché. He’s got his eye on Margery too and his effort at seduction, for all that it tries to pose as anodyne and uplifting, is blandly creepy in the era of #MeToo.

Pastor Greg (Peter Benson), Margery (Lisa Velten Smith)

There is much bad behavior flying past quickly onstage, and Tyrone, who speaks with the kind of expletive-ridden, verbal crassness that seems de rigueur in the era of our uncouth president, comes across as a mad-as-hell rebel. As with puppets used in therapy to help patients act out aggression and mimic traumatic events, Tyrone, in the scheme of the play, can be seen as a kind of desperate therapy, not only for the mourning, anger, and suppressed urges of Jason and Margery, but for a culture in which politeness masks all kinds of unpleasant truths. The play is set in Texas, and its author, a Texan, knows whereof he speaks in showing how the typical locutions of the milquetoast version of Jesus’s love can drive almost anyone to distraction.

Luke Cantarella’s scenic design is nimble in presenting the different spaces of the show—the classroom, Jason’s bedroom, Pastor Greg’s office—and Matthew Richards’ lighting design, as ever, is a godsend. Fight Choreography by Robert Westley deserves plaudits as well as this is a very physical show in a fairly small space, and the puppet design by Stephanie Shaw provides props able to seem as real as their handlers.

Timmy (Miles G. Jackson), Tyrone/Jason (Nick LaMedica)

Askins’ target here is “the devil” as an explanatory concept for whatever is deemed heinous, inappropriate, or foul-minded in human nature. The opening and closing homilies by Tyrone, in his good and bad incarnations respectively, are simple-minded gestures toward what could be called social context. It’s not that we expect a puppet to be profound, but might wonder why the author deems it necessary to make the puppets his mouthpiece. Within the story, Tyrone’s malevolent force and Margery’s erotic urges are made to seem coping mechanisms and needn’t be considered the result of demonic possession. And yet, Askins is asking why we need both an ultimate good—Jesus—and an ultimate evil—Satan—to convince us we’re not so bad.

While some might be shocked by the behavior and/or the language of the play, there’s a rather contemporary sense in which the play—first produced Off Broadway in 2011—lets “locker-room talk” become part of classroom talk, and treats the pornographic imagination as matter-of-fact. The play may aim to exorcise our demons, in a sense, though it plays more like a Feast of Fools pageant where free license actually supports social cohesion. Hence the show’s popularity.

Hand to God
By Robert Askins
Directed by Tracy Brigden

Scenic Design/Projections: Luke Cantarella; Costume Design: Tracy Christensen; Lighting Design: Matthew Richards; Sound Design: Elizabeth Atkinson; Puppet Design: Stephanie Shaw; Fight Choreographer: Robert Westley; Stage Manager: Kate J. Cudworth

Peter Benson, Maggie Carr, Miles G. Jackson, Nick LaMedica, Lisa Velten Smith

TheaterWorks
July 20-August 26, 2018