The Play's the Thing

Review of The Mousetrap, Hartford Stage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Mousetrap
By Agatha Christie
Directed by Jackson Gay

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

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

Hartford Stage
October 13-November 6, 2022 

The Story of Driving Herself Forward

Review of From the Mississippi Delta, Westport Country Playhouse

Adapting a memoir of a lifetime for the stage is a daunting task, even for a skilled playwright. Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland, formerly a professor of theater and American studies, had quite a life (she died in 2006) and her memoir, From the Mississippi Delta, celebrated her accomplishments and an at-times harrowing story of pluck, hope, and luck for “one who drives herself forward”—as she advertised with her chosen name Endesha. Eventually she drove herself into a PhD program at the University of Minnesota, after an awakening to her own possibilities fostered by the Civil Rights Movement and the Freedom Riders who descended upon rural Mississippi in the early 1960s. Her first play, The Second Doctor Lady, about her mother, an unschooled midwife known as Ain’t Baby, won the Lorraine Hansberry Award for Best Play in 1981

As a play, Dr. Holland’s own story relies on much narrative, rather than scenes of dialogue. Fortunately, Dr. Holland is a skilled storyteller, able to fully and forcefully exploit the verbal mannerisms and locutions of the Deep South to create a theater-piece with plenty of local color and a bracing degree of verisimilitude in how her alter-ego Phelia tells her story.

Claudia Logan as Woman One, Erin Margaret Pettigrew as Woman Three, Tameishia Peterson as Woman Two in From the Mississippi Delta at Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

On the wide and high Westport Country Playhouse stage, Jason Ardizzone-West’s set presents an imposing sense of the rural world where Phelia dwells. A staircase leads to an upper story; a cast-iron bed sits in the opposite corner; in front of the stairs is an area generally used as a porch. The fluidity of the space serves the daunting fluidity of the play as three women—Woman One (Claudia Logan), Woman Two (Tameishia Peterson), Woman Three (Erin Margaret Pettigrew), named by their order of appearance—play all the roles, at times delivering Phelia’s narration as if a Greek chorus, trading off lines and bringing to life the author’s differing voices and emotions.

In general, it works. And it works best when there is something happening on the stage for us to fix our attention on: as when Woman Three, as Ain’t Baby, mimes treatment of a difficult breech birth while the other two women alternate their amazed and breathless description of what Phelia sees, watching through the window. Other fully staged moments—with a similar indelible power—are underage Phelia’s rape at the white folks’ home where she babysits (Tameishia Peterson enacts convincingly the innocence, the outrage and the sadder but wiser outcome), and the scene, full of comic ribaldry, when Phelia, in Woman One’s account, decides to compete with a traveling salacious dancer at the fair who has all the menfolk’s attention.

Claudia Logan (Woman One), Tameishia Peterson (Woman Two) in From the Mississippi Delta, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

A sense of oppression is always present in Phelia’s life, but the general tone is of a kind of knowing indulgence furnished by the fact that ultimately Phelia triumphs over adversity. In fact, in the play’s more meandering second act—where Civil Rights workers, and the brutal death of Ain’t Baby, and the journey to Minneapolis and hanging out in the demimonde and earning degrees and dealing with real winter cold all skim by without much in the way of scenic clarity—the tone becomes so congratulatory that we’re just supposed to sit back and admire. The graduation scene is a feast of name-dropping and paying respects, but names aren’t characters. What’s more, Claudia Logan, in particular, maintains the down-home locutions and giddy intonation of the uneducated Phelia. We get very little of the transition to the doctoral Endesha until the powerful passages quoted from a letter to Alice Walker.

There are several vignettes that serve not much purpose other than entertainment and to show off Dr. Holland’s storytelling skills—as in the story of one old lady’s obsession with her water meter and the comeuppance of one who would mistreat her. Such scenes, and particularly the highlight of the hilarious slapstick solemnity of the chief mourner at Ain’t Baby’s funeral, owe their virtues to Claudia Logan’s considerable gift for physical humor. Meanwhile, the old water meter lady and a stereotypical Southern Baptist preacher show off Erin Margaret Pettigrew’s skills at caricature.

Claudia Logan, Woman One, and Erin Margaret Pettigrew, Woman Three in From the Mississippi Delta, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

In general, Logan enacts the comic and sassy segments, Peterson the more soulful or thoughtful segments, with Pettigrew the folksier and wiser elements, particularly stemming from Ain’t Baby’s adages and her distrust of certain changes that the Civil Rights workers bring about. Together the three women create a compelling contrapuntal effect that keeps the story moving and at its best gives the telling the feel of a collective event.

Sprawling, with a great sense of individual voice and of a lived-in time and place, what From the Mississippi Delta captures best is one woman’s own awe at the life she lived, with all its surprises and shocks and success. It is vividly and vibrantly recreated on the Westport Country Playhouse stage as directed by Goldie E. Patrick and her strong cast of performers, Claudia Logan, Tameishia Peterson, Erin Margaret Pettigrew.

Claudia Logan (Woman One), Erin Margaret Pettigrew (Woman Three) in From the Mississippi Delta at Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

From the Mississippi Delta
By Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland
Directed by Goldie E. Patrick

Scenic Design: Jason Ardizzone-West; Costume Design: Heidi Hanson; Lighting Design: John D. Alexander; Composer/Music Director: Michael Keck; Dialect Coach: Dawn-Elin Fraser; Intimacy Coach: Ann C. James; Wig Design: Nikiya Mathis; Props Supervisor: Sean Sanford; Production Stage Manager: Melissa Sparks; Assistant Stage Manager: Tré Wheeler

Cast:
Claudia Logan, Tameishia Peterson, Erin Margaret Pettigrew

Westport Country Playhouse
October 18-30, 2022

Home is Where

Review of Fun Home, TheaterWorks Hartford

Rob Ruggiero, artistic director of TheaterWorks, knows what works in the intimate Hartford theater space and as director of the Tony-winning musical Fun Home, he delivers. The closeness to the action makes the show seem all the more magical as—with a cast of ten, including three children—Ruggiero pulls out a range of moods, situations, and production numbers, all emerging from a memory space in the mind of cartoonist Alison as she tries to come to terms with her own life and the huge, potentially traumatizing shadow her demanding father flung over it.

Julia Nightingale as Medium Alison, Sarah Beth Pfeifer as Alison, Skylar Lynn Matthews as Small Alison in the TheaterWorks Hartford production of Fun Home; photo by Mike Marques

As adapted from Alison Bechdel’s celebrated graphic novel by Lisa Kron (book and lyrics) and Jeanine Tesori (music), Fun Home is a fully engaged and engaging twenty-first century musical. Its story parallels Alison’s story of her coming out as a lesbian—to herself, to the Gay Student Union, to her first girlfriend Joan, and, via letter, to her parents, Bruce (Aaron Lazar) and Helen (Christiane Noll)—during her freshman year in college with her discovery, in a fraught phone call with her mother, that her father has had many same-sex liaisons, some illegal and predatory because of underage partners.

Bruce’s early death means the possibility of any deeper understanding of his story can only come via Alison’s adult perspective on her memories (though it does seem odd that no insights from her brothers, one older, one younger, are ever referenced). Alison’s memories are rendered by Alison as adult (Sarah Beth Pfeifer), Medium Alison, as college student (Julia Nightingale), and Small Alison, as a child (Skylar Lynn Matthews). The age-appropriate casting creates a wonderfully balanced trio whose movements about the stage, in and out of each other’s vantages, amount to fascinating and motivated choreography.

Skylar Lynn Matthews as Small Alison, foreground, Aaron Lazar as Bruce, background, in Fun Home; photo by Mike Marques

As part of the story, the show’s songs are given many dramatic purposes: as soliloquy—the show-stealing “Changing My Major (to Joan)” is all it should be as performed by Julia Nightingale, a perfect Medium Alison; as family fun—when Small Alison (Skylar Lynn Matthews) and her brothers Christian (Myles Low) and John (Jasper Burger) enact their infectious musical ad for “fun home,” the family’s pet name for the funeral home their father runs out of their house; as flashback—when Alison recalls the first outwardly “butch” woman she ever saw, Skylar Lynn Matthews sings “Ring of Keys” with great stage presence, capturing the giddy innocence of the song’s essence remarkably well; as group fantasy—as when the entire cast does a Partridge Family-style rendering of “Raincoat of Love,” that’s catchy, endearing, and cheesy, giving us instant insight into the provenance of Alison’s fondest pop associations.

Christiane Noll as Helen, foreground, Ali Louis Bourzguiz and Aaron Lazar, background, in Fun Home; photo by Mike Marques

The show’s more harrowing songs come mostly in the final third, as the darker elements that keep coming up—Bruce’s seduction ploys, his “do what you want but risk shameful embarrassment” directives to Small Alison, and other potentially harmful moments, including Small Alison’s first sight of a dead body—finally begin to overwhelm the fuzzier, feel-good elements. Christiane Noll’s Helen, who has been a kind of fleeting presence for most of the show, steps fully to center-stage to deliver “Days and Days.” It's the strongest fully mature song in the show and Noll’s rendition, full of pathos and a command of life lessons that, arguably, Alison still hasn’t grasped, is definitive.

In rendering Bruce’s “Edges of the World,” Lazar almost lets us into the emotional crux of this complicated man, but the sense seems to be that he—unlike his wife—doesn’t have a satisfying narrative to hang his heartbreak on. In general, Lazar, best known for his role in FOX’s Filthy Rich, does an estimable job with a role that requires a very episodic treatment: we see Bruce as he’s seen by his daughter at various times in her life and the effort to depict scenes she didn’t see only underscores how little she knows of his true feelings.

Sarah Beth Pfeifer as Alison Aaron Lazar as Bruce in Fun Home; photo by Mike Marques

This comes out in the fraught number “Telephone Wire,” where adult Alison fills in for Medium Alison—who actually took that last drive with dad—and can only maunder over his inability to connect while Bruce keeps up his usual deadpan bonhomie. Whatever we’re meant to feel about this missed opportunity for a possible rencontre, the song keeps us at a distance because neither character’s full interiority is available, Alison—at the time—too young, and Bruce, as ever, too remote.

Of the three CT productions of Fun Home I’ve seen, the current production at TheaterWorks is best. The elements of the show that I’ve found wanting—particularly in Alison’s overview of the past—here seem better managed. I felt more emphatically that Alison, onstage, is dramatizing an effort to make a tellable story from fragments—of memory, of fantasy, of history—and not always sure of the result. This effect was nicely underscored by the sketches and scrawls that, as projections, decorate the stage and at times write over the actors. Key to what works here is how well the space is enlisted to make us inhabit a mind at work with its misery, mysteries, and memorable joys.

Sarah Beth Pfeifer as Alison, Aaron Lazar as Bruce in Fun Home at TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Mike Marques

The show has been extended through November 6.

Fun Home
Music by Jeanine Tesori
Book and Lyrics by Lisa Kron
Based on the graphic novel by Alison Bechdel
Directed by Rob Ruggiero
Music Direction by Jeff Cox

Set Design: Luke Cantarella; Costume Design: Herin Kaputkin; Lighting Design: Rob Denton; Sound Design: Joanna Lynne Staub; Projection Design: Camilla Tassi; Director of Production: Mike Lenaghan; Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Theresa Stark; Casting: Hardt Casting, LLC

Musicians:
Jeff Cox, conductor/keyboard; Morgan Brown, guitars; Kevin Huhn, bass; Harry Kliewe, reeds; Celeste Cumming, cello; Elliot Wallace, drums/percussion; Selah Kwak, violin/viola

Cast:
Jasper Burger, Ali Louis Bourzgui, Sam Duncan, Aaron Lazar, Myles Low, Skylar Lynn Matthews, Julia Nightingale, Christiane Noll, Sarah Beth Pfiefer, Cameron Silliman

TheaterWorks Hartford
October 8-October 30, 2022; extended through November 6

Catching Up

Review of 4000 Miles, Westport Country Playhouse

4000 Miles, Amy Herzog’s popular intergenerational play from the early 2010s, is up at Westport Country Playhouse in a handsome production with lead performances worth seeing, particularly the versatile Mia Dillon. It may be the least confrontational play I’ve seen David Kennedy direct, but that’s not to say the script is wholly benign, it’s just that strong issues and gut-wrenching dramatic turns are in short supply. It’s a family comedy-drama in which a young man, Leo (Clay Singer), 21, has biked cross-country from Seattle to Manhattan. He drops in unexpectedly on Vera, his 91-year-old maternal grandmother, after a rebuff from his girlfriend. The play meanders through the time Leo and Vera spend together as Leo tries to put his life back together after a series of events running from awkward to devastatingly traumatic has more or less derailed him. But not from keeping fit, keeping active, and trying to live his best life.

Clay Singer as Leo, Mia Dillon as Vera in Westport Country Playhouse’s production of 4000 Miles, directed by David Kennedy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The charm of the play is in how it lets us see Leo through Vera’s eyes and Vera through Leo’s but also lets us make up our own minds about how we might relate to either. Which is a way of saying that whether you’re closer to your twenties or closer to your nineties or somewhere in the huge middle ground, you might find yourself veering from one side to the other. Not that the “sides” are that clearly demarcated. It’s more a question of how families imagine themselves and the places of the people within them. Leo is stepping away from whatever has been expected of him up till now, while Bec (Lea DiMarchi), his sometime girlfriend, is stepping away from him. And Vera, not all that cuddly, gets to relearn patience and compassion in dealing with the markedly younger generation.

The support Leo gets from Vera is prickly, most of the time, but that’s to be expected. She’s getting up there and sometimes “loses” her words and sometimes just gets irritated with all the things there are to be irritated about—like computers and her bossy daughter and the loss of the last of “the octogenarians” (a sort of old-age support group we could use a flashback scene with) and her phone-buddy/neighbor who is “a pain the ass” but one of the few dependable people in her life. It’s a life that hit its prime when it was cool and progressive to be a Communist, or “Lefty” (like, the 1940s), and now just looks on from a spacious rent-controlled apartment—with great bookshelves, a skylight, and lived-in clutter (Arnulfo Maldonado, scenic design) with a great view we don’t get to see. It’s a wonder she doesn’t have people staying over with her all the time. How could she refuse to share?

Clay Singer as Leo, Mia Dillon as Vera in 4000 Miles, at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by David Kennedy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Early in the play, after an opening scene that feels really awkward and off-balance (as it’s meant to), Clay Singer floats a truly charming smile as he says “grandma” and for a second we see Leo as he might have been as a kid saying the word for the first time or at least remembering what it was like to be a kid who could charm the old girl. From that feeling comes most of the best stuff in the play, as when Vera simply beams at Leo for remembering what his deceased grand-dad’s voice sounded like. There are of course tensions and misunderstandings and jumping to conclusions but people who have been spouses, partners or roommates for years often have worse. Dillon and Singer create an odd couple—he’s very tall, she’s not; he speaks with a kind of surfer-stoner rhythm that is never in a hurry to get anywhere and he often smiles at his own words as though simply fond of his own voice; she’s a New Yorker and stringent, acerbic and energetic. The chemistry works and this production takes its time, letting the characters grope toward each other.

Lea DMarchi as Bec, Mia Dillon as Vera in 4000 Miles, at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by David Kennedy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

There are two roles for young actresses, and neither role is as good as it might be. The scene in which Bec seems to drop from the sky onto the couch with Vera doesn’t do much to make the character useful. Her scene much later, mostly with Leo, is better because it comes as an important culmination for this couple who have been through some hard things. It’s to Lea DiMarchi’s great credit that she is able to develop her character believably in the space of two scenes very different in mood and placement within the play. The other supporting role features Phoebe Holden as a quick pickup named Amanda, a Parsons student aiming to be an arts celebrity. The scene tries to interject some comical sexy moments and maybe even a look askance at the dating styles of the newish century, but finally collapses into odd quirks—and makes us wonder why Leo would think it’s OK to start up the sexual machinery on his grandma’s couch when she’s just down the hall. Not that we’re really surprised by anything Leo does or doesn’t do.

Clay Singer as Leo, Phoebe Holden as Amanda in 4000 Miles, at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by David Kennedy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

In any case, Amanda has cool clothes (Maiko Matsushima, Costumes) and ties into a very undeveloped subplot concerning Leo’s feelings for his adopted—of Chinese descent—sister. And that bit of characterization—if that’s what it is—is a good example of how some choices in the play feel a bit questionable. As if the mark of a “good play” is the unexpected detail, the odd, juicy tidbit dropped into conversations for the sake of “interest.” Such details feel a bit scattershot when what we might really benefit from is Leo and Vera hashing out what’s like to be starting out in and coming to the end in a particular family with all its particular baggage. When they do hit moments that matter, Dillon and Singer deliver, as when Leo tells what happened to his friend and his gutsy reaction, or when Vera finally says something nice about her neighbor.

It's good that the play ends as it does, otherwise we might want to show up next week to see what else Leo learns about Vera’s past and what else Vera finds out about Leo’s relationships. As it is, 4000 Miles is only playing through next weekend so get the goods while you can.

Mia Dillon as Vera Connell in 4000 Miles, Westport Country Playhouse, directed by David Kennedy (photo by Carol Rosegg)

4000 Miles
By Amy Herzog
Directed by David Kennedy
Featuring Mia Dillon

Scenic Design: Arnulfo Maldonado; Lighting Design: Carolina Ortiz Herrara; Costume Design: Maiko Matsushima; Sound Design: Fitz Patton; Intimacy Coach: Michael Rossmy; Props Supervisor: Sean Sanford; Dramaturg: Dana Tanner-Kennedy; Production Stage Manager: Shane Schnetzler

Cast: Mia Dillon, Lea DiMarchi, Phoebe Holden, Clay Singer

Westport Country Playhouse
August 23-September 4, 2022

The Family Business

Review of Kim’s Convenience, Westport Country Playhouse

The set is an incredibly lifelike convenience store by scenic designer You-Shin Chen. Before the action began I sat admiring the three vents that run across the heating/a-c duct above the store. Those vents didn’t look fake or new; they looked the way the vents would look: worn, serviceable. Into the store walks Appa (David Shih) and his manner isn’t of someone trapped in a place he’d like to get out of. It’s his domain. He pours himself a coffee and settles into whatever the day brings on. This is a story about how things look to this man, a character study of a working man the playwright knows well.

Heart-warming and amusing, Ins Choi’s Kim’s Convenience, playing at Westport Country Playhouse through July 17, is like a friendly local spot you’re happy to visit. The play, which spawned a CBC sitcom in 2016 that ran for five seasons and is available on Netflix, has features you’ll immediately recognize from other popular shows: the work-place—here, the store—that unites most of the action, the family dynamic of intergenerational dysfunction, and the immigrant experience—in this case of Koreans to Canada (the convenience store is located in Toronto)—as mixing both ethnic specificity and the collective features of how strangers become neighbors. It’s familiar, but with a difference.

Chuja Seo as Umma, David Shih as Appa in Kim’s Convenience, directed by Nelson T. Eusebio III, at Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Indeed, you could easily reduce the story to its types: the bossy patriarch and his flustered wife (known only as Appa and Umma (Chuja Seo), to underscore that this is a Mom and Pop store), the potentially slacker daughter now turning thirty, still at home, unattached and vaguely a photographer (Janet, played by Cindy Im), the miscreant son (Jung, played by Hyunmin Rhee) who ran off after a physical altercation with Appa and whose whereabouts only Umma knows. Add a number of small “community figure” roles and Alex, a possible love interest from the neighborhood—all played by Eric R. Williams—and you’ve got the potential for any number of vignettes about how these folks get by and what sort of problems they meet with.

At the center of it all is the man who keeps the store, a figure who exemplifies the very notion of upwardly mobile merchant. Early in the play, a local wheeler-dealer (Mr. Lee—known approvingly as “the black man with the Korean name”) makes a big offer to buy the store, but it’s not about moving on up for Appa. It’s about his need to have “a story,” or, as we might say, “an identity.” Without the store, which he needs to hand on intact, there’s no public role for his life.

The key, for entertainment value, is how this character comes across. If too sentimental, we’ll get bored; if too silly, we’ll not take him seriously. The laughter is not only at Appa—the way we laugh at misguided dads from Archie Bunker to Homer Simpson—but with him as we notice how much he notices. And the sentiment is earned by the way we gradually become aware of how heartfelt his world is.

David Shih as Appa, Cindy Im as Janet in Kim’s Convenience, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

And of course there are life lessons along the way: the main one being that everyone in this play (and in the world the play wants to mirror) have stories just as heartfelt. All the characters want to get along with the others, but they also want something—mostly we could call it “respect,” or “appreciation,” or just the sense of fellow feeling that means someone else understands. And that’s what you’re mainly investing in watching such a play: your understanding. The showdown between Appa and Janet over who owes whom what is one of those universal parent-child situations even if it doesn’t always come to such deliberate expression. As a scene, it’s a well-done dramatic crux. Matched at the close by Appa’s test of his repentant son.

Hyunmin Rhee as Jung, Chuja Seo as Umma in Kim’s Convenience, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Director Nelson T. Eusebio III has his cast use this space extremely well. It never feels stagey or trapped in a fake space. The two scenes outside the store have a different feel as they should. In one Umma visits with Jung in a church and it’s striking how worldly this woman, who speaks mostly Korean to her husband in his domain, suddenly seems. She’s part of a church and so of a different community, one not defined by family or trade. The other is a flashback to when Appa and pregnant Umma, newcomers to Canada, are trying to name the store. There are joke names—7-12—that show not only how Appa views success but how much he wants his brand to be recognizable. “Kim’s Convenience” says it all.

Most of the best scenes involve Appa and Janet. First of all, kudos to costume designer Lux Haac: her wardrobe makes Janet look cool and that helps us enter Appa’s world too. His daughter is nothing like her mother, nor like him, and yet he wants to help her make a life for herself, without really understanding what that might entail. The scenes when he “helps” negotiate the halting date relations between Janet and Alex are funny as physical comedy and blossoming romance together (Michael Rossmy, fight director and intimacy coach earns his keep) and play on the old tropes of the “shotgun wedding” in a way that lets us feel the force of family as an aspect of marriage.

Eric R. Williams as Alex, Cindy Im as Janet in Kim’s Convenience, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Everyone puts in a good performance here: Chuja Seo’s cautiously supportive Umma, Hyunmin Rhee’s sympathetically put-upon Jung, Cindy Im’s mostly patient Janet, and Eric R. Williams’ slick businessman, flustered Islander, and shy but persistent Alex. Meanwhile, David Shih is a marvel. Choi’s dialogue calls for the heavily accented pronunciation and truncated syntax of the non-native speaker of English, particularly one converting from Korean, and Shih gets it all across with a nuanced command of how someone who speaks with conviction finds the means to make his meaning felt. It’s wonderful and often inadvertently (from Appa’s perspective) funny.

And the show’s comedy works because it’s broad enough, but with the recognition that all of us at times look or sound ridiculous and, when we do, we become cartoon characters in much the same way. And we also know—”this my serious face,” as Appa says—when our deepest values are at stake. Kim’s Convenience gets all that out into the open—for our convenience.

Hyunmin Rhee as Jung, David Shih as Appa in Kim’s Convenience, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Kim’s Convenience
By Ins Choi
Directed by Nelson T. Eusebio III

Scenic Design: You-Shin Chen; Costume Design: Lux Haac; Lighting Design: Marie Yokoyama; Sound Design: Twi McCallum; Dialect Coaches: Zoë Kim, Bibi Mama; Fight Director/ Intimacy Coach: Michael Rossmy; Props Supervisor: Sean Sanford; Production Stage Manager: Megan Smith; Assistant Stage Manager/Fight Captain: Kevin Jinghong Zhu

Cast: Cindy Im, Hyunmin Rhee, Chuja Seo, David Shih, Eric R. Williams

Westport Country Playhouse
June 5-17, 2022

May the Farce Be With You

Review of Kiss My Aztec, Hartford Stage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hartford Stage
June 1-26, 2022

The Straight and Narrow Revisited

Review of Straight White Men, Westport Country Playhouse

Young Jean Lee writes provocative, entertaining plays, usually with an off-kilter or oddly conceived angle. Straight White Men, now playing at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Mark Lamos, can stand as a prime exhibit. The play first opened in New York, Off-Broadway at the Public in 2014, directed by Lee; then was revised and produced at Steppenwolf in Chicago in 2017 and in California in 2018, and then went to Broadway (the first Broadway show by an Asian American woman) in 2018. A critic’s darling of Off-Broadway, Lee has concocted a play that is almost “straight” itself: seeming to be a straight-forward story of male-bonding and dysfunction at Christmas—how much more all-American can you get?

Richard Kline as Ed, Nick Westrate as Drew, Denver Milord as Matt, Bill Army as Jake in Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Mark Lamos (photo by Carol Rosegg)

To make sure we know this is a Lee play, we’re given a sort of intro. Before the play starts we’re meant to experience club music—recorded by non-white, non-straight performers—at deafening levels while two “Persons in Charge” circulate through the audience, welcoming, chatting, handing out earplugs if required. As the play begins, the charming and elegantly attired “Persons”—Akiko Akita, non-binary, of Japanese descent, and Ashton Muñiz, gay and African American—take either side of the stage and clue us in, to make sure we understand that, in the script’s words, “the show is under the control of people who are not straight white men” (perhaps there is a place where theater is the province of straight white men, solely or mostly; if so, I haven’t been there this century). It all seems a bit precious, quaint even, but achieves Lee’s effect: we perceive her irony toward her characters and the familiar methods of theater’s make-believe, and we should be aware that we’re watching what she calls in the playbill “an identity-politics show.”

So the unshakable notion that people are best understood through tags about sexual orientation, gender, and racial characteristics (particularly pigmentation) is put before us as defining, a way of turning the tables on the privilege of whiteness and straightness and maleness as the default perspective of American culture, so that now it can be labeled, just like everyone else.

Ashton Muñiz, Person in Charge, Denver Milord as Matt, Akiko Akita, Person in Charge in Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The play concerns three grown brothers visiting their father at Christmas, and is set in Dad’s basement, a man-cave complete, in Kristen Robinson’s wonderfully detailed set, with a half-bath and a washer-dryer, TV, couch, recliner and video-game console. Lest we think we will be dwelling in this cave with Neanderthals who never heard tell of a perspective “other” than straight, white and male, Lee makes sure we grasp how educated and accomplished these fellows are: Drew (Nick Westrate), the youngest, is an award-winning novelist and teaches at a college; Jake (Bill Army), the middle-child, is a successful banker who married, fathered children with and is now divorced from an African American woman; and Matt (Denver Milord), the eldest, graduated from Harvard where, for a time, he participated in a program to build houses in Ghana, and is celebrated by his younger siblings for his teenage penchant for satire (we get a glimpse of his comical send-up of Oklahoma! as a paean to white supremacy); and Ed (Richard Kline), their dad, is a widower who fondly recalls how their mother repurposed Monopoly into a board game called Privilege (pass go, pay $200 to the community chest for being white) to help make sure her brood wouldn’t “grow up to be assholes.”

Not assholes, no, but not exactly grown-ups either. Regardless of their accomplishments, back at home the trio tend to revert to kidstuff: horseplay, rough-housing, ritual humiliations of one form or another, and of course mock disco routines, all of it vigorously choreographed by Alison Solomon. It’s conventional enough to lull us into a form of sitcom cheer where we suppose the jockeying among the lads is going to eventually become a celebration of sensitivity or some kind of crisis of identity. It mostly is the latter, but Lee doesn’t end there in quite the usual way.

Bill Army as Jake, Nick Westrate as Drew, Denver Milord as Matt, Richard Kline as Ed in Straight White Men, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

At the heart of the play is the question of the status of Matt. In the midst of a plaid-PJs-clad dinner of Chinese takeout on the couch, Matt starts sobbing, briefly. This raises a flag that will exercise the other three men, particularly his two younger brothers, throughout the rest of the play. Why is he not happy? Why is he, the one considered the most promising, wasting his time as an office assistant for a progressive organization, living at home with Dad while trying to pay-off his student debt?

The interpretations thrown at Matt’s predicament tend to make his refusal heroic—in Jake’s comically earnest view, Matt is rejecting success as a noble effort to let lesser-privileged Others have their day—or drastic—in Drew’s view, as someone who figured it all out with the aid of a therapist, Matt needs professional help. Ed is not so sure, even if he sees the notion of “helping Dad around the house” to be more of a dodge than a necessary task. Matt, for all his insistence that he’s fine, is also clearly uncomfortable with having to account for himself to the guys. A “mock interview” scene lets us see that he’s just not willing to speak the lingo of self-promotion they demand of him.

And that’s when the “identity-politics” show becomes “identity-crisis” show: all these guys know is what they have achieved; they are who they are because they can be described—professionally, sexually, racially, demographically, and so on. Matt, at this point, doesn’t know who or what he should be. We see that he has taken on the quiet domestic and office tasks generally associated with females in the work force, but he’s not deliberately making a case for that. It’s just the level that he’s at, right now. Is he too old and accomplished for a “gap year”? Is the danger of him becoming what the guys call “a loser” (aka, a slacker) too much for them to handle?

Yes, in the sense that none of them can deal with this version of Matt, his not living up to their expectations becomes the bummer that taints the party of privilege. Whatever a “straight white male” is, he can’t just drop out of it without throwing shade.

Nick Westrate as Drew, Bill Army as Jake, Denver Milord as Matt, Richard Kline as Ed in Straight White Man, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Which reminds me there’s another meaning to the word “straight,” beyond questions of sexual orientation: in comedy the “straight man” is the one who doesn’t get hit with the pie, the one who isn’t wacky and zany and given to the tropes that desperately seek a laugh. It may be that these white straight men in Lee’s play are just now learning the joke’s on them.

What makes Lee’s approach work is the charm of it all—even if quaint, it’s cute. And so we can let her Brecht-lite be just that. It’s not about remaking theater or smashing the bourgeoisie or even ending the dominance of straight white men in our politics and worlds of business and finance and law. It’s just a ploy to make us chuckle about representation as the weird act of faith it tends to wind up as, theatrically speaking. Lee’s play offers a fun night of theater, directed with great panache by Lamos, and played with affectionate verisimilitude by its cast. Straight white men and those who—despite everything—still love them will likely be amused and touched.

Denver Milord as Matt, Nick Westrate as Drew, Bill Army as Jake in Straight White Men, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Straight White Men
By Young Jean Lee
Directed by Mark Lamos

Scenic Design: Kristen Robinson; Costume Design: Fabian Fidel Aguilar; Lighting Design: Masha Tsimiring; Composer/Sound Design: Michael Keck; Choreographer: Alison Solomon; Fight Director: Michael Rossmy; Props Supervisor: Sean Sanford; Production Stage Manager: Shane Schnetzler; Assistant Stage Manager: Allie York

Cast: Akiko Akita, Bill Army, Richard Kline, Denver Milord, Ashton Muñiz, Nick Westrate

Westport Country Playhouse
May 24-June 5, 2022

A Hornet's Nest

REVIEW OF QUEEN, LONG WHARF THEATRE

One of the best things about Madhuri Shekar’s play Queen, now at Long Wharf Theatre, directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar, is that it humanizes scientific research—and shows that that’s where the problems start. The play dramatizes how emotions and the personal trajectories of careers, as well as the tensions of collaboration and subordination can deflect and distort.

Avanthika Srinivasan as Sanam, Stephanie Janssen as Ariel in Madhuri Shekar’s Queen, directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar, at Long Wharf Theatre (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

In Shekar’s play, two up-and-coming graduate researchers, Ariel Spiegel (Stephanie Janssen) and Sanam Shah (Avanthika Srinivasan), have been conducting experiments whose results seem definite. Their research, under Dr. Philip Hayes (Ben Livingston), is slated to appear in the prestigious journal, Nature, and as we meet the duo they are celebrating on a night out. However, there’s a slight hitch. Sanam reports that the most recent data has skewed their findings, suggesting that there has been an error somewhere, or at least that more trials are necessary to have definitive results.

All this might not matter too much—except that the research looks at what has caused bees to desert their hives, bringing about devastating effects in ecology and in the food chain. And the culprit behind the loss of bees and hives has been determined to be a pesticide manufactured by chemical—and engineered-food—giant Monsanto. In other words, the stakes are very high that the research prove, categorically, what it argues. Dr. Hayes’ immediate reaction is to say “fix it,” which means finding out where the problem lies, but which also assumes that their initial findings are correct.

Stephanie Janssen as Ariel, Ben Livingston as Dr. Hayes, Avanthika Srinivasan as Sanam in Queen at Long Wharf Theatre (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Shekar surrounds this “workplace” problem with the details of the researchers’ lives. Ariel is a single mom who once worked in bee-keeping and who has a strong feeling for nature not simply as material for experiment. Her path into academic research has required some sacrifices and she doesn’t have the safety net that Sanam has. Sanam comes from a well-to-do family but the hitch there is that they expect her to find a husband, preferably one they choose for her. The notion that she might simply prefer to devote her life to research—she is a brilliant statistician—would cause a family crisis.

Keshav Moodliar as Arvind Patel, Avanthika Srinivasan as Sanam Shah in Queen at Long Wharf Theatre (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

And thus we meet Arvind Patel (Keshav Moodliar), a hedge-fund broker who is in the market for a wife. That makes this possible match sound very crass, and that element is there from the start, and yet Shekar’s script, and Moodliar’s affable charm, makes the two an engaging couple, even if at times at cross purposes. Without giving too much away, I saw Arvind’s last line to Sanam as putting their relationship in perspective, and we may be grateful that, even in the fraught ideologies of our day, two people can meet and interact without either having to take a superior moral ground.

Unfortunately that’s not the case outside romance. Back in the lab, emotions escalate quickly. As Ariel, Stephanie Janssen has a tough role: in one scene, with Sanam, she argues for the dark personal consequences of their publication not going forward as planned; in the next scene, with Dr. Hayes, she’s all about the high-minded reasons the research should be tabled. It’s a bit too bald a portrayal of the two sides of Ariel and makes her seem rather a loose cannon (though it seems we’re meant to see her as a kind of exemplar).

Ben Livingston as Dr. Philip Hayes in Madhuri Shekar’s Queen at Long Wharf Theatre, directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Likewise, Dr. Hayes has to go from supportive, mostly hands-off oversight to angry and threatening patriarch of a flawed system—or something. Anyway, it doesn’t play well, particularly as the script gives him, if not moral high ground, then at least the pragmatic sense of how these things go. Publication, even with flawed data that can later be disproven (or not), is better than not publishing and losing the momentum of their research. In other words, the world of academic publishing as seen from inside rather than in the hyper-speak of journalism.

Who emerges from this messy confrontation best is Sanam. Srinivasan’s performance is a bit tentative at times, but I felt that helped to add a human flaw to a character who is great at what she does. Her arguments with Ariel seem to give her the losing hand (both times, even when she switches to Ariel’s initial view!), but only if one is driven by emotion over pragmatism. The duo are given a nice conciliatory final scene ministering to bee hives which includes a bit too symbolically the sacrifice of a queen.

Avanthika Srinivasan as Sanam Shah, Stephanie Janssen as Ariel Spiegel in Queen at Long Wharf Theatre (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

And in the end it’s Sanam who sees that the new data might not be an error or an unhappy anomaly but could in fact be pointing to important new findings. So while Ariel praises the bees in her emotive way, it’s Sanam who actually sees what the bees are saying. As a scientist should.

Queen has been designed by scenic designer Junghyun Georgia Lee to be in the round. The seating surrounds hexagonal conference tables that are moved about in different configurations for the different scenes, but which maintain the aura of research and study. The play feels a bit set off within a bubble not aided by the fact that the theater is too large. The show is moving to Off-Broadway where, I imagine, it will gain a bit more intimacy in its staging, making the in-the-round format have more dramatic impact.

Keshav Moodliar as Arvind Patel, Avanthika Srinivasan as Sanam Shah in Queen at Long Wharf Theatre (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Indeed, this is the last production slated to appear at Long Wharf Theatre’s storied theater at 222 Sargent Drive in New Haven, which has proven too large a space for LWT’s Off-Broadway-style offerings to fill. The new plan, as presented by Artistic Director Jacob Padrón, suggests that if you can’t get the audience to come to you, you have to go to the audience. LWT will begin its career as an itinerant theater in the Greater New Haven area sometime in 2023.

Queen
By Madhuri Shekar
Directed by Aneesha Kudtarkar

Scenic Design: Junghyun Georgia Lee; Lighting Design: Yuki Nakase Link; Costume Design: Phuong Nguyen; Sound Design and Original Music: Uptown Works (Daniela Hart, Noel Nichols, Bailey Trierweiler); Stage Manager: Courteney Leggett; Assistant Stage Manager: Tamar Friedman

Cast: Stephanie Janssen, Ben Livingston, Keshav Moodliar, Avanthika Srinivasan

Long Wharf Theatre
May 17-June 5, 2022

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

Strange Bedfellows

Review of Lost in Yonkers, Hartford Stage

The tensions of family life in the 1940s get a revisit in this revival of Neil Simon’s popular period play, Lost in Yonkers, winner of both a Pulitzer and a Tony in 1991. At Hartford Stage, Marsha Mason, a four-time Oscar nominee (who has memorably played a number of Simon roles and was married to the playwright for a decade), stars as the matriarch of the Kurnitz family. Mason fully inhabits the role of an unsympathetic termagant who, oddly enough, runs an ice cream and sweets parlor and lives in the apartment above it.

Marsha Mason as Grandma Kurnitz, Gabriel Amoroso as Arty in Lost in Yonkers, at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The production also benefits from Mason’s participation as co-director, along with Rachel Alderman who directed the very winning contemporary family comedy Cry It Out at Hartford Stage in 2019. How the duties of co-directors fall is anyone’s guess, but my guess is that Mason’s participation means this production is close to the vision of the play as conceived by Simon. Which means, in practice, no ham-fisted efforts to “update” the play into our present. The play’s greatest strength is in its recall of bygone times, as links to the world of Grandma Kurnitz continue to fade away.

It's wartime—1942—and Grandma Kurnitz’s son Eddie has to find a place for his two boys to stay so that he can take a job that will let him pay back the loan shark he owes for the costs of his deceased wife’s cancer treatments. That backstory comes fully into focus as Eddie, played with affecting fatherly panache by Jeff Skowron, pleads nervously with his sons to try to win over their unpleasant grandmother—a woman he himself has mostly avoided since his marriage—so he can realize his plan. It’s kind of do or die.

Hayden Berry as Jay and Gabriel Amoroso as Arty in Lost in Yonkers, at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The boys, 15 and 13, are played as timid when around adults and a bit more likely to be sarcastic when together. The younger, Arty (Gabriel Amoroso), is the one more likely to land zingers and Amoroso does a good job with his timing and the pitch of his voice. As we see in one charming moment, Arty’s got moxie. As the elder boy, Hayden Bercy doesn’t get to be as pithy and some of his lines lose rhythm and get swallowed. It’s not unlike how nervous teens often speak and so fits as part of his characterization.

Sharing the apartment is Eddie’s sister Bella (Andrea Syglowski), a thirtyish woman who acts at times more childlike than the boys. In the old days, friends might just call her “ditzy,” but she’s meant to be developmentally stunted, a situation that is sort of “explained” by the anxiety of growing up as the baby girl of Grandma Kurnitz. It’s a role that is charming in its energy and spirit, and Syglowski makes the part her own. Key to that is the fact that Bella is amorphous, sometimes surprisingly adult, sometimes insistent as only a petulant child can be. Her attempts to grow beyond her mother’s assumptions about her limitations is the main secondary plot to the boys’ plight of simply trying to maintain.

Jeff Skowron as Eddie and Andrea Syglowski at Bella in Lost in Yonkers, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The story is told through the boys’ eyes, so they become somewhat passive observers and we don’t learn anything they don’t. Relevant to that limitation is another subplot provided by their Uncle Louie who shows up at the house to lay low while some moblike individuals are out to find him. His actual activities, which the boys can’t really imagine, don’t get fully illuminated and we, like the boys, have to take Louie as we find him. It’s a plum featured actor part and Michael Nathanson makes the most of it, striding about before the boys as both tough and mysterious, full of his own long litany of abuse from “ma” and his sense of how the family dynamic works, including his read of their somewhat squeamish and well-meaning father. Louie’s engaging time onstage becomes magnified by the curiosity and skeptical awe with which the boys view him.

Gabriel Amoroso as Arty, Hayden Bercy as Jay, Michael Nathanson as Louie in Lost in Yonkers, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

A smaller part goes to the other sister, Gert, victim of a somewhat cruel gag by Simon: she has a speech impediment—more like a breathing impediment—that mostly occurs when around her mother. The initial titters as Libya Vaynberg, very game in the role, enacts the comic tic soon become strained. It might help if Gert were given some good lines but Simon seemed to think they’d be drowned in the laughter at the voice.

Finally, Mason. Grandma Kurnitz is a good role for Mason to play at this time in her life as a role that requires full maturity. Grandma Kurnitz is no secret softie waiting for the right mix of family hijinks to expose her heart of gold. She’s what is often called “a force of nature.” She does soften as the play goes on, but only slightly. More to the point, she comes to see that her version of things isn’t the only version, and that tends to be a lesson one learns from one’s children’s children, not from their parents. That’s very much the case here.

A key factor in the boys’ time in Yonkers is seeing how Jay helps Bella stand-up to her mother, joined by the fact that Grandma sees in Arty someone who can tell the truth, rather than flatter or dissemble. Which is to say that, no thanks to her, the kids are alright and if she wants to see that ship before it sails out of sight she best change her tune, at least a fraction. And that’s a good moral for a grandparent to learn in a three-generation tale.

Marsha Mason as Grandma Kurnitz in Lost in Yonkers, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

In the end it’s about that old line from Robert Frost: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Bella, Louie, Eddie and his two sons: they all make a home of necessity with Grandma Kurnitz, a woman whose own traumatic backstory and personal losses mean that she herself has not been at home, as in comfortable and happy, in a long, long time. The great fortitude in the character—which Mason brings out so tellingly—is that she doesn’t expect to be or believe she deserves to be. Life is hard and it doesn’t make sense, in her view, to try to make it easier for others out of kindness. They need to be able to cope. It’s a view of things that, from the U.S. perspective, has always been “old world.”

That world gets older all the time. It’s not that Simon’s script from the 1990s is nostalgic for those times—at all. It’s just that there’s no getting around where you come from and what those kin who were here before you were up to. In its fond, wise-cracking way, Simon’s play pays tribute to the great duress—the War—that made strange bedfellows of three generations.

Lost in Yonkers
By Neil Simon
Co-Directed by Marsha Mason and Rachel Alderman

Scenic Design: Lauren Helpern; Costume Design: An-Lin Dauber; Lighting Design: Aja M. Jackson; Original Music & Sound Design: Broken Chord; Wig & Hair Design: Charles G. LaPointe; Dialect Coach: Patrick Mulryan; Dramaturg: Victoria Abrash; Production Stage Manager: Kelly Hardy

Cast: Gabriel Amoroso, Hayden Berry, Marsha Mason, Michael Nathanson, Jeff Skowron, Andrea Syglowski, Liba Vaynberg

Hartford Stage
April 7-May 1, 2022

A Searching "Normal"

Review of Next to Normal, Westport Country Playhouse

Westport Country Playhouse is back with the first play of its first full season since the pandemic shutdowns. The production of the Pulitzer-winning musical Next to Normal by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, directed and choreographed by Marcos Santana, with musical direction by Emily Croome, was in the works to appear in the season that was pre-empted in 2020.

The cast of Next to Normal at Westport Country Playhouse, directed by Marcos Santana (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The show offers a full-bodied return to theater in person, with plenty of movement and heartfelt singing. If you know the show, you know it’s a gripping musical play that highlights the passions behind the problems in this family drama. Westport’s revival features non-traditional casting in the sense that the story, which has typically been centered on a white middle-class family, now takes place in the home of a family of color, led by Dar. Lee. See. Ah. in the role of Diana, a wife and mother who is trying to cope with depression and the “valleys and mountains” of bipolar mood swings.

Dar. Lee. See. Ah. as Diana and Wilson Jermaine Heredia as Dan in Next to Normal, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

I’ve only seen one production of the musical before and there are other marked differences. And that is mostly in how Dar. Lee. See. Ah. handles the role. There is little sense of manic comedy in Diana’s response to her situation, replaced by a stoic endurance. We watch with growing understanding of her illness and her very strong grasp of her own convictions. Dar. Lee. See. Ah.’s moving vocals take us along a trajectory in which Diana’s illness and her identity become mutually supportive. It’s as if Diana really doesn’t want to be freed from her ghosts and that’s one of the most vital things about her. Her situation is a gripping confrontation with the limits of empathy and the loneliness of the interior world.

There’s also a strong contrast with her husband, Dan. Wilson Jermaine Heredia plays him as long-suffering and more than a bit detached. We can see that he’s managed to find a way of managing his feelings which makes sense for the character but doesn’t do much to make his presence impressive. Not until his numbers “How Could I Ever Forget?” and “Why Stay?/A Promise” midway through the second act is there a sense of what this story might feel like from his point of view.

Ashley LaLonde as Natalie, Wilson Jermaine Heredia as Dan, and Dar. Lee. See. Ah. as Diana in Next to Normal, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

More vocal and demanding on that score is Ashley Lalonde as their daughter Natalie. She’s impatient with both father and mother and often pitches her discontent with strident shutdowns of their overtures. It’s in her moments at piano practice in the music room, where she meets her casual but steady would-be boyfriend Henry (Gian Perez) that her vulnerability fully registers. One of Natalie’s best numbers, “Superboy and Invisible Girl,” makes the case for her discontent within the family structure.

The high drama of the parental world is furthered by Katie Thompson as the doctors consulted to help Diana cope; one is portrayed as a rock chanteuse with an overbearing and aggressive manner, the other, more diffident, is in the business of providing the drugs that rob Diana of the feelings that, to her mind, make her Diana.

Dar. Lee. See. Ah. as Diana, Daniel J. Maldonado as Gabe, Wilson Jermaine Heredia as Dan in Next to Normal, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The show is marked, then, by strong females supported by male roles that are a bit milquetoast. The exception is the part of Gabe, played with feral intensity by Daniel J. Maldonado. Santana’s direction and choreography come most to life in Maldonado’s leaps and effortless movement through the set’s complex levels like the free spirit he is. The note struck is a kind of “male monster of the Id” who voices a relentless call to Diana to live in a realm more intense if phantasmal. He’s unsettling, to say the least.

Adam Koch’s set is striking, lots of New Brutalist lines and the hard-edged look of stone and glass to suggest a world that lacks warmth, charm and well-being. Within that space, the characters sometimes seem doll-like, dwarfed by space itself, unable to cope with the scope of their dysfunction. The different levels of Diana’s discontent gradually become more humanized through Cory Pattak’s lighting design, which also uses dramatic raking light and silhouettes to express the changes in view even within the same song. Jen Caprio’s costumes veer from very casual and fluid for movement, to odd mixtures that sometimes distract from the mood of a scene, but the changes keep the eye entertained. It’s a visually engaging show.

Dar. Lee. See. Ah. as Diana, Wilson Jermaine Heredia as Dan in Next to Normal, Westport Country Playhouse (photo by Carol Rosegg)

The band has plenty of kick that can sometimes be a bit overpowering in a score where everything is sung and dialogue is minimal. But the big numbers that need to carry emotional weight all score here with a feeling of majesty that increases as the show goes on.

Next to Normal is a singular show, a character study, a family drama, a musical of highs and lows, an exploration of mental illness that becomes in its way a paean to the power of our personal demons. Marcos Santana’s production at Westport is more searching than certain about how best to meet the problem of Diana.

Next to Normal
Music by Tom Kitt
Book and Lyrics by Brian Yorkey
Directed and choreographed by Marcos Santana
Music Direction by Emily Croome

Scenic Designer: Adam Koch; Costume Designer: Jen Caprio; Lighting Designer: Cory Pattak; Sound Designer: Domonic Sack; Associate Director/Choreographer: Natalie Caruncho; Production Stage Manager: Caitlin Kellermeyer; Dramaturg: Katie Ciszek

Cast: Dar. Lee. See. Ah., Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Ashley LaLonde, Daniel J. Maldonado, Gian Perez, Katie Thompson

Musicians: Emily Croome, keyboard; Melody Allegra Berger, violin, keyboard 2; Wes Bourland, bass; Andy Buslovich, guitar; Bobbie Lee Crow III, cello; Arei Sekiguchi, drums and percussion

Westport Country Playhouse
April 6-24, 2022

Making It In America

Review of Dishwasher Dreams, Hartford Stage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hartford Stage
February 24-March 20, 2022

Passing a Reignited Torch

Review of Angry, Raucous & Shamelessly Gorgeous, Hartford Stage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hartford Stage
January 13-February 6, 2022