Give 'em Enough Rope

Review of Rope, Hartford Stage

Let us now praise amazing sets: Riw Rakkulchon, who has presented incredibly handsome and detailed sets at Hartford Stage for All My Sons and The Mousetrap, has created a playing space that suits so well the action and the style of the play Rope as to be almost a seventh character—or is that eighth, since the seventh should by all rights be the unseen young man who appears to be late to a dinner party, then has gone missing, then . . .

The Cast of Rope, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson, set by Riw Rakkulchon

Rope, in its world premiere at Hartford Stage through November 2, is Jeffrey Hatcher's swift and superlative adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's Rope's End (1929), a play I've never read nor seen, which was adapted into a film, called Rope (1948), directed by Alfred Hitchcock (which I did see, once upon a time). All three—Rope, the play, Rope's End, and Rope, the film—bear not a little resemblance to the circumstances surrounding the so-called "crime of the century" back in the 1920s, the famed case known as Leopold and Loeb which, for my money, was best dramatized in the film Compulsion (1959), directed by Richard Fleischer, from a novel about the murder written by Meyer Levin. The latter film was not so much about the murder itself, nor the macabre dinner party hosted by the conspiring killers (the chief event in the original play and in Hitchcock's film and now in Hatcher's version), but rather about the sentencing hearing, in which Clarence Darrow, who defended the duo in real life and kept them from being condemned to death, is played memorably by Orson Welles, with the young would-be Übermenschen played by Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell.

Rope, in the hands of Hatcher and director Melia Bensussen, is a mightily entertaining winner. Their previous collaboration, a gripping adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that was both faithful and innovative, started off Hartford Stage's 2024-25 season. Now, they're back! The production is great to look at: in addition to Rakkulchon’s striking contribution, Risa Ando's Costume Design gives each character a particular style and it's a real pleasure to see such a lovely 1920s dress; Mary Louise Geiger's Lighting Design is impeccable, with lightning design as well, given appropriate thunder in Jane Shaw's Sound Design, and her original musical composition gives us a nicely placed piano interlude. The play's action abounds in graceful touches both verbal and physical, and is dramatic and at times comic, and so very expertly paced. In the playbill Hatcher notes that Hamilton's play, with its three act structure, is "a little creaky." If so, his and Bensussen's version makes sure we don't have time to notice any signs of structural weakness. It crackles and cranks rather than creaks.

Lewis (Ephraim Birney), Brandon (Daniel Neale) in Rope, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

We're faced at once with the fact of the violent demise of an acquaintance of two men who are about to host a dinner party before making their grand getaway. In real life, Loeb and Leopold were college students who killed—in pursuit of the "perfect crime"—an adolescent cousin of Loeb's, to prove their superiority. Here, the duo, called Brandon (the mastermind) and Lewis (a composer), are older and, it seems, a thoroughly haute-bourgeois couple.

Brandon (Daniel Neale), Meriel (Fiona Robberson), Mr. Kentley (James Riordan) in Rope, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The dinner guests are forced to take their refreshments off a rather ponderous trunk quite capable of concealing a corpse. Present are: Meriel (Fiona Robberson), the fiancée of the missing guest, Mr. Kentley (James Riordan), his father, and Kenneth (Nick Saxton), a friend who may have interests of his own in Meriel. The more significant guest is Rupert Cadell (Mark Benninghofen), a former teacher of Brandon and Lewis, who perhaps knows how their minds work better than they think he does.

Rupert Cadell (Mark Benninghofen), Brandon (Daniel Neale) in Rope, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Bookish, cultured, and oh-so arch, Daniel Neale's Brandon has panache to spare, his every move a study in smooth civility, ironically charged, while Ephraim Birney's Lewis is less unflappable. And with good reason: Brandon's the type who, to prove his superior intellect, is liable to place a bit of evidence where it might easily be found. It's classic cat-and-mouse stuff, and watching Brandon and Lewis play their guests as dupes lets us in on a situation both appalling and intriguing. As with any whodunit, murder is all in good fun (until it isn't), giving the proceedings a ready morbid appeal. Here, we already know the culprits' identities, and we may be surprised to find we'd like to see them get away with it. (An effect more easily achieved as we never meet the victim.)

Lewis (Ephraim Birney), Kenneth (Nick Saxton) in Rope, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Cadell, who walks with a cane, is a bit of a Columbo, a bit of a Porfiry (from which Columbo derived), and is mostly a former mentor, invited so that the criminal conspirators will have a last chance to outwit him. Cadell's gradual sense that there is a challenge implied in the entire setup is what keeps us engaged, and Benninghofen gives Cadell enough bristly truculence to make us uncertain whether he's onto something or not.

Rupert Cadell (Mark Benninghofen) in Rope, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

All the actors fully inhabit the characters that Hatcher's nimble dialogue lets them be, upholding the soigné tone of the evening, letting us into the world of people who are always polite, reassuring, and maybe, at times, a bit sinister. The deftness of giving us just enough entertaining repartee while also making us watch out for any slip-ups by the killers or any stumbles-upon-something by the guests is what makes the wheels of this conniving contraption spin.

As with last year's Jekyll and Hyde, Rope is about the evil that may be lurking below the surface. In both plays, there's a central character or two who is compelled to go beyond the bounds of behavioral norms and of commonly held mores. Rope is a play well-armed with knowledge of how those who consider themselves elite may in fact have feet of clay as well as hearts of stone. And that's worth considering and is, in its way, reassuring.

Brandon (Daniel Neale), Meriel (Fiona Robberson) in Rope, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Rope
Adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher
Based on the play Rope's End by Patrick Hamilton
Directed by Melia Bensussen

Scenic Design: Riw Rakkulchon; Costume Design: Risa Ando; Lighting Design: Mary Louise Geiger; Sound Design & Original Composition: Jane Shaw; Wig & Makeup Design: Jodi Stone; Fight Director: Ted Hewlett; Voice & Dialect Coach: Jennifer Scapetis-Tycer; Casting: Alldaffer & Donadio Casting; Production Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Assistant Stage Manager: Julius Cruz; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Mark Benninghofen, Ephraim Birney, Daniel Neale, James Riordan, Fiona Robberson, Nick Saxton

 Hartford Stage
October 10-November 2, 2025

Lost in Translation

Review of English, TheaterWorks, Hartford

Four student desks, a teacher's desk, a whiteboard on rollers, and a grand window with blinds. A woman enters and writes TOEFL: Test of English as a Foreign Language, and under it: English Only. The classroom is in Iran, and the four students are studying English to enhance their prospects in achieving their goals: for Elham, study in an English-based university, for Omid, to make use of his facility with English; for Roya, to reunite with her son's family expatriated to Canada; for Goli, simply to integrate more easily via the lingua franca of today's world. Goli begins the play by saying: English is like “rice, you can do anything you want with it.” That enabling factor will come under serious scrutiny in the course of Sanaz Toossi's Pulitzer-winning play English, playing at TheaterWorks through November 8. Like the class's teacher Marjan, the play remains upbeat throughout, though with many tensions.

Foreground, l to r: Roya (Pantea Ommi), Goli (Anahita Monfared), Elham (Sahar Milani), Omid (Afsheen Misaghi); background: Marjan (Neagheen Homaifar) in English, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Julian Brown

The superlative ensemble cast, directed by Arya Shahi, is a strong factor in the success of this lively production (as are Mary Ellen Stebbins’ Lighting Design and Dina El-Aziz’s Costume Design). Each character is easily differentiated, from the sweet and agreeable Goli (Anahita Monfared) to the competitive and discontented Elham (Sahar Milani), to Omid (Afsheen Misaghi), the only male and possessing almost no Iranian accent, to Roya (Pantea Ommi), a grandmother who, we suspect, may have already learned the best English she will ever speak.

Marjan (Neagheen Homaifar) in English, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Julian Brown

The backstory of Marjan (Neagheen Homaifar) is more intriguing: she spent time abroad in Manchester England, and speaks American English, not without accent. Though asked why she returned to Iran, she never quite explains, but, given her penchant for watching romantic comedies starring Hugh Grant, we suspect it may have had to do with a romance that did or didn't happen. She's now married with a daughter but says she doesn't speak English at home. Her love for the language—she believes conversing in English is one of "the greatest things two people can do together"—is largely restricted to the classroom where she tries her best to keep the students from lapsing into Farsi, their native tongue. Homaifar's excellent portrayal of Marjan shows us someone who is accommodating but also strict. She treats the students as younger than they are, with a tone that makes adults seem to be again in grade school. And, since the level of language she is teaching seems rather basic—we don't see anyone struggling with actually parsing written English—it's easy for her to assert the kindly insistence, somewhat detached yet parental, that seems de rigueur for any classroom teacher. We can't help wanting to know more about her.

Marjan (Neagheen Homaifar), Omid (Afsheen Misaghi) in English, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Julian Brown

Toossi's method in the play is to treat viewers to a succession of days in the classroom—sometimes the class session, sometimes Marjan's office hours. While nothing of great dramatic moment occurs, we learn how each student copes with the issues they face while trying to master a language that none seem to truly admire. For Goli, the language is exciting because she can decipher the meaning of Ricky Martin's "She Bangs," and Omid finds that English-language class is the only place he doesn't speak English with an accent, compared to the others. The students aren't beginners, but they still feel overwhelmed when listening to a straight-forward dialogue in basic English. The rigors of trying to learn a language is a major dramatic factor in the play, and all the classroom behavior—including some rudeness, favoritism, and awkward questions and answers—is finely observed and rendered. Milani's Elham, in particular, is the sort of figure who speaks loudly even when silent.

Roya (Pantea Ommi), Elham (Sahar Milani) in English, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Julian Brown

The central gimmick in the play is that each character speaks English with an accent and oftentimes haltingly or inexactly, much like any new speaker of a language, but their speech in Farsi is rendered as fluent English. The only time Farsi is heard is at the very end of the play, though, once that occurs, it makes us realize that we might have had greater insight into each person if we heard them switching between their native speech and an effort to make themselves understood in English. At least, we'd have a sense of how they sound in each tongue. As it is, we swiftly become aware of their dissatisfactions with English, and, more comprehensively, with a world that marginalizes their own language. Elham likes to fantasize a world in which Persia had not been eclipsed by British and American cultures. Her frustrations with basic English are apt as she has been accepted at an Australian university to study gastroenterology, so we can see how an English-speaking world makes success in her field even more daunting.

There are some surprises, but Toossi avoids any of the clichés of trauma or sudden reveals that so many plays of our time pile onto narrowly delineated characters. The central conceit— that we only know these characters in this one context, the classroom—gives the play its rationale for how it portrays them. The main, enduring theme, teased out in many apropos exchanges, is how the language we speak (and how we speak it) shapes us, giving us a sound and a personality to those we encounter. The students rightly assert that their true identities are altered or obscured by the way they are heard in English. While this may be something of a revelation for anyone who hasn't tried to speak another language, for those who have it’s a recognizable grievance.

Roya (Pantea Ommi), Goli (Anahita Monfared), Elham (Sahar Milani), Omid (Afsheen Misaghi) in English, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Julian Brown

Finally, the play suggests that there's more than just a question of one's comfort or readiness to explore other linguistic possibilities in learning a language. So much, we realize, is lost in translation—especially when moving from ancient and poetic Farsi to prosaic and demotic American English. These characters, standing for so many who try to make such adjustments, show how much hope and hardship and heartache and happiness is bound up with how we make sounds at one another.

Marjan (Neagheen Homaifar), Goli (Anahita Monfared) in English, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Julian Brown

English
By Sanaz Toossi
Directed by Arya Shahi

Set Design: Sadra Tehrani; Costume Design: Dina El-Aziz; Lighting Design: Mary Ellen Stebbins; Sound Design: Bahar Royaee; Casting Director: Gregory Jafari Van Acker / Bass / Valle Casting; Stage Manager: Tom Kosis; Associate Lighting Director: Nicholas Pollock

Cast: Neagheen Homaifar, Sahar Malani, Afsheen Misaghi, Anahita Monfared, Pantea Ommi

TheaterWorks, Hartford
October 2-November 2—extended to November 8, 2025

Show Some Spunk

Review of Spunk, Yale Repertory Theatre

A newly discovered literary classic is always an exciting find, but when it can be brought to such vibrant life as the current Yale Repertory Theatre production of Zora Neale Hurston's Spunk, it becomes a cause for rejoicing. Hurston, best known for her landmark novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, was an ethnologist who wrote plays and musical theater as well. Her intent was to incorporate the authentic songs of African Americans into a story of community and confrontation, and of love triumphant. But the play, adapted from an early Hurston story in the 1930s, languished among her unpublished papers. Then, early this century, it came to the attention of Catherine Sheehy, professor of Dramaturgy at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, who undertook a long-term project to give Spunk its day in the sun. That day is now, through October 25, directed by Tamilla Woodward, with additional songs, new arrangements and music supervision by Nehemiah Luckett and choreography by nicHi douglas.

Foreground: J. Quinton Johnson (Spunk) and Kimber Elayne Sprawl (Evalina) with Isiah Reynolds, Alaman Diadhiou, Mikey Corey Hassel in Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

The story concerns Spunk, the eponymous hero, talented and charismatic, who drifts by a work-crew and is directed to a job at a sawmill. Soon he's a ladies' favorite, able to court whomever he chooses. His selection of Evalina, who is willing but already married, sets up the play's main dramatic tension. Jim, her husband, confronts them, and his father Hodge is said to be a conjuror, skilled in the ways of hoodoo. Spunk, who believes Evalina is his fated mate, may find that his actions will bring down a baleful curse.

Hurston deliberately chooses characters who seem archetypal. More than simply realistic individuals, they become types necessary to the play's orchestration of how a community reacts to change, threat, and, importantly, love stronger than the usual run-of-the-mill romances they've seen until now. The central fact of the show is song, song as an expression of collective spirit, of joking, of romance, of danger, of work and play and testimony to the Lord's favor. There are many standout numbers—the duet on "Weeping Willow" is particularly graceful—and many of the songs have distinctive folk coloration—"Corn Bread and Molasses," "I Rode Some"—or evocative spiritual meanings—"Sing Ye Sinners," "Gethsemane." The range of songs is remarkable and their roles in the action always significant. Nehemiah Luckett gives new arrangements to many of the songs—"Weeping Willow," "Sing Ye Sinners," "Evalina," "Halimuhfack"—that do much to establish the lyrical tone of the show.

Jeannette Bayardelle (Mrs. Watson), center, with cast members of Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

There are rollicking numbers and songs of inspiration and everything in between. The plot may seem at times to be subordinate to music, but there is a steady forward movement with recurring motifs—as for instance beginning both Acts with work songs. In the first case, Spunk is an interloper; in the second, his presence is intrinsic to the song and the action. Hurston's ear for speech mannerisms is fine indeed, and often it’s a minor comment or aside that carries the most weight, as when Spunk says, in Act I, "I done got a letter from love and so help me I’ll go to hell but what I answer it," then, in Act II, receives a literal letter that he must risk everything to answer. Banter is a major feature of the dialogue, and the cast is excellent at making the crosstalk feel both real and meaningful, and amusing. A story of one couple's fate, Spunk is even more a story of how social customs create the context in which any life comes to understand itself. We see a town waiting to discover its hero and, in Spunk and Evalina, two people looking for someone who will make the world make sense.

J. Quinton Johnson (Spunk), left, with Shawn Bowers, Correy West, Alaman Diadhiou, Matthew Elijah Webb in Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

With a cast of fifteen, scenes play out across the entire stage, full of complex action—whether work gangs moving in tandem, a croquet match with plenty of bickering and sassing, a dating game called "a toe party," group dances and card games and, in Act II, a mysterious hoodoo ritual that makes use of dramatic staging, striking projections (Ke Xu, Projection Designer), masks (Kristen Taylor, Costume Designer) and a powerhouse performance by Alaman Diadhiou on djembe. Throughout, John Bronston's music direction is superlative, as is nicHi douglas' choreography, imaginatively weaving together textures of movement, speech and song that define and display the wonderfully affirmative spirit of Hurston's vivacious characters.

Jeannette Bayardelle (Mrs. Watson), Alaman Diadhiou (Blue Trout) in Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

The cast is the very definition of ensemble acting, and, with everyone playing at least one instrument as well, the making of music is a major contribution to the inspiring effect of live theater fully present. A few key roles/performances should be mentioned by name: J. Quinton Johnson has swagger aplenty as Spunk, but there's a soulful earnestness in his demeanor that keeps him from being confused with an arrogant trifler; as his one-and-only, Kimber Elayne Sprawl is easily his match, weighing her every move in terms of what others will think and how she feels; their early duet, "Halimuhfack," establishes their immediate rapport; Jeannette Bayardelle, besides giving "Sing Ye Sinners" a rousing rendition, plays Mrs. Watson with a deadpan charm; as boisterous clown Willie Joe, Shawn Bowers leads the supporting cast, ably abetted by Alaman Diadhiou's show-boating Blue Trout; Kimberley Marable's disappointed Ruby makes the most of her every chance with Spunk, and Charlie Hudson III's Hodge Bishop closes the first Act with a showstopping rendering of humiliation, hatred, and heartbreak.

Charlie Hudson III (Hodge Bishop), Jeannette Bayardelle (Mrs. Watson), foreground, with Kimberly Marable, Shawn Bowers, Correy West in Zora Neale Hurston’s Spunk, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Staged with great ingenuity, zestful choreography and lively, busy and varied scenes, full of rhythmic movement in both speech and song, Spunk is clearly a labor of love for all involved and should not be missed. Like the song says, "Drop everything."

Zora Neale Hurston's
Spunk
New songs, arrangements, and music supervision by Nehemiah Luckett
Choreography by nicHi douglas
Directed by Tamilla Woodard

Music Director: John Bronston; Scenic Designer: Karen Loewy Movilla; Costume Designer: Kristen Taylor; Lighting Designer: Gib Gibney; Sound Designer: Justin Ellington; Projection Designer: Ke Xu; Hair Designer: Matthew Armentrout; Production Dramaturgs: Eric M. Glover and Catherine Sheehy; Technical Director: Tom Minucci; Fight and Intimacy Directors: Kelsey Rainwater and Michael Rossmy; Vocal Coach: Julie Foh; Associate Director: Stephanie Rolland; Casting Director: Calleri Jensen Davis; Stage Manager: James Mountcastle

Cast: Jeannette Baryardelle; Shawn Bowers; Tyler Clarke; Alaman Diadhiou; Amahri Edwards-Jones; Janiah-Camile François; Charlie Hudson III; J. Quinton Johnson; Naiqui Macabroad; Kimberly Marable; Christian Pedersen; Isaiah Reynolds; Kimber Elayne Sprawl; Matthew Elijah Webb; Correy West

Yale Repertory Theatre
October 3-25, 2025

Connecticut Theater, Fall 2025

Previews and Coming Attractions . . .

The summer of 2025 has officially passed away. And that means it's a good time to catch up on what is happening in our local theaters from now to the end of 2025. Some theaters are finishing their 2024-25 season, others are commencing their 2025-26 season. But we'll take the shows in the order of their openings.

First and foremost: Goodspeed Musicals at the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam is running a very popular revival of A Chorus Line, recently extended through November 2. The show, with music by Marvin Hamlisch and lyrics by Edward Kleban with a Book by James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante, is enjoying its 50th anniversary. That's right, it originally debuted in 1975, won almost everything it was nominated for at the 1976 Tonys (9 awards), and if you haven't seen it by now we really must wonder what you've been waiting for—if not the Goodspeed revival. Famous as an effort to dramatize the ups and downs of working in musicals, A Chorus Line thrives on the buzz that admirers of musical theater bring to the show. It's like watching a show take shape before your eyes, directed by TheaterWorks Artistic Director and CT Critics Circle award-winning musical director Rob Ruggiero. Next up, at the Terris Theatre in Cheshire, is The Great Emu War, October 3 to 26. A new musical with music and lyrics by Paul Hodge, and a book by Hodge and Cal Silberstein. Hailing from Brisbane, Australia, Hodge has created an "emusing" take on a little-known historical event: when a war was declared on troublesome emus in Australia. We're exhorted to "think of it as Cats, but with emus." I'm not sure I can quite imagine it, but I'm all for our feathered friends getting their shot at musical glory. Finally, Goodspeed ends 2025 with a return to the nostalgia-laden musical White Christmas, November 14 to December 28. The songs are by Irving Berlin, of course, including the familiar standard that shares the show's title. It's that old roasting chestnut about two army buddies/performers who turn on the charm, variously, with two performing sisters in an effort to save the snowless Vermont inn and ski resort run by their beloved Major General.

If you want more theater about theater, get over to the Legacy Theater in Stony Creek, Branford—if you can get tickets (it may already be sold out, even with two shows added)—where Noises Off runs to October 15. This lively farce by Michael Frayn entertains audiences with a behind-the-scenes approach to putting on a play, and the Legacy production features several familiar television actors, such as James Roday Rodriguez, of Psych, Kurt Fuller (Rob Lowe's second banana in Wayne's World, among many other roles), and Allison Muller, who played in Legacy's Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors in 2024. It's been five years of intimate shows at the Legacy—including sold out runs of Sweeney Todd and Noises Off—and to celebrate, the storied theater is hosting Take 5, a gala, on October 10 at the Pine Orchard Yacht and Country Club in Branford. Cast members from Noises Off will make the date, and the inaugural Anchor Award will go to Ted and Tina Ellis, tireless supporters of Legacy since its inception. Attendance is limited to 160, so get in on it soon.

Long Wharf Theatre, now housed at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, opened its season September 5 with a production of Torera that runs to October 19. Staged in conjunction with The Sol Project, Latinx Playwrights Circle, and WP Theater, the production takes place at WP Theater, 2162 Broadway in NYC. Written by Monet Hurst-Mendoza and directed and choreographed by Tatiana Pandiani, the play explores with great visual poetry the ramifications that occur when the Mexican bullfighting tradition faces a challenge from a talented female would-be torera. Later in the month, Long Wharf's August Wilson Celebration Kick-Off Party, hosted by the New Haven Museum, takes place on October 25 at 2 pm. The celebration is the second in a series of special events—including free panels, workshops, public dialogues, and film screenings—organized as preludes to Long Wharf's staging of Wilson's Gem of the Ocean in spring 2026.

In West Hartford, Playhouse on Park opened its season last night, September 24, with the catchy crowd-pleaser Million Dollar Quartet which showcases, in a Book by Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux, how four guys named Elvis, Carl, Johnny, and Jerry Lee entered rock'n'roll musical history at a little recording studio called Sun in Memphis, TN. The musically vigorous show, directed by Alessandro Viviano with music direction by Chris Coffey (who also plays Carl Perkins), runs through October 19. Next, Playhouse on Park offers an unusual choice for its seasonal show December 5 through December 21: All is Calm, The Christmas Truce of 1914 by Peter Rothstein is based on the true story of an impromptu singing of "Silent Night" in the area called "No Man's Land," separating the trenches of the warring forces in World War 1. A hope that even the most antagonistic forces can letup a little at Christmastime, directed by Sasha Brätt with musical direction by Benjamin Rauch. (For adults 40 and under, check out the Playhouse's deals for season tickets: "Access 40.")

Music Theater of CT in Norwalk kicks off its season this weekend with the ever-dynamic show Rent (Book, Music and Lyrics by Jonathan Larson), running September 26 through October 12, directed and choreographed by Chris McNiff with music direction by David Wolfson. MTC is the place to enjoy intimate takes on big musical shows, so that audiences get an unusual opportunity to feel themselves in the midst of the action. Rent, if you don't know, is a Tony and Pulitzer-winning play about bohemian creatives struggling to become professionals and deal with much stress, while rocking out, in the era of AIDS/HIV in NYC. Ladonna Burns, winner of the CT Critics Circle Award for her role in last season's Ghost, returns to MTC to play Joanne. Olivia Fenton, last season's  Eileen in Moon Over Buffalo, also returns, among a cast of youthful talent. MTC's final show of 2025, November 7 through November 23, will be the madcap farce The Fox on the Fairway by Ken Ludwig (Lend Me a Tenor, Moon Over Buffalo), conceived as "a tribute to the great English farces of the 1930s and 1940s," with a hint of the Marx Brothers, in a world of golf and "stuffy denizens of a private country club."

In Waterbury, Seven Angels opens this weekend with Lucky Stiff, September 26 through October 12, a "murder mystery musical," with Book & Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, Music by Stephen Flaherty, who you might recognize as the creative duo behind musicals like Ragtime, Seussical, Anastasia, and Once on This Island. What's this one about? Well, I'll just let Seven Angels' website explain: "The story revolves around an unassuming English shoe salesman who is forced to take the embalmed body of his recently murdered uncle on a vacation to Monte Carlo. Should he succeed in passing his uncle off as alive, Harry Witherspoon stands to inherit $6,000,000. If not, the money goes to the Universal Dog Home of Brooklyn… or else his uncle’s gun-toting ex!" Then, November 14 through November 30, Seven Angels keeps the murdering spirit going with Art of Murder, winner of an Edgar Award for Best Mystery Play. Written by Tony-Award-winner Joe DiPietro, the play concerns an eccentric painter in Connecticut who plans to kill his dealer, possibly with the aid of the painter's wife. Or?

The Sharon Playhouse in Sharon finishes their 2025 season, which began in the summer with productions of Annie and Sylvia, with Agatha Christie's venerable The Mousetrap (which I believe is always playing somewhere in the world), a classic story of murder and multiple suspects in a remote location during a snowstorm. Directed by Hunter Foster, who directed Rock of Ages at the Sharon in 2024, the play—clever and fast-paced—maintains a longstanding tradition in which no one who sees the play reveals "whodunit." September 26 through October 5

In October, the second wave of openings gets going with:

At the Ivoryton Playhouse in Ivoryton, Incident at Our Lady of Perpetual Help by Kate Forgette opens October 2 and runs through October 26. Set in 1973, this "female-centered play" treats the comedy and crisis that occurs when a nineteen-year-old, about to go off to college, attempts to explain "the birds and the bees" to her younger sister—within earshot of a shocked priest! Directed by Ivoryton's Artistic Director, Jacqueline Hubbard the play explores, in Hubbard's words, "those teenage 'end of the world' moments" that become the memories we treasure. Next comes holiday cheer in the form of Playhouse Holiday Jamboree, created by Katie Barton and Ben Hope, November 20 through December 21, in which six performers gather together to share seasonal songs, stories, jokes, and folk traditions.

TheaterWorks in Hartford opens its season with English by Sanaz Toosi, October 2 through November 2, in partnership with Long Wharf Theatre. Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Best Play, the critically acclaimed play, directed by Arya Shahi, is set in an English-language classroom in Iran in 2008, and looks at the humor and heartache experienced by adults trying to access new identities and opportunities through foreign-language acquisition. November 28 through December 23, TheaterWorks stages its popular, perennial send-up of the Christmas classics of our childhoods, Christmas on the Rocks, wherein a beleaguered bartender must cope with a series of guests in vignettes by five contributing playwrights: Judy Gold, Jenn Harris, Jeffrey Hatcher, Jacques Lamarre, and Edwin Sánchez. Rob Ruggiero directs.

Here in New Haven, the Yale Repertory Theatre is staging, October 3 through October 25, the world premiere of a play world-class author Zora Neale Hurston adapted in 1935 from an early short story. Spunk, directed by resident director Tamilla Woodward, choreographed by nicHi douglas, with new songs, arrangements, and music supervision by Nehemiah Luckett, shows the triumph of love in a context of musicianship, charisma, hoodoo and local power struggles. Then November 28 through December 20, the Rep stages what happens to be my favorite play by the towering nineteenth-century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Hedda Gabler, in a translation by Paul Walsh, offers an amazing drama of sardonic irony, flaring envy and jealousy, domestic dysfunction, thwarted ambitions and bad decisions. Directed by James Bundy whose latest effort, Edward Albee's celebrated Who's Afraid of Virginia Woof, won Outstanding Production of the 2022-23 season from the CT Critics Circle. Bundy, who this year concludes his lengthy tenure—since 2002—as the inspiring Artistic Director of the Rep and Dean of one of the best theater schools in the country, has had an amazing run: Yale Rep has produced four world-premiere plays that transferred to Broadway and earned two Tony Awards and 11 nominations; two other Yale Rep plays have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, and ten plays and musicals have received the CT Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Production of the Year.

Connecticut Repertory Theatre at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, starts off its season with Qui Nguyen's Living Dead in Denmark, October 9 through October 19 in the Nafe Katter Theatre; with a cast comprised of UConn students, grads and undergrads, it's a story of zombie Shakespearean characters in an "action-adventure sequel to Hamlet" that should put you in a Halloween mood, eh Yorick? Then, November 13 through November 22, in the Harriet S. Jorgensen Theatre, As You Like It, a folk-pop musical adaptation by Shania Taub (Suffs), Music & Lyrics, and director/author Laurie Woolery of Shakespeare's beloved rom-com of that name set mostly in the forest of Arden, directed by Brandon Lamar Kelly of the Broadway Dance Center.

Meanwhile, in New Haven, Yale Cabaret, run entirely by students in the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, continues its season, which amounts to a grueling stretch of at least 14 shows from September through April. This year the Co-Artistic Directors are Jasmine Brooks, third-year at DGSD in directing, and Karen Loewy Movilla, third-year at DGSD in Set Design (her set design can be seen at the Rep's Spunk), with Managing Director Sarah Suraiya Saifi (Theater Management). This week, the Cab announced the next three shows. Cab 3: Mouth/Full, October 9-October 11, written by Karen Loewy Movilla, a member of Latinx Playwrights Circle, and co-directed by Roberto Di Donato and Fabiola Andújar, which explores hunger in both metaphorical and visceral ways; Cab 4: [Title TBA Soon], October 23-October 25, written by Andrew Rincón (co-artistic director of Yale Summer Cabaret, 2024), co-directed by Juice Mackins and Max Sheldon, choreographed by Juice Mackins; Cab 5: Twink Death, November 20-November 22, written by Matthew Chong.

Hartford Stage in Hartford, the grande dame of Connecticut theater, starts its 62nd season with Rope, October 10 through November 2, Jeffrey Hatcher's adaptation of the Hitchcock cat-and-mouse thriller of the same name (1948), starring James Stewart, itself based on the 1929 play—known in the U.S. as Rope's End—by Patrick Hamilton, and derived from the infamous Loeb and Leopold murder case. Hartford Stage Artistic Director Melia Bensussen directs, having recently scored triumphs (4 CT Critics Circle awards) with Hatcher's adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, last season's opener, as well as her CT Critics Circle win as director of Romeo and Juliet last spring. From November 22 through December 28, Hartford Stage stages its wonderfully evocative, warmly flavored, and at times—just enough—unnerving adaptation of Charles Dickens' prized A Christmas Carol, cleverly adapted and directed by Michael Wilson with an ear to the 1951 film, still and ever the best version.

A.C.T. of Connecticut in Ridgefield opens its season October 18 through November 23 with a revamped version of Almost Famous, filmmaker Cameron Crowe's fond and immensely entertaining evocation of his days—in the 1970s—as a member of the rock music press. The film's screenplay won Crowe an Oscar, and the subsequent Broadway show was nominated for a Tony for its Best Original Score by Tom Kitt, Tony and Pulitzer-winning composer of Next to Normal. Ridgefield Artistic Director Daniel C. Levine directs and is working with Crowe, Kitt and Bryan Perri—music supervisor of the original Broadway run who returns to that post for the A.C.T. production—to "breathe new life into this rock-and-roll love letter." Levine calls this new, revised version "intimate, raw, and electric" and hopes to give audiences "the definitive version of Almost Famous."

The third-year directors in the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale in New Haven are each given the opportunity to stage a play, drawing on the actors and technicians and resources of the School. Two of the offerings occur in fall semester, and a third in spring semester. First up is Les Liaisons Dangereuses, October 18 through October 24, Christopher Hampton's adaptation of the eighteenth-century epistolary novel by Choderlos de Laclos, directed by Destyne R. Miller, whose production of Jen Silverman's Witch was a memorable success in last year's Yale Cabaret season. Laclos's novel has been the basis of a number of films, with the most successful based on Hampton's play. The story explores a highly competitive world "where status is everything—and losing it is deadly." Next is Utopia, November 15 through November 21, by contemporary Russian playwright Mikhail Durnenkov, recently a visiting fellow at the University of Maryland, in a translation by Sasha Dugdale, and directed by Andreas Andreou, who directed Efthimis Filippou's enigmatic and wonderfully theatrical Apologiae 4&5 at the Yale Cabaret last season. Utopia, a family-run restaurant now closed due to the breakup of the family, has an opportunity to revive in the early days of post-Soviet Russia, thanks to new capitalist interest. But can a lost paradise be regained?

The time-honored and veteran venue, Westport Country Playhouse in Westport commences its 95th season with Oscar Wilde's comedy classic The Importance of Being Earnest, October 29 through November 15. Notable for its sumptuous staging of drawing-room comedy and free-form farces, Westport pairs well with Wilde who seemingly invented the socially abrasive one-liner, creating dialogue that sparkles and eviscerates in about equal measure. Melissa Rain Anderson, noted for directing lively entertainments from Dial M for Murder to The Wizard of Oz and The Play That Goes Wrong, as well as Shakespearean tragedies, will be at the helm. Then, December 13 through December 21, Artistic Director Mark Shanahan's contemporary holiday classic A Sherlock Carol returns—in its third year—to chart Sherlock Holmes' investigation into the mysterious demise of a certain reformed miser in Victorian England.

Ragtime Revisited

Review of Ragtime, the Musical, Goodspeed Musical Theater

Based on a novel by E. L. Doctorow, Ragtime is a sprawling story of life in the U.S. just past the turn of the century (1900, that is). The story is as uplifting, infuriating, and mercurial as the country itself, and it is brought to gripping life on the stage at Goodspeed. Directed with admirable pacing by the very versatile Christopher D. Betts, Ragtime features a gut-wrenching performance by Michael Wordly as Coalhouse Walker, Jr., a Black ragtime musician forced to confront the political system, soaring sonic beauty from Brennyn Lark as Sarah, his love, and a powerfully determined and indelible portrait of Mother by Mamie Parris.

Michael Wordly as Coalhouse Walker, Jr., in Ragtime, the Musical at Goodspeed; photo by Diane Sobolewski

What makes the book by Terrance McNally so brilliant is the way it keeps in play so many of the subplots and timely references that Doctorow weaves into his story. With its major characters separated by class, race, and place of origin, Ragtime shows us the social mores of a society that nominally accepts the concept of “equality before the law,” but has trouble putting it into practice.

We meet a comfortable white family in New Rochelle, NY: Father (Edward Watts, perfectly cast), who has a yearning to go exploring with Admiral Peary; Mother (Mamie Parris, outstanding), who takes in a non-white foundling as a matter of conscience; their Little Boy (Sawyer Delaney, very impressive), who has a way of letting others know what he knows, and Mother’s Younger Brother (Behr Marshall, who seems to have a local fan-club), who goes from starstruck enthusiast of the captivating performer Evelyn Nesbit (Mia Gerachis, quite comical) to a radicalized youth, via the spell cast by eloquent and passionate Emma Goldman (Blair Goldberg, also perfectly cast), and Grandfather (Stephen Tewksbury), played for laughs.

Mother’s Younger Brother (Behr Marshall), Father (Edward Watts), Mother (Mamie Parris), Little Boy (Sawyer Delaney), Grandfather (Stephen Tewksbury) in Ragtime, the Musical at Goodspeed; photo by Diane Sobolewksi

We also meet newcomers to these shores: Tateh (David R. Gordon, excellent) and his daughter, immigrants who are struggling in the streets of New York. Eventually, Tateh’s artistry and quick sense of what sells will lead to the kind of show-biz transformation made possible by the burgeoning film industry, a change fully fleshed out in Gordon’s soulful and gifted Tateh.

Little Girl (Sofie Nesanelis), Tateh (David R. Gordon) and ensemble in Ragtime, the Musical at Goodspeed; photo by Diane Sobolewski

Throughout, swift scene changes provide wonderfully varied glimpses of life and times in the early twentieth century: we see Henry Ford (Matt Wall) churning out his landmark Model T automobiles; get glimpses of Harry Houdini (Jonathan Cobrda, working it for all its worth), a famous escape artist and impresario; get to see crowds thrilling to Emma Goldman’s challenges to the capitalist system of worker exploitation, and linger with Mother and Tateh during one of those fortuitous encounters that the city somehow makes happen. In Act II we even get a manly outing to a ball game, and follow the adventures of Evelyn Nesbit who could easily command an entire musical devoted to her career.

Henry Ford (Matt Wall), Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (Michael Wordly) and ensemble in Ragtime, the Musical, Goodspeed; photo by Diane Sobolewski

The heart and soul of the story and this show are Michael Wordly as Coalhouse Walker, Jr., and Brennyn Lark as Sarah. Their duet in Scene 9, “Wheels of a Dream” is a show-stopping wonder. The mother of the foundling (eventually called Coalhouse Walker III), Sarah is found and also taken into the New Rochelle residence—while Father is off in the arctic wastes. The boy’s father, Coalhouse, Jr., finds her there and begins a long courtship to prove to her he’s reliable and devoted to mother and child. His proud purchase of a Model T sets up a main plot-point (adapted by Doctorow from Heinrich von Kleist’s novel Michael Kolhaas) that puts into play racism, materialism and the workings of the justice system as forces always ready to provoke and incite. The violence that ends Act 1 has a grim inevitability, but is also a reminder that the outrages that inspired the slogan “Black Lives Matter” are an ongoing aspect of life in the U.S.

Sarah (Brennyn Lark) in Ragtime, the Musical, Goodspeed; photo by Diane Sobolewski

The challenge for Lynn Ahrens, Lyrics, and Stephen Flaherty, Music, was to find a way to express all this in song, and one is constantly surprised and delighted by how they manage it, using the always catchy musical phrasings of ragtime to flesh out the score. Considerable pressure is established by the success of Act I at bringing us into these lives and creating lively tableaux of movement and music—with effective ensemble work from choreographer Sara Edwards. What can Act II bring to light?

Jeremiah Valentino Porter, Rory Shirley, Jalyn Crosby, Jordan Alexander and ensemble in Ragtime, the Musical, Goodspeed; photo by Diane Sobolewski

The stand-off between Coalhouse, Jr., and the powers-that-be furthers the darker themes of the novel, but before that crisis, we’re favored with two important numbers: “Sarah Brown Eyes” lets Coalhouse reanimate his love for Sarah, and allows Sarah to join him in a rendering of their enduring bond; and “Back to Before” is Mother’s grand statement, a passionate song that accepts the challenges to the status quo seething in the words of Emma Goldman, in Coalhouse’s challenge to racial hatred, and in her own realization that life without Father can be a truly liberating prospect. Finally, I caught a personal note in how Betts isolates the figure of Coalhouse Walker III during the Finale, “Ragtime/Wheels of a Dream,” with the boy perhaps a stand-in for the gifted director himself.

Mother (Mamie Parris) with Father (Edward Watts) in Ragtime, the Musical, Goodspeed; photo by Diane Sobolewski

Making use of every bit of Goodspeed’s just-big-enough stage, Ragtime is a musical that provokes, inspires and delights, an entertainment with complex themes and a fully engaging presentation. The design elements by its talented team—Emmie Finckel, Scenic Design; Stephanie Bahniuk, Costume Design; Charlie Morrison, Lighting Design; Jay Hilton, Sound Design—deserve mention as much of the pleasure of the show is in how it looks and sounds.

A revival of this always timely musical will go up at the Lincoln Center in NYC beginning in September. Get the jump on it, and go to Goodspeed to see Ragtime ignite its audience.

Ragtime, the Musical
Book by Terrence McNally
Music by Stephen Flaherty
Lyrics by Lynn Ahrens
Based on the novel Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
Directed by Christopher D. Betts
Music directed by Adam Souza
Choreographed by Sara Edwards

Scenic Design: Emmie Finckel; Costume Design: Stephanie Bahniuk; Lighting Design: Charlie Morrison; Sound Design: Jay Hilton; Original Orchestrations: William David Brohn; Additional Orchestrations: Kim Scharnberg; Wig, Hair & Makeup Design: Tenel Dorsey; Intimacy Consulting & Fight Direction: Kelsey Rainwater; Dialect Coach: Jennifer Scapetis-Tycer; Casting: Hardt Casting; Production Stage Manager: Chris Zaccardi; Director of Production: Endla Burrows; Production Manager/Technical Director: Dominick J. Pinto; Associate Artistic Director: Michale Fling; General Manager: Gretchen Wright

Cast: Jordan Alexander, Shaunice Maudlyn Alexander, Mia Bergstrom, Tommy Betz, Jodi Bluestein, Yophi Adia Bost, Jonathan Cobrda, Jalyn Crosby, Sawyer Delaney, Joseph Fierberg, Mia Gerachis, Blair Goldberg, David R. Gordon, Nathan Haltiwanger, Brennyn Lark, Behr Marshall, Henry H. Miller, Robin Louise Miller, Sofie Nesanelis, Mamie Parris, Jeremiah Valentino Porter, Rory Shirley, Denver Andre Taylor, Stephen Tewksbury, Xavier Turner, Matt Wall, Greyson Wallace, Edward Watts, Michael Wordly

Musicians: Keyboard 1/Conductor: Adam Souza; Keyboard 2: William Thomas; Violin: Lu Friedman; Trumpet: Renee McGee; Trombone: Matthew Russo; Bass/Tuba: Stuart Gann, Adam Hammer; Reeds: Liz Baker Smith; Guitar: Nick DiFabbio; Percussion: Elliot Wallace

Goodspeed Musicals
April 25-June 15, 2025; Press Opening: May 7, 2025

"What a Drag It Is to See You"

Review of Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, Yale Repertory Theatre

Do boards just generally have a bad name? To be “on the board”—doesn’t it suggest a level of integration into The System that may be met with envy, anger, maybe even revenge fantasies among underlings? Is there a relation between board-dom and boredom? Did you ever want to get up-close and personal with a “member of the board”? Or line ‘em up and shoot ‘em?

In Mara Vélez Meléndez’s Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, now playing at Yale Repertory Theatre through May 17, Lolita (Christine Carmela), a trans Boricua woman packing her father’s gun, has come to NYC to off an entire board. Consisting of seven unelected climbers put in charge of “oversight, management and economic stability” for Puerto Rico, the board’s snazzy acronym spells P-R-O-M-E-S-A, or “promise.” As with other government entities we might think of, PROMESA seems primarily designed to promote the interests of those in power while shafting the general population. The board has managed Puerto Rico into economic chaos. Lolita thinks enough is enough.

Samora la Perdida, Christine Carmela in Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

She takes the name of an actual woman, Lolita Lebron, who, with other Puerto Rican nationalists, opened fire on the US House of Representatives back in 1954, an act of retaliation, as they saw it, against the recent conversion of Puerto Rico into a US commonwealth. The play’s Lolita arrives at the Wall Street office of PROMESA fueled more by frustration than murderous intent, but her early mic drop moment puts the case clearly: “Do we hesitate to kill our leaders because we’re tired? Or . . . are we tired because we keep hesitating to kill our leaders?”

In the reception area of PROMESA, Lolita passes out from anxiety and comes to while the Receptionist (Samora la Perdida), hoping to help, realizes she’s armed. What follows is absurdist, dreamlike, and very, very much campy drag. Receptionist suggests a trial run at assassinating the board members—they are in possession of a binder with headshots and resumés for each of the seven—and before you can say “seven extravagant costume changes will be involved” Receptionist has taken on the task of enacting each board member as a fantasy drag alter ego.

It makes sense the way loose analogies sometimes do: political and economic self-determination—as for instance as an independent country with its own elected officials—is “like” self-determination in terms of non-binary gender constructions, see? At least both have to do with liberty, the kind that repressive regimes are apt to police or undermine or repress. And so, the fantasy board members that Receptionist conjures enact a sequence of problematic figures for whatever future Lolita is trying to imagine or implement.

I can’t say I quite “got” all seven as types or archetypes or even just as the fractious performers they are. And I have to admit that from time to time I found myself counting how many we’d met and how many more we still had to see—making the show feel a bit like having to get through a series of appointments. Next?

Samora la Perdida, Christine Carmela in Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

The fabulous costumes by Arthur Wilson manage to keep one-upping the outrageousness (the last is truly mind-bending), and the songs and routines will land differently for different viewers (I probably laughed most outright at the initial reception that Artritis—a Reagan-era geriatric—met with, to the tune of “9 to 5”). My favorite board-member, though, for sheer entertainment, was Karlos Grace, the playboy, because he seemed to break most with the general technique on view. Samora la Perdida has a way with all these roles but their lip-synching was always theatrical in a very repetitive way (just giving “notes”). The board-persons that stood out most have some obvious cultural cachet—a judge, and, especially, a bishop.

Samora La Perdida, Christine Carmela (seated), in Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

If you’re an enthusiast for drag shows—and I’ve seen more than a few in the precincts of theater—you will likely find much here to amuse. For me, though, there is an awkward disconnect between the fun of drag—even in the more subversive or openly political numbers I’ve seen—and the situation Lolita is supposedly in. In Javier Antonio González’s direction, the caricatures that Receptionist enacts are always courting audience response, the way a drag number does, while the interplay of board-member with Lolita (who gets to indulge in a variety of time-killing devices while waiting for the next costumed creature) sometimes becomes a whirlwind of half-begun statements, implied arguments and dissing—of each other, of each board-member’s failings, of the revolutionary pose in general. There’s very real friction between what Lolita wants and what the board-members may be said to stand for, but the best dialogue occurs between Lolita and Receptionist, who identifies as Nuyorican, as, for instance, when they try to hash out, as “colonized siblings,” what exactly Puerto Rican-ness could or should be. Receptionist’s viewpoints often seem about as mercurial as they come, while Lolita’s are very much thoughts in progress.

Christine Carmela, Samora la Perdida in Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Doaa Ouf’s projections and collage of surveillance screens do much to add visual interest, and pretty much any time the scenic designer at the Rep—here Patti Panyakaew—uses the space under the stage as part of the set we’re in for a visually stunning event. As Receptionist quips at one point “it’s an elaborate show” and it certainly is, an extravaganza of bits and routines and, yes, killings that are always diverting, as theater.

At one point Lolita offers notes to Receptionist about performance: “Be sublime, not performative.” Easier said than done. Later, Lolita tells Bishop Avid Silk, “I need reasonable conversation about statehood, liberation, what’s next.”  Ummm…

Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members
By Mara Vélez Meléndez
Directed by Javier Antonio González

 Scenic Designer: Patti Panyakaew; Costume Designer: Arthur Wilson; Lighting Designer: Yung-Hung Sung; Sound Designer: Joyce Ciesil; Projection Designer: Doaa Ouf; Hair Designer: Matthew Armentrout; Make Designer: Sarah Cimino; Choreographer: Javier Antonio González; Production Dramaturgs: Daria Kerschenbaum, Abraham E.S. Rebollo-Trujillo; Fight and Intimacy Directors: Kelsey Rainwater, Michael Rossmy; Vocal and Dialect Coach: Cynthia Santos DeCure; Stage Manager: Aura Michelle

Cast: Christine Carmela, Samora la Perdida, with Yan-Carlos Diaz, Flower Estefana Rios

Yale Repertory Theatre
April 25-May 17, 2025

Strangers in a Station

Review of Heisenberg, New Haven Theater Company

The latest New Haven Theater Company production Heisenberg, directed by Steve Scarpa with a cast consisting of George Kulp and Melissa Andersen, opened this weekend and plays tonight and next Thursday through Saturday, May 8, 9, 10, only.

The play, by Simon Stephens (perhaps best known for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time), is engaging, surprising, and ultimately genial and optimistic. It’s not that there’s not a dark side to it all, but Melissa Andersen’s Georgie Burns, as the life force of the play, keeps us, like her stodgy foil Alex Priest (George Kulp), uncertain, fascinated, and vaguely unsettled, never knowing what will come out of her mouth next.

Alex Priest (George Kulp), Georgie Burns (Melissa Andersen) in Heisenberg at New Haven Theater Company, directed by Steve Scarpa

So let’s deal with the “uncertainty principle” right up front. The play is named for Werner Heisenberg, a German physicist who noted that you can’t measure accurately both position and speed of electrons at the same time. As translated into more day-to-day contexts, the Principle has come to be synonymous with the idea that the position/motion of the observer affects the observation. You can’t know what the world actually is until you factor out the distortion your own observations bring to the matter.

Why is this relevant to the play? It seems to me that Stephens wants us to see that someone like Georgie, who is constantly creating fictions about herself—we could also call them lies—is a “particle” we cannot observe properly without some understanding of what it is we think we see from our limited position and our own relative motion. As our stand-in for that process, Kulp’s Priest, an Irishman living in London since his adolescence and a single man with a butcher shop for most of his life (he’s now 75 and thinking of retiring), is laconic, stolid, somewhat distrustful, and, ultimately, more and more receptive.

But what is he becoming receptive to? The notion that a much younger woman—hitting her forties—who spontaneously kisses him on the back of the neck in a train station might actually be a good thing for him. A woman who claims any number of things: she’s an assassin, a waitress, a receptionist at a school; she kissed his neck in memory of a lost husband; she never had children; she never married, but she wants to find out where her grown son is living.

Melissa Andersen’s Georgie is lively, lovely, but also clearly more than a bit damaged. The fact that she’s so verbal is both a come-on and a dodge, a way of keeping as many possibilities in play at once, even in the same sentence. George Kulp’s Alex is an even tougher read: he has the tone of a man not easily impressed nor easily convinced; he’s mostly satisfied with his solitary pursuits—like long walks listening to an infinite variety of musical styles (which he enumerates at one point) on his Walkman. He tells Georgie that the difference between hearing music and listening to it is a matter of thinking about where it’s going, how it’s developing its themes. Which is a nice instruction for following a play as well.

The play is perfect for NHTC, requiring little in the way of set and props, and keeping us focused throughout on the perfectly paced dialogue achieved by this well-meshed cast and director Steve Scarpa (who directed the first show NHTC presented in the theater-space they’ve been in for over a decade). The play works because the oil and water mix of these two characters keeps alive the notion that they may have a special significance for one another—which is easy enough to maintain as there are no other persons in the play for comparison or contrast. Early on, Georgie ascertains that Alex has no one—no living siblings, no close friends, no younger relatives, nor any online life (he’s put off by the fact that he and his butcher shop are Google-able). In other words, he’s the perfect mark for a certain kind of romance-based hustle.

The most relevant uncertainty concerns where these two are headed and how fast: is Georgie simply hustling Alex? Is she genuinely trying to find acceptance or fun or something deeper from this cautious but quite genuine older man? Does she even know? For the issue isn’t only Alex’s uncertainty and ours, there’s a very real uncertainty at the heart of Georgie, who knows all kinds of ways to play with people but seems never quite certain what she’s playing at.

What you make of it all may have a lot to do with where you are in the electron stream of your own limited lifetime, and, for instance, whether 75 years is unthinkably far ahead or around the bend, and 40something an orbital position or receding almost out of sight. The play’s optimism comes from its convincing sense that we often don’t know who we really are or can be. And that’s a good thing.

Heisenberg
By Simon Stephens
Directed by Steve Scarpa

Producer: J. Kevin Smith; Production Stage Manager: Stacy Lupo; Lighting Design: Adam Lobelson

Cast: Melissa Andersen, George Kulp

New Haven Theater Company
May 1-3 & May 8-10, 2025

In Their Triumph Die

Review of Romeo & Juliet, Hartford Stage

The highest praise you can give to a production of Shakespeare’s oft-produced Romeo & Juliet is that it’s so good it makes you forget what’s going to happen, and the current Hartford Stage production is that good. Maybe there are some who don’t know the play’s outcome, but most do know, even if they’ve never seen the play performed (and I’ve seen three professional productions in CT previously). And yet the Hartford Stage production, directed by Artistic Director Melia Bensussen, and playing through May 18, almost makes us forget, so that we can be caught up again in the brilliance of the play.

The cast of Romeo & Juliet at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The way to grab audiences is to give us an incredibly well-paced first half that reminds us that Romeo & Juliet is funny and fun. It’s been said that the play was originally intended as a comedy in which everything works out well in the end, and you can almost believe it up until the point at which Mercutio and Tybalt are killed. After that it’s a different play and, though our “star-cross’d lovers” remain hopeful, even they have a feeling that this can’t end well.

Juliet (Carmen Berkeley), Romeo (Niall Cunningham) in Romeo & Juliet at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen; photo by T. Charles Erickson

This production’s success owes much to its two leads. Niall Cunnigham is a likeable, youthful Romeo. Capable of playing both comedy and romance, Cunningham can crank up the windy rhetoric and also entertain us with Romeo’s awkward uncertainty. The second half, when he’s mostly offstage in exile, yearns for his return. Carmen Berkeley’s Juliet is boisterously charming and candid and full of irresistible spirit throughout the play. She’s a winner all the way. The garden scene with its famed balcony is lively and lovely, and Berkeley makes us feel the wonder of it all through Juliet’s eyes.

Juliet (Carmen Berkeley) in Romeo & Juliet at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Bensussen’s incredibly energetic production makes the most of the play’s action and comedy, abetted by Annmarie Kelly’s Nurse, a garrulous, well-meaning soul who dotes on Juliet—their chemistry does much to establish how lovable Juliet is; and by Carman Lacivita who gives Friar Lawrence both humor and thoughtfulness and the requisite panic when he gets in over his head; and by Juan Arturo’s very dashing Benvolio; and by Alejandra Escalante’s well-spoken and rakish Mercutio (for a woman to play a male role is not surprising, but to make Mercutio—Mercutia?—a woman is a bit of a stretch); Escalante, a Shakespeare veteran, is suitably charismatic in this plum role.

Mercutio (Alejandra Escalante), Tybalt (Brandon Burditt) and cast in Romeo & Juliet at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The first half, then, with all the swordplay and the first meeting of the lovers and the exchange of vows and the dynamics of the household chez Capulet is quite diverting. And it’s not a fault of the production that Shakespeare’s plays tend to drag a bit in Act IV before having a quick end in Act V. Here it’s because Romeo and Juliet don’t have any more scenes together until the end and even then, not really.

Lady Capulet (Eva Kaminsky), Capulet (Gerardo Rodriguez) in Romeo & Juliet at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Juliet’s best scene after the break is when she tries to delay marriage to Paris; the scene is well-played though the gender switch of giving lines written for Capulet to his wife is curious; certainly Eva Kaminsky delivers them exceedingly well, but the iron will shown in the lines doesn’t sit well with other aspects of the character of Lady Capulet as written. Elsewhere, as in his upbraiding of Tybalt, Gerardo Rodriguez perhaps shows his Capulet is not quite equal to the requisite bluster. Meanwhile, the news that Lady Montague died of grief flits by barely acknowledged since she never appears onstage in this production.

Friar Lawrence (Carman Lacivita), Romeo (Niall Cunningham), Juliet (Carmen Berkeley) in Romeo & Juliet at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Did I mention the costumes? Fabian Fidel Aguilar’s designs need to be seen. Not only colorful, rich and dazzling, the costumes incorporate motifs and a palette of Mexican provenance, lending this production a provocative aura. This is nowhere more striking than in the dance sequences, such as the ball where actors wear masks for Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), making death a kind of honored guest in this play. Yes, it’s sad things don’t work out for everyone, but the play—and Bensussen’s vision of the play accentuates this—lets us know that death always has a part to play, in every life, and that here it comes freighted with themes like doomed love, and mortal enmity, and the kinds of risks, chances, and bad luck that put the fatalism in fatalities (there are six, counting Lady Montague).

Tybalt’s ghost (Brandon Burditt) in Romeo & Juliet at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The Set Design by Christopher & Justin Swader is open and eye-catching and graciously devoid of the gravel that graced it in Hartford Stage’s most recent previous production of R & J. The many points of entry and exit are used very effectively, and Dale A. Merrill’s Choreography and Ted Hewlett’s Fight Direction add much flair to the proceedings. Dan Kotlowitz’s Lighting Design subtly takes its cues from changes in the colors of Juliet’s gowns. Which is to say this is a visually splendid production with an impressive grasp of the play’s strengths and a bracing commitment to its spectacular theatricality and vitality.

So fresh and welcome is this Romeo & Juliet, shall I compare it to a summer’s day?

Nurse (Annmarie Kelly), Juliet (Carmen Berkeley) in Romeo & Juliet at Hartford Stage, directed by Melia Bensussen; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Romeo & Juliet
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Melia Bensussen

Choreography: Dale A. Merrill; Scenic Design: Christopher & Justin Swader; Costume Design: Fabian Fidel Aguilar; Lighting Design: Dan Kotlowitz; Sound Design: Darron L. West; Wig, Hair & Makeup Design: Tommy Kurzman; Fight Director: Ted Hewlett; Voice & Text Coach: Julie Foh; Casting: Alaine Alldaffer and Lisa Donadio; Production Stage Manager: Nicole Wiegert; Assistant Stage Managers: Julius Cruz and Maia Tivony

Cast: Opa Adeyemo, Juan Arturo, Carmen Berkeley, Emily Bosco, Brandon Burditt, Niall Cunningham, Alejandra Escalante, Eva Kaminsky, Michael Samuel Kaplan, Annmarie Kelly, Carman Lacivita, Gerardo Rodriguez, Liliana Alva, Jeremy Parrott, Jason Pietroluongo, Madelyn Rothstein

Hartford Stage
April 17-May 18, 2025

Who Can You Trust?

Review of Primary Trust, TheaterWorks, Hartford

Eboni Booth’s Primary Trust, winner of the Pulitzer in Drama for 2024, gives us a story of contemporary trauma that is more Frank Capra than Franz Kafka. And that in itself is refreshing. Directed by Jennifer Chang at TheaterWorks Hartford with a commanding sense of how to use the playing space for maximum effect, Primary Trust is an energetic feel-good play in which “the little guy” manages to navigate the minefield of everyday life without losing his dignity, much. How often does that happen?

As a note on the setting in the playbill reads: “Cranberry, New York: A medium-sized suburb of Rochester. Before smartphones.” It’s the last line that is so telling, as it not only puts the action back there before 2007, but before the reach of media via the phone became ubiquitous and incessant. As the singer Greg Brown puts it, “People used to spend quite a bit of time alone.” Remember?

Kenneth (Justin Weaks) in Primary Trust by Eboni Booth, TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Mike Marques

The plot point, though, is that even when our hero, a young Black man named Kenneth (Justin Weaks), is alone he’s not really alone. As we learn early, he has an almost constant companion: an imaginary middle-aged friend called Bert (Samuel Stricklen). The interplay between the two is the main focus in the early going and when we learn of Bert’s phantasmal status we have to recalibrate a little. Because without Bert, with whom Kenneth haunts a tiki bar called Wally’s, downing mai tais during the two-for-one happy hour, Kenneth has only his job at a bookstore. And when the store’s genial owner, Sam (a quick study in type by Ricardo Chavira), has to sell out to afford a necessary operation, which also requires moving to the dry atmosphere of Arizona—Kenneth’s got nothing. But Bert.

Corinna (Hilary Ward), Kenneth (Justin Weaks) in Primary Trust by Eboni Booth at TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Mike Marques

As the story develops—pushed along by Kenneth sharing his story in direct address to the audience—we see Kenneth learn to navigate life on his own. And that means talking to people who, unlike Bert and the audience, are actually in scenes with him. Chiefly, that’s a string of waitresses/waiters at Wally’s, all played by Hilary Ward with a zestful rendering of different attitudes, dialects, and levels of professionalism. Eventually, the friendly and interested Corrina emerges from the pack and makes a chance suggestion about job prospects at a local bank (Kenneth’s deceased mother had been an employee at a different bank). Kenneth, who previously had a social worker who found him a job, takes the initiative and, with Bert’s backing, goes to a job interview where he meets the generally sympathetic Clay (Ricardo Chavira as an enthusiastic former high school football star), gets hired, and soon begins to succeed on the job.

Clay (Ricardo Chavira), Bert (Samuel Stricklen), Kenneth (Justin Weaks) in Primary Trust by Eboni Booth at TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Mike Marques

Interestingly, Kenneth’s traumatic backstory, which features the original for Bert, is not told to the audience, but rather to Corrina on an impromptu night out at a French restaurant. As we might expect, further trauma will surface when Kenneth comes to understand that having real people in his life makes having an imaginary companion more difficult. While the more dramatic touches in the play can feel a bit manipulative, the likeability of all the characters we meet—including a slew of eager to-be-pleased bank customers (Ward again)—keeps the play bouncing along in a mostly cheerful groove.

Corrina (Hilary Ward), Kenneth (Justin Weaks) in Primary Trust by Eboni Booth at TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Mike Marques

The fact of personal trauma is treated seriously, and the play’s main strength is the way Booth and Chang make theater of the sharing of stories and telling truths as a mainstay of fellowship. We see how relations between employer and employee, or between customer and worker, can be cordial rather than adversarial. Primary Trust takes its title from the name of the bank where Kenneth works, but it also alludes to the idea that trust is primary to any friendship. We may decide for ourselves whether the virtual world has helped to foster or undermine such trust. To say nothing of the political climate the internet aggravates.

The entire cast is engaging and makes each character—no matter how briefly glimpsed—come alive vividly. The more extended roles—Corrina, Clay, Bert—let us learn more about Kenneth by reflection, as we come to know him better by the kinds of interactions he inspires. As Kenneth, Justin Weaks’s thoughtful and touching performance works through a gripping emotional range—at times, reserved and closed off, at other times effusive and emotional. Kenneth is the heart and soul of the play, a young man already sorely tried by life who helps us realize that just getting by can be a great triumph. As we watch, his joy in life becomes ours.

Kenneth (Justin Weaks), Bert (Samuel Stricklen) in Primary Trust by Eboni Booth, at TheaterWorks Hartford; photo by Mike Marques

The staging here is very fast and effective, as in most TheaterWorks shows, with serviceable props and backdrops that quickly shift the scenes, letting us feel we’re becoming at-home in Kenneth’s mind, finding out that empathy can be a magic door into another world.

Primary Trust
By Eboni Booth
Directed by Jennifer Chang

Set Design: Nicholas Ponting; Costume Design: Danielle Preston; Lighting Design: Bryan Ealey; Sound Design: Frederick Kennedy; Wig Design: Earon Chew Healey; Associate Director: Moira O’Sullivan; Dialect Coach: Jennifer Scapetis-Tycer; Stage Manager: Tom Kosis

Cast: Ricardo Chavira, Samuel Stricklen, Hilary Ward, Justin Weaks

TheaterWorks, Hartford
April 10-May 11, 2025

The Play That Keeps Playing

Review of Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse

What is the chief characteristic of “theatre people”? Paul Slade Smith’s play of that name, playing at Westport Country Playhouse through April 12, suggests that “theatre people” may often feel they’re in a play, so that life tends to be a matter of plots and subplots and complications that may lead to a happy ending (comedy) or an unhappy ending (tragedy). Cleverly playing on an awareness of life’s theatricality and of comic theater’s familiar tropes, Smith’s play, ably directed by Mark Shanahan, enacts the kind of fast-paced comedy that Westport Country Playhouse has a tradition of bringing off extremely well.

Margot (Mia PInero), Victor (Michael McCorry Rose), Olga (Erin Noel Grennan), Oliver (Rodolfo Soto), Arthur (Michael McCormick), Charlotte (Isabel Keating) in Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Visiting at a Rhode Island mansion to hear Broadway star Margot Bell (Mia Pinero) perform, Charlotte Sanders (Isabel Keating) and Arthur Sanders (Michael McCormick) are playwrights who hope to facilitate Margot’s participation in the play they plan to make of a new novel, The Angel in the Next Room (which, unbeknownst to Margot, has been written in dedication to her by Oliver Adams (Rodolfo Soto), a young writer in love with her). To help what the Sanderses assume to be a definite couple work together, Charlotte has arranged for Oliver to stay in a bedroom adjacent to Margot’s. Complications arise when Margot is overheard being not so angelic in the next room, much to Oliver’s dismay.

Oliver (Rodolfo Soto), Arthur (Michael McCormick), Charlotte (Isabel Keating) in Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The Sanders must rectify the situation, which means: dealing with Oliver’s despair (given several comical layers by Rodolfo Soto); enlightening Margot of the enormity of the situation (the Sanders desperately need a hit play), which causes Mia Pinero to move swiftly from grande dame to flustered ingenue; roping Oliver’s rival, the handsome, dashing and dim actor Victor Pratt (Michael McCorry Rose), into their plans—which means he may have to flap his arms like a showboating angel at some length; and enlisting all manner of help from Olga (Erin Noel Grennan), a scene-stealing and theater-deprecating housemaid who stands in at times for a playwright, a director, and an audience. The cast are all equal to their characters’ supposed real selves as well as the play-within-the-play characters they have to convince one another they understand (which is not easy!).

Charlotte Sanders (Isabel Keating), Margot Bell (Mia Pinero), Victor Pratt (Michael McCorry Rose) in Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s Play at the Castle (1924), which was popularized in English by P. G. Wodehouse as The Play’s the Thing (1926), Theatre People is set in the 1940s, the chief era for Hollywood screwball comedies, with the Sanderses sometimes flinging off sallies worthy of Nick and Nora—Isabel Keating, who plays Charlotte with a fizzy, can-do assertiveness, even resembles Myrna Loy a little, especially when some of the fizz falls flat and she has to consider that intricate plots may be easier to pull off on stage than in life. As her often bemused, confused partner who lives his life rising to her bait, Michael McCormick shows off great timing, a skeptical foil who knows how to make the most of any opening given.

Charlotte Sanders (Isabel Keating), Arthur Sanders (Michael McCormick) in Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The romantic triangle that has to center the shenanigans is never as diverting as the fiction Charlotte devises so as to tie-up everyone’s loose ends, and Margot and Victor spend the whole first act on the other side of that well-appointed wall, while Oliver is the kind of unrealistically romantic naif whom one can’t imagine writing a novel much less a good one. Such devices make “theater people” seem rather silly, but the protracted “rehearsal” that, in Act 2, makes ridiculous theater of Victor’s wooing of Margot—and creates a preposterous plot that lets Arthur literally play God—is the pay-off, and even manages to make Olga a believer in the value of theater. The value certainly includes the ability to make everything—set (James J. Fenton), costumes (Annie J. Le), lighting (Alyssandra Docherty), sound (Jill BC Du Boff), props (Anya Kutner) and hair/makeup (J. Jared Janas) as top-notch and flawless as possible as they are here.

Olga (Erin Noel Grennan), Charlotte Sanders (Isabel Keating) in Theatre People, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by T. Charles Erickson

There’s a point fairly early in the play when Charlotte tries to explain theater’s attractions to a doubting Olga, whose common sense grasp of human foibles doesn’t see why anyone would want to waste time re-enacting such things. Charlotte describes how the audience at a play are able to forget the world and all its troubles while getting caught up in the lives being staged before them by living people. The words, we can imagine, are meant to have a resonance for our particular times, but can—we realize—be assigned to any time in human history. The power of theater to create a facsimile of life that can fascinate us, whether believable or unbelievable, laughable or lachrymose, keeps us returning to our seats. As the final entry in the venerable Westport Country Playhouse’s “Season of Laughter,” Theatre People capably reminds us that people who live only on stage need an audience to come alive. They need us, in other words, theater’s people.

Theatre People
By Paul Slade Smith
Adapted from Ferenc Molnár’s Play at the Castle
Directed by Mark Shanahan

Set Designer: James J. Fenton; Costume Designer: Annie J. Le; Lighting Designer: Alyssandra Docherty; Sound Designer: Jill BC Du Boff; Prop Supervisor: Anya Kutner; Wig, Hair, & Makeup Designer: J. Jared Janas; Production Stage Manager: Rebecca C. Monroe; Assistant Stage Manager: Christine Lemme; Production Assistant: Zach De Brino; Assistant Director: Anissa Felix

Cast: Erin Noel Grennan, Isabel Keating, Michael McCormick, Mia Pinero, Michael McCorry Rose, Rodolfo Soto

Westport Country Playhouse
March 25-April 12, 2025

The Art of Belonging

Review of Laughs in Spanish, Hartford Stage

Alexis Scheer’s Laughs in Spanish, playing at Hartford Stage through March 30, grabs us from the start: a blank wall where expensive artworks should be hanging and a loud, sustained scream of “fuuuuuck!” from art dealer Mariana (Stephanie Machado). ‘Tis the season of the famed Art Basel Miami Beach, and Mariana must needs sell art. The missing paintings, though, come to seem mostly a minor plot point, a way to start the action with a bit of bait-and-switch. Directed by Lisa Portes, the play begins with comic, on-the-job high anxiety, but gradually becomes a play about relationships, and family, and community values.

I might have preferred to watch Mariana deal with the art world.

Mariana (Stephanie Machado), Estella (Maggie Bofill) in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

But that’s just me: the accent here is on the accents, we might say. The play treats—with ready humor and a bubbly cast of characters—the shifting roles people play in their lives—work, family, romance—and, more particularly, the tonal shifts that come from being manifestly Latine, in some situations, and more knowingly Angloese in others. The fun of watching the play comes in seeing how the role and tone shifts are instinctive, instructive, and played for effect in a variety of social situations by this able cast.

Start with our screaming art dealer (Machado a little later does a rattled scream that easily eclipses her opening bellow): Mariana, we see, is a savvy, self-sustaining success, but success can easily totter into failure; besides the upcoming reception for art now gone, she has to deal with her assistant Carolina (María Victoria Martínez) who is a Latine artist looking for a break—and who cooly suggests her works should be hung in lieu of the purloined pieces; then there’s Mariana’s mom, Estella (Maggie Bofill), who is a celebrity because of a role she plays in a telenovela, and who is back in her old Wynwood stomping grounds for reasons of her own (but which are relevant to Mariana). Coincidentally, Jenny, Estella’s assistant, an Anglo, is a former school-chum of Mariana’s at the boarding school that absentee mom Estella sent her young daughter to. Does that backstory spell friction or romance? Meanwhile, there’s also very agreeable Juan (Luis Vega), the kind of security guard who thinks it’s no sweat when highly valuable art disappears on his watch, and who is more than cozy with Carolina.

In other words, there are past, present, and future situations aplenty. In all the busyness of the various cross-purposes, the play loses some of the charm that got us interested in the first place. The two strong characters here are Mariana and Estella, both given fascinatingly varied readings by Stephanie Machado and Maggie Bofill, respectively. The mother-daughter dynamic is the most fully fleshed-out, and watching these two work through their pasts and presents is rewarding viewing. Bofill’s Estella is the more demanding and commanding, even when she tries to be humble, and her range of ways to work a room never runs dry. Late in the play she delivers a speech/monologue that left me a little uncertain of its relevance but never in doubt that it was fun to listen to and watch.

Estella (Maggie Bofill); Mariana (Stephanie Machado), foreground, in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Machado’s Mariana can be breezy, ballsy, bitter, blithe—and believably girlish. She’s comes across as the kind of character that—if maybe not telenovela material—can be easily imagined as a sit-com heroine, cut from the Mary Tyler Moore Show mold (if that’s not too ancient a reference). This week, we see her deal with missing art, a school crush, and the fall-out from mom’s misdemeanors. Next week?

Jenny (Olivia Hebert), Mariana (Stephanie Machado) in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The supporting cast all get to have spotlight moments too: the scene of Carolina and Juan in his car with siren and lights going works as contemporary comedy-romance; Jenny’s scene with Mariana lingers maybe a bit too long in the indirection of romantic buildup but is still sweet; and anyone’s scene with Estella upgrades the play’s humor. She’s a walking, talking comic melodrama.

Estella (Maggie Bofill) in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Brian Sidney Bembridge’s scenic design is a bright open space that also shows off Hartford Stage’s spinning stage, so that we get a welcome scene change—twice—in the midst of the action. The street-art on a wall has the requisite Miami feel, I assume, and the forest of trees is foreboding and funky at once. Harry Nadal’s costumes are colorfully varied, and there are lively dance/movement routines to the original music by Daniela Hart/UptownWorks. Throughout, Lisa Portes shows a sharp sense of how to have her cast play to an appreciative audience. Most laughs land and some even simmer.

Carolina (Maria Victoria Martínez), Juan (Luis Vega) in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Laughs in Spanish shows us a vividly turning wheel that presents each character functioning in more than one environment and in more than one capacity. The point of it all, ultimately, turns on which self each character is most comfortable as; or we might say, which identity is the most authentic. The strength of Scheer’s play is that it shows we are each authentically, truthfully, actually more than one thing. The best we can do is make our various selves align with those we care about most.

Mariana (Stephanie Machado), Estella (Maggie Bofill) in Laughs in Spanish at Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Laughs in Spanish
By Alexis Scheer
Directed by Lisa Portes

Scenic Design: Brian Sidney Bembridge; Costume Design: Harry Nadal; Lighting Design: Sherrice Mojgani; Original Music & Sound Design: Daniela Hart/UptownWorks; Dialect & Voice Coach: Cynthia Santos DeCure; Production Stage Manager: Theresa Stark; Assistant Stage Manager: Christina M. Woolard; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Maggie Bofill, Olivia Hebert, Stephanie Machado, Maria Victoria Martínez, Luis Vega

Hartford Stage
March 6-30, 2025

Don't Blame the Mirror

Review of The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre

“Dying,” the apocryphal theater saying goes, “is easy; comedy is difficult.” Farce, we might say, is even trickier. Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector dates from 1836 and is one of the classic farces of the era, a play that skewers the pretentions of provincials and metropolitans, of liberals and conservatives alike. If it’s a given that the officials in an out-of-the-way Russian village will be hopelessly corrupt, naïve and inefficient, it’s also a given that any remedy from higher up will be just as ineffectual. In Gogol’s world, humanity is ultimately at its own mercy; witless, indulgent, perverse, false, sentimental, occasionally inspired, the best and worst of our collective species wars in each individual brain and breast.

Yura Kordonsky’s adaption, which he also directs, is now playing at Yale Repertory Theatre through March 29 and aims to be as broadly comic as possible. It’s a production not without its dark side, but the manifest effect is gleeful celebration of theater as contrived spectacle.

Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre, left to right: Whitney Andrews, Darius Sakui, Brandon E. Burton (kneeling), Annelise Lawson, Edoardo Benzoni, John Evans Reese, Malik James, Grayson Richmond; photo by Joan Marcus

The distraught Mayor (Brandon E. Burton) of a nameless village has received word that an inspector, traveling incognito, will be coming to town to spy upon the local officials, who, we see, are a dissolute pack of incorrigibles: The Director of Public Health (Whitney Andrews) runs a hospital where patients die or get well because “they would have anyway”; The Judge (Darius Sakui) proudly takes bribes as suitable to the dignity of his office; The School Superintendent (John Evans Reese) is far too timid to impose any order on his teachers and resents them for acting better educated; The Postmaster (Annelise Lawson) opens and reads all mail in hopes of finding romantic billets-doux; and The Doctor (Grayson Richmond) is German, speaks no Russian, and is therefore made an authority. Then there are the townsfolk in the form of two nearly Beckettian clowns called Bobchinsky (Edoardo Benzoni) and Dobchinsky (Malik James) who vie for the thrill of spreading gossip. Finally, the Mayor’s family: Anna (Elizabeth Stahlmann), a wife and mother who resents being left out of events and sees the maturation of her daughter, Marya (Chinna Palmer), as an affront and a revolt, whereas Marya while naïve is no longer a child.

Marya, the Mayor’s daughter (Chinna Palmer), Anna, the Mayor’s wife (Elizabeth Stahlmann) in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Word comes that a stranger with a servant is staying at a local inn and has let drop that he’s from St. Pete’s (aka, St. Petersburg). This unsuspecting visitor, Ivan Khlestakov (Samuel Douglas), with his man Osip (Nomè SiDone), is trapped in town because his gambling losses have left him without funds. The officials’ efforts to bribe him relentlessly and favor him with all manner of obsequious attentions suits him wonderfully, leading to romantic entanglements and other potentially consequential exposures.

Ivan Khlestakov (Samuel Douglas), Osip (Nomè SiDone) in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

The cast—all graduates from or current students in the MFA acting program at the David Geffen School of Drama—attack the material with what might be called collective mania. At the heart of the show is Samuel Douglas’ Ivan, played as a whining, preening man-child wildly fluctuating between astonishing self-importance and trembling insecurity. His initial surprise at his fawning reception, signaled by a high-pitched laugh reminiscent of Tom Hulce’s Mozart in the film Amadeus (1984), eventually gives way to a smug superiority as he deigns to humor each official’s shameless courtship.

Marya, the Mayor’s daughter (Chinna Palmer), Ivan Khlestakov (Samuel Douglas) in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

The scene where Ivan attempts to secure a mischievously animate boot demonstrates the incredible vigor of Douglas’ physical comedy. His Ivan is a whirlwind of energetic bursts and outrageous attempts to curry favor. He boasts of being friends with Pushkin (as was Gogol) and aims to let his playwright friend Nikolai know of his adventures so they can be put into a play. While one might wish for a somewhat more temperate manner in Ivan’s bewilderment during the long leadup to Intermission, the play’s second Act finds our hero a bit more knowing if not outright Machiavellian. His turn-on-a-dime seductions of both Anna and Marya make hay of the usual love-interests of romantic plays, and are enacted with great relish.

Anna, the Mayor’s wife (Elizabeth Stahlmann), Marya, the Mayor’s daughter (Chinna Palmer), Ivan Khlestakov (Samuel Douglas), The Mayor (Brandon E. Burton) in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Other standouts are: the comic timing of the entire cast, particularly during the reading of a revelatory letter late in the play; Elizabeth Stahlmann’s grandly unhappy Anna who imperiously questions random audience members from a window, fidgets erotically before Ivan, and treats her daughter as an evil double; Annelise Lawson’s neurotic Postmaster whose literal scream for attention is one to remember and whose dimness is her greatest charm; the bluster and fawning of Brandon E. Burton’s Mayor, a figure who, through all the mannerisms of caricature, manages to be a character and the author’s deliberate spokesman at one key point; Malik James’ Dobchinsky who is so flustered by his moment in the limelight when interrogated by Anna that he spends it crawling over surprised audience members; and Edoardo Benzoni’s Bobchinsky, a peasant soul grappling for a modern sense of self, whose great claim is that he “lives here!”

Piotr Ivanovich Dobchinsky (Malik James), Piotr Ivanovich Bobchinsky (Edoardo Benzoni) in Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Also for special mention: Silin Chen’s majestically dilapidated set, with exposed brickwork, a windowed room that makes for intrigue, with a sash that serves for a balcony à la Romeo and Juliet, and a stage full of eternal snow that sticks to every costume and at different points becomes medicinal or celebratory; KT Farmer’s range of costumes from the believable to the fantastic (check out those vermin), with any article apt to become a prop when suitable; Masha Tsimring’s lighting plays with situations as though a visual “score”; Minjae Kim’s sound design gives the musical score its due and includes atmospheric sound effects; Arseniy Gusev’s musical compositions shine in the gripping dream sequence before intermission, and there’s even a Pushkin poem set to music and sung with artful artlessness by Chinna Palmer as Marya.

The cast of Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; Marya (Chinna Palmer), center; photo by Joan Marcus

The sting of Gogol’s satire might seem a bit dulled by the relentless zaniness of Kordonsky’s approach, but the exuberance of the comic hijinks becomes its own rationale. If we’re never remotely in anything like a real place with real people, then we might realize that what we’re seeing is not so much Theater of the Absurd as absurd theater. While the first asks us to question everything that could give coherence to theater as a telling representation of real life, the second lets us know that such theatrical questioning is no answer.

The dark side surfaces in those eerie vermin who seem both humanoid and alien and eager to take over; in the faceless collective that threatens Ivan as his shadowy double (as the actual inspector might be), but can also stand for bureaucratic anonymity (or DOGE dodginess?); and in that final image of the swinging chandelier—ask not for whom the candles dim.

We might shape the play’s relation to the us of the US 2025 thus: if those in power are thorough idiots not to be trusted, what of the idiots who let such idiots run things?

The cast of Nikolai Gogol’s The Inspector, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Nikolai Gogol’s
The Inspector
Newly adapted and directed by Yura Kordonsky

Scenic Designer: Silin Chen; Costume Designer: KT Farmer; Lighting Designer: Masha Tsimring; Sound Designer: Minjae Kim; Composer: Arseniy Gusev; Hair Designer: Matthew Armentrout; Production Dramaturgs: Sophia Carey, Georgia Petersen; Technical Director: Cian Jaspar Freeman; Fight and Intimacy Directors: Kelsey Rainwater, Michael Rossmy; Vocal Coach: Walton Wilson; Casting Director: Calleri Jensen Davis; Stage Manager: Adam Taylor Foster

Cast: Whitney Andrews, Edoardo Benzoni, Brandon E. Burton, Samuel Douglas, Malik James, Annelise Lawson, Chinna Palmer, John Evans Reese, Grayson Richmond, Darius Sakui, Nomè SiDone, Elizabeth Stahlmann

Yale Repertory Theatre
March 7-29, 2025

Living Hell

Review of The Christians, New Haven Theater Company

“I have a powerful urge to communicate, but I find the distance between us insurmountable.” That may be the most resonant line in Lucas Hnath’s The Christians, playing for one more weekend at New Haven Theater Company, March 6-8. The words suggest the huge gaps that have arisen between “different sides” in our republic—right, left; Republican, Democrat; conservative, liberal—and, as in the play, between different beliefs within, nominally, the same religion.

The play is a serious, non-satiric, non-sentimental treatment of crisis in a religious community, and, directed by Deena Nicol-Blifford, is given another satisfyingly professional production in New Haven Theater Company’s long career. Well-cast, well-paced, with a telling grasp of how well this play works in front of a small audience, NHTC’s The Christians might convert you to the joys of small, local theater. As in the storefront where Pastor Paul’s church began, everyone present is fully visible.

The audience is the congregation, to a certain extent. We aren’t given cues, but we do watch as these somewhat theatrical church people go through their contortions. They generally speak into microphones as if their every thought must be broadcast (or in fact is, as the man upstairs is always listening). There’s a stultifying lack of humor in these characters, and a tendency to speak as if their beliefs determine the fate of humanity.

Such attitudes might be played with a sharp irony, but Hnath’s play takes these folks at their word, giving us glimpses of what it’s like to walk with Jesus every step of one’s life. Nicol-Blifford’s very capable cast convince us of the stakes here, even if we might think that whether Pastor Paul (Marty Tucker) or Associate Pastor Joshua (Gavin Whelan) believe in Hell or not doesn’t actually affect its existence or non-existence. To be fair, for the pastors the question isn’t simply whether they believe in Hell or not, but whether or not they should be trying to convince others to believe in it or not.

The play begins, riskily, with a sermon. As Pastor Paul, Marty Tucker is so spot-on believable it’s a bit uncanny. He exudes the measured cadence of a man who makes his living by public speaking, with the lofty tone of a man thoroughly wrapped-up in his own ethos. His story about wooing his wife Elizabeth (Susan Kulp) when she was a stranger on a plane, sending her a note with the quotation above, is made to stand for his ability to surmount the “insurmountable.”

Pastor Paul may be forgiven for being fascinated by the fact that others find him fascinating: his congregation has grown from less than fifty to the tens of thousands. (We’re meant to be seeing the leader of a megachurch, and I’m sure big theater productions with bigger budgets might try to recreate all the razzamatazz of church-going as arena spectacle, but the much smaller scale here means we can appreciate all the more the subtlety of the script.) Pastor Paul opens his sermon telling us that the church has overcome the cost incurred by building its grand meeting hall, and now is free of debt.

The relief of being financially solvent perhaps inspires Pastor Paul to attempt a radical change in the church’s dogma, which in effect says that a person’s soul could be in heaven, even if that person, in life, had never professed belief in Jesus Christ. The blowback on this alternative, and ostensibly progressive, creed is immediate. Associate Pastor Joshua, played with suitably dogged intensity by Gavin Whelan, takes exception, trying to quote the Bible to his purpose, but is nimbly rebuffed by Pastor Paul; Jenny (Margaret Mann), a seemingly meek and appreciative congregant, steps up to the mic with a testimonial that questions Pastor Paul’s good faith in changing course only after his congregation had sacrificed and scrimped to pay for his grand hall; Elder Jay (J. Kevin Smith), mostly supportive in private conversations with Paul, seemingly withdraws his backing when the church loses significantly more congregants than the initial fifty that had backed Joshua, now leading them as his followers.

Elizabeth (Susan Kulp), Paster Paul (Marty Tucker) in The Christians, New Haven Theater Company

In all this, The Christians stays within the bounds of religious practice and religious freedom. Few if any religions haven’t had schisms, heretics, and clashing doctrines even if not always spinning off into new faiths. We’re treated to a glimpse at how communities form and splinter, especially when it’s a matter of this charismatic leader or that. But Hnath’s play moves as well into more intimate realms. Late in the play we see Pastor Paul in conversation with his wife Elizabeth. The tension here comes from the pastor following only his own lead, keeping his wife uninformed of his intentions. What’s more, as Elizabeth presents her view, in Susan Kulp’s carefully modulated tones, we learn that she sides with Joshua on the question of Hell, and feels that her women’s Bible-study group might be a forum for her to express her dissatisfactions with her husband’s teachings.

In the end we see that, though the play concentrates on the problems that arise when a pastor veers from agreed-upon church doctrine into his own soul-searching agenda, The Christians isn’t only about religious belief or faith. Hnath’s text gestures toward the beliefs we profess but don’t really hold, the beliefs we change but conceal from others, the beliefs we use to denigrate those with other beliefs, and how hard it is to talk meaningfully about something that always, it seems, amounts to “a feeling.”

What’s bracing about the play is its sense that an inability to communicate is not insurmountable. Everyone in the play gets to state their views. The downside is that the firmer they are in their beliefs, the more the distance between their beliefs grows.

Insurmountable? As any good pastor might say, “let us pray.”

The Christians
By Lucas Hnath
Directed by Deena Nicol-Blifford

Co-Producers: Deena Nicol-Blifford and J. Kevin Smith; Stage Manager: Abby Klein; Set and Sound Design: Deena Nicol-Blifford; Lighting Design: Michael Abbatiello

Cast: Susan Kulp, Margaret Mann, J. Kevin Smith, Marty Tucker, Gavin Whelan

New Haven Theater Company
February 27 & 28; March 1, 6, 7, 8, 2025

Tend Your Own Garden

Review of Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse

At the conclusion of Voltaire’s satirical narrative Candide, the protagonist reflects that the only way to find happiness in this volatile and uncertain world is “to tend one’s own garden.” Karen Zacarías’ bright situation comedy, Native Gardens, playing at Westport Country Playhouse through March 8, directed by Joann M. Hunter, suggests—comically—that tending a garden may come with its own stress and political tensions.

Frank Butley (Adam Heller), Virginia Butley (Paula Leggett Chase), Tania Del Valle (Linedy Genao), Pablo Del Valle (Anthony Michael Martinez) in Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

Anna Louizos’ sumptuous set confronts us with two different backyards, situated in an upscale neighborhood in Washington DC. On our right, a well-appointed brick house with a stone porch on the back and a very well-tended garden full of bright blooms; on our left, a less maintained house, with siding, overhung by the leaves and branches of a large tree, and a yard with a simple table and chairs near an ivied fence. On the right live the Butleys, Virginia (Paula Leggett Chase) and Frank (Adam Heller), gray-haired, affable, Republican; Frank tends his garden assiduously, desperate to do better than Honorable Mention in the yearly neighborhood competition. On the left, live Tania Del Valle (Linedy Genao), a pregnant doctoral student, and her husband Pablo (Anthony Michael Martinez), a Chilean immigrant eager to make partner at the law firm where he works. They are the new owners of this fixer-upper, and we learn that Tania is very committed to using only indigenous plants in her gardening as she looks askance at Frank’s fussy, imported flowers and shrubs.

Even if the clash here were only about the do’s and don’ts of horticulture, the confrontation between these two couples would likely spin through a number of push-button topics designed to demonstrate the perils of neighborliness in ideologically fraught times. Early on, the talk establishes that Tania’s “people” have been on the North American continent for ages, that she is from New Mexico, not Mexico, and that Pablo hails from a world of chauffeur-driven limos and private schools. Frank and Tania seem to bond on the importance of gardening, even if their ideal gardens are very different; Virginia attempts to find common cause with Pablo by asserting that being a woman in a male preserve such as engineering—her field—is comparable to being a non-white man trying to climb the ladder today.

Pablo Del Valle (Anthony Michael Martinez), Frank Butley (Adam Heller), Tania Del Valle (Linedy Genao) in Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

Zacarías’s dialogue lets each character get across an individual perspective but without drawing major fault lines. Everyone is trying to be likeable. The real disruption occurs not for reasons of taste, or background or even political affiliation. When the Del Valles decide the chain-link fence must go, to be replaced by a wooden one that the Butleys welcome, a glance at the map of their plot indicates that their property line actually extends about two feet into Frank’s garden. Now, it’s time to bring in the rhetorical big guns—about land-grabs, borders, and squatter’s rights, about time-honored stewardship, the rule of law, and old privilege vs. new ambition.

Zacarías works in just enough issues-talk to indicate how our larger cultural surround inflects even our most trivial occupations, and Joann M. Hunter’s direction keeps everything on an even keel, so that we are intrigued more than confronted by the situation. Mention should be made too of how well the silent “workers” are played by Horacio “Joe” Cardozo and Brianna Parkin, whose very presence shows how necessary an underclass is to any upper-class assertions.

Pablo Del Valle (Anthony Michael Martinez), Frank Butley (Adam Heller) in Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

All the drama plays out with notable give-and-take—as for instance, the escalating late-night fracas between Frank and Pablo that is not without a certain self-consciousness, or the “women make nice better than men” assumptions that goad Virginia and Tania into a talk that goes delightfully off the rails. Throughout, there is a fairly nuanced sense of how these two contemporary households differ, and, most usefully, how the perspective of being near retirement vs. up-and-coming plays into the situation.

The problem, which gets uglier and less resolvable as it goes on, receives a dramatic turn that could be called “bambina ex machina.” The epilogue might seem corny in its “can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” cheer, but Zacarías seems to assume that, if we can suffer being ribbed for our eagerness to assert our distinct identities and preferences and assumptions, we can also be ribbed for our hope for happy endings. The script is resolutely fun, but rarely really funny.

Tania Del Valle (Linedy Genao), Frank Butley (Adam Heller), Virginia Butley (Paula Leggett Chase) in Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

The cast acquit themselves well, all very believable in their roles, bringing enough particularity to seem individuals rather than types. As Pablo, Anthony Michael Martinez doesn’t seem yet the slick lawyer we might expect him to become, and his effort at domestic tranquility requires much input from his wife. He seems to spend most of his time flustered. Linedy Genao’s Tania has a freshness and youth that might make us think she’ll be docile and meek, but guess again; when she cusses out Virginia in Spanish we have a glimpse of how risky it is to cross her. As Frank, Adam Heller seems a truly likeable guy’s guy, the type that inhabited many a sitcom where a family is presided over by a sometimes wise, sometimes silly successful white male (early on, Tania quips that the Del Salles are “living next-door to the Dick Van Dyke Show”); he does go on a bit too much about his damn garden contest, but that just shows he’s used to getting his way. The star of the show is Paula Leggett Chase’s Virginia, full of arch mannerisms and meaningful silences and comic timing; we see how much having an argument with these newcomers gets her juices flowing and we imagine Virginia hasn’t been this turned-on in years.

Frank Butley (Adam Heller), Virginia Butley (Paula Leggett Chase) in Native Gardens, Westport Country Playhouse; photo by Carol Rosegg

The set, costumes, lighting, incidental music between scenes are all superb—and all serve well the expectation that theater show us a reasonable facsimile of our lives and times. Playing in Westport, we might find we do indeed recognize these characters and, with the world as dictated by Washington DC becoming daily a more alarming concern, we might find a trip back to the relative stabilities of the late twenty-teens reassuring. As Tania allows at one point, their neighbors, though Republicans, “are people too.”

Native Gardens
By Karen Zacarías
Directed by Joann M. Hunter

Set Designer: Anna Louizos; Costume Designer: David C. Woolard; Lighting Designer: Charlie Morrison; Sound Designer: John Gromada; Prop Supervisor: Anna Dorodnykh; Production Stage Manager: Abigail Zaccari; Assistant Stage Manager: Willy Kinch; Production Assistant: Mariana Jennings

Cast: Paula Leggett Chase, Linedy Genao, Adam Heller, Anthony Michael Martinez

Westport Country Playhouse
February 18-March 8, 2025

Indelible Dialogue in a Diner

Review of Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage

A diner in a failing section of Pittsburgh in 1969. The Hill District was a Black neighborhood where a local community once self-sufficient and set apart has undergone a series of hard changes due to unemployment and the “redevelopment” which destroyed the neighborhood and the storied roots of many people, not least the playwright August Wilson. Wilson’s Two Trains Running, of all his plays set in his birthplace, is particularly aware of its moment. 1969 is a point at which, for some of his characters, what once was is still real while the notable changes for the worse have become irrevocable.

Wilson not only trusts his characters to have sufficient depth to touch on the themes that matter to him, he’s also able to let action become a background to how these characters talk out their reactions, their hopes, their fears, and their grudges. While there is a strong literary command here, one would be hard-pressed to turn any character into a symbol or a stand-in for a particular ideology. Wilson’s characters always speak their individual truths, eventually, and being present while that happens is a major incentive to attend his plays.

Two Trains Running is one of the most rewarding and deeply observed plays in the canon of works by this towering American playwright. Hartford Stage’s production, playing through February 16, is not to be missed.

Memphis (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

At the center of the story is Memphis (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.), a diner owner who originated in Alabama and plans to return to property there, someday. He’s still got the deed, he insists. Key to his current situation is whether to sell out, now that the neighborhood barely sustains his business and, if so, for how much. His pride in his past accomplishments and in his once central place in the local community sustains him as hard times come on. His diner is still a gathering place, but the regulars are not exactly boon costumers.

Foreground: Holloway (Jerome Preston Bates); background: Memphis (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.), Sterling (Rafael Jordan) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

Chief among them is Holloway (Jerome Preston Bates), the main source of local history and the one best able to articulate the grievances of the area; Wolf (Postell Pringle) is younger, a hip numbers runner who flits in and out to drum up business and to take messages on Memphis’s pay phone, much to the proprietor’s annoyance; a newcomer is Sterling (Rafael Jordan), recently released from the penitentiary and desperate for work and for any kind of welcome to give him a sense of belonging. They are joined at random moments by: Hambone (David Jennings), a character afflicted by mental troubles who carries a long-standing grievance against a white employer for the unsettled payment of a ham for work done; and West (Jeorge Bennett Watson), the only well-to-do local Black businessman because, as an undertaker, he is never without work. Finally, there’s Holloway’s only worker, the harried and patient Risa (Taji Senior) whose presence strategically offsets the men’s club ambience at the diner. She bears self-inflicted scars on her legs that suggest a backstory the others aren’t quite willing to face.

The excellent cast renders these characters in all their verbal glory. The Hartford Stage playing space in Lawrence E. Moten III’s realistic design gives ample area for director Gilbert MacCauley’s subtle choreography of action that lets us follow interplay that happens both before our eyes and in our ability to follow a speaker’s manner and particular logic. The way these characters talk to each other is the marrow of this play, and it’s a memorable experience to hear Wilson’s dialogue given its full dimensions. Lighting (Xavier Pierce) and Costumes (Devario D. Simmons) provide visual cues that give extra weight to the personalities on display.

Memphis (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.), Wolf (Postell Pringle) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

As Memphis, Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., has the necessary presence, showing us a man both genial and anxious, able to muse aloud and to denounce the failings he sees in others, while demanding his due. Whether or not his grasp of reality is as unflinching as he thinks it is becomes a plot point when it comes to his evaluation of the diner. His crony, Halloway, a fixture at the diner, is a captivatingly mercurial figure in Jerome Preston Bates’ rendering; his intonations are like a jazz player, riffing on repetitions like Halloway’s recurring praise of Aunt Ester, a legendary figure of the neighborhood known for her wisdom and clairvoyant insight. Postell Pringle’s Wolf is pitch perfect in his facial reactions—like his ability to stare daggers—his vocal sallies, and his general demeanor: the way he looks through the glass door, up and down, before he puts a foot out tells us a lot about the kind of hustle he’s on.

Sterling (Rafael Jordan) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

As the two younger characters who might form a couple, Sterling and Risa seem perhaps the more formulaic aspects of the play, and yet Wilson has a way of making them both very individual and surprising. As Sterling, Rafael Jordan is earnest and dogged, getting on others’ nerves at times, and yet trying to find some way to please; he’s also a loose cannon because the others don’t know exactly what all he might get up to doing. His preening insistence that Risa will marry him once his number comes in provides the play with some romantic comedy elements, and the interplay between Risa and Sterling finds touching use of Gregory Robinson’s original music. Taji Senior gives Risa a mixture of skepticism and sympathy toward the others that makes her at times a stand-in for the audience, trying to assess which of these very voluble men, all assertive and bossy with at least a pretense of charm, is most worth our trouble.

Risa (Taji Senior) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

The main figure of sympathy is Hambone, who seems to live on handouts and disability payments while reciting his credo: “He gonna give me my ham.” David Jennings quite simply owns this role, his performance is forceful, funny, dramatic and fully engaged. As West, the least sympathetic if only because the most well-off, Jeorge Bennett Watson has the dignity of a professional and a long-tested patience that could make him our stand-in as well. His gentle hat-roll late in the play shows that even an undertaker can be playful.

Memphis (Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr.), Hambone (David Jennings) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

August Wilson, who was born in 1945 and died in 2005, wrote a play for each decade of the twentieth century, each of them packed with characters who have compelling realism and archetypal power. This play has long seemed to me one of the more enduring, if only because the 1960s have played such an major part in influencing American culture through the end of the twentieth century. Two Trains Running manages to dramatize cultural forces of the time while avoiding some of the more obvious clichés of the period. It is a treasure of a play, full of history, grievance and hope, and brought to indelible life at Hartford Stage.

Foreground: Risa (Taji Senior), West (Jeorge Bennett Watson); background: Sterling (Rafael Jordan) in August Wilson’s Two Trains Running, Hartford Stage; photo by T. Charles Erickson

August Wilson’s
Two Trains Running
Directed by Gilbert McCauley

Scenic Design: Lawrence E. Moten III; Costume Design: Devario D. Simmons; Lighting Design: Xavier Pierce; Original Music & Sound Design: Gregory Robinson; Wig, Hair & Makeup Design: J. Jared Jonas; Intimacy Coordinator: Kelsey Rainwater; Vocal Coach: Cynthia Santos DeCure; Casting: Alaine Alldaffer & Lisa Donadio; Production Stage Manager: lark hackshaw; Assistant Stage Manager : Adalhia Ivette Hart; Associate Artistic Director: Zoë Golub-Sass; Director of Production: Bryan T. Holcombe; General Manager: Emily Van Scoy

Cast: Jerome Preston Bates, David Jennings, Rafael Jordan, Postell Pringle, Taji Senior, Godfrey L. Simmons, Jr., Jeorge Bennett Watson

Hartford Stage
January 23-February 16, 2025

Trouble in Paradise

Review of Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre

Set in the area of New York City called San Juan Hill in 1927, Steve Carter’s Eden draws us into the tensions between two neighboring families, tensions that stem from class and racial distinctions in the Black community. The main thematic concern of Carter’s play is how divisive cultural conceptions can undermine racial solidarity. It's a worthwhile historical lesson since, for those who didn’t spend much or any time in the twentieth century, the lack of specific ethnic or national identifications in blanket terms like “white” and “black” and “POC” lends itself to an unnuanced view of such identities. Carter’s lively, incisive, well written and engaging play, directed with superlative pacing by Brandon J. Dirden at the Yale Repertory Theatre through February 8, takes us back into U.S. history with the kind of command of period and personality that we find in peers like Arthur Miller and August Wilson.

Nimrod (Juice Mackins), Solomon (Prentiss Patrick-Carter), Agnes (Alicia Pilgrim), Annetta (Lauren F. Walker) in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

As Miller and Wilson often do, Carter sets his play in a very specific time and place and focuses on a particular family. The Bartons consist of a father, Joseph (Russell G. Jones), and a mother Florie (Christina Acosta Robinson), who are West Indian, with two daughters, Agnes (Alicia Pilgrim) and Annetta (Lauren F. Walker), born there as well, and two sons, Nimrod (Juice Mackins) and Solomon (Prentiss Patrick-Carter), who were born in New York. The immediate contrast, played for laughs by the young boys, is the difference between the way the former islanders speak and the way the local Black youths (at the time designated “Negroes”) speak. It’s a cultural difference the young people can view as significant or not, but in their home their father is adamant that his children will not mix with “these people.” American Blacks, in his view, are inferior to Blacks from the Indies.

Annetta Barton (Lauren F. Walker), Eustace Baylor (Chaundra Hall-Broomfield in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Of course this culturally exclusive prejudice will be tested by the familiar “melting-pot” conditions of life in New York City, for the boys, and by the thorny issue of who gets to decide whom marriageable daughter Annetta, eighteen, will marry. Joseph Barton favors Mr. Wallace, a bachelor friend and successful store-keeper, old enough to be Annetta’s father but “pure” in his bloodline; Annetta, in the course of the play, falls for Eustace Baylor (Chaundra Hall-Broomfield), a young man who comes from the U.S. south and is living across the hall with his aunt Lizzie Harris (Heather Alicia Simms).

Carter deftly constructs scenes that illuminate this world and, while the plot developments are hardly surprising, real drama comes from getting to know these characters, and seeing how they come better to know themselves and each other.

Florie Barton (Christina Acosta Robinson), Joseph Barton (Russell G. Jones) in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

There are wonderful, fully involving performances throughout. Christina Acosta Robinson is superb as Florie Barton; seemingly a self-effacing wife and mother, she comes on strong near the end of Act I and completely alters the family dynamic in Act II. Robinson plays her as a woman awakened to her own missed potential by witnessing her husband’s brutal mistreatment of Annetta. Russell G. Jones conveys what Joseph imagines to be tough love and high standards with a patriarchal superiority he deems unquestionable. More than a little tyrannical, he fears the scrappy street ethos of the U.S. will undermine his values, and of course he’s right, but how that plays out is key to the drama Carter finds in questions of social mobility and constructions of racial identity.

Joseph Barton (Russell G. Jones), Annetta Barton (Lauren F. Walker), Florie Barton (Christina Acosta Robinson), Eustace Baylor (Chaundra Hall-Broomfield) in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

As the young couple yearning to breathe free, as it were, Lauren F. Walker’s Annetta presents the mix of innocence and knowing charm that easily stirs Eustace, played by Chaundra Hall-Broomfield with the kind of heartening self-confidence and easy manner we expect will carry the day. The scenes of confrontation with Mr. Barton have a grim inevitability since neither man can admit the other’s view.

As Aunt Lizzie, Heather Alicia Simms brings a further dimension to the story as a woman much more experienced in how immediate and provisional love can be, but also how life-altering. A conversation in Act II between Lizzie and Florie goes a long way in undermining Mr. Barton’s sense that there should be significant difference between the women due to birth and circumstances. They align in a wish to see the couple succeed.

Florie Barton (Christina Acosta Robinson), Lizzie Harris (Heather Alicia Simms) in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Ultimately, this cannot be a “happily ever after” story because the faultlines are too clearly marked. The difficulties of living with the hand one was dealt go beyond the bounds of this story for each character. Carter has the skill to conjure the relations that are meaningful for each character, letting us see how all are affected by such conflicts.

The scenic design by George Zhou, costumes by Caroline Tyson, lighting by Ankit Pandey all contribute significantly to the play’s strong naturalistic affect, creating spaces—including an impressive rooftop set—that feel fully inhabited. Aided by Ein Kim’s poetic projections and Tojo Rasedoara’s sound design and original music, the production is a triumph of subtle tech touches.

Eden’s title refers to Joseph Barton’s sense that the promised land, ultimately, is Africa, the land of his origins, following the views of his hero Marcus Garvey whose photo is prominently displayed in the home. Carter’s play shows how the realities of place have a way of taking precedence over ideological considerations, providing a view of how history is often shaped by unexpected affinities and differences.

Joseph Barton (Russell G. Jones), Solomon Barton (Prentiss Patrick-Carter), Nimrod Barton (Juice Mackins) in Eden, Yale Repertory Theatre; photo by Joan Marcus

Eden
By Steve Carter
Directed by Brandon J. Dirden

Scenic Designer: George Zhou; Costume Designer: Caroline Tyson; Lighting Designer: Ankit Pandey; Sound Design and Original Music: Tojo Rasedoara; Projection Designer: Ein Kim; Hair and Wig Designers: Krystal Balleza and Will Vicari; Production Dramaturgs: Austin Riffelmacher, Tia Smith; Technical Director: Nickie Dubick; Fight and Intimacy Director: Michael Rossmy; Vocal and Dialect Coach: Paul Pryce; Casting Director: Calleri Jensen Davis; Stage Manager: Hope Binfeng Ding

Cast: Chaundre Hall-Broomfield, Russell G. Jones, Juice Mackins, Prentiss Patrick-Carter, Alicia Pilgrim, Christina Acosta Robinson, Heather Alicia Simms, Lauren F. Walker

Yale Repertory Theatre
January 16-February 8, 2025