Bull in a China Shop

C-

Mary Woolley led such an interesting life that it is hard to imagine that it could be turned into a boring play, but playwright Bryna Turner, making her professional debut with this LCT3 production, has managed just that. Among her many achievements, Woolley was president of Mt. Holyoke College for over 35 years and was largely responsible for transforming it from a sleepy regional seminary to a first-rate women’s college. One of her first official acts was to hire her lifelong partner Jeannette Marks, as a professor of English and, within the year, to make her department chair. Suspected favoritism toward Marks dogged Woolley’s career. What Turner has written came across to me as scattered chapters from a Cliff Notes summary of a biography. There was very little enlightenment and not much emotional involvement. Maybe it was more meaningful to lesbians. Since there were two excerpts from a lecture on Woolf’s Orlando, maybe it would have helped to have read that book. As I experienced the play, it shed little heat or light. I must confess that I had to fight nodding off a few times. The multicultural cast is led by Enid Graham as Woolley and Ruibo Quan as Marks. Lizbeth Mackay plays the college’s tradition-bound dean, Michele Selene Ang plays Pearl, a student with a crush on Marks, and Crystal Lucas-Perry’s character, Felicity, is either Marks’s landlady or roommate. The deliberately contemporary dialogue uses the title “Ms.” and is loaded with gratuitous F-bombs. Turner stretches anachronism too far for me when she describes a peace conference to which Woolley was sent by President Hoover: she says she wanted to tell Hitler to pull out of Poland. The conference was seven years before he invaded. Oana Botez costumes the leads in culottes. Did American women wear them 100 years ago? The set design by Arnulfo Maldonado features a back wall with a bright floral design and a large window, a slightly raked polished wooden floor and a walkway at the front. Before the play begins, the set is obscured by a large white rectangular object hanging down that looks like a mattress, but raises to form the set’s ceiling. When the play ended and the rectangle was lowered to its initial position, at least 15 seconds went by before there was applause. Lee Sunday Evans directed. Running time: 90 minutes; no intermission.

Kingdom Come ** C-

Jenny Rachel Weiner’s romantic comedy with poignant overtones is the latest offering at Roundabout Underground’s Black Box Theatre. Somewhat like LCT3, this program offers first-rate productions of works by emerging playwrights at affordable prices. Looking around at the audience, Roundabout seems to be more successful than LCT3 in drawing a younger audience. If you saw “Catfish,” you have an idea of the plot, except that in this instance both people are using deceitful online profiles. The twist is that they genuinely fall for each other. How the situation is resolved isn’t quite what you may expect. The characters are Samantha (Carmen M. Herlihy), a morbidly obese woman who rarely leaves her bed; Dolores (Socorro Santiago), Samantha’s home health aide; Dolores’s studly son Dominick (Alex Hernandez), an actor/busboy in L.A.; Layne (Crystal Finn), a repressed lonely bookkeeper; and Suz (Stephanie Styles), Layne’s younger, prettier, less inhibited coworker. Deceit breeds complications. The personable actors all make the most of their roles. There are some funny moments and clever twists along the way, but the material seemed thin and a bit forced. The set by Arnulfo Maldonado is simple but attractive. Tilly Grimes’s costumes are apt. Kip Fagan’s direction is smooth. Most of the audience reacted enthusiastically. For me, it was one online dating story too many. Running time: one hour 40 minutes, no intermission.

Men on Boats ** C-

The Playwrights Horizons revival of last summer’s Clubbed Thumb hit production has received almost unanimous critical acclaim. The Times made it a Critic’s Pick and it has been extended by popular demand. Playwright Jaclyn Backhaus's subject is the famed Powell expedition of 1869, during which 10 intrepid men in four small boats set out to traverse the Green and Colorado Rivers from Wyoming to Nevada and become the first white men to travel the length of the Grand Canyon. The top-notch cast, ably directed by Will Davis, recreates the rhythms of daily life, the rivalries, the insecurities, the dangers and defections the group endured. The perils of sailing through white water is memorably captured by effective choreography. The play’s gimmick is that all the roles are played by women. Its sensibility is archly contemporary, rather than historical. For the first twenty minutes or so, this worked for me. However, the play soon became repetitive and cartoonish. It eventually seemed like a very long pointless skit that trivialized its subject and wore out its welcome long before it ended. I will grant that the cast was uniformly good, the scenic design by Arnulfo Maldonado was attractive and the costumes by Asta Bennie Hostetter were apt. The audience seemed to love it; the young woman next to me broke into uproarious laughter at least once a minute. I wish I had been able to join in the approbation. Perhaps I would have been less disappointed if my expectations had not been raised so high by all the praise. Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission.

Iphigenia in Aulis **

This production of Euripides’s final play, the centerpiece of Classic Stage Company’s Greek Festival, is a decidedly mixed bag. The text is a “transadaptation” (her word, not mine) by Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns and 10 out of 12) that throws in a few modern words like “dynamite” and “centrifuge” for no particular reason. Director Rachel Chavkin (Preludes and Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812) has doubled roles so that there are three actors playing the seven parts in addition to a mixed-gender chorus of seven, dressed as if on their way to a Carmen Miranda look-alike contest. They sing rock songs by The Bengsons and dance vigorously to choreography by Sonya Tayeh. I would comment on the lyrics, but I was unable to make out most of them. Rob Campbell initially shouts too much as Agamemnon, but is stirring in the later scenes. As Achilles, he seems to be aiming for a mixture of Harvey Keitel and Donald Trump. Amber Gray (Oklahoma! at Bard, Natasha, Pierre…) is a fierce Clytemnestra, but having her also play Menelaus was a bad idea. Kristen SIeh, in addition to the title character, plays an old man and a messenger. As Iphigenia, her transition from rage against her fate to acceptance seemed too abrupt. The elegantly simple scenic design by Arnulfo Maldonado depicts a tent and forest in the background with a bare square platform in front. There is a lovely stage effect at the end. Except for the incongruous costumes for the chorus, Normandy Sherwood’s costumes are tasteful. The thrust of the play survives, but this production’s innovations are not improvements. Running time: one hour, 40 minutes; no intermission.

NOTE: The performance was marred by cellphones ringing not just once or twice, but FOUR times, a record I hope I never see broken. The last two times it was clearly the same phone and the culprit, apparently too embarrassed to be identified, let the phone ring — at least twelve rings each time. Both of these occurrences were at key moments of the play when concentration was essential. I don’t know how the actors kept their cool. It was most disruptive.

Iowa ***

Playwright Jenny Schwartz combines a quirky sensibility with a marvelous facility for language. Her characters speak in riffs and arias. When she is at her best (God’s Ear), the results are wonderful, but on an off-day (Somewhere Fun), they can be dreadful. While her new absurdist comedy with music, now in previews at Playwrights Horizons, does not reach the heights of “God’s Ear,” it has some very good moments. Becca (Jill Shackner) is a 14-year-old who must abruptly leave her high school to move to Iowa, where her mother Sandy’s (the hilarious Karen Quackenbush) Facebook fiancé Roger (Lee Sellars) lives. After an opening song by a child (Kolette Tetlow) whose identity is not immediately revealed, there are about 20 minutes before we hear the next song. Fortunately, this time is mostly filled by a virtually non-stop wacky monologue by Sandy. I was almost sorry when it ended and the music resumed. Early on we meet Becca’s sole friend Amanda (Carolina Sanchez), a misunderstood cheerleader (Annie McNamara), four versions of Nancy Drew including one who is African-American (April Matthis), Becca’s remote father Jim (Sellars again) and his pregnant girlfriend Liz (CIndy Cheung), Becca’s math teacher Mr. Hill, on whom she has a crush (Sellars once more) and a randy singing pony (Sellars yet again). The frequency and importance of the songs (music by Todd Almond, lyrics by Almond and Schwartz) picks up as the play progresses. A trio of piano, viola and bass produces a lovely sound soft enough to avoid the need to mic the singers. About 2/3 of the way through the play, Becca and Sandy reach Iowa. The mood abruptly shifts and, for me, the play lost much of its vitality. I did not care for the Iowa scenes, but they did not seriously diminish my appreciation for what came before. The scenic design by Dane Laffrey is simple but effective. Arnulfo Maldonado’s costumes are delightful. Ken Rus Schmoll’s direction is assured. Schwartz has an original voice and it was good to see her work again. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes, no intermission.