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.

Preludes ***

The creative team that brought us Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 — author/composer Dave Malloy, director Rachel Chavkin, set designer Mimi Lien, costume designer Paloma Young, lighting designer Bradley King, sound designer Matt Hubbs and music director Or Matias — have reunited at LCT3's Claire Tow Theater for another production based on Russian history. In 1900 the 27-year-old composer Sergei Rachmaninoff consulted a Moscow hypnotherapist, Nikolai Dahl, for a cure to the three-year writer’s block that followed the poor reception of his first symphony. Their daily sessions were successful and Rachmaninoff returned to composition in a blaze of glory with his Second Piano Concerto. Malloy and Chavkin have taken this incident as the basis of their new musical. There are interesting embellishments. The character of the composer has been divided between two actors, Rach (the wonderful Gabriel Ebert) and Rachmaninoff the pianist (Or Matias). Dahl, with a change of gender that opens more musical possibilities, is charmingly portrayed by Eisa Davis. The composer’s fiancee Natalya is played by Nikki M. James, whose voice is glorious. The play’s conceit that opera star Chaliapin (well played and sung by Joseph Keckler) is the composer’s close friend adds a sonorous Russian bass to the mix. We also meet Chekhov, Tchaikovsky, Tolstoy, Glazunov and Tsar Nicholas II, all played with élan by Chris Sarandon. The music includes pure Rachmaninoff, adaptations by Malloy, original songs by Malloy, and a dash of Bach, Beethoven and Mussorgsky. Deliberate anachronisms punctuate the dialogue. The wonderfully cluttered set includes a modern refrigerator filled with pop-top cans of beverage. A character drinks from a Zabar’s mug. The men wear period costumes, the women are mainly in modern dress. If you go expecting another Natasha… , you will be disappointed. The broad scope of Tolstoy’s novel and that play’s nightclub setting lent themselves to a theatricality that is not inherent in the story of a composer’s writer’s block. Also, the play takes a long time to build up steam and is quite uneven. More time in workshops might have produced a better result. Nevertheless, there is lots to admire including the fine cast. I give the creative team credit for their ambitious efforts. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes including a short break midway.

Verité **

I envied the people around me who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves at a preview performance of Nick Jones’s new play at LCT3. From the get-go, I did not buy into the play’s premise — that a mysterious publishing house whose catalog cannot be found on the “normal” internet would offer a $50,000 advance to Jo Darum (Anna Camp), a stay-at-home suburban mom, whose only work is a fantasy novel that took her over a decade to complete, to write a memoir for them. The stipulations are that she make “interesting choices” in her life and write only about things that actually happened. Jo lives with her blue-collar husband Josh (Danny Wolohan) and young son Lincoln (Oliver Hollmann) in the attic apartment of Josh’s sister Liz’s (Jeanine Serralles) home. The comic/creepy publishers Sven (Robert Sella) and Andreas (Matt McGrath) have broad accents that somehow simultaneously combine elements from Scandinavia and South Asia. When the handsome Winston (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) appears, claiming to be a former high school classmate who has long had a crush on her, Jo assumes that he is a ringer, sent by the publishers to help her make some interesting choices. She refuses to join her family for a trip to Myrtle Beach and instead runs off with Winston. Complications ensue. I won’t give away more except to say there is an amusing surprise ending. The tone varies from satire to farce to melodrama. The characters seemed one-dimensional and the theme of illustrating the lengths people will go to achieve recognition seemed a bit tired. Although there were flashes of wit along the way, the play did not involve me sufficiently to care much about the outcome. Andrew Boyce has devised a rotating modular set that works efficiently. (I am still trying to figure out how he managed to change the contents of an onstage refrigerator.) Paloma Young’s costumes are amusingly apt, especially Sven and Andreas’s footwear. Director Moritz von Stuelpnagel’s (Hand of God) direction is uncluttered. Running time: one hour, 40 minutes; no intermission.

The Who & the What ***

Winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama must have put a lot of pressure on playwright Ayad Akhtar to come up with another play that is equally impressive. While his new play at LCT3 lacks the explosive power of “Disgraced,” it does have much to recommend it. Afzal (Bernard White) is a wealthy widowed Pakistani immigrant who has risen from cabdriver to owner of the largest taxi fleet in Atlanta. His two adult daughters are Zarina (Madine Malouf), a bookish, somewhat aloof Harvard grad who has been working on a novel for years, and Mahwish (Tala Ashe), her slightly flighty younger sister who would like to marry but cannot because tradition demands that the older daughter marry first. When Zarina wanted to marry a non-Muslim some years past, Afzal forbade her and she acquiesced. Unbeknownst to her, he has recently set up a profile for her on MuslimLove.com and even impersonated her to meet prospects he deemed worthy. One of them is Eli (Gregg Keller, "Belleville"), a white convert to Islam who is imam of a poor congregation, founder of a soup kitchen, and also a plumber. In the second act, which takes place a couple of years later, both daughters have married. Zarina has finally finished her novel (its title is the title of the play, which doesn’t explain a lot) which deals with the life of Mohammed as a flawed human rather than a sanitized prophet, as well as with the constricted role of women in Islam. When her family discovers the nature of her novel and considers the devastating effect its publication is likely to have on them (shades of “Other Desert Cities”), a deep fracture occurs. The well-crafted first act crackles with snappy, often comic, dialogue between pairs of characters. The play’s two scenes between the sisters are especially fine. The second act is not as tightly knit and the big confrontation scene fizzles a bit. Unlike “Disgraced” which peaked with an ensemble scene, the current play seems to flounder when more than two people are on stage. The acting is mostly strong. Jack Magaw’s three-module set with filigreed panels suggestive of Muslim art, is quite attractive and highly functional. Emily Rebholz’s costumes work well too. Kimberly Senior, who also directed “Disgraced,” is effective again here. I found it well worth my time despite its imperfections. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes including intermission.

Stop Hitting Yourself **

To misquote Mae West, "too much of a gold thing can be wonderful." That could well describe the sight that greets you when you enter the Claire Tow Theater: 17 gold chandeliers of various shapes and sizes, a gold baby grand piano, oversized gold statues, gold palm trees and a fountain that spouts queso, a golden melted cheese. And let's not forget the gigantic dollar sign with flashing lights. How could we not be in for an evening of madcap frivolity with a dash of surrealism? Alas, 90 long minutes later you'll know how. A wisp of a plot -- something about a contest to win a good deed from the queen at her charity ball -- tries to knit together this intermittently entertaining melange of speechifying about selfishness, the environment and the nature of art, audience participation games, tap dancing, songs and a grand finale in which the actors attack each other with queso. I have a hunch that the members of the Austin-based theater collaborative Rude Mechs had considerably more fun putting the show together than the audience did watching it. I admire LCT3 for taking a risk on something so different, but in this case, the result was disappointing. Getting to see Mimi Lien's over-the-top set and Emily Rebholz's costumes was almost worth the $20 ticket price. By the way, I have absolutely no idea where the title came from.

Luce **

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)

The publicity for JC Lee’s new play at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater says that it is about a high-school student, adopted from the Congo ten years before, who has a secret. Unfortunately, this sounds more intriguing than it turns out to be. What we get is a look at a teenager reacting to the heavy burden of high expectations, abetted by the unconditional love of an overeager mother. I reacted with ambivalence to all the characters -- Luce (Okieriete Onaodowan), his parents Amy (Marin Hinkle) and Peter (Neal Huff), Luce's teacher Harriet (Sharon Washington), who makes an unsettling discovery about him, and Stephanie (Olivia Oguma), a girl Luce dated. Along the way, the playwright pokes mild fun at educational, parental and social-network doublespeak. Luce expresses the opinion that cultural diversity is often misused as a way to avoid treating people as individuals. For me, the play’s focus got lost in the shuffle. Timothy R. Mackabee’s multipurpose set features a blackboard that doubles as a scrim through which we see part of the family home. Kaye Voyce’s costumes seemed appropriate. May Adrales’s direction, so effective for The Dance and the Railroad earlier this year, worked no magic here. It made for an interesting, but ultimately disappointing, evening. Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes; no intermission.

A Kid Like Jake ***

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
As the recipient of the prestigious Laurents-Hatcher prize for 2013, Daniel Pearle's new play arrives at LCT3's Claire Tow Theater with expectations high. By and large, these expectations have been met and its worthiness for an award is clear. This tale of a Manhattan couple, probably Upper West Siders, struggling through the process of getting their only child into a prestigious private school has a twist: Little Jake, whom we never meet, is obsessed with Cinderella and likes to dress up like a girl. Jake's mom Alex (Carla Gugino), who abandoned a career in dance for the law and then for full-time motherhood, is still emotionally fragile after a recent miscarriage. Her husband Greg (Peter Grosz) is a laid-back psychotherapist. They are not sure whether Jake's predilection for "gender-variant" play, with which they seem mostly comfortable, is an obstacle to admission or, as their counselor/friend Judy (Caroline Aaron) suggests, a selling point for a school to achieve diversity. The application process with its essays, testing, visits, interviews and strategizing places their marriage under tremendous pressure that eventually opens fissures that release a painful outpouring of raw emotion. The three lead actors are superb and the buildup to their catharsis is gripping. I have qualms about the penultimate scene with Alex and a nurse (Michelle Beck), but my reaction to the play as a whole is overwhelmingly positive. Andromache Chalfant's flexible set serves well as several locales. Jessica Wegener Shay's costumes do not call attention to themselves. Evan Cabnet's direction is assured. Running time: one hour, 45 minutes, no intermission. Note: I am told that the entire run is sold out, but watch for a possible extension. Incidentally, LCT3's marketing plan finally seems to be paying off -- the audience had a substantially higher percentage of young people than usual.

Luck of the Irish **

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
Ownership of a house in a formerly all-white neighborhood is the focus of a play that takes place in two time frames -- the present and 50 years ago. That may sound like "Clybourne Park II," but it turns out to be something quite different. Playwright Kirsten Greenidge and director Rebecca Taichman, who had a solid success together with "Milk Like Sugar" at Playwrights Horizons in 2011 are teamed once again in this latest production of LCT3 at the Claire Tow Theater. Did lightning strike twice? Not quite. The new play lacks the clear focus and intensity of their earlier collaboration. Two sisters, the married Hannah (Marsha Stephanie Blake) and her single sister Nessa (Carra Patterson) have inherited the home which their recently deceased grandparents Rex (Victor Williams) and Lucy (Eisa Davis) Taylor purchased 50 years back. A young impoverished Irish Catholic couple Joe (Dashiell Eaves) and Patty Ann (Amanda Quaid) Donovan are enlisted as "ghost buyers" who, for a fee, are to make the purchase and then sign the title over to the Taylors. In what seemed to me an implausible development, the Taylors move into the home before the title has been signed over to them. Hannah and her laid-back husband Rich (Frank Harts) are now living in the house with their unseen son Miles, who has ADHD, and whose problems at school Hannah sees as racially based. She stubbornly wants to keep the house although her sister wants to sell it. Out of the blue, the elderly Mr. Donovan (now played by Robert Hogan) shows up to tell the sisters that the title was never signed over to their grandparents and his wife now wants the house. Eventually, his wife (now played by Jenny O'Hara) shows up, title in hand. I won't say more about the outcome. The first act is burdened with too much shouting -- parents shouting at misbehaving children, shouting spouses, shouting siblings. The dialog between shouts is often banal. However, this is one of the rare plays that improves in the second act. There is a lovely scene between Lucy and Joe and a powerful scene between Lucy and Patty Ann. The elderly Patty Ann has a fine speech near the end. Surprisingly, at least for me, the Donovans -- both the young and old versions -- came across as more sympathetic than any of the black characters. Lucy is an intriguing creation -- beautiful, refined, well-traveled, well-read and well-dressed (and superbly played by Davis), but is too much of a stereotype turned inside out. Joe, as portrayed by both Eaves and Hogan, had more humanity than all the others. There were a few things that puzzled me. Why does the playwright bring up the mysterious deal broker John, whom we never meet and whose existence seemed superfluous? Why have the sisters been raised by their grandparents? Mimi Lien, whose set for "Dance and the Railroad" I greatly admired, has created another attractive minimalist set. Oana Botez's costumes, especially for Lucy, are a treat. Taichman's direction is fluid and assured. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes including intermission.

Disgraced ****

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
Ayad Akhtar is having a banner year -- his first novel, American Dervish, was well-received last winter and this play, his first, has arrived at LCT3's Claire Tow Theater after making big waves in Chicago. It is easy to see why. In 90 tightly-plotted minutes, the playwright raises serious issues about life in contemporary America that, because they are painful, are usually ignored. The protagonist is Amir (Aasif Mandvi), a self-hating first-generation Pakistani-American, who has broken his ties with Islam. His blonde all-American wife Emily (Heidi Armbruster) is a painter who has found her inspiration in Islamic art. Isaac (Erik Jensen) is a Jewish gallery owner who is considering including Emily's work in an upcoming show. His African-American wife Jory (Karen Pittman) and Amir are both associates in the same New York law firm. Amir has a young nephew Abe (Omar Maskati) who has changed his name from Hussein; although largely assimilated, he is still a devout Muslim. When Emily and Abe bully Amir into attending a court hearing for an imam who has been accused of raising money for terrorists, things do not turn out well. At a dinner party for the two couples, prickly conversation escalates into verbal warfare and the evening ends disastrously. A final scene set several months later gives further insight into living as a Muslim-American, but does not provide a strong ending. The cast is quite good except for Mandvi, whose portrayal of Amir would profit from greater nuance and less stridency. Kimberly Senior's direction keeps things from lagging. Lauren Helpern's lovely set of a spacious Upper East Side apartment with modernist furnishings and a terrace will inspire real estate envy in most Manhattanites. Dane Laffrey's costumes are fine too. The powerful dinner party scene will probably stick in my memory longer than I would like. Tickets are only $20.

Slowgirl ***

(Please click the title to see the complete review.)
LCT3 inaugurates its new Claire Tow Theater, built atop the Vivian Beaumont, with this new play by Greg Pierce. Becky (Sarah Steele) is a 17-year-old extrovert who leaves no unfiltered thought go unspoken. Sterling (Zeljko Ivanek) is her reclusive uncle who lives in a remote home in the Costa Rican jungle. Becky, fleeing the horrible consequences of a cruel prank against a developmentally challenged classmate, is visiting him for a week. Several years earlier, Sterling fled the United States for reasons that are gradually revealed. Although they had not seen each other in nine years, their shared alienation forges a bond as the week progresses. There are some awkward plot points and too many long pregnant pauses, but the play held my interest. Steele, who had impressed me in Russian Transport earlier this season, is quite good. Ivanek is fine in a much less showy role. The sets by Rachel Hauck are evocative, effective and technically impressive. Emily Rebholz's costumes are appropriate to the characters. Anne Kauffman's direction could use a little more energy. Running time: 95 minutes without intermission.

The Claire Tow Theater is a welcome addition to the local theater scene. A simple but elegant black box with 131 comfortable red plush seats, it has a lovely terrace overlooking the newly green roof of the Beaumont. All tickets are only $20.

WIth LCT3, Lincoln Center Theater is "reaching out to younger and more ethnically diverse audiences."  I assume their decision not to market Slowgirl to LCT members was part of this plan. Judging from this afternoon's audience, they are not reaching that goal. I was shocked that the theater was half-empty. I think they need a new marketing plan.

Theater Recommendation: 4000 Miles ****

(Click on the title to read the complete item.)
Amy Herzog's play received universal acclaim during its brief run at the Duke last summer. It will be moving into the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in mid-March with the original cast for a limited run. If you missed it the first time, be ready to order tickets as soon as they go on sale -- February 6 for LCT members, February 12 for the general public.

Here is my review from last June:

The title of this new play by Amy Herzog, in an LCT3 production at the Duke, refers to the distance 21-year-old Leo (a strong Gabriel Ebert) has traveled on a cross-country bicycle ride that ends with his unexpected 3 a.m. arrival at the West Village apartment of his 91-year-old grandmother Vera Joseph (the incomparable Mary Louise Wilson). [The character of Vera, a devoted Marxist, also appeared in Herzog's recent well-received play After the Revolution]. Leo has been traumatized by the death of his best friend en route, a less-than-enthusiastic reception by his girlfriend Bec (Zoe Winters), a student at Columbia, and family problems back home in St. Paul. Grandmother and hippie grandson gradually overcome their differences and grow close. Greta Lee is hilarious as Amanda, a Parsons student Leo brings home one night. The characters are vivid, the dialogue is believable and the back story is interestingly complex. One can quibble over a few plot devices, but Herzog is clearly a talented playwright. The set by Lauren Helpern perfectly captures a slightly worn apartment that hasn't changed much in 50 years. Daniel Aukin's direction in unobtrusively fine. 

4000 Miles ***

The title of this new play by Amy Herzog, in an LCT3 production at the Duke, refers to the distance 21-year-old Leo (a strong Gabriel Ebert) has traveled on a cross-country bicycle ride that ends with his unexpected 3 a.m. arrival at the West Village apartment of his 91-year-old grandmother Vera Joseph (the incomparable Mary Louise Wilson). [The character of Vera, a devoted Marxist, also appeared in Herzog's recent well-received play After the Revolution]. Leo has been traumatized by the death of his best friend en route, a less-than-enthusiastic reception by his girlfriend Bec (Zoe Winters), a student at Columbia, and family problems back home in St. Paul. Grandmother and hippie grandson gradually overcome their differences and grow close. Greta Lee is hilarious as Amanda, a Parsons student Leo brings home one night. The characters are vivid, the dialogue is believable and the back story is interestingly complex. One can quibble over a few plot devices, but Herzog is clearly a talented playwright. The set by Lauren Helpern perfectly captures a slightly worn apartment that hasn't changed much in 50 years. Daniel Aukin's direction in unobtrusively fine. At $20, the play is a great bargain. See it before its short run is over.
Note: If you haven't been able to get tickets, don't despair -- LCT will reopen it at the Newhouse next March).