War **

After enjoying all three plays I have seen by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Appropriate, An Octoroon and Gloria), I arrived at LCT3’s Claire Tow Theater with high expectations. Unfortunately I was disappointed. Although I credit the playwright for his ambition and imagination, I did not feel that he had produced a coherent work. From reviews, I gather that the play has changed considerably since its 2014 Yale Rep premiere, Nevertheless it still did not seem like a finished product. The focus is divided among too many themes including sibling rivalry, family secrets, the scourge of dementia, dealing with parental illness, meeting parental expectations, racism in America and Germany from WWII to the present and man’s underlying simian nature. Particularly in the second act, there are too many long monologues that interrupt the flow. Roberta (the able Charlayne Woodard) is a well-to-do middle-aged African-American divorcee who has been rushed to a Washington hospital after suffering a stroke while visiting the ape house at the zoo. Her daughter Joanne (Rachel Nicks), a would-be children’s writer, is married to Malcolm (Reggie Gowland), a low key school teacher of no particular distinction, who is white. They have a young daughter. Joanne has only recently resumed a relationship with her mother after long years of estrangement. Her hostile brother Tate (Chris Myers), a political functionary working in Boston, flies in to be at his mother’s bedside and immediately lashes out at everyone including the kindly nurse (Lance Coadie Williams). We later learn that Tate and his male partner have recently split. Roberta was brought to the hospital by a mysterious woman who speaks almost no English; this is Elfriede (Michelle Shay), a German half-sister that Roberta has only recently discovered and, somewhat implausibly, never mentioned to anyone. Malcolm discovers a man staying at Roberta’s apartment, Elfriede’s angry son Tobias (Austin Durant), who is out to get a share of his late grandfather’s legacy. The nonstop shouting and bickering between Tate and everyone else grows quickly tiresome; Tate is so relentlessly nasty that I eventually cringed whenever he opened his mouth. The play’s most interesting feature is that for much of the first act we witness the comatose Roberta trying to regain her bearings with the assistance of a pack of gorillas led by Alpha (Williams again) whose language is projected as subtitles. It did not work for me. Simian imagery pervades the play from the monkey-sound taunts at Roberta’s father in Germany to the ape house at the zoo and the apes in her struggle for consciousness. Mimi Lien’s elegant scenic design is evocatively lit by Matt Frey. Montana Blanco’s costumes are apt. I can’t fault director Lileana Blain-Cruz for failing to bring all the disparate elements together better. While this evening was a disappointment, three hits out of four is still an enviable record for a playwright. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes including intermission.

Signature Plays **

On paper it must have seemed like a good idea to present a triple bill of revived short works by playwrights who were in Signature Theatre’s Legacy program. For someone like me who has a limited tolerance for absurdist theater, the results were not gratifying. Yesterday’s avant garde often seems quaint or just annoying today. 

Edward Albee’s “The Sandbox” at least offered a bit of drollery and a chance to see three fine actors — Alison Fraser, Frank Wood and Phyllis Somerville as Mommy, Daddy and Grandma, respectively— and hunky Ryan-James Hatanaka as The Young Man. Melody Giron played the cello. 

Maria Irene Fornes’s “Drowning” is a strange tale of unrequited love in which the three characters — Pea (Mikeah Ernest Jennings), Roe (Sahr Ngaujah) and Stephen (Wood again) — are dressed like humans but inexplicably wear grotesque masks that make them look more like sea lions. 

The longest and most complex work is Adrienne Kennedy’s “Funnyhouse of a Negro,” a surrealistic look at racial identity and racism through the mind of Sarah (Crystal Dickinson), a mixed-race graduate student on the Upper West Side. Except for her landlady (Fraser) and her boyfriend (Nicholas Bruder), all the characters represent aspects of Sarah’s inner conflict. They include Queen Victoria Regina (April Matthis), the Duchess of Hapsburg (January LaVoy), Patrice Lumumba (Ngaujah), Jesus (Jennings), and Sarah’s mother (Pia Glenn.) The short scenes are punctuated by blackouts. Along about the tenth one, I began praying that the next would be the last. While I can appreciate the impact the play must have had when new, it just didn’t work for me now.

The production values are first-rate with sets by Mimi Lien, costumes by Kaye Voyce and lighting by Mark Barton. Lila Neugebauer directed. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes including two intermissions.

Smokefall **

“The greatest act of courage is to love” or so say two characters in Noah Haidle’s absurdist family dramedy at MCC Theater. We see how four generations of a Grand Rapids family grapple with this challenge. In the first act, we meet Violet (Robin Tunney), accidentally pregnant, on the verge of giving birth to male twins any day. Her 14-year-old daughter Beauty (Taylor Richardson), whose daily diet includes bark, dirt and paint, announced three years ago that she had nothing more to say and hasn’t spoken since. Her husband Daniel (Brian Hutchinson) secretly feels overwhelmed and, as we learn from the narrator Footnote (Zachary Quinto), is about to abandon his family. The colonel (Tom Bloom), her father, has been sliding into dementia since the death of his wife. The first act ends with an attention-grabbing scene in which the two fetuses (Hutchinson and Quinto), dressed as vaudevillians, sing Sondheim, philosophize and express their fears of leaving the womb. If I had left at intermission, I would have been content. Unfortunately, the second act heads off in directions that I found unsatisfactory, jumping forward and flashing back in time and mixing characters from different time periods in the same scene. There is one particularly confusing actor doubling and another character who does not age for 75 years, all to little discernible purpose. Mimi Lien’s scenic design employs a lot of pressed wood. Asta Bennie Hostetter’s costumes are wonderful, especially the ones for the twin fetuses. When presented in Chicago, the play was such a success that the Goodman Theater moved it from its small stage to its mainstage to ecstatic reviews. Although the current production has the same director, Anne Kauffman, something seems to have been lost on the trip east. The New York cast, entirely new, seems competent so I am not sure they are to blame. I wish the play had been able to maintain the promise of its first act. Running time: one hour 40 minutes including intermission.

John ***

The first play in Annie Baker’s residency at Signature Theatre is now in previews there. After my exasperating experience with her Pulitzer winner The Flick, I attended with low expectations. To my great surprise, I actually enjoyed myself. The traditional crimson curtain with gold fringe covering the stage was the first sign that this was going to be something different for her. That curtain is pulled open by Georgia Engel who plays Mertis Katherine Graven, the genial innkeeper of a b&b in Gettysburg. We see the ornate sitting room with a gigantic Christmas tree and a thousand tchotchkes, stuffed animals and dolls, as well as the Parisian-themed breakfast room. Set designer Mimi Lien (Preludes, The Oldest Boy) has outdone herself. Two guests arrive — Elias Schreiber-Hoffman (Christopher Abbott of “Girls”) and Jenny Chung (Hong Chau) — a neurotic couple who have been together for a rocky three years and who have come to Gettysburg to repair the damage of a recent blow-up. From the raised voices soon after they have retreated upstairs to their room, we gather that the healing is not going well. We eventually learn why Jenny is so clingy and Elias is so mistrustful. In pain with menstrual cramps, Jenny cuts short their battlefield tour the next day while Elias goes to dinner and takes a ghost tour. Jenny and Mertis are joined by Genevieve Marduk (the wonderful Lois Smith), a blind neighbor who recounts her past brush with mental illness after she became convinced that her late husband had invaded her soul. Three times during the weekend someone asks to hear a scary story. Baker clearly had a good time developing an air of mystery and a suggestion of the imminent supernatural. There are red herrings galore including a player piano with a mind of its own, Christmas lights that turn on and off at will and a mysterious journal that Mertis keeps. What turns out to be basically a very simple story has been stretched to Baker size with three acts. Between the second and third acts, there is a unexpected treat involving Lois Smith. My only problem is that I did not find Elias and Jenny sufficiently interesting to deserve all the attention. There is no character onstage named John. I won’t reveal the reason for the title. Asta Bennie Hostetter’s costumes are fine. The clever sound design by Bray Poor involves Mertis playing CDs on a faux-antique player — Bach, more Bach and, finally, Offenbach. Director Sam Gold once again demonstrates his affinity for Baker’s sensibility. Running time: 3 hours 20 minutes including two intermissions.

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.

The World of Extreme Happiness ***

The title of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s new play at Manhattan Theatre Club is ironic to put it mildly. Her unflattering portrait of life in contemporary China is more characterized by ambition than polish. She attempts to tell many stories: the effects of the one-child policy, the great divide between rural and urban China, the horrendous working conditions in factories, the prejudice rural migrants suffer in the cities, the uneasy relationship between communism and capitalism, the limited opportunity for women, the rise of American-style pop psychology as a substitute for religion, and the harsh repression of dissent. It’s a lot for one play to contain. A strong cast of six portrays 13 characters. The wonderful Jennifer Lim (last seen here in “Chinglish”) plays the protagonist Sunny. The other five actors (Francis Jue, Telly Leung, Jo Mei, James Saito and Sue Jin Song) handle two or three roles each, convincingly differentiating their multiple characters. The deliberately bleak set by the talented Mimi Lien (“The Oldest Boy”) is flexible and effective. The costumes by Jenny Mannis are apt. Eric Ting’s direction is fluid. The playwright is not given to subtlety: her favored tool seems to be the sledgehammer. Nevertheless, she is to be commended for taking on such timely, substantive topics and presenting them dramatically. Although the play is flawed, I found it worthwhile. Running time: 95 minutes, no intermission.

The Oldest Boy ****

Lincoln Center Theater is presenting the world premiere of this fascinating work by Sarah Ruhl, one of our most versatile and interesting playwrights. Her plays are so varied that it is difficult to find a common denominator other than flashes of her intelligence and humor. The present work almost has the aura of a fairy tale. An American woman identified only as Mother (a superb Celia Keenan-Bolger) is married to a Tibetan refugee (James Yaegashi) who owns a restaurant in an unnamed American city. Each of them has broken an engagement to marry. One day two Tibetan Buddhist monks (Jon Norman Schneider and James Saito) pay an unexpected visit. They think that the family’s three-year old son may be the reincarnation of an important Buddhist teacher. When the son (Ernest Abuba) passes their tests, they are convinced that he is indeed their late teacher reborn and ask to take him back to India, their home in exile, to be educated in their monastery. I will say no more about the outcome. Rebecca Taichman, who has directed many of Ruhl’s previous plays, once again demonstrates her affinity for Ruhl’s sensibility. It is hard to imagine a better production. The sets by Mimi Lien, the gorgeous costumes by Anita Yavich, the evocative lighting by Japhy Weideman, the sound design by Darron L. West, the puppetry by Matt Acheson, the choreography by Barney O’Hanlon and Taichman’s skillful direction combined to weave an almost hypnotic spell over me. It was a stimulating experience. Running time: 2 hours including intermission.

An Octoroon ****

After showing great promise with his recent play "Appropriate" at the Signature Theatre, Brendan Jacobs-Jenkins has fulfilled that promise -- and then some -- with this new work at Soho Rep. Jacobs-Jenkins is a master at appropriating theatrical tropes and reworking them into something new and more interesting. In the earlier play, he took the Southern dysfunctional family play and turned it inside out. In the current play the object of his deconstruction is "The Octoroon," an antebellum melodrama by Irish playwright Dion Boucicault, that opened at the Winter Garden in 1859 and ran for several years in road companies. The result is a meta-melodrama unlike anything I have seen before. The play opens with a depressed black actor, BJJ (Chris Myers) claiming to be the playwright, in his underwear, discussing a recent session with his therapist, during which he reveals his admiration for Boucicault. Suddenly Boucicault (Danny Wolohan) appears onstage and a shouting match ensues. They are joined by an assistant (Ben Horner) who helps them prepare for the play. BJJ applies whiteface makeup, the white assistant puts on blackface, and Boucicault adds redface, dresses in an Indian (no political correctness here!) costume with an elaborate feather headdress and performs a vigorous dance. Suddenly the rear wall of the stage collapses forward to reveal a bright all-white set with the floor covered with cotton balls, representing the Louisiana plantation Terrebonne where the action takes place. A trio of slaves -- Minnie (Jocelyn Bloh), Dido (Marsha Stephanie Blake) and Grace (Shyko Amos) -- take the place of a Greek chorus, but one that talks trash and contemporary psychobabble. The characters include George (Myers again), the young master who loves his 1/8th black cousin Zoe (Amber Gray), the evil overseer McClosky (Myers yet again) who also desires Zoe, the wealthy heiress Dora (Zoe Winters) who wants to wed George, the old house slave Peter (Horner again), the innocent young slave Paul (Horner once more) and his devoted Indian friend Wahnotee (Wolohan again), the auctioneer LaFouche (Wolohan) and a ship captain (uncredited). They are joined onstage by cellist Lester St. Louis whose music subtly underlines the action. The dialogue blends excerpts from Boucicault's play with Jacobs-Jenkins's inventions. The cast doubling opens clever opportunities such as a one-actor fight scene between George and McClosky. Meandering through the play at several points is an enigmatic Br'er Rabbit figure, a sharply dressed rabbit/man with a cottontail and a very expressive face. (It turns out that he is none other than the playwright himself.) Director Sarah Benson works wonders with the complex material, Mimi Lien's set is amazing, Wade Laboissonniere's costumes are wonderful, as are all other aspects of the production design. My compliments to Soho Rep for mounting such an ambtious play and congratulations to the playwright for his well-deserved Obie. Running time: 2 hours 10 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.

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 ****

For a unique evening of musical entertainment and Russian cuisine, head to Kazino, the ersatz Russian nightclub in a tent under the High Line in the Meatpacking District. When you enter, you are greeted with a vodka drink and carnival entertainment while you wait to be seated. The nightclub is stunning -- the red velvet walls are covered with period paintings, the ceiling is studded with chandeliers reminiscent of those at the Met, and the long rectangular space is filled with small tables and cafe chairs, set on three different levels. Musicians playing both traditional and electronic instruments are scattered around the room. By the time you have finished your meal (crudites, black bread, borscht, chicken, salmon, couscous and pierogi) and any optional drinks you have ordered, you may have forgotten that you were there to see a musical! And then comes the main event, Dave Malloy's clever pop opera adapted from the section of War and Peace that describes Natasha's arrival in Moscow, her introduction to society at the opera, her disastrous meeting with the father and sister of her fiance Andrey who is away at war, her seduction and attempted abduction by the unscrupulous Anatole, her ensuing misery, and the spark of sympathy for her that ignites Pierre. With one dramatic exception near the end, the piece is entirely sung. The eclectic score has touches of folk, pop, rock and club music. The staging is, to put it mildly, fluid: the performers run up and down the central aisle and along platforms that encircle the room and even sit down amid the audience occasionally. Both the acting and vocal skills of the cast are strong. Phillipa Soo as Natasha, Lucas Steele as Anatole, Brittain Ashford as Natasha's cousin Sonya and playwright/composer Malloy as Pierre stand out. Rachel Chavkin's direction, Mimi Lien's scenic design, Paloma Young's costumes, Bradley King's lighting and Sam Pinkleton's choreography are all first-rate. It all added up to a very enjoyable evening. Running time: two hours, 35 minutes including intermission. However, dinner is served an hour before it begins and the play started late, so it added up to almost four hours. Note that you may be seated at a table with strangers and that the wooden seats are not cushioned.

The Dance and the Railroad ***

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
Signature Theatre's has revived David Henry Hwang's 1981 play about two Chinese workers on the Transcontinental Railroad during the strike of 1867. Lone (Yuekun Wu) is a former student of Chinese opera, who has been forced by his family to abandon his studies to support them, He has become unpopular in the camp by remaining aloof from his countrymen and heading off to the mountain before and after work to practice his opera training routines. Ma (Ruy Iskander) is a naive young recent arrival who has an unrealistic view of the world. Ma begs Lone to teach him Chinese opera moves. Lone sorely tests his resolve. The two men share stories of how they left China. They improvise their own Chinese opera based on their personal experiences. The strike ends and they prepare to return to work. The play's major strength is not its narrative. The beauty of the men's graceful and evocative moves is what one is likely to remember. Wu makes a perfect Lone: his gravitas, his arrogance and his grace are all superbly captured. Iskander has the right moves and naivete for Ma, but unfortunately sounds more like a native of the Bronx than of China. Mimi Lien's stunningly simple abstract set is gorgeous, especially as lit by Jiyoun Chang. Huang Ruo's evocative music provides much pleasure and Jennifer Moeller's costumes are fine. Much credit is due Qian Yi for superb work as Chinese opera consultant. May Adrales direction is assured. While the play may not be a dramatic triumph, it is an aesthetic one. Running time: 70 minutes, no intermission.

The Whale **

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.) 
I wish I could join the chorus of praise for Obie winner Samuel D. Hunter's strange new play at Playwrights Horizons, but I found it thoroughly muddled and disagreeable. In it we meet Charlie (the superb Shuler Hensley), a 600+ lb. man who is eating himself to death in his apartment in northern Idaho. During the course of a week, he is visited by his nurse and devoted friend Liz (Cassie Beck); his ex-wife Mary (Tasha Lawrence); his estranged 17-year-old daughter Ellie (Reyna de Courcy), who has to be the most obnoxious character to grace a New York stage this year; and a mysterious Mormon missionary, Elder Thomas (Cory Michael Smith). We learn that Charlie left his wife and infant daughter for a male lover many years ago.  Charlie blames the Mormon Church for his lover's subsequent death and has been eating nonstop ever since. He supports himself by teaching an online expository writing course for the local university. We hear occasional snippets of his exchanges with students. Periodically there are references to Moby Dick and the story of Jonah. Between scenes we hear the symbolic pounding of the ocean. Unfortunately there are plot developments that make absolutely no sense, e.g. Liz's applying lipstick to Charlie. What first impressed me as fascinating soon became tedious and I found myself looking at my watch several times. The uncomfortable seats in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater did not help either. Mimi Lien's set and Jessica Pabst's costumes are admirable. Davis McCallum's direction is assured. Running time: I hour, 50 minutes without intermission.