Tiny Beautiful Things ** C

Cheryl Strayed’s 2012 collection of her “Dear Sugar” advice columns from The Rumpus, an online website, was a bestseller. Actor Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) thought it would be a good idea to adapt it for the stage and enlisted Marshall Heyman and Thomas Kail to assist with the concept. Kail (Hamilton) also directs. The result is this sporadically involving 80-minute production now at the Public Theater. An epistolary play with no direct interaction between characters is not an easy thing to bring off, but it can be done (cf. Love Letters). Here, however, it is an unequal exchange with one person responding to questions from several others. Three actors — Phillip James Brannon (Nat Turner in Jerusalem),  Alfredo Narciso and Natalie Woolams-Torres — play a variety of people with a variety of problems, large and small, who write to Sugar for advice. Sugar differs from the typical advice columnist by her willingness to share her own painful experiences with her readers. Nardalos portrays her with no-nonsense directness, folding laundry or packing school lunches as she speaks. Each time one of the other actors appears, he or she is playing a different person so there is little opportunity to build a character. One notable exception is an extended scene in which Narciso plays a man whose son has been killed by a hit-and-run driver; he is absolutely wrenching. While the questions more or less resemble ordinary speech, Sugar’s answers come out in polished prose. I would have preferred reading them at my leisure over hearing them on a stage. Rachel Hauck’s set of Strayed’s kitchen and living room looks so lived in that I found myself studying its details when my interest lagged. Jennifer Moeller’s costumes suit the characters well. Thomas Kail’s direction tries hard to enliven a basically static situation. I admired all the good intentions, but I found the effort ultimately misguided.

Nat Turner in Jerusalem ** C-

In a period of seemingly endless racial strife, what could be more timely than another look at the oft-told tale of Nat Turner and the bloody, unsuccessful slave rebellion of 1831? Alas, this particular version, set in Turner’s jail cell in Jerusalem, Virginia on the night before his hanging, does not shed much light or heat on events and is too dependent on gimmicks. To give playwright Nathan Alan Davis his due, he does not attempt to sugarcoat Turner’s brutal murder of white women and children. It is easy to believe that the Turner portrayed by Phillip James Brannon thought he was doing God’s will. We also meet Thomas R. Gray, the attorney to whom Turner allegedly dictated his confession, and one of the prison guards. The gimmick here is that both characters are played by the same actor, Rowan Vickers. The main thrust is that Gray is determined to get Turner to confess to knowledge of other rebellions. His goal is not so much to find the truth as to increase the marketability of his book, which he has already hastened to copyright. The alternating scenes with the guard do not seem to have much point and culminate in a scene that is so over-the-top that I was embarrassed. The scenic design, by Susan Zeeman Rogers, was gimmicky too: the platform on which the action takes place is moved between scenes from one end of the rectangle between the facing bleacher seats toward the other — and then back again. The costumes by Montana Blanco were fine and the lighting by Mary Louise Geiger was effective. The sound design by Nathan Leigh was aggressively loud. The direction by Megan Sandberg-Zakian was sluggish. The hard bleacher seats are extremely uncomfortable; there is a thin cushion for the seat but nothing to pad the wooden back. Discomfort made the 90 minutes seem longer. After 185 years, Nat Turner’s slave rebellion and its aftereffects still evoke deeply conflicted reactions. Perhaps it is enough that the play reminds us of that, even if it doesn't contribute much to the ongoing conversation.

Bootycandy **

This work by Robert O’Hara, now in previews at Playwrights Horizons, is a loose assemblage of sketches, most of them comedic, that don’t really fit together very well. The central character is Sutter (Phillip James Brannon) whom we see as an effeminate black child, a misunderstood teenager, a black playwright with a taste for racial vengeance, and a loving grandson. The scenes that include him have a loose narrative thread. Other scenes include a monologue by a preacher who comes out as a cross dresser and another by a man trying to talk himself out of a mugging. A clever costume trick is the gimmick of a hilarious scene depicting a phone conversation with two actors playing four characters. In a darker vein there is a long scene about two brothers-in-law who have a complex and painful relationship. The final scene of act one is an amusing faux conference at Playwrights Horizons with a panel comprised of the alleged authors of the previous sketches and a clueless white moderator. After intermission there is a funny yet moving scene of Sutter’s family at the dinner table. This is followed by an overlong sketch of two lesbians, Genitalia and Intifada, undoing their commitment ceremony. A friend accurately described it as a Saturday Night Live sketch that wears out its welcome. The evening turns very dark with a playlet about Sutter and a flaming butch queen friend picking up a drunk, emotionally unstable white man in a bar and going back to his hotel. In the aftermath, there is a Brechtian moment in which the actors rebel against the playwright and decide to skip the (nonexistent) prison scene. We end with Sutter reminiscing with his grandmother at her nursing home. The language is consistently and outrageously vulgar and there is both graphic description of sexual acts and extended male nudity (tellingly, by the only white actor). The best argument for the play is the opportunity it provides for five terrific actors to show their mettle. Jessica Frances Dukes, Jesse Pennington, Benja Kay Thomas and Lance Coadie Williams play multiple roles with great gusto. The revolving set and appropriately over-the-top costumes by Clint Ramos are first-rate. Once again I am persuaded that, in general, playwrights should not direct their own work. There are multiple instances where scenes run on much too long, a fault another director might well have corrected. I really hoped I could recommend it with more enthusiasm, but its many faults cancel out most of its strengths. I won't give away the meaning of the title. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission.

The City of Conversation ****

The latest offering of Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse is Anthony Giardina's engrossing new political/family drama spanning the period from the Carter years to the Obama inauguration as seen through the household of Hester Ferris (the magnificent Jan Maxwell). Hester, her married lover Chandler (Kevin O'Rourke) and her widowed sister Jean (Beth Dixon) are active in liberal Washington causes. In her Georgetown home, she hosts dinners where politicians of different views are able to meet for unfettered conversation. The arrival home a day earlier than expected of Hester's lone child Colin (Michael Simpson) after studies at the London School of Economics, with a Reaganite girlfriend Anna (Kristen Bush) in tow, is a double surprise for Hester. She and the nakedly ambitious Anna immediately lock horns. A Kentucky senator (John Aylward) and his wife (Barbara Garrick) have been invited to dinner to try to win his vote for a bill to require resignation from segregated country clubs for judicial appointment. When Anna breaks tradition and intrudes on the men's after-dinner conversation, Hester's plans are thwarted. Eight years later, Colin is working for a Republican senator and wife Anna has a job in Reagan's Justice Department. Both are working hard to assure Robert Bork's appointment to the Supreme Court. Hester takes care of their son Ethan (Luke Niehaus) during the day and tries to subvert his parents' conservative influence. Despite her promise to her son not to interfere, Hester is actively campaigning against Bork. When Anna finds out, she presents Hester with a terrible choice. How that works out is revealed in the final scene, set on the night of Obama's first inauguration. A new character, Donald (Phillip James Brannon), a black graduate student of American political history, appears in that scene. I won't give any more away. The play has its problems. Some of the relationships, e.g. between Hester and Chandler and between Hester and Jean, are underdeveloped. Its depiction of the difficulties in balancing the political and the personal is a bit extreme. Nevertheless, it is a pleasure to listen to intelligent, often witty conversation about matters of substance. The play provides a marvelous role for Maxwell and she makes the most of it. The rest of the cast are fine too. John Lee Beatty's set and Catherine Zuber's costumes establish the right tone. Director Doug Hughes brings out the play's strengths. Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes including intermission.

Belleville ***

(Please click on the title to see the complete review.)
I have extremely mixed feelings concerning Amy Herzog's thriller about the unraveling of a codependent relationship. On the one hand, the production values of this New York Theatre Workshop production are superb -- the acting (by Maria Dizza and Greg Keller as the couple and Pascale Armand and Phillip James Brannon as the landlords of their Parisian flat), direction (by Anne Kauffman), set design (by Julia C. Lee), costumes (by Mark Nagle) and sound design (by Robert Kaplowitz). As in her previous work, Herzog excels at creating vivid characters and capturing the twisted patterns of communications in close relationships. Also admirable is the way she builds a feeling of menace and paranoia. On the other hand, I found the big reveal about what underlies the current situation disconcertingly implausible and the denouement (annoyingly in French) unnecessary. Although Annie Baker seems to be the current darling of the lemming critics, I'll stick with Amy Herzog even at less than her best. Running time: one hour, 40 minutes; no intermission.