Posterity **

I really had high hopes for Doug Wright’s new play at Atlantic Theater Company. I had enjoyed his Pulitzer Prize-winning play “I Am My Own Wife” and thought his book for “Grey Gardens” was well-crafted. The topic of the play — the interplay between recalcitrant subject Henrik Ibsen (the excellent Australian actor John Noble) and reluctant sculptor Gustav Vigeland (Hamish LInklater, fine in a role for which he was not an obvious choice) when Ibsen’s bust was sculpted — sounded promising.  I wish I could say my expectations were met. Things start well with a scene with the sculptor and his nude models, the middle-aged Mrs. Bergstrøm (Dale Soules) and his hunky young apprentice Anfinn (Mickey Theis). They are interrupted by the arrival of the prissy Sophus Larpent (Henry Stram), VIgeland’s solicitor and agent. He tries to induce Vigeland to to do a bust of Ibsen in order to win the backing of a key bureaucrat for the ambitious fountain celebrating humanity that he wants to create for a space in the heart of Oslo. When Ibsen arrives to meet Vigeland, things go badly. Their sparring match goes on for far too long and lacks nuance. Changing circumstances persuade Ibsen to agree to sitting for Vigeland and pouring out his heart to him. There are distracting subplots concerning the apprentice and the absence of usable clay. Very little light is shed on either Ibsen or Vigeland. There are very few peaks or valleys along the way, just lots of talk. We don’t even get to see the bust. Derek McLane’s effective set presents a rustic studio lined with busts covered in cheesecloth. Susan Hilferty’s costumes are apt. Wright also directed, which was probably a mistake. While I admired the playwright’s ambitions, I was quite disappointed with the results. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including intermission.

Placebo *

I very much enjoyed the Playwrights Horizons production of “This,” the first play I saw by Melissa James Gibson several years ago, but it’s been downhill since then. The second play I saw, “What Rhymes with America” at the Atlantic, left me cold. Now Gibson has returned to Playwrights Horizons with “Placebo,” which might be subtitled “Four Characters and a Vending Machine in Search of a Play.” Louise (Carrie Coon) is a graduate student in female sexuality, earning money by working with patients enrolled in a double-blind study of an experimental drug to increase female libido. Mary (Florencia Lozano) is one of the patients who is eager to know whether she is receiving the new drug or the placebo. Louise has lived for four years with Jonathan (William Jackson Harper), a 7th year graduate student in Classics who has hit a brick wall in his dissertation on Pliny the Elder. (The fact that Jonathan is played by a black actor seems to be of no significance to the plot, such as it is.) Louise tells her dying mother the white lie that she and Jonathan are getting married soon. Jonathan does not find Louise’s attempts to be supportive helpful. Tom (Alex Hurt), who works for another study at the hospital, becomes friendly with Louise. The game they play with a vending machine is the liveliest scene in the play. The experimental drug study and the placebo abruptly disappear from view and the action shifts to the troubled relationship between Louise and Jonathan. The play ends with a very long, often ludicrous scene of them breaking up — or not. I found the characters little more than collections of tics despite the efforts of an appealing cast to breathe some life into them. The play is not helped by David Zinn’s dreary and confusing set which uses the entire width of the theater to represent both the hospital and Jonathan’s apartment. I’m not sure what more director Daniel Aukin could have done with this material. Gibson seems to appeal to the younger generation; the audience included a group of twenty-somethings who whooped and hollered at every opportunity. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes, no intermission.

NOTE: Why the sudden spate of one-word play titles beginning with P— Pocatello, Posterity, Placebo, Permission?

The Mystery of Love and Sex ***

About an hour into the first act of Bathsheba Doran’s new play at LCT’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater, I began to wonder whether the playwright suffered from AD/HD. Roughly every 10 minutes, a new plot line arrived, seemingly out of left field. By the end of this overstuffed dramedy, I felt like a guest at a dinner party where too many courses were served. Fortunately, we have four fine actors — Tony Shalhoub, Diane Lane, Gayle Rankin and Mamoudou Athie — onstage to guide us through the many twists and turns. Howard (Shalhoub) is a successful Jewish author of mysteries. Lucinda (Lane) is a southern belle who met him at Yale, converted to Judaism and married him. Charlotte (Rankin) is their neurotic daughter who turned down Yale to attend a Southern college with Jonny (Athie), her friend since childhood. Charlotte and Jonny may or may not be falling in love. Howard is opposed, but alleges that it is not because Jonny is black. Among the semi-digested themes that are hurled at us like pitches from a batting machine are conscious and unconscious racism, sexism and homophobia; the angst of confused sexual identity, the self-centeredness of writers, Jewish-Black relations, intermarriage, same-sex marriage, strained marriage, the tricky relationships between parent and child, the porous border between friendship and love, the chances for a fresh start. Lest our interest lag, the author throws in a little semi-gratuitous nudity — twice. Andrew Lieberman’s simple set has a wall of curtains at the back that are tugged this way and that from time to time. The actors have to shlep a lot of furniture between scenes. The overlong first act had a few false endings that were greeted by applause because the audience thought the act was over. Kaye Voyce’s costumes are fine. The ubiquitous Sam Gold directed. It is far from a good play, but nonetheless an entertaining one, thanks largely to the appealing cast and several comic moments. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes including intermission.

I'm Gonna Pray for You So Hard **

The best I can say for Halley Feiffer’s overwrought drama at Atlantic Stage 2 is that it offers a chance for Reed Birney to once again demonstrate that he is one of New York’s finest actors. As David, an embittered alcoholic playwright, he spends the first hour venting spleen against everyone involved in New York theater. His audience is his daughter Ella (Betty Gilpin), an aspiring actress waiting for the reviews of her performance as Masha in “The Seagull.” During the long first scene, Gilpin is called upon mainly to shriek, screech, scream, squeal and shout, to the point that I thought her character was developmentally challenged. David’s casual cruelty to Ella escalates as the evening progresses, fueled by wine, weed and coke, and finally reaches a breaking point. In the second scene, five years later, we learn that Ella has truly become her father’s daughter. Birney’s performance in this scene is absolutely riveting and Gilpin finally gets a chance to do more than make appreciative noises. Mark Wendland’s version of the kitchen of an Upper West Side apartment is appropriately claustrophobic. Jessica Pabst’s costumes are fine, especially her blood-red dress for Ella in the second scene. Trip Cullman directed. Although I really disliked the material, I was happy for the opportunity to see Birney in action. Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission.

Lives of the Saints ***

When Primary Stages offered a near-perfect production of “All in the Timing,” David Ives’s collection of six hilarious short plays, two years ago, I awarded it five stars. Now they are back with an evening of six more Ives playlets. Those expecting a reprise of Ives’s delicious word-play based sketches will be disappointed. The current collection is more substantive, but less stylistically successful. Most of the six plays (a seventh listed in the program was dropped to shorten the evening) are loosely tied together by the theme of goodness. “The Goodness of Your Heart” examines what one can expect from a good friend. “Soap Opera,” a pun-filled extended sketch about a repairman (think Maytag) who falls in love with a washing machine, shows the downside of perfection. “Enigma Variations” did not seem to fit the evening’s theme. With doubled characters and reversing roles, it was more frenetic than coherent. My favorite was “Life Signs,” in which a newly deceased mother thought to have lived an upright life suddenly begins talking to her grieving son and vividly disabusing him of that notion. “It’s All Good” shows a successful New York writer the life he might have had if he had never left southside Chicago. The title play, which closes the evening, demonstrates the simple goodness of two older Polish Catholic women preparing a funeral breakfast. Although the evening does not reach the delirious heights of “All in the Timing,” there are still lots of laughs. Returning from the previous production are director John Rando, set designer Beowulf Boritt, costume designer Anita Yavich and actors Carson Elrod (a comic genius) and Liv Rooth. They are joined by Arnie Burton, Rick Holmes and Kelly Hutchinson, who are just as adept at animating Ives’s characters. Although a bit disappointed that lightning did not strike twice, I had a good time. Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes, including intermission.

Brooklynite **

This new musical about superheroes in Brooklyn, now in previews at the Vineyard Theatre, has lots of talent behind it. Composer/lyricist/ book co-author Peter Lerman has won both a Jonathan Larson Award and a Stephen Sondheim Young Artist Citation. Director and book co-author Michael Mayer brought us “Spring Awakening.” Choreographer Steven Hoggett’s many successes include “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and “Once.” The story is based on characters created by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. The cast includes Nick Cordero, so impressive in “Bullets over Broadway,” and the always entertaining Ann Harada. The production is lavish by Vineyard standards. Donyale Werle’s modular set creates several diverse locales, Andrea Lauer’s superhero costumes are wonderful, as are Andrew Lazarow’s projections. With all this talent, why did I find the show curiously flat and uninvolving? I think the main problems are the book and the music. The story of six superheroes created when an asteroid hit Gowanus and the nebbishy hardware store clerk who would like to join their ranks works better for a comic book than an off-Broadway musical. Except for a couple of songs, the music seemed merely serviceable. The cast, led by Matt Doyle and Nicolette Robinson, do their best to animate cardboard characters. The other recent musical about Brooklyn, “Fortress of Solitude,” was superior in every way. With its story of Brooklyn superheroes and in-jokes about that borough, this show might have been more suitable for some Williamsburg venue than for the Vineyard. I think a younger audience would appreciate it more. Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes including intermission.

The Nether **

After a highly acclaimed London run that included a West End transfer, Jennifer Haley’s mashup of a police procedural and a sci-fi story is now having its New York premiere in an MCC production at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. The Nether is what the internet has become in the near future, an online medium where virtual reality is the main attraction. Since trees have disappeared in the real world, even the sight of an online forest can offer comfort. Schools have been largely supplanted by interactive educational games. As on the internet, porn is an important part of The Nether. As the play opens Detective Morris (Merritt Wever) is interviewing Sims (Frank Wood), a man she suspects of operating a virtual realm called The Hideaway, a Victorian estate where avatars of pedophiles can anonymously have their way with children. One issue raised is whether, since the “children” are actually avatars of adults, there is anything immoral about it. The detective is also questioning Doyle (Peter Friedman), a school teacher in his 60’s who frequents The Hideaway, offering him immunity if he will provide evidence to nail Sims. We also meet Woodnut (Ben Rosenfield), an undercover agent sent to gather evidence, and, most notably, Iris (Sophia Anne Caruso), a nine-year old at The Hideaway, much favored both by “guests” and Papa (Sims’s avatar). There are some surprising developments. It all sounds more interesting than it turns out to be. After reading the ecstatic London reviews, I feel that the problem is a deeply flawed production. The set, by Laura Jellinek, concentrates on the drab interrogation room and merely gives us hints of The Hideaway’s charms, whereas in London the scenic design went to great lengths to show its seductive beauty. Another weakness, at least for me, is Wever’s performance, which I found monotonously off-putting. To see Peter Friedman and Frank Wood is, as always, a pleasure. Rosenfield is quite effective and Caruso is amazing. Jessica Pabst's costumes are excellent. Anne Kauffman’s direction did not pull things together for me. A botched opportunity. Most memorable line: “Don’t tell me that you never fucked an elf!” Running time: 75 minutes, no intermission.