Tag Archives: Sam Gold

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

Jeremy Strong stars in new translation of Henrik Ibsen’s cautionary An Enemy of the People (photo by Emilio Madrid)

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 23, $99 – $499
anenemyofthepeopleplay.com

What price truth?

That is the question that drives Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 drama An Enemy of the People, which can currently be seen in an intense new translation by Obie winner and Tony nominee Amy Herzog, directed by her husband, Tony and two-time Obie winner Sam Gold, at Circle in the Square; this is the first time the couple has worked together, and hopefully not the last.

The story takes place in the late nineteenth century in a small Norwegian town in late winter, but it could also be set anytime, anywhere, including America in 2024. The fortysomething Dr. Thomas Stockmann (Jeremy Strong), a widower, lives a quiet life with his daughter, Petra (Victoria Pedretti), a schoolteacher in her early twenties. They have an open house, welcoming friends and colleagues to stop by for a drink, a smoke, a meal, or stimulating conversation.

The play opens with Petra and the family maid serving dinner to an eager Billing (Matthew August Jeffers). When Petra points out how hard it can be teaching her class of sixteen boys “anything of value,” Billing replies, “So take a load off, sit with me. Teach me something, I’m very ignorant, it’s a real shame.” Value, ignorance, and shame will become key themes to the show.

Billing’s boss, Hovstad (Caleb Eberhardt), arrives, followed by Peter Stockmann (Michael Imperioli); the former is the editor of the local paper, the People’s Messenger, while the latter is the mayor and Thomas’s older brother.

Town mayor Peter Stockmann (Michael Imperioli) doesn’t like what he hears in Broadway revival (photo by Emilio Madrid)

The town’s future has been built on the success of the Baths, the main attraction at the new spa resort. The local economy is about to boom as spring and summer approach, but Thomas has some bad news. “The water at the Baths is rife with bacteria, tiny micro-organisms that cause disease. It’s completely unsafe,” he tells Petra, Billing, Hovstad, and Captain Horster (Alan Trong). Petra says, “Thank goodness you discovered it in time.” They toast Thomas as a local hero, but Petra’s response is not necessarily shared by the rest of the town, including her maternal grandfather, Morten Kiil (David Patrick Kelly), who owns a tannery that might be contributing to the water pollution.

Hovstad is excited “to expose these clowns” by publishing Thomas’s article about the poisonous water and what it will take to save the spa. The printer, Aslaksen (Thomas Jay Ryan), who is also the chair of the Property Owners’ Association and a temperance leader, offers Thomas his full support but suggests he proceed carefully, in moderation.
But when Peter finds out what it will take to make the Baths safe, Thomas goes from hero to villain as he’s publicly declared an Enemy of the People.

Herzog, whose 4000 Miles was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and whose Mary Jane begins Broadway previews April 2, last year adapted Ibsen’s 1879 masterpiece, A Doll’s House, earning six Tony nominations, including Best Revival of a Play. Gold, who won an Obie and a Tony for directing Fun Home at the Public and Circle in the Square, respectively, and another Obie for Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation, was also nominated for a Tony for helming Lucas Hnath’s A Doll’s House, Part 2. You can expect a boatload of Tony nods for their inaugural collaboration.

The audience sits on three sides of the narrow rectangular stage, which runs down the middle. Thomas’s home is plainly furnished, with simple tables and chairs; small changes are made when the scene moves to the printing press and a large meeting room. A white building facade surrounds the space at the top, seemingly unnecessary except to hide a surprise that arrives at intermission. The set is by dots, with tender lighting, featuring several gas lamps, by Isabella Byrd, sound by Mikaal Sulaiman that incorporates dialogue and musical performances, and fine period costumes by David Zinn.

Dr. Thomas Stockmann (Jeremy Strong) is afraid everything will all fall apart unless local town listens to him (photo by Emilio Madrid)

Taking a page out of Daniel Fish’s 2019 Tony-winning revival of Oklahoma! at Circle in the Square, which invited the audience onto the stage during intermission for cornbread and a cup of chili, An Enemy of the People offers shots of a prominently featured Nordic liqueur while several ensemble members (Katie Broad, Bill Buell, David Mattar Merten, Max Roll, Kelly) sing Norwegian folk songs. After intermission, more than a dozen audience members remain onstage, becoming citizens at the town meeting where the mayor maneuvers to silence his brother, along with the rest of the audience, as the speakers address all of us directly with the lights on, each person in the theater involved in the controversy.

Emmy winner Strong (A Man for All Seasons, The Great God Pan), best known for his role as Kendall Roy on Succession, gives a profoundly measured performance as Thomas, a gentle, considerate, if somewhat elusive man, at the edge of exploding, whose life turns upside down when he becomes a whistleblower, standing nearly alone as he staunchly refuses to surrender his principles; it’s a cautionary tale that’s ripe for the modern age, given the spread of fake news over social media and the rejection of truth in favor of money and power by politicians and corporations.

In his Broadway debut, Emmy winner Imperioli (The Sopranos, The White Lotus) is a fine foil as Peter, an arch-conservative to his liberal brother. The ever-dependable Ryan (Dance Nation, The Nap) is phenomenal as Aslaksen, whose belief in freedom of the press goes only so far.

All that said, Herzog is not able to solve some of the play’s inherent problems, a significant reason why it is performed relatively rarely. Arthur Miller’s adaptation debuted on Broadway in 1950 with Fredric March as Thomas and Morris Carnovsky as Peter and was turned into a 1978 film with Steve McQueen and Charles Durning; a 2012 revival with Boyd Gaines and Richard Thomas as the brothers was disappointingly trite. Unfortunately, Robert Ickes’s inventive, interactive 2021 solo version starring Ann Dowd at the Park Ave. Armory was cut short when Dowd had to leave for unstated personal reasons.

Herzog excises the doctor’s wife, and we never see their two sons, making Thomas more of a lone wolf. The town hall scene gets a bit ludicrous at the end with the addition of awkward props. And there is far too much editorializing as the narrative reaches its overly simplistic resolution.

But the play’s relevancy still hits home in 2024, amid domestic and international crises that continue to shake the stability of the world as we realize it will take a lot more than just one brave man to save us from our destiny.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

CORSICANA

Justice (Deirdre O’Connell), Christopher (Will Dagger), and Ginny (Jamie Brewer) watch Mariah Carey in Glitter in Corsicana (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

CORSICANA
Playwrights Horizons, Mainstage Theater
416 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 17, $35-$99
www.playwrightshorizons.org

In her acceptance speech for winning the Tony for Best Actress for her performance in Dana H., Deirdre O’Connell said, “I would love this little prize to be a token for every person who is wondering, ‘Should I be trying to make something that could work on Broadway or that could win me a Tony Award? Or should I be making the weird art that is haunting me, that frightens me, that I don’t know how to make, that I don’t know if anyone in the whole world will understand?’ Please let me standing here be a little sign to you from the universe to make the weird art.”

O’Connell has followed up Dana H., in which she never speaks but instead remarkably conveys a prerecorded true story told by playwright Lucas Hnath’s mother, with Will Arbery’s Corsicana, which has its fair share of weird, starting with the word itself, which is spoken two dozen times by the four characters, each of whom lives in their own reality.

Corsicana takes place in the Texas town named after the island of Corsica. Thirty-three-year-old Christopher (Will Dagger) is a teacher and an aspiring filmmaker who lives with his thirty-four-year-old half sister, Ginny (Jamie Brewer), in the family’s ranch house. They are often visited by the sixtysomething Justice (Deirdre O’Connell), who was best friends with their recently deceased mother.

After her mom’s death, Ginny, who has Down syndrome, is looking for something new to do. She doesn’t want to go back to her job at the nursing home or rejoin the choir because she feels she doesn’t belong. “I’m worried. I can’t find my heart,” she tells her brother.

Ginny had suggested that Ginny meet her friend Lot (Harold Surratt), a sixtysomething reclusive artist and musician who has just been “discovered” via a magazine article; Christopher thinks it might be good for Ginny to write a song with Lot, who previously played an original song for Christopher called “Weird.” (The original music is by singer-songwriter and visual artist Joanna Sternberg.)

A self-taught outsider artist, Lot is a loner who has trouble communicating directly with others, speaking in a sharp, straightforward manner, using few words and prone to non sequiturs; he has no phone or computer. He doesn’t want to interact with either the virtual or real world. And although he believes he may be neurodivergent, he is not about to be a babysitter for a woman with special needs.

Justice (Deirdre O’Connell) pleads with Lot (Harold Surratt) in new Will Arbery play (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

He tells Christopher: “Yeah, I know ‘special needs.’ Why’d you come here? I know the place in the high school. The hallway in the high school. You know I’m not one of them, right?” Christopher replies, “What?” Lot: “I’m not special needs.” Christopher: “Oh — I didn’t think you were. I assumed the opposite.” Lot: “What’s the opposite? I was only a couple years in that hallway. And they knew I didn’t belong. Got a graduate degree in my forties. So don’t worry about me.” Christopher: “Oh, cool. In what?” Lot: “Experimental mathematics. I proved the existence of God.” Christopher: “Are you serious? Can I see?” Lot: “I threw it away. Art’s a better delivery system.”

Art may be a better delivery system, but Lot prefers not to show anyone his work or exhibit in a gallery, or to even sell it. When Justice, who believes she is being trailed by a ghost, asks to see his latest sculpture, he declares, “No, it’s not ready! You’re not allowed to look back there.” The audience is not allowed to look either; none of Lot’s work is ever revealed. He later compares capitalism and consumption as a “prison . . . a man-made evil.” He also claims that they are all surrounded by dinosaur ghosts.

As the characters continue to interact with one another, Lot is fearful about becoming part of something. “You trying to get me to believe in community?” he asks Justice, who replies, “No. I have no agenda.” Lot: “Uh-huh.” Justice: “What do you have against community?” Lot: “I don’t have to have all the same opinions as you,” as if choosing to spend time with people is an opinion.

But he does find common ground with Ginny, explaining that the two of them are “so complicated, people don’t want to think about it. So they make us more simple. In their brains. They don’t think about it, and they call us simple. And everything is about our needs. All our little needs. Our special needs. Everyone around us becoming burdened by our constant need. And if there’s something that we want? Well, it’s for them to decide if we really need it.”

Over the course of the play, all the characters find some form of commonality with the others while also maintaining barriers, particularly when it comes to physical contact of any kind. “People have to understand touch, and ask for permission, and respect boundaries,” Ginny tells Lot. “Touch can cause problems.”

Obie- and Tony-winning director Sam Gold, who has helmed such marvelously inventive productions as Fun Home, John, and A Doll’s House, Part 2 in addition to critically lambasted versions of King Lear, Hamlet, and Macbeth, injects Corsicana with, well, a weird edge throughout. Laura Jellinek and Cate McCrea’s stage consists of a pair of rotating brown couches set against a white backdrop and ceiling, but Justice and Lot spend time sitting on the floor. Often, when two characters are interacting, one or both of the other actors watch from the far corners. Several times, two of the actors push poles to move part of the set toward the audience in order to change Isabella Byrd’s canopy lighting. Meanwhile, the long, horizontal, slanted back white wall serves as the entrance to Lot’s studio, which he often locks to keep people out of his space — and head.

Christopher (Will Dagger) and Ginny (Jamie Brewer) seek connections in Corsicana (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

There is a lot of repetition in the play, which could use a significant amount of trimming from its two-and-a-half-hour length (including intermission). The terrific cast is led by Surratt’s (Familiar, Serious Money) powerful performance as the antisocial Lot — evoking the biblical figure who lived in Sodom, “a righteous man who was tormented in his soul by the wickedness he saw and heard day after day” — primarily standing stiffly upright when talking as he, Justice, Christopher, and Ginny form a kind of found family. Arbery (Pulitzer finalist Heroes of the Fourth Turning, Plano), who is from Texas and Wyoming, based Christopher and Ginny on himself and one of his seven sisters, who has Down syndrome. He also knows about unique families, having served as executive consultant on the third season of Succession.

Brewer (American Horror Story, Amy and the Orphans) brings an unfettered honesty to Ginny, Dagger (Among the Dead, The Antelope Party) is appropriately offbeat as Christopher, and O’Connell (Circle Mirror Transformation, In the Wake) is just the right kind of quirky as the, um, weird Justice, who is writing a book that echoes the subject of Arbery’s play. She explains to Christopher:

“Well, it’s about anarchism and gifts. About the belief that humans are fundamentally generous, or at least cooperative. That in our hearts, most of us really do want the good. It’s about the evils of centralized power, specially in a country as massive as the USA, let alone a state as big as Texas. It’s about an unforgiving land. It’s about unrealized utopias. It’s about how failing is the point. It’s about surrender. It’s about small groups. It’s about community. It’s about the right to well-being. It’s about family. It’s about the dead. It’s about ghosts. It’s about gentle chaos. It’s about contracts of the heart. And the belief that when a part of the self is given away, is surrendered to the needs of a particular time, in a particular place, then community forms. From the ghosts of the parts of ourselves we’ve given away. A new particular body. Born of our own ghosts. I don’t know. It’s about Texas.”

And there’s nothing weird about that. (Is there?)

THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES

The Daughters of Mary worship the Black Madonna in musical version of The Secret Life of Bees (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Atlantic Theater Company
Linda Gross Theater
336 West 20th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 21, $106.50-$126.50
866-811-4111
atlantictheater.org

In a readers guide interview for her 2001 novel The Secret Life of Bees, author Sue Monk Kidd explains, “I began my bee education by reading lots of books. There’s a mystique about bees, a kind of spell they weave over you, and I fell completely under it. I read bee lore and legend that went back to ancient times. I discovered bees were considered a symbol of the soul, of death and rebirth. I will never forget coming upon medieval references which associated the Virgin Mary with the queen bee. I’d been thinking of her as the queen bee of my little hive of women in the pink house, thinking that was very original, and they’d already come up with that five hundred years ago!”

The Virgin Mary / queen bee symbolism lies at the heart of the story, which was made into a 2008 film by Gina Prince-Bythewood starring Dakota Fanning, Jennifer Hudson, Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys, and Sophie Okonedo and has now been turned into a skillfully rendered musical continuing at the Atlantic through July 21. It’s the summer of 1964 in South Carolina, and twenty-two-year-old black maid Rosaleen (Tony nominee Saycon Sengbloh) is determined to exercise her brand-new right to vote. Fourteen-year-old white girl Lily (Elizabeth Teeter) insists on accompanying her. Rosaleen has been helping take care of Lily and her father, T-Ray (Chris Stack), ever since the tragic loss of Lily’s mother. Rosaleen gets attacked by two white racists and is arrested. Lily, after another fight with the angry T-Ray, goes on the run with Rosaleen, spurred by a postcard in her mother’s things of a black Madonna statue in Tiburon. “Not a damn thing in this town / I’m gonna miss / Wherever I’m goin’ / It’s gotta be better than this,” Lily and Rosaleen sing.

When they get to Tiburon, they find a pink house where a group of women make Black Madonna Honey and, as the Daughters of Mary, worship a statue of the black virgin; while August Boatwright (Tony winner LaChanze) immediately wants to take Lily and Rosaleen in, June (Obie winner Eisa Davis) is not so sure, and May (Anastacia McCleskey) is somewhere in between, stuck in mourning for July. Lily is soon working with Zachary (Brett Gray), a black teenager, and learning some life lessons, but T-Ray is trying to track her down — and the horrors of racism await around nearly every corner.

LaChanze belts one out as August Boatwright in world premiere musical at the Atlantic (photo by Ahron R. Foster)

Directed by Tony winner Sam Gold (Fun Home, A Doll’s House, Part 2) and featuring music by Tony and Grammy winner Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening, Alice by Heart) — who was raised in South Carolina — lyrics by two-time Tony nominee and Drama Desk winner Susan Birkenhead (Jelly’s Last Jam, Working), and a book by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (Sweat, Ruined), The Secret Life of Bees is a poignant, hard-hitting tale that feels all too real as voter suppression of people of color is still a major issue in America. The story loses its way near the end as it gets bogged down in religious fervor and treacly melodrama, but the majority of the show is smart and entertaining; especially notable is the creative way the bees flock around Lily. Mimi Lien’s homey set includes a nine-piece band on the periphery of the stage playing a mix of country, folk, blues, pop, and R&B, led by pianist, music director, and conductor Jason Hart and percussionist and associate music director Benjamin Rahuala.

LaChanze (The Color Purple, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical) is absolutely lovely as August, a strong woman asserting her power, while Sengbloh (Eclipsed, In the Blood) is warm and becoming as Rosaleen, and Teeter (The Crucible, The Hard Problem) is impressive as Lily, a tough kid making grown-up decisions. The cast also includes Romelda Teron Benjamin as Queenie, Vita E. Cleveland as Violet, and Jai’Len Christine Li Josey as Sugar Girl, three Daughters of Mary who serve as a kind of Greek chorus, and Nathaniel Stampley as Neil, a principal who has his heart set on marrying the cold and distant June. The musical might be set fifty-five years ago, but it feels all too real given the racial, economic, and political divides that are tearing this country apart, buzzing around us like so many angry hornets, delivering poisonous stings instead of sweet honey.

KING LEAR ON BROADWAY

Glenda Jackson wonders where it all went wrong in King Lear revival on Broadway (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Cort Theatre
138 West 48th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 9, $35-$129
www.kinglearonbroadway.com

Theater aficionados would likely pay good money to watch the inimitable Glenda Jackson read the phone book, as the proverbial platitude goes. But director Sam Gold challenges that now-outdated cliché with his misguided production of King Lear, which boasts the remarkable actress and former longtime British MP as Shakespeare’s declining ruler. On the night I attended, early in the show a valet bringing Lear the crown stumbled and dropped the prop. Jackson let out an angry howl that echoed throughout the Cort Theatre in what looked to be an ad-lib, but it summed up everyone’s frustration with Gold’s handling of the tragedy. The usually dependable and insightful Tony and Obie winner (Fun Home, Circle Mirror Transformation) seems to be going out of his way to unnecessarily complicate virtually every aspect of this consistently awkward staging.

King Lear (Glenda Jackson) has something to say to his youngest daughter, Cordelia (Ruth Wilson) (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

The story takes place in a gold-plated rectangular, horizontal space, with characters in relatively modern dress. (The set is by Miriam Buether, with costumes by Ann Roth.) Ruth Wilson is excellent as both Cordelia and the Fool, although it is sometimes hard to tell when she is one or the other. John Douglas Thompson is stalwart as Kent, his authoritative voice booming, but the rest of the cast seems lost, seeking Gold to guide them not unlike poor Tom (Sean Carvajal) leading his blinded father, Gloucester (Jayne Houdyshell), to the edge of a precipice. The Duke of Cornwall is portrayed by Russell Harvard, a deaf actor who is followed around by Michael Arden, who translates for him in American Sign Language. Philip Glass has composed a lovely score, performed by violinists Cenovia Cummins and Martin Agee, violist Chris Cardona, and cellist Stephanie Cummins; when they unobtrusively play in the far back corner, all is well, but later they come to the front and mingle with the actors, which is unnerving and off-putting. Goneril (Elizabeth Marvel) at first shows empathy for Cordelia, but that changes fast, leading to a sexual expression that made the audience gasp in horror. Pedro Pascal is ineffective as the devious Edmund, while Carvajal is too plain as his too-trusting half-brother, Edgar. The cast also includes Dion Johnstone as the Duke of Albany, Aisling O’Sullivan as a vicious Regan, Ian Lassiter as the King of France, and Matthew Maher as a creepy Oswald. Oh, and there are gunshots.

Ruth Wilson, Glenda Jackson, and John Douglas Thompson are the bright spots in Sam Gold’s revival of King Lear (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Fortunately, watching Jackson for nearly three and a half hours — she does take that long break at the beginning of the second act, and the play suffers even further in her absence — makes this Lear worth it; Jackson, now eighty-two, might be a wisp of a thing, but she radiates intense strength and greatness every step of the way. But be advised that this is not Deborah Warner’s 2016-17 version that took London by storm. I am no traditionalist by any means — for example, I adore what Daniel Fish has done with Oklahoma! — but Gold has deconstructed the play only to reconstruct it with, dare I say, a Lear-like madness that just too often is baffling if not downright annoying. New York has seen many a Lear over the last dozen years — Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Derek Jacobi, John Lithgow, Frank Langella, Sir Antony Sher, Michael Pennington, and Sam Waterston — and Jackson is a worthy addition to that list, but it is telling that she received neither a Tony nor a Drama Desk nomination for her performance, and the production also did not get nods for Best Revival. It’s like an imperfect storm, with Jackson at the center, trying to survive the downpour, along with the rest of us.

A DOLL’S HOUSE, PART 2

Golden Theatre
252 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 7, $39 – $147
dollshousepart2.com

It’s the most famous door slam in theatrical history and a symbolic touchstone of the women’s rights movement. At the end of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play, A Doll’s House, Nora Helmer declares her freedom and walks out on her banker husband, Torvald, and their three young children, in order to figure out who she is and what she wants out of life. In his book From Ibsen’s Workshop: Notes, Scenarios, and Drafts of the Modern Plays, Ibsen wrote of A Doll’s House: “A woman cannot be herself in the society of the present day, which is an exclusively masculine society, with laws framed by men and with a judicial system that judges feminine conduct from a masculine point of view.” Playwright Lucas Hnath delves deeper into those rules of conduct between men and women in his audacious, decidedly contemporary follow-up, A Doll’s House, Part 2. It’s also extremely intelligent and very, very funny, more than worthy of its title.

Hnath and director Sam Gold attack the story with relish, beginning with Miriam Beuther’s set, a large room with two high walls that meet at the back, while the front corner angles into the first few added rows; the feet of the audience members in the first row can actually reach under the stage. To the left is the door, big and brown and austere; a few chairs and a table are arranged around the room sparsely but neatly. A glowing yellow neon sign hangs from the ceiling, boldly announcing the name of the play, rising up and out of view shortly after the show starts, with a knock on the door; Nora (Laurie Metcalf) has returned. “Nora, I can’t believe it’s you!” proclaims an excited Ann Marie (Jane Houdyshell), the nanny who first raised Nora, then Nora’s children. “It’s good to see you,” Nora responds calmly, but she can’t wait to tell Ann Marie what she’s been up to these last fifteen years, during which she has had no contact whatsoever with anyone in the house. She proudly informs Ann Marie that she’s become a successful writer, using a pseudonym, publishing controversial books that argue against the institution of marriage and monogamy, which she calls “self-torture.” When Torvald (Chris Cooper) unexpectedly arrives, he doesn’t even recognize Nora. “Who’s your friend?” he asks Ann Marie before looking a little closer. “Are you . . . You aren’t . . . You are,” he says. “I am,” Nora responds. “I have to go to the bathroom,” Torvald declares, and leaves the room. It’s a scintillating exchange, 15 years in the making in the play itself, but 138 years since Ibsen first wrote Nora’s exit.

Ann Marie (Jane Houdyshell) and Nora (Laurie Metcalf) discuss responsibility and more in “sequel” to Ibsen classic (photo © Brigitte Lacombe)

The reason why Nora has returned is brilliant; she has not come back to explain herself to Torvald or to see how her children are doing. Avoiding all sentimentality, Nora explains that Torvald never filed the divorce papers, so she desperately needs him to finally sign them, which will at last legally set her free of all attachments, allow her to sign contracts on her own behalf, and save her reputation as an anti-marriage crusader — all the dilemmas that ensue from women’s lack of the rights that men enjoy. “I think it’s to be expected that a person would think that after I left this house and my husband and my children that I’d have a very difficult time,” she tells Ann Marie, who says, “The world is a hard place.” Nora adds, “So we’re trained to think. I mean, I think there’s something in our time and place and culture that teaches us to expect and even want for women who leave their families to be punished.” It’s a statement that wittily comments on the audience’s own expectations, displaying how inequality remains very much in force today; Nora might be flaunting her independence and her career triumphs, but she has not yet broken free of society’s rules, many of which have continued into the twenty-first century.

Over the course of the swiftly moving ninety-minute play, Nora goes one-on-one with each character, the next bout announced by a projection of that character’s name on the wall in huge sans-serif block letters by Peter Nigrini. The interactions are superbly staged, as Ann Marie gives Nora a piece of her mind, Torvald is not keen on granting her the divorce, and Emmy shows she has matured into a fine, albeit traditional, young woman. The dialogue in each scene is razor-sharp and unpredictable as Hnath (Red Speedo, The Christians) explores the age-old battle of the sexes with surprisingly modern language. In researching the project, Hnath sought advice from numerous feminist scholars, including Carol Gilligan, Elaine Showalter, Toril Moi, Susan Brantly, and Caroline Light, resulting in a play that never is condescending or didactic and instead is illuminating and wholly believable.

Mother (Laurie Metcalf) and daughter (Condola Rashad) meet for the first time in fifteen years in new play by Lucas Hnath (photo © Brigitte Lacombe)

The cast is divinely exquisite, all four earning Tony nods. Four-time Tony nominee Metcalf (The Other Place, Domesticated) is sensational as Nora, following in the door-slamming footsteps of Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Jane Fonda, Dorothy McGuire, and Joan Crawford. Wearing a gorgeous art nouveau shirtwaist and ladies’ suit by costume designer David Zinn, she’s utterly magnetic as she moves around the stage, completely unafraid to face the realities of Nora’s situation, many of which she did not expect. Oscar winner and Tony and Emmy nominee Cooper (My House in Umbria, Adaptation.), last seen on Broadway in the short-lived 1980 drama Of the Fields, Lately, is gentle and understated as Torvald, who is not sure how to react when he abruptly has to confront something he has tried to put past him. Three-time Tony nominee Rashad (The Trip to Bountiful, Stick Fly) is adorably charming as Emmy, a confident woman who holds no grudges and has an infectiously positive view of life. And Tony and Obie winner Houdyshell (The Humans, Follies), who played the nurse to Rashad’s Juliet in David Leveaux’s 2013 Broadway version of Romeo and Juliet with Orlando Bloom, is, as always, a marvelous delight, holding nothing back as Ann Marie defends the choices she made and delivers the funniest, most direct, and totally un-Ibsen-like line of the play. Tony winner Gold (Fun Home, John) again proves he is one of the theater’s most inventive directors, allowing Hnath’s sparkling words to shine on a sparse but powerful set. One door closes; one door opens. Entrances and exits are the way of life, and the way of theater, and they come together beautifully in this electrifying and masterful production.

THE GLASS MENAGERIE

Madison Ferris, Sally Field, and Joe Mantello star in Sam Gold revival of THE GLASS MENAGERIE on Broadway (photo © Julieta Cervantes)

Belasco Theatre
111 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through May 21, $35 – $149
glassmenagerieonbroadway.com

How do twenty-first-century audiences relate to Tennessee Williams? Tony winner Sam Gold explores that question as he combines elements of two recent productions in his new Broadway version, continuing at the Belasco Theatre through July 2. In 2004, multiple Emmy and Oscar winner Sally Field starred in Williams’s The Glass Menagerie at the Kennedy Center, directed by Gregory Mosher. In November 2015, Gold directed a more experimental adaptation of the play for Ivo van Hove’s toneelgroepamsterdam company. And although the casting is curious, Andrew Lieberman’s set can be confusing, and too much of the staging is head-scratching, it mostly works, resulting in a fresh take on Williams’s most intimate and autobiographical play and the one that put him on the map. With the house lights still on, Tom Wingfield (award-winning actor and director Joe Mantello) takes the stage, with his mother, Amanda (Field), and his sister, Laura (Madison Ferris), in a wheelchair, waiting by a small staircase in front of the stage. “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion,” the graying Tom, looking relatively comfortable in jeans and glasses, announces to the audience. “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic.” After Tom’s opening monologue, Amanda helps Laura up the steps; they’re a difficult few moments, as Ferris has muscular dystrophy. Lieberman’s depiction of the Wingfield home in St. Louis consists only of a kitchen table at the center, open shelving of various objects at stage right, and an old phonograph with records and some tiny glass animals on the floor at stage left, with large, empty spaces and black walls. For the next two hours (without intermission), Amanda prepares for Laura to meet gentleman callers while Tom has trouble writing and disappears at night, upsetting his mother, who descends ever more deeply into denial of what their lives have become. Meanwhile, an unseen portrait of her husband, who walked out on the family years ago, hangs ominously over them like a dark cloud.

Amanda (Sally Field) looks on as the gentleman caller (Finn Wittrock) and Laura (Madison Ferris) bond in dark version of Tennessee Williams classic (photo © Julieta Cervantes)

Williams’s breakthrough play, The Glass Menagerie takes its cues from Williams’s real life. His given name was Tom, he grew up partly in St. Louis, his father was a traveling salesman who was away for long periods of time, and his beloved sister, Rose — in the play, Laura recalls being referred to as “Blue Roses” in high school — suffered from extreme mental illness and ultimately underwent a lobotomy. Many of Gold’s choices go against traditional adaptations: Mantello (The Humans, Angels in America) plays Tom at his current age, not as the younger man, changing the dynamic between Tom and Amanda, particularly when they quarrel. Amanda is often an imposing, overbearing figure, but Field (Norma Rae; The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?) gives her a heartbreaking vulnerability, a disillusioned woman who can’t see things as they are. Finn Wittrock (American Horror Story, Sweet Bird of Youth) turns the gentleman caller into a goofy young man with an innate charm who has an instant connection with Laura. But it’s the casting of Ferris as Laura — the first actor in a wheelchair in a major role on Broadway (in the 2015 revival of Spring Awakening, Ali Stroker became the first actor in a wheelchair ever on Broadway) — that most significantly alters the nature of this production. Laura is usually portrayed wearing a brace that hampers her movement as well as her belief that she will ever find a husband. So when Laura calls herself “crippled” and her mother responds, “Nonsense! Laura, I’ve told you never, never to use that word. Why, you’re not crippled, you just have a little defect — hardly noticeable, even!” it takes on different meaning here, since Laura’s mostly confined to a wheelchair. In other productions, when the gentleman caller asks Laura to dance, there’s a moment of hope, but here we’ve already seen it’s seemingly impossible, based on how difficult it is for Laura to even get up a few steps. But we mustn’t forget that, as Tom said at the very start, this is a memory play, so this is how he is remembering it. It’s a bold choice, one that some have argued goes against Williams’s meaning and others have claimed fits in with his intentions. It certainly makes things more uncomfortable, which is not necessarily problematic, as opposed to some of the staging, which is, including the spectacle that becomes the “nice cool rain,” characters running around the audience, and Amanda and Laura arguing over who is going to answer a knock at the door. But the play withstands such unconventional approaches; as crafted by Williams, it is a lot sturdier than the tiny glass animals that Laura collects.

OTHELLO

Iago (Daniel Craig) makes his case to Othello (David Oyelowo) in gripping NYTW production (photo by Chad Batka)

New York Theatre Workshop
79 East Fourth St. between Second & Third Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 18, $129
Thursday, January 12 benefit, $1,500 – $2,500
www.nytw.org

“Were I the Moor I would not be Iago. In following him, I follow but myself. Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,” Iago (Daniel Craig) says in the first scene of William Shakespeare’s Othello. “I am not what I am.” What he is is a villain, one of the most devious in the Bard’s canon, and in Sam Gold’s captivating, intense production at New York Theatre Workshop, the audience is also Iago’s judge. Set designer Andrew Lieberman has transformed NYTW into a plywood-encased military barracks where the audience sits on benches on three sides of the action, the main sections holding rows of twelve people, like courtroom juries. The soliloquies are delivered as if closing statements in a trial, the characters trying to convince the audience of their innocence — or guilt. Reminiscent of Nicholas Hytner’s 2013 National Theatre production set in a contemporary military base (among other locations), NYTW’s version is sparer, the long, narrow stage area featuring mattresses and lights on the floor. Iago, ensign to military hero and Moor Othello (David Oyelowo), is determined to exact revenge on Othello for an unproved slight by sabotaging his marriage to Desdemona (Rachel Brosnahan), the daughter of Venetian senator Brabantio (Glenn Fitzgerald). With the help of his naïve friend Roderigo (Matthew Maher), Iago concocts a plan to drive Othello mad with jealousy, trying to convince him that Desdemona is in love with Michael Cassio (Finn Wittrock), Othello’s dedicated captain. “Thou art sure of me. I have told thee often, and I retell thee again and again, I hate the Moor,” Iago says to Roderigo. “My cause is hearted; thine hath no less reason. If thou canst cuckold him, thou dost thyself a pleasure, me a sport,” he adds, explaining how he will get even with Othello, believing that the Moor might have bedded his wife, Emilia (Marsha Stephanie Blake). After Roderigo exits, Iago states his case to the audience-jury: “And it is thought abroad that ’twixt my sheets ’has done my office. I know not if ’t be true, but I, for mere suspicion in that kind, will do as if for surety. He holds me well. The better shall my purpose work on him.” As Othello falls for the ruse, tragedy awaits.

New York Theatre Workshop is transformed into military barracks in Sam Gold’s OTHELLO (photo by Chad Batka)

Royal Shakespeare Company veteran Oyelowo (Volpone, Prometheus Bound) and Craig (A Steady Rain, Casino Royale) make a formidable duo as Othello and Iago, roles previously played by such pairs as Paul Robeson and José Ferrer, Richard Burton and John Neville (alternating parts), Laurence Olivier and Frank Finlay, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ewan McGregor, and Laurence Fishburne and Kenneth Branagh. Craig is tough and determined as Iago, dead-set on succeeding in his evil goal, while Oyelowo combines an engaging ardor with a heartbreaking vulnerability. Emmy nominee Brosnahan (The Big Knife, House of Cards) plays Desdemona with a strong independence, Blake (Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Hurt Village) brings depth to Emilia, and Wittrock (Death of a Salesman, American Horror Story) is firm and solid as the loyal Cassio. Through much of the play, other soldiers (Blake DeLong, Anthony Michael Lopez, Kyle Vincent Terry, Slate Holmgren) roam the stage, carrying machine guns, as if violence can explode at any moment, always on the verge of war, keeping things tense as well as frighteningly contemporary, given the state of the world today. Tony winner Gold (Fun Home, The Flick) keeps the racial aspect of Othello simmering just below the surface, ever-present but not overwhelming, casting a black Othello and Emilia and a white Iago and Desdemona among the multiracial cast. (Surprisingly, for most of the twentieth century, Othello was played by white men in major productions, sometimes in blackface.) Gold occasionally breaks the tension with drinking songs led by DeLong on guitar, the characters declaring at one point, “We are, we are, we are, we are the Engineers. / We can, we can, we can demolish forty beers. / Drink up, drink up, drink up and come along with us / ’Cause we don’t give a damn about any old man who don’t give a damn about us.” They’re odd but necessary sidebars in this powerful and intimate three-hour show that grabs you and never lets you go.