Yearly Archives: 2012

DEAD ACCOUNTS

Playwright Theresa Rebeck ultimately bites off more than she can chew in DEAD ACCOUNTS (photo by Joan Marcus)

DEAD ACCOUNTS
Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Through September 2, $67 – $147
www.deadaccountsonbroadway.com

Ohio-born playwright Theresa Rebeck follows up her Broadway comedy Seminar and television series Smash with the slight, sitcomy Dead Accounts. The dysfunctional family tale is set in a kitchen in a house in Cincinnati, where prodigal son Jack (Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz) has suddenly and unexpectedly arrived from New York City, bringing with him numerous pints of Graeter’s ice cream. The charged-up Jack tells his younger sister, the cute Lorna (Katie Holmes), all about how he convinced the guy at the ice-cream shop to let him in, even though it was closed, and sell him a bunch of pints by paying him a thousand dollars. Lorna, who has sacrificed her social life in order to take care of her mother, Barbara (Jayne Houdyshell), and ailing, unseen father, is shocked by Jack’s disregard for the law (yeah, we didn’t get that one either), but she’s about to find out that Jack has done a lot worse and is on the run from both his job and his wife, Jenny (Judy Greer), whom he jokes about having killed. Meanwhile, Jack tries to reconnect to his hometown by hanging out with his childhood friend Phil (Josh Hamilton), who has had a longtime crush on Lorna, and devouring cheese Coneys. (The play features a whole lot of eating and drinking.) As various truths slowly emerge about Jack, things threaten to get even crazier in this small-town madhouse.

Butz gives a bravura performance as the manic-depressive Jack, who seems to live in a different reality from everyone else, but the play is weighed down by Rebeck’s inability to find its center; she sets the story in a kitchen, and she has essentially thrown in everything but the kitchen sink as she takes on religion, politics, Wall Street, environmentalism, love, aging, loneliness, drug addiction, and other topics in a swift two hours (with intermission). Holmes (All My Sons) is good as the shy Lorna, delivering a rousing soliloquy on the state of the nation that earns a well-deserved round of applause, and two-time Tony nominee Houdyshell (Follies, Well) is a joy to watch as always, but Greer, in her Broadway debut, speaks too softly, and Hamilton (The Coast of Utopia) isn’t given much to do with Phil, who seems to have stepped out of a middling sitcom. And continuing the play’s eating theme, the proceedings are dragged down by Rebeck repeatedly biting the hand that feeds her, tearing into big-city New York in favor of small-town Ohio in a mean-spirited way that falls outside the central story and seems to come with a gigantic chip on her shoulder. Fluidly directed by three-time Tony winner Jack O’Brien (The Coast of Utopia, Hairspray), Dead Accounts does have its share of tasty little morsels, especially in the person of Norbert Leo Butz, but it veers off in too many directions as it reaches its curious climax.

BRIGITTE BARDOT, FEMME FATALE: CONTEMPT

Brigitte Bardot shows off both her acting talent and beautiful body in Jean-Luc Godard’s CONTEMPT

CinémaTuesdays: CONTEMPT (LE MEPRIS) (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, December 11, $10, 12:30 & 4:00
212-355-6160
www.fiaf.org

French auteur Jean-Luc Godard doesn’t hold back any of his contempt for Hollywood cinema in his multilayered masterpiece Contempt. Loosely based on Alberto Moravia’s Il Disprezzo, Contempt stars Michel Piccoli as Paul Javal, a French screenwriter called to Rome’s famed Cinecittà studios by American producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance ) to perform rewrites on Austrian director Fritz Lang’s (played by Lang himself) adaptation of The Odyssey by ancient Greek writer Homer. Paul brings along his young wife, the beautiful Camille (Brigitte Bardot), whom Prokosch takes an immediate liking to. With so many languages being spoken, Prokosch’s assistant, Francesca Vanini (Giorgia Moll), serves as translator, but getting the various characters to communicate with one another and say precisely what is on their mind grows more and more difficult as the story continues and Camille and Paul’s love starts to crumble. Contempt is a spectacularly made film, bathed in deep red, white, and blue, as Godard and cinematographer Raoul Coutard poke fun at the American way of life. (Both Godard and Coutard appear in the film, the former as Lang’s assistant director, the latter as Lang’s cameraman — as well as the cameraman who aims the lens right at the viewer at the start of the film.)

Producer Jeremy Prokosch (Jack Palance) doesn’t always have the kindest of words for director Fritz Lang in CONTEMPT

Bardot is sensational in one of her best roles, whether teasing Paul at a marvelously filmed sequence in their Rome apartment (watch for him opening and stepping through a door without any glass), lying naked on the bed, asking Paul what he thinks of various parts of her body (while Coutard changes the filter from a lurid red to a lush blue), or pouting when it appears that Paul is willing to pimp her out in order to get the writing job. Palance is a hoot as the big-time producer, regularly reading fortune-cookie-like quotes from an extremely little red book he carries around that couldn’t possibly hold so many words. And Lang, who left Germany in the mid-1930s for a career in Hollywood, has a ball playing a version of himself, an experienced veteran willing to put up with Prokosch’s crazy demands. Vastly entertaining from start to finish, Contempt is filled with a slew of inside jokes about the filmmaking industry and even Godard’s personal and professional life, along with some of the French director’s expected assortment of political statements and a string of small flourishes that are easy to miss but add to the immense fun, all set to a gorgeous romantic score by Georges Delerue. Contempt is screening December 11 as part of FIAF’s December CinémaTuesdays series “Brigitte Bardot, Femme Fatale,” which also includes Roger Vadim’s . . . And God Created Woman on the same day and René Clair’s The Grand Maneuver on December 18.

THE LAST SEDER

The Prices gather together for what could be the final time in their family home in THE LAST SEDER (photo by Richard Termine)

Theatre Three
311 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves., third floor
Extended through January 13, $18-$30
212-868-4444
www.rosalindproductions.com

Jennifer Maisel’s The Last Seder mimics the experience of actually being at a Seder in more ways than one: waiting through a longish exposition until the actual dinner starts. At many American seders every year, there are often numerous participants who can’t wait for the declaration of Shulchan Orech, the start of the festive meal. What comes before — the traditional telling of the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt during the reign of Ramses II — can often go on and on, as some family members are riveted and others bored silly, desperately in need of the next ritual glass of wine. Such is the case with The Last Seder, which has just been extended at Theatre Three through January 13. The Price family is gathering for Passover at the family homestead in East Rockaway for the final time, as the house is being sold so that patriarch Marvin (Greg Mullavey, so effective earlier this year as a Holocaust survivor in The Soap Myth), suffering from Alzheimer’s, can be moved into a group residence because his wife, Lily (Kathryn Kates), can no longer take care of him by herself despite her best efforts. Their four daughters join them, each of whom brings her own baggage to the table: the oldest, Julia (Sarah Winkler), is a pregnant therapist having a baby with her girlfriend, Jane (Mélisa Breiner-Sanders); Claire (Abigail Rose Solomon), the second oldest, has been with tech geek Jon (Eric T. Miller) for many years but can’t commit to marriage; Michelle (Gaby Hoffmann), the third oldest, is still trying to find herself and invites a stranger she meets in Penn Station, Kent (Ryan Barry), to come to the Seder with her and pretend to be her boyfriend so she doesn’t have to answer questions about being alone; and Angel (Natalie Kuhn), the wild, adventurous youngest daughter, is still obsessed with her neighbor boyfriend, the black Luke (Andy Lucien), so she is unable to go on with her life. In addition, family friend Harold (John Michalski) is hanging around, perhaps a little too closely, with Lily.

The Price family remembers how it used to be in THE LAST SEDER (photo by Richard Termine)

The first half of The Last Seder is filled with little squabbles, bigger fights, a night of romance (in which all of the couples come together in one way or another at the same time), and myriad ideas and subplots thrown around all at once as Maisel attempts to tackle too many issues; focusing on fewer would have made for a tighter structure. Director Jessica Bauman uses the unique conceit of showing characters in bed or asleep as standing figures clutching sheets at their necks, which sometimes can confuse the audience about what exactly is going on. Gabriel Evansohn’s set, a tilted roof sticking out of the floor, also causes confusion, sometimes serving as an actual roof, and other times, well, it’s not quite clear what it is. But all those problems are washed away once the family sits down for the Seder, which turns into a spectacularly beautiful and moving event that will have you weeping with both sadness and joy. Sharply written without being overly sentimental, the Seder captures each character’s situation with intelligence and grace, tenderly displaying their humanity and showing just what it means to be a family. Regardless of religious belief, each person takes part in the proceedings, leading to a heartbreaking finale that you will never forget. It will stay with you at Seders to come — and make you want to attend a Seder if you never have before.

DOCUMENTARY IN BLOOM: THE LOVING STORY

The illegal interracial marriage of Mildred and Richard Jeter and their fight for justice is at center of powerful documentary

NEW FILMS PRESENTED BY LIVIA BLOOM: THE LOVING STORY (Nancy Buirski, 2011)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
December 10-16, $10, 7:30
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
www.lovingfilm.com

On June 2, 1958, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter got married in Washington, DC. Shortly after returning to their Virginia home, Loving, a white man, and Jeter, a black and Native American woman, were arrested and imprisoned by the local sheriff, facing prison sentences because interracial marriage was illegal in their home state. Banished from Virginia, they spent nine years fighting in the courts, and their remarkable tale is now being told in the Oscar shortlisted documentary The Loving Story. First-time director Nancy Buirski, who founded the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and editor Elisabeth Haviland James weave together never-before-seen archival footage shot by photojournalist Grey Villet, old news reports and interviews, and family home movies with new interviews with the Loving children and lawyers Bernard S. Cohen and Philip J. Hirschkop, who were ready to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. One of the many fascinating aspects of the film is that Richard and Mildred had no desire to be trailblazers fighting miscegenation laws; they were just a man and a woman who had fallen in love at first sight and wanted to live happily ever after, in a community that fully accepted their situation. They of course have the perfect last name, because The Loving Story is a story of love and romance as much as it is about an outdated legal system, bigotry, and white supremacy. And it is more relevant than ever, with the issue of same-sex marriage dividing much of the nation. Told in a procedural, chronological format, The Loving Story is also absolutely infuriating, since this all happened not very long ago at all, with many of the protagonists and antagonists still alive — and race still being such a central issue in America. An HBO production, The Loving Story is having its theatrical premiere December 10-16 as part of the Maysles Cinema series “Documentary in Bloom: New Films Presented by Livia Bloom”; Buirski will join Bloom for a Q&A following the December 14 screening.

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

The audience gets to choose the ending and more in Roundabout revival of THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD (photo by Joan Marcus)

Studio 54
254 West 54th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 10, $42-$147
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

The Mystery of Edwin Drood is back on Broadway for the first time since the original production won five Tonys and nine Drama Desk Awards, and it’s as bawdylicious as ever. Featuring book, music, and lyrics by Rupert Holmes — yes, the man behind “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” — Drood is a brilliantly imagined take on Charles Dickens’s final novel, half of which was serialized in 1870 before the British writer died at the age of fifty-eight. Dickens’s Victorian tale is set in a frame story, told as if it were being performed by a troupe in London’s Music Hall Royale in 1895. The Drood story itself is regularly interrupted by the master of ceremonies, Mr. William Cartwright (a wonderful Jim Norton), who tries to keep order while directing the wild shenanigans, introducing the characters and their actors and speaking directly to the audience. (Almost everyone interacts with the crowd; be sure to arrive before curtain time, as the actors walk around the theater in character and chat with theatergoers.) Will Chase (Smash) stars as music hall actor Mr. Clive Paget, who plays John Jasper, the mustachioed villain of the show-within-a-show. Church choirmaster Jasper is in love with his student, young buxom blonde Rosa Bud (Betsy Wolfe as Miss Deirdre Peregrine), who is engaged to marry Edwin Drood (Stephanie J. Block as “famous male impersonator” Miss Alice Nutting; Drood is always played by a woman, including, in the past, Betty Buckley and Donna Murphy). Intrigue abounds when a pair of adult orphan siblings from Ceylon, Neville and Helena Landless (Andy Karl and Jessie Mueller as Mr. Victor Grinstead and Miss Janet Conover), are brought to the town by the Reverend Mr. Crisparkle (Gregg Edelman as Mr. Cedric Moncrieffe); the local drunk, Durdles (Robert Creighton as Mr. Nick Cricker), finishes a tomb for the mayor’s dead wife; and Jasper spends the night in an opium den run by the haughty Princess Puffer (Chita Rivera as Miss Angela Prysock, the role originated by Cleo Laine).

Chita Rivera, Stephanie J. Block, and Will Chase star in DROOD revival at Studio 54 (photo by Joan Marcus)

The story unfolds through such terrific production numbers as “There You Are,” “A Man Could Go Quite Mad,” “No Good Can Come from Bad,” and the music-hall troupe’s classic, non-Drood song, “Off to the Races,” but the Drood plot comes to a screeching halt when they reach the part where Dickens died. At that point, it all becomes even more fun as the audience votes on various aspects of the tale, including the identity of the strange detective who has been seen around town and, even more important, the murderer of Edwin Drood, who has disappeared. The plot proceeds from there, potentially different every night. (Try to show some compassion for poor Phillip Bax, amiably played by Peter Benson, who has little to do as Bazzard in the Drood retelling.) Director Scott Ellis (Harvey) and choreographer Warren Carlyle (Chaplin) keep things appropriately light and frothy, filled with playful humor and plenty of double entendres, making for an extraordinarily delightful night of theater.

ARGO

John Chambers (John Goodman), Les Siegel (Alan Arkin), and Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) come up with quite a rescue plan in gripping ARGO

ARGO (Ben Affleck, 2012)
In theaters now
www.argothemovie.warnerbros.com

The little-known story of an unusual rescue attempt of six American diplomats during the Iran hostage crisis is told in Ben Affleck’s gripping, nearly flawless thriller, Argo. On November 4, 1979, the American embassy was overtaken by Iranian militants, but a half dozen men and women — Bob Anders (Tate Donovan), Cora Lijek (Clea DuVall), Mark Lijek (Christopher Denham), Joe Stafford (Scoot McNairy), Kathy Stafford (Kerry Bishé), and Lee Schatz (Rory Cochrane) — escaped and were given shelter by Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (Victor Garber). A stymied U.S. State Department turns to CIA operative Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) and his boss, Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston), who come up with a bizarre plan to pretend they are making a Canadian movie in Iran, using that as a guise to get the six embassy employees out of the country. Affleck gets real-life producer Les Siegel (a rioutous Alan Arkin) and makeup maestro John Chambers (John Goodman) to maintain a Hollywood office as the plan kicks into gear, with Affleck serving as the producer in Iran and assigning fake behind-the-scenes roles to the six men and women as the terrorists searching for them grow ever closer. Written by Chris Terrio (Heights) and produced by Affleck with George Clooney and Grant Heslov, Argo is a superbly made thriller with expert pacing, a strong cast, and a knuckle-biting story that will captivate Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. Tension is high throughout, with just the right amount of humor and sentimentality, leading to a breathtaking finale. With Argo, one of the best films of the year, Affleck once again proves himself as a big-time director, following the success of 2007’s Gone Baby Gone and 2010’s The Town.

GOLDEN CHILD

David Henry Hwang’s GOLDEN CHILD is in need of revival at the Signature Theatre (photo by Richard Termine)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through December 16, $75
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Last year, Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) teamed up with Obie-winning director Leigh Silverman (In the Wake, Go Back to Where You Are) and actress Jennifer Lim on the Broadway hit Chinglish, a charming comedy about an American businessman who arrives in a small town in China ready to make a deal but is beset by communication and language issues. The three are together again for the Signature Theatre’s revival of Hwang’s Obie-winning, Tony-nominated Golden Child, but the results this time are far less successful. Based on his own family history and a visit he made to his maternal grandmother when he was ten, Golden Child begins in 1968 Manila, as an American-born Chinese teenager (Greg Watanabe) gets ready to interview his grandmother, Eng Ahn (Annie Q), on a tape recorder. While he wants to talk about the history of the family, she wants to focus on Jesus and Christianity. The play then flashes back to Fujian, China, in 1918, as Eng Tieng Bin (Watanabe) is returning from three years working abroad. Waiting for him are his three wives: first wife Eng Siu-Yong (Julyana Soelistyo, who originated the title role in the 1998 Broadway production), a traditionalist who follows the rules of decorum; second wife Eng Luan (Lim), a manipulative woman with a master plan; and third wife Eng Eling (Lesley Hu), who is not as familiar with accepted protocol but is the most passionate of the trio. The three women, as well as Eng’s only daughter, Ahn (Annie Q), quickly learn about his travels, including his newfound interest in Christianity, made more apparent when a marble-mouthed British missionary, Reverend Baines (Matthew Maher), stops by for a visit. Golden Child examines such themes as ancestral worship, foot binding, Confucianism, Jesus, and bragging about one’s accomplishments, but Silverman’s stolid direction, the rather lackadaisical acting, and the tepid and didactic dialogue turn the play into a history lesson that sacrifices dramatic conflict and nuance in favor of educating the audience about the Westernization of modern China and the Asian-American experience in the new world. Class is in session, but not even a very interesting one at that. Perhaps the Signature will have better luck in February when Hwang, its new Residency One Playwright, returns with a revival of his 1981 show, The Dance and the Railroad.