this week in broadway

BroadwayCon 2022

Who: Anthony Rapp, LaChanze, Andrew Barth Feldman, Carolee Carmello, Ben Cameron, Erin Quill, Fredi Walker-Browne, Julie White, Telly Leung, Ilana Levine, Jacqueline B. Arnold, Jennifer Ashley Tepper, Vanessa Williams, Judy Kuhn, Lesli Margherita, Nik Walker, Ryann Redmond, Thayne Jasperson, Hillary Clinton, more
What: BroadwayCon 2022
Where: Manhattan Center, 311 West Thirty-Fourth St., and the New Yorker Hotel, 481 Eighth Ave.
When: July 8-10, day passes $80, general pass $200, gold pass $425, platinum pass $1,250
Why: BroadwayCon is back with an in-person edition taking place July 8-10 at the Manhattan Center and the New Yorker Hotel, right by Madison Square Garden and Penn Station and just a few blocks south of the Theater District. This year’s edition includes panel discussions, interviews, live performances, podcasts, a cosplay contest, workshops, photo and autograph sessions, singalongs, meetups, and celebrations of and inside looks at such shows as A Strange Loop, Six the Musical, Chicago, POTUS, Dear Evan Hansen, Beetlejuice, Thoughts of a Colored Man, Kimberly Akimbo, SpongeBob SquarePants, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Kite Runner, Assassins, and Hamilton.

Among those participating at the three-day festival are Anthony Rapp, LaChanze, Carolee Carmello, Ben Cameron, Erin Quill, Julie White, Telly Leung, Vanessa Williams, Judy Kuhn, Lesli Margherita, and Hillary Clinton, talking about such topics as racial and gender diversity, disability, understudies, anxiety, body positivity, and Stephen Sondheim.

Below are select highlights for each day:

Friday, July 8
Ensemble screening, with Telly Leung, 10:00 am, followed by a talkback at 11:20, Crystal Ballroom, the New Yorker Hotel

BroadwayCon 2022 Opening Ceremony, with Ben Cameron, Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, 12:40

Here’s to the Ladies: Hillary Rodham Clinton Live at BroadwayCon, with LaChanze, Julie White, and Vanessa Williams, moderated by Hillary Clinton, Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, 1:00

Making a Living and Having a Life in Theatre Production, with Jameson Croasdale, Mary Kathryn “MK” Blazek, Rebecca Zuber, Lauren Parrish, and Gary Levinson, moderated by Naomi Siegel, Sutton Place Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 2:20

Lights, Overture, Stage Fright! Breaking Down Performance Anxiety, with Kira Sparks, Sutton Place Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 3:40

POTUS is one of several Broadway shows that will be featured at BroadwayCon (photo by Paul Kolnick)

Saturday, July 9
Black Lives Matter on Broadway, with T. Oliver Reid, Britton Smith, Emilio Sosa, Michael Dinwiddie, and Lillias White, moderated by Linda Armstrong, New Yorker Hotel Grand Ballroom, 10:00

Broadway Livestreaming: Expanding the Reach of Live Theatre, with Timothy Allen McDonald, Sean Cercone, Luke Naphat, Tralen Doler, Nathan Gehan, and Jen Sandler, moderated by Joshua Turchin, Gramercy Park Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 11:20

Getting the Show Back on the Road: The Pandemic and Its Impact on Touring Broadway, with Jacob Persily, Sutton Place Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 2:20

Paul Gemignani and Sondheim’s Musical Legacy, with Margaret Hall and Meg Masseron, Crystal Ballroom, the New Yorker Hotel, 3:40

BroadwayCon Cabaret, with special secret guest, hosted by Ben Cameron, Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, 5:00

Sunday, July 10
Cheers to Understudies: The Broadway Cast Live!, with Amber Ardolino, Mallory Maedke, Tally Sessions, and Lauren Boyd, hosted by Ben Cameron, New Yorker Hotel Grand Ballroom, 10:00

Body Liberation on Broadway, with Amara Janae Brady, Shantez M. Tolbut, and Evan Ruggiero, moderated by Stephanie Lexis, Gramercy Park Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 10:00

Directors on Debuts, with Zhailon Levingston and Tina Satter, moderated by Zeynep Akça, Crystal Ballroom, the New Yorker Hotel, 1:00

Tell Me More! Tell Me More!, special guests TBA, Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom, 2:20

Broadway Anecdotes II: Golden Age Gossip, with Kenneth Kantor, Joshua Ellis, and Mimi Quillin, moderated by Ken Bloom, Gramercy Park Suite, the New Yorker Hotel, 5:00

A STRANGE LOOP

Jaquel Spivey makes his Broadway debut in Pulitzer Prize–winning musical A Strange Loop (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

A STRANGE LOOP
Lyceum Theatre
149 West 45th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 15, $49 – $225
strangeloopmusical.com

In his 2007 book I Am a Strange Loop, Pulitzer Prize–winning scientist Douglas Hofstadter writes, “In the end, we are self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages that are little miracles of self-reference.” In her song “Strange Loop” from her seminal 1993 debut album Exile in Guyville, Liz Phair sings, “The fire you like so much in me / Is the mark of someone adamantly free. . . . I can’t be trusted / They’re saying I can’t be true / But I only wanted more than I knew.”

Hofstadter and Phair are among those who served as major influences on Michael R. Jackson’s dazzling, Pulitzer Prize–winning musical, A Strange Loop, which is bringing down the house at the Lyceum on Broadway following an earlier run at Playwrights Horizons. As the show opens, the protagonist, Usher (Jaquel Spivey), is ushering the audience back to their seats for the second act of The Lion King, adding some unexpected bonus information: “In the background, there will be a young overweight-to-obese homosexual and/or gay and/or queer, cisgender male, able-bodied university-and-graduate-school educated, musical theater writing, Disney ushering, broke-ass middle-class politically homeless normie leftist black American descendant of slaves who thinks he’s probably a vers bottom . . . but not totally certain of that obsessing over the latest draft of his self-referential musical A Strange Loop! And surrounded by his extremely obnoxious Thoughts!” Usher later explains that his self-referential musical is “about a black, gay man writing a musical about a black, gay man who’s writing a musical about a black gay man, who’s writing a musical about a black gay man, etc.”

To bring the loop full circle, Jackson himself is a young overweight homosexual who has been obsessing over his self-referential musical, A Strange Loop, for nearly twenty years; it started off as a monologue in 2003, written when Jackson was working as an usher on Broadway for The Lion King and other Disney extravaganzas and listening to “dat-blasted white girl music” by Phair, Tori Amos, and Joni Mitchell.

Six thoughts come to colorful life at the Lyceum Theatre (photo by Marc J. Franklin)

Usher’s never-ending fears and worries come to life in the form of six thoughts that roil around in his brain and comment on his decisions like a Greek chorus, including Supervisor of Your Sexual Ambivalence (L. Morgan Lee), Daily Self-Loathing (James Jackson Jr.), Head of Corporate Niggatry (Jason Veasey), and Financial Faggotry (Antwayn Hopper); it’s like a queer Black version of the 1990s cis white sitcom Herman’s Head, in which a young magazine employee’s thoughts of professional and romantic success are debated by four actors playing various parts of his psyche. The actors portraying Usher’s thoughts also take turns as his mother (John-Andrew Morrison), father (Veasey), agent (John-Michael Lyles), and various historical Black figures.

Usher is haunted by his consciousness, especially when he is given the opportunity to ghost write a gospel play for Tyler Perry. Usher feels that writing for Perry would compromise everything he believes in, calling Perry “toxic” and arguing, “The crap he puts on stage, film, and TV makes my bile wanna rise.” However, his thoughts and family want him to do it for the money and because “Tyler Perry writes real life” and “Tyler Perry loves his mama.” The guilt runs deep as Usher pursues both professional and personal opportunities, desperate to make himself seen and heard in a world that too often treats him as if he’s invisible, what he refers to as his “exile in Gayville.” Although not all of the details in the show are autobiographical, Jackson shares a lot in common with Usher, except now everyone knows who Jackson is.

A Strange Loop is stylishly directed by Stephen Brackett (Be More Chill, The Lightning Thief) with a balls-out sense of humor that is furthered by Raja Feather Kelly’s wickedly sly choreography, which has fun with Spivey, who is not your typical Broadway leading man. Arnulfo Maldonado’s set isolates Usher, making his loneliness palpable, while giving each Thought its own doorway, like the different compartments of the brain. Montana Levi Blanco’s costumes are highlighted by Usher’s red usher outfit, which is counteracted by his black T-shirt that includes such crossed-out words as “Imperialist” and “White Supremacist” above the clearly legible “bell hooks,” a tribute to the Black author and activist (Black Is . . . Black Ain’t, I Am a Man: Black Masculinity in America) who passed away in December 2021 at the age of sixty-nine.

The ninety-minute show looks and sounds terrific, with colorful lighting by Jen Schriever, vibrant sound by Drew Levy, music direction by Rona Siddiqui, and wonderful orchestrations by Charlie Rosen, played live by a six-piece band. In his Broadway debut, Spivey, taking over for Larry Owens, who played Usher in the off-Broadway production, is an utter delight. From the opening moments, when he declares, “Everyone, please return to your seats; the second act is about to begin!” to his later acknowledgment that “These are my memories / Sweet sour memories / This is my history / This is my mystery,” he has the audience firmly on his side. You don’t have to be a queer Black man to identify with Usher’s fears and desires, to understand his loneliness. Jackson has done a masterful job of making A Strange Loop an inclusive story while also challenging conceptions of what a Broadway musical can be; this is not The Lion King or Aladdin, and it is most certainly not for kids.

In Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Hofstadter writes, “The self comes into being at the moment it has the power to reflect itself.” A Strange Loop works because it reflects on itself, and on all of us, in one way or another.

MJ THE MUSICAL

Myles Frost stars as the King of Pop in MJ the Musical (photo by Matthew Murphy)

MJ THE MUSICAL
Neil Simon Theatre
250 West Fifty-Second St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 30, $84-$299
mjthemusical.com

The most important official line about MJ does not come from two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage’s book or fifteen-time Grammy winner Michael Jackson’s lyrics; instead, it can be found on the title page of the Playbill: “By special arrangement with the Estate of Michael Jackson.”

The jukebox musical features a star turn by former Voice contestant Myles Frost as the King of Pop. The show opens at his Neverland Ranch as MJ is preparing for a world tour in support of his eighth solo album, 1992’s Dangerous. The extensive, exhausting rehearsals — Jackson is a perfectionist, making demands on the dancers and designers — are being documented by music journalist Rachel (Whitney Bashor) and cameraman Dave (Joey Sorge) for MTV, including occasional access to Jackson himself.

The plot quickly glosses over child abuse allegations — the LAPD would begin investigating Jackson in August 1993 — and has a brief scene dealing with his addiction to painkillers. (Jackson’s death in June 2009 at the age of fifty was attributed in large part to his overdependence on prescription medication.)

The main conflict, and it’s a big stretch, is whether Jackson is willing to put Neverland up for collateral in exchange for a loan that will pay for his spectacular entrance sequence at the start of his concerts. It’s a paper-thin narrative even as we root for Jackson not to lose his beloved home, where many of the alleged abuses purportedly took place. More time is given to talk of his Heal the World Foundation, a charity to help disadvantaged children, than to any accusations. Although one certainly gets invested in seeing just how close the company comes to re-creating Jackson’s songs and movement, that can’t sustain a 150-minute show (with intermission).

Director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon cuts between rehearsals and key scenes from Jackson’s childhood in the Jackson Five, with the young Michael (Walter Russell III, Christian Wilson, Tavon Olds-Sample) joined by his brothers Marlon (Devin Trey Campbell, Zelig Williams), Jermaine (Lamont Walker II), Tito (Apollo Levine), Randy (Raymond Baynard), and Jackie (John Edwards) as they are discovered and nurtured by Motown founder Berry Gordy (Antoine L. Smith) and producer Quincy Jones (Levine) as parents Katherine (Ayana George) and, especially, the controlling Joe (Quentin Earl Darrington) carefully watch their career.

The songs are terrifically orchestrated and arranged by musical supervisor David Holcenberg and musical director Jason Michael Webb, regularly igniting the crowd. And what a setlist it is: “ABC,” “Bad,” “Beat It,” “Billie Jean,” “Black or White,” “Dancing Machine,” “Man in the Mirror,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Thriller,” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” among others. The show is a tech success, with sets by Derek McLane, lighting by Natasha Katz, costumes by Paul Tazwell, sound by Gareth Owen, and projections by Peter Nigrini; Charles Lapointe does a great job with hair and wigs.

Darrington (Once on This Island, Ragtime) stands out doing double duty as tour manager Rob and Joe Jackson, as Nottage (Sweat, Ruined) and Tony winner Wheeldon (An American in Paris, Cinderella) make direct comparisons to the two men’s influences on Michael’s personal and professional lives and how they protect him. But it’s not enough to offset everything that is left out of the story, which looms over the production like a dark cloud.

In the song “Keep the Faith” from the Dangerous album, Jackson sings, “If you call out loud / Will it get inside / Through the heart of your surrender / To your alibis / And you can say the words / Like you understand / But the power’s in believing / So give yourself / A chance.” MJ the Musical feels like a chance for the Michael Jackson Estate to exploit those alibis without really looking at the man in the mirror.

AMERICAN BUFFALO

Sam Rockwell, Darren Criss, and Laurence Fishburne star in latest Broadway revival of David Mamet’s American Buffalo (photo by Richard Termine)

AMERICAN BUFFALO
Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 10, $79.50 – $299.50
americanbuffalonyc.com

In 1981, at the downtown Circle in the Square on Bleecker St., a high school classmate of mine named Rich and I saw David Mamet’s American Buffalo, a searing three-character drama starring Al Pacino, Clifton James, and Thomas G. Waites as a trio of luckless losers in a Chicago junk shop plotting a low-level heist. Last month, Rich and I saw the third Broadway revival of the play, at Circle in the Square in the Theater District, a still-sizzling play with another all-star cast: Sam Rockwell, Laurence Fishburne, and Darren Criss.

A lot has changed over the last forty-one years. Rich and I both moved out of Long Island; he is a married insurance defense lawyer in Queens with two kids, while I’m a married culture writer and managing editor in Manhattan. Mamet, for decades celebrated as one of the country’s most important and talented playwrights and filmmakers — he’s been nominated for two Oscars, three Emmys, and two Tonys and won the Pulitzer Prize for 1983’s Glengarry Glen Ross — has now been turned into a pariah by the left because of his Trumpist political views and condemnation of liberalism, which dates back to around 2011, along with the toxic masculinity and misogyny that appear throughout his work.

The last decade has witnessed a quartet of disasters by Mamet — the oh-so-brief Broadway debuts of The Anarchist and China Doll, an ill-fated revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, and the world premiere of the disappointing The Penitent — but all of that has little to do with Neil Pepe’s powerful new staging of American Buffalo; my only quibble is that the intermission gets in the way of the flow of the drama, which is only eighty-five minutes without the break. (Most of Mamet’s works are between sixty and one hundred minutes, so he certainly has a way of getting right to the point.)

Donny (Laurence Fishburne) gets an earful from Teach (Sam Rockwell) in American Buffalo (photo by Richard Termine)

American Buffalo takes place in an impossibly crowded downstairs junk shop. It’s a Friday morning, and middle-aged store owner Donny Dubrow (Laurence Fishburne) is talking with Bobby (Darren Criss), a young simpleton who helps him out on occasion. In this case, Donny has asked Bobby to keep watch on a guy who had come into the store and purchased a buffalo nickel from him for ninety bucks. Donny compares the stranger to their friend Fletcher, who just won a stash playing cards.

“You take him and you put him down in some strange town with just a nickel in his pocket, and by nightfall he’ll have that town by the balls,” Donny says. “This is not talk, Bob, this is action. . . . Skill. Skill and talent and the balls to arrive at your own conclusions.”

While Donny goes out of his way to teach Bobby about life, their friend Walter Cole (Sam Rockwell), better known as Teach, isn’t seeking out any teaching moments. He whirls into the shop, complaining about this and that, finding offense in minor incidents, lashing out with a slew of curses as he recounts supposed wrongs done to him. “Someone is against me, that’s their problem,” he barks. “I can look out for myself, and I don’t got to fuck around behind somebody’s back, I don’t like the way they’re treating me. Or pray some brick safe falls and hits them on the head, they’re walking down the street. But to have that shithead turn, in one breath, every fucking sweetroll that I ever ate with them into GROUND GLASS — I’m wondering were they eating it and thinking ‘This guy’s an idiot to blow a fucking quarter on his friends‘’ . . . this hurts me, Don. This hurts me in a way I don’t know what the fuck to do.” When Donny tries to calm him down, the bloviator says, “The only way to teach these people is to kill them.”

Amid a series of Pinteresque discussions, each more absurd than the last as they talk about English muffins, bacon, the weather, coffee, cheating at cards, pigirons, and loyalty, they plot a heist, deciding to rid the buffalo nickel customer of all of his coins later that night. What could possibly go wrong?

American Buffalo is a character-driven masterpiece about low-level dreams gone awry, about people who started with nothing and have no idea how to get their piece of the pie, or at least not legally. It’s field day for three actors; past productions have featured such trios as Robert Duvall, Kenneth McMillan, and John Savage; William H. Macy, Philip Baker Hall, and Mark Webber; John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer, and Haley Joel Osment; and Damian Lewis, John Goodman, and Tom Sturridge.

Daren Criss holds his own with big-timers Sam Rockwell and Laurence Fishburne in Mamet revival (photo by Richard Termine)

The current Broadway revival, staunchly directed by Neil Pepe (Hands on a Hardbody, Dying for It), who has helmed many of Mamet’s works — including the 2000 revival at the Donmar Warehouse and the Atlantic Theater, which was cofounded by Mamet and Macy and where Pepe has been artistic director for thirty years — is another acting tour de force, with Criss (How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) sublime as the gentle Bobby, Fishburne (Two Trains Running, Riff Raff) steadfast as the straightforward Donny, and a mustachioed Rockwell (A Behanding in Spokane, Fool for Love) right on target as the unsettling, unpredictable Teach, his polyester slacks practically a character unto themselves. (The costumes are by Dede Ayite.)

Scott Pask’s set is like a character unto itself as well, consisting of hundreds of items cluttering the floor and filling the ceiling over the men’s heads; these pieces of junk are like parts of their brain, all the thoughts and desires swimming around their skulls, likely to never come to fruition, just taking up space in these ne’er-do-wells who can’t see clearly ahead of themselves.

Right before the show started, Rich reminded me that when he had taken a stab at acting and stand-up comedy after college, his go-to audition speech was from American Buffalo, Teach’s first words: “Fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie, fuckin’ Ruthie.” After experiencing the play with him again after four decades, that choice made perfect sense to me.

PARADISE SQUARE

Races and dance styles mix it up in Paradise Square (photo by Kevin Berne)

PARADISE SQUARE
Ethel Barrymore Theatre
243 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 17, $39 – $250
www.paradisesquaremusical.com

Paradise Square gets off to a rousing start, with exciting choreography by Bill T. Jones, a fabulous set by Allen Moyer, a terrific cast led by Joaquina Kalukango, splendid period costumes by Toni-Leslie James, historical projections by Wendall K. Harrington and Shawn Boyle that establish the time and place, and thrilling music by Jason Howland and Larry Kirwan. But once Nathan Tysen and Masi Asare’s lyrics and the book, by Christina Anderson, Craig Lucas, and Kirwan, kick into full gear, the whole thing falls apart, leaving us to wonder what could have been. Not even two-time Tony-nominated director and National Medal of Arts recipient Moisés Kaufman can put it back together.

It’s 1863, the middle of the Civil War, and Nelly Freeman (Kalukango) is running the (fictional) Paradise Square pub in Five Points, at the corner of Baxter and Worth Sts., what she proudly calls “the first slum in America!” It’s a place where everyone, regardless of race, gender, or religion, can come for a “little bit of Eden.” As she sings, “All we have is what we are / Inside here we all feel free / We love who we want to love / With no apology / If you landed in this square / Then you dared to risk it all / At the bottom of the ladder / There’s nowhere left to fall.”

Nelly is married to Willie O’Brien (Matt Bogart), an Irishman who is captain of the Fighting 69th Infantry. Willie’s right-hand man is Lucky Mike Quinlan (Kevin Dennis); Nelly runs the saloon with Willie’s sister, Annie (Chilina Kennedy), who is married to the Reverend Samuel Jacob Lewis (Nathaniel Stampley). Willie and Mike are about to head back to the war. “We’ll be back before ya blink,” Mike promises. “On me word, Nelly. I’ll bring him to ya with all his workin’ parts still workin’.”

Annie’s nephew, Owen Duignan (A. J. Shively), arrives, looking to make a fresh start in a new land where the streets are supposedly paved with gold. Also showing up is Washington Henry (Sidney DuPont), an escaped slave seeking shelter until he is reunited with his wife, Angelina Baker (Gabrielle McClinton), who was separated from him in the woods. Meanwhile, a drunk piano player named Milton Moore (Jacob Fishel) comes in looking for a job; Nelly does not realize that he is actually Stephen Foster, who has already written some racist anthems (and who really did live — and die — in Five Points).

Broadway musical looks at slavery, immigration, war, and personal sacrifice (photo by Kevin Berne)

Keeping a close watch on everything that happens at the Paradise is uptown party boss Frederic Tiggens (John Dossett), who wants to close the establishment because it is the center of Black and Irish anti-South and anti-business voters, “a haven of social depravity and political ascension.” He confronts Nelly, calling her “a facilitator of prostitution, gambling, and drunken mayhem.” She humbly replies, “I am just one woman who runs a saloon.” He bites back, “Don’t play coy. A degenerate who somehow wields power in New York politics doesn’t get to be coy.” To which she responds, “But enough about you —.”

It all devolves quickly once Nelly decides to hold a dance-off in which the winner will get three hundred dollars, the exact amount needed to buy one’s way out of President Lincoln’s newly implemented draft for the Union army. “Three hundred dollars?! That’s more than a year’s wage!” an Italian longshoreman declares. “I won’t go,” a German longshoreman adds. “If you do not go, you will be considered a deserter and a criminal,” a provost marshal explains. “This is a rich man’s war that the poor and immigrant will have to fight,” an Irish longshoreman says. When two Black longshoremen are ready to sign up, the marshal tells them, “No coloreds. Only citizens and immigrants.”

The contest and its aftermath turns what was a compelling drama about immigrants, slavery, poverty, and war into a cliché-ridden narrative that will leave you exasperated, as Tiggens becomes more and more like cartoon villain Snidely Whiplash and the lines between good and evil might as well be drawn with a giant crayon, eliminating any nuance or subtlety. It really is a shame, since so many of the individual elements are outstanding; Anderson, Lucas, and Black 47 leader Kirwan don’t have enough faith that the audience will be able to weave its way through a more complex and realistic story, instead opting for the lowest common denominator. I nearly screamed at a plot development late in the show that still has me seeing red.

Two-time Tony nominee Kalukango (Slave Play, The Color Purple) is almost reason enough to see Paradise Square, but I had to wonder whether the showstopping standing ovation she received for her blazing solo “Let It Burn” was genuine or was at least partly egged on by an excerpt of a review on the theater’s facade that highlights the standing O from the Chicago production. The song includes such mundane lyrics as “I know why you have come here / What you want to erase / But I know that our spirit / Is bigger than this place.”

Paradise Square wants to make serious statements about issues that are still relevant a century and a half after the Civil War, but it can’t stop stepping on its own toes, unable to leap beyond the obvious.

THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH

Thornton Wilder looks at the history of the world through the Antrobus family in The Skin of Our Teeth (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH
Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through May 29, $49-$225
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

“The theatric invention must tirelessly transform every fragment of dialogue into a stylization surprising, comic, violent, or picturesque,” Thornton Wilder wrote about his Pulitzer Prize–winning play The Skin of Our Teeth in a 1940 notebook. Over the years, many productions have attempted to capture that spirit, with varying degrees of success. In 2017, TFANA staged an exemplary version under Arin Arbus’s direction, almost making sense of Wilder’s complex story involving the Antrobus family — their name means “human” — who have experienced it all but keep on keeping on, as if it’s all in a day’s work.

Mr. Antrobus (James Vincent Meredith) is the inventor of the multiplication table, the alphabet, and the wheel. He’s been married to Mrs. Antrobus (Roslyn Ruff) for five thousand years, and they have two children, Gladys (Paige Gilbert) and Henry (Julian Robertson). Their maid, Sabina (Gabby Beans), runs the household and lets the audience know just what she’s thinking, breaking the fourth wall not only as Sabina but as the actress portraying her. “I hate this play and every word in it,” she tells us. “Besides, the author hasn’t made up his silly mind as to whether we’re all living back in caves or in 1950s Jersey, and that’s the way it is all the way through.”

Massive sets dominate Lincoln Center revival of The Skin of Our Teeth (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

Over the course of three acts and nearly three hours, they are surrounded by melting polar ice caps, a raging war, a refugee crisis, a coming flood, and other key moments of world history. The setting shifts from their suburban home in Excelsior, New Jersey, to the bustling Atlantic City boardwalk. Large-scale pet dinosaurs enter their living room and walk around. A fortune-teller (Priscilla Lopez) offers a stern warning. Sabina flirts with Mr. Antrobus. Everyone worries when he’s not home from work one night. Sitcom meets disaster movie with biblical implications in a choppy narrative that has been significantly tweaked by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Everybody, An Octoroon), adding modern-day Black references that often feel out of place alongside old-fashioned newsreels. It’s all too much of a good thing.

Adam Rigg’s set is endlessly imaginative and often awe-inspiring, but at times you’ll find yourself distracted by it. The dinosaur puppets stay onstage too long. Sabina’s complaints grow tiresome and repetitive. Immensely talented Obie-winning director Lileana Blain-Cruz (Fefu and Her Friends, Marys Seacole) has overstuffed the show; it ends up working best in the third act, when the pace slows down and we get into the heart of the play. Wilder invited surprise, but too many surprises can get overwhelming; sometimes it really is best to stop and smell the roses, thorns and all.

HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE

David Morse, Mary-Louise Parker, and Johanna Day (center three) reprise their roles in Broadway debut of How I Learned to Drive (photo © Jeremy Daniel 2022)

HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 12, $79-$299
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

“I’m just a very ordinary man,” Peck says in Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, making its stunning Broadway debut at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through June 12.

“I’ll bet your mother loves you, Uncle Peck,” his teenage niece, Li’l Bit, replies.

The beauty of Vogel’s Pulitzer-winning drama is in its simplicity, the very ordinariness of a complex story about child sexual abuse and its lasting effects on the survivor.

In 1997, forty-three-year-old David Morse and thirty-two-year-old Mary-Louise Parker starred in How I Learned to Drive, he as Peck, she as Li’l Bit, both named after their genitalia. The play primarily takes place in backward chronology from 1969, when he is fifty-two and she is seventeen, except for two key detours to 1970 and 1979. Twenty-five years later, the actors have returned to the parts they originated, joined by the same director, Mark Brokaw, and Johanna Day, who, as Female Greek Chorus, also portrays Li’l Bit’s mother; joining the cast is Alyssa May Gold as Teenage Greek Chorus and Li’l Bit’s grandmother, and Chris Myers as Male Greek Chorus and Li’l Bit’s grandfather, among other characters.

Having Morse and Parker reprise their roles is a stroke of genius; over the last quarter century, their stature as consummate actors has grown, so we are immersed in their characters immediately. Parker, in particular, is a wonder, embodying the teenage Li’l Bit with small gestures and movements that make us forget that she is some forty years older. But the casting also reminds us that in the last twenty-five years, child abuse and pedophilia is still one of society’s most shameful ills, brought to light again in the #MeToo era.

When Peck tells Li’l Bit, “I have loved you every day since the day you were born,” the audience lets out an audible gasp.

Li’l Bit (Mary-Louise Parker) gets life lessons from Female Greek Chorus (Johanna Day) and Teenage Greek Chorus (Alyssa May Gold) (photo © Jeremy Daniel 2022)

Inspired by Nabokov’s Lolita as well as the sexual abuse that she herself suffered, Vogel uses driving lessons as a metaphor for Peck’s grooming of Li’l Bit as his potential victim. The Greek Chorus announces shifts in scenes with such phrases as “Safety First — You and Driver Education,” “Idling in the Neutral Gear,” “You and the Reverse Gear,” and “Implied Consent,” along with subtle changes in lighting by Mark McCullough and sound and original music by David Van Tieghem.

Rachel Hauck’s streamlined set features constantly changing furniture — chairs, tables, a bed — with the only constant a tall wooden post that evokes telephone poles along the road as well as a cross. Dede Ayite’s costumes are straightforward dress; the characters can be anyone, at any recent time.

Li’l Bit’s dilemma is exacerbated when she begins growing breasts, larger than her classmates’. She is teased and made fun of not only by the boys and girls in school but by her own family, who sexualize her with dangerous lessons. “I told you what my mother told me! A girl with her skirt up can outrun a man with his pants down!,” her grandmother says. Her grandfather warns, “If Li’l Bit gets any bigger, we’re gonna have ta buy her a wheelbarrow to carry in front of her.” Her mother teaches her, “Never mix your drinks. Stay with one all night long, like the man you came with . . . damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

Li’l Bit knows from the very start that what Uncle Peck is doing is wrong, but he is so calmly persuasive that she keeps sticking around him. In a key scene, she watches as Peck teaches her cousin Bobby how to fish, essentially a primer for how a man can lure a woman into something she doesn’t want to do. “We’re going to aim for some pompano today — and I have to tell you, they’re a very shy, mercurial fish. Takes patience, and psychology. You have to believe it doesn’t matter if you catch one or not,” he says.

In a car, Uncle Peck tells Li’l Bit, “Put your hands on the wheel. I never want to see you driving with one hand. Always two hands.” After hesitating, she replies, “If I put my hands on the wheel — how do I defend myself?”

Uncle Peck (David Morse) grooms Li’l Bit (Mary-Louise Parker) in powerful revival of Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer winner (photo © Jeremy Daniel 2022)

Peck is a knowledgeable fisherman, understanding just how to approach his prey. Tony nominee Morse (The Iceman Cometh, The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin) is so successful in the role that, at the talkback that followed the matinee I saw, several women embarrassingly admitted that they were taken in by his character, that they had trouble seeing him as a predator but instead thought he was just a nice guy. That’s precisely what sexual abusers do, fool the observers, and Morse nails it. We want to like him, want him to be our cool uncle too, until we don’t.

Tony winner Parker (The Sound Inside, Proof) is astonishing as Li’l Bit; her timeless, youthful qualities once again shine as she ages seventeen years in the play. Our hearts ache for Li’l Bit as her uncle’s pursuit of her intensifies, but Parker, as ravishingly beautiful as ever, uses her age and experience to give the teenage girl added depth; the audience can’t help but feel her every emotion and search their own lives to examine mistakes they might have made or situations in which they looked the other way. It’s one of the best performances of an adult as a child you’re ever likely to see.

Day (Sweat, The Nap) is excellent as always as the enabler in all of us, while Gold (Taking Woodstock, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord) is a marvel in multiple roles, including a powerful surprise at the end.

Vogel (Indecent, The Baltimore Waltz) and Brokaw (Heisenberg, The Lyons) have done a superb job reimagining this hard-hitting yet delicate, crucial work for these times, a play that in itself is a primer for how to recognize sexual abuse and, hopefully, be able to reach for the brakes. As Li’l Bit warns us, “Sometimes to tell a secret, you first have to teach a lesson.”