this week in theater

DRAGON SPRING PHOENIX RISE

Lone Peak (David Patrick Kelly) leads a ritual for his daughter, Little Lotus (PeiJu Chien-Pott), in Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise at the Shed (photo by Stephanie Berger)

The McCourt at the Shed
The Bloomberg Building
545 West 30th St. at Eleventh Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 27, $25-$99
646-455-3494
theshed.org

In 1999, Chen Shi-Zheng presented his widely hailed twenty-hour production of The Peony Pavilion at Lincoln Center. Perhaps the China-born, New York-based director is used to longer spectacles, because it takes quite a while for his hundred-minute Shed commission, Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise, to get cooking at the McCourt, where it continues through July 27. The final twenty minutes of the kung-fu musical are everything audiences hoped for, an exhilarating combination of martial arts and movement (choreographed by Zhang Jun and Akram Khan), sound (by Brandon Wolcott) and music (by Bobby Krlic and Arca), acrobatics, and storytelling; what comes before is a treacly narrative with mundane songs (by Sia) right out of a Disney movie; in fact, the show was co-conceived and written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, the duo behind the DreamWorks family film series Trolls and Kung Fu Panda.

World premiere Shed commission features some awe-inspiring stagecraft (photo by Stephanie Berger)

The story shuttles between modern-day Flushing, Queens, and the near future, although you can’t really tell that from Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s set, which features a very cool ancient boulder on one side, a ladder that leads to a walkway in a silly, glitzy nightclub on the other, and hanging cloths that rise and fall, beautifully illuminated by lighting designer Tobias G. Rylander and Leigh Sachwitz’s colorful, swirling projections. In the mostly senseless fable, aging kung fu master Lone Peak (David Patrick Kelly) is not happy when his daughter, Little Lotus (Jasmine Chiu), is being courted by flashy billionaire Doug Pince (David Torok, a martial artist who needs more acting lessons). Pince is after the Dragon Spring, which is rumored to offer eternal life. When Lone Peak’s protégé, Lee (Dickson Mbi), turns traitor, evil rears its ugly head. Eighteen years later, Little Phoenix (Jasmine Chiu) and Little Dragon (Ji Tuo) meet, leading to a grand finale.

Thrilling final battle elevates Chen Shi-Zheng’s kung-fu musical at the McCourt (photo by Stephanie Berger)

Chen (Orphan of Zhao, Monkey: Journey to the West) was inspired to make Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise by Bruce Lee’s 1964 audition for The Green Hornet, and much of the show has the simplicity of a run-of-the-mill 1960s television series. Plot twists don’t fit, character motivation comes out of nowhere, and set pieces are random and repetitive. But then the last scenes save it from a fate worse than death as the many elements coalesce into a gratifying whole. In a program note, Chen explains, “I wanted to create an allegory for the immigrant experience, transforming iconic Chinese images, movement, and ideas into an American context.” It never reaches that ideal — he dumbed it down too much — and it takes too long to gel, but when it finally does, it’s worth the wait.

FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE

Michael Shannon and Audra McDonald star in Broadway revival of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (photo by Deen van Meer, 2019)

Broadhurst Theatre
235 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 28, $49-$159
www.frankieandjohnnybroadway.com

Obie-winning director Arin Arbus, six-time Tony winner Audra McDonald, and two-time Oscar and Tony nominee Michael Shannon deliver a lovely eightieth birthday present to four-time Tony-winning playwright Terrence McNally — and a splendid gift to theatergoers in the process — with a scorching Broadway revival of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, heating up the summer at the Broadhurst through July 28. Originally presented by Manhattan Theatre Club in 1987 featuring Kathy Bates and F. Murray Abraham as the title characters, then debuting on Broadway in 2002 with Edie Falco and Stanley Tucci (replaced by Rosie Perez and Joey Pantaliano) — it was also made into a 1991 movie by Garry Marshall with Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino — the play is clearly all about the actors; its one and only subject is about making connections in a world that can be cold and lonely. Arbus’s version remains true to the original, set in the 1980s in a New York City walkup in the West Fifties during the AIDS crisis. There are no cell phones and no internet, no 24/7 news cycle, no Facebook, no Spotify playlists, just two people involved in a one-night stand, then grappling with the question of whether it may be more.

The show takes place in a well-rendered studio apartment designed by Riccardo Hernández, with the bed at the center of the stage. Frankie (McDonald), a waitress at a local diner, and Johnny (Shannon), a short order cook there, are in the midst of raw, passionate sex while Bach’s Goldberg Variations plays on the radio. “God, I wish I still smoked. Life used to be so much more fun,” Frankie says after they have finished making love. It’s not exactly what you expect to hear after such a sexual experience, but it instantly establishes Frankie as a nervous, worried, negative woman who thinks the best part of her life is over. The more upbeat and positive Johnny responds with a funny story about flatulence that exposes a wry sense of humor and a clear lack of boundaries. She wants him to leave, but he won’t; he’s determined to convince her that this was no mere onetime tryst. While he heaps praise on her and doesn’t hesitate to open up, she is fearful of revealing too much of herself. He also discovers a series of coincidences that he thinks means they are meant to be together, but she is not buying it.

Frankie (Audra McDonald) and Johnny (Michael Shannon) explore connections in eightieth birthday present for Terrence McNally (photo by Deen van Meer, 2019)

“I want to ask you to quit sneaking up on me like that,” she says. “We’re talking about one thing, people who teach, and wham! you slip in there with some kind of intimate, personal remark. I like being told I’m fabulous. Who wouldn’t? I’d like some warning first, that’s all. This is not a spontaneous person you have before you.” He replies, “You’re telling me that [the sex] wasn’t spontaneous?” She responds, “That was different. I’m talking about the larger framework of things. What people are doing in your life. What they’re doing in your bed is easy or at least it used to be back before we had to start checking each other out. I don’t know about you but I get so sick and tired of living this way, that we’re gonna die from one another, that every so often I just want to act like Saturday night really is a Saturday night, the way they used to be.”

His insistence on sticking around and getting extremely personal is more creepy in this #MeToo era, but his stalkerish behavior wasn’t exactly exemplary in 1987 either. After all, McNally does name the characters after an old song that first declares, “Frankie and Johnny were lovers,” then has her pulling out a gun after he “done her wrong,” so her trust issues are understandable. Before this night, Frankie and Johnny had communicated at the restaurant only as fellow employees, with her calling out orders (probably in abbreviated diner-speak) and him making the food. Now they’re potentially laying bare their souls — after laying bare their bodies, as the play famously requires substantial nudity in the first act.

Former TFANA associate artistic director Arbus (The Skin of Our Teeth, The Father) heightens the emotional and psychological cat-and-mouse aspects of the narrative as Frankie and Johnny try to figure out what just happened between them. McDonald (Master Class, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess) again proves herself to be one of the finest theater actors of her generation with a brave, sizzling display of rough-hewn vulnerability, while Shannon (Long Day’s Journey into Night, The Killer) portrays Johnny with a jittery, menacing kindness. McNally (Kiss of the Spider Woman, Love! Valour! Compassion!) includes numerous references to music and the moon, classic inspirations for romance — the title of the play itself refers to Claude Debussy’s movement based on Paul Verlaine’s 1869 poem, which in part reads, “All sing in a minor key / Of victorious love and the opportune life, / They do not seem to believe in their happiness / And their song mingles with the moonlight.” Many of the scenes are so graphic and exposing that intimacy director Claire Warden was brought in to make the actors more comfortable. Fortunately, that did not remove the general level of discomfit and unease the audience is meant to feel as they watch a man and a woman examine their fate face-to-face, and body to body.

MOSTLY MOZART FESTIVAL

Boy Blue’s Blak Whyte Gray makes a special return engagement at 2019 Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center (photo by Carl Fox)

Multiple venues at Lincoln Center
July 10 – August 9, free – $120
www.lincolncenter.org

With the demise of the Lincoln Center Festival last year, the institution’s Mostly Mozart Festival has filled in many of the gaps, expanding its breadth to cover much more than classical music and related events. Thus, its fifty-third season is a multidisciplinary affair with a wide variety of dance, theater, music, and film that is mostly non-Mozart. The summer festival begins July 10-13 with the world premiere of Mark Morris Dance Group’s Sport at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater, set to Erik Satie’s “Sports et divertissements,” along with the company’s Empire Garden and V. Other dance programs include a special return engagement of Boy Blue’s Blak Whyte Gray August 1-3 at the Gerald Lynch Theater at John Jay College, with Kenrick “H2O” Sandy and Margo Jefferson participating in a talk after the August 2 performance, and the US premiere of Yang Liping Contemporary Dance’s Under Siege August 8-10 at the David H. Koch Theater, a lavish dance-theater production inspired by historic events in Chen Kaige’s Farewell, My Concubine, the 1993 epic that will be screened July 28 at the Walter Reade Theater. The festival will also be showing Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on August 4, which features Oscar-winning production design by Tim Yip, the set and costume designer of Under Siege.

Yang Liping Contemporary Dance’s Under Siege makes its US premiere at Mostly Mozart Festival (photo by Ding Yi Jie)

Of course, there is plenty of Wolfgang Amadeus and other classical programs at the festival. The Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra will present Beethoven’s “Eroica Symphony” July 23-24, Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” July 26-27, “Mozart & Brahms” July 30-31, “Beethoven & Schubert” August 2-3, “Joshua Bell Plays Dvořák” August 6-7, and “Mozart à la Haydn” August 9-10, all at David Geffen Hall. British theater group 1927’s production of The Magic Flute July 17-20 at the Koch features the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, a cast from Komische Oper Berlin, colorful animation, and imaginative set design. The intimate series “A Little Night Music” in the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse includes performances by cellist Kian Soltani and pianist Julio Elizalde; pianist Michael Brown; vocalist Nora Fischer and guitarist and vocalist Marnix Dorrestein; violinist Pekka Kuusisto and bassist Knut Erik Sundquist; soprano Susanna Phillips and pianist Myra Huang; pianist Martin Helmchen; pianists Lucas and Arthur Jussen in their New York debut; Brooklyn Rider; and pianist Steven Osborne. And on August 4, the Budapest Festival Orchestra will play works by Haydn, Handel, and Mozart at the Geffen, with soprano Jeanine De Bique, conducted by Iván Fischer.

Mostly Mozart Festival features New York production premiere of The Magic Flute by British theater group 1927 (photo by Michael Daniel)

One of the highlights of the festival is sure to be Davóne Tines and Michael Schachter’s The Black Clown July 24-27 at the Gerald Lynch, a musical theater piece based on Langston Hughes’s 1931 poem, with Tines as the title character, choreography by Chanel DaSilva, and set and costumes by Carlos Soto; the July 25 show will be followed by a talk with Tines, director Zack Winokur, and DaSilva. In addition, there are several free, first-come, first-served events: the panel discussion “Mozart’s Magic Flute: In His Time and Ours” July 20 at 3:00 at the Kaplan Penthouse; the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) performing works by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir, and Ashley Fure at the David Rubenstein Atrium on July 25 at 7:30; the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra, conducted by Louis Langrée, playing Mozart’s “Gran Partita” July 27 at 3:00 at St. Paul’s Chapel; ICE’s “Composer Portraits” program of works by Iranian composers Anahita Abbasi, Aida Shirazi, and Niloufar Nourbakhsh at the atrium August 5 at 7:00; and violinist Tessa Lark and bassist Michael Thurber at the atrium August 8 at 7:30.

Soho Rep.’s FAIRVIEW

Beverly (Heather Alicia Simms) and Dayton (Charles Browning) get ready for a family affair in Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview (photo by Henry Grossman)

Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 11, $55-$115
866-811-4111
www.tfana.org
sohorep.org/fairview

At the beginning of Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Fairview, which has successfully transitioned from Soho Rep. to the much bigger Theatre for a New Audience, a black woman onstage approaches the fourth wall as if it were a mirror, checking her hair and applying lipstick, but she’s not seeing herself, of course; what she is looking at is a space filled primarily with white people who have paid good money to watch her and the other actors/characters in the dark. It’s an incendiary concept that gets more radical — and openly angry and confrontational — as the story makes its way through four ever-more-antagonistic acts, taking a recent theme to a whole new level of supreme discomfort.

There might be an explosion of high-quality plays on and off Broadway by black men and women about the black experience — think Suzan-Lori Parks, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Lynn Nottage, Tarell Alvin McRaney, Dominique Morisseau, Jocelyn Bioh, Jeremy O. Harris, Lydia R. Diamond, and Dael Orlandersmith, among others, as well as such directors of color as Kenny Leon, Liesl Tommy, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Lileana Blain-Cruz, and Leah C. Gardiner — but the audience for these shows is still predominantly white, something that has not gone unnoticed by black artists. In the Flea’s 2015 interactive Take Care, written by the white Todd Shalom and the black Niegel Smith, who also directed, an audience member is given the job of pointing out all the black and brown people in the room and telling them to gather in a corner, as if being rounded up for nefarious purposes. (I had that responsibility when I attended.) In Jordan E. Cooper’s 2019 Ain’t No Mo’, in which all of the people of color in America are being sent back to Africa, a minister tries to get the mostly white audience to shout out the N-word, with no success save for one black woman the night I went.

Sisters Beverly (Heather Alicia Simms) and Jasmine (Roslyn Ruff) do battle in Pulitzer Prize winner (photo by Gerry Goodstein)

In Thomas Bradshaw’s 2019 revival of Southern Promises at the Flea, also directed by Smith, a mini-Roots-like tale is performed by an all-person-of-color cast, playing slaves as well as slave owners and a white preacher; at the curtain call, much of the white audience stood and applauded, but a handful of blacks were silent, appearing distraught by what they had just witnessed. And in Triptych (Eyes of One on Another), a multimedia production about Robert Mapplethorpe’s photos of, among other subjects, black male bodies, with a score by the white Bryce Dessner and a libretto by the black Korde Arrington Tuttle, a black actor watches from the front of the stage, never speaking, until at one point he sits down in the primarily white audience and claps and cheers by himself, leaving the crowd to wonder if they just aren’t getting it. All of the above incidents are deeply uncomfortable moments involving race and, more specifically, the “segregation” that still exists in the theater.

“In America you are obsessed with race, and you never never never think about class,” a character says in Fairview. “The rich profit from the racism. The poor get nothing from it.” The play takes place on Mimi Lien’s almost blindingly white stage, a huge, fancy dining room / living room that feels like The Jeffersons meets The Cosby Show by way of Edward Albee and Noël Coward. At the front of the stage is a black border, a few feet high, that makes it look like the Frasier family (a nod to Kelsey Grammer’s popular Frasier sitcom?) is on a television screen while also serving as a small barrier keeping actors and audience separate. At the start, Beverly (Heather Alicia Simms) sings along with Sly & the Family Stone’s 1971 disco hit “Family Affair” on the radio, but the station changes a few times by itself, as if reminding the audience — and Beverly — that someone else is in charge.

Keisha (MaYaa Boateng) and her aunt Jasmine (Roslyn Ruff) do some celebrating in Fairview (photo by Henry Grossman)

Beverly and Dayton (Charles Browning) are getting ready for a dinner celebrating her mother’s birthday; they are joined by their daughter, graduating high school senior Keisha (MaYaa Boateng), and Beverly’s gossipy sister, Jasmine (Roslyn Ruff). In the second act, the action is repeated, but silently, as four white people in voiceover (Hannah Cabell as Suze, Jed Resnick as Mack, Natalia Payne as Bets, and Luke Robertson as Jimbo) discuss the loaded question “If you could choose to be a different race, what race would you be?” It gets even whiter in the third act, when Beverly’s brother and his wife finally arrive and the matriarch comes downstairs, followed by a finale in which all hell breaks loose and theatrical conventions are turned inside out and upside down. What might be exhilarating at first quickly becomes something else as Drury (Marys Seacole,; We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, from the German Südwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915), director Sarah Benson (In the Blood, An Octoroon), and Boateng/Keisha go where no play has gone before, particularly involving gender, class, and stereotyping in addition to race.

The stellar production, which has been extended at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn through August 11, is ingeniously directed by Benson, who navigates the changing emotional temperatures of the four distinct acts, with terrific lighting by Amith Chandrashaker, sound by Mikaal Sulaiman, and costumes by Montana Levi Blanco, fully immersing everyone in the ever-darker proceedings. Fairview — the name itself can be broken into two words, explaining part of Drury’s mission — offers a very different experience to white audiences as compared to black and brown theatergoers. Regardless of your color, however, there’s nothing you can do to prepare yourself for what happens, or for your ultimate reaction, as white privilege and white guilt take center stage without apology.

DYING CITY

Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Colin Woodell star in two-actor, three-character play at Second Stage (photo by Joan Marcus)

2econd Stage Theater
Tony Kiser Theater
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through June 30, $30-$125
2st.com/shows

With President Trump threatening to attack Iran and Congress fighting over whether to fully fund ailing 9/11 first responders, Christopher Shinn’s 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Dying City, takes on added relevance in its intense Second Stage revival at the Tony Kiser Theater, where it runs through June 30. The two-actor, three-character play shuttles between July 2005 and January 2004 as Gold Star wife Kelly (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) examines her relationship with her husband, Craig (Colin Woodell), upon the sudden arrival of Craig’s twin brother, Peter (Woodell), late one night at her Manhattan apartment. It’s been nearly a year since Craig was killed in the Iraq war, and Peter, an actor on the rise, needs to connect with Craig’s widow, Kelly, a therapist who has not been returning his calls or emails.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead makes a strong theater debut as a Gold Wife widow in Christopher Shinn’s Dying City (photo by Joan Marcus)

“It’s — yeah, it’s. — I’ve been meaning to call you and — it’s — I just haven’t. I’ve been so busy,” Kelly stumbles, offering excuses. “I wanted to make sure I had the, that I had enough — energy, mental space, before I called.” Kelly seems to want to put everything behind her and get on with her life, but Peter, who is starring in a New York City production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night — a prime example of family dysfunction — insists on dredging up the past, insinuating that something may be wrong with the story of Craig’s death. Peter is also facing problems with his boyfriend, Tim.

Meanwhile, in 2004, it’s Craig’s last night at home before heading to Fort Benning in the morning, and Kelly is not having the touching goodbye she expected as he criticizes Peter’s choice of movies and lovers and how she is handling one of her patients, a man who claims to be a fierce animal in bed. “You’re so passive,” Craig tells Kelly. “This always happens when we talk seriously about my work,” she responds. “We don’t talk seriously about your work,” he replies. “Exactly,” she shoots back. As that final night gets rehashed, Kelly, Peter, and Craig enter some harsh territory.

Colin Woodell plays very different identical twin brothers in Dying City revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

Obie winner Shinn (Where Do We Live, Now or Later), who also directed this version, has said that he structured Dying City like a trauma; in many ways, it feels like Kelly and Peter are suffering through their own forms of PTSD over what happened to Craig and how that has impacted their lives. Dane Lafrey’s comfortable, uncluttered apartment-house set — a sharp contrast to the characters’ inner turmoil — consists of an L-shaped couch at the center, with an unseen kitchen off stage left, a hallway in the back that leads to the bedroom, and a television in the front corner, often tuned to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The barefoot Winstead wears the same clothing throughout the ninety-minute play, while Woodell makes slight changes as he morphs from Craig to Peter and back again, usually walking out of view as one character and then returning as another, darkness and a flash of light accompanying the shifting scenes. (The costumes are by Kaye Voyce, with lighting by Tyler Micoleau.)

Winstead (Fargo, All About Nina) is terrific in her stage debut, embodying Kelly’s extreme unease at having to speak with Peter and look at the past, while Woodell (Unsane, Masters of Sex), who did in fact recently appear in a revival of Long Day’s Journey into Night (in LA), excels at keeping his portrayals of the twin brothers separate, the needy Peter insecure and sensitive, the brash Craig more concerned with his manhood. Dying City is a breadcrumb play; the plot and its many intricacies — among the topics that get covered are sexual assault, the military, political leanings, guns, homosexuality, the theater, lies, violence, love, and war — unfold slowly in bits of dialogue that require close concentration. However, following the crumbs does not lead to a fairy-tale ending but to a devastating finale.

LITTLE WOMEN

Kate Hamill adapts Little Women for the twenty-first century and plays Meg (far left) (photo by James Leynse)

Cherry Lane Mainstage Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 29, $82-$152
212-989-2020
primarystages.org
www.cherrylanetheatre.org

Kate Hamill strips down Louisa May Alcott’s classic semiautobiographical children’s book, Little Women, to its bare essentials in her self-described “radical adaptation,” a Primary Stages production continuing at the Cherry Lane through June 29. Hamill, who previously wrote and starred in dynamic versions of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice and William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, explores gender identity and traditional male and female roles as it relates to both the mid-to-late nineteenth century and today. The story zooms in on Jo March (Kristolyn Lloyd), a tomboy who wants to break out of her family’s small world by going to college, becoming a writer, and traveling through Europe. She lives with her mother, known as Marmie (usually Maria Elena Ramirez, although I saw Mary Bacon, who also plays Aunt March), who understands the significant differences among her children; the oldest sister, Meg (Kate Hamill), already a spinster at sixteen; the sweet but sickly thirteen-year-old Beth (Paola Sanchez Abreu); the youngest, twelve-year-old Amy (Carmen Zilles), who is determined to find her Prince Charming; and their maid, Hannah (Ellen Harvey, who also portrays Mrs. Mingott), who is pitching in more than ever while the family patriarch, Robert March (John Lenartz), is off fighting for the Union in the Civil War.

Fifteen-year-old Jo develops an intimate friendship with their new neighbor, Laurie (Nate Mann), an effeminate piano-playing orphan who lives on a large estate with his wealthy grandfather, Mr. Laurence (Lenartz), and is being tutored by John Brooks (Michael Crane, who also plays the nasty parrot). The tutor is preparing Laurie for upper-middle-class manhood: college followed by heading up the family business, which he is loathe to do. “I’m not very good at being a, you know, a ‘lady,’” Jo, who shortened her name from the more feminine Josephine, says to Laurie, who prefers being called that instead of his more masculine given name of Theodore. “I’m not very good at being a ‘gentleman.’ So perhaps we should — be ourselves,” he says. They are mirror images of each other, both wanting to further their education and travel overseas while just being their not-so-cisgender selves, an option open to them in 2019 but not in the 1860s.

The March family needs a group hug in Primary Stages production at the Cherry Lane (photo by James Leynse)

Hamill has excised many supporting characters and changed several key plot points in order to focus more on the family dynamic and the individual sisters’ relationships. “You’re all growing up so fast,” Marmie says. In fact, the word “grow” is used extensively throughout the play. “In this story, they never grow up. They just stay the same, and it lasts forever,” Jo tells Beth when she’s about to read her one of her tales. “Nothing lasts forever,” Jo responds. “We all grow up, eventually,” Laurie says later with a tinge of sadness. “One isn’t better than the other. They just need different things to grow,” Marmie says about flowers but referring to her children as well. Meanwhile, Hannah explains, “Took care of all of you since you were babies. Each one of you growing different than the other.” In Hamill’s view, as kids head toward adulthood, they don’t have to follow societal norms and do what’s expected of them; they can make their own choices, follow their dreams.

Purists shouldn’t be worried; this is still Alcott’s Little Women, even as it’s reclaimed by Hamill, whose mother first gave her the book when Kate was reaching puberty. She is not reinventing or reimagining it so much as bringing a contemporary perspective that is refreshing while still remaining true to the heart of the novel. The play, which, even with its changes, sticks more to the original story than Hamill’s previous works, is briskly directed by Sarna Lapine on Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s two-level set, the upstairs containing Jo’s writing desk and Beth’s bed, the main floor serving as multiple locations with very minor adjustments. Lloyd (Dear Evan Hansen, Paradise Blue) is superb as Jo, prancing about with a fake mustache, wearing men’s clothes (the fine period costumes are by Valérie Thérèse Bart), and determined to make something of herself, but as a person, not specifically as a woman. In his New York debut, Mann, a recent Juilliard grad, is wonderful; he and Jo practically melt into each other. And Hamill is a cool Meg, giving her more weight in this adaptation. The play also features a lovely piano score by Deborah Abramson, which works its way into the narrative. We can’t get enough of Hamill’s ingenuity and can’t wait to see which classic she tackles next.

THE MOUNTAINS LOOK DIFFERENT

Matthew Conroy (Paul O’Brien) and Martin Grealish (Con Horgan) do not become the best of friends in Mint production at Theatre Row (photo by Todd Cerveris)

The Mint Theater at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 21, $65
minttheater.org
bfany.org/theatre-row

I knew there was a problem the moment I walked into the theater where the Mint is staging the American premiere of Micheál mac Liammóir’s controversial 1948 play, The Mountains Look Different. The company, which specializes in resurrecting long-forgotten works by little-known writers, is justly celebrated for its exquisitely rendered period sets, which often elicit gasps of joy from the audience. But the set for this production, continuing at Theatre Row through July 14, is standard and ordinary, a small farmhouse with painted backdrops of mountains and sky. (The set designer is Vicki R. Davis, who has previously wowed us with her sets for such previous Mint shows as Katie Roche, Women without Men, and The Price of Thomas Scott.) Unfortunately, the play can be described as plain and ordinary as well, a rarity for Jonathan Bank’s supremely talented and otherwise consistently dependable Mint.

Martin Grealish (Con Horgan) has something to say to his new daughter-in-law, Bairbre (Brenda Meaney), in The Mountains Look Different (photo by Todd Cerveris)

It’s St. John’s Eve in the west of Ireland, and miller Matthew Conroy (Paul O’Brien) has arrived at the home of Martin Grealish (Con Horgan) to greet his niece, Bairbre (Brenda Meaney), and her new husband, Tom (Jesse Pennington), Martin’s son, who are coming back from London, where Bairbre toiled for thirteen years. While the happy and positive Matthew is excited by the marriage, the dour, bedraggled Martin is suspicious, and he grows even more leery when the couple shows up: He doesn’t trust that the modern, elegant Bairbre can possibly be in love with his odd and awkward son. And when he thinks he recognizes Bairbre, matters get even worse.

A small community gathers on St. John’s Eve in American premiere of Micheál mac Liammóir play (photo by Todd Cerveris)

St. John’s Eve is a night of bonfires, but The Mountains Look Different, which was inspired by Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, never ignites. It is a one-note morality play, lacking depth and nuance, directed with overly straightforward precision by actor Aidan Redmond. The acting is fine; the cast also includes Daniel Marconi as farm handyman Bartley, Liam Forde as addled tin whistler Batty Wallace, and Cynthia Mace as an old woman named Máire, who declares, “Oh, isn’t it a glorious thing a lone woman to have a man around the place the way he could be putting in a word for her or be striking a blow for her, and she not able to make a stir for herself with the dint of the weakness does be on all female women, God help us!” However, the story surrounding the play is more intriguing than the play itself: There were religious protests over immorality when the show first opened at the Gate, and Gate cofounder mac Liammóir (The Importance of Being Oscar, Where Stars Walk) — who portrayed Tom — was, twelve years after his death in 1978, revealed to not be Irish at all but an Englishman named Alfred Willmore.