this week in theater

FIDDLER ON THE ROOF IN YIDDISH (FIDLER AFN DAKH)

Steven Skybell leads a rousing adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof as Tevye (photo by Victor Nechay / ProperPix)

Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Edmond J. Safra Plaza, 36 Battery Pl.
Wednesday – Sunday through December 30, $70-$121
866-811-4111
nytf.org/fiddler-on-the-roof
mjhnyc.org

I only wish my mother were still alive to see the dazzling US premiere of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. Shraga Friedman’s adaptation, Fidler Afn Dakh, debuted in Israel in 1965 and has finally made it to New York City, where it is being presented by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage through December 30. Directed with verve and style by Tony and Oscar winner Joel Grey, whose father was klezmer star Mickey Katz, the rousing three-hour production features musical staging and choreography by Staś Kmieć, inspired by Jerome Robbins’s original, with musical direction by conductor and NYTF artistic director Zalmen Mlotek. The show is the Fiddler we know and love, the tale of a shtetl on the eve of the 1905 Russian Revolution, complete with stirring nightmare, breathtaking bottle dance, and a sewing machine, with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein. But the Yiddish version, with Harnick and Harold Prince serving as consultants, offers neat little twists on the language; Friedman’s translation goes back to Sholem Aleichem’s original Tevye stories and reconfigures numerous lines to match the rhythm and meaning in Yiddish.

Thus, “Tradition” becomes “Traditsye,” “If I Were a Rich Man” turns into “Ven Ikh Bin a Rotshild” (“If I Were a Rothschild”), and “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” is sung as “Shadkhnte, Shadkhnte.” In “Sunrise, Sunset” (“Tog-Ayn, Tog-Oys”), “I don’t remember growing older / When did they?” becomes “Just give a look, how grown up / they’ve become,” while in “Do You Love Me?” (“Libst Mikh, Sertse?), “For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes, / cooked your meals, cleaned your house” turns into “For twenty-five years I’ve washed your wash, / I rub and polish pots of brass.” The lyrics are sung in Yiddish, with Russian and English surtitles. Tony winner Beowful Boritt’s spare set is backed with three long, hanging scrolls representing the parchment of the Torah; the word “Torah” is written on the middle section in Hebrew. The twelve-person orchestra plays behind the scrolls, partially visible.

Tevye and Golde’s five daughters look toward a new future in Fidler Afn Dakh (photo by Victor Nechay / ProperPix)

The utterly superb Steven Skybell, an Obie winner for Antigone in New York, joins a long line of actors portraying Tevye the milkman, from Zero Mostel, Topol, Theodore Bikel, Leonard Nimoy, and Herschel Bernardi to Alfred Molina, Harvey Fierstein, and Danny Burstein, but he’s the first one to do it in Yiddish in America. He shakes his body with vigor, slyly smiles as Tevye looks to G-d for answers, and playfully debates various incidents on one hand and the other. The narrative looks directly at modernity and change from two main perspectives; the personal and the communal. Tevye and his wife, Golde (Jill Abramovitz), are raising five daughters, Tsaytl (Rachel Zatcoff), Hodl (Stephanie Lynne Mason), Khave (Rosie Jo Neddy), Shprintze (Raquel Nobile), and Beylke (Samantha Hahn). Town gossip and matchmaker Yente (Jackie Hoffman) arrives one day to tell Golde that the wealthy, much older butcher, Leyzer-Volf (Bruce Sabath), wants to marry Tsaytl, but unbeknownst to either of them, Tsaytl is in love with the poor tailor, Motl Kamzoyl (Ben Liebert). Tsaytl and Motl’s determination to make their own match goes against tradition and the father’s power — and also leads to Hodl wanting to be with progressive teacher and political radical Pertshik (Daniel Kahn) and Khave falling for non-Jew Fyedka (Cameron Johnson), as women start making decisions for themselves. The excellent cast also includes Lauren Jeanne Thomas as Der Fiddler, Kirk Geritano as Avrom the bookseller, Jodi Snyder as Frume-Sore, Michael Yashinsky as Mordkhe the innkeeper, Der Rov as the rabbi, Jennifer Babiak as Grandma Tsaytl, and Evan Mayer and Nick Raynor as Fyedka’s friends, Sasha and Yussel.

Joel Grey directs Yiddish version of Fiddler with verve and panache (photo by Victor Nechay / ProperPix)

The other key plot point centers around anti-Semitism and the future of the shtetl. Der Gradavoy (the constable, played by Bobby Underwood) warns Tevye, whom he claims to like and respect, that there is going to be an unofficial demonstration by the police to rattle the village in order to assert their control. “Thank you, your excellency,” Tevye says. “You are a good person. It’s a shame you aren’t a Jew.” Anatevke is in danger, but the residents don’t want to leave the only home most of them have ever known. I’ve seen numerous Fiddlers over the years, but this Yiddish version, which could have felt dated and old-fashioned, instead is very much of the moment in the wake of the immigrant and refugee crisis currently going on in America and around the world. It’s chilling watching the final scenes in light of what is shown on the news night after night. The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene has been on quite a roll since celebrating its centennial in 2015, with a wonderful adaptation of The Golden Bride, the Drama Desk-nominated Amerike — the Golden Land, and a sensational work-in-progress preview of The Sorceress. This Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof should be another big hit for the talented troupe. And my mother would have loved it.

Note: There will be a series of preshow discussions ($5, 6:30) called “Fiddler Talks: From Anatevka to Broadway and Back Again,” consisting of “The Making of Fiddler on the Roof” on July 18, “Transforming Fiddler on the Roof into Fidler Afn Dakh” on July 25, “Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye and Fiddler’s, or ‘Was Tevye a Traditional Jew?’” on August 8, and “Shalom / Sholom the Yiddish Mark Twain” on August 22. In addition, Tevye Served Raw, which includes two Tevye tales not in Fiddler on the Roof as well as other Aleichem works, opens July 17 at the Playroom Theatre.

THE DAMNED

Ivo van Hove’s The Damned runs at the Park Avenue Armory July 17-28 (photo by Jan Versweyveld)

Park Avenue Armory, Wade Thompson Drill Hall
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
July 17-28, $35-$175, 7:30/8:00
212-933-5812
armoryonpark.org

Ivo van Hove has dazzled audiences with unique theatrical interpretations of such complex films as Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, Persona, and Scenes from a Marriage, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema, and John Cassavetes’s Opening Night and Faces. The Belgian director continues his affection for difficult cinema with his adaptation of Luchino Visconti’s 1969 The Damned, an exploration of power and decadence in 1930s Germany during the rise of the Third Reich. Visconti, Nicola Badalucco, and Enrico Medioli were nominated for an Oscar for their screenplay for the film, which stars Dirk Bogarde, Ingrid Thulin, Helmut Griem, Helmut Berger, Umberto Orsini, and Charlotte Rampling. Van Hove is directing the work not for his home company, Toneelgroep in Amsterdam, but for France’s legendary Comédie-Française, which was founded in 1680. “In my view, it is the celebration of evil,” van Hove, who has also directed Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and A View from the Bridge on Broadway and is reviving West Side Story, says about the dark tale. The work features set and lighting design by van Hove’s longtime collaborator and partner, Jan Versweyveld, costumes by An D’Huys, video by Tal Yarden, and sound by Eric Sleichim. The North American premiere takes place at the Park Avenue Armory July 17-28; van Hove will be participating in an artist talk with Laurie Anderson on July 19 at 6:00. In addition, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is hosting “Visconti: A Retrospective,” consisting of more than a dozen films by the Italian director, continuing through July 19 with such gems as Rocco and His Brothers, The Leopard, The Innocent, and, on closing night, The Damned.

FREE SUMMER EVENTS JULY 15-22

come out and play

The free summer arts & culture season is under way, with dance, theater, music, art, film, and other special outdoor programs all across the city. Every week we will be recommending a handful of events. Keep watching twi-ny for more detailed highlights as well.

Sunday, July 15
Harlem Meer Performance Festival: Keith “the Captain” Gamble and the NU Gypsies, Charles A. Dana Discovery Center, Central Park, 2:00

Monday, July 16
Piano in Bryant Park: Daryl Sherman, July 16-20, Bryant Park, 12:30

Tuesday, July 17
High Line Art: Kerry Tribe Artist Talk, panel discussion with Kerry Tribe, moderated by Melanie Kress and Ana Traverso-Krejcarek, about Tribe’s Exquisite Corpse film, the High Line at Fourteenth St., 7:00

Black Mother will be shown in Socrates Sculpture Park on July 19

Wednesday, July 18
Outdoor Cinema: Black Mother (Khalik Allah, 2018) and Symphony of a Sad Sea (Carlos Morales Mancilla, 2018), Socrates Sculpture Park, with live performance at 7:00, film at sunset

Thursday, July 19
Shakespeare in the Parking Lot: Hamlet, starring Jane Bradley and directed by Karla Hendrick, Clemente Parking Lot, 114 Norfolk St., July 19-21 & 26-28, 6:30

Piano in Bryant Park continues weekdays at 12:30

Friday, July 20
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival: Anoushka Shankar, Land of Gold, My Brightest Diamond, Prospect Park Bandshell, 7:30

Saturday, July 21
Come Out & Play, Manhattan Bridge Archway Plaza, DUMBO, family-friendly activities 1:00 – 5:00, adult games 7:00 – 10:00

Sunday, July 22
SummerStage: Ginuwine, the Ladies of Pink Diamonds, and DJ Stacks, Corporal Thompson Park, Staten Island, 5:00

MARY PAGE MARLOWE

Twelve-year-old Mary Page (Mia Sinclair Jenness) looks up to her mother (Grace Gummer) in extraordinary Tracy Letts play (photo by Joan Marcus)

2econd Stage Theater
Tony Kiser Theater
305 West 43rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 19, $30-$89
2st.com/shows

“I am unexceptional,” the title character tells her shrink in Mary Page Marlowe, Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy Letts’s exceptional play, which opened tonight at 2econd Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater. The best play I’ve ever seen about the life and times of a woman written by a man, Mary Page Marlowe follows the protagonist, born in 1946, through eleven nonchronological stages of her rather ordinary existence, portrayed by six terrifically talented actresses and one doll (as the infant). Each scene reveals small but significant details about the character as she goes about her days as a daughter, a wife, a mother, a patient, an employee, and a retiree, trying to find her identity as her relationships — and her name — change. Whether she ever finds her true self — if there even is such a thing — is the question of the play. Mary Page is wonderfully performed by Mia Sinclair Jenness at twelve, Emma Geer at nineteen, Tatiana Maslany (in her New York stage debut) at twenty-seven and thirty-six, Susan Pourfar at forty and forty-four, Kellie Overbey at fifty, and Blair Brown at fifty-nine, sixty-three, and sixty-nine. The nonlinear time shifts are indicated primarily by the character’s clothing (the simple but effective costumes are by Kaye Voyce) and hairstyle as such basic props as beds, tables, couches, and chairs slide on and off Laura Jellinek’s intimate two-level set, making it clear this is about one woman’s interior and exterior changes, not about a changing America.

Fifty-nine-year-old Mary Page (Blair Brown) gets some bad news as Ray (Brian Kerwin) looks on in masterful production at 2econd Stage (photo by Joan Marcus)

From childhood to senior citizenship, Mary Page faces illness, divorce, alcoholism, infidelity, displacement, and more, all with the same attitude, as if various key moments in her life are no different from the rest of her days; sometimes the choices aren’t hers, but even when they are, she is often a spectator, much like the audience. “What do you want?” her teenage daughter, Wendy (Kayli Carter), asks at a Denny’s as her younger brother, Louis (Ryan Foust), plays with a map. “Why can’t you just say what you want?” Wendy repeats when her mother avoids the question. Throughout the ninety-minute intermissionless play, Mary Page says “I don’t know” two dozen times, although she also does provide some answers. When her shrink (Marcia DeBonis) asks her why she hasn’t brought up what she believes to be a certain important issue previously, Mary Page says, “Because it’s not relevant, that’s what I’m telling you, it feels like a different person who was going through that,” eliciting a laugh from the audience since each Mary Page is played by a different actress. She then adds, “I still live life even when you’re not watching me,” as if reminding the audience that there is even more to Mary Page than what is revealed onstage, just as there is more to any woman we see in real life. But even when she does — or doesn’t — take action for her own benefit, she shows a resilience to persist, a well-earned survival instinct that keeps her going despite what are sometimes formidable odds.

Thirty-six-year-old Mary Page (Tatiana Maslany) faces off against her shrink (Marcia DeBonis) in dazzling New York premiere (photo by Joan Marcus)

Letts (August: Osage County, Superior Donuts) and director Lila Neugebauer, who has excelled helming such ensemble pieces as The Antipodes, Everybody, The Wolves, and The Wayside Motor Inn, do a beautiful job moving from scene to scene; even though events happen out of order, Mary Page is in a constant state of progression. We might not ever see them together (at least not until the curtain call), but the six amazing women who play Mary Page flow into one another seamlessly, helping make her one person with many distinct aspects. The large cast also includes Grace Gummer as Mary Page’s mother and Nick Dillenburg as her father; Audrey Corsa and Tess Frazer as her high school friends, Connie and Lorna; David Aaron Baker and Brian Kerwin as significant others Ray and Andy; Maria Elena Ramirez as her nurse; Gary Wilmes as one of her lovers; and Elliot Villar as her dry cleaner, who wraps everything up as they talk about fixing a quilt in which “different women would sew the different panels and then stitch them all together,” just as Letts, Neugebauer, and the cast have so remarkably done in this extraordinary work.

PASS OVER

Kitch (Namir Smallwood) and Mister (Gabriel Ebert) wonder what’s next in Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Claire Tow Theater
LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St.
Through July 22, $30
www.lct.org

Antoinette Nwandu takes a hard look at who we are as a nation through the eyes of a pair of young, disenfranchised black men in the searing Pass Over, continuing at Lincoln Center’s Claire Tow Theater through July 22. As you enter the small, intimate venue, the main characters are already onstage, one sleeping under a lamp post, the other walking back and forth across a long, angled street curb, occasionally stopping and staring out suspiciously, as if expecting trouble, from racial profiling to blatant discrimination and bigotry. The former is Moses (Jon Michael Hill), a stern, angry man with “plans to rise up to my full potential,” while the latter is Kitch (Namir Smallwood), a naive, less ambitious guy. They call each other by the n-word so often that it is meant to make the mostly white audience feel uncomfortable; in fact, to further that feeling, one reason the two-act, eighty-five-minute show has no intermission is that “if Moses and Kitch cannot leave, neither can you,” Nwandu writes in the script. The two men often talk of getting out, their conversations punctuated by abrupt lighting shifts as they raise their hands in the air, as if suddenly facing the police, or the “po-pos.”

Their space is soon invaded by Mister (Gabriel Ebert), a privileged version of Little Red Riding Hood; Mister is a tall Caucasian man dressed in an all-white suit, with white shoes and a white hat and carrying a picnic basket. He says he got lost on the way to his mother’s house and offers to share his food with them in exchange for their allowing him to sit down and rest his “weak arches.” While Kitch is aching to dig in to the grub, Moses wants no part of Mister, suspicious of his motives and why he’s there. Although they speak a very different language — Mister talks formally and says things like “gosh golly gee” and “salutations,” in blunt contrast to the street poetry of Kitch and Moses — they quickly begin discussing police treatment of blacks, hunger, and the n-word. “Gosh / you really like that word. . . . I mean / every sentence / my n-word this / my n-word that,” Mister says. “Maaaaaan / quit actin’ like / yo ass ain’t sed dat shit,” Kitch argues, but Mister insists he has never used the term. “If they don’t / bess believe / dey want to,” Moses says about white men who claim they don’t say it. A few minutes later, Mister departs, and a uniformed white cop, Ossifer (Ebert), shows up, immediately threatening Moses and Kitch. “Talk shit / like they got power / ain’t got no power / cept dat gun / dat fuckin badge,” Moses says after the policeman has left. They then go to sleep, hoping that the next day will be better. It’s not.

Trouble awaits Kitch (Namir Smallwood) and Moses (Jon Michael Hill) in Pass Over (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Waiting for Godot meets the biblical story of the Exodus from Egypt in Pass Over, a dark, twenty-first-century fable of the state of race relations in America today — and how much things haven’t changed since before the Civil War. In the script, Nwandu refers to Moses as a slave driver and God’s chosen leader, Kitch as a slave and one of God’s chosen, Mister as a plantation owner and pharaoh’s son, and Ossifer as a patroller and a soldier in pharaoh’s army; she also notes that the play takes place in the present as well as 1855 and the thirteenth century BCE, on a ghetto street, on a plantation, and in Egypt, expanding the timelessness of the central narrative. However, the characters, Wilson Chin’s set, and Sarafina Bush’s costumes never switch eras, equating the perpetual nature of racism and slavery through the ages. Tony nominee Hill (Superior Donuts, The Unmentionables) and Smallwood (Pipeline, Buzzer) sizzle as updated versions of Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon, waiting and hoping for a promised land that appears to be far beyond their reach, while Tony and Obie winner Ebert (Matilda the Musical, 4000 Miles) attacks his two roles with relish. The play, which premiered last year at Steppenwolf and was filmed by Spike Lee, is boldly honest, both funny and frightening. When Mister tells Moses and Kitch, “If i were in your shoes / gosh / i’d be terrified,” he’s speaking for everyone in the audience. Taymor (Esai’s Table, Nwandu’s Flat Sam), whose aunt is Emmy and two-time Tony winner Julie Taymor, directs with a sure hand, letting the subject matter take shape before it all shatters. Pass Over ushers in a fresh, vibrant voice in Nwandu, who includes a shock ending to make sure we get her devastating message.

GIRLS & BOYS

Carey Mulligan gives a tour-de-force performance in Dennis Kelly play (photo by Marc Brenner)

Minetta Lane Theatre
18 Minetta Lane between Sixth Ave. and Macdougal St.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 22, $57-$97
girlsandboystheplay.com
libertytheatresusa.com

Carey Mulligan is brilliant as a wife and mother telling the gripping story of her family in Dennis Kelly’s engrossing one-woman show, Girls & Boys, which has been extended at the Minetta Lane through July 22. The play unfolds in a series of “chats” in which Mulligan, as the unnamed woman, speaks directly to the audience, interrupted by scenes in which she interacts with her two unseen children, Leanne and Danny. Mulligan speaks to the audience from a shallow, confined area at the front of the stage; the scenes with the children take place when the back wall opens up onto an idyllic kitchen/living room, a large space with objects arranged as if in a Morandi painting, all bathed in a soft robin’s-egg-blue evoking fantasy and memory. (The set is by Es Devlin, with lighting by Oliver Fenwick.) Recounting a brief period in her youth when she went wild with men and drugs, the woman recalls the turning point in her life, a drunken night with her flatmate in which they continued having sex after she threw up. “I remember thinking, ‘If he doesn’t come soon, he’s going to fuck me right into that puddle of puke,’” she says. “Let me tell you something — when a sentence like that appears in your life, you know it’s time to start looking at your choices.” Her tale continues as she relates meeting in an airport queue the man she would eventually marry, and she later describes how she got a job “as a development executive’s assistant’s . . . executive assistant” in a documentary filmmaking company. In between discussing belief, violence, and truth, she plays with, scolds, and shares tender moments with Leanne and Danny. But as her career takes off, her husband’s, selling antique wardrobes, starts experiencing problems that affect their marriage.

A woman (Carey Mulligan) plays with her unseen children in Girls & Boys (photo by Marc Brenner)

Tony winner Kelly (Matilda the Musical, Taking Care of Baby) and Olivier-winning director Lyndsey Turner (Machinal, Chimerica) expertly pace the Royal Theatre production, carefully revealing key bits of plot before a critical moment occurs about two-thirds of the way through, setting up the shocking finale. Oscar and Tony nominee Mulligan (Skylight, An Education) is extraordinary as the woman; as the tension builds over the course of 105 intermissionless minutes, she holds her body ever tighter, barely moving as she gets to the hardest parts of her tale. But through it all, the woman refuses to condemn the human race for the problems she experiences. “I think a lot about violence,” she explains. “Not because I want to or anything. I just think it’s such a fundamental part of our species that how can you understand us without understanding it?” She adds, “And please don’t misunderstand, I’m not negative about . . . us — I think we’re incredible. The things we’ve done. The things we do. I mean if I collapse right here, tonight — you’ll all look after me. You will. You will do that.” At the end of the play, you will want to look after the woman, but of course you can’t; such is the cathartic nature of high-quality, powerful theater. But her story is likely to stay in your mind and heart for a long, long time. (Girls & Boys is the second one-person show produced by Audible at the Minetta Lane Theatre, following David Cale’s Harry Clarke, which starred Billy Crudup. Both plays are available as audiobooks; you can listen to a sample of the former here.)

SKINTIGHT

Benjamin Cullen (Eli Gelb), Jodi Isaac (Idina Menzel), and Trey (Will Brittain) don’t exactly get comfortable with one another in Skintight (photo by Joan Marcus 2018)

Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 26, $119
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

Joshua Harmon’s fourth play is another clever and insightful, if occasionally repetitive and overwrought, drama of family relationships. In Bad Jews, a trio of siblings squabble over a treasured heirloom. In Significant Other, a gay man can’t find love while his girlfriends each get married. And in Admissions, privilege and merit come to the fore when students at a boarding school apply to college. In Skintight, making its world premiere at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre, Harmon delves into sex, love, aging, and lust in a dysfunctional Jewish clan. Tony winner Idina Menzel stars as Jodi Isaac, a mother and lawyer facing a midlife crisis when her husband, Greg, leaves her for a much younger woman. In desperate need of unconditional support, she pays an unannounced visit to her father, Elliot (Jack Wetherall), a wealthy clothing entrepreneur who is about to turn seventy and hates surprises. “While Greg and I were at that resort, like, not to be graphic, Daddy, but while we were having like the best sex of our lives, our adult lives, this person was getting her diaper changed, because she didn’t yet possess the motor skills to wipe her own ass,” Jodi says. But that doesn’t exactly gain Elliot’s sympathies; not only is he not exactly a warm and fuzzy father and grandfather, but he’s living with twenty-year-old stud Trey (Will Brittain), with whom he rides motorcycles and goes out to nightclubs. “There has got to be more to life than sex with a hot young thing,” Jodi adds, not seeing the comparison. When her self-involved gay twenty-year-old son, Benji (Eli Gelb), who’s been studying abroad in Budapest, arrives, Elliot worries that he might be interested in Trey. The tension mounts as the birthday dinner approaches and nobody is really listening to what anyone else is saying.

A dysfunctional family looks back at its past in latest Joshua Harmon play (photo by Joan Marcus 2018)

Harmon fills Skintight with plentiful one-liners and keen observations — “It’s not an achievement, to not die,” Jack tells his daughter about not wanting to make a big deal of his milestone birthday — and three-time Obie-winning director Daniel Aukin (Bad Jews, Admissions, 4000 Miles) guides the characters with an assured hand as they make their way through Lauren Helpern’s appropriately cold, ritzy set, an austere, silver-gray Horatio St. living room and staircase. But it’s difficult to accept Jack and Jodi as father and daughter; they lack that necessary connection that would add potency to their pithy disagreements. And Trey is so over the top, particularly when he walks around in a jockstrap, that he feels like he’s from a different play, reminiscent of Cowboy in The Boys in the Band. In a rare nonmusical stage appearance, Tony winner Menzel (Rent, Wicked), whose family is Jewish and emigrated from Eastern Europe, does well as the constantly complaining Jodi, Wetherall (The Elephant Man, Tamara) is cool and calm as the Calvin Klein-like Elliot, and Gelb (How My Grandparents Fell in Love, The Twenty-Seventh Man) is delicious as Ben, a queer studies major who, when discussing seeing Michelangelo’s “David” in Florence, explains, “They come from all over the world to see a statue a gay guy made of a nice Jewish boy. Makes you think the world isn’t such a bad place after all.” The play also features Stephen Carrasco as Jeff and Cynthia Mace as Orsolya, Elliot’s comic-relief-supplying housekeeping staff. In Skintight, Harmon delves into the nature of superficiality but doesn’t dig quite deep enough, although he still comes up with another entertaining night at the theater, showing again that a world with playwrights such as him isn’t such a bad place after all.