this week in theater

THEATER OF WAR: A DRAMATIC READING OF SCENES FROM SOPHOCLES’ PHILOCTETES

theater of war

Who: Zach Grenier, Kathryn Erbe, Reg E. Cathey
What: Free performance of scenes from ancient Greek play, followed by Q&A
Where: Allison & Howard Lutnick Theater, Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, Pier 86, West Forty-Sixth St. & Twelfth Ave.
When: Sunday, May 28, free with RSVP, 7:00
Why: In conjunction with Fleet Week, Theater of War is presenting a dramatic reading of scenes from Sophocles’ Philoctetes, translated, directed, and facilitated by Brooklyn-based artistic director Bryan Doerries, author of The Theater of War: What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today. The event, part of a project that “is designed to promote understanding, compassion, and positive action,” features Tony nominee Zach Grenier (The Good Wife, 33 Variations), Tony nominee Kathryn Erbe (Law & Order: Criminal Intent, The Speed of Darkness), and Emmy winner Reg E. Cathey (The Wire, House of Cards). The dramatic reading will be followed by a Q&A with community panelists.

THE LUCKY ONE

Brothers Gerald (Robert David Grant) and Bob (Ari Brand) face off against each other in A. A. Milne’s The Lucky One (photo by Richard Termine)

The Mint Theater
The Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row
410 West 42nd St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 2, $65
minttheater.org

For his latest theatrical excavation, Jonathan Bank and his expert drama archaeologists at the Mint have resurrected Winnie-the-Pooh creator Alan Alexander (A. A.) Milne’s The Lucky One, presenting the first New York revival of the 1922 Broadway play at the Beckett Theatre through July 2. “The Lucky One was doomed from the start with a name like that,” Milne wrote in the introduction to a published volume of five of his plays written in 1916–17. “I see no hope of its being produced. But if any critic wishes to endear himself to me (though I don’t see why he should) he will agree with me that it is the best play of the five.” In 2004, the Mint brought back two other Milne works, Mr. Pim Passes By and The Truth About Blayds, and now is staging The Lucky One, which Milne wrote in 1917 while serving in WWI. It’s a slight but pleasurable tale of upper-class Edwardian desire and doom, featuring a compelling central plot but lacking any bigger scope. The first and third acts are set in the country home of Sir James Farringdon (Wynn Harmon) and his wife, Lady Farringdon (Deanne Lorette), where the golf-obsessed Tommy Todd (Andrew Fallaize) is bragging about a hole-in-one to dapper family friend Henry Wentworth (Michael Frederic). The Farringdons’ virtually perfect younger son, the tall, blond Gerald (Robert David Grant), handsome well spoken, and well placed in the Foreign Office, has just gotten engaged to the beautiful and charming Pamela Carey (Paton Ashbrook). But not everyone thinks he’s the bee’s knees. “The trouble with Gerald, Mr. Wentworth, is that he goes about expecting everybody to love him. The result is that they nearly all do,” says Gerald’s elderly spinster Great-Aunt Harriet, aka Aunt Tabitha. “However, he can’t get round me.” Miss Farringdon prefers Gerald’s older brother, “poor old Bob” (Ari Brand), a dark-haired, dour young man who regrets having been sent into the big bad city by his parents to work on the Stock Exchange. Bob is sore at Gerald, as Pamela was Bob’s girlfriend before he brought her home and introduced her to his brother. Bob is also embarrassed that he has to ask Gerald for help with a serious business problem; Bob’s partner has absconded with ill-gotten money and left him facing possible prosecution.

The Farringdons and friends face a crisis in Mint revival of A. A. Milne’s The Lucky One (photo by Richard Termine)

The middle act takes place in a Dover Street hotel in London, where the family discusses Bob’s situation. “I don’t want to be unfair to Bob; I don’t think that any son of mine would do a dishonourable action,” Sir James says, “but the Law is the Law, and if the Law sends Bob to prison I can’t help feeling the disgrace of it.” When Bob arrives, he has some terse words for his brother. “You could have saved me from this, and you wouldn’t help me,” he sternly tells Gerald. But soon there’s more than that coming between the siblings. One of the highlights of nearly every Mint production is the set, which is often deserving of its own applause (as well as oohs and aahs). In this case, Vicki R. Davis’s design is, like the play, rather pleasant but nothing more, an elegant main room with a few sofas and chairs, doors in the back leading outside, and a long, high two-sided staircase rising across the stage; at the top landing is a large photograph of Bob and Gerald as boys, a constant reminder of a more innocent time. The cast, which also includes Mia Hutchinson-Shaw as Letty Herbert, who provides comic relief with her bestie, Tommy, and Peggy J. Scott as Mason, the family’s longtime nurse and servant, is excellent — Grant (Merchants of Love, Clever Little Lies) is especially charming in his Mint debut — and Mint associate director Jesse Marchese (The Fatal Weakness, I Am a Camera) provides solid direction, particularly in the key scenes involving Bob, Gerald, and Pamela. But there’s not a whole lot of meat to the play, not enough for audiences to chew on. Milne rarely ventures past the well-groomed surface of the landed gentry and their actions. It all makes for a pleasant theatrical experience, but you’ll leave the Beckett wanting a little more — perhaps a few episodes of Downton Abbey.

PRESENT LAUGHTER

Liz (Kate Burton) comforts ex-husband and master thespian Garry Essendine (Kevin Kline) in Broadway revival of Present Laughter (photo by Joan Marcus)

St. James Theatre
246 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 2, $59 – $199
laughteronbroadway.com

In the latest Broadway revival of Noël Coward’s WWII-era comedy Present Laughter, two-time Tony winner and Oscar recipient Kevin Kline gets to put his stamp on Garry Essendine, one of the great characters of twentieth-century British theater, and he does so with devilishly wicked delight. He ferociously devours the scenery, following in the footsteps of such previous ferocious scenery devourers as Albert Finney, George C. Scott, Peter O’Toole, Frank Langella, Ian McKellen, Clifton Webb, and the original Essendine, Coward, who based the role on himself; other characters and incidents were inspired by real people and events as well, lending the show an intimate charm with plenty of knowing winks and nods. Essendine is a master thespian preparing for a tour of Africa, but not in peace and quiet — his apartment becomes a carnival of friends, colleagues, staff, lovers, and an oddball stranger. Late one morning, upon learning that Daphne Stillington (Tedra Millan), a young woman he apparently brought home the night before, is in the guest room, Essendine complains to his longtime assistant and confidante, Monica Reed (Kristine Nielsen), “Why didn’t you tell her to dress quietly like a mouse and go home? You know perfectly well it’s agony here in the morning with everybody banging about.” Also turning his impressive London flat (designed by David Zinn) into Victoria Station over the course of the play are Essendine’s ex-wife, Liz (Kate Burton); his manager, Morris Dixon (Reg Rogers); his producer, Henry Lyppiatt (Peter Francis James); Henry’s hot-to-trot wife, Joanna (Cobie Smulders); Daphne’s mother, Lady Saltburn (Sandra Shipley); would-be playwright Roland Maule (Bhavesh Patel); and Essendine’s irrepressible, good-natured valet, Fred (Matt Bittner), and rather strange housekeeper, Miss Erikson (Ellen Harvey). Essendine has built a kind of extended family around himself, one that he might not be able to hold together as things start falling apart, in classically British ways.

Garry Essendine (Kevin Kline) makes a point in semiautobiographical Noël Coward play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Kline (The Pirates of Penzance, On the Twentieth Century) is masterful as Essendine, his every gesture and utterance beautifully overplayed to the hilt, as if the character can’t tell the difference between the stage and real life, always acting, be it Shakespeare or vaudeville. Kline shows a flair for slapstick comedy reminiscent of Monty Python’s John Cleese — Kline won his Oscar for his supporting role in A Fish Called Wanda, which was written by Cleese and starred fellow Python Michael Palin — whether he’s falling down stairs or trying not to be seduced. The women in the show, which takes its name from a line from the Bard’s Twelfth Night — “Present mirth hath present laughter” — are terrific, led by the stalwart Burton, who played Daphne in Scott’s 1982 production; her Liz is not about to take any garbage from Garry while getting a kick out of all the crazy shenanigans going on around him. The always excellent Nielsen (Betty’s Summer Vacation, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) turns Monica into a den mother with a wry sense of humor about her boss’s philandering, and Harvey (How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, Mary Poppins) is nearly unrecognizable as the dour Miss Erikson, who is not the most caring of housekeepers. Smulders (How I Met Your Mother; Love, Loss, and What I Wore), in her Broadway debut, is sexy and elegant as the manipulative Joanna, while Millan, in her Broadway debut, follows up her success in The Wolves with another strong performance as the overexcited, high-pitched Daphne, determined to get what she wants. The men, however, do not fare as well; Bittner has fun with Fred, but James (Stuff Happens, Hamlet with Kline) and Rogers (Holiday, Privacy) can’t keep up with Kline, looking lost at times, and Patel (War Horse, Indian Ink) is so over the top as Roland that he seems to be in the wrong play. But director Moritz von Stuelpnagel (Hand to God, Important Hats of the Twentieth Century) is able to keep reeling it in whenever it threatens to go a little bit off track, with the help of Kline, who has such an impressive command of the stage and the character that there’s never a doubt that you will presently be laughing; even the way he checks his hair several times in a mirror almost as an aside is an absolute treat, capturing the essence of Garry, and Kevin, with just a few scant motions.

VENUS

Saartjie Baartman (Zainab Jah) is put on display as the Venus Hottentot in Signature revival of Suzan-Lori Parks drama (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Irene Diamond Stage
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday-Sunday through June 4, $30
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks follows up her powerful Signature revival of the intensely stylized The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World AKA the Negro Book of the Dead with a disappointing, heavily overstylized production of her 1996 work, Venus, which opened last night at the Signature’s Irene Diamond Stage. In the play, which continues through June 4, Parks details the horrible abuse suffered by Saartjie Baartman (Zainab Jah), a young South African woman who is chosen by two brothers (John Ellison Conlee and Randy Danson) to be taken to England and displayed as a freak because of her unusually shaped buttocks. Although the Negro Resurrectionist (Kevin Mambo), who serves as ringmaster and narrator, announces the scenes in reverse order, the story is told chronologically, except for the very beginning, in which all the characters are introduced, including Saartjie, the Venus Hottentot, who says, “I regret to inform you that thuh Venus Hottentot iz dead. There wont b inny show tuhnite.” The Resurrectionist adds, “Tail end of our tale for there must be an end is that Venus, Black Goddess, was shameles, she sinned or else completely unknowing of r godfearin ways she stood  totally naked in her iron cage. . . . Sheed a soul which iz mounted on Heaven’s bright wall while her flesh has been pickled in Sciences Hall.” Parks fashions much wordplay regarding the buttocks as the rear “end,” highlighting how black bodies are seen as objects unto themselves, not part of a living, breathing human being. Promised that she will be the “African Dancing Princess” getting paid in gold over a two-year period, Saartjie accepts the brothers’ offer to go to England. There she joins a downtrodden troupe, the 8 Human Wonders, freaks who are being taken advantage of first by the two brothers, then by the Mother-Showman (Danson), who allows curious onlookers to fondle Saartjie for an additional price. Meanwhile, a play-within-a-play, the baroque period piece For the Love of the Venus, mimics what is happening to Saartjie, in a more elegant manner. Her life changes dramatically when she is taken in by the Baron Docteur (Conlee), who claims to be in love with her while also using her as a specimen for the 8 Anatomists, but it is already clear that things are not going to go well for Saartjie.

Saartjie Baartman (Zainab Jah) dreams of a better life where the streets are paved with gold in Venus (photo by Joan Marcus)

Venus opens with Jah (Eclipsed) being placed in a tight-fitting naked suit that exaggerates her body, particularly her buttocks; it’s an emotional moment, as if she is on view for us not unlike Saartjie was two hundred years ago, after slavery had been banned in England. (It also evokes the beginning of Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man.) Jah is superb as the Venus Hottentot, who believes that a great life awaits her no matter how terribly she is treated. Mambo (The Color Purple) and Conlee, as the Baron Docteur, are fine as well, but the rest of the cast, including several who were in The Death of the Last Black Man, are like amateurish caricatures, which might be the point but it detracts from the narrative nonetheless. Parks (Topdog/Underdog, Father Comes Home from the Wars) and Obie-winning Public Theater Public Works artistic director deBessonet (Good Person of Szechwan) get to the heart of the matter early on; the bulk of the two-hour and fifteen-minute protest play merely hammers home the same ideas about gender, race, and cruelty, aspects of humanity still prevalent today. Even during intermission, the Baron Docteur delivers his scientific notes on the Hottentot, as if Parks just can’t stop emphasizing the details, which are of course critical but create stagnant, repetitive drama. Matt Saunders’s sets change from the freak-show circus to the Baron Docteur’s bedroom, which features a cleverly placed mirror that reflects Saartjie’s image in a way that reminds us that she is always on view, even in her most intimate of moments. It’s a deft touch in a play that does not have much subtlety and feels like it’s preaching to the choir, a very different experience than The Death of the Last Black Man, a beguiling seventy-five-minute piece that made many of the same arguments with a more abstract depth. Perhaps the Black Lives Matter movement and such books as Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, which focus on the mistreatment of black bodies in today’s society, have taken some of the potency out of Parks’s play. Parks’s Residency One at Signature will continue in late August with The Red Letter Plays: Fucking A and The Red Letter Plays: In the Blood, presented together for the first time. The May 20 performance of Venus will be followed by the World of the Play talk “Body/Image: Creating and Maintaining Intersectionality in the Arts,” and the May 25 show will be preceded by a Backstage Pass discussion with costume designer Emilio Sosa.

GROUNDHOG DAY THE MUSICAL

Phil Connors (Andy Karl) is trapped in Punxsutawney, PA, forced to relive Groundhog Day over and over again (photo by Joan Marcus)

August Wilson Theatre
245 West 52nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 7, $79.50 – $169
www.groundhogdaymusical.com

“Hoping for an early spring? Well, tomorrow is Groundhog Day, and the good folks in Punxsutawney are already gathering in a snowy field waiting for the dawn. Why? Because they’re morons,” meteorologist Phil Connors (Andy Karl) declares at the beginning of Groundhog Day, the fabulous musical adaptation of the popular 1993 comedy. The arrogant, condescending, misogynistic Connors, who hosts the television program Good Weather with Phil Connors — “Thanks for watching,” he patronizingly says whenever recognized by a gushing fan — has been sent to cover the annual Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, with excited associate producer Rita (Barrett Doss) and quiet cameraman Larry (Vishal Vaidya), but he doesn’t care one iota about whether the rodent sees its shadow or whether there will be six more weeks of winter. “Small towns, tiny minds / Big mouths, small ideas / Shallow talk, deep snow / Cold fronts, big rears,” he sings about the local populace and eager tourists who have flooded the community, many who have come in costume to celebrate the aptly named Phil the groundhog. “There’s nothing more depressing than small town USA / And small don’t come much smaller than Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day,” he adds. Connors might care only about himself, unwilling to find the charm that is the core of America, but he’s about to get one very unusual comeuppance because of his snarky, superior attitude. Every morning, he wakes up to discover that it is still Groundhog Day — he is stuck in a loop in which he keeps meeting such corny, down-home characters as the Chubby Man (Michael Fatica), bed-and-breakfast owner Mrs. Lancaster (Heather Ayers), groundhog fans Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland, nerdy marching band sweethearts Fred and Debbie (Gerard Canonico and Katy Geraghty), the bumbling sheriff (Sean Montgomery), and high school acquaintance and insurance salesman Ned Ryerson (John Sanders), who all annoy him no end, especially when they want to talk about the weather. He’s trapped in a nightmare of his own making, perhaps incapable of figuring a way out.

Phil Connors (Andy Karl) and Rita (Barrett Doss) pause for a special moment in smash Broadway musical (photo by Joan Marcus)

Three-time Tony nominee Karl (On the Twentieth Century, Rocky) is a phenomenon as Connors, a role immortalized by Bill Murray in the film; he is bursting with an infectious charisma and bewitching energy that envelops the audience from the very start and never lets go; it’s an unforgettable, bravura, career-making performance by a rising star. He even has fun showing off the brace he has to wear after having torn his ACL during previews. But he’s helped tremendously by an outstanding book that really understands the heart and soul of the film, which is not a shock, as the book is written by Danny Rubin, who cowrote the movie with director Harold Ramis. Thus, the characters and the plot come first, with plenty of spoken dialogue leading into the superb music and lyrics by Australian comedian, musician, writer, director, and actor Tim Minchin, who also wrote the music and lyrics for Matilda the Musical, earning him a Tony nomination for Best Original Score. (He also played crazed rock star Atticus Fetch on Californication.) The songs flow seamlessly into the story, with some brilliant surprises. Rebecca Faulkenberry (Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Rock of Ages) brings down the house as Nancy Taylor, a conquest of Phil’s who opens the second act with “Playing Nancy,” lamenting her fate both as the character and the actress playing the character. “Well, here I am again the pretty but naive one / the perky breasted, giggly, one-night-stand / Is it my destiny to be a brief diversion / just a detour on the journey of some man?” she asks, wanting to be more than she is. Later, Sanders (Matilda, Peter and the Starcatcher) delivers the beautiful ballad “Night Will Come,” about life’s inevitabilities.

Meteorologist Phil Connors (Andy Karl) can’t stop bumping into insurance salesman Ned Ryerson (John Sanders) in Groundhog Day (photo by Joan Marcus)

Minchin and Rubin don’t sugarcoat anything, instead focusing on the bittersweet nature of human existence. Tony-winning director Matthew Warchus (Matilda, God of Carnage) never allows the show to get boring, despite so much repetition, while Peter Darling and Ellen Kane’s playful choreography weaves its way through Rob Howell’s fast-changing sets amid Christopher Nightingale’s smart orchestrations. (Howell also designed the fun costumes.) And during “Hope,” magician Paul Kieve (Ghost, Matilda) adds some very cool illusions as Phil contemplates the end. There’s a reason the Old Vic production garnered eight Olivier nominations (winning Best Actor and Best Director) and the Broadway version is up for seven Tonys (Best Musical, Best Book, Best Actor, Best Direction, Best Original Score, Best Choreography, and Best Scenic Design): The cast and crew are just that good, from top to bottom, led by Karl, all coming together to create a show to remember, one that, yes, audiences are likely to want to see over and over again and one that, despite its British roots, is profoundly American.

HAPPY DAYS

Dianne Wiest stars as Winnie in Yale Rep production of Happy Days at TFANA (photo by Gerry Goodstein)

Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
262 Ashland Pl. between Lafayette Ave. & Fulton St.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 28, $85-$120
866-811-4111
www.tfana.org

In preparing to play Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, a part she had been waiting thirty years to take on and one she calls “the Hamlet for actresses,” Dianne Wiest worked with a special movement coach in order to deal with the role’s unusual physical demands: She must spend nearly two hours buried in an artificial sand dune, in the first act only able to move her upper body and in the second act even less. Unfortunately, perhaps that’s why the two-time Tony and Emmy winner’s performance can feel overly mannered in the first half of the show, which continues at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center through May 28, although she dazzles after intermission. Winnie is first seen in a strapless black dress, her torso and head the only parts of her body sticking out from atop Izmir Ickbal’s large sand dune, behind which is a trompe l’oeil backdrop of white clouds and blue sky. A mysterious bell rings her awake, and Winnie begins her morning ablutions, going through her bag, taking her medicine, brushing her teeth, and getting ready for the day, which pretty much is going to be like every other day in her life, but she is cheery and chipper nonetheless. “Another heavenly day,” she announces with a smile. “So much to be thankful for — no pain — hardly any,” she adds, shining with positivity. To her right, in a crevice, is her husband, Willie (Jarlath Conroy), who is rarely seen and has very little to say aside from reading obituaries and job postings in the paper. Wiest overemotes with her bare arms, drawing too much attention to them, detracting from Winnie’s charmingly abstruse existential ramblings. Every movement, every pause, every emotion was written into the script by Beckett, but here they are just too broad.

Willie (Jarlath Conroy) and Winnie (Dianne Wiest) face life and death in Samuel Beckett revival (photo by Gerry Goodstein)

In the second act, with her arms buried beneath the sand, Wiest (All My Sons, Hannah and Her Sisters) really hits her stride, her high-pitched, singsong voice rising throughout the theater with the dawn of a new day. “Hail, holy light,” she begins. “Someone is looking at me still. Caring for me still. That is what I find so wonderful. Eyes on my eyes,” she says, referring to the rapt audience. “What is that unforgettable line?” We are looking at her indeed; of course, it’s a play in which you have to keep your eyes on her, but you’ll be mesmerized by Wiest’s tantalizing performance in this second half. However, director James Bundy never quite establishes a connection between Winnie and Willie, who is relegated to merely an afterthought. In the 2015 Boston Court production at the Flea, starring real-life husband-and-wife Brooke Adams and Tony Shalhoub, Willie was much more critical to the narrative, which also took on climate change. But Bundy, Conroy, and Wiest still do justice to Beckett’s views on the passage of time, with intriguing references to sex, death, and vaudeville and Winnie regularly championing “the Old Style.”

THE ANTIPODES

A group of men and women gathers around a table telling stories in Annie Baker’s The Antipodes (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 11, $30 through May 14, $90 after
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Near the beginning of Annie Baker’s first play for her Residency Five program at the Signature Theatre, John, a character declares, “Tell me a story.” Baker takes that conceit to a whole new level in her follow-up, The Antipodes, which has been extended at the Signature through June 11. The set-up is essentially fairly simple: a group of coworkers sit in ergonomic chairs around a table in an office, where they spend their days sharing deeply personal tales that might or might not lead to the one that their boss, Sandy (Will Patton), needs as he seeks material for a successor to their biggest hit, Heathens. The audience, sitting on two sides of Laura Jellinek’s pristine set, never learns what kind of company the seven men and two women work for — but it’s apparently at least somewhat bureaucratic and corporate, as Josh (Josh Hamilton) has to fill out forms over and over in an ongoing effort to try to get his ID. The tale they seek involves monsters, but no dwarves, elves, or trolls; they could be making movies, video games, apps, or an animated television series, although it doesn’t really matter, because it’s all about the stories themselves. “There are seven types of stories in the world,” Dave (Josh Charles) says, while Danny M1 (Danny Mastrogiorgio) claims there are thirty-six, Josh ten, and Brian (Brian Miskell) eighteen. They share intimate sexual episodes, moments that shaped their lives, and random tales that go nowhere. Josh philosophizes about the nature of time, Eleanor (Emily Cass McDonnell) doesn’t understand why she can’t use her cell phone, Danny M2 (Danny McCarthy) is hesitant to contribute, and Adam (Phillip James Brannon) remembers being hit by lightning. Scenes often end in the middle of a discussion, then pick up in the midst of a new topic, with no clear delineation of the time change except when Sarah (Nicole Rodenburg), Sandy’s assistant — who knows more than she’s letting on — arrives to take lunch orders, wearing a different chic outfit each time, courtesy of costume designer Kaye Voyce. While it doesn’t appear that they are accomplishing anything, Sandy, a straight shooter who is having some issues at home, pushes them to keep going. “I just wanted to remind all of you that what you’re doing is important. We need stories. As a culture. It’s what we live for. These are dark times. Stories are a little bit of light that we can cup in our palms like votive candles to show us the way out of the forest.” Even Brian, the note-taker and researcher, gets in on the action. But the team starts getting nervous when Sandy suddenly doesn’t show up one day.

Dave (Josh Charles) and Adam (Phillip James Brannon) listen to others’ stories in latest exceptional work by Annie Baker (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Antipodes, which sounds like a mythical monster but actually means “contrary” or “the exact opposite,” has all the makings of a pretentious play about the art of playwrighting, a work about the writer’s struggle to come up with a good idea, but Pulitzer Prize winner Baker (The Flick, Circle Mirror Transformation), who wrote the two-hour show specifically for the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, proves that it’s not that obvious. Instead, it’s a carefully crafted existential take on everyday existence, on the things humans do to get by, from eating and drinking to having sex, from going to work and communicating with others to dealing with life’s little problems. “We can do anything,” Sandy points out, as if he’s speaking for Baker the playwright, who is firmly in control. The show is also about the concept of time, which in a play can be manipulated by the writer. “There are two kinds of time. Vertical and horizontal. And if something happens in horizontal time, it can be . . . it’s not permanent,” Josh explains. “You can reverse it. Like one of them is the time that we think of when we think of normal time that’s moving forward and you can’t go back. But then there’s another kind of time and if you do something in that kind of time you can . . . uh . . . it’s more flexible.” Director Lila Neugebauer, who has done an extraordinary job navigating through time and space in such complex multicharacter dramas as The Wayside Motor Inn, The Wolves, and Everybody, makes every movement count, never allowing the narrative flow to drag, whether by way of a bit of magic about where lunch comes from or Adam lying on the floor to tell “the first story ever told.” The actors form an utterly believable group, fellow employees with unique personalities, some of whom bond while others remain outsiders, just as in real life. “The stories we create teach people what it’s like to be someone else on a visceral level,” Sandy tells his crew. “As storytellers we know how to shift perspective and inhabit different viewpoints. Imagine what would happen if everyone in the world could do every once in a while what we already do on a daily basis. It would be revolutionary.” The Antipodes is another exceptional play from one of the theater’s finest minds, a writer who is never afraid of going for the revolutionary in her work.