this week in theater

THE HUMANS ON BROADWAY

Stephen Karam explores the bright and dark sides of the American dream in beautifully humanistic Broadway drama (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Helen Hayes Theatre
240 West 44th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 24, $39-$145
www.thehumansonbroadway.com
www.roundabouttheatre.org

The most human off-Broadway show of the season is now the most human on Broadway. The Roundabout production of Pulitzer Prize finalist Stephen Karam’s The Humans, which ran at the Laura Pels from October 25 through January 3, has made a seamless transition to the Great White Way, where it is inhabiting the Helen Hayes Theatre through July 24. Karam has made minimal, virtually undetectable tweaks to the play, which features the same cast and crew and is just as good the second time around. Tony nominee and Drama Desk and Obie Award winner Reed Birney stars as Erik Blake, the patriarch of a Scranton family that is gathering for Thanksgiving in the new Chinatown apartment of younger daughter Brigid (Sarah Steele), which she and boyfriend, Richard (Arian Moayed) have just moved into. Erik and his wife, Deirdre (Jayne Houdyshell), have driven into the city with his ailing mother, Momo (Lauren Klein), who requires constant care. They are joined by older daughter Aimee (Cassie Beck), a Philadelphia lawyer who has recently broken up with her longtime girlfriend. Over the course of ninety-five intimate minutes, we learn about each character’s strengths and weaknesses, their hopes and dreams, their successes and their failures, as Scranton native Karam (Speech & Debate, Dark Sisters) and two-time Tony-winning director Joe Mantello (Take Me Out, Assassins) steer clear of clichés and melodramatic sentimentality, even when making direct references to 9/11. The acting, led by New York theater treasures Birney (You Got Older, Circle Mirror Transformation) and Houdyshell (Follies, Well) and rising star Steele (Slowgirl, Speech and Debate), is impeccable, making audience members feel like they’re experiencing their own Thanksgiving. Every moment of The Humans, which takes place on David Zinn’s spectacular two-floor tearaway set, rings true, a gripping, honest depiction of life in the twenty-first century, filled with the typical ups and downs, fears and anxieties, that we all face every day. Although things get very serious, including a touch of the otherworldly, the play is also hysterically funny as it paints a familiar yet frightening portrait of contemporary America, mixing in darkness both literally and figuratively. To find out more about the story and to read a short excerpt from the play, you can read my review of the off-Broadway run here, but by this point all you need to know is that this is a must-see production of a must-see show.

OPEN PLAN: CECIL TAYLOR

Jazz great Cecil Taylor rehearses at the Whitney in November 2015

Whitney Museum of American Art
Neil Bluhm Family Galleries, fifth floor
99 Gansevoort St.
April 14-24, free with museum admission unless otherwise noted
212-570-3600
whitney.org

The fourth stage of the Whitney’s “Open Plan” series, which previously saw Andrea Fraser, Lucy Dodd, and Michael Heizer take over the large fifth-floor space in the new downtown building, hands the reins over to free jazz legend, poet, and New York City native Cecil Taylor. The eighty-seven-year-old pianist will be celebrated in a series of programs beginning April 14 at 8:00 ($50), when Taylor will make a rare public appearance, collaborating with British drummer Tony Oxley and Japanese dancer and choreographer Min Tanaka. On April 15 at 7:00, cellist Tristan Honsinger will perform a solo set, while writer Thulani Davis, dancer and professor Cheryl Banks-Smith, and bassist Henry Grimes join forces for a unique presentation. On April 16 at 2:00, Banks-Smith will moderate “Cecil Taylor and Dance,” a panel discussion with Dianne McIntyre, Heather Watts, and Tanaka. That evening at 7:00, trumpter Enrico Rava, double bassist William Parker, and drummer Andrew Cyrille will perform as a trio, in addition to a solo set by Cyrille. On April 20 at 3:00, a Poetry and Music gathering brings together poets A. B. Spellman and Anne Waldman and saxophonist Devin Brahja Waldman, Anne’s nephew. On April 21 at 3:00, Poetry and Music features Steve Dalachinsky, Clark Coolidge with Michael Bisio, and Nathaniel Mackey with Grimes. That night at 9:00 ($10), Hilton Als directs a restaging of Adrienne Kennedy’s one-act play A Rat’s Mass, starring Helga Davis; Taylor wrote and directed the music for the show. And on April 22 at 6:00, Chris Funkhouser, Tracie Morris and Susie Ibarra, Fred Moten and William Parker, and Jemeel Moondoc/Ensemble Muntu (featuring Parker, Mark Hennen, and Charles Downs) will present an evening of poetry and music. Throughout this part of “Open Plan,” there will also be listening sessions hosted by Davis, Archie Rand, André Martinez, Gary Giddins, Moten and Funkhouser, Ben Young, and Nahum Chandler in addition to screenings in the Kaufman Gallery of such films as Sheldon Rochlin’s Cecil Taylor: Burning Poles, Chris Felver’s Cecil Taylor: All the Notes, Billy Woodberry’s And When I Die, I Won’t Stay Dead, and the world premiere of Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s The Silent Eye about Taylor and Tanaka (and followed by Q&As with the director, who sat on Taylor’s stoop until the pianist would finally talk to him). There will also be documents, videos, audio, scores, photographs, poetry, and ephemera from throughout Taylor’s life and career on view.

DRY POWDER

Rick (Hank Azaria) finds himself in a battle between Seth (John Krasinski) and Jenny (Claire Danes) in Sarah Burgess’s DRY POWDER (photo by Joan Marcus)

Martinson Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor P.
Tuesday through Sunday through May 1, $95
212-539-8500
www.publictheater.org

Being a Wharton and NYU grad, I had a, well, personal vested interest in seeing Sarah Burgess’s first professionally produced play, Dry Powder, continuing at the Public Theater’s Martinson Hall through May 1. Several decades ago, I dumped a potential career in high finance to work in publishing and the arts, but many of my fellow students and close friends made their way to Wall Street and Park Ave., where they still engage in the art of the deal. (One has even played golf with Donald Trump.) So I wasn’t sure just how much of this show about a private equity firm fighting for its financial life I would be able to take, but fortunately, Burgess has written a smart, tightly constructed play in which nothing is black and white but instead a very specific kind of green — as well as a deep shade of cobalt blue. Hank Azaria stars as Rick, the terse, direct founder of KMM Capital Management. In the midst of a public relations blunder involving an elephant and his impending marriage, Rick is brought a seemingly can’t-miss proposition by one of his two limited partners, Seth (John Krasinski). Seth wants Rick to sign off on a deal to buy the family-owned American company Landmark Luggage while promising Landmark CEO Jeff Schrader (Sanjit De Silva) that KMM will help it grow, rather than move the home base, lay off employees, and eventually flip it. But the offshore-layoff-quick-sale scenario is precisely what Rick’s other limited partner, Jenny (Claire Danes), has figured out could earn KMM more money. While Seth, a married man looking to have children, has developed a friendly relationship with Jeff and seems to care about Landmark’s future, Jenny, a single woman and workaholic with no friends, is all about the bottom line and nothing else; she doesn’t seem to understand personal connections or even the public good. “People can’t relate to me,” she says without a hint of regret. Facing a financial crisis, Rick has some important decisions to make that will affect more than just KMM.

Seth (John Krasinski) and Jenny (Claire Danes) take opposing views of a major deal in DRY POWDER (photo by Joan Marcus)

Burgess fills Dry Powder with such financial terms as “leveraged buyouts,” “letters of intent,” “dividend recaps,” “IPOs,” and “dry powder” (industry slang for liquid cash reserves), but the shop talk never overwhelms the narrative, which also avoids drifting into a clear good vs. evil setup. The audience sits on all four sides of Rachel Hauck’s dramatically simple, rectangular, boldly blue stage, a raised platform with a desk and three boxes that serve multiple purposes, moved around between scenes by well-dressed men and women while Lindsay Jones’s music and Jason Lyons’s colorful lighting grab your attention. In a power suit and sporting short-cropped hair, three-time Emmy winner Danes (Homeland, Temple Grandin) is a delight as Jenny, a robotic, cold-hearted financier who doesn’t care that she doesn’t know the name of her chief analyst, who has recently been hospitalized. Danes gives her just the right balance between tough negotiator and comic relief. Krasinski (The Office, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men) plays Seth with a smarmy charm that reveals the character’s claims of trying to benefit society while making money are perhaps not quite as true as he lets on, as he’s too quick to defend the size of his yacht and his score on the GMATs. Five-time Emmy winner Azaria (The Simpsons, Tuesdays with Morrie) imbues Rick with a tortured edge while loving the game. De Silva (War Horse, Awake and Sing!) is sort of an onstage stand-in for the everyday American, having worked hard, made something of himself, but is now on the cusp of something big and facing some hard choices. Director Thomas Kail, on a bit of a roll with Hamilton (as well as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s earlier Broadway hit, In the Heights), manages to make all ninety-five minutes more than palatable, given that we’re essentially watching one-percenters argue over tens of millions of dollars and the value of American jobs. It’s not an earth-shattering exploration of what makes these people tick, but it doesn’t purport to be anything other than exactly what it is. And it makes me extremely happy that I chose a different career path. (Advance tickets for Dry Powder are sold out, but there is a $20 TodayTix lottery for each performance, and $750 – $1,000 seats are available for the closing week benefit.)

ALICIA GRULLÓN: FILIBUSTER

Alicia Grullón will reenact Wendy Davis’s eleven-hour filibuster of Texas Senate Bill 5 in its entirety on April 13 at BRIC House

Who: Alicia Grullón
What: Special performance as part of “Whisper or Shout: Artists in the Social Sphere”
Where: BRIC Arts | Media House, stoop, 647 Fulton St., 718-683-5600
When: Wednesday, April 13, free, 10:00 am – 9:00 pm
Why: On June 25, 2013, Texas state senator Wendy Davis, in pink sneakers, held the floor for eleven hours, filibustering against Senate Bill 5, which “[related] to the regulation of abortion procedures, providers, and facilities; providing penalties.” Davis became an instant media superstar; however, the bill pass passed in a special session held in July. On April 13, performance artist Alicia Grullón, with Davis’s blessing, will reenact the eleven-hour filibuster at the BRIC House Stoop in Fort Greene. Yes, she will be wearing pink sneakers. Admission is free, and people can come and go as they please. “Senator Davis’s filibuster fell along the lines of these other events where moments of protest or tragedy highlight the impact of imbalanced history and policies on the social sphere and on the body of other[s],” Grullón said in a statement. “Her filibuster on women’s healthcare highlighted and reignited the necessity for an equitable feminist history and a call for younger women of color to take the lead since many of the women affected by the closing of clinics are poor and/or of color.” Previously, Grullón has covered her face in newsprint while trying to sell such staples as rice, flour, and beans for between $1000 and $5000 per pound to bring attention to food riots in Haiti (“Revealing New York: The Disappearance of Other”); spent four hours standing in the snow in Van Cortlandt Park to let people know about an undocumented worker who froze to death in a Long Island forest, his body found days later (“Illegal Death”); and led a one-person boycott of the closed Stella D’Oro factory in the Bronx (“No Cookies”). “Filibuster,” which is being held in conjunction with the BRIC House exhibition “Whisper or Shout: Artists in the Social Sphere,” will be streamed live here; you can also tweet questions to Grullón (#BRICfilibuster) and follow the event on Periscope.

TICKET ALERT: LINCOLN CENTER FESTIVAL 2016

Jonathan Pryce will play Shylock in Shakespeare’s Globe production of THE MERCHANT OF VENICE at Lincoln Center Festival this summer (photo by Manuel Harden)

Multiple venues at Lincoln Center
July 13-31, $30-$125
Tickets on sale now
www.lincolncenterfestival.org

For twenty years, one of the highlights of every summer arts season has been the Lincoln Center Festival, and 2016 is no exception, with another stellar lineup of dance, music, opera, and theater from around the globe. The festival begins with six presentations by Japan’s Kanze Noh Theatre at the Rose Theater in Jazz at Lincoln Center. Led by Grand Master Kiyokazu Kanze, the troupe, which rarely ventures outside its home country, will perform Okina with Kanze’s son, Saburota, and Hagoromo on July 13, Sumida Gawa, Busshi, and Shakkyo on July 14, Hagoromo, Kaki Yamabushi, and Sumida Gawa on July 15, Okina and Aoi No Ue on July 16 at 1:30, Hagoromo, Busshi, and Aoi No Ue on July 16 at 7:30, and Okina and Shakkyo on July 17. From July 13 to 16 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater, visual artist Jennifer Wen Ma directs composer Huang Ruo’s Ming Dynasty romantic opera, Paradise Interrupted. Japan’s Takarazuka Revue will bring “All That Jazz” and more to the David H. Koch Theater July 20–24 with an all-female version of Chicago, with a rotating cast, lyrics in Japanese, and Bob Fosse’s original choreography. Shakespeare’s Globe, which recently staged the marvelous Broadway double shot of Twelfth Night and Richard III, will make its Lincoln Center debut July 20–24 at the Rose Theater with Jonathan Pryce in The Merchant of Venice, directed by Jonathan Munby. British company 1927 reinvents a traditional tale in Golem, incorporating animation, puppetry, crazy set design and costumes, and general absurdity July 26–31 at the Lynch.

Japan’s Takarazuka Revue will present an all-female version of CHICAGO at Lincoln Center Festival (photo by Maiko Miagawa and Nobuhiko Hikichi)

The National Ballet of Canada waltzes into the Koch Theater July 28–31 with Tony winner Christopher Wheeldon’s unique take on The Winter’s Tale, featuring music by Joby Talbot, scenic design by Tony winner Bob Crowley, and silk effects by Basil Twist. In addition, Goran Bregović’s Wedding and Funeral Orchestra marches into David Geffen Hall July 15–16; Reich/Reverberations pays tribute to Steve Reich July 16, 19, and 21 with Sō Percussion, Ensemble Signal, and JACK Quartet; C.I.C.T. / Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord’s version of Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme goes for laughs July 20–24 at the Lynch, directed by Denis Podalydès and with choreography by Kaori Ito; musicians Wang Li and Wu Wei team up on July 23 at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse; and a few days later Sō Percussion’s Trilogy takes over the Penthouse, with Eric Cha-Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski, and Jason Treuting playing works by Reich, Dessner, and Lang on July 28, Xenakis, Ergun, and Trueman on July 29, and Cage, Lansky, and Mackey on July 30. There are various special ticket packages that can save you between twenty and thirty-five percent if you go for multiple shows, but those deals are going fast.

BRIGHT STAR

Carmen Cusack belts away on moving set in dazzling Broadway debut in BRIGHT STAR (photo by Nick Stokes)

Cort Theatre
138 West 48th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 26, $45 – $115
brightstarmusical.com

The opening number of the new Steve Martin and Edie Brickell musical, Bright Star, takes a chance right from the start, putting its cards on the table as Alice Murphy (Carmen Cusack) declares, “If you knew my story / My heaven and hell / If you knew my story / You’d have a good story to tell.” It turns out that Bright Star does have a pretty good story to tell, for the most part, and it does so with an intoxicating homey style and sweet sense of humor. The fairy-tale-like narrative, with its fair share of darkness, shifts between the 1920s and 1940s in North Carolina. In 1945, Billy Cane (AJ Shively) has returned home from the war with a jump in his step but is saddened to learn from his father (Stephen Bogardus) that his mother has recently passed away. Determined to become a writer, Billy has been sending his stories to his childhood friend Margo Crawford (Hannah Elless), who owns the local bookstore. Now grown up, she has taken a more romantic interest in Billy, who is oblivious to her desires; he decides to move to Asheville to try to get his writing published in the prestigious Asheville Southern Journal, which will be no easy feat, as it is run by notoriously difficult editor Alice Murphy and her two gatekeepers, the snarky and sarcastic Daryl Ames (Jeff Blumenkrantz) and the sexy and alluring Lucy Grant (Emily Padgett). When Billy first arrives at the company, Daryl tells him that the New Yorker wanted to steal Miss Murphy away, but Lucy notes that the dour editor wanted to stay in North Carolina. “That’s good!” Billy cries out. “Not for young tadpoles like you,” Daryl says. Lucy adds, “She once made Ernest Hemingway cry. He lay right there, banged his fists on the floor, and sobbed.” Billy asks, “Why?” to which Lucy replies, “He used the word ‘their’ as a singular pronoun.” The story then jumps back to sixteen-year-old Alice (Cusack) in 1923 and her flirtation with twenty-year-old Jimmy Ray Dobbs (Paul Alexander Nolan), the hunky son of Mayor Josiah Dobbs (Michael Mulheren). But the mayor, a big-time businessman of the Old South, has other plans for his son, preparing to marry him off to help the company. However, Jimmy Ray wants to go to college and experience the world outside Zebulon. “You can’t expect the future to be just like the past / You haven’t got a clue, sir, please try to understand,” Jimmy Ray sings. “When I stood tall, side by side with your grandpa / There was just nothing at all we couldn’t do,” his father responds. Soon the two main plots merge, leading to a surprise conclusion that is not quite as shocking as it thinks it is but is heart-wrenching nonetheless.

Part of band spends entire show in mobile cabin in musical by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell (photo by Nick Stokes)

Actor, musician, novelist, comedian, and playwright Martin (Picasso at the Lapin Agile, Shopgirl) and folk-rock musician Brickell — billing themselves as the new Steve and Edie — collaborated on the music and story, inspired by an actual event; Martin wrote the book, while Brickell wrote the lyrics. (The musical was initially based on their 2013 album, Love Has Come from You, but went through major changes, leading to their 2015 follow-up, So Familiar, which includes their versions of many of the songs that made the final show.) Director Walter Bobbie (Chicago, Venus in Fur) and choreographer Josh Rhodes (Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, It Shoulda Been You) make fantastic use of Eugene Lee’s (Wicked) rustic set, an open cabin (reminiscent of the one at the start of The Jerk) where four members of the band (Michael Pearce, Bennett Sullivan, Rob Berman, Martha McConnell) play and which gets moved around as the setting changes to the offices of the Asheville Southern Journal, Margo’s bookstore, Mayor Dobbs’s residence, and the Shiny Penny bar. Occasionally a model train passes overhead when a character is traveling. Cusack is sensational in her Broadway debut, going back and forth between the young Alice to the older Miss Murphy with wit and elegance, singing with a vibrant, evocative voice and infectious confidence. The show works best when the music follows more of an Americana roots and bluegrass style, which is especially embraced by Nolan (Jesus Christ Superstar, Doctor Zhivago); his duets with Cusack are the musical highlights of the production. The weak link is the dull subplot about Billy’s desire to be a writer, with Shively (La Cage aux Folles, February House) too straitlaced to keep things interesting, lacking any edge, and Martin can get a little too erudite with his literary barbs. In addition to the musicians in the cabin, there are more up top on either side of the stage; Peter Asher’s music direction and August Eriksmoen’s orchestrations mostly work, although the Shiny Penny scene, featuring the ensemble song “Another Round,” is a disaster in every which way. (And why did they have to use glasses with tops on them, making it look ridiculous when characters apparently take a big drink but the same amount of liquid is still clearly visible in their glass?) Stephen Lee Anderson (The Iceman Cometh, The Kentucky Cycle) does a fine turn as Alice’s Bible-thumping father, and Mulheren (Spider-Man, Kiss Me, Kate) gives the mayor a Big Daddy–like presence. “Should’ve raised you with a firmer hand,” Daddy Murphy sings to his daughter in a strong number. For a show partially about writing, Bright Star would have benefited by being edited with a firmer hand, but it’s still an entertaining musical with supreme moments.

(On April 12, Martin and Brickell will be at the Upper West Side Barnes & Noble at 86th St. & Lexington Ave. for a discussion with Asher and a CD signing of So Familiar; priority seating will be given to attendees who purchase the disc there.)

BLACKBIRD

Una (Michelle Williams) and Ray (Jeff Daniels) revisit a past traumatic event in very different ways in BLACKBIRD (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Belasco Theatre
111 West 44th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Monday – Saturday through June 11, $39 – $145
blackbirdbroadway.com

In 2007, Jeff Daniels starred with Alison Pill in the off-Broadway premiere of David Harrower’s Olivier Award–winning play, Blackbird, directed by Joe Mantello at Manhattan Theatre Club. Nine years later, Daniels is revisiting the incendiary work by digging even deeper into his controversial character in the show’s must-see Broadway debut, running at the Belasco through June 11. Daniels plays Peter, a man suddenly forced to confront his past when Una (Michelle Williams) surprises him at his office late one afternoon. Fifteen years earlier, Peter, then forty years old and known by his given name, Ray, had an inappropriate and illegal relationship with Una, who was twelve at the time. “What cinched the decision to return was that Ray still terrified me,” Daniels wrote in a recent column in the New York Times. “Every actor knows you can’t run from the ones that scare you. It’s not the acting of the character, nor is it the dark imagination it takes to put yourself through all of his guilt, regret, and shame. To truly become someone else, you have to hear him in your head, thinking, justifying, defending, wanting, needing, desiring. The more I looked back at the first production, the more I saw what I hadn’t done, where I hadn’t gone. I’d pulled up short. Found ways around what was necessary. When it came time to truly become Ray, I’d protected myself. He’d hit bottom. I hadn’t.” Daniels indeed hits rock bottom in his remarkable, and terrifying, portrayal of Ray, humanizing a man who committed a horrible crime and tries to escape its consequences and get on with his life, changing his identity and moving away. But as Una, Williams is Daniels’s equal, fully inhabiting the difficult role of a young woman who, on the cusp of adolescence, had her future shut down by Ray’s actions. Tiny, wearing giant heels, and wrapped in a red puffer coat, Williams suggests both a fully adult woman and a sexualized child, delivering a character who never had opportunities to figure out who she is and potentially live a normal life. Their confrontation takes place in a small employee cafeteria in Ray’s office, where he at first denies even knowing who she is, although his head looks like it is about to explode. “This was pointless. Absolutely pointless. Can you see that?” Ray asks her, adding, “You’re a / some kind of ghost / turning up from nowhere to / Go home. / Please. / Leave me alone.” Una responds, “I do feel like a ghost. / I do. / I feel like a ghost. / Everywhere I go. . . . / You made me into a ghost.”

Una (Michelle Williams) considers where life has brought her in BLACKBIRD (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Williams and Daniels go at it in real time during the play’s ninety minutes, as details of past and present slowly emerge. Their words come in fits and starts, with incomplete sentences and several long monologues that are filled with emotion. While Una is often coy, Ray is angry, afraid not only of Una but of being discovered; as they play a vicious game of cat and mouse, switching between roles of attacker and prey, figures occasionally walk past in the hall or a colleague of Ray’s knocks on the door and asks for him. (These extras are seen only in silhouette through frosted doors and windows.) But even though we know in our hearts that what Ray did to Una was completely wrong, Daniels is able to elicit compassion for Ray, while Williams sometimes makes us feel like Una is taking advantage of the situation in unfair ways. I hated myself for thinking that, but that’s part of the beauty of Harrower’s (Knives in Hens) piercing dialogue and Mantello’s (The Humans, Other Desert Cities) astute, no holds-barred direction. “I am entitled to something. / To live,” Ray says. “I lost more than you ever did,” Una replies. “I lost / because I never had / had time to to to begin.” Scott Pask’s set is cold and unfeeling, almost antiseptic except for the mess of food wrappers and garbage left behind by employees. Trash becomes an integral part of the proceedings. Una tells a story about getting upset when she saw a man drop a can of beer and a cigarette on the sidewalk. “It’s not the litter / it wasn’t the litter / the dirtying,” she says. “It was the man, the person doing that. / Because he hasn’t been, been / schooled / educated / civilized enough / and I thought, / I just thought you are a beast.” She’s of course not talking only about the stranger but about Ray as well. But Ray refuses to see himself as a beast, and Una refuses to regard herself as garbage.

Ray (Jeff Daniels) tries to avoid a meltdown when part of his past comes rushing back in BLACKBIRD (photo by Brigitte Lacombe)

Watching Blackbird is as uneasy and uncomfortable as it is captivating and physically and mentally exhausting. I found myself leaning forward in my seat, mesmerized by every word and every nuance and movement by three-time Oscar nominee Williams (Cabaret, My Week with Marilyn) and Emmy, Drama Desk, and Obie winner Daniels (The Newsroom, The Squid and the Whale) as they worked their magic. They both give dynamic, unrelenting performances that are brave and bold. It’s more than just a battle of wits and power, or an argument about the nature of love, or an exploration of the very different responsibilities of adults and children. The production, which includes excellent sound design by Fitz Patton and lighting by Brian MacDevitt, masterfully challenges the viewer to disregard extremes and do some genuine soul searching of their own. Of course, just by calling the woman “Una” sets herself off by herself, as if she is alone in the world. (The film version, the debut feature by Australian theater director Benedict Andrews, is called Una; Rooney Mara plays Una, with Ben Mendelsohn as Ray.) On the way out of the Belasco, you’re likely to find yourself in a heated discussion with your companion over whether the show was honest and truthful about pedophilia, whether it was more of a glorified rape apology, whether it was a love story, or whether it treated both characters equally. You’re also likely to find yourself wanting a thorough shower.