this week in theater

SHAKESPEARE BIRTHDAY BASH

Jonathan Slaff reads from HENRY VI at 2014 birthday bash for the Bard in Bryant Park (photo by Claire Taddei)

Jonathan Slaff reads from HENRY V at 2014 birthday bash for the Bard in Bryant Park (photo by Claire Taddei)

Who: The Drilling Company, with artistic director Jonathan Eric Foster, managing director Sarah George, and more than fifty actors, including company members Kyle Acheson, Sam De Roest, Nyssa Duchow, and Corley Pillsbury
What: Second annual Shakespeare Birthday Bash
Where: Bryant Park, 40th to 42nd Sts. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
When: Wednesday, April 23, free, 12:30 – 2:30
Why: The Drilling Company, those creative folks behind Shakespeare in the Parking Lot and who brought Hamlet to Bryant Park last year, will celebrate the Bard’s 451st birthday with a free party in the park on Thursday afternoon. At 12:30, a flash mob of actors will be roaming the area, presenting “Wonderful Words,” consisting of famous speeches, sonnets, and lines. At 1:00, folk band Thicket & Thistle will perform original music based on Shakespeare sonnets on the Fountain Terrace. At 1:30, anyone can join the festivities by reading a speech from a Bard play to win a T-shirt. Finally, at 2:00, banners will be raised, filled with quotations that people have been adding to all afternoon. The Drilling Company will be back in the park later this spring and summer, presenting Two Gentlemen of Verona May 15-31, followed by Romeo and Juliet July 10-26 and The Taming of the Shrew September 4-20; they will also perform As You Like It July 9-26 and Macbeth July 30 to August 15 in their new parking lot home on Norfolk St. behind the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center.

MICHIKO GODAI: YOKOHAMA ROSA

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Saturday, April 25, 7:30, and Sunday, April 26, 2:30, $35
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society’s multidisciplinary “Stories from the War” series continues with the one-woman show Yokohama Rosa, about the transformation of a Japanese woman, known as Merii-san, before, during, and after WWII. The play is written and performed by Michiko Godai (Death Note, Pride), who puts on the production every year in Yokohama on the anniversary of the end of the war. The Saturday-night performance will be followed by a Meet-the-Artists reception, while the Sunday matinee includes admission to the exhibition “Life of Cats: Selections from the Hiraki Ukiyo-e Collection.” In conjunction with the show, Japan Society will be holding The Life of Yokohama Merii Language Workshops on Saturday and Sunday, taught by Kazue Kurahara ($105, including theater ticket).

GIGI

GIGI is set in the extravagant high-society world of fin de siècle Paris (photo © Margot Schulman)

Neil Simon Theatre
250 West 52nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 21, $67-$147
gigionbroadway.com

In the Oscar-winning title song of Gigi, Gaston Lachaille asks, “When did your sparkle turn to fire / and your warmth become desire?” In the new Broadway revival at the Neil Simon Theatre, there is plenty of sparkle and warmth, but little fire and desire, making for a perfectly pleasant evening that never quite hits the high notes of this story of love and extravagance in fin de siècle Paris. Gigi began life as a 1944 novella by Colette, which was turned into a 1949 French comedy starring Danièle Delorme as the sixteen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood. It then became a Broadway hit written by Anita Loos in 1951 and starring Audrey Hepburn, followed by Vincente Minnelli’s smash 1958 Lerner and Loewe musical, which was nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Score, and won them all. Twenty-five years later it was turned into a Broadway musical by Alan Jay Lerner (book and lyrics) and Frederick Loewe (music) that won a Tony for Best Score but failed to catch on with the public. Which brings us to the current, first-ever Broadway revival, a modestly entertaining if not exactly illuminating version adapted by British screenwriter and playwright Heidi Thomas (Cranford, Call the Midwife), who has scrubbed clean this tale of accepted high-society prostitution, significantly lessening the age difference between the main characters, Gigi and Gaston, portrayed by former Disney stars Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical) and Corey Cott (Newsies), respectively. In fact, Hudgens is fifteen months older than Cott; in comparison, ten years separated Leslie Caron and the older Louis Jourdan in the movie musical. In addition, the signature song, “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” is no longer sung by Gaston’s uncle, Honoré, who was most famously played by Maurice Chevalier, but instead by Gigi’s grandmother, Mme. (Mamita) Alvarez (Victoria Clark), and great-aunt, Alicia (Dee Hoty), completely eliminating any hint of lewdness. As far as the plot goes, Gaston is a very wealthy steampunk bon vivant who dreams of flying. He is experiencing problems with his mistress, Liane d’Exelmans (Steffanie Leigh), and might soon be in search of his next lover, which excites Aunt Alicia, who has been grooming Gigi to prepare her to become a gentleman’s courtesan, one of the class of Parisian women who get rewarded handsomely for their “services.” The idealistic Gigi might not be all about girl power, but she still believes she can make her own choices, setting up the major conflict of the show.

Honoré Lachaille (Howard McGillin) and Mamita (Victoria Clark) remember it well in GIGI (photo © Joan Marcus)

Gigi has a delightful score, featuring such memorable songs as “The Parisians,” “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” and “The Night They Invented Champagne.” Hudgens sings and dances well, although she strains at overpronouncing her “t”s in dialogue. Hoty (Footloose, The Will Rogers Follies) overplays Aunt Alicia; the scenes in which she trains Gigi in the art of being a mistress fall flat. Former Phantom of the Opera McGillin is fine as Honoré, delivering a lovely “I Remember It Well” with Clark (The Light in the Piazza, Cinderella), who is the strongest part of the show. The weakest is Cott, who lacks the charm and elegance necessary for the role of the man every woman in Paris wants; the program lists his only experience other than Newsies as university productions, so he might need more time to blossom. Derek McLane’s flashy set is structured around the base of the Eiffel Tower as it changes from posh nightclub to fashionable beach resort to Mamita’s and Alicia’s very different living quarters. Director Eric Schaeffer (Follies, Million Dollar Quartet) never really achieves a flow to the narrative, resulting in a bumpy progression of set pieces. It might never all quite gel, and the production magnifies the dated nature of the central story, but it still makes for a nice show. It’s not a bore, but you might not remember it very well either.

FUN HOME

FUN HOME has been transformed into a whole new experience on Broadway (photo © Joan Marcus)

Circle in the Square Theatre
1633 Broadway at 50th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through September 13, $75-$150
funhomebroadway.com

The best off-Broadway musical of last season is now the best Broadway musical of this season. Fun Home hasn’t merely transferred from the Public’s Newman Theater downtown to Circle in the Square on the Great White Way; it has been positively transformed, with returning director Sam Gold and set designer David Zinn making ingenious use of the small, intimate space, the audience surrounding the famed Circle in the Square stage. Nominated for eight Drama Desk Awards last year, Jeanine Tesori and Lisa Kron’s magical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s genre-defining graphic memoir is even better the second time around. The deeply personal story delves into the dysfunction of the Bechdel family: father Bruce (Michael Cerveris) is a high school English teacher, a restorer of old houses, and a funeral home director (which leads the kids to call it Fun Home); mother Helen (Judy Kuhn) plays the piano and has a yen for the theater; and younger children Christian (Oscar Williams) and John (Zell Steele Morrow) look up to their older sister, Alison, who is played as an eight-year-old by Sydney Lucas, as an eighteen-year-old by Emily Skeggs, and as a forty-three-year-old adult by Beth Malone. Malone is onstage for the full hundred minutes, watching her character’s life unfold before her. “I don’t trust memory,” she says early on, explaining why she is constantly drawing. When she goes off to college, she finds out something about herself that confuses and scares her — as well as a dark family secret that shakes her already complicated world.

Older Alison (Beth Malone) sketches her college-age self (Emily Skeggs) in FUN HOME (photo © Joan Marcus)

The staging is simply sensational, although there’s nothing simple about it. Furniture, from doors and tables to a console television, a bed, and a casket, rises up and down from beneath the floor as the scenes change, keeping the narrative flowing at a calm, even pace despite the building angst and turmoil. Tesori’s (Violet; Caroline, or Change) music and Kron’s (2.5 Minute Ride, Well) book and lyrics continue to soar, from the outrageously funny “Changing My Major” to the Partridge Family homage “You Are Like a Raincoat,” from the incredibly clever “Ring of Keys” to the mellifluous “Welcome to Our House on Maple Avenue,” with the crack band onstage (and enjoying the show as well when they’re not playing). The cast, once again, is outstanding, with Cerveris just the right bit on edge as Bruce; Kuhn splendidly tentative and nervous as Helen; Lucas a powerhouse as the creative small Alison; Skeggs terrific as the wide-eyed, curious middle Alison; Roberta Colindrez delightful as Joan, a lesbian who catches Alison’s eye at Oberlin; and Joel Perez as multiple characters, including Roy, a handyman who helps out around the house. But Gold’s (The Realistic Joneses, The Flick) revamped staging sheds more light on the adult Alison and Malone’s subtly beautiful performance; instead of existing on the periphery as an observer, she is now right in the middle of everything, sometimes sitting down next to one of her younger selves, getting a much more close-up look into her childhood without getting overly sentimental. (The same can practically be said about the audience.) The Broadway version of Fun Home is so extraordinary, it’s made me nearly forget about the marvelous original production.

REUNION READING: HURLYBURLY

Ethan Hawke and Parker Posey are among the New Group actors reuniting for a benefit reading of HURLYBURLY on April 26

Who: Bobby Cannavale, Josh Hamilton, Ethan Hawke, Parker Posey, Wallace Shawn, Scott Elliott
What: Benefit reading for the New Group
Where: The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center, the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, 480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., 212-244-3380 x308
When: Sunday, April 26, $50-$250, 6:00
Why: As part of its twentieth anniversary celebration, the New Group will be holding a one-night-only benefit reading of David Rabe’s Hurlyburly, reuniting the original cast and director Scott Elliott. The reading will take place in the New Group’s new home at the Signature Center, with Bobby Cannavale as Phil, Josh Hamilton as Mickey, Ethan Hawke as Eddie, Parker Posey as Darlene, and Wallace Shawn as Artie; the parts of Bonnie and Donna are yet to be finalized. The 2005 production was nominated for five Lucille Lortel Awards, with Posey winning as Best Featured Actress. This past fall, the New Group mounted a successful revival of Rabe’s Sticks and Bones, with Elliott at the helm. The New Group is also holding a bonus fundraiser in which the highest bidder will get to be onstage and read the stage directions, in addition to meeting the cast and crew and attending the VIP reception with a guest following the performance. The current bid is $3,000, but it can be all yours for ten grand right now.

BUZZER

Jackson (Grantham Coleman), Suzy (Tessa Ferrer), and Don (Michael Stahl-David) test the limits of love and friendship in BUZZER (photo by Joan Marcus)

Martinson Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 26, $55-$65
212-539-8500
www.publictheater.org

Tracey Scott Wilson’s Buzzer is a sizzling drama about gentrification, class, race, and white privilege. In modern-day Brooklyn, rising young black lawyer Jackson (Grantham Coleman) is moving back to his old neighborhood, purchasing a large, impressive apartment across the street from a corner populated by drug dealers and crack whores. “The wave is sweeping through here, and before they build another coffee shop, before they build another gym, before the wave swallows up another person here, I want in,” he says to an unseen Realtor. “I know this neighborhood. I know what it’s worth and I know what it can be.” Next he has to convince his girlfriend, Suzy (Tessa Ferrer), a white teacher, to move in with him. Suzy is being disciplined at her job for yelling at one of her students, telling him to “put the mother-fracking book down.” But Suzy and Jackson’s love is severely tested when his longtime best friend, Don (Michael Stahl-David), a white screw-up who has been in and out of rehab for years, comes to stay with them as he tries to get his life back together. “I’m horny, broke, and nearly homeless,” he says at an AA meeting, “so if I just had a job, a woman, and a house, Popsicle beer would not be so appealing.” The apartment might be big, with two hallways, a pair of walk-in closets, and a vast central living space, but it’s tight quarters for the three of them, especially after Suzy is harassed by some of the guys on the corner, a confrontation that Don and Jackson want to handle in very different ways, sparking trouble that threatens the relationships among the three of them.

A couple deals with race and gentrification in Tracey Scott Wilson’s scorching drama at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

Despite garnering good notices since Buzzer premiered at the Pillsbury House Theatre in Minneapolis in 2012 and went on to the Guthrie and then the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, Wilson (The Good Negro, The Story) has tweaked it significantly for its New York run at the Public, cutting about a half hour out, streamlining it down to a fast-moving ninety minutes without intermission. Like the spacious apartment, the play is uncluttered, and Wilson avoids getting preachy or clichéd in a play that evokes such recent Broadway successes as Clybourne Park and Disgraced. The cast is uniformly excellent, each of their characters introduced with a soliloquy while facing the audience directly, an intimate conceit. Coleman is stalwart as Jackson, who does not want to become the “Magical Negro”; Ferrer is a whirling dervish of powerful emotions as the complicated, unpredictable Suzy; and Stahl-David is quirky and compelling as the uneasy, desperate Don. Obie-winning director Anne Kauffman (The Nether, Detroit) keeps everything going at a swift but determined pace as scenes morph into one another seamlessly. Laura Jellinek’s set is open and dark on one side, while the other is populated by a maze of sparkling white walls and a kitchen; the back holds a surprise as the ending nears. The title refers to the apartment’s buzzer; the intercom system doesn’t work, so whenever the buzzer is pushed, the residents have to go downstairs to see who’s at the door. It’s fraught with danger; every time the buzzer sounds, the tension grows thicker while providing a clever sonic alternative to Jackson’s unusual ring tone, which keeps going off. Jackson, who grew up in Newark and later moved to a gentrifying neighborhood in Crown Heights, where she was living when she wrote the play, has a sharp ear for realistic dialogue and creates well-drawn characters caught up in believable situations, despite one ultimately forgivable misstep. Buzzer, which continues at Martinson Hall through April 26, is not afraid to push buttons, resulting in a taut, gripping experience.

GREAT KILLS

Robert (Peter Welch), Tim (Robert Homeyer), and Mr. G (Joe Pantoliano) concoct a crazy scheme in GREAT KILLS (photo by Rosalie Baijer)

Theater for the New City, Community Space
155 First Ave. between Ninth & Tenth Sts.
Wednesday – Sunday through April 12, $20
212-254-1109
www.theaterforthenewcity.net

Tom Diriwachter captures the zeitgeist of the borough that never changes, Staten Island, in his involving new play, Great Kills, making its world premiere at Theater for the New City in the East Village. When you first encounter Mark Marcante’s set, you’re likely to think the story takes place in the 1970s, as the appliances in the kitchen are old, the décor static, with books stacked all over the floor, issues of National Geographic strewn about, and an ancient television front and center. But as soon as the TV is turned on and a sportscaster (voiced by director Jonathan Weber, who runs the New York Mets blog The Ballclub) announces that Mets pitcher Jason deGrom is facing Cincinnati Reds first baseman Joey Votto, it becomes apparent that the time is the present, as characters reach into their past to prepare for the future. Robert Homeyer stars as Tim, a tall, awkward, bearded forty-year-old former adjunct professor now working at a local B&N. An angry and desperate ne’er-do-well, Tim lives with his father, Mr. G (Joey Pantoliano), a gruff, grizzled drunk who’s been a painter at the Meadowbrook state institution for thirty-seven years, but the facility will be closing following a series of investigative reports that depicted it as a “horror show.” (That part of the plot was inspired by Geraldo Rivera’s real-life reporting on Staten Island’s Willowbrook facility.) When Tim finds out that Meadowbrook has apparently discarded a huge amount of cabinets, he decides to take them off their hands and make a fortune reselling them, claiming he’s seen similar items going for eighteen hundred bucks in the Village. So he calls in his childhood friend Robert (Peter Welch), a successful restaurateur, to help with the scheme. Wearing a sharp suit, Robert is suspicious of Tim and the plan, but he’s willing to listen, for reasons that eventually become apparent. And through it all, Mr. G just keeps on drinking and grumbling.

Emmy winner Joe Pantoliano is a hoot as an aging drunk in play set in Staten Island (photo by Rosalie Baijer)

Great Kills is built around a suspect, questionable premise, and although it all makes sense in the end, it works best as a character study of three very different men. The way they interact with one another — Robert with Tim, Tim with Mr. G, Mr. G with Robert — is what drives the play, which features dark humor and gritty, rapid-fire dialogue with clever wordplay from lifelong Staten Islander Diriwachter. Robert: “We’re friends.” Tim: “We are friends.” Robert: “We’ve been friends a long time.” Tim: “We used to ride bikes together.” Robert: “I’d take a bullet for you.” Tim: “I’d . . . wrestle a bear for you.” Robert: “I don’t know why you’d ever have to do that.” Tim: “I’m just saying.” Robert: “But business is business.” Robert is cool and self-confident, Tim edgy and unnerving, Mr. G a grunting widower who serves as comic relief, but each one has surprises in store as the plot unfolds in real time. The Hoboken-born Pantoliano, who won an Emmy for his role as Ralphie Cifaretto on The Sopranos, starred with Rosie Perez on Broadway in Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune, and has appeared in such other films as Memento, The Matrix, and Risky Business, is a hoot as Mr. G, just wanting to be left to his baseball and booze. He is practically one with his comfy chair, getting up only to grab another beer or a shot. Indie film actor, writer, and director Welch, who is also a fine art photographer, gives just the right edge to Robert, who keeps hanging around even as the plan gets more complicated. And Theater for the New City regular Homeyer plays Tim as a man uncomfortable in his own skin, believing that the world owes him a whole lot more. It might be Mamet-lite, but this tale of losers, idealists, and never-will-bes is an engrossing look at modern men and the American dream, with a sharp Staten Island tang.