this week in theater

THE SNOW GEESE

The Gaesling clan gathers at their upstate lodge for the start of hunting season (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 15, $67-$120
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.thesnowgeesebroadway.com

Late last year, Sharr White’s gripping The Other Place, a searing look inside the mind of a marketing executive lost in her own alternate reality, opened on Broadway after a 2011 run at MCC Theatre. White’s follow-up, The Snow Geese, another coproduction of Manhattan Theatre Club and MCC at the Samuel J. Friedman, is a dreary mashup of Alan Bridges’s 1985 film The Shooting Party and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, a just-plain-dull WWI-era tale focusing on a woman having difficulty facing reality after the unexpected loss of her beloved husband. Despite the sudden death of Teddy, Elizabeth Gaesling (Mary-Louise Parker) thinks she is ready to go on with her life as the family comes together at their lodge in upstate New York for their traditional toast at the opening of snow goose season. Elizabeth is joined by her two sons: the patriotic, prodigal Duncan (Evan Jonigkeit), who goes to Princeton and has joined the war effort, and Arnold (Brian Cross), who has stayed home to take care of their mother and the family finances, which are not in very good shape.

Two sisters (Mary-Louise Parker and Victoria Clark) try to get by in Sharr White’s new Broadway play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Also with them is Elizabeth’s sister, Clarissa (Victoria Clark), a very Christian woman who thinks that Elizabeth should still be in mourning, and her husband, Max (Danny Burstein), a German-born doctor with a thick accent who can no longer practice medicine because of anti-Axis sentiment, even though he has been an American for decades. Most of the meandering story plays out on John Lee Beatty’s stodgy dining-room set, with occasional boring scenes out in bare woods where Duncan and Arnold verbally spar while not shooting at snow geese, who fly by in a metaphorical gaggle of freedom. The most interesting figure in the play is the Gaeslings’ maid, Viktorya Gryaznoy (Jessica Love), a bright young woman from a wealthy family who escaped the Ukraine and has taken a job well below her; how she is treated by the others establishes not only her character but theirs as well. Director Daniel Sullivan (Proof, Orphans) is not able to do much with the material or the mediocre performances, surprising from such a talented cast. The Snow Geese takes aim at examining the human condition in a changing America during WWI but unfortunately ends up firing mostly blanks.

THE WINSLOW BOY

The Winslow family faces a series of crises in revival of 1946 Terence Rattigan play (photo by Joan Marcus)

American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 1, $52-$137
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

The Roundabout production of Terence Rattigan’s 1946 drawing-room drama The Winslow Boy is like a fine episode of Masterpiece Theatre brought to life on the Broadway stage. Originally presented at the Old Vic, this new version of the rarely revived play, which was inspired by a true story and made into films twice (Anthony Asquith, 1948; David Mamet, 1999), follows the trials and tribulations of the Winslow clan just before World War I. Younger son Ronnie (Spencer Davis Milford), his father’s favorite, returns home after having been expelled from a prominent naval school for stealing a five-shilling postal order. The boy professes his innocence to his stern father, Arthur (Roger Rees), and his understanding mother, Grace (Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio), so Arthur sets off on a quest to protect the family name, writing letters, going to the press, and hiring big-time lawyer Sir Robert Morton (Alessandro Nivola). But Arthur’s determination to get justice is soon negatively impacting the family, affecting daughter Catherine’s (Charlotte Parry) engagement to John Watherstone (Chandler Williams) as well as older son Dickie’s (Zachary Booth) future at Oxford. Meanwhile, Ronnie doesn’t really seem to care all that much, oblivious to all that is going on around him.

Ronnie (Spencer Davis Milford) takes a rest while his father (Roger Rees) fights to save the family name (photo by Joan Marcus)

Written just after World War II about a period right before World War I and dealing with an anxiety-ridden middle class, The Winslow Boy still feels fresh and relevant. In his Broadway bow, director Lindsay Posner, who has previously helmed more than fifty shows in England — including several by Mamet — delicately balances humor with seriousness while guiding the action on Peter McKintosh’s lovely living-room set. Rees (Nicholas Nickleby, Indiscretions) is excellent as a father on a mission, willing to do whatever it takes to prove Ronnie’s innocence, no matter the personal and financial cost. Parry (Look Back in Anger, The Importance of Being Earnest) nearly steals the show as Catherine, a suffragist who always puts the cause ahead of her own desires. The solid cast also features Michael Cumpsty (End of the Rainbow) as family friend and solicitor Desmond Curry, an endlessly dull man who harbors a longtime fondness for Catherine, and Henny Russell (The Other Place, Lombardi) as Violet, the Winslows’ rather chatty maid. From top to bottom, The Winslow Boy is a wonderfully involving trip into another time that is really not that different from our own.

UNSPEAKABLE: A DRAMATIC FANTASIA

UNSPEAKABLE looks at the tumultuous life and career of comedian Richard Pryor

Apollo Theater Soundstage
253 West 125th St.
November 1-3, $20
800-745-3000
www.apollotheater.org
www.facebook.com

One of the most influential and controversial comics of his generation, Richard Pryor was not afraid to take on difficult issues of race and class in his brilliant stand-up routines. Born in Peoria, Illinois, in 1940, Pryor made such films as Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip, Blue Collar, and Silver Streak and such records as That N*gger’s Crazy and Outrageous, quickly earning a reputation for someone who says exactly what’s on his mind. Earlier this year, Marina Zenovich’s documentary Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic played at the Tribeca Film Festival and on Showtime, and now comes Unspeakable: A Dramatic Fantasia, a stage show inspired by Pryor’s tumultuous life, which ended in 2005 at the age of sixty-five. Written by Rod Gailes OBC and James Murray Jackson, Jr., Unspeakable is a work in development that explores Pryor’s life from childhood to death, focusing on the era between 1967 and 1982. Jackson, Jr., who was named Outstanding Lead Actor for playing the role in a 2005 version at the New York International Fringe Festival, is reprising the part this weekend at the Apollo, with Gailes OBC directing. The cast also includes Benja Kay Thomas, Margot White, Alvin Keith, Nedra McClyde, Adam Couperthwaite, and Nyahale A. Allie. “Richard Pryor broke down barriers, and stereotypes once thought unimaginable, said the unspeakable and did the unthinkable,” Gailes OBC said in a statement. “He taught us by holding a mirror to the conscience of America while self-destructing, and imploding on his own pain and grief. Though flawed in life, he lived uninhibited onstage. He was part preacher, social commentator, political activist, addict, and a whole lot of devil.” Unspeakable runs November 1-3 at the Apollo Theater’s Soundstage; tickets are $20.

A TIME TO KILL

Rupert Holmes’s stage version of John Grisham novel gets off to an exciting start at Golden Theatre (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Golden Theatre
252 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 17, $49 – $132
www.atimetokillonbroadway.com

In A Time to Kill, Rupert Holmes’s adaptation of John Grisham’s 1989 debut novel, Tony winner Holmes (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) and director Ethan McSweeny set things up well in the first act, but it all falls apart very quickly in a second act that could have been called A Time to Overkill. In fictional Clanton, Mississippi, two white racists, Billy Ray Cobb (Lee Sellars) and Pete Willard (Dashiell Eaves), have just been arrested by Sheriff Ozzie Walls (Chiké Johnson) for raping and beating a ten-year-old black girl. After a bail hearing, the girl’s father, Carl Lee Hailey (John Douglas Thompson), shoots and kills both of them in the courthouse. Arrested for double homicide, Hailey hires local defense attorney Jake Brigance (Sebastian Arcelus) to represent him. With the help of law student Ellen Roark (Ashley Williams) and disbarred lawyer Lucien Wilbanks (Tom Skerritt), Brigance battles hotshot prosecutor and potential gubernatorial candidate Rufus R. Buckley (Patrick Page) to save Hailey from the death penalty. The first act flows smoothly, with short scenes and quick set changes that mimic the pace of a movie; in fact, A Time to Kill was a successful 1996 film directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Matthew McConaughey (Brigance), Samuel L. Jackson (Hailey), Sandra Bullock (Roark), Kevin Spacey (Buckley), Kiefer Sutherland (Cobb), Donald Sutherland (Wilbanks), and Charles S. Dutton (Walls).

Mississippi courtroom drama runs out of gas in overly zealous second act (photo by Carol Rosegg)

But in the second act, which focuses on the trial overseen by Judge Noose (a stumbling Fred Dalton Thompson), unnecessary video projections, manipulative emotional twists, and an annoying conceit in which Buckley and Brigance address the audience as if it’s the jury grow tiresome. The plot and characterizations get more, well, black and white as the lines become more heavily drawn between good and bad, and any sense of nuance vanishes. Skerritt, in his Broadway debut, isn’t given much to do, and none of the actors (the cast also includes Tonya Pinkins as Hailey’s wife and John Procaccino as a drunk insanity expert) deliver standout performances as the cardboard-cutout of a story continues. Grisham fans — who very likely are in the midst of reading his brand-new novel, Sycamore Row, which features the return of Brigance — will notice the deletion of certain characters, most prominently Ethel Twitty, Harry Rex Vonner, Stump Sisson, and Carla Brigance, making for a more streamlined version, but there are better ways to kill time than by seeing this overly zealous treatment of A Time to Kill. [ed note: On November 7, it was announced that the final performance will be held on November 17. In addition, John Grisham will host the November 14 performance, discussing the original novel, the play, and the sequel, Sycamore Row.]

NEXT WAVE THEATER: NOSFERATU

Grzegorz Jarzyna adds to the vampire legend in multimedia NOSFERATU running this week at BAM (photo by Stefan Okolowicz)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
October 30 – November 2, $20-$65
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Halloween is quickly upon us, so arts organizations across the city are turning to horror to try to scare the hell out of us this week. Over at BAM, you can catch the frightening “Puppets on Film” series, which includes Godzilla, Aliens, and the terrifying The Great Muppet Caper; Alfred Hitchcock’s Family Plot and The Lodger, the latter with live music by Morricone Youth; and the twelfth annual BAMboo!, a free, child-friendly block party with music, candy, games, workshops, and more. But the strangest of them all is likely to be TR Warszawa and Teatr Narodowy’s multimedia production of Nosferatu, inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula — which was also the inspiration for F. W. Murnau’s 1922 horror classic, Nosferatu, a film that had to change its title, character names, and plot details because the Stoker family would not authorize the rights. Written and directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna, who brought Thomas Vinterberg’s Dogme 95 film The Celebration to mesmerizing life as Festen at St. Ann’s Warehouse last year, Nosferatu has an original score by John Zorn, with sets and costumes by Magdalena Maciejewska, lighting by Jacqueline Sobiszewski, and video design by Bartek Macias. The cast consists of Sandra Korzeniak, Katarzyna Warnke, Wolfgang Michael, Jan Englert, Jan Frycz, Krzysztof Franieczek, Marcin Hycnar, Lech Łotocki, and Adam Woronowicz. The show runs October 30 through November 2 at the BAM Harvey; on November 1 at 6:00 in the Hillman Attic Studio ($15), New Yorker journalist Joan Acocella will give the related talk “On Vampires.” In addition, Film Forum is showing Werner Herzog’s remake Nosferatu the Vampyre through November 7, with a bonus screening of Murnau’s original on November 4 at 7:30.

A CELEBRITY BENEFIT READING: CRIMES OF THE HEART

A ONE-NIGHT-ONLY READING TO BENEFIT THE NEW GROUP: BETH HENLEY’S CRIMES OF THE HEART
The New Group @ Theatre Row
The Acorn Theatre
410 West 42nd St. between Eighth & Ninth Sts.
Monday, October 28, $100, 7:00
212-244-3380 ext308 / jamie@thenewgroup.org
www.thenewgroup.org

Since 1995, the New Group has been staging contemporary, adventurous shows, including productions of Kenneth Lonergan’s This Is Our Youth with Josh Hamilton and Mark Ruffalo; the Tony-winning Avenue Q; Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw with Dylan Baker and Chloë Sevigny; David Rabe’s Hurlyburly with New Group mainstay Ethan Hawke, Bobby Cannavale, Parker Posey, Wallace Shawn, Catherine Kellner, and Hamilton; Jonathan Marc Sherman’s Things We Want with Peter Dinklage, Paul Dano, Hamilton, and Zoe Kazan; and Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind with Keith Carradine, Marin Ireland, Laurie Metcalf, Frank Whaley, and Hamilton, directed by Hawke. The company, founded by artistic director Scott Elliott, who helms many of its productions, has won or been nominated for multiple Obie, Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, and other awards during its eighteen seasons. On October 28, in conjunction with its brand-new production, Beth Henley’s eagerly awaited The Jacksonian, starring Ed Harris, Glenne Headly, Amy Madigan, Bill Pullman, and Juliet Brett, the nonprofit New Group is holding a benefit reading of Henley’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning Crimes of the Heart, the southern tragicomedy that was also turned into a film directed by Bruce Beresford. The reading, directed by Elliott, will feature Ireland (Homeland, Marie Antoinette) as Lenny, Natasha Lyonne (Orange Is the New Black, Slums of Beverly Hills) as Chick, Zosia Mamet (Girls, Really Really) as Babe, Sebastian Stan (Gossip Girl, Picnic) as Doc, Raviv Ullman (Phil of the Future, Russian Transport) as Barnette, and Allison Williams (Girls, The Mindy Project) as Meg. Tickets are $100 and are fully tax deductible.

ALL FOR ONE THEATER FESTIVAL: ANOTHER MEDEA

Tom Hewitt gives an unforgettable performance in Aaron Mark’s mesmerizing ANOTHER MEDEA (photo by Aaron Mark)

Tom Hewitt gives an unforgettable performance in Aaron Mark’s darkly mesmerizing ANOTHER MEDEA (photo by Aaron Mark)

Cherry Lane Studio Theatre
38 Commerce St.
Saturday, October 26, 4:00, and Wednesday, October 30, 7:00, $26 ($5 off with code LEGENDARY)
Festival runs through November 9
www.afofest.org
www.aaronmark.webs.com

Aaron Mark’s Another Medea is as intense and gripping a show as you’re ever likely to see, a harrowing examination of Euripides’ Medea myth, set in modern-day New York City. The eighty-minute one-man show is spectacularly acted by Tom Hewitt, in a 180-degree turn from his Broadway resume, which includes such villainous musical characters as Dr. Frank N Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, Billy Flynn in Chicago, Scar in The Lion King, and Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar. Hewitt plays an actor determined to meet fellow thespian Marcus Sharp, who is in prison for committing a horrific crime. For most of the show, Hewitt is seated behind a small table, retelling the story that Sharp told his onetime understudy when they finally met. Sharp shares his tale in precise, exacting detail, using multiple voices as he talks about his relationship with a wealthy British doctor named Jason, one that ends in heartbreaking tragedy. Writer-director Mark (Commentary, Failed Suicide Attempts, Random Unrelated Projects) wrote the show specifically for Hewitt, who is performing it at the third annual All for One Theater Festival at the Cherry Lane Studio Theatre (and for the first time without the script in front of him). Hewitt is nothing short of breathtaking, immersing himself in the role of an extremely complex and conflicted character whose crime is unfortunately all too familiar in these difficult times. His mastery of the material is stunning, poetically delivered without calling attention to itself. Brutal and beautiful at the same time, Another Medea is a one-of-a-kind theatrical experience that deserves to have a longer life in a bigger venue.

(Mark and Hewitt, who originally produced Another Medea earlier this year at the Duplex in the West Village and then New York Theatre Workshop at Dartmouth, will be participating in the All for One panel discussion “Something Wicked: Writing and Performing Dangerous Characters” on October 26 at 11:00 am.)