this week in theater

CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF

Brick (Benjamin Walker) and Maggie (Scarlett Johansson) smell the odor of mendacity in Broadway revival of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (photo by Joan Marcus)

Richard Rodgers Theatre
226 West 46th St. between Seventh & Eighth Aves.
Through March 30, $27-$132
877-250-2929
www.catonahottinroofbroadway.com

Over the last two years, there has been a plethora of Tennessee Williams revivals on and off Broadway in celebration of the centennial of the Mississippi-born playwright’s birth in 1911, including In Masks Outrageous and Austere, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, Vieux Carré, and A Streetcar Named Desire. The latest is a new Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which initially debuted on the Great White Way in 1955 and was last seen on Broadway in an all-black version in 2008. The problems with this current revival, directed by Rob Ashford (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying), are evident from the very start, as the audience applauds over the opening lines spoken by Scarlett Johansson as Maggie the Cat and continues with Ciarán Hinds’s understated Big Daddy, Debra Monk’s goofy Big Mama, and Benjamin Walker’s barely there Brick. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof demands big, over-the-top performances to hide its relatively basic story line of a family hunkering for a big inheritance when they believe their patriarch to be seriously ill, in addition to a classic Williams subplot of a character having trouble facing his possible homosexuality. It’s not so much that the actors have to deal with the memories of such previous Cat stage and film superstars as Burl Ives, George Grizzard, Charles Durning, and James Earl Jones as Big Daddy, Ben Gazzara, Paul Newman, and Terrence Howard as Brick, and Elizabeth Taylor, Kathleen Turner, and Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie. Instead, Ashford presents the play as a subdued tale lacking nuance; the audience keeps waiting for electricity and explosions that never happen. Christopher Oram’s set, a large, wide-open bedroom, turns into Grand Central Terminal as characters keep traipsing through, denying Maggie and Brick any privacy as the odor of mendacity increases. This production of Williams’s second Pulitzer Prize winner — Streetcar also garnered the honor — would have been better served in a smaller off-Broadway house than under the glaring lights of the Great White Way.

BARE THE MUSICAL

Revamped BARE musical explores relationships among a group of teenagers at a Catholic boarding school

New World Stages
340 West 50th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Through February 3, $92.50
www.baremusicalnyc.com

Bare has been around since October 2000, appearing in various versions around the world, usually billed as a pop opera. But in its latest incarnation, it has been transformed into a straightforward musical, presented by an energetic cast in an extremely entertaining production. The story takes place in St. Cecilia’s co-ed boarding school, where the shy, nerdy Peter (Taylor Trensch) has fallen for beautiful blond basketball star Jason (Jason Hite). While Peter is not ashamed of being gay, Jason is determined to hide their secret relationship, no matter the cost. Wanting to spend more time with Peter, Jason auditions for the school production of Romeo and Juliet, run by the controversial Sister Joan (Missi Pyle), who tends to bend the rules when it comes to certain religious practices, which does not make Father Mike (Jerold E. Solomon) happy. Soon jealousy and envy take center stage as Jason is cast as Romeo opposite supposed slut Ivy (Elizabeth Judd), who Matt (Gerard Canonico) thinks he is dating, while Jason’s sister, wry, cynical drug dealer Nadia (Barrett Wilbert Weed), has the hots for Matt. Comic relief is provided by Alice Lee as ditzy Asian Valley Girl Diane and Alex Wyse as Alan, the only Jew at St. Cecilia’s. Jon Hartmere, who wrote the original book and lyrics, has updated the show, with Lynne Shankel adding new songs to Damon Intrabartolo’s score to make the show more relevant to current events.

Jason (Jason Hite) and Peter (Taylor Trensch) share a forbidden kiss in BARE THE MUSICAL

Director Stafford Arima (Carrie, Altar Boyz) and choreographer Travis Wall (All the Right Moves) keep things moving fast on Donyale Werle’s hip set as the company performs such numbers as “A Million Miles from Heaven,” “Drive You Out of Your Mind,” “Kiss Your Broken Heart,” and “Pilgrims’ Hands.” One of the new songs, “Hail Mary,” is meant to be a showstopper, with Pyle portraying Mother Mary camping it up in a Vegas-style romp, but although it revs up the audience, it ends up detracting from the developing story. Otherwise, the first act unfolds beautifully, with well-developed characters and a smart use of Shakespeare’s classic romance as it relates to what is going on between Peter, Jason, Matt, Ivy, and Nadia. The shorter second act is not quite as crisp, wandering too much as it tries to make its points about forbidden love and religion, still not quite there after all these years. An engaging night of theater, Bare continues at New World Stages through February 3. There are various ways to get tickets besides buying them in advance, including $26.50 same-day general rush, “30 at 30” $30 tickets available thirty minutes before showtime for people under thirty, and “20at20” $20 tickets twenty minutes prior to curtain.

THE NETFLIX PLAYS

netflix plays

Ars Nova
511 West 54th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
January 30 – February 9, $15, 8:00
212-352-3101
www.arsnovanyc.com

Since 2007, Ars Nova’s Play Group has been putting together festivals of short works and live music dedicated to pop-culture themes and internet memes, beginning with “The Wikipedia Plays” and continuing with “Playlist,” “Missed Connections NYC,” “The Wii Plays,” and “The Urban Dictionary Plays.” This year the Play Group turns its attention to online movie streaming with “The Netflix Plays,” twelve works inspired by Netflix’s recommendation categories and people’s guilty pleasures. The queue consists of Josh Koenigsberg’s Because You Watched Weekend at Bernie’s 2: A Kantian Morality Tale directed by Wes Grantom, Rachel Bonds’s Because You Watched Sherlock: Jack of Hearts directed by Portia Krieger, Sarah Gancher’s Understated Foreign Coming of Age: December 2011, Budapest directed by Jess Chayes, Sarah Burgess’s Inscrutable European-Set Thrillers: Bolzano directed by Jesse Jou, Dipika Guha’s Because You Watched Downton Abbey: Violently Overstated British Period Drama for Ages 19-100 directed by Jou, Bess Wohl’s Watch It Again: Happy New Year directed by Chayes, Sharyn Rothstein’s Heartfelt Noncontroversial Political Tearjerkers: October Surprise! directed by Chayes, A. Zell Williams’s Emotional Foreign Father-Daughter Films: The Foreign Affair, directed by Jou, Nick Gandiello’s Hip-Hop Documentaries: How I Feel directed by Krieger, Stephen Karam’s Watch It Again! directed by Grantom, Michael Mitnick’s Because You Watched Frasier: BECAUSE YOU WATCHED FRASIER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! directed by Krieger, and Jon Kern’s Inspiring Fight-the-System Movies Based on Real Life: The Cable Bill directed by Grantom. But you need not worry too much about the bill, as the evening, in which all the plays are performed, is a mere fifteen bucks. The cast, which, based on the plays’ titles, should be having a lot of fun themselves, includes Kyle Beltran, Deonna Bouye, Nadia Bowers, Megan Byrne, Ben Graney, Drew McVety, Sarah Steele, and Eddie Kaye Thomas.

THE SUIT

Matilda (Nonhlanhla Kheswa) clutches the object of her affection, and ultimate downfall, while Philomen (William Nadylam) sneaks up on her in THE SUIT (photo by Richard Termine)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through February 2, $25-$90
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

A married couple’s woes serve as a microcosm for life in apartheid South Africa in Peter Brook, Marie-Hélène Estienne, and Franck Krawczyk’s minimalist English-language adaptation of Can Themba, Mothobi Mutloatse, and Barney Simon’s French version of Themba’s award-winning short story, The Suit. Set in the 1950s in Sophiatown, a culturally vibrant suburb of Johannesburg that was crushed by apartheid, The Suit is a story within a story with Jared McNeill serving as narrator, speaking directly to and interacting with the audience, even bringing three people onstage at one point. McNeill relates the tale of Philomen (William Nadylam), a working man who comes home early one day to catch his wife, Matilda (Brooklyn-based South Africa native Nonhlanhla Kheswa), in the arms of another man (Rikki Henry, who plays multiple small roles as well as serving as assistant director). The lover takes off in a hurry, leaving behind his well-tailored suit on a hanger. As punishment for her cheating, Philomen forces Tilly to treat the suit as a member of the family, pretending to feed it and giving it an honored place in their bedroom every night. But when he decides that they should throw a party that includes the suit as a guest, tragedy awaits.

Three friends talk about life and love in South African drama THE SUIT (photo by Richard Termine)

Three friends talk about life and its limited possibilities in THE SUIT (photo by Richard Termine)

The Suit takes place on a relatively bare stage that features only a dozen brightly colored backless chairs and metal clothing racks that become doors, windows, closets, bathrooms, and bus stops. The empty spaces in the racks and chairs evoke the emptiness of the characters’ lives during apartheid; Brook, Estienne, and Krawczyk fill these empty spaces with music, performed live by guitarist Arthur Astier, pianist Raphaël Chambouvet, and accordionist David Dupuis, who also make humorous surprise appearances at the party. Tilly also sings several heartfelt songs herself, with Kheswa revealing a lovely voice. The Suit doesn’t make any grand statements about racism, politics, or even infidelity, instead concentrating on the claustrophobic lives the people of Sophiatown must endure. The cast is uniformly excellent; the night we saw it, the show had to be stopped for a few minutes because of a sick audience member, but McNeill, Nadylam, and Henry were able to get back into their scene afterward, improvising a handful of playful jokes referencing the delay. Brook is a familiar fixture at BAM, going back more than forty years; in 1971, he presented A Midsummer Night’s Dream there, and in 1987 he helped renovate the Majestic Theater, now known as the Harvey, for The Mahabharata. At eighty-seven, he is back at the Harvey, with a delightful yet dark seventy-five-minute production that once again proves that less can be more.

COLLISION

The Amoralists explore manipulation, vulnerability, power, and control in COLLISION (photo by Russ Rowland))

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
224 Waverly Pl.
Through February 17, $55
www.theamoralists.com
www.rattlestick.org

In such recent works as The Bad and the Better and HotelMotel, the New York–based Amoralists theater company challenged audiences with its unique take on story, staging, and setting; the former featured more than two dozen actors onstage at any one given time, effortlessly weaving between multiple scenes, while the latter took place in a hotel room where the crowd of twenty people sat either around a bed or within the set itself. Its latest production, the world premiere of Lyle Kessler’s Collision, is a more staid affair, both in design and execution. The play is set in a college dorm room as Grange (Amoralists cofounder and artistic director James Kautz) and Bromley (Nick Lawson) meet. It is instantly clear that Grange, who puts up posters of Che Guevara, Malcolm X, and Kurt Cobain as well as a photo collage of “a cross-section of humanity . . . No one of any consequence,” is adept at making people do whatever he wants, even if it goes against their own ethics and morals, manipulating them in devilishly clever ways that gets deep into their inner being. He exerts his power over Do (Anna Stromberg), an innocent coed who both Grange and Bromley are attracted to, in addition to one of his teachers, Professor Denton (Michael Cullen), who refuses to call on him in class. As the four grow closer, Grange takes advantage of their individual vulnerabilities on his way to a finale that is meant to be shocking but instead comes off as overly sensationalistic and even disappointing in its obviousness. “One man’s rose is another man’s Holocaust,” Grange tells Bromley early on. The five-person cast, which also includes Craig ‘muMs’ Grant (Oz) as a gun dealer, performs solidly throughout; Cullen (Cobb, Bug) is particularly effective as the older man looking to make one last stand. Much of the narrative relies on Kautz’s (Dedalus Lounge) ability to not only convince the other characters of his superiority but the audience as well, and he does so with a smooth determination. David Fofi’s unexciting direction doesn’t add anything to Kessler’s words, which too often toy with clichés in what amounts to clichéd ways. Collision was undergoing significant changes up to the last minute, when the ending was altered and the play morphed from a black comedy to a straight drama, and that lack of definition shows in far-too-many unsteady moments that result in the show falling somewhere in between, relying on too many leaps of faith on the part of the characters and the audience. Collision continues at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater through February 17; Kessler’s 1983 hit, Orphans, will be making its Broadway debut in April, starring Shia LeBouf and Alec Baldwin.

PICNIC

Pulitzer Prize–winning PICNIC looks at a day in the life of small-town America (photo by Joan Marcus)

American Airlines Theatre
227 West 42nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Through February 24, $42-$127
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

It’s been nearly sixty years since William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Picnic debuted on Broadway, with Ralph Meeker’s Hal and Paul Newman’s Alan battling over Janice Rule’s Madge; in the 1955 film, it was William Holden and Cliff Robertson with more than just their eyes on Kim Novak. So while the Roundabout’s current revival of Picnic at the American Airlines Theatre doesn’t boast quite the star power of those versions, it is still a charming and fun frolic through a bygone era. The two-hour play takes place in a small Kansas town in 1950s America that is preparing for the annual Labor Day picnic. Local beauty queen Madge Owens (Lost’s Maggie Grace) assumes she’ll be going to the picnic with Alan Seymour (Ben Rappaport), a relatively boring and self-satisfied college student from a wealthy family, along with her younger sister, the tomboy Millie (Californication’s Madeleine Martin), and their somewhat dowdy mother, Flo (Emmy winner Mare Winningham), whose husband walked out on her many years before, leaving her to raise her children on her own. The Owens family lives next door to Helen Potts (Oscar, Emmy, and Tony winner Ellen Burstyn), an older woman who has given up whatever life she could have had in order to care for her ailing mother. To get a cheap thrill, Helen hires a stranger, Hal Carter (Gossip Girl’s Sebastian Stan), to do some yard work for her, barely able to control herself when the Adonis-like man rips off his shirt, revealing his taut, sweaty chest. All of the other women notice as well, including spinster schoolteacher Rosemary Sydney (four-time Obie winner Elizabeth Marvel), who has been dating dull but reliable businessman Howard Bevans (two-time Obie winner Reed Birney). It turns out that Hal is a down-on-his-luck former fraternity brother of Alan’s who has come to town to get back on his feet, but after he is instantly attracted to Madge — and perhaps vice versa — things don’t exactly end up as planned.

Madge (Maggie Grace) shares her hopes and dreams with her mother, Flo (Mare Winningham), in Roundabout revival of William Inge’s PICNIC (photo by Joan Marcus)

In Picnic, Inge, who also wrote such plays as Bus Stop and Come Back, Little Sheba and won an Oscar for his screenplay for Splendor in the Grass, cleverly deals with people’s hopes, dreams, and expectations in this funny, tender, and tense drama that explores the soft underbelly lying beneath the old-fashioned values of small-town America. Surprisingly, the acting is a mixed bag, with Marvel overplaying her part, Winningham underplaying hers, and Burstyn at times seeming to be lost while Grace, Birney, and Martin are more effective. Director Sam Gold (Look Back in Anger, Seminar) makes excellent use of Andrew Lieberman’s charming set, a shared backyard that firmly sets the action in America’s heartland. When Madge is up in her room, applying her makeup in front of a window that looks out on the backyard, the audience is sneaking a peek at her just as several characters are doing, everyone dreaming of the possibilities life holds for us all. In a season dominated by revivals of long-ago Broadway classics, including Golden Boy, The Heiress, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Picnic is a fine addition.

THE OTHER PLACE

Real-life mother and daughter Laurie Metcalf and Zoe Perry star in Sharr White’s fascinating THE OTHER PLACE (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 3, $67-$120
www.theotherplacebroadway.com

Three-time Emmy winner Laurie Metcalf won both an Obie and a Lucille Lortel Award for her 2011 off-Broadway portrayal of neurologist Juliana Smithson in Sharr White’s The Other Place, and now she has a strong shot at a Tony as the play moves to Broadway in the gripping MTC production at the Samuel J. Friedman. Metcalf stars as Juliana, a pharmaceutical pitch-woman who suffers an “episode” while on the road touting a new wonder drug. Long estranged from her daughter (Zoe Perry, Metcalf’s real-life daughter, in her Broadway debut) and accusing her doctor-husband, Ian (Daniel Stern), of having an affair with her much-younger doctor (Perry again), Juliana is trying to hold herself together even as she believes she has brain cancer. But as the complex, highly cinematic play continues, it becomes evident that she is suffering from something very different, and in many ways far more frightening.

White and Tony-winning director Joe Mantello (Other Desert Cities, Wicked, Love! Valour! Compassion!) tell Juliana’s harrowing story by going back and forth between the past and the present, as Justin Townsend’s lighting signals the time shifts. The action takes place within set designers Eugene Lee and Edward Pierce’s semicircular web of bleak gray frames (hiding lights and speakers) that serve as doors, windows, and mirrors while also evoking the misfiring synapses of Juliana’s brain. Metcalf (Rosanne, November) gives a dazzling performance as Juliana, an intelligent, scientific woman who doesn’t understand — and is unwilling to accept — what is happening to her. As the audience filters into the theater, she is already onstage, sitting in a chair, fiddling with her cell phone, helping the incoming crowd instantly identify with her. But soon it’s Ian, strongly portrayed by Stern, who is standing in for the audience as the truth is slowly revealed. Despite a few missteps — primarily a somewhat baffling finale that takes things much too far — The Other Place is an involving eighty minutes of fascinating theater, expertly told and brilliantly acted.