this week in theater

TWO BY SYNGE: IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLEN / THE TINKER’S WEDDING

The Irish Rep’s Two by Synge features several musical interludes (photo by Carol Rosegg)

TWO BY SYNGE: IN THE SHADOW OF THE GLEN / THE TINKER’S WEDDING
Irish Repertory Theatre, W. Scott McLucas Studio Theatre
132 West 22nd St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through May 22, $50
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

I am here to sing — pun intended — the praises of the great John Keating, currently starring in the theatrical twinbill Two by Synge: In the Shadow of the Glen & The Tinker’s Wedding at the Irish Rep. It’s a rave long in coming. If you don’t know the name, you must not have visited the Irish Rep much in the last quarter century, during which time the Tipperary native has appeared in more than a dozen productions (as well as numerous Shakespeare adaptations at TFANA).

Keating, a wiry fellow who stands six-foot-three with wildly curly hair and an immediately recognizable face, portrayed the fearful, deeply religious Shawn Keogh in John Millington Synge’s Playboy of the Western World at the Irish Rep in 2002; he is not the same John Keating who illustrated a 1927 edition of the work.

Directed by Irish Rep founding artistic director Charlotte Moore, Two by Synge consists of a pair of early short works about Irish peasantry, which the Dublin-born Synge based on stories he heard and saw, then wrote about at the urging of his friend and colleague W. B. Yeats. They take place in the company’s downstairs W. Scott McLucas Studio Theatre, a tiny, intimate black box where you can practically reach out and touch the actors — while getting the sensational opportunity to revel in Keating’s extraordinary talent.

It begins with The Tinker’s Wedding, Synge’s bawdy tale of a poor couple, Sarah Casey (Jo Kinsella), the onetime Beauty of Ballinacree, and Michael Byrne (Keating), a tinker, who want to get married. Their relationship is more out of necessity than true love.

A couple of peasants want the local priest to marry them in The Tinker’s Wedding (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Sarah harasses Michael, arguing, “It’ll be small joy for yourself if you aren’t ready with my wedding ring. Is it near done this time, or what way is it at all?” He replies, “A poor way only, Sarah Casey, for it’s the divil’s job making a ring, and you’ll be having my hands destroyed in a short while the way I’ll not be able to make a tin can at all maybe at the dawn of day.” Sarah says, “If it’s the divil’s job, let you mind it, and leave your speeches that would choke a fool.” Michael retorts, “And it’s you’ll go talking of fools, Sarah Casey, when no man did ever hear a lying story even of your like unto this mortal day. You to be going beside me a great while, and rearing a lot of them, and then to be setting off with your talk of getting married, and your driving me to it, and I not asking it at all.”

Sarah tries to force the local priest (Sean Gormley) to perform the ceremony, but he is not about to do so without getting some form of payment, as Sarah and Michael are not church regulars and she does not live the life of a model Christian. “A holy pair, surely! Let you get out of my way,” the harried priest declares, attempting to leave them, but Sarah is adamant. Soon arriving is Michael’s mother, Mary (Terry Donnelly), a well-known drunk who has a way of ruining everything. She tells the priest, “Isn’t it a grand thing to see you sitting down, with no pride in you, and drinking a sup with the like of us, and we the poorest, wretched, starving creatures you’d see any place on the earth?” When the priest threatens again to not marry the couple, Sarah and Michael come up with a bizarre plan to ensure their union.

The Tinker’s Wedding — which Synge never got to see performed, as he died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of thirty-seven, more than seven months before its 1909 debut — is a bit too jumbled at first but eventually finds its legs. Daniel Geggatt’s set features stone walls, a fireplace, a small gate, and the facade of a house that resembles a huge Native American drum. Keating is a joy to watch, whether he is front and center or drifting off into the background, tinkering with the ring or a tin can. In full character, he follows the action with intricate gestures, from smiles and nods of agreement to frowns and head shakes. His eyes gape open in wonder and shudder in fear. While that might be what good acting is about, he takes it to another level, in the simplest moments as well as the turning points.

Keating (The Naturalists, The Winter’s Tale) is even better in the second play, the significantly superior In the Shadow of the Glen, the first of Synge’s works to be staged (in 1903). Keating plays a tramp in a shoddy coat (courtesy of costume designer David Toser) who has wandered in from a storm to seek temporary shelter in the home of Nora Burke (Kinsella) and her husband, Dan (Gormley), who is lying lifeless in the bed. (The set is essentially the same save for the “drum,” which has been rotated to reveal the bedroom.) She seems relatively nonplussed by the corpse, and the tramp is taken aback.

“It’s a queer look is on him for a man that’s dead,” the tramp points out. Nora responds, “He was always queer, stranger, and I suppose them that’s queer and they living men will be queer bodies after.” The tramp adds, “Isn’t it a great wonder you’re letting him lie there, and he is not tidied, or laid out itself?” She answers, “I was afeard, stranger, for he put a black curse on me this morning if I’d touch his body the time he’d die sudden, or let any one touch it except his sister only, and it’s ten miles away she lives in the big glen over the hill.” Tramp: “It’s a queer story he wouldn’t let his own wife touch him, and he dying quiet in his bed.” Nora: “I’m thinking many would be afeard, but I never knew what way I’d be afeard of beggar or bishop or any man of you at all. It’s other things than the like of you, stranger, would make a person afeard.”

The tropes of a classic ghost story turn on a fabulous plot twist and the arrival of the Burkes’ neighbor, young farmer Micheal Dara (Ciaran Bowling) — the character Keating played in his first professional performance in 1994 — in whom Nora sees a rescuer from her sudden predicament. “What way would I live and I an old woman if I didn’t marry a man with a bit of a farm, and cows on it, and sheep on the back hills?” she asks.

A tramp finds himself caught between a young farmer (Ciaran Bowling) and a woman (Jo Kinsella) mourning her husband in J. M. Synge’s In the Shadow of the Glen (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Keating (Autumn Royal, The O’Casey Cycle) is again magnificent in Glen, his body movements and shifting of his eyes utterly hypnotizing. He is an actor’s actor, making everyone around him better; watching him watching the other characters also offers another way into the play for the audience, no matter how successful it already is, and In the Shadow of the Glen is just that, a short but satisfying foray into the fear of death that hovers over Irish stories. Moore (The Streets of New York, The Playboy of the Western World) and lighting designer Michael O’Connor makes sure to never have Keating fade too far into the background as members of the rest of the fine cast take center stage.

The two shows, which total seventy-five minutes, also include six songs, two by Synge, three traditionals, and one original by Gormley, “A Smile upon My Face,” which comes between the two comedies. Yes, despite such lines as “It’s a cruel and a wicked thing to be bred poor,” said by Sarah Casey, Two by Synge is very funny.

In his preface to The Tinker’s Wedding, the playwright explained, “The drama is made serious — in the French sense of the word — not by the degree in which it is taken up with problems that are serious in themselves, but by the degree in which it gives the nourishment, not very easy to define, on which our imaginations live. We should not go to the theatre as we go to a chemist’s, or a dram-shop, but as we go to a dinner, where the food we need is taken with pleasure and excitement. . . . Of the things which nourish the imagination humour is one of the most needful, and it is dangerous to limit or destroy it. Baudelaire calls laughter the greatest sign of the Satanic element in man; and where a country loses its humor, as some towns in Ireland are doing, there will be morbidity of mind, as Baudelaire’s mind was morbid. In the greater part of Ireland, however, the whole people, from the tinkers to the clergy, have still a life, and view of life, that are rich and genial and humorous. I do not think that these country people, who have so much humor themselves, will mind being laughed at without malice, as the people in every country have been laughed at in their own comedies.”

Whenever you’re not sure if something is funny or not, just follow Keating’s lead and he’ll make sure you’re on the right path.

THEATER OF WAR: THE NURSE ANTIGONE

Who: Tracie Thoms, Taylor Schilling, John Turturro, Ato Blankson-Wood, Keith David, Craig Manbauman, Sandy Cayo, Elizabeth Hazlewood, Jumaane Williams, Bryan Doerries
What: Dramatic reading and community discussion
Where: Theater of War Zoom
When: Thursday, April 21, free with RSVP, 6:00
Why: Theater of War Productions teams up with the Greater NYC Black Nurses Association for its latest live, interactive presentation, exploring caregiving and death. On April 21 at 6:00, an all-star cast will deliver a dramatic reading of Sophocles’s Antigone, about one of the daughters of Oedipus and Jocasta who is determined to give a proper burial to her brother Polynices, who has been branded a traitor, his body left to rot.

The fifth-century play will be performed by actors Tracie Thoms, Taylor Schilling, John Turturro, Ato Blankson-Wood, and Keith David, joined by frontline nurses Craig Manbauman, Sandy Cayo, and Elizabeth Hazlewood and New York City public advocate Jumaane Williams; the discussion, which explores the themes of the play as they relate today to the coronavirus crisis and other health issues, will be facilitated by Theater of War artistic director Bryan Doerries and held in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, and the Resilient Nurses Initiative — Maryland.

HEATHER CHRISTIAN: ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS

Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things is an exhilarating journey through time, space, and shared human experience (photo by Ben Arons)

HEATHER CHRISTIAN’S ORATORIO FOR LIVING THINGS
Ars Nova at Greenwich House
27 Barrow St. at Seventh Ave. South
Tuesday – Sunday through May 15, $35-$65
arsnovanyc.com/oratorio

Heather Christian’s Oratorio for Living Things is a gloriously exhilarating ninety-minute celebration of life, art, and nature, an immersive journey through the complex quantum, human, and cosmic time and space of our daily existence.

Oratorio is Obie winner Christian’s follow-up to Animal Wisdom, a confessional of music and storytelling dealing with the personal and communal aspects of ritual and superstition, grief and loss, ghosts and the fear of death, and I Am Sending You the Sacred Face, a solo virtual musical about Mother Teresa, performed in drag in a closet by Theater in Quarantine’s Joshua William Gelb.

The Ars Nova production takes place in a reconfigured, in-the-round Greenwich House, where the audience sits in a few steeped rows of rafters, each section separated by a dozen steps; it’s such a small group that you feel specially privileged to be there. Twelve lovely performers (Sean Donovan, Carla Duren, Ashley Pérez Flanagan, Brian Flores, Quentin Oliver Lee, Angel Lozada, Barrie Lobo McLain, Ben Moss, Onyie Nwachukwu, Dito Van Reigersberg, Kirstyn Cae Ballard, and Divya Maus) in casual, carefully considered dress move up and down the stairs and through the tiny center stage area, over which dangles a glowing orb that evokes an unstructured, abstract globe or meteor. At the top of either side is the outstanding band: Johnny Butler on woodwinds, Jane Cardona on piano, Clérida Eltimé on cello, Odetta Hartman on violin, John Murchison on upright and electric bass, and Peter Wise on percussion.

Greenwich House has been transformed into a unique communal space for Oratorio for Living Things (photo by Ben Arons)

Throughout, the singers make warm, intimate direct eye contact with the audience, signaling we are all on this planet together and need to live in unison with one another and nature. Christian’s libretto, which is handed out to each audience member as they’re seated, is in English and Latin; the lights are usually dimmed just enough to still allow you to follow along, but you certainly don’t have to.

As Christian notes in a program letter, “Don’t worry! You do not need a degree in astrophysics, antique languages, or microbiology to ‘get’ this piece. In fact, one would argue that Oratorio for Living Things could function as a Rorschach test. It’s made to engage with you at whatever level you’d like to do so.”

However, it can become a bit distracting when a lot of heads are buried in the white libretto instead of watching the performers, particularly when they’re right in front of them. But this is a judgment-free zone. (The comforting set is by Kristen Robinson, with costumes by Márion Talán de la Rosa, lighting by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew, and sound by Nick Kourtides.)

The score morphs from classical oratorio to jazz, gospel, blues, and a burst of Godspell-like musical theater as Christian guides us through canticles, hymns, choruses, and poems with such titles as “Beginning (Infinite Fractal),” “Alligatum (membranes),” “Dust to Dust (water),” “Hydrogen and Helium: History of Violence,” and “Vesuvius,” which contains the warning: “Now we have arrived at something truly Frightening.”

In “Memory Harvest,” individual singers recall major and minor moments from their past, one example of which is: “I’m five years old and my cousin is seven years old and we jump from one foot to the other standing on the side of the road across from the train tracks. Our excitement builds as the train approaches, our arms flailing, pump up and down, we want the engineer to pull the chain to blow the train whistle. And he does.”

In “Carbon/DNA Iteration 4: Building DNA via Ticker Tape on Time Spent,” the performers use numbers to quantify life, including such observations as “Three and a half hours throwing away unopened mail / Forty minutes putting lids on Tupperware / Eighteen days looking for a bathroom / One year in the ‘Bag Drop’ line / Eleven days trying to remember why you came into the room / Four hours changing pants / Two and a half years being too cold / Four years and eleven days being too hot.” It’s a gorgeous, often very funny look at the little things that add up, equating a wide range of items that we all have in common and which feel particularly meaningful as we emerge from a pandemic lockdown that severely limited our presence in society and has led to so much grief and loss.

Twelve singers and six musicians envelop the audience in Heather Christian’s glorious Oratorio for Living Things (photo by Ben Arons)

Obie-winning director Lee Sunday Evans (Dance Nation, Intractable Woman: A Theatrical Memo on Anna Politkovskaya) has just the right touch to make it all flow seemingly effortlessly, like a babbling brook where you rest and casually reflect on the beauty of everything. Evans also makes sure we don’t feel like we’re trapped in science class amid mentions of entropy, energy, evolution, chloroplasts, mitochondria, diatoms, and covalent bonds.

Inspired by Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time, American astronomer Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, and German composer Carl Orff’s cantata “Carmina Burana,” Christian imbues Oratorio with an existential hope that fuels who we are as individuals and as a harmonic unit. In the libretto, she describes “Fields” as “a brief indulgence in an environment (now established). A reminder that because something is devoid of human consciousness or observation does not mean that it is empty.” In “Vesuvius: Dormancy,” we are told, “Do not mistake dying for stopping,” and in “Vesuvius: Eruption” that “we are in the middle / we aren’t at the end / of a loop.”

Do whatever you can to see Oratorio for Living Things, which has been extended through May 15; this extraordinary shared pilgrimage is sold out, but standby and rush tickets might be available. As Christian writes in the libretto, “A very smart person once said that given the choice between living in a universe where only some things are known and knowable and living in a universe where either everything or nothing was known, they’d take the former. Because out of mystery evolves curiosity, and out of confoundment evolves wonder.” And that is exactly what Oratorio delivers.

HARMONY: A NEW MUSICAL

Barry Manilow musical tells real-life story of the Comedian Harmonists (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

HARMONY: A NEW MUSICAL
National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene
Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
Edmond J. Safra Hall, 36 Battery Pl.
Through May 15, $79-$129
nytf.org/harmony

“A Bulgarian singing waiter, a doctor, a bass from the Comic Opera, a musical prodigy, a whorehouse pianist . . . and a Polish Rabbi walk into a bar,” Josef Roman “Rabbi” Cykowski (Chip Zien) says near the beginning of Harmony, the biographical musical that opened tonight at the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, presented by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.

Throughout his nearly sixty-year career, Brooklyn-born songster Barry Manilow has won a Tony, two Emmys, a Grammy, and an honorary Clio for his classic jingles and has released more than three dozen albums (including eight gold and eight platinum records) that have sold more than eighty-five million copies. But his favorite creative endeavor is Harmony, the twenty-five-plus-years-in-the-making musical about the Comedian Harmonists, the real-life a cappella German singing group whose international success was ultimately thwarted by the Nazis; composer Manilow and his longtime collaborator, Queens native Bruce Sussman, who wrote the book and lyrics, seek to restore the Harmonists’ legacy in this glittering show.

The story is told in flashback by the older Rabbi, who details how the group formed and became a sensation despite some initial stumbles; he pontificates on many of the choices they made, especially those by his younger self (Danny Kornfeld), while sometimes joining them in song. Originally known as the Melody Makers, the ensemble was put together by actor and composer Harry Frommerman (Zal Owen) and consisted of Rabbi, Comic Opera bass Robert “Bobby” Biberti (Sean Bell), medical student Erich Collin (Eric Peters), piano player Erwin “Chopin” Bootz (Blake Roman), and singing waiter Ari “Lesh” Leshnikoff (Steven Telsey). In addition to their glorious harmonies and goofy charm, they used their voices as instruments, making it sound like they were performing with a band.

Ruth (Jessie Davidson) is ready to fight what’s coming in Germany in Harmony (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

As their fame spreads, Rabbi falls in love with Mary (Sierra Boggess), a Christian who considers converting to Judaism but is also worried about the growing anti-Semitism emerging from the National Socialists, and Chopin marries Ruth (Jessie Davidson), a staunch Jewish activist who is ready to fight against the rise of the far right. As Nazi officers start showing up at their concerts, including a standartenführer (Andrew O’Shanick) and his wife, Ingrid (Kayleen Seidl), who are huge fans, the Comedian Harmonists realize they are caught in the middle of something a lot bigger than themselves and have to take a long, hard look at their personal and professional futures.

Harmony premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 1997, with Danny Burstein as Rabbi and Rebecca Luker as Mary. (The two got married in 2000 and remained so until Luker’s tragic death in 2020.) Manilow and Sussman, writing partners for more than forty years, have continued to tweak the show since then; today it feels oddly prescient as dictators and the far right gain power around the world and so many oppressed people become refugees as they try to escape bad situations that are only getting worse. It is also an excellent way to celebrate the little-known a cappella group, as there are only limited archival footage and audio recordings available online, in addition to a 1991 German documentary, a 1997 German biopic, and a 2010 English-language book.

The six actors portraying the Comedian Harmonists are terrific, forming a cohesive unit in, well, perfect harmony. Director and choreographer Warren Carlyle (After Midnight, On the Twentieth Century) has fun with the sextet, particularly in a scene in which they have no pants. Characters often enter and leave through the aisles, approximating the feel of watching the Comedian Harmonists in a 1920-’30s theater rather than a contemporary venue. And the Museum of Jewish Heritage is just the right place to stage this show, an institution dedicated to preserving the Jewish experience before, during, and after the Holocaust.

Chip Zien gives a bravura performance as Rabbi Josef Roman Cykowski and others in Harmony (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

The musical is about a tight-knit ensemble, but it’s worth seeing for Zien (Into the Woods; Caroline, or Change) alone; a New York City theater treasure, Zien is spectacular as Rabbi, who can’t help but get emotional as he watches mistakes his younger self and the troupe make. Zien also dazzles by taking on a number of minor roles, changing costumes — and wigs — lightning fast as he transforms himself into Marlene Dietrich, Richard Strauss, and Albert Einstein. (The costumes, which range from humble street clothes to pristine tuxedos to Nazi uniforms, are by Linda Cho and Ricky Lurie, with hair and wigs by Tom Watson.) Zien leaves Ana Hoffman to regale us as Josephine Baker, who did in fact perform with the Harmonists.

Three-time Tony winner Beowulf Boritt’s set is anchored by a wall of mirrors that reflects the performers — and the conductor, who leads the orchestra from a pit in the right side of the audience — and also on which are projected archival photographs, text identifying the time and place, and Nazi symbols. Among the locations are various nightclubs in Berlin, Tivoli Park in Copenhagen, a movie set in Cologne, a night train to Munich, the tailor shop where Mary works, and Carnegie Hall, where the Comedian Harmonists headlined in 1933.

Barry Manilow and Bruce Sussman rehearse with the cast of Harmony (photo by Julieta Cervantes)

At 165 minutes (with intermission), the show, featuring music direction and additional arrangements by John O’Neill, is at least a half hour too long, dragging primarily during the romantic numbers; there’s much more life when the German boy band is performing and when the political tension increases — to a point where the characters are making potential life-or-death decisions.

And as much as Harmony is specifically about the Comedian Harmonists, it also reminds us how we all should be with others, particularly in times of strife. As the cast sings in the title song: “Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah, / Oom-pah oom-pah oom-pah, / Harmony, / We sing in harmony / Like the robins in Herald Square. / Harmony, / The thing is harmony, / Always knowing there’s someone there. / In this joint / All encounters with counterpoint / End in harmony. / And it’s clear / No man’s a solo here. / Not even me! Me! Me! Me! Me! Me! / No solo mio! / Just harmony.”

TAKE ME OUT

Much of Take Me Out happens in the locker room — with and without uniforms (photo by Joan Marcus)

TAKE ME OUT
Helen Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 11, $79-$199
2st.com/shows

Scott Ellis’s hit Broadway revival of Richard Greenberg’s Tony-winning Take Me Out is well on its way to the playoffs (Tony nominations) and the World Series (Tony wins), but you don’t have to know anything about baseball to root for this compelling tale of ego, homophobia, and winning and losing.

It all starts with the brilliant title itself, which refers to: the traditional 1908 tune “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” sung by fans during the seventh-inning stretch of every contest; a reverse riff on the chorus of John Fogerty’s 1985 hit, “Centerfield,” in which the former CCR leader declares, “Put me in, coach / I’m ready to play, today”; going out on a date; the public revelation that someone is gay; and the slang for a mob hit, as in “take him out.”

It’s 2002, and the world champion Empires, a stand-in for the Yankees — one backdrop features a silhouette of the Yankee Stadium wooden facade — are off to another good season. The story is narrated in flashback by shortstop Kippy Sunderstrom (Patrick J. Adams), a good friend of superstar Darren Lemming (Jesse Williams), a five-tool centerfielder who comes out of the closet with a sudden, unexpected announcement that he is gay. Darren did not do it to become a role model, to fight for gay rights, or to make a sociocultural statement; throughout the play, Darren’s motivations are private, driven primarily by ego and self-importance.

“Now, I’m not a personal sort of guy, really, and that’s not gonna be any different,” Darren, a handsome mixed-race player reminiscent of Bronx Bomber legend Derek Jeter, tells his teammates. “I mean, don’t expect the free flow of information. Don’t expect the daily update. I’m just here to play ball. I’m just here to have a good time. That’s no different. . . . And if, incidentally, there’s any kid out there who’s struggling with his identity, I hope this sends a message that it’s okay. They can follow their dream, no matter what. Any young man, creed, whatever, can go out there and become a ballplayer. Or an interior decorator.”

But he also tells Kippy, “You think you know me? You think you know my secret? Shit, that wasn’t a secret — that was an omission. I’ve got a secret — but that’s not it.” Even his last name, Lemming, is a warning for others not to follow him.

Friends and rivals Darren Lemming (Jesse Williams) and Davey Battle (Brandon J. Dirden) sit down for a chat in Take Me Out (photo by Joan Marcus)

As one would expect, his declaration creates significant problems in the locker room. Emerging from the shower to find a naked Darren, Toddy Koovitz (Carl Lundstedt) complains, “So now I gotta go around worrying that every time I’m naked or dressed or whatever you’re checking out my ass.” Because, of course, every gay man immediately wants to sleep with every male he sees. But Darren always gives better than he gets, telling Toddy, “Why’re ya lookin’ at it’s the question.” As the quippy Kippy noted earlier, after Darren confirmed, “I don’t want to fuck any of you,” he responded, “It’s not about that, Darren. It’s about us wanting to fuck you.”

When their ace pitcher, Takeshi Kawabata (Julian Cihi), slumps, they call up hard-throwing closer Shane Mungitt (Michael Oberholtzer) from Double A, who leads them back on track until he opens his mouth one day and spews forth bigoted remarks that would make even former Braves reliever John Rocker wince.

The tension in the locker room grows to epic proportions as no one can have a civil conversation, exacerbated by Kawabata’s, Martinez’s (Hiram Delgado), and Rodriguez’s (Eduardo Ramos) inability to speak English, a sports trope that enrages more conservative fans who believe that if you play ball in America, you need to speak the language — and the same fans are likely to have problems with a gay player.

“We were Men,” Kippy slyly philosophizes to his teammates. “This meant we could be girlish. We could pat fannies, snap towels; hug. Now . . . What do we do with our stray homosexual impulses?” After not-too-bright new catcher Jason Chenier (Tyler Lansing Weaks) asks if he was talking specifically to him and then turns red out of embarrassment because of the topic, Kippy adds, “We’ve lost a kind of paradise. We see that we are naked.” It’s as if they have taken a bite out of that apple and are being cast out of the garden.

Meanwhile, Darren keeps meeting with his new business manager, Mason Marzac (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), a gay accountant who at first knows nothing about baseball except that Darren is also gay, which makes him fall in love with the sport and worship his client. “A couple of weeks earlier I would have barely recognized the name! Then the announcement — that incredible act of elective heroism — and it was as if I’d known him my whole life — as if he’d been something latent in my subconscious.”

As the Empires prepare for a big game against the club that Darren’s best friend, Davey Battle (Brandon J. Dirden), is on, the world around Darren and the Empires turns into a lot more than just “the mess” Kippy alluded to at the start of the show.

Shane Mungitt (Michael Oberholtzer) has a rude awakening in store in Broadway revival of Richard Greenberg play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Take Me Out is an exceptional drama that uses baseball as an apt analogy for the state of the country. “I have come (with no little excitement) to understand that baseball is a perfect metaphor for hope in a Democratic society,” Mason says. “It has to do with the rules of play. It has to do with the mode of enforcement of these rules. It has to do with certain nuances and grace notes of the game. . . . Everyone is given exactly the same chance. . . . And baseball is better than Democracy — or at least than Democracy as it’s practiced in this country — because unlike Democracy, baseball acknowledges loss.”

In the history of the four major sports leagues, only one NBA player and one NFL player have revealed they were gay and kept playing: Brooklyn Nets center Jason Paul Collins in 2013 and current LA Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib in 2021. The revelation that a baseball superstar in his prime is gay would be a major deal today, but in the twenty years since Take Me Out premiered at the Public, no MLB player and only one umpire, Dale Scott, has come out and stayed on the diamond. Greenberg’s (The Assembled Parties, Three Days of Rain, The Perplexed) play feels fresh and alive in 2022, like it could have been written yesterday, save for the lack of cellphones onstage (and, thanks to strict rules, in the audience as well).

The two-hour play (plus intermission) moves much faster and more smoothly than baseball games. Ellis (On the 20th Century, The Elephant Man) is a superb manager, guiding the actors through David Rockwell’s splendid sets, which range from the ballpark and the locker room to a lounge and actual showers. Linda Cho’s costumes, primarily baseball uniforms, spend nearly as much time off the actors as on. (The nudity is the reason audience members must have their phones sealed in a Yondr pouch that the staff will open for you during intermission and then upon exiting.)

In their Broadway debuts, Adams (Suits, Equivocation) displays an easygoing, likable charm as Kippy, earning the audience’s devoted attention from his very first words, while Williams (Grey’s Anatomy, The Sandbox) shows off his numerous tools as the secretive hotshot Darren. (He will reprise the role in an upcoming television series, according to Deadline.) Dirden (Skeleton Crew, Jitney) excels in his supporting role, like a solid, dependable DH who always gets good wood on the ball and comes through in the clutch.

But the MVP might just be Ferguson (Modern Family, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), who knocks it out of the park every chance he gets. Mason is the glue that holds it all together, the only one who seems to really understand Darren as both a wealthy athlete and a gay man. Ferguson’s growing enthusiasm is infectious, spreading throughout the theater; he’s just the kind of person every locker room needs.

THE MUSIC MAN

Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster turn up the glitz in Music Man revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE MUSIC MAN
Winter Garden Theatre
1634 Broadway between 50th & 51st Sts.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 15, $99-$599
musicmanonbroadway.com

In my decidedly unfavorable review of the 2017 revival of Hello, Dolly! starring Bette Midler, I wrote, “The new production of Hello, Dolly!, which is breaking house records at the Shubert Theatre, is everything that is wrong with Broadway. . . . Through it all, there’s Bette, who never really inhabits the role but plays herself playing the character while basking in the unending attention, the love bursting forth from the audience at her every knowing smirk; the Shubert practically explodes when she emerges in her glittering red dress for the title song, but it’s Bette who’s being celebrated, not Dolly.”

Unfortunately, the same can be said about the third Broadway revival of Meredith Willson’s 1957 smash The Music Man, continuing through November 6 at the Winter Garden. The star attraction is the beloved Hugh Jackman, but he is trapped as Hugh Jackman playing Professor Harold Hill, a con artist who has arrived in River City, Iowa, to sell the townspeople costumes and instruments for a band that will never be. The Grammy-, Emmy-, and Tony-winning Jackman, who follows such previous Hills as Robert Preston, Eddie Albert, Forrest Tucker, Bert Parks, Van Johnson, Dick Van Dyke, Craig Bierko, and Matthew Broderick, is as charming as ever, but he never fully embodies the character, and the fault lies in part with the audience, who won’t allow him to, and four-time Tony-winning director Jerry Zaks and Tony-winning choreographer Warren Carlyle, the duo who performed the same tasks on Midler’s Hello, Dolly! As with that production, which won four Tonys, many of the scenes don’t move the narrative along but instead are excuses to meander off track with showy, too long set pieces that are only fun for a while before we need to get back to the story.

The cast of The Music Man jumps for joy in Broadway revival at the Winter Garden (photo by Joan Marcus)

Tony winner Sutton Foster fares better as Marian Paroo, whose previous portrayers range from Barbara Cook and Shirley Jones to Rebecca Luker and Meg Bussert, but since we all know what is going to happen between Hill the snake oil salesman and Marian the adorable librarian, Zaks and Carlyle don’t focus properly on the chemistry between them that is necessary to propel the plot, even as basic as it is. Meanwhile, the cast features a slew of Tony winners in small roles, including Shuler Hensley as Marcellus Washburn, Jefferson Mays as Mayor Shinn, Jayne Houdyshell as Mrs. Shinn, and Marie Mullen as Mrs. Paroo, but it’s yet more window dressing; for example, Mays, one of New York City’s most consistently entertaining actors, can’t rise above the more dated material, as nearly all of the mayor’s jokes fall flatter than an out-of-tune trombone.

All the songs are here — “Rock Island,” “(Ya Got) Trouble,” “Seventy-Six Trombones,” “Pickalittle (Talk-a-Little),” “Marian the Librarian,” “Shipoopi,” “Till There Was You” — but the only one you’re likely to be humming on your way out is “Seventy-Six Trombones,” and only because it seems that it never ends. Santo Loquasto’s ever-changing set and colorful costumes get lost in the razzle-dazzle.

Born and raised in Iowa, Willson also wrote the musicals The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Here’s Love, and 1491, the holiday classic “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” several symphonies, and three memoirs. If he were alive to write a fourth book, maybe even he would agree that there’s big-time trouble in River City.

PLAZA SUITE

The Nashes (Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick) try to celebrate their anniversary in Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite (photo by Joan Marcus)

PLAZA SUITE
Hudson Theatre
141 West Forty-Fourth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 26, $99-$559
plazasuitebroadway.com

Some playwrights age better than others. It’s been more than ten years since the last Neil Simon revival on Broadway, and if the current production of Plaza Suite at the Hudson Theatre is any indication, at least part of the reason why is evident.

The three-act play, which opened on Broadway on Valentine’s Day, 1968, is a slapstick love letter to marriage written with a poison pen. In each act, a couple, portrayed by the same actors, flirt and argue as they evaluate their relationships and their lot in life as they flit about in room 719 at the Plaza Hotel in midtown Manhattan. The original featured George C. Scott and Tony nominee Maureen Stapleton and was directed by Tony winner Mike Nichols; the current revival stars Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, who are married in real life, with John Benjamin Hickey directing the fusty festivities. The play might be set in 1968–69, but it feels a whole lot older than that, especially in its Neanderthal portrayal of women.

“Visitor from Mamaroneck” takes place on a late winter afternoon at the Plaza, where Karen Nash (Parker) has planned a romantic getaway with her workaholic husband, Sam (Broderick), to celebrate their anniversary in the same room where they spent their wedding night more than twenty years earlier. Karen orders Champagne and hors d’oeuvres, but when Sam arrives, he is overwhelmed with business issues.

While he is a wiz with figures, she has trouble with any kind of number, which slides right into gender stereotypes. After she claims that it’s their twenty-fourth anniversary, Sam responds, “Tomorrow is our anniversary and we’re married twenty-three years.” She asks, “Are you sure?” Sam: “I go through this with you every year. When it comes to money or dates or ages, you are absolutely unbelievable. We were married December fifteenth, nineteen forty-five.” Karen: “Then I’m right. Twenty-four years.” Sam: “Forty-five from sixty-eight is twenty-three!” Karen: “Then I’m wrong. Math isn’t one of my best subjects.”

When Sam’s devoted, and devilishly sexy, secretary, Jean McCormack (Molly Ranson), shows up, things take a turn for the worse, although not at all unexpectedly. In fact, we can see what’s coming from the proverbial mile away as occasionally funny banter transforms into a terrible, unfair weight on Karen (and Sarah).

A New Jersey housewife (Sarah Jessica Parker) and a Hollywood producer (Matthew Broderick) have a clandestine meeting in Neil Simon revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

“Visitor from Hollywood” is set the following spring, with hotshot Hollywood producer Jesse Kiplinger (Broderick) meeting his high school flame, Muriel Tate (Parker), in room 719. She’s an uptight New Jersey suburban housewife and mother obsessed with his success; she dreams of the glamorous life he’s leading, but he just wants to get into her pants. As he plies her with vodka stingers, she grows friendlier and friendlier even as she protests that she has to get home and take care of her family, although she’s pretty shifty about the details. It’s evident her “I never do things like this!” housewife shtick is . . . just shtick. She knows what she wants: proximity to fame. He wants proximity to her. Close proximity.

The play reveals its age in this act with its outdated references, from Bonwit and Lee Marvin to Elke Sommer and Marge and Gower Champion, which will leave younger audiences scratching their heads (or desperately wanting to Google the names right there and then). “Will you stop with the celebrity routine. Aside from a couple of extra pounds, I’m still the same boy who ran anchor on the Tenafly track team,” Jesse says. Muriel replies, “And is living in the old Humphrey Bogart house in Beverly Hills.” In 2022 — if not in 1968 — it’s tremendously uncomfortable watching a single male Hollywood producer trying to take advantage of a woman in a hotel room, regardless of how happy or not she is.

The play concludes in June 1969 with “Visitor from Forest Hills,” in which Roy and Norma Hubley (Broderick and Parker) are in room 719 at the Plaza, preparing for the wedding of their daughter, Mimsey (Ranson); the only problem is that Mimsey has locked herself in the bathroom and refuses to come out and marry Borden Eisler (Eric Wiegand). Roy and Norma try just about everything to get Mimsey to open the door, as Roy trots out jokes so old they have cobwebs about fathers and wedding costs.

Norma (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Roy (Matthew Broderick) are facing a wedding crisis in Plaza Suite at the Hudson (photo by Joan Marcus)

“All right, what did you say to her?” Roy demands to know. Muriel answers, “I knew it! I knew you’d blame me. You took an oath. God’ll punish you.” Roy explains, “I’m not blaming you. I just want to know what stupid thing you said to her that made her do this.” As they attempt to lure their daughter out of the bathroom, Roy ratchets up the blaming of the women while Norma keeps the truth from the ever-more-worried Eislers downstairs.

The best parts of this Plaza Suite, which runs slightly more than two and a half hours with an intermission and a brief pause, are John Lee Beatty’s gorgeous set, which gets its own well-deserved round of applause; Jane Greenwood’s costumes, especially the glorious outfits worn by Parker; and the stars’ undeniable chemistry and gift for physical comedy. There is some potent slapstick from Broderick (Evening at the Talk House, Shining City), who has appeared in three previous Simon plays, and Parker (The Commons of Pensacola, The Substance of Fire), who last worked with Broderick onstage in the 1995 Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying; at one point in the second act, after Parker pulled off a hilarious move, both actors tried unsuccessfully to suppress their own laughter. The third act is highlighted by an outrageously funny stunt by a nearly unrecognizable Broderick, in gray wig and mustache and elegant tux. [Note: Both Broderick and Parker have contracted Covid-19 so the show has been temporarily shut down as of April 7.]

But standout moments here and there do not make up for the misogyny that is on view in all three acts, filling the theater with a dense cloud of midcentury woman hating. It’s also hard to get too excited about watching the foibles of wealthy white people in a fancy schmancy hotel room. The first of a trilogy that was followed by California Suite in 1976 and London Suite in 1995, Plaza Suite feels old, crusty, and unnecessary today, unless they’re going to redefine some of the characters or experiment more with the staging. Playing it straight in 2022 is just not viable, and it has nothing to do with political correctness.

Simon — who was nominated for four Oscars and four Emmys, won four Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize (for 1991’s Lost in Yonkers), and had a Broadway theater named after him in 1983 — was ultimately married five times to four women (three actresses and a dancer); this is the first revival of one of his plays since his death in 2018 at the age of ninety-one. Hopefully the next one will do more to burnish his legacy.