Lincoln Center Theater | This Week in New York

Željko Ivanek and Sarah Steele make a powerful team in Greg Pierce’s beautifully done SLOWGIRL (photo by Erin Baiano)

Claire Tow Theater
LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St.
Extended through August 5, $20
www.lct.org

Lincoln Center has inaugurated its new low-price, 112-seat Claire Tow Theater, which sits above the Vivian Beaumont and Mitzi E. Newhouse, with the world premiere of Greg Pierce’s wonderful two-character Slowgirl. After being blamed for a high school tragedy back home, seventeen-year-old Becky (Sarah Steele) is sent off to spend a few days with her reclusive uncle Sterling (Željko Ivanek), a divorced lawyer who has been living by himself in a shack in the jungles of Costa Rica for nine years. Whereas Becky is outgoing and seems to never be able to shut up and relax, Sterling chooses his words far more carefully, as if each one pains him to say out loud, while wincing at Becky’s openness and questionable language. The two very different people eventually bond over smoothies and iguanas as Becky talks about what happened to her somewhat off classmate known as Slowgirl, who was seriously injured at a graduation party, and Sterling discusses the events that ultimately led him into the jungle.

The reclusive Sterling (Željko Ivanek) is forced to face some dark secrets in SLOWGIRL (photo by Erin Baiano)

Emmy winner and multiple Tony nominee Ivanek, most well known for recurring roles on such television series as Homicide, Damages, and Oz in addition to stage appearances in such shows as The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and Brighton Beach Memoirs, is mesmerizing as Sterling, a pent-up bundle of nerves who can barely get the words out of his mouth, while Steele (All-American, Russian Transport) is delightful as Becky, a fast-talking teen with no filter, spitting out whatever’s on her mind. Rachel Hauck’s main set, Sterling’s open-air shack, rises at one point to reveal a labyrinth Sterling built to help him silently concentrate and focus, something Becky seems incapable of doing. Leah Gelpe’s sound design includes animal and bird noises that make the audience feel like they’re in the middle of the jungle, while Anne Kauffman’s (This Wide Night, Thugs) direction seamlessly weaves the characters and story together. Pierce (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) has written a compelling, intelligent, splendidly nuanced hundred-minute drama that is filled with small surprises and little touches that serve as a terrific introduction to Lincoln Center’s intimate new theater, which is dedicated to works by emerging playwrights, directors, and designers, with tickets for all productions only $20.

BLOOD AND GIFTS looks at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan through the eyes of an American operative who befriends a local warlord (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through January 8, $85
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Sociopolitical playwright J. T. Rogers transported audiences to Rome in Madagascar and Rwanda in The Overwhelming, telling intimate stories of Americans abroad. In his latest work, the Lincoln Center commission Blood and Gifts, the Brooklyn-based writer examines the Soviet war in Afghanistan as seen through the eyes of CIA operative James Warnock (a strong, confident Jeremy Davidson). With his wife back in the States, Warnock heads to Islamabad as the new station chief, ready to offer cold, hard cash to Colonel Afridi (Gabriel Ruiz), a Pakistani military intelligence chief seeking to help Afghan freedom fighters, in particular the extremely dangerous and unpredictable Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Warnock joins with cynical British MI6 lifer Simon Craig (an appropriately twitchy and nervous Jefferson Mays), while their counterpart is the sly Dmitri Gromov (a very funny Michael Aronov), a Soviet agent trying to keep tabs on the American, since the United States has made it very clear that it is not getting involved in the conflict. Warnock quickly develops a close relationship with mujahideen warlord Abdullah Khan (Bernard White) and his right-hand man, Saeed (Pej Vahdat), eventually bringing them to Washington to attempt to pry more funding out of Senator Jefferson Birch (Robert Hogan) and the rest of Congress. With the cold war coming to an end, politics and family collide head-on, with the main characters taking a painful look at their own personal lives, measuring their public responsibility against their private needs as they contemplate the sacrifices they’ve made in the name of country.

Spies from America, England, and the Soviet Union are both friends and enemies in J. T. Rogers’s political thriller (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Blood and Gifts is a powerful drama about men playing war games, about fathers and sons, about superpowers invading seemingly vulnerable yet ultimately impenetrable foreign nations. Although it takes place between 1981 and 1991, it is as much about today (Iraq, Afghanistan) and tomorrow (Iran?) as it is about yesterday (Vietnam, Korea). Bartlett Sher directs with a swift hand, moving things quickly on Michael Yeargan’s small, sparse set, which consists of a tiled floor flanked on three sides by benches on which some of the actors sit while waiting for their next scene to come up, watching the action along with the audience. Davidson plays Warnock with a square-jawed determination, heading a solid cast that also includes a humorous turn by John Procaccino as blustery CIA head Walter Barnes. Beginning life as a one-act at the Tricycle Theatre’s “The Great Game: Afghanistan” series before making its full-length debut at London’s National Theatre, Blood and Gifts is a compelling spy thriller that takes audiences behind the scenes of the inner workings of the business of war and the high cost paid by the men and women on the sidelines, as well as those right in the middle of the action.