Tag Archives: Manhattan Theatre Club

EVERYTHING’S NOT COMING UP ROSES: OLD FRIENDS ON BROADWAY

Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends honors the theater legend on Broadway (photo by Matthew Murphy)

OLD FRIENDS
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 15, $110-$422
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

During intermission of Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, I thought about how much the surprisingly underwhelming MTC production felt more like a gala fundraiser than a fully fledged musical — especially one that bills itself as “a great big Broadway show.”

When I got home, I discovered that was precisely the case: It started out as a one-night-only concert presented on May 3, 2022, in London’s West End, a collaboration between Stephen Sondheim and producer Cameron Mackintosh to celebrate their long friendship. Sondheim had died on November 26, 2021, but the show went on, and the concert turned into a tribute to the eight-time Tony winner and New York City native. It was then adapted for a run at the Gielgud Theatre in London on its way to the Great White Way.

Old Friends is two and a half hours (with intermission) of Sondheim songs, performed by an ensemble of nineteen actors, highlighted by two-time Tony winner and four-time Emmy and Grammy nominee Bernadette Peters, who has appeared in five Sondheim shows, and Tony winner and two-time Grammy nominee Lea Salonga, whose only previous Sondheim credit is a 2019 Manila production of Sweeney Todd in which she played Mrs. Lovett. Peters and Salonga introduce the show to uproarious applause but neither is the standout, as a few others steal the spotlight.

The show consists of forty-two songs from fourteen musicals, mostly staged in front of a glittery raised bandstand where the fourteen-piece orchestra performs. The singers and dancers come out for each number in different costumes by Jill Parker, often inspired by the original production, and range from classy to silly. Matt Kinley’s set also features two sliding towers on either side; George Reeve adds projections of the New York City skyline, a forest, and other locations on the back brick wall and on small screens that descend from the ceiling.

Director Matthew Bourne and choreographer Stephen Mear are never able to achieve any kind of flow in the proceedings, primarily because the members of the cast all have distinct styles, vocal ranges, and physical abilities. In addition, the numbers just don’t stand up on their own; Peters tries to bring heft to “Children Will Listen” (Into the Woods), “Send in the Clowns” (A Little Night Music), and “Losing My Mind” (Follies) and Salonga belts out “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” (Gypsy), but it feels more like a cabaret revue with syrupy arrangements.

Faring much better are understudy Paige Faure, who is hilarious as the disgruntled bride-to-be in “Getting Married Today” from Company, Bonnie Langford, who nails “I’m Still Here” as Carlotta Campion from Follies, and Tony winner Beth Leavel, who knocks it out of the park as Joanne in “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company.

The men, led by Gavin Lee (“Live Alone and Like It” from Dick Tracy), Jason Pennycooke (“Buddy’s Blues” from Follies), Jeremy Secomb (“My Friends” from Sweeney Todd), and Kyle Selig (“Everybody Ought to Have a Maid” from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum with Lee and Secomb), all overplay their hand, trying too hard.

Songs from West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and Sunday in the Park with George receive more detailed stagings but get lost in the shuffle. There are also tunes from Anyone Can Whistle, Passion, Merrily We Roll Along, Bounce, and The Mad Show with such other performers as Jacob Dickey, Kevin Earley, Jasmine Forsberg, Kate Jennings Grant, Bonnie Langford, Joanna Riding, Maria Wirries, and Daniel Yearwood.

There’s an adorable clip of Sondheim at the piano with Andrew Lloyd Webber from the two-day June 1998 concert Hey, Mr. Producer!, which lauded Mackintosh’s career, but it also reinforces how bumpy and uneven the evening is and how much better it could have been. There’s a reason why Old Friends received no Tony nominations and only one Drama Desk nod, for Mick Potter’s sound design; I can confirm that the show sounds terrific.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER: THREE PLAYS ABOUT DEAR OLD MOM

Five actors portray multiple characters in Neena Beber’s Brecht adaptation at BAC (photo by Maria Baranova)

A MOTHER
Baryshnikov Arts Center, Jerome Robbins Theater
450 West 37th St. between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
March 29 – April 13, $59-$79
www.bacnyc.org

There was already a palpable buzz at the Baryshnikov Arts Center on April 7, opening night of Neena Beber’s Brecht adaptation, A Mother, before several Jessicas arrived: Jessica Hecht, who co-conceived the show and was about to step onstage in her starring role as Pelagea Vlassova, and a resplendent Jessica Lange in the audience, who raised the event’s already high-glamour quotient. Lange, who has won three Emmys, two Oscars, and a Tony, has portrayed several memorable mothers onstage during her long career, including Phyllis in Paula Vogel’s Mother Play last year and Mary Tyrone in Jonathan Kent’s 2016 production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, was there not just as a fan of Brechtian epic theater but also because Shura Baryshnikov, her daughter with BAC founding artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov, is the show’s choreographer.

Brecht’s 1932 play, the full title of which is The Mother: The Life of the Revolutionary Pelagea Vlassova from Tver, is based on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel known alternately as The Mother and, more simply, Mother. Beber and her co-creator, Emmy and Tony nominee Jessica Hecht, have changed the title to A Mother, which gives it more of a universal feel. They have also updated the setting; the action takes place in 1917 Russia, 1979 Miami, and the present.

In Russia, the widow Pelagea Vlassova (Hecht) is worried that her son, Pavel (Fergie Philippe), has fallen in with dangerous revolutionaries Ivan (Portia) and Anton (Zane Pais), who are protesting the treatment of factory workers and are threatening to strike. In Miami, fifteen-year-old Jess (Hecht) is having a blast at JD’s Disco on the beach, where she dances with seventeen-year-old Daryl (Philippe), who she hopes will be her first true love. In the present, she looks back at her life, including the summer she spent at Camp Shalom Aleichem in Barkhamstead, Connecticut, where she learned about Brecht from counselor Michelle (Delilah Napier), who was determined to inject plenty of Brecht into the campers’ production of Lerner and Loewe’s 1951 musical, Paint Your Wagon.

Michelle is wrapped up in her own Brechtian world view. “Who cares what you see yourself as? Identification is the lowest form of appreciation!” she tells one camper. She advises another, “Play the opposite. Think the opposite. Do the opposite.” And she declares, “Everything artificial is less artificial if you acknowledge that it’s artificial. The best way to be real when you are doing a play is to be fake.”

That’s precisely how Beber, director Maria Mileaf, set designer Neil Patel, costumer Katherine Roth, choreographer Shura Baryshnikov, lighting designer Matthew Richards, and the cast of five approach A Mother. Their production regularly reminds us that we are in a theater watching a fictional show in 2025, from their use of Brecht curtains to Jess’s interactions with the audience and clever dialogue.

“I don’t care what they say, disco is never gonna die,” Daryl insists. One of the other clubgoers (Napier) explains, “Born in the clubs frequented primarily by gay and African-American and Latino fans in opposition to the dominant social structures!” Social structures involving race and injustice come to the fore when the narrative shifts to the real-life murder of Black insurance salesman and Marine Arthur Lee McDuffie at the hands of police officers, leading to the 1980 Miami riots. In one of the most poignant moments of the play, Arthur’s mother, Eula Bell McDuffie (Portia), sings the elegiac African American spiritual “Wade in the Water” (the tune of which Jess transforms into the Mourner’s Kaddish).

As per Brecht’s instructions for this “learning play,” music is a key contributor, with songs ranging from Lipps Inc.’s “Funkytown” and “Wade in the Water” to compositions by Mustapha Khan, William Kenneth Vaughan, and Norman (Skip) Burns. Among the new tunes are “Time to Fight” (“Take it to the street”), “Our Spot Is Desperate” (“Things can’t go on this way”), and “Let’s Make It Strange” (“You can melt gold to re-form / into shapes not quite born / with the fire of dialectical materiality”). As Michelle points out, “Think about that Brecht said: ‘Will there be singing in dark times? Yes, there will be singing, about the dark times.’”

Slyly referencing the Brecht-Gorky connection, the facade of the house at the back of the set features the number 775, a reference to Brecht’s 775th poem, “Stormbird,” which was inspired by Gorky’s “The Song of the Stormy Petrel.”

A Mother is a fun, thoroughly entertaining hundred-minute romp that maybe would have had even Brecht disco dancing at the end. “The aim was to teach certain forms of political struggle to the audience,” Brecht wrote in 1933 about the show. At the end of this production, Jess relates how copies of Brecht’s play were burned by the Nazis, then strolls through pieces of history on her way to today.

“I thought things would be different by now but dark times, dark times keep coming,” she says before reminding everyone about the hope — and revolutionary struggle — that is at the heart of epic theater.

Matt Doyle and Caroline Aaron star as son and mother in semiautobiographical play (photo by Carol Rosegg)

CONVERSATIONS WITH MOTHER
Theatre 555
555 West Forty-Second St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through April 21, $67-$169
conversationsplay.com

Matthew Lombardo’s Conversations with Mother began life about a decade ago as a series of Facebook posts detailing verbatim phone calls the playwright had with his mother. He eventually decided to turn the daily talks into the semiautobiographical show, which closes April 21 at Theatre 555. (It had been scheduled to run through May 11.)

The play traces the relationship between Maria Collavechio (Caroline Aaron) and her son, Bobby (Matt Doyle), starting in Connecticut in 1966, when she is thirty-seven and he is eight. Bobby desperately wants to come home from sleepaway camp, and Maria says absolutely not — until he writes to her, “Dear Mom: One of the camp counselors asked me to stay with him in his van overnight. He has strawberry Charleston Chews, clicker clackers, and eyeglasses that have real X-ray vision. Can I stay with him some night? Love, Bobby.”

For the next forty years, Bobby keeps getting into trouble, refusing to follow his mother’s sage advice, as he moves to New York and falls in love with an abusive man. Often when admitting his bad choices to her, he asks if she’s mad, and when she says no, he adds, “Good. Cause there’s more.” The strong-willed Maria is not angry as much as disappointed that the tender and insecure Bobby cannot find himself a better life; she believes he is wasting his youth and his chances; he deserves more but won’t believe that. The problem never was that Bobby is gay — Maria embraces that from when he first comes out to her — but that Bobby keeps screwing up, both personally and professionally. And it gets tiring, for her and, unfortunately, the audience.

The play is told in such chapters as “Tell Me The Truth and I Won’t Get Mad,” “Why Can’t You Ever Meet a Nice Boy?,” and “If Your Phone Doesn’t Ring, It’s Me,” as Maria and Bobby go through good times and bad. Even as Bobby starts his career as a playwright, he is unable to enjoy it. He explains, “I’m just so tired. I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want to be happy. I don’t want to be sad. I don’t want to be sorry. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to know. I just want to be numb.” Maria responds, “I don’t know what to do with you, Bobby. I really don’t know what else to do. I gave you everything. More than all the other kids combined. I gave you things in me I didn’t even know I had. And for what? So you can bitch about your shitty life? No one has a better life than you!”

The narrative takes a turn when Maria becomes ill, leading to a head-scratchingly melodramatic ending that seems to come out of nowhere.

Directed by Noah Himmelstein (The Lucky Star, Los Otros), Conversations with Mother takes place on Wilson Chin’s framed set, where various chairs, bars, and tables are wheeled on and off and props are hidden in the walls. Ryan Park outfits Aaron in fanciful dresses while Doyle wears camp T-shirts with a silly hat, a revealing apron with a silly hat, a hoodie, and eventually more grown-up clothing.

Aaron (Madwomen of the West, A Kid Like Jake) and Tony winner Doyle (Company, A Clockwork Orange) never quite connect; the characters feel like caricatures trapped in a repetitive circle that is hard for the audience to become engaged in. Lombardo, whose previous plays include Tea at Five about Katharine Hepburn and Looped about Tallulah Bankhead, doesn’t develop enough depth; perhaps he’s too close to the material.

At the conclusion of the eighty-five-minute play, you’re likely to think, thank goodness there’s not more.

Jeanine Serralles, Andrew Barth Feldman, and Joanna Gleason star as three generations of a Jewish family in New York in We Had a World (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

WE HAD A WORLD
New York City Center Stage II
131 West Fifty-Fifth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 11, 4160
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.nycitycenter.org

New York City native Joshua Harmon is a master at writing about families, specifically Jewish ones, as evidenced by such works as Bad Jews, Skintight, and the epic Prayer for the French Republic. He turns his focus on his own clan in the beautifully told We Had a World, exploring his relationship with his mother and grandmother — and their complicated relationship with each other.

The hundred-minute play begins with Joshua (Andrew Barth Feldman) receiving a phone call from his grandmother, Renee (Joanna Gleason), whom he calls Nana, telling him that his next play should be about the estrangement between his mother, Ellen (Jeanine Serralles), and his aunt, the unseen Susan, focusing on a problematic Passover Seder — and that it should be called Battle of the Titans.

“I have — always wanted to write about our family; I didn’t know if — I had your permission?” he says. She gives him her blessing while making him promise that it will be “as bitter and vitriolic as possible. . . . You can even make your grandmother a real Medea. It ought to be a real humdinger.”

We Had a World is indeed bitter and vitriolic, and a real humdinger, but not in the way the fictionalized Joshua imagined; it is also sweetly innocent, tender-hearted, and almost too honest.

The story ranges from 1988, when Joshua is five, to 2018, when ninety-four-year-old Renee is sick. During his early years, Renee introduces Joshua to the arts, taking him to the R-rated Dances with Wolves, a Robert Mapplethorpe show, an exhibit featuring Tom Friedman’s Soap (which has a pubic hair on it), and the 1994 Broadway production of Medea starring Diana Rigg, an adaptation of the Greek tragedy in which a mother brutally murders her children.

“I don’t think my Mom would ever kill me,” Josh wonders.

“No, I don’t suppose she would,” Renee answers.

“Would you ever kill your children?” he asks.

“It would depend on the situation,” she responds.

Among the other cultural references are E. L. Konigsburg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient, and Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country.

Over time, however, Joshua learns some hard truths about his grandmother while coming to understand his mother in a much more profound way.

Tony-nominated director Trip Cullman (Cult of Love, Significant Other) artfully guides the action on John Lee Beatty’s open set, the audience on three sides, practically in the characters’ laps; you’ll want to try out Renee’s two Parisian high-backed love seats covered in pale green silk, an important plot point, but don’t.

In her return to the stage after a self-imposed twelve-year absence, Tony winner Gleason (Into the Woods, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) is luminous as Renee, who is not quite the heroic figure Joshua initially thought she was, while two-time Drama Desk nominee Serralles (Dying for It, Gloria) vividly captures the complexities of the more heroic Ellen.

The immensely likable Feldman (Dear Evan Hansen, Little Shop of Horrors) ably navigates between eras as he also serves as the narrator, sharing information directly with the audience. “Before I can take you to Nana’s apartment, you probably want to know a few things. Like why my aunt and mother don’t want to be in the same room. But giving you the sixty-five-year blow by blow of that relationship would . . . we only have one play, so . . . just take my word,” he says near the beginning. “But first — a small family drama? There’s going to be enough ugly stuff.”

Given Harmon’s track record, it’s easy to take his word, especially if there are more wonderfully intricate family dramas in his and our future. (Meanwhile, Passover is right around the corner.)

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

DAKAR NOIR: PLAYING CHARADES AROUND Y2K

Dina Stevens (Mia Barron) involves Boubs (Abubakr Ali) in a complicated government plot as Y2K approaches (photo by Matthew Murphy)

DAKAR 2000
Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Tuesday – Sunday through March 23, $79-$99
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.nycitycenter.org

“If we both describe the same thing at the same time, will one of our descriptions be more true than the other?” Isaac says to Nikolai in Rajiv Joseph’s 2017 time-leaping play Describe the Night. Later, Feliks tells Mariya, “You love to make up stories that are more interesting than what the truth is.”

The concept of “the truth” is also central to Joseph’s latest work, Dakar 2000, a gripping cat-and-mouse contemporary noir presented by Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center’s Stage 1 through March 23.

It’s December 31, 2024, and a fifty-year-old man (Abubakr Ali) walks onstage and delivers a monologue detailing a series of life-altering events that happened to him twenty-five years earlier, during the last few days leading up to Y2K, when some people thought the world might end.

Standing on a swirling ramp, he begins, “This is a story within a story, about a person within a person, in a time within another time. In a galaxy far, far away. All of it . . . is true. Or most of it, anyway. Names have been changed. Some of the places have been changed. Some of the boring parts snipped away. Some other stuff has been added to make it . . . theoretically more interesting. But otherwise all of it is almost entirely true.”

After telling us about a secret job he had that has taken him across the globe, he concludes, “The truth — the dumb, boring truth — is that this is mostly the story of a kid who just wanted to make a difference. And the truth is . . . he didn’t. I mean, I didn’t. Or I hadn’t . . . I hadn’t done much of any consequence, ever. Until I flipped my truck, just before the millennium . . . And met a woman who worked at the State Department.”

The narrative shifts to late December 1999, and Boubacar (Ali), known as Boubs (pronounced “boobs”), is a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal, stationed in Kaolack and building a fenced-in community garden in the nearby village of Thiadiaye. Sporting a bandage around his injured head following the accident, he has been called in to meet with Dina Stevens (Mia Barron), who identifies herself as the Deputy Regional Supervisor of Safety & Security for Sub-Saharan Africa. Dina watches Boubs carefully as he shares the details of what led to the crash; she then starts asking pointed questions that tear holes in his story. He keeps up what turns out to be a ruse until she accuses him of lying about his situation, and he ultimately admits to repurposing materials that were meant for other projects.

Threatening to send him back home to America, Dina, who is hell bent on avenging the murder of several of her friends in the 1998 embassy bombing in Tanzania, offers Boubs the option of performing an odd task for her instead, which leads to another task, and another, each one more mysterious and perilous — and bringing Boubs and Dina closer and closer. As Y2K approaches, Boubs doesn’t know what to believe, and neither does the audience.

Boubs (Abubakr Ali) and Dina Stevens (Mia Barron) grow close working together in Rajiv Joseph’s Dakar 2000 (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Dakar 2000 is a riveting thriller reminiscent of Stanley Donen’s 1963 Hitchcockian favorite Charade, in which Audrey Hepburn stars as an American expat unexpectedly caught up in a dangerous spy drama in Paris after her husband is killed and she is pursued by multiple men, one of whom (Cary Grant) claims he is trying to help her even though she catches him in lie after lie. Which is not to say that Barron and Ali have the same kind of chemistry as Hepburn and Grant, but the quirky relationship between Dina and Boubs is appealing. At one point, when they’re on Boubs’s roof, face-to-face, you want them to kiss but also want them not to, as neither one is ultimately trustworthy.

Two-time Obie winner Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, King James) and director May Adrales (Vietgone, Poor Yella Rednecks) keep us guessing all the way to the finale. Tim Mackabee’s turntable set moves from Dina’s office and a restaurant to the roof and a hotel bedroom, with small props occasionally surreptitiously added when it rotates from scene to scene. Shawn Duan’s projections range from a starry sky and outdoor African locations to text that establishes the precise time and location. A metaphor linking the 1997 Hale Bopp Comet to fate is confusing, but the choice of Culture Club’s 1983 hit “Karma Chameleon” as the song connecting Boubs with his ex-girlfriend is inspired, with Boy George singing, “There’s a loving in your eyes all the way / If I listen to your lies, would you say / I’m a man without conviction / I’m a man who doesn’t know / How to sell a contradiction / You come and go, you come and go.”

Ever-dependable Obie winner Barron (The Coast Starlight, Dying for It) effectively captures Dina’s enigmatic nature, representing an unethical government that holds all the cards. Ali (Toros) portrays Boubs’s younger self with a tender vulnerability that makes his actions understandable, although his overall characterization is ultimately a bit uneven, his voice too often switching pitches, his youth making him less than convincing as the modern-day Boubs.

Joseph has noted that Dina and Ali are based on actual people, but that doesn’t mean Dakar 2000 is a documentary play, particularly as words such as truth and lie show up over and over again. During the course of the work’s brisk eighty minutes, Dina tells Boubs, “You’re a good liar,” “Trust me, I wouldn’t lie to you about this,” and “Do you ever wonder if it’s all a big lie?” Meanwhile, Boubs wonders, “How could it be a lie?” when Dina questions humanity’s general consciousness.

Theater by its very definition presents a fictional version of reality, no matter how factual it might be. But in the case of Dakar 2000 and other plays by Joseph, we should be grateful that he “loves to make up stories that are more interesting than what the truth is.”

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

EUREKA! STRIKING GOLD ON BROADWAY

The executive committee at Eureka Day School has its work cut out for it (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

EUREKA DAY
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 16, $48-$321
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Jonathan Spector’s Eureka Day is the funniest play of the year.

Five years ago, I called Colt Coeur’s East Coast premiere of Eureka Day at walkerspace an “uproarious satire.” It’s even better in the Broadway debut of the Manhattan Theatre Club production at the Samuel J. Friedman, succeeding where a similarly themed show, Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play, about a woke quartet of grown-ups trying to put on an acceptable, PC holiday show for young schoolchildren, failed. The fall 2018 iteration of The Thanksgiving Play at Playwrights Horizons was fresh and original and utterly hilarious; its 2023 Broadway version was stale and outdated, like dried-out leftovers.

That doesn’t happen with Eureka Day, which strikes gold for the second time.

The story takes place in the fall of 2018 in the library of the Eureka Day School in Berkeley, California. The executive committee is meeting, and the opening dialogue sets the stage for what’s to come.

Meiko: Personally no / I don’t find it offensive / the term itself is not offensive.
Eli: It’s descriptive.
Suzanne: I think she’s saying / I’m not putting words in your mouth / she’s saying it’s not offensive / but when you contextualize it in that way. . . .
Meiko: I find / the best way not to put words in someone’s mouth? / is not to put words in their mouth.
Don: Okay okay.
Suzanne: Sorry sorry.
Meiko: It’s fine / what I meant was / that we’d want to make it absolutely clear that it’s optional / that it’s not / Either / Or.
Suzanne: Right / and also / that the inclusion of the term on this list at all is / I think / inappropriate? / and that some people may / With Good Reason / find its inclusion offensive.
Eli: No no yeah / I just wonder though / by leaving it off / is it possible some people would find its absence offensive?
Don: You’re concerned / that it could be a sort of / erasure / of people’s experience?
Eli: Right / if our Core Operating Principle here is that everyone should / Feel Seen / by this community.
Suzanne: There’s no benefit in Feeling Seen if you’re simultaneously Being Othered / right?
Meiko: Well / no yeah.
Don: Carina, did you want to / do you want to / offer anything?
Carina: Oh, I / I’m happy to defer / I don’t know that I’ve really formed a strong [opinion.]
Don: That’s perfectly all right / even just your gut instinct is [welcomed] / this is an Open Room / we welcome your unique perspective.

The discussion is about what to include in the school’s online dropdown menu where parents are supposed to click off their kid’s race/ethnicity/heritage, but it could deal with so many other subjects that are part of the committee’s efforts to be as inclusive as possible in any and all situations.

“Sounds like there’s a lot to unpack here,” Don says, but there’s a lot to unpack everywhere in this outrageously hilarious satire.

The white, childless Don (Bill Irwin) is the head of the committee and prefers not to take sides, ending each meeting with a quote from the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi. The well-off, white Suzanne (Jessica Hecht) is a longtime board member who has put each of her six children through Eureka Day and regularly supplies the library with books. The white, Jewish Eli (Thomas Middleditch) is a wealthy tech bro with an open marriage and one son in the school. He is secretly dating the half-Japanese Meiko (Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz), who has a daughter in the school and spends much of her time knitting rather than actively participating in the committee’s proceedings. And the biracial Carina (Amber Gray) is filling the spot saved for the new member, hesitant to share her views until she can’t stop herself as it all becomes ridiculously absurd.

When a student contracts the mumps and the health department sends an official notice explaining that nonvaccinated children will be barred from attending school until they get their shot, the committee calls for a hybrid Community Activated Conversation, with parents commenting from home on the chat, which delves into vaccination efficacy, conspiracy theories, personal and public responsibility, and plenty of vicious name-calling.

Christian Burns: Wait. HALF the school is antivaxxers? Seriously????
Sandra Blaise: “Anti-vaxxer” is not really a term I’m comfortable with. It’s actually something said out of IGNORANCE.
Karen Sapp: Exactly! Protect your children by EDUCATING YOURSELVES.
Tyler Coppins: OR, Protect your children by VACCINATING THEM.
Courtney Riley: Wait what???? Why should we be forced to keep our kids home because you CHOOSE to endanger yours?
Doug Wong: Okay here’s another idea: what if we made the quarantine days OPTIONAL.
Orson Mankel: Doug, that’s idiotic. If the “problem” is that we won’t have enough kids in class, why make the problem worse???
Christian Burns: TRUE FACTS: Moonlanding wasn’t faked. 9/11 wasn’t an inside job. Global Warming is real. Vaccines Don’t Cause Autism.
Karen Stacin: Mock all you want, but I saw so many bad things as a nurse. That’s why I decided I would NEVER subject my children to Western Medicine of any kind.
Christian Burns: Remember that time I got crippled from polio? Oh, no, wait. I didn’t. Cause I got FUCKING VACCINATED.

Things only devolve from there in side-splitting ways that are even funnier — and more frightening — now that President-elect Donald Trump has nominated the controversial Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services.

Community Activated Conversation at Eureka Day goes terribly wrong in hilarious Broadway play (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Ancient Greek polymath Archimedes is often credited with coining the exclamation Eureka! upon discovering what became known as the Archimedes Principle, a scientific theory about buoyancy. So it makes sense that Spector has named the woke school in question Eureka Day. Todd Rosenthal’s set features blue chairs, red, orange, and yellow trapezoid tables that are rearranged into geometric shapes, posters of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Albert Einstein, Maya Angelou, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Michelle Obama, and a sign that reads “Social Justice” under a placard that proclaims, “Berkeley Stands United Against Hate.” Clint Ramos’s naturalistic suburban costumes are highlighted by the long, fussy frocks worn by Suzanne.

Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro (August: Osage County, This Is Our Youth) directs with a sweet glee, while sound designers Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen know just when the laughs are coming, particularly during the Community Activated Conversation, when David Bengali’s projections take over and the characters’ discussion fades into the background.

The ensemble is outstanding: Tony nominee Gray (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, Hadestown) is cool and collected as the determined Carina, who can’t believe what the board is doing; two-time Tony nominee Hecht (Summer, 1976, Fiddler on the Roof) is delightful as the nervous, jittery Suzanne, punctuating her dialogue with wonderful sighs and grunts; Tony winner Irwin (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, On Beckett) is tender as the mild-mannered, oblivious Don; Emmy nominee Middleditch (Silicon Valley) adds humanity to the selfish Eli; and Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz (How the Light Gets In, Unrivaled) beautifully captures Meiko’s evolving value system as she reconsiders being part of the team.

As funny as Eureka Day is, it tackles some hard-hitting subjects, from race and income inequality to religion and health care; the executive committee is so wrapped up in DEI that they miss what is right in front of them, stirring up more trouble with their inability to follow old-fashioned rules and face the truth of what is really happening in their school, to the students.

At one point, the other members of the committee explain to Carina how there was controversy over a recent eighth-grade production of Peter Pan. “I don’t know what they were thinking,” Suzanne recalls. “We came to what I thought was a very [good agreement] / we set the production in Outer Space / and that really solved the [problem],” Don says. “So then all the kids got to fly,” Eli adds, as if that were the only solution, while Carina can barely accept what she has gotten herself into.

Fortunately, Eureka Day does not have to worry about any such controversies, as it gets it all right, flying high from start to finish.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

JOHN PATRICK SHANLEY: DOUBT: A PARABLE / BROOKLYN LAUNDRY

Sister Aloysius (Amy Ryan), Sister James (Zoe Kazan), and Father Flynn (Liev Schreiber) have a serious talk in Doubt (photo by Joan Marcus)

DOUBT: A PARABLE
Todd Haimes Theatre
227 West Forty-Second St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 14, $68-$344
212-539-8500
www.roundabouttheatre.org

“What do you do when you’re not sure? That’s the topic of my sermon today. You look for God’s direction and can’t find it,” Father Flynn (Liev Schreiber) says at the beginning of the first Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s 2004 Pulitzer- and Tony-winning Doubt: A Parable. “Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone.”

Shanley has two plays running concurrently in New York City, both dealing with doubt and certainty. Roundabout’s production of Doubt has been extended at the Todd Haimes Theatre through April 21, while Manhattan Theatre Club’s world premiere of Brooklyn Laundry has been extended at City Center through April 14. (A sold-out revival of Shanley’s 1983 two-character Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, starring Christopher Abbott and Aubrey Plaza, completed a limited run at the Lucille Lortel in January; it covered some of the same themes as the other two.)

Doubt and Brooklyn Laundry both feature four characters, rotating sets, high-powered performances, real-life inspiration, and, with just a few exceptions, a series of scenes between two characters. But while the former flows seamlessly as the plot unfolds, the latter is bumpy and much less structured.

Doubt takes place in St. Nicholas Church in the Bronx in 1964, during the Second Vatican Council, which sought to update Catholicism in response to the modern world, moving away from scholasticism and centuries-old doctrine and theology toward new ways of relating to lay people, priests, and nuns. Not everyone was on board, and some still aren’t sixty years later.

Father Flynn (Liev Schreiber) shares a moment with Sister James (Zoe Kazan) in the church garden (photo by Joan Marcus)

The school is run by the hard-nosed, impossibly strict principal Sister Aloysius (Amy Ryan), a member of the Sisters of Charity, who has no time for art, music, dancing, ballpoint pens, Frosty the Snowman, Father Flynn’s long fingernails, or the monsignor, who she thinks is oblivious. She believes that “satisfaction is a vice” and “innocence is a form of laziness.” When young teacher Sister James (Zoe Kazan) stops by her office, Sister Aloysius starts drilling her on classroom methods, claiming she’s too lenient with her students. She wants her to pay more attention but won’t say exactly what Sister James should be looking for. “I must be careful not to create something by saying it. I can only say I am concerned, perhaps needlessly, about matters in St. Nicholas School,” the older nun says with suspicion.

Later, in the church garden, Sister Aloysius asks about Donald Muller, the first Black student in the school; she is sure that Donald, an altar boy, will get bullied, but when Sister James points out that Father Flynn has taken him under his wing, Sister Aloysius immediately tightens up. “So it’s happened,” she says, as if she has been waiting for this moment.

She learns that Father Flynn had a private talk with Donald in the rectory. Later, in her office, she demands that Father Flynn tell her what happened. The priest refuses, arguing that it was a sensitive, personal matter while understanding exactly what the principal is accusing him of without her saying it out loud. When he is eventually forced to talk about it, he explains that he was only protecting the child and did nothing wrong. That’s not enough for Sister Aloysius, who still suspects him; he storms out, and she tells Sister James, who believes the father, “These types of people are clever. They’re not so easily undone. . . . I’ll bring him down. With or without your help.”

What follows is a tense cat-and-mouse game between the principal and the priest; Sister Aloysius even calls in Donald’s mother (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), who shocks her with her response to learning that her son might be in danger from a predatory priest.

Sister Aloysius (Amy Ryan) has some harsh words for Mrs. Muller (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) in Broadway revival of Doubt (photo by Joan Marcus)

Doubt debuted on Broadway in 2004, with Brían F. O’Byrne as Father Flynn, Cherry Jones as Sister Aloysius, Heather Goldenhersh as Sister James, and Adriane Lenox as Mrs. Muller; all four cast members received Tony nominations, with Jones and Lenox winning, along with awards for Best Play and Best Director (Doug Hughes). In 2008, Shanley adapted the play into a feature film, with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Father Flynn, Meryl Streep as Sister Aloysius, Amy Adams as Sister James, and Viola Davis as Mrs. Muller, all of whom were nominated for Oscars, along with Shanley’s adapted screenplay, which expanded the story to include more than fifty roles.

Director Scott Ellis (Take Me Out, The Assembled Parties) masterfully directs the ninety-minute play, never letting the tension break as the audience wonders whether Father Flynn actually abused Donald. The story was partly inspired by Shanley learning years later that his high school mentor was a sexual predator, as well as his deep respect for nuns. Except for one scene between the two sisters and the father, all the others feature two characters talking about intolerance, faith, gossip, love, God, and what, or who, to believe.

David Rockwell’s sets move between Sister Aloysius’s austere office and the garden, with a projection in the back of buildings next to the church. Everything disappears and windows drop from above when Father Flynn delivers his homilies. Linda Cho’s costumes are primarily dark habits and vestments. Kenneth Posner’s lighting and Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound maintain the eery, mysterious feeling of impending doom.

Bernstine (The Amateurs, Our Lady of 121st Street) is powerful as Mrs. Muller, who is not afraid to make her unique point of view known, and Kazan (Love, Love, Love; A Behanding in Spokane) is wonderful as the doe-eyed innocent who is in over her head.

Two-time Tony nominee Ryan (Love, Love, Love; A Streetcar Named Desire) is almost unrecognizable as Sister Aloysius, the cagey principal who trusts no one except God. She portrays her as diamond-hard, a cold, steely woman without kindness or compassion but she’s not quite a villain, although you’d have to look hard to find a soft spot; you hope she is wrong about Father Flynn not only because he is a more relatable person but because you want her not to win. (Or do you?) Schreiber (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, A View from the Bridge) is utterly brilliant as her prey, his eyes mesmerizing, his gestures works of art; he is almost otherworldly when giving his sermons, then down to earth when teaching the boys basketball.

“Now, the thing about shooting from the foul line: It’s psychological,” Father Flynn explains. “The rest of the game you’re cooperating with your teammates, you’re competing against the other team. But at the foul line, it’s you against yourself. And the danger is: You start to think.”

He’s talking about a lot more than basketball.

Owen (David Zayas) and Fran (Cecily Strong) take stock of their lives in Brooklyn Laundry (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

BROOKLYN LAUNDRY
Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
Tuesday – Sunday through April 14, $119-$129
212-581-1212
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

“You believe in God?” Fran Costello (Cecily Strong) asks Owen (David Zayas) shortly after meeting him.

“Yeah, why not? You want your dry cleaning?” he responds.

Inspired by having his clothes lost by a local laundromat, John Patrick Shanley’s Brooklyn Laundry is a slight but enjoyable seventy-five-minute trip into a quartet of people facing turning points in their lives. Fran is a cynical thirty-seven-year-old office worker, the youngest of three siblings; her sister Trish (Florencia Lozano) lives in a hospice trailer in Pennsylvania with her two young kids, her ex-husband in jail; her sister Susie (Andrea Syglowski), who lives with her husband and their six-year-old son in the city, is the responsible one; and the fiftyish Owen owns three laundries and hasn’t been with a woman since his fiancée left him two years before.

It’s not exactly love at first sight for Fran and Owen when she comes in to drop off a bag of laundry, where she has a credit because they lost her laundry six months ago. “You’re like my fiancée was,” he says. “She’s . . . ?” Fran begins. “Gone. She was like you. Smart, one inch from terrific, but gloomy,” he continues. She answers, “I don’t think I’m gloomy. I think what I’m suffering from is reality.” Owen: “Some folks look life in the mouth.” Fran: “You’re not one of those people who think I’m manifesting, are you?”

He asks her on a date, and she reluctantly agrees. “Why would you want to have dinner with a person who’s in the middle of an episode?” she asks. He responds, “I don’t know. Everybody has a bad day.”

Fran goes out with Owen and meets up with Trish in Pennsylvania and Susie in Brooklyn as she takes stock of her sad, lonely life; her problems are not about to just come out in the wash.

Susie (Andrea Syglowski) and Fran (Cecily Strong) have a family squabble in John Patrick Shanley world premiere for MTC (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The concept of sleep is an underlying theme of the play. At one point, Susie says to Fran, “It’s a wake-up call,” and Fran responds, “Was I asleep?” Sleep is brought up by all four characters, which harkens back to Doubt. “Oh. I can’t sleep,” Sister Aloysius tells Father Flynn, who asks, “Why not?” The nun says, “Bad dreams. Actually one bad dream and then I haven’t slept right since.” Later, she says to Sister James, “Maybe we’re not supposed to sleep so well.”

Santo Loquasto’s set rotates from Owen’s laundry, which appears to be fully operational, chugging away as the audience enters, to the bedroom in Trish’s trailer, Fran’s studio apartment, and the restaurant where Fran and Owen go to dinner. Suzy Benzinger’s costumes are naturalistic, Brian MacDevitt’s lighting is sharp, particularly in the dinner scene, and John Gromada’s original music and sound maintain the mood, along with Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road.”

All four actors are exceptional; Lozano (Placebo, One Wet Brain) imbues the dying Trish with a keen sense of humor, Syglowski (Dig, Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven) brings humanity to the angry and frustrated Susie, Strong (The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Schmigadoon!) empowers Fran through all her awkwardness, and Zayas (Cost of Living, Anna in the Tropics) proves once again why he’s one of the best around, portraying the unpredictable and frightfully honest Owen with charm to spare.

Written and directed by Oscar, Tony, and Obie winner and Emmy nominee Shanley (Outside Mullingar, Prodigal Son), Brooklyn Laundry contains unexpected dialogue with clever undertones. When Owen tells Fran she can keep a quarter that fell on the floor, she says she doesn’t want it, so he asks, “What? You afraid of a little change?” Trish loves the artificial flowers she’s had for twenty years. “You can wash them. They never fade,” she says, as opposed to clothing, or people. When Owen and Fran are at dinner, she is upset that chicken is not on the menu, so he urges her, “This is exactly when reality becomes super important. You must choose from what exists on the menu, Fran, and not choose the invisible thing in your mind.”

However, each scene seems to exist in its own mind; they never come together as a whole, unfolding like loosely connected stories with chapters missing.

“What do you do when you’re not sure?” Father Flynn asks in Doubt, a nearly perfectly executed drama. Meanwhile, Brooklyn Laundry feels unsure of itself, unable to sleep well.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC / APPROPRIATE

Patrick (Anthony Edwards) watches his family in Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic on Broadway (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West Forty-Seventh St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 3, $94-$318
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Success off Broadway is no guarantee of a hit on Broadway. Transferring to a bigger house, the passing of time, tweaking the script, cast changes, and sociopolitical events can all have an impact on a play or musical moving to the Great White Way.

While such shows as Hamilton, The Humans, Fun Home, Sweat, Fat Ham, and Into the Woods were sensational on and off Broadway, others ran into trouble.

Girl from the North Country was inspired at the Public but felt stale at the Belasco. Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf was electrifying at the Public but was completely reimagined at the Booth, and not for the better. Slave Play was provocative at New York Theatre Workshop but lost its power at the Golden. At Playwrights Horizons in 2018, Larissa FastHorse’s The Thanksgiving Play was a brilliant farce, but five years later at the Helen Hayes, with a new cast and creative team, it was dry and disappointing, like overheated leftovers.

Molly (Molly Ranson) and Elodie (Francis Benhamou) argue about Israel in Prayer for the French Republic (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

I loved Prayer for the French Republic when it debuted at MTC at New York City Center, but two years later, it doesn’t feel as sharp and incisive at the Samuel J. Friedman, and I’ve been scratching my head to try to figure out why. Joshua Harmon’s play is still an impressive piece of work, but it doesn’t have the same power now that it had then. It was named Outstanding Play at the 2022 Drama Desk Awards, receiving my vote, but I wouldn’t have voted for this current version.

The story takes place in Paris in 1944–46 and 2016–17, following the trials and tribulations of the Salomon family, who have been making pianos since 1855. During WWII, Irma and Adolphe choose to remain in France as they worry about the fate of their children. In contemporary times, their descendants face a vicious antisemitism that forces them to question whether they have to leave their home. The script and the creative team are essentially the same, including the director, David Cromer, who guided The Band’s Visit to a slew of awards both on and off Broadway. Only five of the eleven cast members are back, so that could be part of the issue. One is notably stronger than his predecessor, but another sadly falters in a key role.

However, the scintillating scene between Elodie and her distant cousin Molly as they argue about Israel is played by the same actors on the same set, yet it fails to ignite as it previously did. I think it was more than just moving to a bigger venue; the events of October 7 and the aftermath involving Hamas’s terrorist attack and Israel’s military response have impacted everyone’s views of the Middle East. The glue that held the off-Broadway show together was Rich Topol as Patrick, the Salomon brother who also serves as narrator and who has a different view of Judaism than the rest of his family. Notably, Topol just finished a run as a Jew who leaves Poland shortly before a brutal 1941 pogrom in Igor Golyak’s poignant and inventive adaptation of Tadeusz Słobodzianek’s Our Class, which is filled with a frightening sense of urgency.

Two previous Harmon shows — Significant Other and Bad Jews — were just as good, if not better, when they transferred to bigger venues; Prayer is a conundrum.

Three siblings battle over their family’s legacy in Appropriate (photo by Joan Marcus)

APPROPRIATE
Helen Hayes Theater
240 West 44th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 3, $209-$269
Moving to the Belasco Theatre March 25 – June 30, $79-$318
2st.com

Ten years ago, I saw Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate at the Signature. The play is about three siblings of the white Lafayette family who have returned to the clan’s dilapidated southern plantation to sell it to pay off debts following the death of their father. The siblings are not very close — youngest brother Franz has not been heard from in a decade — but their relationships are further strained when a home-made book of photographs of lynched black men is found in the house. The possibility that their father was a racist infuriates Toni, who cared for the ailing patriarch, and she becomes even more incensed when her Jewish sister-in-law, Rachael, who is married to Bo, claims that he was antisemitic as well.

The Signature show was directed by Liesl Tommy and starred Johanna Day, Michael Laurence, and Maddie Corman as the siblings. In 2014, I wrote, “Appropriate begins with solid character development while raising intriguing social and moral issues without getting didactic. But the story goes off the rails in the second act as various secrets emerge and the vitriol reaches even higher levels. Perhaps most unfortunate, there’s a moment that seems like the perfect ending; the lights go out, and just as the audience is ready to applaud, the play continues through a disappointing, unnecessary coda. Jacobs-Jenkins clutters what is a fascinating premise with too many disparate elements.”

I still feel the same about the ending, even with an insightful added finale, but everything else about the play, at the Helen Hayes through March 3 before moving to the Belasco for three more months, is better this time around. Jacobs-Jenkins (The Comeuppance, An Octoroon), a relentless reviser, has improved the script immensely, with dialogue that hits harder and deeper. Director Lila Neugebauer grabs hold of the complex plot and never lets go; the confrontations among the siblings, their significant others, and the next generation are scintillating; at times it’s so severe and merciless, so intimate, that you feel guilty for watching it unfold but you can’t look away for a second.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate is reborn on Broadway (photo by Joan Marcus)

Sarah Paulson is a force of nature as Toni, an embittered woman with deep scars and no filter, exploding with vitriolic accusations she will never be able to take back. Corey Stoll goes toe-to-toe with her as Bo, who is having financial difficulties that may be affecting his ethics, while Natalie Gold is tough as nails as Rachael, who is not afraid to get in the ring with them. Michael Esper imbues Franz with a gentleness that belies the character’s past, while his younger girlfriend, a flower child named River played sweetly by Elle Fanning, stands firmly by his side. And the set, by dots, becomes more of an integral element, both what’s inside and lurking outside.

The Broadway production of Appropriate, the title of which has several different meanings and pronunciations, feels both of its time and timeless, an intense tale about the Black experience in America that has no people of color in its cast. A lot has changed in the world since 2014: Barack Obama finished his second term, followed by Donald Trump, both having defeated Hillary Clinton, the former in the primary, the latter in the general. The police killing of George Floyd led to the Black Lives Matter protests and a reckoning with this country’s shameful legacy of slavery and racism. And antisemitism is again on the rise, with October 7 only making it worse.

This vital new adaptation of Appropriate captures all of that and more in unforgettable ways.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]

POOR YELLA REDNECKS

The cast of Poor Yella Rednecks occasionally breaks out into hip-hop songs (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

POOR YELLA REDNECKS
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
131 West Fifty-Fifth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 3, $89-$109
212-581-1212
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Arizona-born Vietnamese American playwright and screenwriter Qui Nguyen follows up his semiautobiographical Vietgone with Poor Yella Rednecks, making its New York premiere at MTC at New York City Center — Stage I through December 3.

In praising Vietgone, I wrote, “Passionately directed by [May] Adrales with a frenetic warmth, the hip-hop immigrant tale — with a sweet nod to Hamilton — is colorful and energetic.” I am happy to say the same thing about Poor Yella Rednecks, except it’s even better than its predecessor.

Once again, the play begins with Nguyen (Jon Norman Schneider), called the playwright, explaining that not everything we are about to see actually happened. “This story is based on true events. All heavily researched. All one hundred percent historically accurate. Well, at least according to my mom.”

It’s August 7, 2015, and Nguyen is sitting at a table, interviewing his mother, Tong (Maureen Sebastian), for a play about how she left Vietnam and began a new life in America. But she thinks it’s a terrible idea and the reason why he is poor. “No one want to hear story about old woman who speak bad English with bald son,” she says. She ultimately agrees to talk with him but with a few important rules: “I don’t want you to only tell happy thing. I see your other play. You like to write romantic and funny. But no life is all romance. And it is not all fun. Sometimes it is hard. We Vietnamese. We good at being hard. I want it to be true and hard.” Another rule relates to speech: “If this going to be my play, I want all the white people to sound like the way I hear them. Let them hear all the stupid stuff they say. . . . And finally, I want to talk good.”

Thus, when Vietnamese characters speak with each other, it is in perfect English, substituting for Vietnamese so the audience can understand what they’re saying. But when a Vietnamese character is actually speaking English, it is in broken English. For example, when the older Tong talks to her son in broken English, that is how she is pronouncing the language; however, when she speaks in perfect English, she is actually talking to him in Vietnamese. It’s handled beautifully by Adrales and the cast, a constant reminder of the immigrant experience.

Tong takes him back to Arkansas in 1975, when she met her future husband, Nguyen’s father, Quang, at a relocation camp named Fort Chaffee, then moved to El Dorado. When the playwright says that it must have been love at first sight, Tong replies, “Mm-hmm. And Santa Claus is real, as is the Easter Bunny, and capitalism works for everybody.”

The playwright (Jon Norman Schneider) interviews his mother (Samantha Quan) in Poor Yella Rednecks (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The action then shifts to the past as Tong and Quang (Ben Levin) fall in love even though she is still dating Bobby (Paco Tolson) and he is still married to Thu (Samantha Quan), who is raising their two children in Vietnam. Five years later, Quang and Tong are living in a trailer with her mother, Huong (Quan), a foul-mouthed, cynical smoker who takes care of Quang and Tong’s son, Little Man, while Tong works at a local diner and Quang hangs out with his hapless friends, including his bestie, Nhan (Jon Hoche). In an ingenious move, Little Man is a puppet, designed by David Valentine, that is voiced and operated by Schneider as the playwright, essentially the adult son playing himself as a child. It works wonderfully, especially when Huong teaches Little Man how to defend himself.

When Nhan announces that he’s moving to Houston to find better opportunities and it turns out that Quang hasn’t quite settled things with Thu yet, Tong starts to reevaluate who she is and what she wants out of life.

Tim Mackabee’s set is structured around five large neon letters — Y, E, L, L, A — that occasionally light up in different colors and are moved around to expose smaller sets attached to them, from a living room and a bar to the diner and a fast-food joint. They were designed to evoke the letters in the fabled Hollywood sign; just as that sign beckons wannabe stars to California from all over the world, the Y-E-L-L-A letters represent the American dream that Asians have when they emigrate from their countries to the United States — and encounter hatred, bigotry, language barriers, and other elements that do not make their transition easy. Several scenes also occur in and around a pickup truck, revealing that the vehicle is a favorite not only for a certain stereotyped group of white men who like country music and beer.

The big letters, along with comic-book-like projections by Jared Mezzocchi, are also a nod to Nguyen’s success as a writer for Marvel Studios and founder of the New York–based Vampire Cowboys troupe; Nguyen even has Marvel legend Stan Lee (Tolson, who portrayed the playwright in Vietgone) show up once in a while and deliver statements about heroes. Valérie Thérèse Bart’s costumes hit their target, and Lap Chi Chu’s lighting ranges from bold to intimate.

As in Vietgone, the cast, nearly all of whom appeared in that show at South Coast Rep and/or MTC, displays their vast talents by often breaking out into exciting raps; the original music is by sound designer Shane Rettig, arranged by Kenny Seymour, choreographed by William Carlos Angulo, and with music direction by Cynthia Meng. “I know you think I’m joking — what the hell am I smoking? / But being next to you is what got my heart thumping / Our kiddies will be cuties, bring over that fine bootie / Nothing’s gonna stop us with our combined beauty,” Quang declares. “Let me reintroduce myself / I’m better known as that shorty that you up and left / I must be crazy, baby — thought you were dead / We threw a funeral to commemorate your death,” Thu announces. “Cuz I’m more than just pretty, my brain is damn witty / Gimme one hot second — Imma run this city / Yo, say that I shouldn’t — I’m my own woman / Stronger than any man and twice as good looking,” Tong proclaims. “Even if they mad at you, you gotta be true to you / Every scar you wear, you show the shit that you went through / Ya gotta stand strong, be strong, head strong, ya ain’t wrong / So come on listen close, this here’s our fight song,” Huong tells Little Man.

Jon Norman Schneider (left) portrays the playwright and his younger puppet self in New York premiere from MTC (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

Nguyen (She Kills Monsters, Living Dead in Denmark) and Adrales (The Strangest, Golden Shield) are in total sync; nearly every minute rings true, and the pace never lags. Schneider (The Coast Starlight, Once Upon a (korean) Time) is warm and charming as the playwright, Hoche (King Kong, Life of Pi) is a hoot as Nhan and various rednecks, Levin is hunky as Quang, Quan is cute and lovable as Huong, Tolson (The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Children of Vonderly) gives Bobby an unexpected edge, but Sebastian (The Best We Could: A Family Tragedy, Soul Samurai) steals the show as Tong, who stares adversity right in the face but refuses to give up, in many ways representing the Asian diaspora in America.

Early on, right before the official interview begins, Tong tells her son, “Let me tell you what kind of story white people want to hear.” He asks, “Wait, why only ‘white people?’” She replies, “Because only white people like to watch a play.” He argues, “All sorts of people watch plays, Mom.” To which she counters, “Yes, all sorts of white people. It look like a Fleetwood Mac concert. It so white. . . . Maybe I don’t want to dig up old history just so you can make a few dollar on play white people won’t like.”

At the matinee I saw, the audience appeared to be at least half Vietnamese or Vietnamese American, both young and old, and they and the white people reacted in unison to the unconventional, important story taking place onstage. Eliciting a wide range of emotions, the show accomplishes what theater does best, bringing people of different backgrounds together to focus on the human condition, reaching into the past while giving us hope for the future.

[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]