Tag Archives: Manhattan Theatre Club

MTC CURTAIN CALL SERIES: THREE DAYS OF RAIN

Who: Patricia Clarkson, John Slattery, Bradley Whitford
What: Reunion reading
Where: Manhattan Theatre Club online
When: March 11-25, free with RSVP
Why: In 1997, Manhattan Theatre Club staged Richard Greenberg’s generational mystery Three Days of Rain, directed by Evan Yionoulis and starring Patricia Clarkson as Nan, John Slattery as her brother, Walker, and Bradley Whitford as their childhood friend Pip. The original cast is reuniting for a virtual reading of the Pulitzer Prize–nominated play, streaming as part of MTC’s “Curtain Call Series,” which kicked off last month with an excellent online version of another taut family drama, Richard Wesley’s The Past Is the Past, featuring Jovan Adepo and Ron Cephas Jones and directed by Oz Scott. The free series continues April 15–25 with Charlayne Woodard’s 1997 one-woman show, Neat.

Bradley Whitford, John Slattery, and Patricia Clarkson reunite for virtual presentation of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain

Update: “Do things really stay secret that long?” Pip asks Nan in MTC’s energetic Zoom reunion presentation of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain. Patricia Clarkson, John Slattery, and Bradley Whitford reprise their roles from the 1997 iteration of Greenberg’s tale of family subterfuge, unrequited love, requited love, mental illness, legacy, and plenty of secrets. The play begins in 1995, as the calm Nan (Clarkson), her brother, the manic-depressive Walker (Slattery), and their childhood friend, soap-opera star Pip (Whitford), prepare for the reading of Nan and Walker’s father’s will. Pip’s father, Theo Wexler, was the longtime business partner of the now-deceased Ned Janeway. They ran what became a successful architectural firm, which allows Greenberg and the characters to use a litany of building metaphors, comparing the construction of houses and office towers to people’s relationships and psyches. (You might also want to keep a running list to look up all of Greenberg’s high-falutin references later, from Heidegger, Hegel, and Handel to Trimalchio’s feast.) After intermission, the action goes back to 1960, with Clarkson as southern belle Lina, Slattery as Ned, and Whitford as Theo, laying the foundation for what would eventually happen to the Janeways and Wexlers.

The three actors are brilliantly engaging, filled with spirit and vitality as each performs from their own home. Director Evan Yionoulis never lets things get too static in those Zoom boxes as the trio share architectural drawings and an old journal. (However, couldn’t they have made sure that Clarkson had the same style blue book as Slattery?) There is an added layer of meta in that Clarkson, Slattery, and Whitford are revisiting their professional past in ways that are similar to how the play goes back in time to the previous set of Janeways and Wexlers; not only are the actors portraying the prior generation, but they’re returning to their own prior generation, nearly a quarter-century earlier, when they were not quite as big stars as they are today. In the brief talkback that accompanies the production, Whitford admits to weeping when he was off camera, overwhelmed by it all. The emotions felt by the actors are palpable; you might not break down in tears, but you will feel their joy and their pain, their confusion and their fears, both theirs and their characters’.

MTC CURTAIN CALL: THE PAST IS THE PAST

Who: Jovan Adepo, Ron Cephas Jones
What: New reading of previously produced MTC play
Where: Manhattan Theatre Club
When: February 18-28, free with RSVP
Why: Manhattan Theatre Club is inaugurating its “Curtain Call” series, in which the institution hosts new readings of older plays it previously presented onstage, with, appropriately enough, Richard Wesley’s The Past Is the Past. Originally produced in April/May 1975, the play, directed by Lloyd Richards, starred Earl Bill Cobbs and Eddie Robert Christian as a father and son, respectively, reconnecting after many years. MTC is bringing it back for a virtual reading February 18–28, featuring two-time Emmy winner Ron Cephas Jones (This Is Us, Truth Be Told) as father Earl Davis and Jovan Adepo (Fences, The Stand) as son Eddie Green, directed by Oz Scott (Bustin’ Loose, Mr. Boogedy). MTC would go on to work with Wesley, who wrote the screenplays for the comedies Uptown Saturday Night and Let’s Do It Again, on such other shows as The Sirens, The Last Street Play, and The Talented Tenth. The free series continues in March with Richard Greenberg’s 1997 Pulitzer finalist and Obie-winning Three Days of Rain, directed by Evan Yionoulis and reuniting the original cast of Patricia Clarkson, John Slattery, and Bradley Whitford, followed by Charlayne Woodard’s 1997 one-woman show, Neat, and Nilo Cruz’s 2006 Beauty of the Father, directed by Michael Greif.

MTC VIRTUAL THEATRE: TED SNOWDON READING SERIES

Charlie Oh’s Long kicks off MTC virtual spring reading series/

Who: Manhattan Theatre Club
What: Virtual fall reading series
Where: MTC YouTube channel
When: Tuesdays, November 10 – December 15, free, 2:00 (available for viewing through the following Saturday at 2:00)
Why: During the pandemic, Manhattan Theatre Club has featured such online programming as mini-modules about dramatic openings, family stories, creating strong characters, earned endings, and other topics; #TalkbackTuesdays; artist conversations; Stargate Theatre; student monologues; and other virtual presentations that can be viewed here. In addition, the Ted Snowdon Reading Series in the spring consisted of online readings of Good Time Charlie and The Collapse.

The fall reading season comprises five new plays (including some commissions), kicking off November 10 with Charlie Oh’s Long, directed by Dustin Wills and starring Christian DeMarais, Raymond Lee, Daniel Liu, and Tara Summers, followed November 17 by Julia Izumi’s (An Audio Guide for) Unsung Snails and Heroes, directed by Natsu Onoda Power; December 1 by Brittany K. Allen’s Ball Change, directed by Margot Bordelon; December 8 by Stacey Rose’s As Is: Conversations with Big Black Women in Confined Spaces, directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene; and December 15 by Penelope Skinner’s Friendly Monsters, directed by Nicole Charles. The series, which focuses on developing innovative new work, is named for and supported by theater producer Ted Snowdon and began back in 1999 (when Cherry Jones appeared in David Auburn’s Proof); among the playwrights whose work has been presented in the past are Theresa Rebeck, Adam Rapp, Mike Daisey, Amy Herzog, Alfred Uhry, Matthew Lopez, Ayad Akhtar, Jocelyn Bioh, and Lauren Yee. Each free reading will be livestreamed at Tuesday at 2:00 on YouTube and will be available for viewing through the following Saturday at 2:00. MTC will also be inaugurating “The Show Goes On,” looking back at its history, later this month, and its annual gala will go virtual in December.

IN THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR WITH RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON

in the directors chair

Who: Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Stephen M. Kaus
What: Livestream discussion with exclusive footage
Where: Manhattan Theatre Club Facebook Live
When: Thursday, May 21, free, 5:00
Why: In 2017, Manhattan Theatre Club presented the August Wilson’s Jitney at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, the first American Century Cycle play Wilson wrote but the last to reach Broadway. The production, which earned the Tony for Best Revival of a Play and featured John Douglas Thompson, André Holland, Ray Anthony Thomas, Brandon J. Dirden, Carra Patterson, Michael Potts, Harvy Blanks, Anthony Chisholm, and Keith Randolph Smith, was directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who has acted in, directed, and/or recorded the complete ten-play cycle and was friends with the playwright; he was Wilson’s personal choice to portray him in the autobiographical one-man show How I Learned What I Learned once Wilson got ill and then passed away, in 2005 at the age of sixty. On May 21 at 5:00 on MTC’s Facebook page, Santiago-Hudson will discuss his directorial choices, accompanied by clips from the Broadway run that he will review in depth; he will be joined by MTC director of artistic producing Stephen M. Kaus. Santiago-Hudson won a Tony for his performance in Wilson’s Seven Guitars, has written Lackawanna Blues and Your Blues Ain’t Sweet Like Mine, and has directed such other plays as Paradise Blue and Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.

THE PERPLEXED

Rival families try to find common ground in Richard Greenberg’s The Perplexed (photo © Matthew Murphy, 2020)

Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
Tuesday – Sunday through March 29, $99-$109
212-581-1212
perplexedplay.com

Succession meets Romeo and Juliet in Richard Greenberg’s The Perplexed, making its world premiere at City Center’s Stage I. The Manhattan Theatre Club production, which opened last night and runs through March 29, takes place in a stunning library in a Fifth Avenue mansion that has audience members gasping in delight (and jealousy) as they enter the space; the set, filled with books, austere furniture, and inviting nooks that disappear off into the wings, was designed by Santo Loquasto, who has won five Drama Desk Awards and four Tonys and has been nominated for three Oscars for his production design and costumes, most prominently for Woody Allen films. You are instantly sucked into this insulated sphere of the rich and the formerly rich, men and women dealing with who they were, not necessarily knowing who they are or who they will be.

Isabelle Stahl (Tess Frazer) and Caleb Resnik (JD Taylor) are getting married in the massive town house owned by her grandfather, the unseen, ridiculously wealthy Berland, who nobody seems to care for very much. Isabelle and Caleb have been destined to be together since they were six years old, but a rift over money tore the families apart until the two millennials reconnected on a subway platform twenty years later — how gauche! — and fell in love. The controlling and manipulative Berland is the father of the somewhat addled Joseph Stahl (Frank Wood), who is married to the elegant Evy (Margaret Colin), a candidate for City Council speaker; her red dress is wet and dirty from a stop she made at the site of a water-main break on the way to the wedding, and throughout the action the stain creeps slowly up from the hem. Their son, Micah (Zane Pais), is in med school but has also added acting in online porn to his resume. So much for the bride’s side.

Margaret Colin, Frank Wood, Ilana Levine, and Gregg Edelman play in-laws-to-be in MTC world premiere (photo © Matthew Murphy, 2020)

Caleb’s mother, Natalie Hochberg-Resnik (Ilana Levine), is a would-be social justice warrior not above delivering verbal jabs and none-too-subtle innuendoes, while her husband, Ted Resnik (Gregg Edelman), appears to be a pleasant, understated gentleman. “Don’t our children look too beautiful? Doesn’t it positively make you want to kill yourself?” Natalie says, to which Evy responds, “That’s not what does.” A few moments later, Natalie offers, “We can maintain an entente cordiale. For the kids.” Evy replies, “There’s never been a real reason for the rupture. We hate the same things. And the kids are so great. It would be a pity to make this evening worse than it already is.”

Meanwhile, Evy’s brother, the sarcastic, wry writer James Arlen (Patrick Breen), adds erudite commentary to the goings-on as former rabbi Cyrus Bloom (Eric William Morris), who will be officiating the marriage, is preparing his words for the ceremony. “I think you’re slinging a whole lot of bullshit here, James,” Cyrus says early on. “If I am, it’s not original to me, it’s what’s been passed down — heirloom bullshit,” James answers. It is clear that no one wants to be there with Berland as former glories, current enmity, and the stratifications of wealth threaten to crack the smooth social veneer. As the midnight nuptials approach, surprising past relationships among various characters are revealed and blood is spilled.

Richard Greenberg’s The Perplexed is about wedding that brings together two formerly wealthy families (photo © Matthew Murphy, 2020)

In Greenberg’s 2013 Broadway play, The Assembled Parties, one character says, “God is bogus, and religion a scourge. Still, I believe in something, though I’m not sure what.” The same thing applies to The Perplexed, which several times invokes the Kabbalistic concept of the broken vessels, which involves God’s light, good and evil, and repairing a shattered universe. Several characters think Cyrus can just spit out a biblical parable and all will be well, but that’s not quite how it works. “My friends started pointing out that I was using the word God a lot and wasn’t I an official atheist and would I please cut it out?” Cyrus admits. It’s hard to know just what the Arlens and the Resniks believe in. Perhaps it is all summed up by Patricia Persaud (Anna Itty), Berland’s housekeeper. “When we are foolish, it’s good that things hurt a little,” she tells everyone.

Efficiently guided through extensive changes during previews — there was confusion the night I went about the running time, which is currently officially listed as two hours and fifteen minutes with one intermission — by MTC artistic director and three-time Tony nominee Lynne Meadow, who has previously helmed Greenberg’s Our Mother’s Brief Affair and the aforementioned The Assembled Parties, the superbly acted The Perplexed is a clever and witty drawing-room comedy that journeys into the world of a privileged class trying to hold on after much of that privilege has gone away.

MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON

Lucy Barton (Laura Linney) recalls a significant time in her life in play based on Elizabeth Strout novel (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Monday – Saturday through February 29, $70-$150
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
lucybartonplay.com

It’s always a pleasure watching the exquisite Laura Linney, whether on television, in film, or onstage. Nominated for three Oscars and four Tonys and winner of four Emmys, the Manhattan native has an instantly infectious appeal; you want to be in her luminous presence. She is terrific once again in her latest Broadway play, the one-woman show My Name Is Lucy Barton, which is based on Elizabeth Strout’s 2016 novel and continues at MTC’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre through February 29. Under Richard Eyre’s expert direction, she flows between sharing her story with the audience and portraying her mother. So why isn’t it better?

Born and raised in the rural town of Amgash, Illinois, Lucy is now reflecting on a critical time in her life, when she spent nearly nine weeks in a New York City hospital. Her husband hates hospitals, so he refuses to visit her, instead choosing to care for their two young daughters. She is estranged from her parents and siblings but is shocked when her mother, who she hasn’t seen in many years, unexpectedly arrives and spends days and days sitting in a chair in Lucy’s hospital room, mostly gossiping about people from the old neighborhood, quite disinterested in Lucy and her family. While her mother is there, Lucy recalls the physical and psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of her parents and discusses the life she led as a child, with no television, no newspapers or magazines, no books, no friends, no sense of personal identity. “How do you even know what you look like if the only mirror in the house is a tiny one high above the kitchen sink?” she says.

Laura Linney is once again exquisite in one-woman show on Broadway (photo by Matthew Murphy)

So she set out on a new course, moving to the big city but unable to shake a haunting loneliness. “I was lonely,” she explains. “Lonely was the first flavour I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.” It’s this loneliness that is at the center of the story, and primarily women’s loneliness. Her mother can’t stop talking about women like her friend Kathie Nicely and her cousin Harriet, who left their husbands or were left by them, and their often unsuccessful efforts to make new lives and establish their own identities.

But there’s also a lonely feeling watching the play; we wrap ourselves around Linney (The Little Foxes, The Big C, The Savages), not the narrative, which seems inconsequential for the most part, and the material lets down the rest of Eyre’s (Guys and Dolls, Notes on a Scandal) production, which is stellar. Bob Crowley’s pristine set consists of a chair and a hospital bed as well as three successively larger wall screens in the back on which video designer Luke Halls projects peaceful shots of corn and soybean fields in Illinois and the Chrysler Building and streets of New York City, with precise lighting by Peter Mumford as Linney shifts between characters.

Despite it being her story, Lucy is an unreliable narrator. She regularly says “I think,” not firm in what she is relating. At one point she says of her mother, “Maybe she didn’t say that. I don’t remember.” Later she admits, “I still am not sure it’s a true memory, except I do know it, I think. I mean: It is true.” It’s as if she’s doing a (wonderfully) staged reading of the book; Rona Munro’s (The James Plays, Bold Girls) adaptation sounds more like an audiobook you can listen to while driving. In fact, the play is presented “in association with” Penguin Random House Audio, which published the audiobook in 2016, read very differently by Kimberly Farr. But forgetting everything else, there is one main reason to see the play, and her name is Laura Linney.

BELLA BELLA / A WOMAN OF THE WORLD

Kathleen Chalfant is radiant as Mabel Loomis Todd in A Woman of the World (photo by Carol Rosegg)

A WOMAN OF THE WORLD
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 17, $25-$35
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org

Currently two one-person shows about real women are running off Broadway, both with a feminist bent, both starring New York theater legends. Yet they could not be more different, one far superior to the other. At 59E59, five-time Obie winner Kathleen Chalfant is beautifully portraying Mabel Loomis Todd (1856–1932) in the Acting Company’s world premiere of Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Gilman’s utterly delightful A Woman of the World. It’s 1931, and Todd is giving a lecture, “The Real Emily Dickinson,” at the Point Breeze Inn on Maine’s Hog Island. In the 1890s, Todd edited several collections of Dickinson’s poetry, published after the reclusive New England poet’s death in 1886 at the age of fifty-five, and Todd built a lucrative and unusual career around her association with Dickinson. Todd’s talk is supposed to be about Dickinson, but it ends up instead delving into Todd herself as she shares intimate stories about her own life, including her relationship with her husband, astronomer David Todd; her close friendship with Emily and her brother Austin; and her affection for Hog Island, much of which she owns.

Mabel Loomis Todd (Kathleen Chalfant) details her relationship with Emily Dickinson and her family in A Woman of the World (photo by Carol Rosegg)

“If you haven’t already, do step outside tonight and look at the sky. It’s one of those clear nights on Hog Island when the stars are so close you feel like you could reach out and touch Polaris,” she says wistfully. “And while you’re out there, listen closely and you’ll hear — well, besides the wind in the trees — and the waves on the rocks — which together comprise the most peaceful sound I know. . .” Margaret Montagna’s sound design includes chirping birds that add to the allure. Todd continually turns to her unseen daughter, Mrs. Millicent Bingham, who is signaling her from the back, particularly as her mother gets distracted and goes off topic, letting her personal biases and vengeful character show through, as well as her extreme self-aggrandizement. “I confess to you, it’s been something of a burden to me over the years that men have always found me impossible to resist. And it’s not because of anything I actively do to attract them,” she boasts. “It’s because the average man is rarely exposed to someone of my natural talents, and singular charm. When I was young, I was renowned for my beauty. But more than that, I was an accomplished artist.” There’s seemingly nothing Todd couldn’t do, and she wants the audience to know about it all.

But soon after she notes that “like all families, the Dickinsons had their secrets,” it’s the Todd family secrets that come pouring out, one after another, offering myriad surprises and more than a few shocks. Chalfant (Wit, Talking Heads) fully embodies the elegant and graceful Todd, wearing an ankle-length off-white dress with a long necklace and short hair like a second skin. (The costume is by Candice Donnelly.) She is captivating and beguiling as she slowly glides around Cate McCrea’s tiny yet cozy set, featuring a wooden bench, a pair of carpets, and two stacks of books on the floor, with framed pictures of plants on the wall and a window revealing clouds and sky. Gilman (Soups, Stews, and Casseroles: 1976; The Glory of Living) and director Valentina Fratti (Williston, R.U.R.) turn the 2019 audience at 59E59 into the 1931 crowd in the parlor at the Point Breeze Inn as we hang on Todd’s every word and movement, enraptured by the house of cards she has so carefully constructed. Todd was clearly ahead of her time, in more ways than one.

Harvey Fierstein plays firebrand Bella Abzug in Bella Bella (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

BELLA BELLA
Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center
130 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 1, $99-$139
212-581-1212
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
bellabellaplay.com

Four-time Tony winner Harvey Fierstein pays tribute to another woman ahead of her time, Bella Savitsky Abzug (1920-98), in Bella Bella, an MTC production making its world premiere at New York City Center. Fierstein wrote the play, based on Battling Bella’s own words, and stars as the Bronx-born firebrand, an antiwar social activist, feminist, and lawyer who spent three terms as a US Congresswoman. It’s September 15, 1976, and Abzug is cooped up in the cluttered bathroom of a room at the Summit Hotel on West Fifty-Seventh St. while awaiting the returns in her Senate primary race against Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Her husband, Martin; daughters, Eve and Liz; sister, Helene; press secretary, Harry Holzer; and famous friends Shirley, Lily, and Gloria are all gathered outside the bathroom, cheering on the outspoken Abzug, who spends the time regaling the audience with anecdotes from her personal and professional life, focusing on how she has never backed away from a challenge.

“When I started this whole senatorial campaign,” she explains, “a pollster handed me a survey and was surprised when I threw it back in his face. ‘Would you vote for a woman if she was qualified?’ Now why the hell does a woman have to be qualified when a man only has to be a man?” Further regarding woman politicians, she declares, “We are not all good any more than all men are bad. But to my grave I will defend the right of a woman to be an unqualified asshole and still become president just like a man.”

Harvey Fierstein wrote and stars in Bella Bella (photo by Jeremy Daniel)

The play is stuffed with such quotes, in addition to Yiddish phrases, and Fierstein (Torch Song Trilogy, Casa Valentina often mugs to the audience for extra laughs. It’s more like a series of gags than a compelling narrative. Fierstein first appears onstage silhouetted in the shower entrance, holding one of Abzug’s trademark large hats. The hat “kinda became my thing,” she later notes. “And the press, the only thing they wrote about was, ‘The hat. The hat. The hat.’ I finally said, ‘Anyone want to know what’s under the hat?’” But Fierstein puts away the hat after the beginning and chooses not to impersonate Abzug or her style; instead, he speaks like himself, and he wears a black shirt and pants, standing barefoot on the stage. (The costume is by Rita Ryack.) Thus, we’re all too well aware that we are watching Harvey Fierstein as Bella Abzug, a stark contrast to Kathleen Chalfant’s expert personification of Mabel Loomis Todd. Director Kimberly Senior (Disgraced, The Niceties) seems limited by John Lee Beatty’s busy set, which includes a stellar rendering of the facade of the Summit Hotel but nothing is done with it aside from a very brief, very tiny shadow of a person walking down the hall. Abzug was a central figure of life in New York City in the 1970s, a passionate leader and fighter, but Fierstein never grabs hold of the era or the woman, and neither do Caite Hevener’s period projections. We never get to know any more about what’s under the hat than we did when we came in, which is a shame, because there was no one else quite like Bella.