Tag Archives: Manhattan Theatre Club

DAN CODY’S YACHT

Cara Russo (Kristen Bush) is unsure what to do when Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes) offers her an unexpected opportunity in Dan Cody’s Yacht (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
Tuesday – Sunday through July 8, $90
212-581-1212
dancodysyacht.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Anthony Giardina’s Dan Cody’s Yacht has several gaping holes you could, well, pilot a luxury boat through. However, the Manhattan Theatre Club world premiere, which opened last night at City Center’s Stage I, still offers an intriguing ride despite the choppy waters it navigates through income and education inequality. The two-hour, two-act play begins in September 2014 in the suburbs of Boston, as smarmy financial wizard Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes) tries to bribe high school English teacher Cara Russo (Kristen Bush) to change his son’s failing grade on a paper on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the book that altered the course of his own life. “Incorruptible Cara Russo. I’ve heard about it, now I’ve seen it for myself,” he says, clunkily establishing the core of the narrative. “Chosen by her peers to be the powerful voice of the teachers in our town’s current, ill-advised plunge into liberal American mediocrity. The proposal to meld the two school districts — depressed Patchett, thriving Stillwell. To join the drug addicted, poverty ridden, low achieving children of your little town to the drug addicted but still high achieving children of mine.”

Cara, a divorced single mother, lives in Patchett, where her teenage daughter, Angela (Casey Whyland), goes to school, but she teaches in Stillwell, where Kevin’s teenage son, Conor (John Kroft), is slacking off. Cara is an important member of the committee that will decide whether the merging of the two very different schools, one filled with the haves, the other the have-nots, will be put to a public vote. Cara’s friend Cathy Conz (Roxanna Hope Radja), a working mother whose daughter, Britney, has just made the Patchett debate team, is not so sure that the plan to combine the schools is a good one. “Our high school is our town. We lose that, what have we got?” she says. “We ship our kids over the river to become second class citizens, they come back, how do they respect anything here?” Kevin invites Cara to join his small investing group, where he and other Stillwell parents, Geoff and Pamela Hossmer (Jordan Lage and Meredith Forlenza) and Alice Tuan (Laura Kai Chen), meet monthly, pooling their money to play the market as they drink wine and eat sushi. Cara argues that she doesn’t have any excess cash to get involved in “financial chicanery,” but Kevin convinces her to give it a try, and it all goes well, until it doesn’t.

Kevin O’Neill (Rick Holmes) heads an investment club with Geoff Hossmer (Jordan Lage), Pamela Hossmer (Meredith Forlenza), Cara Russo (Kristen Bush), and Alice Tuan (Laura Kai Chen) in MTC world premiere (photo by Joan Marcus)

Giardina (Living at Home) and Tony-winning director Doug Hughes (Doubt, The Father), who previously collaborated on the Drama Desk–nominated Lincoln Center production The City of Conversation, which also featured Bush, steer the ship through an extremely bumpy first act with several key flaws. The discussion about getting Angela into Stillwell seems moot, as it is way too late for her to switch schools in time to affect her chances to go to a better college. There is a serious ethical question about Kevin, who works professionally in private equity, running an investment club, even though the prospect of illegally sharing inside information is brought up. And it seems impossible for Cara to make enough money to afford to move out of Patchett as quickly as she plans to. But the second act is stronger than the first, delving deeper into the characters’ motivations and what they want out of life, which is more complicated than just more money and better education.

“Nobody told us to care about ourselves first,” Cara tells Cathy as she explains why she joined Kevin’s club. “Nobody told us that. And say what you will about that man, that is what he is saying to me.” Later, she adds, “Tell me. Go ahead, say it. You don’t want this. You want mediocrity. You’re happy with mediocrity. You’re happy with this,” referring to their dreary lives in Patchett. Kevin treats finance like sex; when he talks about the opportunities that can open up for Cara, he is practically seducing her. Kevin himself was inspired by the section of The Great Gatsby when the protagonist, then known as James Gatz, rows out to a yacht owned by the much older Dan Cody and becomes his personal assistant; Kevin believes that Gatsby and Cody had a sexual relationship, something that might have ultimately influenced his own life and career. Meanwhile, Angela is reading a worn copy of Leon Uris’s Exodus, more than hinting at the potential exodus of Patchett students across the river to Stillwell. It is small touches like these that rescue the play from drowning itself in murkiness.

Conor O’Neill (John Kroft) and Angela Russo (Casey Whyland) are caught in the middle of adult shenanigans in new play by Anthony Giardina (photo by Joan Marcus)

The main players, making their way across John Lee Beatty’s effective living-room, classroom, and kitchen sets, give solid performances, particularly Bush (The Common Pursuit, Taking Care of Baby), representing a middle class seeking to improve its lot in life against the odds. Holmes (Junk, Matilda) manages to avoid being a completely unlikable villain, although Kevin says some very hurtful things without regret. Whyland, a 2018 NYU graduate, and Kroft, in his New York debut, are both sympathetic as the teens caught in the middle, not fully understanding, or caring, about the towns’ battle over their future. It also brings to light another central focus of the play: fear. Various characters express being afraid they haven’t done enough for their children (or they’ve done too much), being afraid of change, being afraid of believing they deserve better, even being afraid of money itself. “I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth,” Nick Carraway explains at the beginning of The Great Gatsby. In Dan Cody’s Yacht, Giardina attempts to explore that inequality specifically relating to the education gap in contemporary society, though emerging with decidedly mixed test results.

SAINT JOAN

A teenage farm girl (Condola Rashad) is on a mission from God in Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 10, $65-$159
saintjoanbroadway.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

“There is something about her,” men say of Saint Joan, the title character in Bernard Shaw’s 1923 play. There is also something about Condola Rashad, who portrays Joan in the current Manhattan Theatre Club revival at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. Rashad has now appeared in five Broadway shows, earning four Tony nominations, for Stick Fly, The Trip to Bountiful, A Doll’s House, Part 2, and Saint Joan. (She was also nominated for a Drama Desk Award for her 2009 off-Broadway debut, Ruined, but got shut out as Juliet in a misbegotten Broadway revival of Romeo and Juliet in 2013.) The thirty-one-year-old Rashad is charming as Joan, a teenage farm girl in 1429 who claims that Saint Margaret and Saint Catherine speak to her and that God has commanded her to lead the French to victory in Orleans against the occupying English so the hapless Dauphin (Adam Chanler-Berat) can claim the throne as King Charles VII. She joins a luminous roster of actresses who have played Saint Joan, including Wendy Hiller, Uta Hagen, Joan Plowright, Jean Seberg, Imelda Staunton, Imogen Stubbs, Amy Irving, and Diana Sands, the only other black woman to portray Joan in a major production, at Lincoln Center in 1968. Rashad’s Joan is sweet-natured but determined, gentle yet forceful, a kind of hero just right for the #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter generation. Joan goes about the world of men — Rashad is the only woman in the cast, among twelve actors, save for a brief appearance by Mandi Masden as the Duchess de la Trémouille — with an ease that emanates from her faith.

Military squires, royals, and religious leaders disparage Joan until they meet her, slowly falling under her captivating spell. Robert de Baudricourt (Patrick Page) brags about how he “burns witches and hangs thieves,” but Joan tells him, “They all say I am mad until I talk to them, squire. But you see that it is the will of God that you are to do what He has put into my mind,” and he does. Captain La Hire (Lou Sumrall) calls her “an angel dressed as a soldier.” Charles might not want to be king, but Joan is on a holy mission to see that he is crowned at Rheims Cathedral. “If the English win, it is they that will make the treaty: and then God help poor France!” she tells Charles. “You must fight, Charlie, whether you will or no. I will go first to hearten thee. We must take our courage in both hands: aye, and pray for it with both hands too.” But after she impossibly takes Orleans despite being massively outnumbered and then urges the campaign continue on to recapture Paris, the military, the church, and the monarchy realize her power and turn on her, trying her for sins that could get her burned at the stake.

The Dauphin (Adam Chanler-Berat) finds a savior in Joan (Condola Rashad) in Manhattan Theatre Club Broadway revival (photo by Joan Marcus)

Scott Pask’s set is dominated by large gold pipes hanging from above, as if the entire play takes place inside a giant church organ, spreading Joan’s religious message. “It is in the bells I hear my voices,” Joan tells Jack Dunois (Daniel Sunjata), who ably fights by her side. “Not today, when they all rang: that was nothing but jangling. But here in this corner, where the bells come down from heaven, and the echoes linger, or in the fields, where they come from a distance through the quiet of the countryside, my voices are in them.” Shaw (who preferred not to use the first name George) famously said, “I’m an atheist and I thank God for it”; in writing the play, he was trying to neither convert anyone nor convince them to leave the fold, nor was he creating a biblical-style story of good versus evil. In a preface to the published edition, Shaw wrote, “There are no villains in the piece. . . . It is what men do at their best, with good intentions, and what normal men and women find that they must and will do in spite of their intentions, that really concern us.” Shaw, who also wrote such works as Pygmalion, Major Barbara and Man and Superman and won the Nobel Prize shortly after Saint Joan, does not include any superheroes either. “I am not a daredevil: I am a servant of God,” Joan says to Dunois. “My heart is full of courage, not of anger. I will lead; and your men will follow: that is all I can do. But I must do it: you shall not stop me.”

The exemplary cast also features Max Gordon Moore as Bluebeard, Walter Bobbie as the Bishop of Beauvais, John Glover as the Archbishop of Rheims, Matthew Saldivar as Bertrand de Poulengey, Robert Stanton as Baudricourt’s steward, Russell G. Jones as Monseigneur de la Trémouille, and Jack Davenport as the Earl of Warwick. Most of the actors play more than one role; Page is particularly impressive as Baudricourt and the Inquisitor. Daniel Sullivan’s (The Little Foxes, Proof) direction can get a little bumpy though there are several deft touches, and at nearly three hours, the show can be a little trying. Which brings us to the rather campy epilogue. Shaw wrote Saint Joan in 1923, three years after her canonization, something he deals with in the somewhat surreal, comic, and arguably out-of-place conclusion. “As to the epilogue, I could hardly be expected to stultify myself by implying that Joan’s history in the world ended unhappily with her execution, instead of beginning there,” Shaw wrote. “It was necessary by hook or crook to shew the canonized Joan as well as the incinerated one; for many a woman has got herself burnt by carelessly whisking a muslin skirt into the drawing-room fireplace, but getting canonized is a different matter, and a more important one. So I am afraid the epilogue must stand.” And so it does, for better or worse.

IN THE BODY OF THE WORLD

Eve Ensler stands up against cancer in new one-woman show (photo © Joan Marcus 2018)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Tuesday – Sunday through March 25, $90
212-581-1212
bodyoftheworldplay.com
www.nycitycenter.org

In the wake of losing my mother to lung cancer just after Thanksgiving, one of the last things I wanted to do was see a play about a woman fighting the cursed disease. But Eve Ensler’s daring, delightful one-woman show, In the Body of the World, which opened tonight at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I at City Center, is bursting with the affirmation of life and the celebration of joy. In 2010, the Tony- and Obie-winning writer of The Vagina Monologues and The Treatment was diagnosed with cancer; she first wrote about it in her 2013 memoir, In the Body of the World, which she has now successfully adapted for the stage. Ensler divides the eighty-minute performance, directed with flair by two-time Tony winner Diane Paulus (Pippin, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess), into three sections, “Somnolence,” “Burning,” and “Second Wind,” as she honestly and often poetically talks about her childhood and her family and relates her cancer to things much bigger than herself. “A mother’s body against a child’s body makes a place. It says you are here. I have been exiled from my body. I was ejected at a young age and I got lost,” she says at the beginning. “For years I have been trying to find my way back to my body, and to the earth. I guess you could say it’s a preoccupation.” Ensler strides about Myung Hee Cho’s set, consisting of a wooden chair, a credenza with an altar/cabinet on top, and a chaise longue, which serves as Ensler’s loft, her hospital room, and her hotel room in what she calls Cancer Town, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Ensler, a twice-divorced vegetarian and activist who was fifty-six at the time of her diagnosis, had stopped drinking in her twenties and quit smoking in her thirties, so the cancer came as somewhat of a shock, especially when she learned she would have to have her “mother parts,” her uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes, ovaries, and some of her vagina, removed. “Do you have any idea who I am? Do you have any fucking sense of irony?” she tells the doctor.

Eve Ensler bonds with nature as she fights for her life in MTC’s In the Body of the World (photo © Joan Marcus 2018)

Ensler exposes her body and her soul as she goes through chemo and becomes involved in the creation of City of Joy, a community of women survivors of rape and violence in Bukavu, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, run by Dr. Denis Mukwege and Mama C, aka Christine Schuler-Deschryver. (The amazing work they do is documented in Madeleine Gavin’s extraordinary 2016 film, City of Joy.) Ensler says that Dr. Mukwege “was literally sewing up the vaginas of rape survivors as fast as the militias were tearing them apart. . . . There were hundreds of these stories. They all began to bleed together. The destruction of vaginas. The pillaging of minerals. The raping of the earth. But inside these stories of unspeakable violence, inside the women, was a determination and a life force I had never witnessed.” Refusing to feel sorry for herself, Ensler reexamines her place in the greater world, continually working to teach people to stop sleepwalking through life and start taking responsibility for themselves and others, using this stage as a wake-up call for all of us.

Occasionally projections by Finn Ross cover the stage and the back wall, depicting protests, scenes of nature, people at City of Joy, certain key words, and a tree that deeply impacts Ensler’s recovery. She sometimes flirts with new agey ideas and twelve-step jargon — and she tries to get everyone up and dancing at one point in a rather goofy moment — but, being Eve Ensler, she also finds time to briefly fire away at political and social injustice. And then, at the end, she offers a magical surprise that every audience member should experience instead of rushing to get home; I wouldn’t dare give it away, but you can get a look at what it is here if you can’t help yourself. Ensler, a New York City native, is also a founder of V-Day, “a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls” that in 2018 is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of The Vagina Monologues with special events on and around Valentine’s Day. This year’s V-Day motto is “Rise, Resist, Unite,” which is also the route Ensler took in her fight against cancer, as depicted in this warm and very funny performance. I wish my mother were around to have experienced it for herself.

THE CHILDREN

Old friends Rose (Francesca Annis) and Hazel (Deborah Findlay) reunite in Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children (photo © Joan Marcus 2017)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 4, $60-$149
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
thechildrenbroadway.com

Amid all the splashy musicals, wacky comedies, and star-driven vehicles currently on Broadway, the British import The Children stands apart, a breath of fresh air in this winter season. Well, maybe that’s not the best way to classify this fiercely taut drama, which takes place shortly after a devastating nuclear accident on the East Coast of Britain. The fictional event appears to have even rattled the stage at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, which is severely tilted, creating a bit of an uphill or downhill climb when the characters move to the right or left. The play opens as Rose (Francesca Annis) pays a surprise afternoon visit to her old friend and colleague, Hazel (Deborah Findlay), who is living with her husband, Robin (Ron Cook), in a small cottage just outside the contaminated exclusion zone. “We heard you’d died!” Hazel announces; it’s been thirty-eight years since the two women, both nuclear engineers, last saw each other. While Hazel has settled into the domestic life of a retiree, with four children and four grandchildren, Rose has been gallivanting around the world, never settling down or getting married. When Rose asks Hazel why they haven’t moved farther away from the radiation, Hazel responds, “It’s just that little bit extra but it makes a world of difference to our peace of mind. . . . I would’ve felt like a traitor. Besides, retired people are like nuclear power stations. We like to live by the sea.” They are soon joined by Robin, who goes to their old farm every day, tending to the cows, even though it’s in the exclusion area. Where Hazel is very direct and to the point, Robin is more rambunctious and freewheeling, cracking jokes, asking Rose for a squeeze, and offering her some of his homemade wine. But when Rose reveals the reason she has returned — and secrets emerge — the trio has to reexamine their purpose in life and their future.

Robin (Ron Cook), Hazel (Deborah Findlay), and Rose (Francesca Annis) remember the good old days in U.S. premiere at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway house (photo © Joan Marcus 2017)

Originally produced at the Royal Court Theatre, The Children is brilliantly written by Olivier Award winner Lucy Kirkwood (Chimerica, Mosquitoes), who has created three complex characters who are genuine and unpredictable. The play takes a hard look at ageing and death, examining the responsibility the old have to the young. “How can anybody consciously moving towards death, I mean by their own design, possibly be happy? People of our age have to resist — you have to resist, Rose,” Hazel says. “If you’re not going to grow: don’t live.” It is also about blood, both literally and figuratively. When Rose first enters the house, a shocked Hazel turns defensively and hits Rose, giving her a bloody nose. One of Hazel and Robin’s children suffers from mental illness, thinking she is a bloodsucking vampire. And, of course, radiation poisons the blood. James Macdonald, who has directed numerous works by Caryl Churchill (Escaped Alone, Top Girls) and Sarah Kane (4.48 Psychosis, Blasted), among others, keeps things balanced even as the actors have to deal with Miriam Buether’s angled set, which is framed as if a tilted picture on a wall come to life. Olivier nominee Annis (Cranford, Troilus and Cressida), Olivier winner Findlay (Stanley, Coriolanus), and Olivier nominee Cook (Juno and the Paycock, Faith Healer) reprise their roles from the London production, all three delivering warm, heartfelt performances, with a special nod to Cook for having to ride a tricycle uphill despite a bad back. And Max Pappenheim’s sound design stands out as well, from a Geiger counter to church bells. Despite its title, The Children is the most adult show in New York City right now, a marvelously resonant, intelligent, and engaging play that continually defies expectations as the plot twists and turns while something threatening hangs just past the horizon.

ANNA ZIEGLER: LOVE, ACTUALLY

Tom (Joshua Boone) and Amber (Alexandra Socha) cannot quite agree what happened one night in Actually (photo © Matthew Murphy)

ACTUALLY
Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center: The Studio at Stage II
Tuesday – Sunday through December 10, $30
212-581-1212
manhattantheatreclub.com
actuallyplay.com

Watching a talky play with relatively few characters, say, only two or four, can be like watching a tennis match. When the writing and directing is exceptional, it’s like seeing a championship bout between Nadal and Federer, Borg and McEnroe, Evert and Navratilova, your head going back and forth as the shifting dialogue consists of aces, expert passing shots, exciting net play, and thrilling overhead smashes. Of course, just as every play is not going to qualify for award status, not every tennis match is going to be memorable, something I can vouch for, having attended the U.S. Open for more than twenty years. Brooklyn-born playwright Anna Ziegler serves up both ends of the spectrum with two current off-Broadway shows, Actually and The Last Match, both of which involve the characters breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to the audience, with very different results. The Manhattan Theatre Club production of Actually, continuing at City Center’s Stage II through December 10, is a timely, intense look at what actually happened the night two Princeton freshmen, Tom (Joshua Boone) and Amber (Alexandra Socha), hooked up at a party. While Tom believed their coupling was completely consensual, Amber thinks it turned into rape and reported it to the university.

Alexandra Socha and Joshua Boone star in gripping play by Anna Zielger

Alexandra Socha and Joshua Boone star in gripping play by Anna Ziegler (photo © Matthew Murphy)

Tom is a black classical pianist who says, “In some ways, I’ve been on trial my entire life.” Amber is white and Jewish, a mediocre squash player who explains, “We all fill some stupid niche, which reduces us to something much less than what we are, but that’s the way it goes.” The play begins with them playing the game Two Truths and a Lie; Tom is reluctant, but Amber demands he participate if he wants to sleep with her. For ninety taut minutes, they reenact events from that night and share their thoughts with the audience, discussing consent, race, religion, Title IX, gender, and other key topics, turning viewers into a kind of jury of public opinion. When Amber says that her default state is “this zone of wanting something and not wanting it at the same time,” it really hits home, getting to the core of how so many people feel. Boone (Holler If You Hear Me, Mother Courage and Her Children) and Socha (Spring Awakening, Fun Home) are outstanding caught up in a long deuce, each one taking, then losing, the advantage as they volley back and forth. Ziegler’s (Photograph 51, Boy) dialogue is sharp and focused, while Obie winner Lileana Blain-Cruz (Pipeline, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World) directs with pinpoint accuracy on Adam Rigg’s spare set. Actually is no mere Bobby Riggs vs. Billie Jean King, he said / she said contest; it is a powerful exploration of possible sexual misconduct in an age when Americans learn more and more about the issue every day, as more and more predators are revealed.

The Last Match takes place during the semifinals of the U.S. Open (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE LAST MATCH
Laura Pels Theatre
Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre
111 West 46th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 23, $79
212-719-1300
www.roundabouttheatre.org

Unfortunately, the Roundabout production of The Last Match, running at the Laura Pels Theatre through December 23, is not nearly as incisive and gripping as Actually. It’s the semifinals at the U.S. Open, and six-time champion Tim Porter (Wilson Bethel), who might be on the downside of his career at the tender age of thirty-four, is playing younger up-and-comer Sergei Sergeyev (Alex Mickiewicz), a hotheaded Russian who wants to dethrone the even-tempered American star and crowd favorite. They serve and volley on Tim Mackabee’s tennis court set, with the familiar blue, white, and green colors of the Open and scoreboards on either side, while Bray Poor’s audio design includes the sound of imaginary swinging rackets striking imaginary yellow balls. In between and during points, Tim and Sergei argue with each other in ways that don’t feel real during a live match; share their thoughts directly with the audience; and reenact scenes from their past, primarily Tim’s relationship with fellow tennis player Mallory (Zoë Winters) as they marry and try to have a baby, and Sergei’s courtship of the fiery Galina (Natalia Payne). The women cheer their partners on from the sides of the stage as the men fight it out. But whereas Amber and Tom in Actually were complex characters who had their charms along with their shortcomings, both gaining the audience’s sympathy at different times, only Mallory is able to elicit much catharsis in The Last Match.

Tim Porter (Wilson Bethel) and Sergei Sergeyev (Alex Mickiewicz) battle it out on court and off in Anna Ziegler play (photo by Joan Marcus)

“You don’t want people to know you’re an asshole. But anyone who does this sport at this level is gigantic asshole of worst gigantic asshole variety,” Sergei says early on, adding, “You have to care only for yourself.” It’s hard to care about Sergei, Galina, and Tim, who are self-obsessed; Ziegler (A Delicate Ship, The Wanderers) and director Gaye Taylor Upchurch (Animal, The Year of Magical Thinking) give them back stories that don’t help humanize them but turn each one into more of a caricature. While Actually made smart, subtle references to societal issues and did not proclaim any grand statements about who was right, The Last Match is melodramatic and obvious, like a love match in tennis. “So many game points, on my racquet,” Sergei says. “This should be my game so many times over. I have earned it! But life does not actually work that way. You actually have to win.” But you’re likely to decide who you want to win from the very start, rendering the competition relatively mute. “Some people don’t even love their babies right away so it’s just relentless and boring. And we already have tennis for that, right?” Mallory asks Tim, who replies. “Well, I don’t find tennis boring.” But any tennis match, like any sporting event, can be relentless and boring. Just like any play.

THE PORTUGUESE KID

Atalanta Lagana (Sherie Rene Scott) and Mrs. Dragonetti (Mary Testa) are at odds throughout John Patrick Shanley’s The Portuguese Kid (photo by Richard Termine 2017)

Manhattan Theatre Club
MTC at New York City Center – Stage I
Tuesday – Sunday through December 3, $95-$112.50
212-581-1212
theportuguesekid.com

Tony, Oscar, and Pulitzer Prize winner John Patrick Shanley was feeling down in the dumps about the state of the world, so he decided it was time for an old-fashioned Neil Simon-style romantic farce; the result is the hilarious, if bumpy, comedy The Portuguese Kid, which opened last night at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I at City Center. Grieving widow Atalanta Lagana (Sherie Rene Scott) is in the Providence, Rhode Island, home office of her lawyer and childhood friend, Barry Dragonetti (Jason Alexander), reviewing the estate of her recently deceased second husband, Vinny, “a passive aggressive fascist” foot surgeon who voted for Donald J. Trump. ESP-obsessed Atalanta is wearing a sexy black mourning dress and sunglasses, pummeling Barry, who seems to have forced himself into a too-tight, too-blue business suit, with a barrage of brutal one-liners. They’ve been at odds for forty years, ever since ten-year-old Atalanta saved fifteen-year-old Barry when he was mugged by a Portuguese kid, leading to his lifelong horror of anything Portuguese. Atalanta slyly reveals that she’s now seeing Freddy Imbrossi (Pico Alexander), a twenty-nine-year-old carefree would-be poet and real estate agent — and the former passionate lover of Patty (Aimee Carrero), Barry’s hot, sexy, and sensitive young Puerto Rican wife. “What is it? You got a problem with Freddy?” Atalanta says to a disgruntled Barry, who responds, “You got a problem. Freddy Imbrossi? You’d be better off with Lyme disease!” Atalanta then explains that she’s been calling out Barry’s name during sex for years (with both her deceased husbands), which confuses Barry but infuriates his nine-toed mother (Mary Testa), who has been listening in by the door. Barry recuses himself from Atalanta’s case, which fills Mrs. Dragonetti with glee. “I pray to God I never have to violate these eyes with the sight of you again,” she says to the two-time widow.

Clever, witty, and, sometimes a little roughly, the next three scenes in this intermissionless one-act move from Atalanta’s corny but lush bedroom to Barry’s well-appointed backyard, where Patty and Mrs. Dragonetti go at it next, no holds barred, leaving Barry torn between his fiery young wife, who remembers fondly how they met and fell in love, and his hotheaded, nasty mother, who thinks no one is good enough for her baby. The final scene takes place in Atalanta’s garden, where all of the characters gather for a lunch they’ll never forget.

Everyone gathers for a frenetic feast in Manhattan Theatre Club world premiere (photo by Richard Termine 2017)

The Bronx-born Shanley (Doubt, Moonstruck, Prodigal Son,) wrote and directed The Portuguese Kid, making changes to the second and fourth scenes up to the very last minute during previews, and it unfortunately shows; those scenes are more chaotic and unformed than the fabulous first and third scenes, in which the characters are well developed, the actors get to strut their stuff, and the plot thickens in wonderfully acerbic ways. Alexander (Seinfeld, Merrily We Roll Along) excels in a role written with him in mind, all pent-up anger waiting to explode, while three-time Tony nominee Scott (Everyday Rapture, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) is simply fab as the unpredictable, tough-talking Atalanta (loosely inspired by the virgin huntress in Greek mythology), who regularly admits to having “a darkness.” And there’s little left of the scenery after Drama Desk Award winner Testa (First Daughter Suite, Queen of the Mist) gets through with it; her physical presence is the center of gravity around which her galactic verbal barrages fly. Alexander (Punk Rock, What I Did Last Summer) and Carrero (Young & Hungry, What Rhymes with America) have their moments, but their roles are not as fully fleshed out as Jason Alexander’s and Scott’s; in some ways, the quartet evokes Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The snazzy production features a movable set by John Lee Beatty, fun, colorful costumes by William Ivey Long (Scott’s dresses are too die for), and original music and sound by MTC stalwart Obadiah Eaves. “You underestimate women,” Atalanta tells Barry, who answers, “I’m glad you think so.” In The Portuguese Kid, Shanley most certainly does not underestimate women — or his audience.

PRINCE OF BROADWAY

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through October 22, $89-$165
princeofbway.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Less is certainly not more in Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of the surprisingly slight Prince of Broadway. Continuing at the Samuel J. Friedman through October 22, the show is a tribute to legendary icon Hal Prince, who has won twenty-one Tony Awards during a grand career going back to his days as an assistant stage manager in 1950 through directing and/or producing many of the greatest musicals in Broadway history. Prince himself directs the talented cast of nine — Chuck Cooper, Janet Dacal, Bryonha Marie Parham, Emily Skinner, Brandon Uranowitz, Kaley Ann Voorhees, Michael Xavier, Tony Yazbeck, and Karen Ziemba — who all portray him, glasses on top of their heads, as he discusses brief, mostly unilluminating snippets from his history, many of them self-aggrandizing platitudes that serve as introductions to some of the numbers, although there are a few choice tidbits, including his meeting Stephen Sondheim. The crew is just about as good as it gets, with a book by two-time Tony nominee David Thompson, arrangements and orchestrations by two-time Tony winner Jason Robert Brown, sets and projections by Tony winner Beowulf Boritt, costumes by six-time Tony winner William Ivey Long, lighting by two-time Tony winner Howell Binkley, and codirection and choreography by five-time Tony winner Susan Stroman. And the show has several memorable moments, including Cooper bringing the house down with “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof, Parham belting out the theme song from Cabaret, Xavier and Dacal camping it up on “You’ve Got Possibilities” from It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman, and Skinner delivering a moving “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music. But as Ziemba sings as Fräulein Schneider from Cabaret, “So what?”

Too many of the production numbers are not introduced by name; how many people are likely to know that “This Is Not Over Yet” is from Parade? Prince’s specific contributions, whether director or producer, are not indicated onstage (only in the program), so it is often difficult to grasp how much we’re seeing is from the man himself. With limited or no background information, most of the songs exist in a kind of vacuum, where the audience doesn’t know enough about the characters to get involved in their tales, except for the numbers that have more exposition in them. Even such beloved songs as “Something’s Coming” and “Tonight” from West Side Story feel lost amid the other hits and non-hits; it’s not fair for Stroman and Prince to assume the crowd is already familiar with the songs, a disservice particularly to younger generations or newcomers of any age to musical theater. And although Prince worked on nearly sixty shows, a mere sixteen are represented here, with three or four songs from certain musicals; it would have been fascinating to see tunes from such less-well-known works as Zorba, A Family Affair, Flora, the Red Menace, or even A Doll’s Life, which closed after five performances, instead of multiple numbers from Evita and The Phantom of the Opera. An earlier version did have other songs, including “All I Need Is One Good Break” from Flora, but numerous delays and financial issues led to many changes. (For example, in March 2012 it was announced that the Broadway production would open that November with Sebastian Arcelus, Linda Lavin, Richard Kind, LaChanze, Shuler Hensley, Sierra Boggess, Josh Grisetti, Amanda Kloots-Larsen, Daniel Breaker, Caroline O’Connor, David Pittu, and Skinner.) In a program note, Prince writes, “I doubt if anyone today can duplicate the life I’ve been lucky enough to live.” That’s very likely true, but the eighty-nine-year-old master deserves better than Prince of Broadway.