Tag Archives: Manhattan Theatre Club

THE FATHER

André (Frank Langella) doesn’t make it easy for his daughter, Anne (Kathryn Erbe), to help him in THE FATHER (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 12, $70-$150
thefatherbroadway.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

In early 2014, Frank Langella played King Lear at BAM, a thought-provoking counterpoint to his latest show, the U.S. premiere of Florian Zeller’s The Father. As Lear, the seventy-eight-year-old Langella, who has won three Tonys and two Obies, battled his failing mind and body while two of his three daughters fought over his wealth and power and the third only wanted to love and care for him. As eighty-year-old André in Zeller’s Olivier-nominated, Molière Award–winning play — not to be confused with August Strindberg’s The Father, currently running at Theatre for a New Audience — Langella is an elegant Paris gentleman dealing with the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease while his loving daughter, Anne (Kathryn Erbe), tries to care for him despite his mistreatment of her. After scaring off yet another home nurse, André yells at Anne, “I don’t need her! I don’t need her or anyone else! I can manage very well on my own!” But it’s becoming more and more apparent that he can’t, as he gets lost in a psychological maze of the past and the present, not knowing who is who and where he is while refusing to acknowledge what is happening to him, instead turning the tables on those around him. “I’m worried about you,” he says to a woman (Kathleen McNenny) who claims to be Anne but he does not recognize. “Don’t you remember? She doesn’t remember. Are you having memory lapses or what? You’d better go and see someone, my dear.” He also mixes up Anne’s significant others, either boyfriends or husbands (Charles Borland and Brian Avers) who may or may not be moving to London with her. And he compares his latest caretaker, Laura (Hannah Cabell), to his beloved other daughter, Elise, whom he wildly praises while disparaging Anne. “You have two daughters?” Laura asks suspiciously. “That’s right,” he says. “Even though I hardly ever hear from the other one. Elise. All the same, she was always my favourite. . . . I don’t understand why she never gets in touch. Never.” In addition, André seems to be forgetting whose apartment he’s in and whether he’s living on his own or with Anne, which makes him angry and upset. “I don’t need any help from anyone and I will not leave this flat,” he firmly declares. But he’s of course in dire need of help.

André (Frank Langella) ponders his frightening future in Florian Zeller play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Translated from the French by two-time Tony winner Christopher Hampton (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Sunset Boulevard) and directed by Tony winner Doug Hughes (Frozen, The Royal Family), Zeller’s play, a companion piece to The Mother, uses clever stagecraft to depict André’s heartbreaking descent. Scenes sometimes repeat or overlap, and having multiple actors play Anne and her partners transfers André’s confusion to the audience, which is also sometimes not sure who is who or if what is happening is only in André’s fading mind. Each scene ends with a sudden darkness, and when the lights come back on (courtesy of lighting designer Donald Holder), bits of Scott Pask’s fashionable French-flat set, from books to furniture, have disappeared, echoing the cognitive losses inside André’s head. André is also obsessed with time, as if, deep down, he really does understand the fate that awaits him but is unwilling to face the truth. He keeps thinking someone has stolen his watch, and he continually refers to time. “Time passes so fast,” he says wistfully. Later he opines, “If this goes on much longer, I’ll be stark naked. Stark naked. And I won’t even know what time it is.” Langella (Frost/Nixon, Dracula) goes from bold and confused to touchingly gentle as André, imbuing him with a Lear-like regalness and an aristocratic refinement even when tap-dancing; it’s a beautifully moving performance from one of America’s finest actors. Zeller, Hampton, and Hughes avoid genre clichés or sentimentality, using clever subtlety to tell a very sad, unfortunately increasingly common tale.

PRODIGAL SON

Jim Quinn (Timothée Chalamet) shares his dreams with Louise Schmitt (Annika Boras) in John Patrick Shanley’s latest memory play (photo © 2016 by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Through March 27, $90
212-581-1212
prodigalsonplay.com

John Patrick Shanley’s Prodigal Son is exactly the kind of play that makes us love the theater: a beautifully written, directed, and acted work about believable people we can respect, in realistic situations that entertain and educate us about ourselves and others. Prodigal Son, which Shanley both wrote and directs, is the culmination of his unofficial autobiographical trilogy, which began with 1991’s Beggars in the House of Plenty and continued with 2004’s Doubt: A Parable; all three have been first presented by Manhattan Theatre Club. In this world premiere, which opened last night at City Center, Timothée Chalamet stars as Jim Quinn, a bright but confused adolescent from the Bronx who is off to the Thomas More Preparatory School in New Hampshire after having problems at previous educational institutions. “Do you remember fifteen? For me, it was a special, beautiful room in hell,” he tells the audience at the start. The school’s founder and director, Carl Schmitt (Chris McGarry), a devout Catholic, decides to take a chance on the tough-talking, working-class Jim. “We don’t have another boy like him,” he explains to Alan Hoffman (Robert Sean Leonard), the head of the English department who becomes a mentor to Jim. A lonely kid obsessed with poetry, Nazis, and defending and supporting his older brother who is a soldier in Vietnam (the play takes place from 1965 to 1968), Jim gets into fights with fellow students, steals odd objects, drinks apricot brandy, and breaks other rules that should get him expelled, but Mr. Schmitt sticks with him. “He’s the most interesting mess we have this year,” he says to Mr. Hoffman. But as much trouble as he is, Jim is also an extremely clever young dreamer with fascinating insight into life. “It’s a prison to think things are impossible,” he says to his math-nerd roommate, Austin Lord Schmitt (David Potters), Mr. Schmitt’s nephew. Later, meeting with Louise Schmitt (Annika Boras), Mr. Schmitt’s wife and an English teacher at the school, Jim says, “People are born somebody. They don’t choose who they are. I was born me. I don’t get to be somebody else, even if I want to be someone else.” “Do you want to be somebody else?” Mrs. Schmitt asks. “What’s it matter? I can’t be,” he responds. “I’m Jim Quinn. I was born Jim Quinn and I’ll die Jim Quinn.” It all comes to a head as graduation nears and Jim’s immediate future is very much in doubt.

John Patrick Shanley goes back to prep school in PRODIGAL SON (photo © 2016 by Joan Marcus)

Prodigal Son is a deeply personal story, based on Shanley’s real experiences at the real Thomas More school, which was founded and run by the real Mr. Schmitt. (In fact, a special preview of the play was recently held for current and former students and faculty members.) It’s no surprise that the show is highly literate, with discussions of “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,” Plato and Socrates, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Sigmund Freud, and T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” that avoid getting overly pedantic. The five characters are extremely well drawn, avoiding genre stereotypes while including several shocking plot twists. Chalamet (Homeland, Interstellar), a graduate of the LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts and who was born and raised in Hell’s Kitchen, is a whirlwind as Jim, gesticulating wildly — much of which was inspired by Shanley’s (Moonstruck, Outside Mullingar) own proclivities — and approaching the world with eyes wide open, hopeful for the possibilities it offers while worried he might never find his place in it. McGarry, who has previously appeared in Shanley’s Doubt, Defiance, Dirty Story, and Where’s My Money?, is steadfast as Mr. Schmitt, a God-fearing man whose convictions are severely tested by Jim. Boras (Chair, The Broken Heart) is radiant as Mrs. Schmitt, a bright and charming woman who is much more than a mere appendage of her husband; her involvement with Jim is critical to his potential success. Santo Loquasto’s engaging set includes a miniature version of the school in the back and bare trees on the sides that move as various rooms slide in and off the stage; the interstitial music is by Paul Simon, with lighting by Natasha Katz. But at the center of it all is the Tony-, Pulitzer-, and Oscar-winning Shanley himself, finally sharing a story he’s wanted to tell for decades. “I wish you could have been there,” Shanley writes in a program note. After experiencing Prodigal Son, you’ll feel like you were.

OUR MOTHER’S BRIEF AFFAIR

A park bench is the main setting in Richard Greenberg’s OUR MOTHER’S AFFAIR (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 6, $60-$140
ourmothersbriefaffairbroadway.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Our Mother’s Brief Affair, Richard Greenberg’s eleventh collaboration with Manhattan Theatre Club, starts off promisingly enough, but a bizarrely bombastic reveal shortly before intermission derails the rest of this quiet family drama. Tony winner Linda Lavin stars as Anna, a variation of a character previously introduced in Greenberg’s Everett Beekin and played by Bebe Neuwirth in 2001 at Lincoln Center. On one of her many deathbeds yet again, the Burberry-loving Anna tells her son, Seth (Greg Keller), that she had an affair with a man (John Procaccino) back in 1973, when she took Seth to Juilliard for his weekly music class. Although Seth, an obituary writer used to examining people’s lives in death, thinks she’s just making up another story, his twin sister, Abby (Kate Arrington, in her seventh Greenberg work), confirms its truth. Anna’s confession becomes even more shocking when she tells them who the man is, a minor but real person in the Cold War and a figure of revulsion to New York’s Jewish intelligentsia. The name is less than well known enough to require a sort of extended live footnote, so the show comes to a screeching halt as Seth and Abby explain who he is and what he did. Greenberg’s choice of partner for Anna is so head-scratchingly strange that the play simply can’t get back on track.

Anna (Linda Lavin) and her lover (John Procaccino) recall the good old days in Richard Greenberg play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Lavin (The Lyons, The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife), at seventy-eight, adds some sex appeal to her role as a mother with secrets of her own that are finally coming out, as she claims once again to be facing the end. Procaccino (Incident at Vichy, Nikolai and the Others), one of New York theater’s busiest, and most dependable, actors, is laden down with playing a historical figure that overwhelms his presence. Keller (The Who and the What, Of Good Stock) and Arrington (Grace, The Iceman Cometh), as dysfunctional gay twins, are expository characters who never quite develop their own personalities. Santo Loquasto’s easygoing set consists of a few chairs and a park bench, where Seth, Abby, Anna, her husband (also played by Procaccino), and her lover go back and forth between 1973, 2003, and 2006, with everyone watching what unfolds regardless of what time period they are from, which is occasionally unnerving. MTC artistic director Lynne Meadow never quite pulls together the time shifts and plot reveals; despite a fine lead performance by Lavin, Our Mother’s Brief Affair — which was originally staged as a slightly shorter one-act in 2009 by South Coast Rep, with Jenny O’Hara, Arye Gross, Marin Hinkle, and Matthew Arkin and directed by Pam MacKinnon — feels more like a short story, or a subplot from another play, unable to sustain itself, particularly because it just can’t support the major twist that pulls the rug out from under whatever possibilities it might have had.

RIPCORD

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Tuesday – Sunday through December 6, $90
212-581-1212
ripcordplay.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Pulitzer Prize winner David Lindsay-Abaire’s sixth collaboration with Manhattan Theatre Club is a hilarious battle of wits between two unlikely combatants: a pair of elderly ladies in a suburban New Jersey nursing home. Abby Binder (Holland Taylor) is a nasty, mean-spirited, and spiteful woman filled with vitriol she pours on everyone and everything, just wanting to be left alone. Marilyn Dunne (Marylouise Burke) is a kind, sweet-natured soul who loves life and wants only happiness for all. Marilyn explains that she has reached a point in her life where she no longer gets angry. “There’s really no point. It always leads to an ugly place. And I don’t care for ugly places,” she states. Meanwhile, Abby claims she doesn’t get scared: “Haven’t been in years. That’s what happens when you live long enough. Things disappear. Just like my taste buds. Just like your anger. Everything goes eventually.” Abby has chased off her previous roommates at the Bristol Place Assisted Living Facility and wants Marilyn gone as well, but Marilyn is determined to stay no matter what. So the two make a bet: If Abby can make Marilyn angry first, she gets the room to herself, but if Marilyn frightens Abby first, she gets the bed by the window, with a view of the park. So the gloves come off and the two go at it fiercely, with nothing off limits as they each try to win at any cost.

Lindsay-Abaire, whose previous works include Rabbit Hole, Fuddy Meers, and Good People, has written a tight, smartly crafted story that calls to mind both The Gin Game and The Odd Couple (with a wee bit of Jackass) while feeling wholly fresh. It’s tons of fun, and it doesn’t let up for the full two hours (with intermission). Alexander Dodge’s (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Present Laughter) sets change from the shared bedroom to a haunted house and an airplane, the latter two working surprisingly well. Tony nominee Taylor (Ann, Bosom Buddies) and Obie winner Burke, in her sixth Lindsay-Abaire play, are utterly delightful as the two very different senior citizens resorting to ever-dirtier tricks, ranging from very funny to very serious, determined to be the victor. Nate Miller (Of Good Stock, Love and Information) is charming as Scotty, the gentle, courteous nursing-home attendant. SNL veteran Rachel Dratch (Tail! Spin!, Love’s Labour’s Lost) does double duty as an actress portraying a creepy mother in a haunted house as well as Marilynn’s daughter, Colleen, who gets involved in the bet despite the misgivings of her husband, Derek (Daoud Heidami). Heidami (American Hero, Aftermath) and Glenn Fitzgerald (Ivanov, Lobby Hero) play several small roles, including Heidami as a zombie butler and Fitzgerald as a killer clown in the house of horrors. Director David Hyde Pierce (It Shoulda Been You, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) keeps it all from getting too sitcom-y, something he knows a thing or two about; Ripcord had every right to turn into an expanded episode of The Golden Girls, but instead it’s one of the best comedies of the season, a deliciously clever, and ultimately poignant, look at family, old age, and the human need for companionship.

FOOL FOR LOVE

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 13, $75-$150
foolforlovebroadway.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

In the published script for Fool for Love, Sam Shepard explains, “This play is to be performed relentlessly, without a break.” And as with many of Shepard’s plays, it is indeed relentless. In a seedy motel room on the edge of the Mojave Desert, Eddie (Sam Rockwell), a former rodeo cowboy, reclines in a shaky chair against the back wall, while May (Nina Arianda), a tall blonde, is hunched statue-like on the end of the bed, her face covered by her long hair, looking toward the ground. At the front of the stage near the corner, an older man (Gordon Joseph Weiss) sits back in a sturdy chair, hands grasping the armrests like the slick hipster from the Maxell commercials. The Old Man and May remain stock-still as Eddie begins talking and makes his way over to May, showing a slight limp. “I’m not goin’ anywhere. See? I’m right here. I’m not gone,” he tells her, and she eventually reaches out and grabs his leg, holding on for dear life. That sequence sets the stage for this seventy-five-minute one-act play about two people who both attract and repel each other, for reasons that become more clear with a surprise revelation about halfway through. May and Eddie have known each other since high school, and they have been on-and-off lovers ever since. “You’re just guilty. Gutless and guilty,” she says shortly before promising to kill both Eddie and the Countess, a woman he might be seeing. “I’m gonna torture her first, though. Not you. I’m just gonna let you have it. Probably in the midst of a kiss. Right when you think everything’s been healed up. Right in the moment when you’re sure you’ve got me buffaloed. That’s when you’ll die.” The ever-confident Eddie is sure that May will ultimately choose to come away with him, despite May’s claims that she has started a new life, dating a normal man, Martin (Tom Pelphrey). Every once in a while, the Old Man chimes in briefly, like a Greek chorus all by himself. “I wanna show you somethin’. Somethin’ real, okay? Somethin’ actual,” he says to Eddie, referring to a nonexistent picture on the wall. A moment later, after the Old Man has settled back in his chair, once again soundless and immobile, May tells Eddie how much she can’t stand him. “No matter how much I’d like not to hate you, I hate you even more. It grows. I can’t even see you now. All I can see is a picture of you. You and her.” We only see what we want to see, remember what we want to remember, mixing fiction and reality in our memories, much like theater itself. For Eddie and May, there’s one thing they can never forget. “You know we’re connected, May,” Eddie says. “We’ll always be connected. That was decided a long time ago.” To Shepard, destiny is a bitch.

Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Fool for Love is part of the series of plays, including the Family Trilogy, that Shepard wrote between 1978 and 1985, consisting of Curse of the Starving Class, Pulitzer winner Buried Child, Pulitzer nominee True West, and A Lie of the Mind. Partly inspired by his relationship with Jessica Lange, Fool for Love is a treat for actors; previous versions have featured such Eddie-May pairings as Ed Harris and Kathy Baker, Ian Charleson and Julie Walters, Martin Henderson and Juliette Lewis, Bruce Willis and Denise Simone, and, in the 1985 Robert Altman film, Shepard and Kim Basinger (with Harry Dean Stanton as the Old Man and Randy Quaid as Martin). The original 1983 production was directed by Shepard, who includes extremely specific stage cues in his script. For the play’s Broadway debut, Daniel Aukin (Bad Jews, 4,000 Miles) takes the reins. Tony winner Arianda (Venus in Fur, Born Yesterday) and Rockwell (A Behanding in Spokane, Moon) have a fiery energy together, but their back-and-forth rapport gets repetitive, and you can feel the hands of Shepard (and Aukin) manipulating your emotions too much, especially when Rockwell puts his lasso to interesting use, bringing a little S&M into the proceedings. The story bounces between the physical and the metaphysical, occasionally getting caught within both at the same time. Pelphrey (Guiding Light, As the World Turns) plays Martin with just the right amount of cluelessness, and Weiss is terrifically perverse as the Old Man; while the rest of the action is going on, you can’t help but cast glances over at him sitting in the darkness. Shepard is a man’s man, and Fool for Love is very much a masculine tale; May might get in her digs, but Eddie is really calling the shots as he cleans his rifle and swigs tequila straight from the bottle. Love ain’t easy, and destiny is a bitch, Shepard is telling us. Damn straight.

OF GOOD STOCK

Jennifer Mudge, Heather Lind, and Alicia Silverstone star as three sisters reconnecting at their family home on Cape Cod in OF GOOD STOCK (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Tuesday – Sunday through July 26, $90
212-581-1212
ofgoodstockplay.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Having spent some time the past several summers in a house on Cape Cod rented by my in-laws, I was looking forward to Melissa Ross’s new play, Of Good Stock, which takes place on the popular peninsula. Entering the theater at City Center, I could practically smell the fresh saltwater air as soon as I saw Santo Loquasto’s open stage of beach grass and dune. And once the play started and the revolving set rotated to that all-too-familiar, overly comfy style of Cape Cod house, and then two of the characters went out to pick up something from Marion’s Pie Shop in Chatham, well, it was like I’d been transported to Massachusetts, where I will not be going this summer. Fortunately, however — or, perhaps, unfortunately — I had little cathartic identification with the fictional Stockton clan, a dysfunctional family of three sisters and their significant others, that who did not remind me of any real people I know but instead felt like escapees from worlds created by Wendy Wasserstein (The Sisters Rosensweig), Tracy Letts (August: Osage County), Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart), and, of course, Anton Chekhov (Three Sisters), among others. Oldest sister Jess (Jennifer Mudge), middle sister Amy (Alicia Silverstone), and youngest sister Celia (Heather Lind) arrive at the Cape Cod house where they spent their childhood summers, seeking to take stock of their lives. The daughters of the late famous writer and master philanderer Micah Stockton, they each have relationship and daddy issues. Jess, the stalwart leader of the group who is battling cancer, married the much older, very dependable Fred (Kelly AuCoin), who used to work for Micah. Amy, a flighty drama queen given to histrionics and whining, is engaged to the already henpecked Josh (Greg Keller) and is obsessed with planning their destination wedding in Tahiti. And neurotic free spirit Celia has brought a new beau, Hunter (Nate Miller), a hirsute thirtysomething hipster from Montana who has still not finished college. While the men basically sit back and watch, the three women rehash old stories, purposefully push one another’s buttons, and argue over just about everything. But their problems are nothing to the easygoing, up-front Hunter, who says, “I’ve got twelve siblings. No offense to you guys but y’all are amateurs.”

A rare moment of laughter is shared in new play about family dysfunction (photo by Joan Marcus)

Mudge (Into the Woods, Reckless) and AuCoin (The Wayside Motor Inn, House of Cards) are an excellent team as Jess and Fred, the heart and soul of the play, keeping it from teetering over the edge, bringing empathy and depth to every situation. AuCoin is particularly effective in a terrific scene with Keller (Wit, The Who and the What) as Fred and Josh discuss “manly men things.” Lind (Turn: Washington’s Spies, The Merchant of Venice) and Miller (Love and Information, Peter and the Starcatcher) are fun to watch, she a whirling dervish of energy, he an easygoing, content dude who prefers the truth to secrets. Silverstone (Clueless, The Graduate) isn’t given a whole lot to do with Amy except annoy, complain, and rush off in tears, which grows tiresome rather quickly. Directed by Lynne Meadow, Of Good Stock can get a bit too manic depressive, and its characters and plot twists offer little new on family dysfunction. Ross, whose Nice Girl was recently warmly received at LCT3, favors overlapping dialogue that sometimes gets confusing, and the narrative too often heads toward sitcom territory. The play, which premiered earlier this year in a different production at South Coast Repertory in California, was a late substitute after Manhattan Theater Club announced that Richard Greenberg’s previously scheduled The Swing of the Sea was being postponed “in order to give these artists more time to work on the production of the play.” Of Good Stock could probably have benefited from more tweaking as well. But it’s still a nice place to visit, even if you wouldn’t want to live there.

AIRLINE HIGHWAY

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 14, $50-$130
airlinehighwaybroadway.com
www.manhattantheatreclub.com

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lisa D’Amour (Detroit) channels her inner Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill in Airline Highway, a rapturous tale about a group of lovable luckless losers coexisting in the run-down, dilapidated Hummingbird Motel on a slowly gentrifying Airline Highway in modern-day, post-Katrina New Orleans. It’s the spring of 2014, and the sad-sack denizens of the seedy motel are preparing for a funeral party in honor of their matriarch, Miss Ruby (Judith Roberts), a local burlesque legend who is on her deathbed but wants a big send-off while she’s still alive. Tanya (Julie White), an aging hooker with a heart of gold, is organizing the festivities, getting help from the loud, fun-loving transgender Sissy Na Na (K. Todd Freeman), moody stripper Krista (Caroline Neff), hippie leftover Francis (Ken Marks), jack of all trades, master of none Terry (Tim Edward Rhoze), and longtime motel manager and primary ne’er-do-well Wayne (Scott Jaeck). They all share a familial sense of camaraderie, ribbing one another about their sorry-ass lives, but only to show they really do care. “Why do we gotta wait until we’re in the coffin for people to say nice things about us?” Francis asks. “Yeah, like maybe if those people said those things earlier, we’d live longer,” Wayne adds, to which Krista responds, “Who wants to live longer.” Trouble soon shows up in the form of Bait Boy (Joe Tippett), an old Hummingbird resident who got out three years earlier and is trying to make a new life for himself, moving in with a cougar and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Zoe (Carolyn Braver), in Atlanta. Bait Boy — whose nickname has numerous debated derivations — had been in a long-term relationship with Krista, who is none too happy to see him again, especially since he has brought his stepdaughter; Zoe keeps asking everyone personal questions as part of a sociology paper she is doing for school. “I’m supposed to interview at least three people from the same subculture,” she explains. “Meaning, you live in a ‘culture,’ and you are coming down to us,” Sissy Na Na points out. Bait Boy’s return and Zoe’s presence set things in motion as the past comes back to haunt them all.

Two-time Tony winner Joe Mantello (Assassins, Take Me Out) directs this Steppenwolf production, presented by Manhattan Theatre Club, with an infectious giddiness that is echoed in David Zinn’s spot-on costumes and Scott Pask’s fab set, which turns the drab parking lot of the dilapidated, depressing Hummingbird into a space bursting with life despite the universal lack of hope displayed by the characters, all damaged goods who seem resigned to their fate. But that’s not going to stop them from dressing up and throwing one helluva party. The ensemble is superb, led by Tony winner White (The Little Dog Laughed,), who has been nominated for a Tony and a Drama Desk Award for her lovely, understated performance as Tanya, a street-smart woman who expected more out of life but is making due with the lot she’s been cast. Tony nominee Freeman (The Song of Jacob Zulu) is up for a Tony and Drama Desk Award for his poignant portrayal of Sissy, a caring soul who speaks her mind and loves to have a good time. In her Broadway debut, Neff (A Brief History of Helen of Troy) gives a beautiful, heartbreaking edge to Krista, who is ashamed of what’s become of her, while Rhoze is a riot as Terry, a layabout who should have done more with his life. The play is alive with the energy of New Orleans, as well as its music, highlighted by Fitz Patton’s original score, a fiery take on Nina Simone’s “Be My Husband,” and overlapping dialogue bursting with an intoxicating rhythm. Two late soliloquies are entirely unnecessary, overemphasizing what the story has already shown us about these very believable forgotten men and women living by their wits on the fringes of society. The play takes place during Jazz Fest, but only Francis has ever been to the annual New Orleans celebration, and he doesn’t even go to the main part. “The real fest is on the edges,” he says, just like their existence. There are various Native American legends about the hummingbird, a positive symbol that can represent peace, love, and happiness as well as beauty, harmony, and integrity. Airline Highway has all that and more.