Tag Archives: Manhattan Theatre Club

CONSTELLATIONS

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through February 28, $67-$125
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.constellationsbroadway.com

It takes several minutes to get into the flow and rhythm of Nick Payne’s Constellations, a two-character play set in the quantum multiverse, in the “past, present, and future.” Beekeeper Roland (Jake Gyllenhaal) and cosmologist Marianne (Ruth Wilson) meet in a bar, have a brief chat, the lights go out, then they do it again, and again. But each time, something changes — the tone of their voice, the movement of their bodies, their positioning onstage, a word here and there. What at first seems like it might be just a tiresome theatrical exercise turns out to be a captivating, sophisticated exploration of the many roads a relationship (and storytelling itself) can take. Over the course of seventy minutes, there are more than fifty short scenes as Roland and Marianne go through repeated iterations of hooking up and not, discussing their careers, being faithful and unfaithful, and, ultimately, facing mortality square in the face. Once you fall under the spell of the drama’s intellectual conceit, a scene won’t even be over before you’re eagerly anticipating how the next one will be slightly different. Constellations is no mere Sliding Doors rehash in which the protagonists have two choices that will take their lives in alternate directions, nor is it as black and white as the Star Trek episode “The Enemy Within,” in which each character has a good and evil version; instead, it posits that there are parallel universes in which Roland and Marianne are interacting at the same time, each one similar but unique — and each one, ultimately, ending in death, something that never changes.

In writing Constellations, Payne — who previously tackled climate change in If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet, in which Gyllenhaal made his New York theater debut — was inspired by the work of Columbia physics and mathematics professor Brian Greene, the superstring theorist and author of the highly influential book The Elegant Universe, giving an intriguing, well-researched scientific edge to the play. While Marianne’s job has her studying the origin of the universe, Roland is a rooftop beekeeper, caring for insects whose very existence might determine the future of the planet. In her Broadway debut, Wilson, whose star has risen dramatically in just a few short years — the thirty-three-year-old actress has won two Olivier Awards and had starring roles in such well-received television series as Luther and The Affair — is sensational as Marianne, combining an innate intelligence with just the right amount of vulnerability. And in his Broadway debut, the thirty-four-year-old Gyllenhaal — who is currently up for an Oscar for his performance in Nightcrawler and has starred in such other films as Zodiac, Brokeback Mountain, and Proof — is a worthy partner as he keeps his character beguilingly unpredictable under the sure hand of Michael Longhurst, who previously directed Gyllenhaal in the Roundabout production of If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet and Wilson in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, when the two were at the University of Nottingham together. The play, which originated in London with Rafe Spall (Life of Pi, Betrayal), who also originated the role Gyllenhaal played in If There Is, and Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky, Blue Jasmine), features a fascinating set designed by Tom Scutt, with lighting by Lee Curran; the actors remain on a central rectangular platform that is surrounded on three sides and above by balloons that represent stars, with different orbs glowing on and off in each scene. Constellations is a challenging, intellectually stimulating and satisfying work, expertly written, directed, and acted, but even with all the thought-provoking science, when it comes right down to it, it’s really just a, er, universal love story, as boy meets girl, then boy meets girl, then boy meets girl….

LOST LAKE

Veronica (Tracie Thoms) and Hogan (John Hawkes) are a pair of lost souls set adrift in new play by David Auburn (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
NY City Center Stage 1
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through December 21, $90
212-581-1212
www.lostlakemtc.com
www.nycitycenter.org

One of the best new plays of the fall season, David Auburn’s Lost Lake is a relatively simple yet compelling drama about two flawed souls trapped in worlds they can’t break out of. Veronica (Tracie Thoms) is a single mother looking to rent a cabin upstate for a week for her, her children, and one of their friends. Veronica goes up early to check out the cabin, which turns out to be as shoddy and ramshackle as its owner, Hogan (John Hawkes), a gaunt, grizzled, but well-meaning man who can’t seem to do anything right in his life. Both are repairers of a sort; Veronica is a nurse practitioner with aspirations to perhaps become a doctor, while Hogan purports to be a handyman who can fix just about anything, including the rotting swimming dock out on the lake behind the cabin. But neither can patch the gaping holes in their lives. As her supposed vacation progresses, Veronica gets caught up in Hogan’s family drama, as he lurks around the property, telling her about his problems with his ex-wife, his daughter, his brother, and, mostly, his despised sister-in-law, no matter how much Veronica just wants him to leave. But various events, both major and minor, keep bringing these two very different people together during a complicated period in which each is forced to take a long, hard look at the choices they’ve made while dealing with the hands they’ve been given.

Tony and Pulitzer Prize winner Auburn reteams with his Proof director, Daniel Sullivan, for this moving slice-of-life tale, which is highlighted by two superb performances. Thoms (Cold Case, Stick Fly) is careful and deliberate as Veronica, a troubled woman who does not like to let her wounds show. The Oscar-nominated Hawkes (Winter’s Bone, The Sessions) is riveting as Hogan, all herky-jerky and unpredictable as a man seemingly uncomfortable in his own skin. The back-and-forth banter between them is enhanced by the piercing yet vulnerable looks in their eyes, neither character happy with their lot in life but not sure how to turn things around. The script cleverly touches on such issues as race, the economic crisis, class, elitism, and gender roles while efficiently dismissing the one place you really don’t want it to go. J. Michael Griggs’s set is appropriately broken-down and dilapidated, echoing the protagonists’ inner demons. The ninety-minute Manhattan Theatre Club production follows the play’s debut earlier this year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Jake Weber and Opal Alladin as part of the Sullivan Project, a residency led by artistic director Daniel Sullivan, who has also helmed such shows as Rabbit Hole, Orphans, The Heidi Chronicles, and many Shakespeare in the Park presentations. Lost in the Lake is a fine fit for the intimate Stage I at City Center, where it is scheduled to run through December 21.

THE COUNTRY HOUSE

An acting family rips into itself in Donald Margulies’s THE COUNTRY HOUSE (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 23, $67-$125
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.thecountryhousebway.com

There’s something all too familiar about Pulitzer Prize winner Donald Margulies’s latest play, The Country House, which opened October 2 at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway home, the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. The show, which deals with a close-knit group of friends and relatives gathering at a country house during the Williamstown Theatre Festival, resounds with echoes of such recent productions as the Tony-winning Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, the underrated Ten Chimneys, the Public’s Nikolai and the Others, and MTC’s own The Snow Geese. It’s a year after the tragic death of Kathy, a beloved and successful actress and, by all accounts, one of the most amazing women ever to step foot on the planet. Her family is honoring her memory at their country house, led by her mother, stage diva Anna Patterson (Blythe Danner); Anna’s cynical, ne’er-do-well son, Elliot Cooper (Eric Lange); her former son-in-law, schlock director Walter Keegan (David Raasche), who was married to Kathy; and Susie (Sarah Steele), Walter and Kathy’s twentysomething daughter. Walter has arrived with his new fiancée, the much younger and very beautiful — as we are told over and over again — Nell McNally (Kate Jennings Bryant), a struggling actress, and Anna has also invited TV superstar and heartthrob Michael Astor (Daniel Sunjata), a longtime family friend who is slumming by appearing at the festival in Ferenc Molnár’s The Guardsman. Margulies (Time Stands Still, Dinner with Friends) channels Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and The Seagull as all the women flirt with Michael, the cynical Susie chooses not to get involved in the family business, and the condescending and contemptuous Elliott takes issue with just about everyone, writing a play that doesn’t exactly endear him to the others.

The Country House might not shed new light on this somewhat tired subject, but the production itself is excellent, fluidly directed by Daniel Sullivan, who has helmed many of Margulies’s previous plays. John Lee Beatty’s living-room set is charming and inviting, enhanced by Peter Kaczorowski’s splendid lighting, which smartly signals each next scene and is especially effective evoking a lightning storm. The acting is exemplary, led by the always engaging Danner (The Commons of Pensacola, Butterflies Are Free) as the still-feisty family matriarch rehearsing for Miss Warren’s Profession, and Steele (Slowgirl, Russian Transport), who is a star on the rise. Rasche (Speed-the-Plow, Sledge Hammer!) is particularly effective as Walter, a character with a lot more depth than originally presented, and TV veteran Lange (Lost, Victorious), in his first play in seven years, will have you wondering why he doesn’t take to the stage more often. Originally produced this past summer at the Geffen Playhouse in L.A. (where Danner, Steele, Rasche, and Lange originated their roles), The Country House has a lot to offer, but it’s a place that’s been visited far too often.

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG AND UNAFRAID

Cherry Jones, Morgan Saylor, and Zoe Kazan shine in world premiere by Sarah Treem (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Tuesday – Sunday through August 10, $89
212-581-1212
www.whenwewereyoungandunafraid.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Five-time Tony nominee Cherry Jones follows up her breathtaking performance as Amanda Wingfield in the Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie with another powerful turn in Sarah Treem’s When We Were Young and Unafraid, but the two-time Tony winner (Doubt, The Heiress) ends up being much better than the play itself. Jones stars as Agnes, a determined woman running a bed and breakfast in 1972 on a small island off the coast of Seattle. In addition to serving vacationing guests, Agnes and her teenage daughter, Penny (Morgan Saylor), also secretly house and help battered women, protecting them from their abusers while nursing them back to physical and mental health. One day a terrified Mary Anne (Zoe Kazan) knocks on the door, her face beaten to a bloody pulp. Agnes offers her temporary asylum as long as she promises not to contact her husband, and soon Mary Anne and Penny, a bookish girl who wants to go to the prom with the captain of the football team, are bonding, discussing life and love. That part of the play works extremely well, treating a difficult subject with tenderness and humor.

Too many hard-to-believe twists leave WHEN WE WERE YOUNG AND UNAFRAID in the dark (photo by Joan Marcus)

However, Treem, who has written such previous plays as A Feminine Ending and The How and the Why and for such television series as House of Cards and In Treatment, tries to do too much, losing focus, particularly by introducing the wholly unbelievable characters of Hannah (Cherise Boothe), a brash black lesbian spouting revolutionary platitudes, and Paul (Patch Darragh), a wimpy white singer-songwriter who is instantly attracted to Mary Anne. The Manhattan Theatre Club production, more than ably directed by Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?), ultimately fails in attempting to examine the women’s rights movement from too many sides, getting lost in heavy didacticism and moralizing and losing its initial firm footing in reality. But Jones is still a marvel to watch, her every movement filled with nuance, eliciting solid support from Kazan (A Behanding in Spokane, The Exploding Girl) and Homeland regular Saylor in her affecting stage debut.

CASA VALENTINA

Jonathon (Gabriel Ebert) contemplates becoming Miranda in front of other people in CASA VALENTINA (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through June 15, $67-$125
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.casavalentinabroadway.com

“Welcome to the Chevalier d’Eon Resort. Welcome to the world of self-made women,” Valentina (Patrick Page) announces in Harvey Fierstein’s sensitive and engaging, if occasionally didactic, new play, Casa Valentina. Fierstein’s first drama in more than a quarter century, following such hit musicals as Kinky Boots, Newsies, and La Cage aux Folles, Casa Valentina was inspired by the true story of a husband and wife who ran a Catskills bungalow in the 1960s where men would spends weekends cross-dressing and acting like women, a safe haven where they could celebrate their feminine side. The show takes place in June 1962 as Valentina, who spends her weekdays as George, and his wife, Rita (a wonderfully sensitive Mare Winningham), prepare for their latest arrivals. Among the attendees are Jonathon (Gabriel Ebert), a shy, nervous young man who will be making his first-ever appearance as Miranda; Bessie (Tom McGowan), a military veteran with a wife and kids who glories in the freedom Casa Valentina gives him; Gloria (Nick Westrate), a stylish woman who looks like she stepped out of an episode of Mad Men; Terry (John Cullum), a septuagenarian who tells Miranda, “You don’t get cleavage. You earn it”; and a respected judge (Larry Pine) who revels in becoming Amy away from his stressful regular life. The guest of honor for the weekend is Charlotte (Reed Birney), a radical cross-dresser who wants the others to join the Sorority, an organization that is attempting to change the public perception of and laws against transvestitism. “I firmly believe that once the world sees who we truly are, there will be no need for deception,” she says. However, membership includes signing an oath against homosexuality, something that makes the rest of the women more than a little uncomfortable.

Charlotte (Reed Birney) gets political at a Catskills bungalow in new Harvey Fierstein play (photo by Matthew Murphy)

Lovingly directed by two-time Tony winner Joe Mantello (Assassins, Take Me Out), Casa Valentina is at its best when it celebrates the joy these men experience by being accepted as women for a few treasured days. The show gets bogged down a bit when dealing with the oath, although it does bring up the critical point that the vast majority of cross-dressers — recent studies put the number around eighty percent — are heterosexual. Even with the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage in America, there are still gross misconceptions of homosexuality, transvestitism, and other so-called deviant or non-normative behavior, and Casa Valentina beautifully reveals how absurd it is for society to restrict and judge the predilections of others. The actors clearly have a blast in Rita Ryack’s lavish costumes and Jason P. Hayes’s glorious wigs and makeup (except for poor Winningham, allotted a frumpy pair of sensible pedal-pushers while the men get to wear fabulous dresses), while Scott Pask’s airy set immediately welcomes the audience into this little-known world. Cross-dressing might be somewhat de rigueur these days on Broadway (Kinky Boots, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, Cabaret, Hedwig and the Angry Inch), but Fierstein, Mantello, and an extremely talented and beautiful cast offer a very different take on this misunderstood culture, treating it with humor, intelligence, honor, courage, and, perhaps most important, dignity.

TALES FROM RED VIENNA

A war widow (Nina Arianda) and a Hungarian journalist (Michael Esper) consider a dangerous romance in TALES FROM RED VIENNA (photo by Joan Marcus)

Manhattan Theatre Club
New York City Center Stage 1
Through April 27, $89
212-581-1212
www.talesfromredvienna.com
www.nycitycenter.org

Inspired by the real-life story of desperate German war widows who turned to prostitution in the 1920s, David Grimm’s Tales from Red Vienna begins with a powerful scene: From behind a loose black curtain that evokes a widow’s veil, a gentleman enters a woman’s living room and promptly has sex with her against a table; he leaves money for her, but her distaste is clear. The curtain is then pulled back and we learn that she is Heléna (Nina Arianda), a formerly well-off married woman who has taken to extremes to earn money after her husband was killed in WWI. Instead of a mansion, she now lives in a small apartment but still manages to be served by her longtime housekeeper, the quick-witted and cynical Edda (Kathleen Chalfant). When Heléna’s best friend, society doyenne Mutzi von Fessendorf (Tina Benko), hatches a plan in which Heléna will join her on what is supposed to be a blind date but is really a way for the married Mutzi to meet with her potential lover, Heléna is shocked when the fix-up turns out to be her most recent customer. Hungarian journalist Béla Hoyos (Michael Esper) instantly takes a liking to Heléna, and her eventual reciprocation leads to major problems as the story takes an unexpected yet utterly clichéd and extremely disappointing turn.

Kathleen Chalfant and Michael Goldsmith offer support in TALES FROM RED VIENNA (photo by Joan Marcus)

Directed by Kate Whoriskey (Ruined, Magdalena) with procedural attention across three acts with two intermissions, the Manhattan Theatre Club production at City Center is highlighted by John Lee Beatty’s (The Nance, Other Desert Cities) inventive sets, particularly the middle-section cemetery where Heléna and Bela have their secret rendezvous. But the promise of the first act slowly falls apart as predictable scenes mix with overacting (Benko, Hoyos) and underacting (Arianda, who was such a force in her Tony-winning role in Venus in Fur). Meanwhile, a subplot involving a Jewish grocer’s son (Michael Goldsmith) as a portent to the rise of Nazism essentially just fades away, emblematic of the play as a whole.

OUTSIDE MULLINGAR

Tony Reilly (Peter Maloney) shares his questionable plans with son Anthony (Brían F. O’Byrne) and neighbor Aoife Muldoon (Dearbhla Molloy) in OUTSIDE MULLINGAR (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 16, $67-$135
www.manhattantheatreclub.com
www.outsidemullingarbroadway.com

Ten years ago, Manhattan Theatre Club presented Bronx-born playwright John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt, starring Brían F. O’Byrne, directed by Doug Hughes, and with scenic design by John Lee Beatty. That group has teamed up again for the world premiere of Outside Mullinger, a charming little tale that opened last week at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. A dark romantic comedy, Outside Mullingar takes place in County Westmeath in the home of Tony Reilly (a wonderful Peter Maloney) and his ne’er-do-well son, Anthony (five-time Tony nominee O’Byrne). An elderly widower, Tony tells his neighbor, Aoife Muldoon (Dearbhla Molloy), that he is considering selling his farm to his nephew in America rather than leave it to Anthony. Aoife, who has just buried her husband, Christopher, can’t believe Tony would do that to his son, who is distressed when he is told of the possibility that he might not get the family land he has worked on his whole life. Discussion also turns to a forty-meter strip of land on the Reilly property that is actually owned by the Muldoons because of an old loan. The strip divides the front of the Reilly home so Tony and Anthony have to walk through a pair of gates to get from the road to their front door. Now that Christopher Muldoon has died, the Reillys believe they can get that narrow bit of land back, but Muldoon’s daughter, Rosemary (Debra Messing), is not about to hand it over, as it holds a very special memory for her. As the two families bicker both playfully and seriously, attention soon turns to Anthony and Rosemary, two lonely, difficult people who clearly don’t know what’s best for them.

Anthony Reilly (Brían F. O’Byrne) and neighbor Rosemary Muldoon (Debra Messing) battle it out during a soft rainstorm in new John Patrick Shanley play (photo by Joan Marcus)

Shanley, who won a Tony and a Pulitzer for Doubt and an Oscar for his screenplay for Moonstruck, keeps things simple in Outside Mullingar, which works as a timeless character study, performed by an engaging cast. Maloney (To Be or Not to Be, Judgment at Nuremberg) nearly steals the show as the crotchety old man, while Molloy (Dancing at Lughnasa, The Cripple of Inishmaan) is stalwart as the widow dressed in black. One of the genuine treasures of the New York stage, O’Byrne (Frozen, The Beauty Queen of Leenane) plays the unpredictable Tony with just the right mix of ambiguity and crazy. And in her Broadway debut — although she has performed often off Broadway, including as Mary Louise Parker’s understudy in Shanley’s Four Dogs and a Bone — Emmy Award winner Messing (Will & Grace, Smash) is a delight, employing an Irish brogue as she battles with Tony both in his house and outdoors in a gentle rainstorm. Here’s hoping it’s not another ten years before this talented team works together again.