Tag Archives: Rob Howell

GOOD BONES AND FIRM FOUNDATIONS ON AND OFF BROADWAY

Mamoudou Athie, Susan Kelechi Watson, and Khris Davis star in Good Bones at the Public (photo by Joan Marcus)

GOOD BONES
Martinson Hall, the Public Theater
425 Lafayette St. at Astor Pl.
Tuesday through Sunday through October 27, $95
212-539-8500
publictheater.org

According to the Canadian website houseful, “‘Good bones’ refers to the core foundational elements of the home — a steady structure that can withstand time, wear, and elements. A home with good bones typically has a sturdy foundation, structural stability, and a strong roof. A well-staged home can hide imperfections with beautiful rugs, a fresh coat of paint, or features that pull your attention.”

Four current plays that take place primarily in a home struggle with the core foundational elements, with varying results.

Playwright James Ijames and director Saheem Ali follow up their Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham, which ran at the Public’s Anspacher Theater before transferring to Broadway, with Good Bones, continuing at the Public’s Martinson Hall through October 27. Maruti Evans’s set is a skeletal house surrounded by plastic, undergoing renovation in an unidentified American city that itself is experiencing controversial gentrification.

Travis (Mamoudou Athie), who comes from money, and Aisha (Susan Kelechi Watson), who grew up in the projects, are a married couple who have moved back to her neighborhood and are considering having a baby. He is a chef preparing to open a restaurant, and she is working on a new sports complex she believes will vastly improve the community. Their contractor, Earl (Khris Davis), flirts with Aisha, who returns the interest, but when she shares the plans for the complex with him, he sees her as a traitor to her roots.

She explains, “We’re calling it the Jewel. It’s going to be kind of like a little village over there. This neighborhood has been abandoned to decay and atrophy. The Jewel will bring together the best of the old and the new. Will there be change? Yes. But change is the only thing consistent in this life. We have been sowing into this community. We have worked diligently to revitalize this neglected corner of the city. We’re changing this neighborhood for the better.” His quick response: “It’s the death star.”

James Ijames’s Good Bones is in need of further renovation (photo by Joan Marcus)

Remembering how he used to play in the very house he is now working in, Earl tells Aisha, “These houses are sturdy. Shit’s built like a ribcage. The bones are so good. If . . . uh . . . you sit really still in here, you can feel the walls breathing and the floors lifting to meet your feet. That’s why I love these old houses. I get to spend time in a lot of haunted places.”

Good Bones follows in the lofty footsteps of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park, but it lacks the character development and depth of those two award-winning works. Watson (Eureka Day, Merry Wives) and Athie (The Mystery of Love and Sex) have little chemistry; it might be the relationship between Travis and Aisha that requires renovating, but it’s hard to root for them because their marriage has no firm foundation.

Davis (Fireflies, Sweat) steals the show as the honest, hardworking, well-meaning contractor who has a more realistic view of the world, the only one who can see the ghost in the machine, and Téa Guarino (A Hundred Words for Snow, Antony and Cleopatra) is charming as his daughter, Carmen. But Good Bones needs more work, more than just a fresh coat of paint.

Kate Mulgrew outshines the material in Nancy Harris’s The Beacon at the Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

THE BEACON
Irish Repertory Theatre, Francis J. Greenburger Mainstage
132 West Twenty-Second St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through November 3, $60-$125
212-727-2737
irishrep.org

Obie winner and Emmy nominee Kate Mulgrew excels as an Irish abstract painter renovating her seaside home in Nancy Harris’s The Beacon, making its North American premiere at the Irish Rep through November 3. Mulgrew is Beiv (rhymes with gave), who is transforming her late husband’s cottage into a glass-enclosed space, as if she has nothing to hide — it has been long rumored that she might have had something to do with her spouse’s death.

She is surprised when her son, Colm (Zach Appelman), arrives with his new wife, Bonnie (Ayana Workman), who is a big fan of hers. Colm is surprised when he finds out that one of his old friends, Donal (Sean Bell), is helping with the renovation and has grown close to Beiv, who Colm always calls by her name, never “mom” or “mother.”

At the back of the room is Beiv’s most recent canvas, which is not quite finished yet. Examining it, Bonnie says, “You can really see the female rage. Like I’m instantly getting menstrual blood, the blood of childbirth, genital mutilation, hemorrhaging — pretty much all female suffering. Abortion is in there obviously . . . and repression and shame. But there’s also something really — tender too. Like there, in those softer shades, I see the vulva. And the clitoris, and this really female desire for pleasure, for sexual intimacy but also for like a really fucking explosive orgasm, you know. But yeah. No, it’s powerful. And brutal. And sad too.”

Beiv’s quick response: “It’s a blood orange.”

Of course, it’s actually something in between, and that “in between” is where the play, directed by Marc Atkinson Borrull, find itself stuck, unable to escape from its own trappings.

The Beacon is in need of more structure at the Irish Rep (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Beiv is a complex and fascinating character, superbly portrayed by Mulgrew (The Half-Life of Marie Curie, Tea at Five) with a compelling thread of intrigue. But when she’s not onstage, the narrative drags with didactic dialogue and meandering subplots, some of which feel completely unnecessary, such as the one involving Ray (David Mattar Merten) and Bonnie, although Ray overdramatizes things when he describes the house: “On one hand it looks like an idyllic little artist’s garret. Half-finished charcoal sketches sit scattered on a table. A large oil painting rests on an easel; there’s a huge glass window with sweeping views of the Atlantic. But the crack in the window from a recent break-in suggests another story. A darker story . . . a story of sex and violence and betrayal that’s hung around this cottage for over a decade.”

As always at the Irish Rep, the set, in this case by Colm McNally, is an impressive structure, but the story does not have the requisite good bones. It’s as if Harris and Borrull (Little Gem, Bedbound) knew where they wanted to end up but threw in too much as they get there.

Even the title is wasted on an unimaginative metaphor. Mulgrew herself is a beacon, but alas, in this production, she’s the only one who shines.

Martha Pichey’s Ashes & Ink trap the actors and characters in uncomfortable ways (photo by Thomas Mundell, Mundell Modern Pixels)

ASHES & INK
AMT Theater
354 West Forty-Fifth St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Wednesday – Sunday through November 3, $39-$49
ashesink.ludus.com
www.amttheater.org

“‘Structure.’ Our lives need structure,” Molly (Kathryn Erbe) says early in the New York premiere of Martha Pichey’s Ashes & Ink. It’s a word that’s repeated several times in the play, which itself needs considerable rebuilding.

Running at the AMT Theater through November 3, Ashes & Ink moves between Molly’s apartment in New York City and her boyfriend Leo’s home in the country. Molly is a widow with a vast archive of birdsong she’s recorded and is categorizing with her sister, Bree (Tamara Flannagan); Molly’s teenage son, Quinn (Julian Shatkin), is an addict who has been in and out of rehab and is seeking a career in acting after having made an impact in a few movies. Leo is a widower raising his eight-year-old son, Felix (Rhylee Watson), by himself.

Quinn has once again left rehab, a place called Serenity House, so he can rehearse for his audition to get into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Prepared to do a monologue from Richard II — his father’s name was Richard — he instead does the classic, and obvious, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy from MacBeth. The most important phrase is “signifying nothing,” to which he adds, “Nothing. Not a fucking thing.” That goes for the play as well, echoed later by Molly, who opines, “I am so deep inside my sucked dry bones sick and tired. I don’t know how to do this anymore. I don’t even know how to think anymore. I can’t remember anything.”

Tim McMath’s set switches from Molly’s cramped apartment, which resembles a psychiatrist’s office, where Quinn often sits in a chair complaining about his life, and the kitchen of Leo’s country house and under a tree on his property. The actors move the sets themselves; the first time they do it is fresh and exciting, but over the course of fifteen scenes, it grows tiresome, dragging down any pace the show is trying to achieve. For some reason, Molly leaves the window over the fire escape wide open, not the safest thing to do, especially when Quinn is running away from trouble.

Stagnantly directed by Alice Jankell, the play — Pichey’s debut — can’t get out of its own way as subplots turn ever-more ludicrous and the holes in the central story keep expanding. And I couldn’t help but cringe when Tony nominee Erbe (Something Clean, The Speed of Darkness, The Father) had to deliver the following lines: “If somebody told me my little boy would grow up to be an addict, I would’ve spat in their face. Aimed right for their mouth. . . . Take the lid off the pressure cooker, Molly! Watch it plaster the walls with all this gummy smelly stuff. Put your nose up to it, take a good whiff of this shit, this mix of ‘Could’ve done this,’ ‘Should’ve known that.’”

Without any kind of firm foundation, Ashes & Ink fails the smell test, among others.

Sisters Gloria (Leanne Best), Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond), Jill (Helena Wilson), and Joan (Laura Donnelly) reunite as their mother lies on her deathbed in The Hills of California (photo by Joan Marcus)

THE HILLS OF CALIFORNIA
Broadhurst Theatre
235 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 22, $58-$351
thehillsofcalifornia.com

Rob Howell’s magnificent multilevel set for Jez Butterworth’s new play, The Hills of California, is a character unto itself, an Escher-like maze of rooms and staircases that rise into a mystical darkness. The main floor switches between 1955 and 1976 at a family-run Victorian guesthouse on the outskirts of the seaside resort town of Blackpool on the Irish Sea, providing a firm foundation for the gripping, if overburdened, narrative.

In 1976, sisters Gloria (Leanne Best), Ruby (Ophelia Lovibond), and Jill (Helena Wilson) have gathered at the fading Seaview Luxury Guesthouse and Spa because their mother, Veronica Webb, is dying in a room upstairs; they are waiting for their fourth sister, Joan (Laura Donnelly), who has not stepped foot in the house for twenty years, living in America. They are in what once was the private kitchen but is now a tiki bar with a one-armed bandit and broken jukebox that represent the siblings’ once-promising career. Their mother’s nurse, Penny (Ta’Rea Campbell), has offered the sisters the opportunity to bring in a doctor to end Veronica’s pain, but they don’t want to make any critical decisions until Joan arrives, something Gloria believes is highly unlikely.

“Times like these you find out who a body is. But go on. Stick up for her,” Gloria says sharply to Jill, who has spent her life taking care of the guesthouse and Veronica and is sure that Joan is on her way, exclaiming, “Well, I’m sorry. But it’s not Silly Jilly head-in-the-clouds, nor sticking up for no one. I know my sister. If Joan says she’s coming, she’s coming. There. I’ve said it.”

In 1955, single mother Veronica (Donnelly) is training young Gloria (Nancy Allsop), Ruby (Sophia Ally), Jill (Nicola Turner), and Joan (McDonnell) to become the next Andrews Sisters, rehearsing Johnny Mercer’s 1948 hit “The Hills of California,” which features the lines “The hills of California will give ya a start / I guess I better warn ya cuz you’ll lose your heart / You’ll settle down forever and never stray from the view / The hills of California are waiting for you.”

“What is a song?” Veronica asks, answering, “A song is a place to be. Somewhere you can live. And in that place, there are no walls. No boundaries. No locks. No keys. You can go anywhere.” A song is its own kind of structure, its own kind of home, meant to bring people together, but in The Hills of California, it tears a family apart.

Veronica Webb (Laura Donnelly) is a controlling British stage mother in Jez Butterworth’s The Hills of California (photo by Joan Marcus)

Tony winner Butterworth (The River, Jerusalem) and Oscar, Tony, and Olivier-winning director Sam Mendes (The Lehman Trilogy, Cabaret) previously teamed up on The Ferryman, which won four Tonys and boasted an ensemble of nearly three dozen performers including covers. The Hills of California is overstocked with minor male characters who disappear into the woodwork, even Luther St. John (David Wilson Barnes), who is involved in a key scene that influences the girls’ future and their relationship with their mother.

About fifteen minutes have been cut from the original three-hour London production and the early previews on Broadway, leaving some gaps in the narrative, along with several moments that feel extraneous, such as when Veronica forces a lodger (Richard Short) to take the long way home, barring him from the shortcut through the kitchen. But when the story focuses on the mother and her daughters, in both time periods, the play finds its foundation, with sharp, poignant dialogue, lovely music by Nick Powell, and pinpoint choreography by Ellen Kane.

Donnelly, who has appeared in several plays written by Butterworth, her partner (they have two children together), is whip-smart as Veronica, a controlling stage mother who recalls Rose Hovick in Gypsy, currently played by Audra McDonald right next door at the Majestic. (On the other side is another show about a mother and daughter and music, Hell’s Kitchen.)

America is not referenced just in the song; the rooms in the guesthouse are named after such US states as Colorado, Alabama, Indiana, Minnesota, and Mississippi, where the critical event happens in 1955 and where Veronica is dying in 1976, reminding the audience that this kind of tale can happen anywhere.

In her 2016 poem “Good Bones,” British actress Maggie Smith, who passed away in September at the age of eighty-nine, writes, “Any decent realtor, / walking you through a real shithole, chirps on / about good bones: This place could be beautiful, / right? You could make this place beautiful.” Even with its occasional skeletal forays, The Hills of California has good bones, filled with a glorious beauty.

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

OLD VIC: IN CAMERA — A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Andrew Lincoln shines a light on a different aspect of Scrooge’s psyche in Old Vic adaptation (photo by Manuel Harlan)

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
The Old Vic, London
Through December 24, £10-£65
www.oldvictheatre.com

For its fourth “In Camera” presentation, the Old Vic has revived Jack Thorne’s 2017 reimagining of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which moved to Broadway in fall 2019 and plans to return next holiday season. Thorne’s bold adaptation minimizes the traditional ghost story elements and instead develops a narrative that focuses on Ebenezer Scrooge’s childhood trauma (George Samuel Townsend plays him as a boy, Andrew Lincoln as an adult) and how it influenced his development into the greedy, heartless man he now is — revealing the psychological damage wrought by a demanding, overbearing father (Michael Rouse), never mentioned in Dickens’s original; the boy’s relationship with his adored sister, Fan (Melissa Allan), named only once by Dickens; and his one chance at love with Belle (Gloria Obianyo), the daughter of his employer, Mr. Fezziwig (Clive Rowe), who in this version runs a funeral parlor, although Dickens himself never elucidates Fezziwig’s business.

The heart-tugging Cratchit family — Scrooge’s clerk, Bob (John Dagleish), Bob’s wife (Maria Omakinwa), and their children, including the lame Tiny Tim (Rayhaan Kufuor-Gray, Lara Mehmet, Lenny Rush, or Eleanor Stollery) — is almost an afterthought in Thorne’s retelling, while Scrooge’s deceased partner, Jacob Marley (Rouse), is given more prominence, as is Scrooge’s nephew, Fred (Eugene McCoy). The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future are portrayed by a trio of women (Julie Jupp, Golda Rosheuvel, and a surprise third character) who are not daunting spirits but rather have much more intimate connections with Scrooge.

Old Vic’s “In Camera” livestreamed production of A Christmas Carol follows Covid-19 protocols (photo by Manuel Harlan)

The Old Vic’s “In Camera” series, live plays streamed direct from its London stage, adhering to all Covid-19 protocols and performed without an audience, previously offered very short runs of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer with Michael Sheen, David Threlfall, and Indira Varma, Stephen Beresford’s Three Kings with Andrew Scott, and Duncan MacMillan’s Lungs with Claire Foy and Matt Smith. Helmed by Tony-winning artistic director Matthew Warchus (Matilda, God of Carnage), A Christmas Carol is riveting theater for most of its two-hour length. The action is filmed with multiple cameras that give tantalizing close-ups as well as long views, while the tech crew often utilizes split screens so expertly that it’s sometimes difficult to figure out whether actors are actually next to each other or are socially distancing, especially during several handshakes.

Lincoln (The Walking Dead, Parlour Song) is sensational in one of the most familiar roles ever written, playing Scrooge as a flawed human being rather than a brutally cold and unforgiving ogre. It’s a welcome change, as are the changes brought to other minor characters, with stand-out performances by Obianyo, Rowe, and Rosheuvel. The cast also features Rosanna Bates as Jess, Tim van Eyken as Nicholas, and Sam Lathwood as Ferdy. This is not your grandparents’ Christmas Carol.

The set by Rob Howell, who also designed the period costumes, is anchored by a slotted-wood floor, with frames without doors through which characters enter and exit and dozens of lanterns hanging from the ceiling. At the 2017-19 in-person shows, audience members received clementines and cookies; the Old Vic tries to maintain a level of interactivity by having an online quiz that begins about an hour before the play starts and by providing a family activity pack that can be downloaded for free here.

Which brings us to the ending. Throughout the show, Christmas carols are played by a masked band in the balcony, consisting of pianist and musical director Will Stuart, cellists Christopher Allan and Pedro Vieira da Silva, violinist Clare Taylor, and clarinetist Martin Robertson. The songs often get in the way of the narrative, especially with Thorne’s (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, His Dark Materials) unexpected twists, but it all becomes particularly annoying when the music, acting, and staging all combine to go way over the top during Scrooge’s rethinking of what Christmas means. What was a gripping, tense tale instantaneously lapses into a tired traditional holiday finale, turning its back on everything that came before. It had challenged what we know about this classic story but then settled for the lowest common denominator for its conclusion, which is a shame. Or, of course, I’m just being a scrooge. Bah, humbug.

THE FERRYMAN

Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
242 West 45th St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through July 7, $79 – $209
theferrymanbroadway.com

Winner of three Olivier Awards for Best New Play, Best Director (Sam Mendes), and Best Actress (Laura Donnelly), British import The Ferryman is a staggering achievement, everything a Broadway play should be and more. Jez Butterworth, whose three-hour Jerusalem dazzled audiences in 2011 and earned Mark Rylance a Tony, followed in 2014 by the underwhelming eighty-five-minute The River, returns to the Great White Way with a searing 215-minute tale set during the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the late summer of 1981, while Irish Republican political prisoners are on a five-month hunger strike that has divided Great Britain. Quinn Carney (Paddy Considine) and his extended family are living on a farm in rural County Armagh — including his always ailing wife, Mary (Genevieve O’Reilly); their children, J.J. (Niall Wright), Michael (Fra Fee), Shena (Carla Langley), Nunu (Brooklyn Shuck), Mercy (Willow McCarthy), Honor (Matilda Lawler), and a nine-month-old son; Quinn’s elderly Uncle Patrick (Mark Lambert) and wheelchair-bound Aunt Maggie Far Away (Fionnula Flanagan); fierce IRA supporter Aunt Patricia (Dearbhla Molloy); and Quinn’s sister-in-law, Caitlin (Donnelly), and her son, Oisin (Rob Malone).

They are all preparing for the harvest feast, with the help of their trusted farmworker, Tom Kettle (Justin Edwards), an addled, simple Englishman, and teenage cousins Shane (Tom Glynn-Carney), Diarmaid (Conor MacNeill), and Declan Corcoran (Michael McArthur), who know how to have a good time. Quinn has been trying to escape his IRA past, but it all comes hurtling back when the body of his brother, Seamus, Caitlin’s husband, is found in a bog and IRA strongman Frank Magennis (Dean Ashton) and leader Muldoon (Stuart Graham) show up unexpectedly at the house to send a very specific message. Caught in the middle is Father Horrigan (Charles Dale), who wants to do the right thing but is threatened by Magennis and Muldoon as well.

Tony winner Mendes (American Beauty, Cabaret) superbly navigates the play’s many complexities, making three hours and fifteen minutes virtually float by. Rob Howell’s crowded, busy set (he also designed the costumes), a kind of purgatory where various sins are revealed, is able to contain the large cast as the characters sing, dance, argue, cook, tell stories, love, and fight. Numerous cast changes have been made since it first opened at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in October (and where it has been extended through July 7), but The Ferryman is an ensemble piece, not dependent on any individual performances, although a baby and a goose stand out. That said, it is a treat to see English actor Considine, who has starred in such films as Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People, Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz, Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Ultimatum, and Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin, make his stage debut as Quinn, a proud man who just wants to go on with his family life but is pulled back into his past. “Let’s just stay like this. Let me just dream for a moment. Imagine what it feels like to have won. I just want to stay like this,” he tells Caitlin early on, before news of Seamus’s fate reaches them. Butterworth, who has cowritten screenplays for such films as Fair Game, Black Mass, and Spectre, was inspired to write The Ferryman by the true story of the murder of Donnelly’s uncle Eugene, who disappeared in 1981 and whose body was discovered three years later. Butterworth wrote the part of Caitlin specifically for Donnelly (Outlander, The River), his partner, who was pregnant during the initial London run. Donnelly gave birth to a daughter, while Butterworth delivered what is currently the best play on Broadway.

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

Sir Richard Eyre’s intimate staging of Eugene O’Neill classic continues at BAM through May 27 (photo by Richard Termine)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St.
through May 27, $25-$150, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

The walls are closing in on the Tyrone family and there’s not much anyone can do about it in Sir Richard Eyre’s deeply intimate staging of Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical masterpiece, Long Day’s Journey into Night, a work so personal that O’Neill never wanted it to be performed. Eyre initially brought the show to the Bristol Old Vic as part of the venerable institution’s 250th anniversary in 2016, with Oscar, Emmy, and Tony winner Jeremy Irons as James Tyrone and Olivier winner and Oscar nominee Lesley Manville as his wife, Mary; the Bristol was where Eyre saw his first play and where Irons trained. A stunning, slightly amended production is now running at the BAM Harvey through May 27 before heading out to California. Rob Howell’s set is staggeringly breathtaking, a large living room with sharply angled glass walls and ceilings that seem to both threaten and expose James and Mary as well as their sons, the sickly Edmund (Matthew Beard) and the ne’er-do-well Jamie (Rory Keenan), along with the maid, Cathleen (Jessica Regan). James is a famous actor who, emotionally crippled by childhood poverty, chose the easy way out, a financially successful career touring his big hit, The Count of Monte Cristo, rather than pursuing artistic challenges. Despite his money, he remains fearful and miserly, and his family has been scarred by it. While James, Jamie, and Edmund drink heartily, Mary is addicted to painkillers, claiming they are for the rheumatism that is crippling her hands. She has recently returned from yet another stay in a sanitarium, and the men are keeping a close eye on her, particularly when she goes upstairs and spends time in the extra bedroom, where she loses herself in her morphine-addled world. James desperately wants to keep the truth about Edmund’s illness from Mary, but he no longer has the tight grip on his family that he might have once had.

James Tyrone (Jeremy Irons) and Mary (Lesley Manville) fight many demons in Long Day’s Journey into Night (photo by Richard Termine)

It all takes place on a foggy August day in 1912, but the show feels as relevant as ever, given the current opioid crisis that is devastating America, and O’Neill’s knowing depiction of functional alcoholism is as sharp as ever. Former National Theatre director Eyre (Ghosts at BAM, The Crucible on Broadway) focuses on conversations between two characters, making it feel like we are invading their privacy, intruding on this dysfunctional family, whether we’re watching a sweet, romantic moment between James and Mary, a warm bonding between James and Edmund, or a lovely little talk between Mary and Cathleen. The cast is exceptional, led by a brilliant performance by Manville (The Phantom Thread, Ghosts); she plays Mary with more of a firm grounding than usual, as if Mary has a legitimate fighting chance to beat her addiction. (Previous portrayers of Mary include Tony winners Florence Eldridge, Vanessa Redgrave, and Jessica Lange as well as Geraldine Fitzgerald, Zoe Caldwell, Bibi Andersson, Laurie Metcalf, Liv Ullmann, and Colleen Dewhurst.) In one scene she starts to go upstairs several times but turns back, which tortures her husband and sons and teases the audience, even though we know where she will eventually end up. Irons (Reversal of Fortune, The Real Thing) is classy and erudite as James, his long legs spread apart magnificently when he’s smoking his cigar and reading the paper at the table; he looks at Mary with real tenderness, recalling a love he might never recapture. (The role has earned Tonys for Fredric March and Brian Dennehy and nominations for Jack Lemmon and Gabriel Byrne; other portrayers include Laurence Olivier, James Cromwell, Robert Ryan, Alfred Molina, and David Suchet.)

The Tyrone family can’t look away from their troubled existence in Bristol Old Vic production at BAM (photo by Richard Termine)

Tony nominee Beard (Skylight, And When Did You Last See Your Father?) has an amiability not always associated with Edmund, while Keenan (Liola, The Kitchen) is brash and determined as Jamie, who has given up on any kind of reputable future. Regan (Doctors, Liola) makes the most of the small but important role of Cathleen. Peter Mumford’s lighting often results in characters’ being reflected in the windows, like ghostly apparitions of their troubled souls. As dark as the play is, Eyre holds out just enough hope that this time things will turn around for the Tyrones, that maybe Jamie will get a real job, Edmund will beat consumption, Mary will kick morphine, and James will go back to the stage. But as Mary says, “None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.” Written seventy-five years ago, O’Neill’s words still ring true, providing yet more sparks to this American classic.

GROUNDHOG DAY THE MUSICAL

Phil Connors (Andy Karl) is trapped in Punxsutawney, PA, forced to relive Groundhog Day over and over again (photo by Joan Marcus)

August Wilson Theatre
245 West 52nd St. between Broadway & Eighth Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 7, $79.50 – $169
www.groundhogdaymusical.com

“Hoping for an early spring? Well, tomorrow is Groundhog Day, and the good folks in Punxsutawney are already gathering in a snowy field waiting for the dawn. Why? Because they’re morons,” meteorologist Phil Connors (Andy Karl) declares at the beginning of Groundhog Day, the fabulous musical adaptation of the popular 1993 comedy. The arrogant, condescending, misogynistic Connors, who hosts the television program Good Weather with Phil Connors — “Thanks for watching,” he patronizingly says whenever recognized by a gushing fan — has been sent to cover the annual Groundhog Day celebration in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, with excited associate producer Rita (Barrett Doss) and quiet cameraman Larry (Vishal Vaidya), but he doesn’t care one iota about whether the rodent sees its shadow or whether there will be six more weeks of winter. “Small towns, tiny minds / Big mouths, small ideas / Shallow talk, deep snow / Cold fronts, big rears,” he sings about the local populace and eager tourists who have flooded the community, many who have come in costume to celebrate the aptly named Phil the groundhog. “There’s nothing more depressing than small town USA / And small don’t come much smaller than Punxsutawney on Groundhog Day,” he adds. Connors might care only about himself, unwilling to find the charm that is the core of America, but he’s about to get one very unusual comeuppance because of his snarky, superior attitude. Every morning, he wakes up to discover that it is still Groundhog Day — he is stuck in a loop in which he keeps meeting such corny, down-home characters as the Chubby Man (Michael Fatica), bed-and-breakfast owner Mrs. Lancaster (Heather Ayers), groundhog fans Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland, nerdy marching band sweethearts Fred and Debbie (Gerard Canonico and Katy Geraghty), the bumbling sheriff (Sean Montgomery), and high school acquaintance and insurance salesman Ned Ryerson (John Sanders), who all annoy him no end, especially when they want to talk about the weather. He’s trapped in a nightmare of his own making, perhaps incapable of figuring a way out.

Phil Connors (Andy Karl) and Rita (Barrett Doss) pause for a special moment in smash Broadway musical (photo by Joan Marcus)

Three-time Tony nominee Karl (On the Twentieth Century, Rocky) is a phenomenon as Connors, a role immortalized by Bill Murray in the film; he is bursting with an infectious charisma and bewitching energy that envelops the audience from the very start and never lets go; it’s an unforgettable, bravura, career-making performance by a rising star. He even has fun showing off the brace he has to wear after having torn his ACL during previews. But he’s helped tremendously by an outstanding book that really understands the heart and soul of the film, which is not a shock, as the book is written by Danny Rubin, who cowrote the movie with director Harold Ramis. Thus, the characters and the plot come first, with plenty of spoken dialogue leading into the superb music and lyrics by Australian comedian, musician, writer, director, and actor Tim Minchin, who also wrote the music and lyrics for Matilda the Musical, earning him a Tony nomination for Best Original Score. (He also played crazed rock star Atticus Fetch on Californication.) The songs flow seamlessly into the story, with some brilliant surprises. Rebecca Faulkenberry (Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Rock of Ages) brings down the house as Nancy Taylor, a conquest of Phil’s who opens the second act with “Playing Nancy,” lamenting her fate both as the character and the actress playing the character. “Well, here I am again the pretty but naive one / the perky breasted, giggly, one-night-stand / Is it my destiny to be a brief diversion / just a detour on the journey of some man?” she asks, wanting to be more than she is. Later, Sanders (Matilda, Peter and the Starcatcher) delivers the beautiful ballad “Night Will Come,” about life’s inevitabilities.

Meteorologist Phil Connors (Andy Karl) can’t stop bumping into insurance salesman Ned Ryerson (John Sanders) in Groundhog Day (photo by Joan Marcus)

Minchin and Rubin don’t sugarcoat anything, instead focusing on the bittersweet nature of human existence. Tony-winning director Matthew Warchus (Matilda, God of Carnage) never allows the show to get boring, despite so much repetition, while Peter Darling and Ellen Kane’s playful choreography weaves its way through Rob Howell’s fast-changing sets amid Christopher Nightingale’s smart orchestrations. (Howell also designed the fun costumes.) And during “Hope,” magician Paul Kieve (Ghost, Matilda) adds some very cool illusions as Phil contemplates the end. There’s a reason the Old Vic production garnered eight Olivier nominations (winning Best Actor and Best Director) and the Broadway version is up for seven Tonys (Best Musical, Best Book, Best Actor, Best Direction, Best Original Score, Best Choreography, and Best Scenic Design): The cast and crew are just that good, from top to bottom, led by Karl, all coming together to create a show to remember, one that, yes, audiences are likely to want to see over and over again and one that, despite its British roots, is profoundly American.

MATILDA THE MUSICAL

Miss Trunchbull (Bertie Carvel) declares that “children are maggots” in MATILDA (photo by Joan Marcus)

Shubert Theatre
225 West 44th St. between Broadway & Eighth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 6, 2014, $32-$157
www.matildathemusical.com

The best musical to hit the Great White Way since The Book of Mormon, the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Matilda is a dazzling spectacle, a sensational gift from across the pond. Based on Roald Dahl’s 1988 children’s novel, Matilda follows the trials and tribulations of young Matilda Wormwood (played alternately by Sophia Gennusa, Oona Laurence, Bailey Ryon, and Milly Shapiro), an extraordinarily gifted nine-year-old who loves to read books and tell stories. But her sleazy car-salesman father (Gabriel Ebert), who is involved in a shady deal with some Russians, and her self-obsessed mother (Lesli Margherita), who is training for a dance competition with hot-to-trot partner Rudolpho (Phillip Spaeth), want her to give up books and instead be more like her older brother, the dim-witted Michael (Taylor Trensch), who spends his days watching TV and grunting. At school, her teacher, Miss Honey (Lauren Ward), recognizes Matilda’s promise and wants to escalate her education, but the headmistress, Miss Trunchbull (Bertie Carvel in magnificent drag), prefers to punish kids — by sending them off to the terrifying Chokey — rather than promote learning. Meanwhile, Matilda tells an intriguing story to Mrs. Phelps (Karen Aldridge), the school librarian, about a doomed relationship between an acrobat (Samantha Sturm) and an escapologist (Ben Thompson) that is a metaphor for Matilda’s awful family life. But with the help of her remarkable self-possession and unending determination, Matilda is not about to give up her unquenchable thirst for knowledge.

Matilda (Molly Shapiro) tells illuminating, and very adult, stories to Mrs. Phelps the librarian (Karen Aldridge) in MATILDA (photo by Joan Marcus)

Winner of seven Olivier Awards, Matilda is a complete triumph from start to finish, from the opening “Miracle” scene, in which the kids are all introduced at a birthday party, to the closing ensemble piece, “Revolting Children.” Every detail is filled with magic, from Rob Howell’s letter-laden sets, which spell out various words that appear during the course of the show, and his inventive, very funny costumes, particularly for Miss Trunchbull and Matilda’s father, to Peter Darling’s choreography, which reaches jaw-dropping proportions when the stage turns into a three-dimensional Scrabble board. Shapiro is extraordinary as the title character, employing just the right mix of wry cynicism and childhood wonder, as Dennis Kelly’s book and Tim Minchin’s music and lyrics capture Dahl’s unique tone and spirit. “So you think you’re able to survive this mess / by being a prince or a princess / you will soon see / there’s no escaping tragedy,” the kids sing in the bouncy but ominous “School Song,” continuing, “And even if you put in heaps of effort / you’re just wasting energy / ’cause your life as you know it / is ancient history.” The large cast also includes Frenie Acoba as Lavender, who develops a delightfully devilish little plan, and Jack Broderick as Bruce, who has a thing for chocolate cake, but even with all the cute and talented kids around, it’s Carvel as the hunchbacked Miss Trunchbull who steals the show, declaring that “children are maggots” as she takes delight in destroying even the tiniest bits of happiness they might find. Impressively directed by Matthew Warchus (God of Carnage, Boeing-Boeing), Matilda creates a world of pure imagination, yet one with darkness hovering around every corner, the must-see musical of the season.