Tag Archives: Teresa Avia Lim

JUNK

Ayad Akhtar and Doug Hughes shine a light on debt financing, leverage, disclosure violations, and the death of American manufacturing in Junk at Lincoln Center (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday – Saturday through January 7, $87-$147
212-362-7600
www.lct.org

Just because I graduated from Wharton in the 1980s doesn’t mean I understand every intricacy in Ayad Akhtar’s complexly layered Junk, his sizzling-hot excoriation of greed and hostile takeovers, set in 1985. But Akhtar makes the key elements easy to follow, even for me, as a group of men fight it out for control of an Allegheny steel mill — but the last thing on their mind is actually steel, because in this world, it’s money that matters. Akhtar — who won the Pulitzer Prize for Disgraced, a sharp play about race, assimilation, ambition, and bigotry, and whose 2014 drama, The Invisible Hand, put capitalism and religion on trial in Pakistan — refers to Junk as “a ritual enactment of an origin myth,” in this case that of debt financing at the expense of American manufacturing. “When did money become the thing — the only thing?” journalist Judy Chen (Teresa Avia Lim) asks at the beginning. “It was like a new religion was being born.” It might not sound like a sexy topic, but it’s a scorcher in the hands of Tony-winning director Doug Hughes (The Father, Incognito), who orchestrates all the back-room dealings on John Lee Beatty’s dazzling multilevel set, strikingly lit by Ben Stanton. Sacker-Lowell junk bond trader Robert Merkin (Steven Pasquale) is the mastermind behind a hostile takeover of Everson Steel and United, a family-owned business on the Dow. Merkin, who believes that “debt is an asset,” and Sacker-Lowell lawyer Raül Rivera (Matthew Saldivar), who claims that “nothing makes money like money,” are working with corporate raider Israel Peterman (Matthew Rauch) to gain control of Everson Steel, owned by Thomas Everson Jr. (Rick Holmes), who desperately wants to hold on to the Allegheny-based firm founded by his father. Merkin turns to his wife, numbers whiz Amy (Miriam Silverman), for advice while luring in arbitrageur Boris Pronsky (Joey Slotnick) and investor Murray Lefkowitz (Ethan Phillips) to raise the necessary funds and manipulate the market. When old-time private equity magnate Leo Tresler (Michael Siberry) gets wind of Merkin’s plan, he decides to throw his hat in the ring as well. Meanwhile, US attorney Giuseppe Addesso (Charlie Semine) and assistant US attorney Kevin Walsh (Philip James Brannon) are operating behind the scenes, building a case against Merkin and others.

Corporate raider Israel Peterman (Matthew Rauch) colludes with junk bond trader Robert Merkin (Steven Pasquale) in Broadway financial thriller (photo by T. Charles Erickson)

When Akhtar moved to New York City shortly after graduating from Brown, his father offered to pay his rent if he read the Wall Street Journal every day. He immersed himself in newspapers and magazines about business and came to believe that the players in this world were “not moral or immoral but amoral,” he tells co-executive editor John Guare in Lincoln Center Theater Review. In many ways Junk is like a Shakespearean history play about war, complete with lies, betrayal, spies, sex, and blood, where words and actions can be twisted to mean something else. Of course, Akhtar is not exactly the first person to write about how money became a kind of religion, with profit more important than product and people, humanity be damned, but he does so with a graceful style that turns clichés inside out while choosing no real heroes or villains. No one is safe from his skewer, but each man and woman gets to state his or her case free from editorial judgment. That doesn’t mean everyone is equal, that the audience can’t separate good from evil, or that viewers can’t feel sympathy for some characters and disdain for others. Akhtar reveals a socioeconomic level many of us will never be a part of, and most likely wouldn’t want to — although more than a few in the well-heeled Lincoln Center audience at the show we attended rustled uncomfortably in their seats. Talking about Merkin, Tresler tells Chen, “He’s a pawnbroker. And he’s got America in hock,” to which she replies, “Or he’s the new J. P. Morgan.” In many ways Akhtar has created an extremely extended dysfunctional family, with surrogate children, cousins, parents, and grandparents fighting over money, power, and values. “I don’t want to make you mad,” Lefkowitz tells Merkin, as if he doesn’t want to disappoint Daddy. Featuring a strong cast of twenty-three led by fine turns by Pasquale (The Bridges of Madison County, Rescue Me), Siberry (An Enemy of the People, Six Degrees of Separation), Phillips (My Favorite Year, Benson), Slotnick (Dying for It, Boston Public), and Holmes (The Visit, Matilda), Junk might be set thirty-two years ago, but it’s not out-of-date in the least, as income inequality grows around the world, President Trump has just signed a controversial overhaul of the US tax system, and cryptocurrency complicates the market and confuses the masses.

SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK: THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

Katerina (Cush Jumbo) is not about to be tamed by men in all-female production of THE TAMING OF THE SHREW in Central Park (photo by Joan Marcus)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Through June 26, free, 8:00
publictheater.org

William Shakespeare, protofeminist? Well, not exactly. But in the hands of Tony-nominated director Phyllida Lloyd, Bard fans are offered a new way to look at Shakespeare’s troubling play about women’s submission at the hands of devious men. Lloyd, who previously helmed all-woman versions of Julius Caesar and Henry IV at St. Ann’s (as well as Mamma Mia! on Broadway), now takes the same route with The Taming of the Shrew, continuing at the Public’s Delacorte Theater in Central Park through June 26. Mark Thompson’s set and costumes create a kind of traveling circus atmosphere as a Donald Trump sound-alike introduces beauty-pageant contestants, instantly demeaning women in multiple ways. The women, who come in all the shapes and sizes that the presumptive Republican nominee for president would clearly not approve of, sing and dance, wearing giant smiles on their faces. But Katherina (Cush Jumbo), whose sister is the beautiful, ditzy blonde Bianca (Gayle Rankin), wants no part of this sideshow, demanding to make her own decisions and refusing to kowtow to any man.

The tough-talking Petruchio (Janet McTeer) is ready for a challenge in THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (photo by Joan Marcus)

Her words are so harsh and brutal that the men in Padua treat her as a kind of laughingstock, wanting nothing to do with her. But when her wealthy father, Baptista (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), declares that until Katherina, his eldest daughter, is wed, his younger daughter, Bianca, an object of sexual desire among all the men, is off limits. So several of Bianca’s suitors, including Gremio (Judy Gold), Lucentio (Rosa Gilmore), and Hortensio (Donna Lynne Champlin), get involved in an elaborate scheme of lies, deception, and mistaken identity to convince Petruchio (Janet McTeer) to wed and bed the untamable Katherina so Bianca becomes fair game. But Kate is not about to fall for their tricks, until she has little choice, resulting in some very difficult scenes as Petruchio essentially starves and tortures Kate to force her to become his obedient sex slave. But Lloyd has a surprise in store that provides a conclusion that might not sit well with either Shakespeare or Trump.

A beauty pageant sets the stage for a unique battle of the sexes at the Delacorte Theater (photo by Joan Marcus)

The cast, which also features Adrienne C. Moore as Tranio, Teresa Avia Lim as Biondello, Stacey Sergeant as Grumio, Candy Buckley as Vincentio, Leenya Rideout as a wealthy widow, and Morgan Everitt, Anne L. Nathan, Pearl Rhein, Jackie Sanders, and Natalie Woolams-Torres, has an absolute ball, seemingly enjoying every second of the show. Jumbo (Josephine and I, The River) stomps and shrieks around with fiery glee as Kate, while Tony-winning, Oscar-nominated British actress McTeer (God of Carnage, Tumbleweeds) channels a dirtbag Crocodile Dundee as Petruchio. Gold (The Judy Show — My Life as a Sitcom, 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother) stands tall as Gremio, replacing what she calls a boring speech with a brief stand-up routine that, the night we attended, referenced a raccoon that was sneaking around backstage. And Moore (Black Cindy on Orange Is the New Black) is delightful as Tranio, firmly entrenched right in the middle of all the shenanigans. Lloyd infuses the festivities — which actually do nearly fall apart during the wedding scenes and when Petruchio is “taming” Kate — with a feminist energy that nearly explodes to songs by Pat Benatar and Joan Jett. Of course, this production of an outdated, sexist play — which inspired the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate — comes along at an opportune moment in American history, as Hillary Clinton has a legitimate chance to become the first woman U.S. president, violence and discrimination against the LGBTQ community remain prevalent, and even discussions over bathroom usage have resulted in fear and loathing. In the program, Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis notes that Shrew “is the only major Shakespeare play which I have never produced or directed. . . . The reason is simple: I have never been able to get behind the central action of the play, which is, well, taming a woman. . . . But then I listened to Phyllida Lloyd.” We are all very glad that he did.

AWAKE AND SING!

Ralph (Jon Norman Schneider), Uncle Morty (Andrew Ramcharan Guilarte), and Grandpa Jacob (Alok Tewari) face a series of crises in all-Asian revival of Clifford Odets’s AWAKE AND SING! (photo by William P. Steele)

Walkerspace
46 Walker St.
Tuesday – Sunday, through September 8, $25
866-811-4111
www.naatco.org

It’s been fifty years since writer and director Clifford Odets died of stomach cancer at the age of fifty-seven, and it is thrilling to see his work currently undergoing a kind of renaissance. Late last year, a seventy-fifth anniversary production of Golden Boy opened on Broadway and was nominated for a Tony, and this past spring brought the first Broadway revival of the 1949 Hollywood drama The Big Knife. But the National Asian American Theatre Co. (NAATCO) takes a somewhat different approach in its wonderfully small-scale, deeply intimate version of Odets’s first, and one of his best, plays, Awake and Sing! Written for Odets’s Group Theatre in 1935, the play follows the exploits of the Berger family, who live together in a cramped Bronx apartment. It’s 1933, and the Great Depression is continuing to take its toll. The household is run by domineering mother Bessie (NAATCO cofounder and artistic producing director Mia Katigbak), who is married to the meek and often clueless Myron (Henry Yuk). Son Ralph (Jon Norman Schneider) has no career direction and a girlfriend his mother disapproves of, while daughter Hennie (Teresa Avia Lim) has just gotten knocked up, with the man who did it out of the picture. While Bessie tries to orchestrate and control everyone’s lives, her father, Jacob (Alok Tewari), spouts Marxist doctrine and her well-dressed brother, Morty (Andrew Ramcharan Guilarte), waxes poetic about success in business. Also hanging around is Moe Axelrod (Sanjit De Silva), a street-smart character who offers his own take on the future.

Bessie Berger (Mia Katigback) will do whatever it takes to protect the honor of her family in NAATCO revival of Clifford Odets’s first play (photo by William P. Steele)

As opposed to its two big-time Broadway productions — Awake and Sing! premiered on the Great White Way in 1935, directed by Harold Clurman and starring Luther Adler, Stella Adler, Morris Carnovsky, John Garfield, and Sanford Meisner, while the Tony-winning 2006 revival was directed by Bartlett Sher and featured Ben Gazzara, Zoe Wanamaker, Mark Ruffalo, Lauren Ambrose, and Pablo Schreiber — NAATCO’s three-act production takes place in the reconfigured Walkerspace theater in SoHo, where Anshuman Bhatia’s set design consists of a dining-room table, a couch, and some chairs in a narrow rectangular center area, with the fifty-member audience seated in two rows on the longer sides, making them feel like part of the family. The all-Asian cast gives splendid performances as the Jewish clan, a conceit that lends additional insight into the general themes of poverty, class, and pride, resulting in a more universal scope. Katigbak is particularly effective as the manipulative mother, while De Silva stands out as Axelrod, a voice of reason amid the escalating chaos. Directed by Shakespearean Stephen Fried, the play benefits strongly from the intense eye contact the characters make with one another, something that gets lost on larger stages but is powerful and dramatic here. The Bergers might not find that the streets of America are paved with gold, but this production of Awake and Sing! is very rich indeed.