All in Play
Young Jean Lee makes history as the first female Asian-American playwright with her quietly enveloping play “Straight White Men”; far from the raging jeremiad that many liberal theatregoers no doubt anticipate, this tightly directed and finely acted play is a smart, funny, and surprising look at questions of privilege and identity through the lens of America’s oldest and newest, and soon to be minority, group: straight white men.
Belgian visionary director Ivo van Hove presents a breathtaking and terrifying stage version of Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” at the Park Avenue Armory. Documenting the rise of the Third Reich through the lens of one German family, it is one of the most profoundly unsettling, memorable, and perversely satisfying experiences I have had in the theatre.
Carey Mulligan gives a commanding performance in “Girls & Boys”, but the play is bloated, plodding, and dramatically unsatisfying. Skip it or listen to the audiobook instead.
Tracy Letts’ “Mary Page Marlowe” at Second Stage offers a fascinating, fragmented portrait of one ordinary woman’s journey through life, embodied by six actors in eleven time-hopping scenes. The tension of what happens to us versus what we control haunts the text as Mary Page traverses decades, surfing waves of feminism amidst the shifting roles of women from mid-century America to the present. Mr. Letts, director Lila Neugebauer, and an ensemble cast of 18 create a mosaic that is compelling, if ultimately mysterious.
Capping an unusually gay year for New York theatre, I take a look at what many consider to be the first gay play (“The Boys in the Band”) and what might be the newest gay play (“Log Cabin”). Catch the former if you can (tickets are scarce and expensive); skip the latter.
Two new plays that trenchantly tackle experiences of African American men across the present and history of our country opened Off-Broadway last week. Both “Pass Over” and “Sugar in Our Wounds” floored me for different reasons; though distinct in content and message, they are united in a common theme of black erasure. This is a look at each, both of which I highly recommend.
Joshua Harmon’s new play, “Skintight” at Roundabout Theatre Company, entertainingly surveys the ways in which our notions of beauty and age shape and shade all our relationships. Idina Menzel makes a rare stage play appearance in a role tailor made for her talent, but this play offers little resolution, only more questions, and a steady stream of laughs—enjoyable, but largely forgettable.
Elevator Repair Service’s “Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf” by Kate Scelsa is self-styled “fan fiction” parody response to Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, lovingly skewering the latter with a sometimes absurdist literary, dramaturgical, and feminist critique. The ambition is admirable and the result mixed, though entertaining.
“Dan Cody’s Yacht” is a new play by Anthony Giardina that tackles contemporary issues of privilege, mobility, inequality, and education through an implausible, plot-hole ridden story with an irredeemable leading character and disgraceful ideological point of view. Skip it.
“Peace for Mary Frances”, a new play by Lily Thorne, receives a world premiere production by The New Group starring Lois Smith as a fading matriarch of a very dysfunctional family, waiting to die in home hospice. Hyper-realistic, brimming with both tedium and spasmodic explosions of family feuds, death isn’t always the most compelling experience to observe, but that turns out to be the point.
Susan Stroman, John Kander, and David Thompson continue their thirty year collaboration with “The Beast in the Jungle”, a “dance play” inspired by Henry James’ 1903 novella. The dancing and music is beautiful to watch and hear, but the piece is dramatically unfulfilling, its more cryptic source material diminished in the course of fleshing out, crystallizing, and modernizing the story.
Hook & Eye Theater’s fourth collaborative play “She-She-She” examines the experience and legacy of New Deal-era She-She-She campers and their contemporary descendants, set against a larger dialogue about female agency, grief, trauma, and isolation. While this witty, playful, and heartfelt show has closed, be sure to put Hook & Eye Theater on your radar.
