All in Off-Broadway
Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn presents a new nondescript production of Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar” featuring an athletic use of choreographed movement to summon the emotional charge created by crowd and battle scenes, elevating and sustaining the intensity of the political drama. “Julius Caesar” is hard to get right; TFANA pulls it off with this well-acted, smartly staged, deeply engaging, and flat-out thrilling production.
Mara Nelson-Greenberg’s new play “Do You Feel Anger?” at the Vineyard Theatre is a razor-sharp, whip-smart satire of contemporary workplace culture that is the blissful antithesis of complacent theatre-making, this play serves up a highly digestible, surrealist critique of mores around empathy consciousness, sexual harassment, hyper-masculinity, and female agency that is equal parts hilarious and horrifying.
A tribute to Oscar Hammerstein is a wonderful idea, but “Sincerely, Oscar” is an ill-conceived, self-indulgent, cringe-inducing, glorified cabaret act that is easily one of the worst productions I have seen on a New York stage in recent memory. Skip it.
Now Off-Broadway, National Yiddish Theatre Folksbeine’s glorious production of “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish” breathes fresh life into a treasured property from the golden age of musical comedy, forcing audiences to interact anew with what is now one of the most well-known and performed musicals of all time, and providing, in return, a host of vital performances and resonant insights. It is, in short, a revelation. See it, or regret it.
Lincoln Center Theater presents a strange, funny, and somewhat confounding new comedy by esteemed playwright John Guare that is a bizarre romp through the recesses of memory and the meaning of story. Tautly told and energetically performed, the play remains entertaining, though incomplete—a great whale that Mr. Guare has harpooned for audiences to follow in our own “Nantucket Sleigh Ride”.
Mark Evans shines in Rodgers and Hart’s 1938 hit “I Married an Angel”; this dance infused fantasy story involving an aristocrat who literally marries an angel is a peculiar relic of its time, but a treat for collectors of obscure musicals and fans of the Rodgers and Hart oeuvre. Director/choreographer Joshua Bergasse steps into the shoes once worn by George Balanchine to create an entertaining show featuring the talents of ballerina Sara Mearns (his wife), as the Angel. Feather-light as it is, I suspect we won’t see “I Married an Angel” again for some time.
Isabelle Huppert offers a devastating portrait of maternal sublimation and abandonment in Florian Zeller’s disturbing and disorienting dark comedy, “The Mother”. Under the brilliant direction of Trip Cullman, the play offers a highly theatrical, distorted, collage-like, meditative, and surreal look at one woman coping with an empty nest, a loveless marriage, and a purposeless life. My advice: get tickets if you can. And call your mother.
Drawing from the headlines, in Bekah Brunstetter’s “The Cake” Debra Jo Rupp gives a fantastic, full dimensional performance as a lovable, conservative baker who struggles with the decision to bake a wedding cake for her surrogate daughter’s same sex wedding. Despite a great performance and a gorgeous production, the play contains a dated treatment of its gay characters and their milieu, presenting an incongruous and ultimately flawed portrait of the relevant issues at hand.
“By The Way, Meet Vera Stark”, a smart satire that takes a piercing look at the damage done by early Hollywood representations of people of color, and the legacy that echoes forth today. With a terrific cast and Lynn Nottage’s is incisive and engaging writing, this play is an easy critic’s pick.
Two hotly-anticipated new musicals opened Off-Broadway recently: Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s “Alice By Heart” at MCC Theater, and Tom Kitt and Joshua Logan’s “Superhero” at Second Stage Theater. I take a look at each.
Two duos of complementary works recently opened Off-Broadway: “Sea Wall / A Life” at the Public Theater, featuring Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal performing monologues by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne, and Classic Stage Company’s repertory presentation of “Mies Julie” and “The Dance of Death”, two newly adapted works of August Strindberg. This is a short look at each.
“The Light” is an urgent and painful story of revelation, redress, and hopeful reconciliation cued at the intersection of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter. Tautly and evocatively sketched by playwright Loy A. Webb, this exquisite two-hander starts like a rom-com before embarking on tragic territory, forcing the audience to reckon with its own baked-in biases and assumptions based on race and gender, and to do and be better.
