Thursday, September 02, 2004
Ambivalent about plays, drama enthusiast catches cold at summer thatre
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
If you'd like a profound observation about the state of this season's American theatre scene, I have one for you - always bring a sweater to the Summer theater. They freeze you to death, no matter where you go. That is as far as I will profound for you.
The founding group of our T&V area theatre fame is the Roundabout. Although they left 17th Street some years ago, many locals still subscribe. Roundabout has always brought great revivals, Shaw and Cabaret and Moliere with Bill Irwin, and some trendy stuff. With three theatres going, they can do a lot, and some of the stuff is head-spinning.
If what they currently show is the trend, I am counting. Their most recent play, Fiction, by Steven Dietz, is a tale of a smartass childless couple of writers, whose talk is a caricature of caricature figures. The pose is pierced by a young woman who had a long-remembered affair with the man and a plagiarism encounter with the woman. The action flitters back and forth over two decades, confusing the theatergoer, given that the characters do not age. The actors on the sparse stage - Tom Irwin, Julie White and Emily Bergl - are superb, but the flashback -oriented scenario that strains the imagination of a seasoned playgoer is off-putting. Flashback is a big seller in today's drama. A time-line, just like in the newspaper stories, seems necessary.
Drama that rewrites recent history is another favorite modality. Assassins, a Roundabout revival of a 1970s musical by Sondheim at his darkest, appears singularly tasteless in the post-9/11 world. It features the several assassins, successful and not, of the nine Presidents that were attacked, with a final scene of the old-time brigands tempting Lee Harvey Oswald to abandon his useless life and make himself a historic figure. Ugh! And it received several awards. This war is transforming us, we must be losing our sense of propriety altogether.
Golda's Balcony by William Gibson, with Tovah Feldschuh, is the story of a Zionist idealist who learns to play power politics for survival. This play presents an intriguing statement attributed to Kissinger that Golda Meir blackmailed the US into supporting Israel in the 1973 war by threatening atomic attacks on Arab capitals.Wow!
History decomposition is actively at work also at the Barrington Stage theatre in the Berkshires, where we frequently encounter T&V country vacationers. This year's new play by Mark St. Germain was God's Committee, which dissects the hospital people who have to decide how to apportion scarce heart transplants. Last year he had Ears on a Beatle, about two FBI agents who shadowed John Lennon and fled the assassination scene. A year earlier there was Castro's Beard, by Brian Steward, a farce of an attempted assassination of Fidel by the CIA, foiled when he chose to stay at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem and fry chickens instead of luxuriating at the Sheraton.
The great joy in the Berkshires was Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmund Rostand's 1897 romantic drama with noble heroes and villains transformed by calls on their honor. The heartbroken poet-swordsman with the huge nose still sacrifices his hopeless love for beautiful Roxanne by teaching her simpleton beloved the words that will make him worthy of her. The Cyrano character, Christopher Innvar, was an uncanny image of Jose Ferrer, whose portrait hangs in the reception hall of the Players Club on East 20th, across from the Edwin Booth statue in Gramercy Park. If you ask politely, the attendant may let you take a look at it. Ferrer, a former Players president, was the Cyrano for all ages, and amply earned the Oscar for his 1950 performance.
We also bade farewell to another former neighbor, Little Shop of Horrors, for many years a T&V country's local feature, residing at the Orpheum Theatre, near Second Ave Deli, for 2,200 performances starting in 1982. In its fourth incarnation it opened on Broadway a year or so ago. Since it has closed, I will not be speaking out of turn by telling that this viewer was put off by the huge hi-tech man-eating flower that swings out over the audience in the last scene, evoking shrieks. Combined with this version's sudden, hard to fathom transmutation of Seymour the meek clerk into a numb serial murderer, it leaves an unpleasant taste of hokey drama, despite the outstanding music by the late Howard Ashman. The three doo-wop girl chorus, their sound outdoing the Supremes and Shirelles, remains an unremitting joy. If you are wondering about the two other versions, there was the original low-budget 1960 dramatic flick directed by Roger Corman the B-movie cult figure, starring a young Jack Nicholson in a featured role, and another, a pricey 1986 movie musical.
If you'd like a profound observation about the state of this season's American theatre scene, I have one for you - always bring a sweater to the Summer theater. They freeze you to death, no matter where you go. That is as far as I will profound for you.
The founding group of our T&V area theatre fame is the Roundabout. Although they left 17th Street some years ago, many locals still subscribe. Roundabout has always brought great revivals, Shaw and Cabaret and Moliere with Bill Irwin, and some trendy stuff. With three theatres going, they can do a lot, and some of the stuff is head-spinning.
If what they currently show is the trend, I am counting. Their most recent play, Fiction, by Steven Dietz, is a tale of a smartass childless couple of writers, whose talk is a caricature of caricature figures. The pose is pierced by a young woman who had a long-remembered affair with the man and a plagiarism encounter with the woman. The action flitters back and forth over two decades, confusing the theatergoer, given that the characters do not age. The actors on the sparse stage - Tom Irwin, Julie White and Emily Bergl - are superb, but the flashback -oriented scenario that strains the imagination of a seasoned playgoer is off-putting. Flashback is a big seller in today's drama. A time-line, just like in the newspaper stories, seems necessary.
Drama that rewrites recent history is another favorite modality. Assassins, a Roundabout revival of a 1970s musical by Sondheim at his darkest, appears singularly tasteless in the post-9/11 world. It features the several assassins, successful and not, of the nine Presidents that were attacked, with a final scene of the old-time brigands tempting Lee Harvey Oswald to abandon his useless life and make himself a historic figure. Ugh! And it received several awards. This war is transforming us, we must be losing our sense of propriety altogether.
Golda's Balcony by William Gibson, with Tovah Feldschuh, is the story of a Zionist idealist who learns to play power politics for survival. This play presents an intriguing statement attributed to Kissinger that Golda Meir blackmailed the US into supporting Israel in the 1973 war by threatening atomic attacks on Arab capitals.Wow!
History decomposition is actively at work also at the Barrington Stage theatre in the Berkshires, where we frequently encounter T&V country vacationers. This year's new play by Mark St. Germain was God's Committee, which dissects the hospital people who have to decide how to apportion scarce heart transplants. Last year he had Ears on a Beatle, about two FBI agents who shadowed John Lennon and fled the assassination scene. A year earlier there was Castro's Beard, by Brian Steward, a farce of an attempted assassination of Fidel by the CIA, foiled when he chose to stay at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem and fry chickens instead of luxuriating at the Sheraton.
The great joy in the Berkshires was Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmund Rostand's 1897 romantic drama with noble heroes and villains transformed by calls on their honor. The heartbroken poet-swordsman with the huge nose still sacrifices his hopeless love for beautiful Roxanne by teaching her simpleton beloved the words that will make him worthy of her. The Cyrano character, Christopher Innvar, was an uncanny image of Jose Ferrer, whose portrait hangs in the reception hall of the Players Club on East 20th, across from the Edwin Booth statue in Gramercy Park. If you ask politely, the attendant may let you take a look at it. Ferrer, a former Players president, was the Cyrano for all ages, and amply earned the Oscar for his 1950 performance.
We also bade farewell to another former neighbor, Little Shop of Horrors, for many years a T&V country's local feature, residing at the Orpheum Theatre, near Second Ave Deli, for 2,200 performances starting in 1982. In its fourth incarnation it opened on Broadway a year or so ago. Since it has closed, I will not be speaking out of turn by telling that this viewer was put off by the huge hi-tech man-eating flower that swings out over the audience in the last scene, evoking shrieks. Combined with this version's sudden, hard to fathom transmutation of Seymour the meek clerk into a numb serial murderer, it leaves an unpleasant taste of hokey drama, despite the outstanding music by the late Howard Ashman. The three doo-wop girl chorus, their sound outdoing the Supremes and Shirelles, remains an unremitting joy. If you are wondering about the two other versions, there was the original low-budget 1960 dramatic flick directed by Roger Corman the B-movie cult figure, starring a young Jack Nicholson in a featured role, and another, a pricey 1986 movie musical.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 2:43 PM 
