Good play, good production: Mockingbird at Kavinoky Theater

Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, at the Kavinoky Theatre in Buffalo. Adapted by Aaron Sorkin, directed by Kyle LoConti. Has the usual uniformly strong cast assembled by Kavinoky. Saw the performance Friday night, November 29, 2019. Worth seeing. Good play, good production.

Sometime around 7th or 8th grade, around 50 years ago, I read Harper Lee's novel and liked it. About that same time, I remember seeing the movie with Gregory Peck playing a sage and saintly Atticus Finch. The play is a decent takeoff on the story, compressing the narrative into 2 3/4 hours (which of course has consequences). A lot of Americans who grew up in the 60s and 70s know the story. You can't help but seethe over Tom Robinson's fate as the black man falsely accused and convicted of raping a white woman in a sleepy Alabama town in the 1930s (Tom is played by Xavier Harris in a modulated, controlled performance). Unfortunately, the play says almost nothing about Boo Radley, the mysterious neighbor who comes to the children's rescue, until the very end, thus making the ending difficult to understand if you don't know the book.

The play emphasizes Atticus Finch (well played by Chris Avery) as a moral crusader. Tom wants to plead guilty to the charge of raping a white woman, and is willing to accept a 15 year prison sentence. Tom knows the score, and knows a jury of twelve white farmers will surely convict him, and execute him. But Atticus convinces Tom to plead innocent. So we have a trial. The play seems to show Atticus as being in a conflicted, ambiguous moral position. He gets flack for it from his black maid Calpurnia, and while the Judge Taylor and Sheriff Tate seem to support Atticus, the townspeople condemn him for being a "nigger-lover".

The play takes some theatrical liberties that bothered me. The loathsome Bob Ewell (menacingly played by Patrick Moltane), is given long lines that too neatly describe his racism. Ewell sounded "scripted" on the stand, as if the playwright blared at the audience that Ewell represents racism in general. And I found Calpurnia's mocking of Atticus for his own possibly racist assumptions hard to understand. She does it with a sort of 2019 irony that I don't see in the 1936 story line. It sticks out as jarring and false.

We know how it goes. Tom is shot five times trying to escape a prison he should never have been in to begin with (we get the allusion to the police shootings of black men of the last few years). And Boo Radley pops out of nowhere to save the children. Good play. Good production. 

Speed the Plow at Roads Less Traveled Productions: two problems the play can't get around

Speed the Plow, a play by David Mamet, seen Saturday, October 27, 2018 at Road Less Traveled Productions theater. Directed by Scott Behrend.

I have a problem with this play. I have no problem with the production itself. Matt Witten and Kevin Kennedy are very good as Bobby Gould and Charlie Fox, two full-of-themselves Hollywood producers who've been promoted. They play the profanity-crammed buddy dialog pretty well. Mamet does the profanity quite realistically. Having worked in corporations most of my career, I've heard men talk this way many times (mostly salesmen, and sometimes women), though never quite this non-stop. Laura Barriere is also good as the temporary secretary with schemes of her own. Nice stage set. The whole production moved with a snappy verve, as a Mamet play should.

My problem is with the play itself. There are two holes in the story for me.

1. The courtesy read book (whatever it's titled) is so bad, it's hard to imagine any producer being interested in it as a movie. Yes, I understand that it's Mamet's intention that the book (as presented through the segments read aloud by Karen and Bobby) is supposed to be comically ridiculous. But the book is too ridiculous. Bobby decides to promote the book as a movie thanks to being won over by Karen (who wins him over by having sex with him). Bobby Gould, and men like him, can have all the sex they want with the Karens of the world. A night of sex with Karen is not enough to make anyone like Bobby Gould dump his longtime ally and friend Charlie and even temporarily promote this absurd movie idea. To me, it simply doesn't make sense.

2. Then there's Karen. Why would Karen promote this book? What's in it for her? That's never clear. We are made to believe that Karen is not as innocent as she presents herself at the beginning. Fine. She turns out to be ambitious. Okay. She wants to be in a movie. Great. But she could have more easily wormed her way into the movie that Charlie was promoting with that mega-star director as this stupid. And what is it about Karen that gives her so much power over Bobby? That's never clear either.

Together, these two problems make this otherwise taut, well-shaped play puzzling and nonsensical. That's my problem.

Postscript
From a Facebook post, I replied to a friend: "...yes, as I was listening to the read-aloud excerpts of the courtesy-read book, I had the feeling that in the 70s or 80s, such a book may not have seemed quite so ridiculous to many in the audience. And perhaps Karen might have seemed more plausible as a sort of peace-love crusader. In that sense, the play is kind of 'dated'."

Murderously insane and likeable at the same time: Sweeney Todd, at the Kavinoky Theater

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Music by Stephen Sondheim, book by Hugh Wheeler. At the Kavinoky Theater, directed by John Fredo.

The complicated Victorian-era story is about a man who was wrongly accused of a crime and sentenced to prison in Australia for fifteen years. On his return to London, he is told his beautiful daughter has become the ward (actually, concubine) of the evil judge who sentenced him, and that his wife has since poisoned herself. To wreak his revenge, he takes the name of Sweeney Todd, sets himself up as a barber above a meat pie shop and the friendly woman who helps him, and murders a slew of customers, ultimately murdering the judge himself.

I had never seen this musical before. I love Sondheim. This is of course a macabre, grotesque story, full of sometimes humorous songs that belie and are dissonant to the murderous events. That's Sondheim. If it's possible to enjoy a play where you like and feel moved by people who are insanely murderous, then this is that play. Todd is insane. Mrs. Lovett, who makes meat pies out of the corpses of Todd's victims, is insane. They cold-bloodedly murder people who have done them no harm. Yet, we like them, their songs are about love, affection, overcoming hardships. How can we not like them and feel moved by their complicated stories?

There is that central falsehood in this play. The lyricist can give Todd and Mrs. Lovett these songs. The playwright can put reasonable words in their mouths, and give them actions that show them to be compassionate, caring people. Yet they are monsters who cut the throats of innocents as well as evil judges. In what reality can such a story take place?

The cast and the entire production were great. Matt Witten's Todd was controlled and restrained. Todd is seething with rage, and yet we see a quiet, almost contemplative Todd on the stage (up until the instant he slits the throats of his victims). Witten's restraint, and the music, heightened the tension leading up to the two attempts on the judge's life -- almost unbearable, Sweeney Todd wielding the razor, we know what he's about to do, and he's singing. Anthony Lazzaro was exceptional as the young innocent sailor Anthony Hope (great name).

Sarah Ruhl's unconvincing Stage Kiss, at the Shaw Festival

Stage Kiss, a play by Sarah Ruhl, produced by the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada. Seen August 11, 2018.

In this comedy/farce, a pair of bitter ex-lovers are cast as the lead characters in a comically awful play in which they play current lovers.  The exes reunite, discover they cannot continue their affair, and then resume their everyday lives.

First, the production itself -- it's all terrific. The actors (starring Fiona Byrne as She, and Martin Happer as He) were excellent, as were the stagecraft and directing. I loved watching Fiona Byrne as the lover/wife who resumes an affair off-stage with her ex-lover He. I found myself watching her face -- in many instances, just before a confrontation, confusion, laughter, goofiness, anger all fly over her face in a couple of seconds. And Martin Happer, with his square jaw, Bad Boy good looks, and affability, is very good as He. The entire cast is wonderful.

But the play itself left me cold. There are funny spots, particularly early on, as the predictable plot is taking shape. We all know that the two ex-lovers will race to his apartment for sex within a few minutes -- after all, they hardly seem bitter or angry with each other. And neither character expresses any real reservations. What's to stop them? The plot itself has too many absurdities to describe, and that in itself is okay (it is a comic farce, after all).

What bothers me is the sense that the playwright seems to have set out to write a "summer festival comedy". She has the commercial concept -- the ex lovers/actors playing lovers in a play within the play -- and she draws the stereotypical characters to fit into the concept. Sort of like paint-by-numbers. Along the way, we get bursts of the word "fuck", some mild romping in bed, disconnected  philosophizing about the "soul" and religion, and demonstrations of how fractured family life is (I think this is meant to congratulate us in the audience for attending such a contemporary and sophisticated play). None of this is convincing, not much is funny (the laughs slowly get more and more strained as we go along).

At the end of this play, what did I actually see? I'm not sure I can describe it. I'm glad that She returns to her boring but decent husband. I'm glad that He gives up on his affair with her in a friendly way. But I wish I liked the play more.

Who or what is the devil? -- "The Christians", at Road Less Traveled Productions

A friend and I went to The Christians, a play by Lucas Hnath, performed at Road Less Traveled Productions, downtown Buffalo NY. Directed by Scott Behrend. 

You can read Ben Siegel's good review of the production in the Buffalo News. He said some things better than I can.

I was so glad that Lucas Hnath, the playwright, takes the Christian characters of his play seriously. The small group of characters depend on their church to guide them through their lives and to inspire them.  They are not the ignorant cartoon Christians so easily mocked in comedy skits and Twitter rants. Their anguish at having their old beliefs and practical concerns pushed aside is real, and makes them sympathetic characters with echoes to my own life and experiences.

The central story of the play is about a successful mega-church evangelical pastor (played with admirable modulation by Dave Hayes) who one day tells his congregation that he can no longer accept his church's doctrine that only a Christian who has made Christ his savior can be saved from eternal Hell. The pastor voices a legitimate dilemma. He cites an example, an event he saw on a video. A brave young non-Christian boy in an Asian country sacrificed his life to save his sister from a fire -- and despite his sacrifice, he will be consigned to Hell for eternity because he never announced Christ as his savior. How can Christians accept this? The pastor announces a revised version of Heaven and Hell: all are instead eventually welcomed to Heaven after death, regardless of faith, or what they've done on earth. There is no judgement waiting us.

This announcement causes the young associate pastor (movingly played by Aaron Moss) to leave and form his own church, troubles the church elders, and nearly causes the pastor's wife to leave him. All rebuke him for having shaken the church and the lives of the congregation without consulting them first. A parishioner pointedly asks him if he would have made his radical announcement if the church had not recently paid off its mortgage. Why didn't he say these things before? Was he deceitful? Was he actually filled with doubts but afraid to say anything lest the church lose its financial footing? The pastor's replies are all variations of, "God had not made ready to talk until now".

You can hear all sorts of echoes to other church life issues in the play -- the role of money, financial tensions, the tensions between ancient accepted beliefs with modernity. All of it will feel familiar to anyone who attends some faith, or who has struggled with faith. 

One thought I had about the play's central premise is that many Christians are quite comfortable with the idea of non-Christians finding their own sense of salvation. I think the emphasis on emphatically accepting Christ as one's savior in order to assure salvation is an evangelical Christian doctrine. As an Orthodox Christian, I believe we and other branches of Christendom accept that salvation is not assured, and that God's actual judgement is unknowable. Therefore, it's hard to get too worked up about whether you are Christian or not -- you are not simply assured of salvation one way or another based on your avowed faith. It's your life's actions that matter.

This is a terrific production by Road Less Traveled Theater. I liked all five actors. I thought it was a great decision to make for the associate pastor to be played by a young black actor. Aaron Moss effectively shows us a man who fought and sacrificed his way up through his faith to get where he is, and he's not about to lose it all. The RLT stage was sparse, but gave a good feeling of the characters speaking to a larger auditorium. The sound design and lighting were effective, with each character using a microphone, as if on a Sunday service.

The Nether, a contemporary classic, at Road Less Traveled Productions

The Nether, a play by Jennifer Haley. Directed by Katie Mallinson. A very good cast. Road Less Traveled Productions, downtown Buffalo.

This is a complex, good play, impressively directed, well-performed, with an excellent set and staging. It's a difficult play that feels like a contemporary classic.

I'm glad to have read Ben Siegel's review of this production in the Buffalo News. This is a demanding play, and it helps to read a good critic's words to settle your own thinking.

The time of this play is described as near-future, something in the next few years. "The Nether" of this play is a virtual reality world, accessible by logging in, just as you log in to your Gmail account today. Once logged in, you can act out your fantasies, benign or criminal. The story of the play is that a detective Morris -- icily well played by Eve Everette -- is investigating the online child sex operation run by Sims (Steve Jakiel). Men such as Doyle (Dave Marciniak) can enter the virtual reality world and act out their fantasies, sexual and murderous. Detective Morris wants to shut down the operation.

We see scenes inside the nether, cleverly constructed in Victorian British settings -- no doubt alluding to Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll's penchant for young girls. We see the emotional connections and tensions among the logged-in characters. I wondered what the characters actually got out of their virtual reality activities (essentially a kind of dream state). But the playwright Haley shows us that the men are dramatically changed by their experiences in the online world. Doyle is desperate to stay in that world, he depends on it. It's like an addiction for him, and he reveres Sims, the man who makes his virtual life possible. 

At first I didn't grasp why the state, in the form of detective Morris, is interested in what happens in the Nether. If these are avatars acting out their whims according to the prescribed algorithms, why would the state care? But then I began to see that what happens there really does affect what happens in the real world ("offline"). The online world seems just as real to the men, and to us, as their flesh and bones world. And thus the state has an interest in both worlds. A man who would act out his desires for a young girl online must be a danger in the real world as well (though Doyle argues the opposite).

There are plenty of thought-provoking turns in the story. It's almost too much. It's the best contemporary play I've seen in a long time. 

Donald Marguiles should re-write Act 2 of "The Country House"

We saw "The Country House," a play by Donald Marguiles, at Road Less Traveled Productions, downtown Buffalo, on Thursday night, May 18, 2017.

This play depicts an acting family getting together for a summer holiday in the Berkshires in the family's country house. It is one year since the death of the daughter of the family matriarch has died of cancer. The deceased daughter's husband shows up with a Porsche and a young girlfriend. A famous handsome actor spends a few days in the house, attracting the active attention of every woman on the stage. The matriarch's son, a failed actor who wants to write a play, is angry at everybody. And so, a number of strained family interactions are set off.

The first half of the play has a decent share of humor. There are some nice quips. The set has a comfortable feel (although it doesn't hint at any underlying tensions in its design or setup). This is a very good cast, and they made the first act enjoyable. I especially liked Christian Brandjes as the failed actor Elliot, and enjoyed his energetic depiction of Elliot's cynicism. To my surprise I also liked Kristen Tripp Kelley as Nell, the gorgeous young girlfriend -- Nell did not come off as "incandescent" (in Walter's words) and didn't initially seem right for the part. Yet Kelley has a quiet focus and a way of depicting an interesting interior life that makes up for her not being the flashy eye candy referred to in the play.

By the intermission however, I began to feel that the playwright's grasp of the characters was weak. These were stock characters in fairly cliched exchanges. The hunky actor building schools in  the Congo as a display of his virtue. The deluded aging matriarch who thinks she still attracts young men. The aging director who mounts a defense of his wealth earned by making commercially successful films. The second act seemed predictable and strained. The last twenty minutes in particular, with Elliot wailing about how his mother, Anna, didn't really love him when he was a boy, were painful to watch. I couldn't help but feel that Marguiles needed a strong revision.

I wanted to like the play because of the very good cast. We appreicate the Road Less Traveled troupe and their energy in mounting the play. But the play itself needs work.

Naivete is no excuse: the play "After the Revolution", by Amy Herzog

After the Revolution, a play by Amy Herzog. Directed by Saul Elkin. Seen at the Jewish Repertory Theater, Amherst, NY.

The central premise is about a fervent young, left-wing, Jewish lawyer who learns from her father that her beloved grandfather, who was blacklisted in the 50s, actually passed secrets to the  Soviets. The revelation has a shattering effect on her, and her relationship with her father. She's furious that he didn't tell her when she was younger.

A good cast, good performances. I especially liked Tom Makar's performance as Morty, the wealthy old leftist, who counsels Emma, the young lawyer to hold fast to her ideals and the foundation she started in the name of her grandfather.

I'm not convinced by the central premise. If we are to believe that Emma is a smart lawyer, how is it that she didn't herself question her grandfather's status years ago? There are numerous books on the subject -- we know that dozens of people working inside the US government turned over information to the Soviets. It would seem obvious that Emma would have questioned her grandfather's activities long before the play's action. Furthermore, we are meant to believe that her father, a leftist teacher played well by David Marciniak, actively deceived her all throughout her life. Were there no dinner table conversations in which grandfather was discussed? Of course. The man we see on stage does not seem like a man who would actively deceive his daughter on such an important subject. The family drama scenes therefore struck me as overwrought.

And what's with the annoying rotating stage? The whole thing creaked noisily like some eighteenth century elevator between scenes. I would understand if there were dramatic changes of scenery. But there weren't -- a few chairs were moved around. Was there some message in the rotating stage? Something about the generations changing? I didn't get it.

Saul Elkin directed the play. He was there, and he looks much the same after thirty some years.

Broken Glass, a play by Henry Miller that could have been left on the shelf

In September, we saw this New Repertory Theater production of Arthur Miller's play, Broken Glass.

A Jewish woman in New York in the late 1930s falls is mysteriously paralyzed. Her doctor, whom she seems to fall in love with, cannot find the cause of her paralysis. Her husband is cold, and seems to hate his own Jewishness. She dwells on the rising harassment and persecution of German Jews, and we get the sense that her paralysis is somehow related.

It had some interesting themes (self-hatred and Jewish identity, being a Jew in a WASP company in 30s New York) but seemed overwrought and a bit long. The characters seemed stereotypical, although the cast (especially the beautiful Anne Gottlieb as Sylvia, and Jeremiah Kissel as Phillip Gellburg gave good performances with some nuance within the limits of the play). The possible affair between Sylvia and her doctor made me wince. The play does seem dated. I wondered what the intention was in reviving it.

I still have never seen Death of a Salesman.

The play "Saving Kitty" -- Jennifer Coolidge makes it work

Saving Kitty, a play by Marisa Smith, at Central Square Theater, Sunday, August 2, 2015. Directed by Lee Mikeska Gardner. Starring Jennifer Coolidge. With Alexander Cook, Lydia Barnett-Mulligan, Lewis D. Wheeler.

A young woman who works as a TV or film producer brings her fiance, a rising evangelical school principle, home to meet her Manhattan parents. They are not happy, the mother is appalled and she works to end the engagement. This is a decent comedy, but the main reason it worked for me is Jennifer Coolidge. We didn't know anything about her film TV work. As the monstrous mother, she imparted a strange magic to her lines and the character. Jokes that really weren't funny became hilarious thanks to her intonation and edge. She was a combination tyrant and vulnerable victim at the same time. It's hard to imagine anybody else doing the role. It was a very good cast, but Coolidge covered over the play's flaws and made it worth seeing.

I have a problem with some of the premises of the play. The young man character (well played by Alexander Cook) is barely realistic as a committed evangelical believer. He gives no sign of actually having any faith, at least none that is much different from the others around  him (which is to say none). But the real problem is the mother, Kate Hartley. We are meant to believe that she lives by the liberal values of wealthy Manhattan. But that's not what we see. We see a bigoted, crass, neurotic blowhard from the very start. That she objects to her daughter's choice of an evangelical believer seems irrelevant -- her reactions and behavior didn't really make sense to me.

So that was The Drowsy Chaperone....okay.

We saw the musical, "The Drowsy Chaperone" (book by Bob Martin and Don McKellar and music and lyrics by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison) on Saturday, July 11, at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, with friends.

It's hard not to like The Drowsy Chaperone. I liked it. We both liked it. We all liked it. It's a parody of 1920s musical comedies, where an old  professor-type plays his favorite 20s musical album, and the musical is acted out on stage for us. The plot is incidental, typically "madcap". The very good, New York-level production and performance included some wonderful tap dancing (wish I'd learned), the usual high-volume singing, and corny stereotypical jokes. It's never not entertaining, and never rises to anything absorbing or provocative. It's strangely comforting. 

Why does the play "Grounded" get so much attention and praise?

Grounded, a play written by George Brant, produced by the Nora Theater Company, starring Celeste Oliva.

We saw the new play "Grounded" last night, and neither of us liked it. I'm surprised at the generous reception it's gotten, including in this review by the Boston Globe's Don Aucoin. It's played in ten different theaters recently, around the country.

I was bored with it after the first few minutes. The main character, a female fighter pilot, has almost no depth to her character. She's a sort of male jock-pilot, in a woman's body. Her entire 83 minute monologue is delivered in a harsh, terse and unvarying voice. The predictable events, sketchy themes, and what little drama there is -- a female pilot is assigned to pilot drones flying in the Middle East looking for enemies to kill, from a base in Las Vegas -- seem straight out of the recent headlines and columns. There is no doubt good material here -- the moral drama of killing at a safe distance, with your own life kept in god-like security, is good stuff. But it's largely undeveloped. The pilot's language and expression stays close to cliche throughout. The slight uptick in interest at the end, when the pilot hallucinates the presence of her own young daughter onto the video screen, and thus refuses to pull the trigger to kill the "guilty" bad guy, is just not enough. It felt more like an artificial ploy to give the play a climax.

This struck me as more of a sketch for a play than a finished play. So why does it get so much attention and praise? The professorial-looking Cambridge audience gave it a brief standing ovation at the end. Was it the female character in a role overwhelmingly filled by men, a gratifying salute to liberal sensibilities? Was it the insertion of the little girl, the target bad guy's daughter, that humanizes and evokes sympathy for a man otherwise vilified as a terrorist?

Bedlam's "Saint Joan" -- engrossing and jarring

Bedlam Theater Company's production of George Bernard Shaw's play "Saint Joan" at the Central Square Theater.

I found Bedlam's Saint Joan engrossing and jarring. The story of Joan of Arc, a young girl who leads the French armies to victory after victory over the invading British (who, of course did not see themselves as invaders) until she is captured, tried as a heretic by the British, and burned at the stake, is a story I don't know well. The play does a wonderful job of introducing the audience to that story, and that's one of Shaw's accomplishments. The tension between the British church authorities and their military/political interests was interesting -- at least some of the churchmen wanted to save Joan, if only she'd recant her testimony and deny that she'd actually had visions from God, which she almost does, until she realizes that doing so would still leave her in a stinking prison the rest of her life, which she cannot bear.

This production itself is amazing. The four Bedlam actors play twenty-some roles! And we always seem to know which character they're playing. You have to mention Andrus Nichols, the actress who plays Joan. She's sturdy (physically and emotionally), and she projects a woman worth fighting for.

In this production, parts of the audience had to move between acts in order to move seats, to fit the design of Bedlam's interpretation. I didn't mind this (we weren't the ones moved), although this required a bit of good-natured, comic coaxing from the stage hands and actors, which seemed to jar us all out of the play, at least momentarily. Furthermore, some of the comic interpretations of the characters (I'm thinking in particular of the swishy tea-drinking, British nobles straight out of Monty Python) were so broad and stereotypical that I winced. The three hours running time seemed a bit long. It did make us want to see a full production as Shaw wrote it. Perhaps we can see it some day at the Shaw Festival.

There was an odd coincidence in the play to a news event earlier in the week. The Islamic State in Syria released a video showing their terrible execution by fire of their unfortunate captive Jordanian pilot. ISIS reveled in their barbarity. Shaw presents the British as being conflicted, with some churchmen and soldiers repenting of the manifest cruelty of burning alive a young girl. And of course, Shaw's Joan had a trial, of sorts.

People with little to hide: The Cocktail Hour, by A.R. Gurney

The Cocktail Hour, a play by A.R. Gurney, at the Huntington Theater, Saturday, December 7.

We like A.R. Gurney's plays, having seen Love Letters, The Snow Ball, and now The Cocktail Hour. This last play on Saturday night left me a little let down. The friendly but unsatisfied review by Don Aucoin in the Boston Globe seemed accurate to me.

The young playwright John, played by James Waterston, has brought his play manuscript home for the family to read and approve. The play is about his family, with the father taking a lead role. His patrician and cranky father does not approve -- he doesn't like the idea of the truth being displayed up there on the stage. (Who would?) The family members are generally well drawn, though the sister Nina seems a little odd (she's contented living a family life of many small contentments, yet the actress Pamela J. Gray plays her as being easily riled about her unfulfilled life -- the contradiction bothered me). John struck me as a toned down Woody Allen. Great performances by Richard Poe as the prosperous easy-going father Bradley, and Maureen Anderman, as the apparently ditzy mother Ann. They were both perfect as wealthy, monied Buffalonians who live along Delaware Avenue, near the art gallery.

There are lots of small laughs along the way. I recognized myself and my family in the words and characters. That John goes back home to Buffalo to receive approval for his play, well, that certainly hits home with me. It becomes obvious that John's play is actually the play we are watching, and this has a dated feel to it. We know this is experimental, and there's no compelling reason for it.

It occurred to me that these people, these characters, in fact don't really have any momentous secrets to hide. John wants to create some drama...but there really isn't any, at least not in this play. These are ordinary, decent people, not saints. Their ordinariness is both endearing and troubling. That there is in fact no great conflict, or actual confrontations of the type that John talks about regarding his mother, is what left me feeling that the play is somehow unfinished and unsatisfying.

Health insurance, and The Elephant Man at the New Repertory Theater

The Elephant Man, a play by Bernard Pomerance, at the New Rep Theatre in Watertown. Directed by Jim Petosa.

Haven't had a chance to write in this blog for a while. We saw The Elephant Man several weeks ago, and at this distance, I remember that the first half was absorbing. John Merrick's terrible disfiguring disease (I don't recall the exact name of it), and his awful attempts live a somewhat normal life in late 19th century England, made for good drama. Tim Spears, who plays Merrick, was terrific, as was Michael Kaye, who played the doctor Frederick Treves, who sheltered Merrick in London Hospital. It's a good story in itself, how Merrick permitted himself to be shown in a freak show, his ambiguous relationship with the freak show manager, his pathetic flight to London and to the care of Treves, where he becomes a favorite object of pity and support by London socialites and philanthropists.

The second act...I don't remember much (except for the Victorian-clothed actress Mrs. Kendal giving Merrick a thrill by displaying her breasts to him while on a picnic, her back to the audience). There was a lot of talk about motives. I think the overall question was about who should care for patients like Merrick, and who should pay for it. The playbill implied that this was related to our current debate about health care reform, and I see that. Must Merrick be an object of pity in order to receive donations from wealthy Londoners, and thus maintain a decent life? It's a long stretch from there to the current debate about requiring universal coverage by insurance companies, but I can see the connection, since the Health Care Reform Act (Obamacare) removes the necessity of anyone having to ask for help -- everyone has help in the form of health insurance.

How life crumbles: the play "Absurd Person Singular" at the Central Square Theater

Absurd Person Singular, a play by Alan Ayckbourn, by the Nora Theater Company at Central Square Theater. Directed by Daniel Gidron.

We saw this performance July 21st. At first, I thought the mannerisms and quips came off as a bit dated and tedious, not unlike the British domestic comedies from the 80s and 90s that are still repeated on PBS. But slowly, I began to feel that we were really into something. A couple puts on a Christmas Eve party, and is slyly treated with contempt by the better-established guests. Sidney (played dry and convincingly by David Berger-Jones) comes off as an early John Cleese. Jane (Samantha Evans) as his frantic wife.

Over the course of three Christmas Eves, the fortunes of the various couples are reversed, until the first couple are avenged, calling the tune, sadistically forcing the others to dance and pretend merriment. Good performances, some genuinely funny spots. I was not entirely convinced by the play itself. The lives of the various characters crumble, as lives do, and we start to feel some affection and sympathy for them. But the route to Sidney and Jane's sadistic vengeance seems a little faked -- we don't see it in them until the very last scene.

Dancing at Lughnesa -- something truly lived

Dancing at Lughnesa, a play by Brian Friel. We saw the Sunday afternoon performance at Wellesley Summer Theater, June 2, 2013. Directed by Nora Hussey and Marta Rainer.

From the description that I read in the Globe, I expected a sad dark play. Five adult sisters living together on a remote farm in Ireland in 1936. Their frail elder brother returns from his missionary work in Africa after many years, his mind wandering and perhaps broken. And the sisters' lives get worse, as the oldest sisters loses her job as a teacher, and two of the younger ones lose their piece-work knitting jobs.

Whoah. But it's darker and more sorrowful than that. The play is narrated by the adult Michael, the son of one of the sisters, many years later as he reminisces about that summer of 1936, when uncle returned from Africa. The very device of reminiscence in a play, of knowing that the people depicted are long dead, of course pulls us into a sad, doomed world.  I liked it a lot.

The slight bits of humor delighted us, as did the dancing and the loud brash sisters. They were all wonderful performances by the cast. I felt heartsick at the end, and wished that some of the sadness and sentiment had not hit us so hard, yet I felt that I had seen something truly lived. And I wouldn't change it.

Was Mozart really a childish jerk?

We saw Amadeus, the Peter Shaffer play about Mozart and Salieri, at New Repertory Theater in Watertown, on May 26. Directed by Jim Petosa. Here is a Boston Globe review that I mostly agree with.

I vaguely remembered the movie from the 80. It was a very popular play and movie back then. If it is true, the story of the envious Salieri steadily blocking the superhumanly gifted Mozart in his career and finally poisoning his life to the point of killing him, makes for a good story. On the web, I've read that the play's story is greatly exaggerated, and there's lots of evidence that Salieri and Mozart actually liked and worked with each other. But that's probably not important to the play -- the story doesn't have to adhere to the historical truth, and the truth can be hard to figure out.

Marilyn was enthusiastic about the play, and I less so. There is lots of good ensemble work. The scenes where Mozart (played by Tim Spears) actually plays at the harpsichord and devises music are wonderful. The performances were uniformly good. McCaela Donovan, as Mozart's wife Costanza, stood out for her cool and modulated style. This woman was really out to promote Wolfgang's career and life. And Russell Garrett, as Emperor Joseph II, was very good.

My main complaint is the story itself. Mozart is represented as an cartoonish adult adolescent, and is a stereotype for the childish artist who is a "genius" at his art but a childish jerk otherwise. I just don't buy that the scheming older Salieri ground down and scared the genius Mozart to his death, even in the context of the play.

A great play, A Raisin in the Sun, at the Huntington

A Raisin in the Sun, at the Huntington Theater, Saturday, March 23, 2013. By Lorraine Hansberry. Directed by Liesl Tommy. Here is a good review by the Boston Globe's Don Aucoin, with which I largely agree.

I think most theater lovers know the story of the Younger family, who are poor and live in a claustrophobic flat in Chicago's black neighborhoods, how the mother comes into insurance money from the death of her husband, how the erratic son Walter blows a good chunk of the money on a liquor store scheme when one of the partners absconds with the money, and how they're move to buy a house in a white neighborhood is accomplished over the objections of the white neighbors, who are willing to pay the Youngers to not move there. There are a lot of stories going on in this play. It's a flood of stories. And that's not bad. Better always to have too much going on than too little. For me, the story of Walter (played by LeRoy McClain), his weakness, and his ultimate resolution and redemption, is the one that stood out.

The Huntington, and this cast, did a great job. It's a long, almost three hour play, but it passes quickly. I wondered about LeRoy McClain, the actor who plays Walter. The role of Walter seems almost too much for one actor. There's too much happening to Walter in three hours. McClain pulled it off, inhabiting a man who jumps from elation to near insanity. Physically and mentally, how does he do it night after night?

I liked everybody. The smart daughter Beneatha, was charming, funny, and combative (I assumed this was Lorraine Hansberry herself; was saddened to recall that she died of cancer at 34). The mother Lena was tough and in charge, and described nicely. There are plenty of Greek children who would recognize a Greek mother in her. Ruth Younger is at the end of her rope.

The rotating stage, revealing different rooms of the small Younger flat as it rotates, seemed like a hell of a lot of engineering trouble for not much theatrical effect. The sex scene between Walter and Ruth Younger was too bizarrely graphic -- it was if the director was inexplicably trying to revoke the dignity of these two people. Seeing the ghost of the deceased Mr. Younger on stage, in the background, distracted me a little in the beginning, but I got over it, and it did set up the powerful scene towards the end of the play when the older man puts his hand on Walter's shoulder, and Walter finds the strength to refuse the money of the white neighbors.

The memorable Glass Menagerie at American Rep Theater

The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams. At the American Repertory Theater, Cambridge.

This was the second time we've seen this play. We saw an excellent production years ago in Buffalo, at the Studio Arena. Today's production was memorable. The review by Ben Brantley in the NY Times is glowing, and I agree with it. I can't imagine a better Tom than Zachary Quinto. Cherry Jones as the neurotic Amanda, Celia Keenan-Bolger as a frail and beautiful Laura, and Brian Smith as Tom. All great.

I thought about Tom's abandonment of the two women -- this wasn't just a leave-taking to save his own life, though it certainly was that, it was an abandonment. Those two had no other support for their lives. Laura and Amanda are not capable of holding jobs. What Tom did was surprising and cruel, and though we know that his action haunts him the rest of his life, in the end it colors my feelings about him. He abandoned them.

A pool of water surrounded the darkly lit stage. Occasionally, the characters came to the edge and looked into the quiet dark surface, seeing their reflection. It emphasized the the family's isolation, as if they're on their own little psychotic island. It was a good touch by the set designers.

Laura had only her little glass unicorn on her box. In the old production we saw, years ago, her entire menagerie of animals was out, on display. Somehow I liked that better, because Laura lives through those animals, an entire cast of glass animals, each with its own personality.