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The Summer’s Five Hottest Shows

Doug Strassler — Fri, 25 May 2012 16:41:59 +0000

School may be out, but the hardworking kids in the New York theater scene still have homework to do this summer. Below, a list of the five most anticipated events of the 2012 summer season.

Harvey

Hot on the heels of last year’s debut in The Normal Heart, two-time Emmy winner Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory) returns to the stage in this revival of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning classic. Parsons is Elwood P. Dowd, the role immortalized on screen by James Stewart, a middle-aged man whose best friend is a 6-foot-tall rabbit. Is Harvey real or a figment of Elwood’s imagination? You’ll have to head over to the Studio 54 Theater to find out. Co-stars include Larry Bryggman (Doubt), Tracee Chimo (Circle Mirror Transformation), Jessica Hecht (A View from the Bridge), Carol Kane (Wicked), Charles Kimbrough (TV’s Murphy Brown) and Rich Sommer (TV’s Mad Men).
In previews now, runs June 14-Aug. 5; $37+. Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St., roundabouttheatre.org

Democracy

This June-long event, running at Williamsburg’s Brick Theater, is dedicated to the idea of putting on a summer theater festival of the people, by the people and for the people in this election year. Eight candidates will campaign against each other in a series of public appearances for the title of “President of the Brick.” The elected official will be given reign over The Brick for two weeks next January and will be entrusted with curating all Brick programming during this time period. Shows include works from Matthew Freeman, Eric John Meyer, Jeremey Catterton, Zack Calhoun and Roger Nasser. Attendance is mandatory, as all voters must cast their ballot in person.
May 31-July 1; $15. The Brick Theater, 575 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, bricktheater.com.

Uncle Vanya

Some of New York’s finest actors have signed on to this world premiere reimagining of the Chekhov classic about a visiting professor and his alluring younger wife at Soho Rep. The winning team of director Sam Gold and writer Annie Baker (The Aliens, Circle Mirror Transformation) have recruited a top-notch ensemble that includes Reed Birney, Maria Dizzia, Georgia Engel, Peter Friedman, Matthew Maher, Rebecca Schull, Michael Shannon, Paul Thureen and Merritt Wever. Take note: a June 19 benefit performance will include a post-show vodka reception with the cast and creative team.
Opens June 7; $0.99-$40. Soho Rep Theatre, 46 Walker St., sohorep.org.

Sovereign

The conclusion to Mac Rogers’ Honeycomb trilogy is off-off-Broadway’s answer to The Return of the King, and not just because of the similarities in the title. This play, part of Gideon Productions in collaboration with the BFG Collective at the Secret Theater, will confirm the fates of the characters we’ve come to love in Advance Man and Blast Radius, particularly Ronnie (Becky Byers), now a hardened governor lording over a slowly rebuilding human race and her defiant brother Abbie (David Rosenblatt). Rogers’ trilogy, directed by Jordana Williams, has offered so many surprising turns, it’s hard to predict where this tale will end—but incredibly exciting at the same time. It’s safe to say that by now, the Secret is out.
June 14-July 1; $15-$25. The Secret Theatre, 44-02 23rd St., Long Island City, bfgcollective.com.

Into the Woods

The second of this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park entries (following As You Like It) is this James Lapine-Stephen Sondheim favorite, in a production based on the acclaimed 2010 staging at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park, London. Woods was just mentioned this week on Glee as the most vocally demanding of Sondheim’s canon—so why revive this tale of what happens to fairy tale characters after their happy ending? With three-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams onboard as the Baker’s Wife, two-time Tony-winner Donna Murphy to play the Witch and current Tony nominee Jessie Mueller (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever) playing Cinderella, why wouldn’t you?
July 23-Aug. 25; free. Delacorte Theater in Central Park, accessible via 81st St. & Central Park West or 79th St. & 5th Ave., shakespeareinthepark.org.

Summer Guide to Theatre

NYPress — Thu, 24 May 2012 03:56:03 +0000

Downtown

Shakespeare in the Parking Lot
Tired of waiting in the stifling heat for Shakespeare in the Park to no avail? Fear not; there’s another free outdoor option to view the Bard’s work. The Drilling Company’s LES staple, taking place in the municipal parking lot at the corner of Broome and Ludlow streets, will present The Merry Wives of Windsor in July, followed by Coriolanus in August. Keep in mind that these productions are prone to interruption; the action occurs around parked cars whose drivers sometimes return and drive away mid-performance. Now that’s something performers never needed to concern themselves with during the Elizabethan era!
Thursdays-Saturdays, July 12-28 & Aug. 2-18, 8 p.m.; free. Broome St. at Ludlow St., shakespeareintheparkinglot.com.

Upper West Side
Shakespeare in the Park
It wouldn’t be summer without a trip (or better yet, two) to the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, where the Public Theater presents Shakespeare in the Park. This summer, it isn’t just the Bard taking the stage, however. In addition to As You Like It, starring Oliver Platt and Lily Rabe, there will also be a run of Stephen Sondheim’s classic musical Into the Woods, featuring movie star Amy Adams and Broadway vet Donna Murphy.
As You Like It opens June 5, Into the Woods opens July 2; free. The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, enter at W. 81st St. & Central Park West, shakespeareinthepark.org.

Upper West Side
Lincoln Center Theater Festival
The esteemed arts institution will offer a diverse mix of live programming, including two works—Giselle and Orpheus and Eurydice—by the Paris Opera Ballet and a 70th birthday tribute to late soul great Curtis Mayfield on July 20. Performers will include Tunde Adebimpe, Meshell Ndegeocello, Ryan Montbleau, Sinéad O’Connor and Mavis Staples. The National Theatre of Scotland will perform Macbeth, starring Tony winner Alan Cumming as the famed Thane of Cawdor. And six years after playing Hedda Gabler at BAM, Cate Blanchett and the Sydney Theater Company will revive another Chekhov classic, Uncle Vanya. Completists can check out both this version and Annie Baker’s adaptation at Soho Rep.
July 5-Aug. 5. Lincoln Center, W. 62nd St. & Columbus Ave., lincolncenterfestival.com.

Midtown
Marble Collegiate Church New Work Festival
Entering its second year, The Puzzle, Marble Collegiate Church’s festival of new work, brings together a host of freshly written theater pieces from New York and around the country for a three-week workshop process culminating in a week of plays, musicals and spoken word.
June 25-30; free. Marble Collegiate Church, 29th St. at 5th Ave., marblechurch.org.

Midtown
Signature Theater
In its first season in its new three-theater Midtown home, the Signature Theatre will present Athol Fugard’s My Children in Africa, Will Eno’s Title and Deed, the world premiere of Kenneth Lonergan’s Medieval Deed and Sam Shepard’s Heartless, among others. In addition to the plays, the theater will offer talk-back programs with performers and playwrights as well as pre-show discussions with designers.
Times and dates vary. Signature Theatre, 480 W. 42nd St., signaturetheater.org.

Citywide
New York Musical Theatre Festival
Featuring live music, workshops and full productions of brand-new musicals, the NYMTF has been giving New York audiences a chance to experience exciting musical theater without Broadway price tags (or tourists) since 1994. This year’s lineup is particularly strong, with 30 musicals including A Letter To Harvey Milk, about a butcher sending a letter to Milk; Baby Case, Michael Ogborn’s take on the Lindbergh baby’s disappearance; and Prison Dancer, a show based on the Filipino prisoners who became a worldwide sensation thanks to their YouTube performances.
July 9-29. Various locations, nymf.org.

Citywide
Fringe Fest
Even at 16 years old, this annual marathon of offbeat, cutting-edge theater—which birthed Rent, among other memorable shows—is devoted to the new and the strange. This year’s performances will include From Busk Till Dawn: The Life of an NYC Street Performer, Love Death Brains (A Zombie Musical), Occupy the Constellations: A Collaborative Revolutionary Puppet Tale and, all the way from California, a show called What I Learned From Porn. Not everything you’ll see at the Fringe is great, but it’s always done with humor and spirit, making it more interesting—if not quite as professional—than most other festivals. Aug. 10-26. fringenyc.org.

‘Raisin in the Sun’ 50 Years Later, a Worthy Homage

Doug Strassler — Tue, 22 May 2012 22:32:28 +0000

Clybourne Park arrives bearing serious dramatic lineage. Bruce Norris’s 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winner for drama, which, under Pam McKinnon’s adroit direction has already enjoyed a successful run at the Off-Broadway Playwrights Horizons in addition to London and Los Angeles tours, is a direct descendant of Lorraine Hansberry’s milestone work A Raisin in the Sun, set in the house that will be filled, and then, a half-century later, vacated by the windfall-inheriting Younger family.
Knowledge of Raisin is not required to understand Clybourne; all that’s required is a keen grasp of what makes people tick. Norris has a supreme grip on the inherent selfishness and groupthink that befalls adults who think that what’s best for their interests overlaps with what’s right for all. So when Karl Lindner (an outstanding Jeremy Shamos) tries to convince Bev (Christina Kirk) and Russ (Frank Wood) in 1959 that a black family should not move to their suburban Chicago block, he thinks his argument maintains a sense of moral urgency.
Fifty years later, when the white house hosts a black family and this same Chicago neighborhood has seen property values decline (set designer Daniel Ostling’s quickie deterioration of the set between acts is miraculous), yuppie couple Steve (Shamos again) and wife Lindsey (Annie Parisse) look to move in.
Part of the fun of Clybourne comes from who the actors from the first act go on to play in the second. For instance, Crystal A. Dickinson, letter-perfect here, goes from playing a domestic employee to an uber-articulate professional (Damon Gupton sharply underplays her husband in both 1959 and 2009). Wood ends up playing a construction worker in the second act, which sadly deprives the brilliant actor of the same dramatic opportunities afforded him in the play’s first act. And a terrific Brendan Griffin ultimately plays three distinct roles, each with nuanced shades of quiet understanding.
But Clybourne comes alive when its characters shout, and it is here that it also shares play DNA with recent Broadway hits like August: Osage County, God of Carnage and Other Desert Cities, in which a bunch of seemingly well-adjusted adults sit in a room together and tear into each other. Of the three, Clybourne most closely mirrors August’s keen observations of how grown-ups view entitlement as applied to their own manifest destiny.
Norris is able to show, in ways both horrifying and hilarious, how racism and sexism seem to come embedded within us all. Individual achievement, the play asserts, isn’t enough; one must also prove superior to all of those around them.
McKinnon’s ensemble offers a master class in not just individual performance achievement but great teamwork. Looking at any cast member at any moment tells you everything about who they are and where they want to be (for most of them, it’s rarely in the living room set). There isn’t a square peg to be found in this group, whose nimble handling of Norris’ dialogue suggests just how nuanced the playwright’s ear is for the different rhythms of how people talk. But it’s when his characters aren’t talking that Clybourne says the most.

Clybourne Park
Through July 8. Walter Kerr Theatre, 219 W. 48th St., clybournepark.com; $50+.

‘Proof’ Playwright Turns to Lithgow to Tackle David Alsop

Doug Strassler — Mon, 21 May 2012 14:46:18 +0000

Is it fair to ascribe the sophomore slump to a Broadway writer whose second play hit the stage nearly 12 years after the first? Because that seems awfully close to what happened with The Columnist, David Auburn’s follow-up to the Tony and Pulitzer grabber Proof. Columnist, a peek into the life of powerful mid-20th-century journalist David Alsop, isn’t a bad work, but it’s one without teeth, a bio-play that does justice neither to its subject nor to the time period it depicts.
Alsop had an incisive view of life and, particularly, the country he not only chronicled but also tried to push in very specific directions. Columnist, directed by Daniel Sullivan, stays strictly on the outside. This comes despite an intriguing first scene in which we meet a post-coital Alsop (John Lithgow) in a Russian hotel room with Soviet agent Andrei (Brian J. Smith). Yep, he’s gay, and his assignation threatens to rip every fiber off of Alsop’s pristinely preserved veneer. Except while this tantalizing first scene should set us on a journey into Alsop’s heart and mind, it ends up being too roundabout for dramatic sparks to ever fly.
What follows is a fairly safe series of scenes that depict the man in Wikipedia entry form instead of any more galvanizing style. Columnist trudges from this mid-1950s encounter through the 1960s and hits on events both historic (the assassination of his friend JFK, the mushrooming of the Vietnam War, of which Alsop is a proponent) and personal (his marriage of convenience to Washington widow Susan Mary Jay Patten, his combustibly competitive relationship with younger brother Stewart) with a respect for all elite parties involved (the play comes adorned with the kind of beautiful costumes, from Jess Goldstein, and set, courtesy of the busy John Lee Beatty, that one expects from the Manhattan Theater Club).
But all of this is told in a linear, matter-of-fact style; there’s no real angle or thesis to the show. Even when the Andrei thread comes back, Auburn’s tapestry still looks incomplete.
Not that the cast isn’t excellent—a technically excellent Lithgow reprises the snobbish prig touches he’s played before in Sweet Smell of Success and Mr. and Mrs. Fitch, burrowing far beneath Auburn’s material to show Alsop’s compromised but uncompromising heart; he sees change on the horizon but will not bend to it. But it’s when he’s offstage that we learn more about his character and the play offers faint glimmers of hope, notably in the heated exchanges between Stewart (a typically excellent Boyd Gaines) and anti-Vietnam New York Times journalist David Halberstam (Stephen Kunken).
Though these scenes could be woven better into the fabric of the play, we learn more about the toll those turbulent times took on the people living it, as both David and Stewart are privy to far more information than the rest of America, and Kunken sinks his teeth into the gritty role of his shameless investigative reporter.
Margaret Colin, as Susan, also makes the most of her stage time, but it would be nice to see her character’s gradual disappointment with Alsop’s inability to change than simply hear a stirringly delivered monologue about it. As Susan’s daughter, Abigail, Grace Gummer reads a little too stagey, especially when playing Abigail as an early teen. And Sullivan cuts off her final, haunting line before it ever has a chance to resonate.
Questions about Alsop linger long after the end of Columnist. What would have made him happy? Did power corrupt him or did his ego always know few bounds? When all is said and done, the man is more of a mystery than he was when the show began. Chalk it up to miseducation; let’s hope Auburn can ace his next assignment.

The Columnist
Through June 1, Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 W. 47th St., 212-239-6200, www.manhattantheatreclub.com; $67+.

Desire at B. Smith’s

Doug Strassler — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:17:32 +0000

The cast of Streetcar revival dished on the upcoming revival

The company of the forthcoming revival of A Streetcar Named Desire showed up at B. Smith’s in midtown last night to eat, drink and discuss their new revival of the Tennessee Williams masterpiece. Attendees included director Emily Mann as well as Blair Underwood, making his Broadway debut as Stanley, in addition to Nicole Ari Parker (Blanche), Daphne Rubin-Vega (Stella), and Wood Harris (Mitch).

What’s notable, of course, about this cast, is that it includes actors of color in traditionally white roles. (Show executive producers Stephen Byrd and Alia Jones brought a similarly interracial look to Broadway with their revival of another Williams’ classic, Cat on A Hot Tin Roof).

“It just seemed like an obvious way to do the play,” Mann said of the race-specific casting. Mann herself is quote familiar with the William’s oeuvre; she was the first woman to ever direct The Glass Menagerie, a play she has gone on to direct again, as well as productions of Cat and Suddenly, Last Summer. “It speaks to the meaning of New Orleans, that gumbo of ethnicity.” Indeed, the DuBois sisters played by Parker and Rubin-Vega will be descended from French Huguenots.

“Stella is tough,” Rubin-Vega said of her put-upon character. “I identified with her sense of overwhelm!” she joked, later adding that “we both want to control situations, we want peace in the valley.”

Mann explained that Williams had always wanted to have an African-American cast bring his Pulitzer Prize-winner to life, but a 1955 attempt was aborted due to a conflicting production of Sweet Bird of Youth.

“The language of the play – and themes of enduring, of surviving life – lends itself to our cast,” Parker said. “It doesn’t disturb the purity of Tennessee William’s writing.” Parker went on to say that having African-American performers take on traditionally white roles shouldn’t be such a big deal. “Why not? White [actors] have been playing yellow for years!”

Underwood echoed Parker’s sentiment. “This play is beautiful poetry,” he said. “It’s about passion, it’s about desire. That’s why it’s a classic. And it is a true ensemble.”

“We’re planning to connect with the audience, like a band,” Harris said of that ensemble element. “Everyone plays an instrument.” (On that note, jazz musician Terence Blanchard will provide an original musical score for this revival.)

“Like Wood says,” Underwood said, “we’re playing a tune.”

Audiences can hear that tune when previews for the show begin on at the Broadhurst Theatre on April 3.

More information can be found at http://streetcaronbroadway.com/

Death Be Not Loud

Doug Strassler — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:38:13 +0000

A new revival of Albee’s forgotten The Lady from Dubuque sheds light on the darkest of topics

In his signature work, Edward Albee asked “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” In The Lady from Dubuque, which Signature is reviving following an abortive 1980 New York run, the playwright opens his show with the question “Who am I?” Various permutations of this question will be asked over the course of this deceptive show, and while plenty of meaty nuggets are to be found, don’t expect any straightforward answers to that seemingly most basic of questions.

Sam (a superb Michael Hayden) is the initial character to pose this question, as part of a parlor game he and wife Jo (Laila Robins) are hosting for four of their friends (Catherine Curtin, Thomas Jay Ryan, Tricia Paoluccio, and C. J. Wilson) in their impressive modern home (John Arnone’s set decoration is gorgeous, somehow being both sterile and saliva-inducing). Jo is as gracious as she can be, given that she’s enduring the painful symptoms terminal illness, which she tells the audience in one of many moments of Pirandellian direct address with which Albee peppers his play.

The answer, as it were, to Sam’s “Twenty Questions” riddle is deceiving – he’s not one person but two. But Lady brings even cloudier issues of identity to the surface once the silky Elizabeth (Jane Alexander) and her cohort, Oscar (Peter Francis James) let themselves in to the household once everyone else has left or retired to bed. Elizabeth purports to be Jo’s mother, and though Sam insists she cannot be, that she bears no resemblance to his dying wife’s actual mother, Jo offers no resistance. Though cloaked in white (Elizabeth Hope Clancy designed the costumes), Elizabeth seems to be none other than Death incarnate, and Jo accedes to her imminent demise in making friends with her, embracing (literally) a new family as she weans herself off of her existing one.

One can see, perhaps, why Dubuque proved so confounding upon its original staging: it’s evasive and elliptical, and some dialogue that Albee thinks is smart is actually rather silly. And the second act return of the two supporting couples feels clunky. But the playwright has bigger themes in mind, and in the hands of director David Esbjornson (who also directed the Tony-winning Broadway run of Albee’s The Goat), the increasingly barbed, metaphysical flights of fancy feel instructive. There are life lessons here about who we are and what others do for us that should not be ignored. For instance, Sam loves Jo but can no longer help her; in fact, his mere touch only wounds his love as her body continues to punish and betray her.

Esbjornson also conjures deep performances from his ensemble, particularly Paoluccio as the outsider of this incongruous group of friends and Wilson as its gruffest member. Alexander is exquisite, all the more unsettling because of her constantly calm demeanor. Depending on how one views the play, either Elizabeth, Jo or Sam will be its true lead (for me, it’s Sam). And what’s important is the answers given – or lack thereof – as much as the questions. Who is asking them, and why? What do we ultimately need from one another? The longer Jo cleaves to Elizabeth (for Robins, forced to writhe and moan, Dubuque must be quite an endurance run), the more we in the audience question what we look for in the company we hold near and dear.

Kudos to the Signature’s players and Esbjornson in particular. In resuscitating Dubuque, they have proven that a play about death has plenty of vital signs.

Edward Albee’s The Lady from Dubuque

At the End Stage Theater in the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, Clinton; thru April 15, signaturetheatre.org. $75.00

Clowning Around

Noah Wunsch — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 14:31:44 +0000

Last Saturday night, while the streets were lined with the stench of stale beer and the remains of Kelly green party favors, something magical was taking place in the East Village where a crowd of people were crammed tightly into a small, dark space. Most sat, a few stood. Songs of the old school variety were sung; the Vaudeville love that harked back to the soft croon of Cole Porter, a smiling face, performing a song rather than simply blasting it. Beyond that… People were laughing… AND NO ONE WAS DRUNK! La MaMa, the East Village mecca of experimental theatre, is celebrating its 50th year of staging wonderful eccentricities. That Beautiful Laugh, a clown show, gives a youthful spirit to this golden anniversary.

Directed by Obie Award Winner Orlando Pabotoy, That Beautiful Laugh explores the world of laughter. Three clowns, played by Alan Tudyk, Carlton Ward and Julia Ogilvie are brought on stage to teach a tiny red egg about the joys of the world through short vignettes that roil belly-thumping laughs from the audience and cast alike. The cast fully embraces the practices of clowning to its fullest, with Tudyk playing the ring-leader of the group, Ward playing a somewhat demented caricature and Ogilvie taking the role of the the outgoing cutesie one. Together, they take the egg through the gritty city, with a puppet show that harks back to the dirty world of “Avenue Q.” They perform strange tricks to impress the egg (you’ll be shocked what Ward can do with a clothes hanger). and they teach the bird about love and sharing. It seemed appropriate that the show debuted last weekend, given the New York City half marathon was Sunday. The physical energy exerted by the actors in the play is nothing short of a theatrical marathon. They run around the theatre, jump on the walls, wrestle and dance (on stilts).

The show marks the debut of The Artigiani Troupe, and the work developed by Pabotoy and his five-year-old son, based on stories the two of them formed before the young’n drifted off to the delirious world of dreams. While the story is rooted in the simple joy of laughter, that concept obviously expands by the end of the show and informs the audience to slow down a bit, and enjoy all of the things we now hold as everyday mediocrities. Sunshine. Blooming trees. Bees buzzing, not stinging. In it’s innocence it rejuvenates the secret nature of Manhattan. I found myself mesmerized watching the show; an inescapable smile on my face, as I reminisced over how sad and wonderful it all was. Wonderful that an art form like clowning can still rile so much happiness in people of all ages. Sad, because out on the streets so many people were boozing up in bright green, completely unaware that just a few blocks away magic was being created in a small dark space, for a roomful of people.

“That Beautiful Laugh,” runs until March 25th at The Club at La Mama (74 E. 4th st. Btw Bowery and 2nd Ave). Tickets are $18 and $13 for students and seniors. For more info click here.

Begonya Plaza Pledges Devotion to Teresa’s Ecstasy

admin — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 14:35:06 +0000

Photo: Begonya Plaza, left, and Shawn Elliott. Photo credit: Carol Rosegg

By Doug Strassler

“Tell me more about you,” is the first thing Begonya Plaza says to me as I meet her in front of the Cherry Lane Theatre, where her new show, Teresa’s Ecstasy, is set to open on Wednesday, March 14.

I must be careful here, I think. Should I let her know that I have been a fan of hers since catching her in Maid to Order, a fun 1980s comedy starring Ally Sheedy? No way. I must be composed, professional. I mention several of the outlets for which I write, and we settle down in a cozy West Village bistro for an early pre-show dinner. Conversation returns to the show. “Phew,” I say to myself, “well-played, Doug.”

Ecstasy is about Carlotta (played by Plaza), a writer en route to Avila to research the famous Saint Teresa. Before arriving there, she makes a pit stop in Barcelona to hand her estranged husband, Andres (Shawn Elliott), divorce papers. Over a wine-abetted lunch, he fights to find a spark that might rekindle their flailing relationship, while Carlotta has bigger concerns on her mind. Will Pomerantz is the director.

Plaza, who has a college-age daughter, began work on Ecstasy six years ago. “I was looking to return to acting after taking time to be a mother,” she explains. “I wanted to get back to action.” Initially, however, it was written as a one-woman show about the 16th century saint. Plaza had written a screenplay about the artist Salvador Dalí, and in doing her research found that one of the books at his bedside table was her autobiography. (That screenplay became The Persistence of Memory, a movie to which Glenn Close is attached.)

“I thought, ‘Why would someone like him, someone so perverse, be interested in her?’” Plaza says. She read the book herself, “and I got sucked in. She is fascinating, that whole period of time, the Spanish Inquisition, it’s all fascinating, and I wondered what it would be like to play Teresa. We think we live in a macho world now? She lived in an atmosphere of prejudice. I’d probably become a nun too then – it would be the only way to educate myself!”

According to Plaza, who says she always travels to monasteries when beginning to write something (literally, “it’s a blessing”), it wasn’t the religious aspects of Teresa’s life as much as the spiritual elements that touched Plaza and led her to explore the woman further. She sent an early version to Elliott, a friend of hers, who told her that her subject was too perfect. “There was no conflict! He told me people would get bored,” Plaza explained. At one point in the process, Plaza had a phone conversation with her ex-husband, with whom she has an amicable relationship. “He is a noble but opinionated man, and he likes to contradict. He was dismissing what I was talking about,” Plaza continues, “and I thought, ‘That’s my conflict!’” She rewrote the play to focus on Andres and the Teresa-influenced Carlotta; eventually Elliott himself won the part. (Linda Larkin also stars as Becky, Carlotta’s publisher).

I tell Plaza that history and cross-cultural differences seem to dominate her work. In addition to Dalí and St. Teresa, Plaza has also written about such people as Evita Perón, Simón Bolivar, Dolores Ibarruri, Antonio Machín and such subjects as Iraqi veterans and the Spanish Civil War. She agrees. “I don’t know why I wasn’t interested when I was in high school,” she jokes. “But history is the gossip of the past, right?”

While definitely excited about Ecstasy, Plaza is still in that apprehensive pre-opening phase. “It’s a roller coaster ride,” she says. “But I am filled with gratitude. I keep saying, ‘Let’s have fun.’” This leads me to refer to an interview I once saw with Kathy Bates, in which the acclaimed actress also discussed the importance of having fun when acting. “It is called a play,” I repeat to Plaza.

“You just mentioned my favorite actress!” she exclaims. “I looooove her.” And now I’m not just an interviewer talking to a talented artist; we’re two fans on common ground. So I let my guard down and admit my fondness for Plaza and Maid to Order. Plaza laughs as I tell her how much joy that brought my family as a child growing up, and while I get the impression she hasn’t thought of the film in quite some time, she smiles at the memory and said it was fun to make.

After the interview is over and we’ve parted ways, I think about what Plaza said about feeling gratitude for what she gets to do. And a similar feeling washes over me, too.

For more information about Teresa’s Ecstasy, go to http://teresasecstasy.com/.

What a Way to Make a Living

Mark Peikert — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:32:26 +0000

When the film adaptation of The Hours came out, my boss at the time said, apropos of Julianne Moore’s character, “You don’t need a reason to be depressed.” That truth kept flashing through my mind during RX, the saddest comedy to come along in quite a while.

In Kate Fodor’s world, managing editor at American Cattle & Swine Magazine Meena (Marin Hinkle) hides in the old-lady underwear section of Bon Ton to cry during her breaks. When drug giant Pharma launches a trial of a new workplace depression medication, Meena is desperate enough to prostrate herself to researcher Phil (Stephen Kunken) for a chance to be included. From there, it’s just a sip and a swallow until Phil and Meena are in love just long enough to make the complications that follow particularly sad.

Fodor has a firm grasp of how people grapple with depression. Meena is frozen in place, unable to leave her job and disgusted with her previous dreams of writing prose poetry. Lacking ambition and, frankly, hope, Meena treads water until the new medication suddenly gives her another chance. The pills are beside the point here; what Meena and everyone for whom she serves as a stand-in need is a glimmer of something on the other side of the dark cloud that hangs over her head.

If RX is ultimately juggling more pills than Fodor and director Ethan McSweeny can keep in the air (Marylouise Burke appears for a few scenes as an elderly woman in Bon Ton, who might as well have “Unknowing Cancer Victim” scrawled across her forehead), Hinkle and Kunken’s performances as faltering, stumbling lovers add a dash of melancholy romance amid the pointed jokes about big pharmaceutical companies and workplace ennui.

Hinkle craftily makes Meena a jittery bundle of nerves, someone who looks as fragile as she feels, thereby putting off everyone around her and exacerbating her depression. And Kunken, as the gallant and tentative Phil, navigates the broken heart subplot with aplomb, never resorting to romcom shorthand. As Meena and Phil’s co-workers, Michael Bakkensen, Paul Niebanck and Elizabeth Rich keep their comedic support fresh and grounded, shying away from playing the stereotypes of their roles.

RX is a comedy—and certainly the audience roared with laughter throughout—but Fodor has hit upon some painful truths about our workaholic culture, truths that aren’t blunted by medication. For anyone who’s ever worked a job they loathed, RX will ring a little too true.

RX
Through March 3, 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St. (betw. Park & Madison Aves.), www.59e59.org; $65.

Might of 'The Navigator'

Doug Strassler — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:16:13 +0000

While the Philip K. Dicks and Isaac Asimovs of the world would have us fearing the rise of our prevalent gadgets, Eddie Antar’s clever, well-executed The Navigator will have us believe that the ends more than justify the machines.

Kelly Anne Burns and Joseph Franchini in The Navigator. Photo: Gerry Goodstein.

Dave (Joseph Franchini) is a card-holding member of our current age of anxiety. Unemployed and having just lost even more on a bad stock, Dave is nearing the end of his emotional rope, and his harried wife Lilly (Nicole Taylor) doesn’t alleviate any of his concerns. What he really needs is a life whisperer, someone with all the answers to help him get out of his rut.

And that’s exactly what Dave finds when driving back home to Lilly in the form of his car’s GPS navigator (brought to life in the form of Kelly Anne Burns). This navigator’s instructions quickly move beyond calculating directions. First, she is aware of other cars on the road, and instructs him to avoid an eventual collision. Then she starts dispensing greater advice, covering everything from dinner plans to investment tips. Dave may physically be in the driver’s seat, but his navigator is the one in control, giving him the answers he needs until this damaged man gets the confidence he sorely needs to rejoin the land of the living.

Credit director Leslie Kincaid Burby with steering Antar’s sweet play on the side of the humorous, merely dipping Navigator in pathos where others might have given it a full bath. Of course, Burby has had time to nurture this production, which first incubated as part of WorkShop Theater’s Plays In Production series in 2010 (Burby won a New York Innovative Theater Award for Best Director from that run) and stands as a testament to not allowing the budget’s size determine the quality of a show. This is true onstage, thanks to the comic work done by Franchini, Taylor and Michael Gnat in a small role, and to Burns’ perfectly modulated speech pattern as the navigation system, emotion-free and completely authoritarian. And it’s also true behind the scenes, thanks to Quentin Chiappetta’s detailed sound design, which replicates the many car and street noises necessary to create the image of Dave’s car journeying on the lonely road. Make no bones about it: this is one show that knows exactly where it is going.

The Navigator
Through Mar. 3, WorkShop Mainstage Theater, 312 W. 36th St., 4th Fl., www.workshoptheater.org; $18, $15 for seniors and students.