Photo by Tristan Fuge

For all the talk of war – which conflicts in which the United States should be engaged, what rules apply to which groups of people who can and cannot serve – it is often easy for those of us sitting at a remove from the battlefield to remember that these discussions pertain to individuals, with beating hearts and loved ones standing alongside them and waiting for their return at the home front. Mat Smart’s aptly titled The Steadfast, now playing at TBG Theater, is an economical cornucopia that renders the political incredibly personal.

Smarts sly play, directed with keen understatement by Wes Grantom, traces the role of the American soldier from the Revolutionary War to the most recent battles in the Persian Gulf, a la Robert Schenkkan’s The Kentucky Cycle. At two and a half hours, however, Steadfast resists the impulse to reach for epic effect.  Still, do not be confused: size does matter. It’s just that instead, Smart’s nimbly woven kaleidoscope of vignettes creates a rich tapestry that emphasizes depth over length.

Among the stories within this saga: a 1950s mother (a wonderfully evocative Susan Greenhill) sits in front of a red oak tree planted by her son (Ben Kahre), before he died in the Korean War. In another example of filial devotion, a 1776 father (Brent Langdon) frets over the revolution his sons plan to assist against the British. In 2003, eighteen-year-old Private Tommy Kellar (Matt Dellapina) asks Lance Corporal Powell (Cloteal L. Horne), the only woman in the squad, to help him write the girlfriend he left behind back home. Powell, it turns out, has relationship strife all her own: she felt compelled to join the marines following 9/11 but not to inform her pacifist husband, Mark (Nick Mills), that she was doing so. In 1968, three young men (John Behlmann, Dellapina, and Alex Ubokudom) flee to Canada to dodge the Vietnam draft.  The Civil War is acknowledged by a vignette in which a runaway slave (David Ryan Smith) hopes to join the Union army.

Structurally and at times even thematically, Steadfast recalls Paula Vogel’s recent A Civil War Christmas, although the former is a tauter and more affecting work. It is one that also requires a bit of work on the part of its audience. Though Grantom’s ensemble is highly talented (and able to stitch humor and pathos together without manipulation), since actors play multiple parts, it can be difficult to discern which characters they might be playing. It can also be tricky to determine what current age a character might be, as some age, and not necessarily in chronological order. For example, and without giving too much away, one performer ages nearly a century over the course of scenes that bounce around. The fact that these scenes are scrambled instead of linear also takes some getting used to, and the narrative benefits significantly from a second viewing or a reading of the script for those lucky enough to access one or the other. Smart’s anthology, sometimes subtle, sometimes overt, makes an important point about the souls who have served on any battlefield being forever linked by their valor. The Steadfast is an ambitious but necessary play that should not be missed.

The Steadfast

TBG Theater, 312 West 36th Street. www.smarttix.com. Thru Feb 3.

The Fig Leaves Are Falling

Fig Leaves was a notorious Broadway flop 44 years ago created by Albert Hague and Allan Sherman about changing attitudes among the sexes. I’m not sure why director Ben West decided to revive this at Alphabet City’s Connelly Theatre, nor why he thought chomping down on the show’s book would be the best solution to bring the show up to date. It’s the second “revisal” of sorts for a show of the mod era, after last season’s On a Clear Day, and one that is equally problematic.  Harry (Jonathan Rayson) is a buttoned-up exec at a Manhattan-based greeting card company with a wife and kid in Westchester. Using the loosey-goosey framing device of having smug friend Charlie (Matt Walton) host a TV show, Fig Leaves shows how Harry, first devoted to wife Lillian (Natalia Venetia Belcon), decides to leave her for his younger, less inhibited secretary Jenny (Morgan Weed). The plot unfolds exactly as you think it will, sputtering out song after song with no time for motivation or character development. Belcon and Rayson, in particular, are doing good work, though all is for naught. The voices in Fig Leaves soar, but the rest of the show falls flat.

Connelly Theatre, 220 E. Fourth St. www.smarttix.com. Thru Jan. 13.

Midsummer [A Play With Songs]

David Greig’s infectiously funny and charming show is perfect for those who loved Once, but prefer shows with less filler. It debuted several years ago at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and stars Cora Bissett and Matthew Pidgeon as Helena and Bob, mismatched lovers who keep both eyes on the short-term and neither one on the long-term. She’s a lawyer prone to bad personal decisions, while he is a petty criminal about to celebrate his 35^th birthday. Greig, who both wrote and directed, keeps Midsummer running at a fast clip but never loses his audience, even as both Bissett and Pidgeon play a host of characters, and even as at one point Pidgeon runs through the audience. Despite a rueful tone, this show is really a celebration of life and its many follies. Midsummer is a show for all seasons.

Clurman Theatre, Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street. http://www.theatrerow.org/theclurman2.htm.  Thru Jan. 26.

Tar Baby

Solo artist Desiree Burch makes all audience members question how racist they are in her new show, Tar Baby, playing at the DR2 Theatre and co-written by her with Dan Kitrosser. Designed almost like a carnival sideshow, Tar Baby looks at the past history of the role of the African-American in our country, and looks at how the economy, physical appearance and even sociological norms have shifted – and how they have not. Burch relies heavily on audience participation, which can distract from the content of the show (she also gets an assist from Phoebe Mar Halkowich as, yes, “White Slave”). The show is directed by master ball juggler Isaac Byrne, who knows how let Burch take her audiences to the brink, and then bring them back to solid ground. Towards the end of Tar Baby, Burch lets loose with an epic rant about color and cruelty that’s both personal and objective, full of rage and also self-deprecation. It’s at this moment that you realize, despite all the guises and chicanery on display here, the greatest character Burch can play is herself. The good news is that there appear to be more stories left for her to tell.

DR2 Theater, 103 East 15th Street. www.telecharge.com. Thru Jan. 19.

Water by the Spoonful

Second Stage Theater is mounting Spoonful, which is not only the midpoint of playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes’ trilogy focusing on the tribulation of Philadelphia’s Ortiz family (the first was 2006’s Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue) but also the 2012 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Directed by Davis McCallum, Spoonful is a complicated, and, at times, not fully formed drama about connections both missed and gained. Elliot (Armando Riesco) is a Marine who was wounded overseas in Iraq. Estranged from his mother, he was raised by an ill aunt and close to cousin Yaz (Zabryna Guevara). Meanwhile, a group of recovering crack addicts are portrayed in a chat room administered by Haikumom (Liza Colón-Zayas), designed by Neil Patel and projectionist Aaron Rhyne. The integration of these two threads feel a little playwriting student-familiar, and several of the character’s choices feel rather unearned. McCallum gets maximum intimacy from his performers, especially Frankie Faison and Bill Heck as two of the other addicts, and Guevara, the best interpreter of Hudes’ dialogue in the group. Ultimately, though, Spoonful is both ambitious and anemic, trying to say a lot but not quite completing any of its sentences. For a play about messy lives, everything happens a bit too tidily.

Second Stage Theatre, 305 West 43rd Street. http://www.2st.com/plays/viewPlay/0/168/. Thru Feb. 10.

Photo by Joan Marcus

Mare Winningham often plays the overlooked character – the girl left behind, the weary but steadfast wife, the beleaguered mother. Though known for her film work (the least Brat Pack-y cast member of St. Elmo’s Fire, 2 Emmys for her television work), her stage career has been a constant, quieter engagement full of artfully detailed performances. Fortunately, you’re likely to notice the great care she puts into her performance as Flo in Sam Gold’s revival of William Inge’s dated Pulitzer Prize-winner, Picnic, which just opened at the American Airlines Theater. In fact, there were times when I found myself unable to take my eyes off her.

The only problem? My eyes were supposed to be watching the lithe, godlike bodies of Maggie Grace and Sebastian Stan, the show’s two de facto “stars.” Oops.

Grace, in her Broadway debut, is Madge Owens, an eighteen-year-old yearning to taste life and see the world beyond her repressive small Kansas town. And she’s not alone. All the women in her view, including neighbor Helen Potts (Ellen Burstyn) and meddlesome boarder Rosemary Sydney (Elizabeth Marvel), are stagnating, dried up from the lack of male affection. Actually, it’s attention that these women crave, more than love. And so the arrival of the virile but wayward Hal Carter (Stan, in his second Broadway at-bat but first leading role), a childhood friend of Madge’s loyal beau, Alan Seymour (a rigid Ben Rappaport), throws all the women in town into a tizzy – even Flo’s younger daughter, Millie (Madeleine Martin, at times too mercurial for her still-naïve role). And that’s the major problem with Gold’s current production. Hal’s presence hauls water onto these dried-up lives. But he should be setting their world ablaze, instead of creating a destination that’s all wet.

Despite a surfeit of perfectly detailed technical work (including David Zinn’s costumes, Tom Watson’s hair and wig design, Jill B.C. DuBoff’s sound work, and especially Jane Cox’s strategic lighting and Andrew Lieberman’s scenic design), a lot of Picnic’s emotional nuance gets ignored, making the sixty-year-old play feel even dustier than it should. The bad boy-good girl dynamic between Hal and Madge should set off fireworks in Inge’s play, set around a titular Labor Day celebration, each unlocking a hidden reserve of bruising and lust, respectively. But neither has a solid grip on Inge’s dialogue nor their characters’ simmering emotions. Grace keeps Madge on the sweet side instead of emphasizing just how out of place Madge feels, a fact which drives her to hurt Millie and blue-ball Alan, and it deprives the audience of a chance for her and Hal to connect over the conflicted feelings that forbid them to feel as though they belong somewhere. Stan, for his part, whose looks have heretofore been the actor’s stock-in-trade, parades his chiseled body with the knowing hubris of a Chippendale but forgets that it must be undercut with a dollop of regret and self-loathing. Hal isn’t sorry he’s a good-looking guy, but he is supposed to be limited by the fact that he’s never seen as anything more.

Gold’s supporting cast is a mixed bag. Burstyn makes every moment count as Helen, a peek into what Madge’s future looks like if she doesn’t branch out and Cassie Beck, Maddie Corman and Chris Perfetti all project the inner knowledge of people who know their world is flat and walled-in. Reed Birney, always outstanding, is letter-perfect as nebbish shopkeeper Howard Bevans, but he’s outmatched by Elizabeth Marvel, who devours the show-stealing part of Rosemary without fully digesting it. Yes, Rosemary is the most attention-starved of all, but by the time her portrayer launches into the show’s climactic catalytic rant, Marvel has already exploded so that there is no further stratosphere for her to hit. Her fury, paired with Grace and Stan’s lack of spark, lead Picnic to feel as stripped as Hal’s famously torn shirt.

Winningham, however, weaves a coat of many colors for poor Flo, stenciling in a life history of heartbreak, love, and filial piety. Madge and Millie long for a life away from their boring town, and Flo wants desperately for her children to have more than she did. But watching Winningham care for her two children, you see that for Flo, the two of them have also always been all she ever needed.

Picnic

American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street. www.roundabouttheatre.org. Thru Feb. 24.

Photo by Aaron Zebrock.

I just made a new friend named Chase. And another named Naomi. And yet another named Michael. They were all hosts of the raucous, rollicking party that is Restoration Comedy, now taking place nightly at the Flea Theater.

All of my aforementioned new BFFs are part of the Bats, the resident group of young, and in this case, quite nubile, young actors, working at the Flea. They all flaunt their considerable talents, both internal and external, on display in director Ed Sylvanus Iskandar’s mounting of Amy Freed’s riff on two existing restoration comedies, Love’s Last Shift by Colley Cibber and The Relapse, by John Vanbrugh. Iskandar replicates the template he set with last year’s Flea production, These Seven Sicknesses, in which a central, classic kind of story was merely the conduit for a party-like feel that extends the whole evening. Though the two “acts” of Restoration probably last less than two full hours, the overall show ran for about three-and-a-half hours, including actors schmoozing with audience members (impressively remembering everyone’s names) as they serve them drinks, appetizers from neighboring Macao, and a full-on post-show dance party. One leaves the show having not just been entertained, but feeling as though they had just made a bunch of new friends.

For instance, have you met my new pal Allison Buck? This ethereal beauty, a Bat veteran who has starred in Sicknesses as well as other Flea shows like Looking at Christmas, plays the virtuous Amanda, mourning the believed death of her lecherous husband, Loveless (James Fouhey). When Ned Worthy (a winning Seth Moore) lets Amanda in on the ruse, she decides to use Ned as a teacher in the ways of seduction, so she can lure Loveless back to her. Relapse, meanwhile, finds Loveless readjusting to the very limited life of a supposedly happy marriage. That chapter will also feature two of my other new besties, Stephen Stout and Bonnie Milligan, in two show-stopping performances, he as the social-climbing Lord Foppington (he leads an exhilarating second act prelude set to the Scissor Sisters’ “Let’s Have a Kiki”) and she as a supposedly homely provincial heiress with a chastity belt.

Restoration strays from the more typically dramatic and challenging works often portrayed by the Bats from such playwrights as Thomas Bradshaw (Dawn) or A.R. Gurney (The Guys, Office Hours). Clearly this is lowbrow comedy rather than high art. Iskandar’s approach is essentially what you might find in a Chelsea club on Dangerous Liaisons night. (Several numbers, choreographed to the hilt by Will Taylor and quite seamlessly performed in sync by the entire Restoration ensemble, even evoke Madonna’s VMA “Vogue” performance.) Loren Shaw has adorned the cast in both gorgeous Elizabethan dress as well as glittery go-go gear, a massive undertaking given the number of quick changes and enormity of the cast. Think of it as haute couture rave gear. And while the audience interaction doesn’t do much to strengthen Freed’s themes, questioning the validity of the institution of marriage, it serves the director’s greater mission, which is to create a party, although this kind of in-your-face theatricality is definitely not for the faint of heart or those with any kind of social anxiety disorder. The story itself may be slim, but the event rocks the house.

Restoration Comedy

Flea Theater, 41 White St. Thru Dec. 31.  www.theflea.org.

Photo by Carol Rosegg.

An ever-growing subgenre has emerged within the movie adaptation umbrella constantly covering Broadway: the holiday movie adaptation. In addition to Elf and White Christmas, both making return engagements this season, A Christmas Story, The Musical, the earnest adaptation of the cult film that grew into a yuletide tradition, has arrived for a limited engagement at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.

Joseph Robinette has drawn the show’s book from Leigh Brown, Bob Clark and Jean Shepherd’s script for the 1983 film, itself lifted from Shepherd’s anthology “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash,” and kept nearly all the film’s beloved vignettes intact (the only thing excised appears to be an Ovaltine-related sequence). He has also, with the sturdy help of director John Rando and music writers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, maintained Shepherd’s sweet sense of nostalgia and innocence. It convincingly evokes a time when bullies still fought with their hands and the Red Ryder BB gun nine-year-old Ralphie (an able Johnny Rabe, alternating in the role with Joe West) could be seen only as a danger to himself (you hear the refrain “You’ll shoot your eye out” many a time) rather than a menace to society. It’s a time when the authority of teachers still went un-impugned by both students and their parents, and when love was enough to keep the home fires burning, even in a Depression-era Indiana small town.

That love is supplied in ample doses by Ralphie’s Mother (Erin Dilly, wonderful) and father, The Old Man, (John Bolton, humorously turning what was more of a curmudgeon in the film into a dexterously manic onstage creation), as well as by Ralphie’s button-cute kid brother, Randy (Zac Ballard). As played by a charming Dan Lauria – himself the paterfamilias of TV’s The Wonder Years, which knew a thing or two about narration and nostalgia – Shepherd narrates the events of the month leading up to Ralphie’s favorite holiday, Christmas, which include contending with the school bully, a visit to see a department store Santa Claus, the arrival of a curious novelty lamp, The Old Man’s colorful vernacular, his contention with a couple of neighborhood dogs, and the misguided dare of one of Ralphie’s friends to stick his tongue to a frozen pole, in addition to his quest to find that prized gun underneath the Christmas tree.

Robinette transfers all of these events from the movie, and the results fare better than most works that try to mimeograph the events of one genre onto enough (see: the musical version Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). The narrative flow is sometimes a bit forced but never clunky, and its episodic structure is fitting, given that it derives from the mind of a young child. It also gives Robinette and the team of Pasek and Paul the opportunity to expand Ralphie’s daydreams, Pennies From Heaven-style, into some elaborate and unexpected musical numbers. This includes a Western-themed “Ralphie to the Rescue” and “You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out.” The latter takes place, perhaps improbably, in a speakeasy (with the children in the cast dressed as adults and doing most of the dancing, “Bugsy Malone”-style), yet it shows off both Caroline O’Connor, as Ralphie’s teacher, Miss Shields, and wunderkind youngster Luke Spring in an exciting dance number. Throughout the show, choreographer Warren Carlyle devises thoughtful dance numbers that boasts the skills of his young cast without over-challenging them, and Rando makes the task of working with kid actors look like child’s play.

Pasek and Paul, who just recently proved in the Second Stage Theatre production of Dogfight a perceptive ability to thread music with narrative, setting and emotion, have crafted an enjoyable and appropriate pastiche score, although none really linger in the mind after the applause has wound down. Still, Dilly tackles her two numbers, “What a Mother Does” and the Big-recalling “Just Like That,” with such warmth and clarion delivery, one would be fool not to wish for everyone to have a mother like her. Bolton is a comic delight, mastering a plethora of physical demands in his role. Even Lauria goes the extra mile, fills his merely perfunctory role with real pathos. Christmas doesn’t aim to raise the bar, but it’s a charming callback to the comforts of both family and the traditional book musical.

A Christmas Story, The Musical

Lunt-Fontanne Theater, 205 West 46th Street, www.achristmasstorythemusical.com. Through Dec. 30.

By Deirdre Donovan

Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice has meant very different things at very different times. It began its stage life with a comic Shylock in a false nose and evolved through the centuries into a drama of great pathos. But whether you see this play as a comedy or tragedy, Daniel Sullivan’s staging at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, starring Al Pacino as Shylock, is incisive and arresting.

Lily Rabe, Byron Jennings and Al Pacino in The Merchant of Venice.

Pacino’s Shylock holds the attention. Without forcing a syllable or gesture, Pacino constantly makes a point. He is incredibly interesting to watch, and plays his character as a small-minded patriarch who prides himself on his money lending on the Venetian Rialto. There are emotionally searing moments: for example, his character’s best-known speech of “Hath not a Jew eyes?” reminds you again that the spiteful Shylock is not without human feeling. Other contemporary productions have stressed this conceit but Pacino, with his gritty New York voice, pulls it off with fresh gravitas.

Fortunately, the rest of the cast is not eclipsed by Pacino. While the star undoubtedly has mega-wattage on the boards, there are a number of other actors who deliver big-time. There’s Lily Rabe, as Portia, who turns in an especially luminous performance. Playing opposite Rabe is the protean Hamish Linklater as Bassanio, who evolves from a mere fortune-hunter to Portia’s true-love during the evening. Byron Jennings, as the nominal character, is suitably urbane.

To be sure, the real protagonist of this story is money. And it eventually taints everybody who lends, borrows, steals, uses or enjoys its luxuries. Venice is a city of commerce, after all, and even the Christians know that money is the vital ingredient of their workaday world.

This production takes a few liberties with Shakespeares’ text: Sullivan has inserted a scene that has Shylock baptized in full view of the audience. This invented stage business vividly underscores one of the sticking points of the story: The Christian morality in Venice is often cruel and punitive.

If The Merchant of Venice is a deeply disturbing play with dark energies, then The Winter’s Tale is awash with enchantment. Although the drama opens like a tragedy, Shakespeare’s genius turns the plot inside-out before the final scene arrives.

The story, in many ways, resembles a fairytale. Polixenes, King of Bohemia, visits his old friend Leontes, King of Sicilia. Polixenes is so charming to his wife Hermione that Leontes believes that they are lovers and he has fathered her unborn child. I would be a spoiler to recount all the intricacies of the story here, but suffice it to say that Leontes’s mad jealousy causes a number of tragic events.

The problem with this production is that Ruben Santiago-Hudson is miscast in the leading role. Merely adequate in the part, Santiago-Hudson doesn’t add any fresh nuances to his character. Curiously, the star turn in this production belongs to Marianne Jean-Baptiste, playing the feisty Paulina. This show, directed by Michael Greif, also has the daunting task of playing in repertory with Merchant. Repertory theater has many virtues, but it has one unavoidable drawback: one production typically outshines the other.

Still, you can’t go wrong with this show. Certain plays repay repeated seeing, and The Winter’s Tale is one of them.

Instead of thinking in the “hit and flop” mentality of Broadway, you should go to both Delacorte offerings this summer to enjoy their Shakespearean resonances and to watch the actors perform in contrasting roles. In Merchant, you have a rare opportunity to watch the legendary Pacino on the boards; and in The Winter’s Tale, you can reflect on the wonder of “second chances” in life.

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Shakespeare in the Park
Performances continue through Aug. 1.
Tickets to both shows are free.
For additional information, visit www.shakespeareinthepark.org or call 212-539-8750.