Who's Your Favorite Beatle?

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Long Day’s Journey Into Night, American Airlines Theatre, 3 h 40 m

You never want to miss a revival of what many consider America’s greatest theatrical drama, and the latest version with Jessica Lange and Gabriel Byrne is no exception.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a tale of addiction and family dysfunction that transcends time. Even on paper the words and structure of this autobiographical work by Eugene O’Neill are powerful, sometimes brutal, sometimes lyrical. But when the acting is as excellent as it is in the current production, the effect is luminous.

Jessica Lange plays the haunted Mary Tyrone. Like the fog that ebbs and flows around the family’s seaside cottage, Mary drifts between a sharp lucidity and a fey dreaminess, driven by her morphine addiction. 

The three men in her life orbit Mary’s extremes, fueled by their own alcoholism. The father, James Tyrone, played by Gabriel Byrne, is a matinee-idol of the stage. He is famous for a single role in a popular play that has made him wealthy and famous, but he regrets forsaking Shakespeare, who he still quotes and idealizes. Jamie (Michael Shannon), the oldest son, is a dissipated, failed actor. His younger brother, Edmund is a poet and wanderer. His diagnosis of consumption, what we now call tuberculosis, is confirmed during the course of the play.

At the start the men are cautiously hopeful that Mary, who has recently returned from a cure, is finally free of the drug. Jamie is the first to suspect otherwise, hearing Mary wandering the upstairs halls and spending the night in the spare bedroom, always a tell-tale sign that she has slipped.

As the men realize Mary is using again, the recriminations start. She realizes they are watching her, following her. She angrily lashes out at them, then retreats into a world of her own, musing incoherently. “I tried,” she confesses to James, but in the very next line she escapes back into denial. They all try to blame each other for her disease, but they never acknowledge the effects their drinking has had on the family, excusing it as reaction to their own circumstances and her drug use. The sons tell James that because of his stinginess he has never found her decent doctors and has forced her to live in cheap hotels and the dilapidated summer cottage she hates. The father tells both of them that they are bums that drink and whore and rely on him for money. Like the abrupt changes in Mary, the men hate and love each other from moment to moment.  

Jessica Lange is a wonder as the addled Mary. She paces around the room like a trapped animal at the start of the play, attacking and then retreating. Lange subtly conveys Mary’s constantly shifting moods by the pitch of her voice, the fluttering of her hands, the vacancy of her look. She speaks in a deep, wounding growl when she berates the others, but in the grip of the drug her voice is high and unsteady. 

Like the men in the play, we can’t take our eyes off her, never quite sure what she will say or do next. At one moment she is wistfully back in the convent of her youth, the next she calmly contemplates a welcome overdose. As good as the other actors are, it is Lange that shines brightest

She initially seemed to be drawing on Katherine Hepburn’s interpretation of Mary with a shaky voice and nervous gestures. But soon it is clear that Lange has much more depth, inhabiting Mary’s viciousness as thoroughly as she conveys the haze of the drug. At one point she is draped off of a chair, grasping the edge of a table, looking for a balance that she can never achieve. When she’s not on the stage, you want her back.

These are all complex characters, and nothing is easy about portraying any of them. Byrne is not the definitive James Tyrone, but he does capture James’s weariness and resignation. While not the dominating presence you expect, he incisively takes James on the wide arc from hope to disappointment to eventual drunken disgust. You are meant to both despise and pity James, and Byrne doesn’t quite get you to those extremes.

The lumbering Brennan is near perfect as Jamie. He is able to elicit just enough empathy for the cynical older brother to make him almost admirable, despite his failings. He smoothly brings out Jamie’s duality: a belligerent drunk and a solicitous older brother.

The one weak spot is John Gallagher, Jr. as the failing Edmund, probably the play’s most difficult role since it relies less on histrionics than the others. Gallagher plays him as quiet and self-pitying, but he isn't able to give Edmund the strength to credibly challenge the others. We only see him resigned to his sickness and the futility of his minor literary efforts. His long passage in the fourth act about his life at sea is monotonous and distracting.

More than half of Act Four is taken up with Edmund's musing and James telling family secrets and bemoaning the lost promise of his early career. You get impatient waiting to see what has happened to Jamie and Mary. He has been on a drunken binge in town; she has been hidden away upstairs, taking ever larger doses of morphine.

No question that at three hours and 40 minutes this is a long night at the theater. There have always been grumblings that O’Neill needed to edit more, particularly the dialogue between Edmund and James in Act Four. With that exception, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” moves briskly, as you are caught up in the dystopia of the Tyrone family. And Jessica Lange is not to be missed, maybe the best Mary ever.

Grade: A

Hamilton

Hamilton, An American Musical, book, music and lyrics Lin-Manuel Miranda, at the Richard Rogers Theatre, 46th between Broadway and Eighth Avenue 

“In New York you can be a new man.” That quote from the opening moments of “Hamilton” is the hopeful, timeless theme of this amazing new play. But like everything else in this subtle, nuanced production, it’s not as simple as that.

The incredibly talented Lin-Michael Miranda, who wrote the book, music and lyrics and plays Alexander Hamilton, used Ron Chernow’s award-winning biography as inspiration. Among other things, he may have mastered a new art-form: the historical, musical biography.

As we learned in fifth-grade history, Hamilton is killed by Aaron Burr in a duel, so we know right from the start that the theme of re-invention will have its limits. But Hamilton’s is a fascinating story and Miranda’s genius is to give that story its due textures, while providing a funny, moving, rousing experience. The music and choreography are beautiful; the history instructional; and, most surprisingly, one doesn’t interfere with the other.

Much has been made of the multi-ethnic cast and the hip-hop score. Yes, at the beginning you notice that Hamilton is hispanic and Washington, Jefferson and Burr are black, but that is all part of the inclusive message. Miranda believes in an America where all men are created equal, and the story of the American Revolution and the creation of our political system belongs to all of us, equally. It's "An American Musical." 

The hip-hop songs propel the sustained energy of the play - you can impart a lot of information in those fast rhymes. But we get a full complement of modern music: Motown-inspired love songs, classic Broadway production numbers, even Tommy James-like 60’s pop, comic relief from King George III.  

There is a very personal story here:  Hamilton starts as a bastard orphan on Nevis, rises to Washington’s staff, marries the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, and becomes Secretary of the Treasury. Along the way he makes enemies because he’s ambitious and talks too much. Burr warns him, “why do you always say what you mean?”

Burr is presented as envious throughout.  When Hamilton endorses Jefferson in the contested election of 1800 over Burr, the duel is inevitable.  Here is the sitting vice-president shooting a former Secretary of the Treasury.  I know it was a smaller, more violent world 200 hundred years ago, but can you imagine Joe Biden capping Henry Paulson?

From the fast-paced start with the song, “Alexander Hamilton,” the music is superb. You are thrilled and proud when the cast celebrates the victory of the Revolution with “Yorktown” that includes the refrain “The World Turned Upside Down,” a popular song of the time. “One Last Time” is a beautiful love song that Hamilton sings to his wife. You are moved to tears with the death of Hamilton’s son, as he and his wife cope with their grief in “It’s Quiet Uptown.”

Maybe because author Chernow was involved with the production, the history is never dumbed down and is interwoven with the themes of the play. The federal government’s adoption of the colonies’ debt is certainly not a normal subject of Broadway, but Miranda incorporates that into a Burr solo, “The Room Where It Happens,” that is true to the history, plus advances the Burr-Hamilton storyline. Last year’s LBJ drama “All the Way” is a cartoon in comparison.

Miranda never forgets his themes. “Immigrants get the job done,” Lafayette laughingly tells Hamilton, tweaking the current Know-Nothing attitude towards immigration. “We will never be free until we end slavery,” one character tells Hamilton as the Revolution is coming to an end.  

Down to the intricate choreography of the climactic duel with the clever use of a revolving stage, “Hamilton” is a tour de force.  It's an inspired, smart, inclusive look at the American Dream, and the best entertainment you will find on Broadway today.

Grade: A+

Heisenberg

Heisenberg, Manhattan Theatre Club, 90 minutes, written by Simon Stephens

What a thrill to find that someone you have admired at the far remove of TV and film is just as impressive in person.  From literally just a few feet away!

City Center's two stages afford an audience the chance to be closer to the staging area than any of the traditional Broadway theaters.  In the smaller of the two venues, rows of bleacher-like seats rise on each side of an open rectangular area that is approximately 15 feet by 45 feet.  Being in the front row, I was so close to the actors that I occasionally felt the need to move my legs out of their way.  It was in that small space that Mary Louise Parker, one of my favorite actresses, and Dennis Arndt brought "Heisenberg" to life.

Parker is an appealing actress, and I loved her as the resourceful, pot-dealing mom on "Weeds."  She has great comic timing and a wry look as if she knows something very funny that she will only let you in on as she pleases.  What came across even more fully in that tiny theater is her incredible energy. Through the 90 minutes of this original production, she is a dynamo, moving and talking the whole time.  Arndt is calm and steady, a worthy foil.

Parker plays the wide-eyed Alex (Parker), and she gets in the face of George (Arndt), who is just minding his own business relaxing in a park in London.  Alex babbles on about her life, her dreams, prodding the reluctant George to respond. He is initially baffled and annoyed, but is gradually charmed, just as the audience is.  It's a Beckett-like situation, without the obscure, tangential dialogue.

The staging is remarkably simple with Parker and Arndt moving tables and chairs to suggest a change of scene.  You are so caught up in the intensity of the burgeoning relationship between Alex and George that the artifice is convincing.  Such is the magic of great theater.

Alex initially seems mad; but, as we hear of her estrangement from her son who has gone to America, we start to see her as less flighty, more purposeful.  Is she merely lonely?  What does she find attractive in the older George, a retired baker?  George is a widower and lonely himself, and his resistance to the wild Alex wears down.  But where are they headed?

Simon Stephens is a top dramatist, who also did the theatrical adaptation for "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time," the 2015 Tony favorite for best play.  The range of his imagination is clear in the contrast between the elaborate staging of "Incident" and the minimalism of "Heisenberg." (Stephen's choice of title is mercifully not a "Breaking Bad" reference; it relates to the physicist's famous "uncertainty principle.")

As good as the play itself is, Parker was who I came to see, and I went away an even bigger fan.  Her amazing presence was captivating.

Grade: A

Skylight and Airline Highway

Skylight, written by David Hare, directed by Stephen Daldry at the Golden Theatre

Flashing names of big-time film stars on their marquees seems to be Broadway’s go-to marketing ploy.  It makes paying those $100+ ticket prices just a little more palatable.  But does it make good theater?

As we’ve learned, not always.  But when film stars have their roots in the theater and they return to their first love, you can have exceptional results.  Such is the revival of David Hare’s “Skylight” with Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy.

I’m not sure I would have recognized Mulligan, just based on her looks, in her role as Kyra Hollis, the schoolteacher forging a new life in a poor section of London, but the rich timbre of her voice is distinctive.  It’s a voice made for the theater.  Nighy, of course, is unmistakable. With his thin, crisp demeanor and commanding presence, he is totally convincing as the suave restauranteur, Tom Sergeant.  Mulligan and Night skillfully depict the possibilities and limits of Kyra's and Tom's complex relationship, and that is what makes “Skylight” soar.

The play, entirely staged in Kyra’s one-room flat, unfolds with a visit from Edward (Matthew Beard), Tom’s son.  He tells Kyra that his mother, Alice, has died, nearly a year earlier.  Edward is worried about his father and hopes Kyra will see him.  We learn that Kyra lived with their family for many years and then abruptly left.  Clearly devoted to Kyra, Edward tells her that her leaving was even worse than his mother dying because it was so unexpected.  Importantly, he asks her what she would really like.  A good breakfast is her answer.  “With crisp bacon and toast wrapped in a napkin.”

Later that day Tom drops by.  They haven’t seen each other in years, and he leaps nervously around the room, balletic in his movements, while she is relatively still.  The dialogue is quick and funny, but tension abounds as we slowly discover what brought them together and why she had left.

Reconnecting, they go off on their superficial peeves - him the banks, her the news - but then settle into their reminiscences.  When the self-absorbed Tom says, “Alice used her death to punish me,” Kyra tells him he should have listened to her more. With false bravado Tom sneers “listening is halfway to begging.”  We laugh at the line, but suspect he means it.

Their arrangement was unusual, with Kyra working in Tom’s restaurant, she and Tom being lovers and her living in the Sergeants home.  This lasted until Alice inevitably discovered what was happening.  Kyra tells Tom that she loved Alice too, and that she left when Alice found the love letters Kyra wrote Tom from a vacation. Suspecting Tom left the letters out on purpose, Kyra felt she had to leave out of respect for Alice and to make a life of her own.  Coincidentally or not, Alice got sick right after Kyra left.

In the first act we learn what connects Kyra and Tom.  In the second we find what keeps them apart.  Tom can’t understand why she isn’t using her abilities to create a “good” life instead of living in this dreary section of London and commuting by bus hours each day to a teaching job he sees as making no difference.  Kira has rejected the phony glamour of his world for “a job I believe in.” And it’s one she understands: “education is finding a balance between creating a safe haven and challenging them.” 

What Mulligan and Nighy do best is convince you that these two people, so very different in their philosophies of life, can still be in love.  But that isn’t always enough.  As the arguments escalate, Nighy even starts to look older.  He doesn’t see another possibility for a life other than his own; she is adamant in her discovery of a true path.  “Something must come of all this,” he says resignedly.  By that point, even he doesn’t believe it.

“Skylight” is a very smart play, and you won’t see two better people perform it than Mulligan and Nighy.  It’s only on through June 16 so get tickets while you can!

Grade: A

 "Skylight" has been nominated for seven Tony Awards, including Best Revival, Best Actress for Mulligan and Best Actor for Nighy.

 

Airline Highway, written Lisa D’Amour, directed by Joe Mantello, Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre

New Orleans is a never ending source of great material, be it movies (“The Big Easy” and so many others), novels ("A Confederacy of Dunces"), music (jazz, Randy Newman), television ( “Treme”) and theater (“Streetcar Named Desire”).  Following in that tradition is Lisa D'Amour's “Airline Highway,” showing yet another side of town.  (A true product of New Orleans, D'Amour is a former Carnival Queen.)

The down-at-the heels Hummingbird Motel along Louisiana's old Airline Highway is the last-stop home to a disreputable group of funny, but poignant characters: transvestites, hookers, junkies, drunks.  They have all come together for a memorial service for another resident, Miss Ruby, who ran a strip club but somewhat inconveniently hasn’t bothered to die yet.

It is not selling "Airline Highway" short to say that the set is one of the best parts of the play.  With most of the players in the parking lot, the motel and its second floor balcony is a perfect runway, with the actors coming in and out of the adjoining rooms, even making dramatic descents of the not-so-grand concrete staircase.

Although a featured performer, K. Todd Freeman as the transvestite Sissy Na Na directs much of the action from above as he/she lobs a running commentary concerning the craziness of the other participants.  He richly deserves his Tony nomination.

It is a testament to this great ensemble that “Airline Highway” holds your interest as well as it does.  There are lots of laughs, some light rumination about loyalty and the vicissitudes of life, but don’t expect much else.  These are marginalized people who are at the end of their journey, not pondering choices.  The one character that has gotten away comes back and seems to regress to the general dissolution of the rest.

My immediate reaction was, “Hey, that was fun.”  Followed almost immediately by “But what did it amount to?”  Unfortunately the answer to that was “Not much.”  So “Airline Highway” is a well-executed, entertaining trifle.  You could do worse for your Broadway dollar.  It’s on until June 14.

Grade: B

 "Airline Highway" has been nominated for four Tony Awards.

Lady Day

Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, written by Lanie Robertson, directed by Lonny Price, at Circle in the Square Theatre

Billie Holiday is more legend than reality.  Virtually forgotten in the rock ’n’ roll sixties, her story was inadequately and inaccurately revived in 1972 with Diana Ross in “Lady Sings the Blues,” based on an autobiography Holiday claimed she never read.  

But now the brilliant artistry of Audra McDonald has brought “Lady Day” back to life.  It’s a desperate and sad life, leavened only by the music of the woman many consider our greatest jazz vocalist.  McDonald has researched this role thoroughly, and she shows us the beauty of Billie’s art, but also the self-destructive bitterness of her life.  

It’s not always a pretty sight.  Leaving a drink behind on the bar, Holiday initially shuffles past the tables of the patrons of Emerson’s bar (actually theater-goers in Circle in the Square’s unusual staging) and onto the stage where she is clearly struggling for control.  Then she starts to sing, and all seems right again, for a time.

Throughout the next 90 minutes you are bounced between that amazingly nuanced, emotional voice to the jarring reality of Lady Day’s obvious impairment and her brassy patter telling the excruciating story of her life.  I can’t think of anyone besides McDonald who has the singing and acting chops to handle such a demanding role.  

Holiday bravely tells her awful story without explicitly asking for sympathy, and you are moved by it.  Raped at 10, working with her mother as a prostitute at 12, she picked up singing by listening to Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith records on wind-up Victrolas in the brothels.  Eventually she started singing in clubs and was discovered by the amazing John H. Hammond, a record producer who would also help launch the careers of Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, among others.  (Even more incredibly, he was the great grandson of William H. “The public be damned!” Vanderbilt and was schooled at St. Bernard’s, Hotchkiss and Yale!)

Billie speaks fondly of her mother, known as “The Duchess.” After "The Duchess" refuses to give her money even after Billie has bankrolled a restaurant for her, her frustration is beautifully commemorated in her biggest and most covered hit “God Bless the Child.”  Our generation knows it best from the version done by Blood, Sweat and Tears, jarringly upbeat given the original context.

But even after Lady Day started working with some of the Big Bands of that era, life wasn’t easy.  She never got paid what she thought she deserved - singers weren’t important back then, she explained.  And being black caused nearly insurmountable problems, particularly in the South, where she wasn’t allowed to sit on the stage with the rest of the band or enter through the front door.  In one instance, she was refused use of a bathroom, with a hilarious, wet result for the lady running the club.

Holiday is outspoken about discrimination, especially about the deaths of Bessie Smith and her father, who she says both died because they could not find a doctor or hospital to treat them when they were touring the South.  Her outrage is most eloquently expressed in the song “Strange Fruit,” revolutionary in the 30’s, that tells the story of a lynching.  Singing that song so overwhelms her that she has to leave the stage.  (See Lady Day singing "Strange Fruit" below.)

 

Lady Day talks in a cocky, wistful way, like none of these horrors have affected her too badly, but we see otherwise.  She tells us early on about her time in jail and later how she actually took the blame for the heroin "her one true love," Sonny, stashed in her suitcase.  She went cold turkey in jail, but when she hastily readjusts her long white gloves after returning to sing, we are not so sure she is still clean.

She is barely able to get through the last few songs, at one point tripping off the stage. It is a testament to McDonald that all we see at this point is Lady Day.  She mumbles about her later years when she couldn’t get a cabaret card to perform in New York, although she was allowed to perform for one memorable night at Carnegie Hall.  Clearly she has been crushed by her life, the heroin and the booze.  The program notes tell us she will die broke in a New York hospital within months.  

Musically the show is flawless.  The trio backing Lady Day is superb.  They warm up the audience at the start with some very tight jazz instrumentals and later do a “Blues Break” when she is offstage.  I am not especially familiar with Holiday’s recordings, but, I am told, Audra McDonald has done all she can to give us Holiday’s voice.  Her vocal manipulation of words, mimicking jazz instruments, is distinctive.  I was struck by her speaking voice as well, clearly urban and black, a little southern (she grew up in Baltimore), but with a Caribbean lilt.  

But as good as the music and the singing are, this is an intense, unsettling 90 minutes.  McDonald makes Lady Day flip and devastated, all at once, referring to herself, almost contemptuously as “this black bitch.”  You can’t imagine her proud successors like Aretha Franklin or Tina Turner, who grew up in an era where civil rights was at least a possibility, ever succumbing to that kind of self-loathing, even if meant jokingly.

You will be affected by this Tony-award performance.  “Lady Day” is scheduled to run through August 31 so try to catch it.

Grade:  A

A Lie of the Mind

A Lie of the Mind, by Sam Shepard, at Trinity Repertory Company, Providence, RI

My first experience with Trinity Rep was a good one. They are currently performing Sam Shepard’s intricate and elusive play, “A Lie of the Mind,” and you are not going to find a more satisfying night at the theater, if it’s thought-provoking drama that you like.

This regional company did a superb job with a difficult, challenging work.  The acting was first rate and the staging fascinating. Many of the actors have been with the company for years, and they are seasoned character actors, subsuming their ego for their craft.  The stage was backed by a wall of box fans that whooshed to life at appropriate spots, with a door in the middle that was slammed continually for emphasis. The rest of the set was spare and functional.  Other than the fans, all it contained were some cinder blocks, an old bed and a broken-down sofa. Oh, and an industrial lift sliding along a beam, perfect for hauling a deer carcass!   

Equally effective were the valuable musical overlays Shepard sprinkles throughout the play that set just the right tone for a variety of scenes. Remarkably, nearly all the instrumentation is deftly handled handled by just one person.

So, what’s this play about?  Good question!  On the surface, and very simplistically, it’s about how two families deal with the effects of a husband abusing a wife.  Jake calls his brother Frankie to tell him he’s done it again - he’s beaten up his wife Beth. This time so badly that he thinks she’s dead.  (It isn’t really clear how she gets to the hospital or why Jake doesn’t know her exact condition, but I’m chalking that up to dramatic license.)

Brother Frankie follows Beth to her family’s home to find out whether she’s alive.  Jake moves back in with his mother, Lorraine.  Either he has always been this way or this latest incident has pushed him over the edge, but he’s looney and thinks his sister, Sally, is his wife.  His mother wants him to stay in the room he had as a kid, in his old bed where she can feed him.

Then we are at the hospital with Beth’s family.  She is alive, but barely able to speak - she slowly, but never completely, regains her speech as the play progresses.  Her mother, Meg, has only a slim hold on reality, and Baylor, her father, wants nothing to do with the hospital or the doctors.  Only Mike, Beth’s brother, really seems to care what has happened to her.

These are all people who are somehow crippled by their environment and their families.  Sally lugs around a suitcase filled with water bottles.  Lorraine is obsessed by memories of her husband who she says she followed to various military bases, even though he didn't really want her around.  He was killed under somewhat suspicious circumstances, and Jake was a witness to it, maybe Sally as well.  It’s not clear whether that’s what drove Jake mad, but now his mother dreads him leaving, like his father did.

Beth’s family is equally disturbed.  Her mother has moments of lucidity, but spends most of her time prancing around the stage, holding her hair out to the side and staring into space with a demented grin on her face.  Baylor lives to hunt, trying to get his one buck on the last day of the deer season.  He is unloving and demanding, getting Meg to cater to his every whim.  In one hilarious scene she finally rebels.  After taking off his boots and socks and rubbing his feet with oil, she fetches his socks in her teeth like a dog and drops them in his lap. Then she grabs a gun and holds it on him as she leaves the room.  She isn’t threatening him, just establishing her position - finally. 

Frankie makes his way to Beth’s family’s cabin, where Baylor mistakes him for a deer and shoots him. Beth, only slightly more lucid, recognizes his voice.  She clumsily tries to seduce him, but he again shows his ability to make a rationale decision, by fending her off, appalled at the idea of sleeping with his brother’s wife.  

At the beginning of the last act Sally tells Lorraine what really happened to her husband, Sally, Jake and Frankie’s father.  Sally and Jake went to Mexico to find him, and they all went out drinking.  Jake and his father got drunk and challenged each other to out macho the other.  Jake races his father to the next bar, and the father is run over by a truck.  Sally tells her mother that Jake intentionally killed their father. This long narrative describes action off-stage, usually a dramatic no-no, but it’s so vivid that it works.  

Eventually Jake ends up at Beth’s cabin, but Mike finds him hiding in a barn where he forces a confession out of him.  What he really wants is Jake to apologize to Beth, and he is appalled when no one seems to care whether he does or not. In a concurrent scene Lorraine tells Sally she wants to burn down their house and intimates that she had done this before.  Her solution to any problem is to obliterate it.  She won't allow herself rational thought so she destroys.

At the very end Baylor and Lorraine fold the American flag that Jake was wearing that his family received from the Air Force after his father died.  Meg then tells the others to look out at the fire in the snow and remarks how unusual that is.

What's Sam Shepard trying to tell us with "A Lie of the Mind?"  Here’s my theory, but I’ll remind you it’s only that.  Shepard is talking about free will and how difficult it is for any individual in a family as extreme as these two (or maybe any family!) to set out on an individual path based on reason and good sense.  

Most of the characters are governed by their passions instilled in them by their families and environments:  Jake, with an absent father that he may have killed and a mother intent on babying him, is angry and abuses his wife.  Beth is totally programmed by that abuse to think she either still loves Jake or his brother Frankie.  Baylor won’t deal with life on any terms but his own, and those terms are very narrow and self interested. Meg shows sparks of revolt against Baylor’s tyranny, but easily retreats into her own fantasy world.  Lorraine seems doomed to repeat her pattern of destruction by fire and has included Sally, still clutching her suitcase full of water bottles, into her plans.  

The only two characters exhibiting anything close to what could be considered free will are the two brothers.  Frankie does the logical thing - he seeks the truth about Beth’s condition.  He even rebuffs her semi-conscious attempt to seduce him.  At the end he is insistent that he did not betray Jake, but he is still trapped in her family’s cabin. Mike to a lesser extent also sets his own path.  He initially is protective of Beth and frustrated that neither of his parents seem to care what has happened to her. Ultimately he becomes more like his obsessive parents, hunting deer and insisting that Jake confess and that Beth should have nothing to do with either Frankie or Jake.

And what is that strange fire in the snow?   Does this have something to do with Lorraine and Sally burning down their house?  In my construct the fire is symbolic of the collision of these two families. Whether any of them are enlightened by the light from that fire is very questionable.  After all, the title is “A Lie of the Mind.”  The lie is that we are stuck in our prescribed roles - we are able to change, but our mind tricks us into thinking we can’t break out of our patterns, throw off our conditioning.  Shepard is saying it’s difficult to exhibit that kind of free will and it may not even make a difference, like in the case of Frankie and Mike.  But, if we don’t, we are surely doomed, like Baylor, Meg and Lorraine and, certainly, Jake and Beth.  What makes this play so memorable is how he lets all these characters be themselves in their strange, idiosyncratic way.

Shepard has left so many doors open for interpretation that I am sure there are plenty of alternative theories.  What is without question is the excellence of the Trinity Rep production of this complex drama.  All the actors, young and old, gave superb performances.  Trinity’s national reputation is well deserved.

Grade: A-

 

Casa Valentina and Beautiful

Casa Valentina, written by Harvey Fierstein, directed by Joe Mantello

“Casa Valentina” opens with Jonathon (Gabriel Ebert), a shy young man, checking in at a country inn in the 1950’s.  Rita (Mare Winningham), the proprietor, is showing him around, trying to reassure him.  Of what? It seems her inn is no ordinary Catskills retreat.  Upstairs a middle-aged man at a make-up table is readying himself for that night’s dinner. He is Bessie and this is Casa Valentina, where middle aged men dress up to show their inner girl, if only for the weekend.

We next meet Rita’s husband George (Patrick Page) who is proudly, but desperately Valentina.  He has been in town meeting with creditors, the first hint of the troubles to come, but he can’t wait to get out of his straight, guy clothes and get into his evening frock.  Incredibly, Rita seems to be totally supportive of Valentina. 

 “The girls” gather to meet the newcomer. Jonathon, now Miranda,  comes out in his dress and wig and makeup - and the group tsk-tsks.  The chant of “makeover, makeover” starts.  And they actually do fix him up so “Miranda” looks better.  At this point I was thinking that this is mildly amusing, but I was getting restless because I didn’t want the play to be just one long tranny joke.

Harvey Fierstein, already renown for "Torch Song Trilogy," knew exactly what he was doing.  It was like he said "OK, I gave them some laughs, now I have to get serious or I’ll lose them."  One of the guests is Charlotte (Reed Birney) who runs a magazine about cross-dressing, and she thinks their “movement” can gain respectability by distancing themselves from homosexuals.  She wants to issue a manifesto praising cross-dressing but condemning homosexuality, and she wants all of them to sign it.

That’s where the dissension starts.  Valentina who writes for the magazine is supportive, but others are against it.  In particular, the Judge/Amy (Larry Pine) does not want to lose the anonymity that Casa Valentina assures. He knows the ruin that any public declaration of cross-dressing will bring in 1950’s America.

Charlotte is adamant.  Her ironic and totally wrong prediction is that in 50 years transvestites will be respectable, while homosexuals will still be shunned. Plus her motives are questionable since she is already out and has a pornography conviction. The group is split, particularly after Terry (John Cullum) gives the reasonable and moral opinion that it would be wrong to turn against the only people who have ever really supported them.  

In the second act, the “girls” all get drunker and positions harden.  Back in this age of conformity, all these people were taking huge risks, and the conflict is over who will be exposed and for what.  As insular as this group is, they still realize how perilous their “hobby” is.

Today a split between transvestites and homosexuals may seem trivial, but Fierstein is illustrating the right of all minorities to their own dignity, no matter the prejudices of the mainstream.  In the 1950’s this mainstream was embodied in the FBI and it’s director J. Edgar Hoover, who, ironically and hypocritically, would have fit right in at “Casa Valentina.”  Sadly, not much has changed in 60 years.  Society is even more fragmented today and getting sub-groups to turn on each other is still a favored tactic.

Besides illuminating these societal trends Fierstein also shows the dignity and struggle of the individual.  Do I cross dress?  Am I gay? Do I love my wife more than I love my alter ego?  Why do I support a husband who can’t answer that question?

Fierstein has created smart and funny characters who you will remember long after you leave the theater.  “Casa Valentina” is a tight drama that involves you and makes you care about the outcome. The acting is first rate.  That Tony nomination for best play is well deserved.  

Grade: A

 

Beautiful, The Carole King Musical, book by Doug McGrath, at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre

Carole King’s famous album “Tapestry” seemed to come out of nowhere in 1972.  She wasn’t glamorous and ethereal like Judy Collins or hip-beyond-belief like Joni Mitchell, but, damn, those were great songs and she wrote them all.

I don’t think many of us were aware that we had been listening to her songs since we started listening to the radio.  Only they were songs by black acts like the Shirelles (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow”), the Drifters (“Up on the Roof”) and Little Eva (“The Loco-motion,” one of the first 45’s I ever bought!).

“Beautiful” is the story of her marriage and collaboration with Gerry Goffin that led to the creation of those songs.  It’s also about their friendship and rivalry with Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann who cranked out fabulous hits of their own, like “On Broadway,” (in collaboration with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller) and “You’ve Lost That Lovin' Feeling,” (with Phil Spector).

But it’s also about King’s chrysalis emergence as a solo writer and performer after the break-up of her marriage.  She overcomes her legendary stage fright to perform "Tapestry" at Carnegie Hall.  

Make no mistake this is not Arthur Miller drama - it doesn’t need to be.  Except for a lull in the second act when the show bogs down in the details of the failure of their marriage, the show bounces along from song to song, and you know every word of every one.  

It’s irresistible, and we have Jessie Mueller to thank for that.  She looks like King and captures her voice perfectly, though she actually has a bigger range. She even allows herself some shouts and flourishes that are totally appropriate but that you would never have heard from the artist she is channeling. 

You also learn some fun rock trivia along the way.  Did you know that Little Eva was King’s nanny?  Or that Mann and Weil wrote that 60’s prep-school anthem, “We Gotta Get out of This Place,” made famous by the Animals?

You are there for the music, and, with over 25 songs, you get plenty of it.  Yes, the “play” is kitschy, even silly at points, but it doesn’t matter.  Every song will stir a memory.

Grade: A-

 

All The Way

All The Way, written by Robert Schenkkan, directed by Bill Rauch, Neil Simon Theatre, running through the end of June

Bryan Cranston, now famous for being Walter White in “Breaking Bad," dimly remembered as the dad in “Malcolm in the Middle,” is now LBJ on Broadway in the play, “All The Way.”  He succeeds.  I’m not sure the play does.

To our generation Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, will always just be those three initials: L-B-J.  He was the evil usurper from Texas that didn’t deserve the mantle of Camelot.  He was the corn-pone drawl, saggy face and dad-glasses on TV.  He was “Hey, Hey, LBJ/How many kids did you kill today?” after Kent State.  But we also remember him, for good and bad, as a consummate politician.

Like all caricatures there is some truth and no nuance in these characterizations.  Recently, LBJ has been fondly remembered as a man who could get things done, in marked contrast to President Obama (who, we can only hope, will not be remembered by his two initials, BO!)  

“All the Way” shows the period of Johnson’s life that showcases those abilities. It begins right after the assassination of President Kennedy and takes you through his landslide election victory over Barry Goldwater, with the emphasis on his monumental legislative triumph, the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The first act has mainly quick scenes that give you an elementary background on the era.  Trying to understand people as diverse as Sam Rayburn, Richard Russell, Martin Luther King and Stokely Carmichael through brief conversations and telephone calls seemed almost cartoonish. By trying to boil a whole era down into two plus hours on the stage, the play relies too much on our collective memories.  There are too many characters and the politics too complex for anything more than a cursory exposure to these fascinating people and ideas.

But Cranston is a great LBJ, starting with his remarkable natural resemblance.  He deftly captures the many sides of Johnson:  his mastery of the legislative process, but also the crudeness, the bullying, particularly of Lady Bird and Hubert Humphrey, and the deep-down insecurity.  He clearly shows how Johnson was able to use the arcane rules of Congress to enact the first meaningful civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.  One quibble:  his voice is just a little too sharp to capture LBJ’s lazy drawl, at least the public voice we remember from his television addresses.

You celebrate with Johnson at the convention and then election night, but there is a wistfulness about it, because you know what is coming:  Vietnam and 1968, his decision not to run and then the King and Kennedy assassinations.  In that spring of '68 it was hard to take much solace in the Civil Rights Act, when it felt like the country was coming apart.  

I wanted “All The Way”  to be better focussed.  A model is Daniel Day Lewis's “Lincoln” which concentrated solely on the mechanics of passing comparable legislation, the 13th amendment.  That was tight drama, not a pageant.  For “All The Way,” less could have been more. 

Grade: B-

Catching Up

With the flood of good new movies around the holidays I want to clear the decks and give some quick reviews of books, theater and movies I’ve read/seen in the last couple of months. 

12 Years A Slave, directed by Steve McQueen, 134 minutes

I was asked an important, if somewhat politically regressive, question about this movie.  “Can we just admit that slavery was an atrocity, a blot on our history and move on?  This isn’t my idea of a fun time at the movies.”

I admit I had some reservations about seeing “12 Years A Slave,” mostly because I’d heard how violent it was supposed to be.  But because it was also supposed to be such a well-executed movie, I went anyway and am very glad I did.

To answer that question, if you are only interested in movies as an escape, maybe "12 Years” isn’t for you.  But if you want to see a beautifully acted and produced movie with a brutal, but ultimately uplifting story, don’t miss it.  Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon Northrup, a middle-class, black musician who gets kidnapped and sold into slavery, will be an Oscar favorite.

And maybe we are getting to a period in our country’s history where we are finally seeing the story of slavery and black history as told by black writers and directors, like Steve McQueen.  (It is impossible for me to see that name without thinking of “our” Steve McQueen, trying to jump that fence on a motorcycle in “The Great Escape.”) We lived though black revisionism like “Gone With The Wind,” then black exploitation (“Foxy Brown"), now we have black realism.  It’s important to balance the scales.

One warning: the brutality is not pervasive, but in spots, particularly during one whipping scene, it can be excruciating.

Grade: A-

 

Dallas Buyers  Club, directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, 117 minutes

Here’s another one I shouldn't have hesitated about seeing because of the potentially depressing subject. 

First off, this is way more comedy than drama.  Matthew McConnaghey plays a redneck cowboy who mocks gays and is appalled when he finds out he has HIV, for him a “gay” disease.  When conventional treatments fail, he goes to a clinic in Mexico and finds relief from vitamins and supplements that he then starts to smuggle back into the US.  With this and "Mud" McConnaghey has shown a surprising versatility in his recent roles.

As good as McConnaughey is, Jared Leto, as his transvestite partner, Rayon, nearly steals the movie.  He is totally convincing as a woman in his short skirts and ripped stockings, but the beard under all the makeup tells us differently.  Our kids know Leto as the teen heart throb Jordan Catalano, opposite Claire Danes in “My So-Called Life.”  He should be a prime Oscar contender for Best Supporting Actor.

Grade: A

 

 

The Circle, by Dave Eggers, published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2013, 491 printed pages

I’m going to do a full post on this amazing novel, but let me give you the headline: “The Circle” is for our information age what “Brave New World” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four” were for our parents's era of fascism and war.

This novel describes a company that could be a combination of Google, You Tube and Facebook. “The Circle” has benign, utopian ideals but subtly and insidiously turns its workers and its customers into a monomaniacal juggernaut.

If you are going to read any novel this year, make it “The Circle.”

Grade:  A+

 

Atlantic  - Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms and A Vast Ocean of A Million Stories, by Simon Winchester, Harper Collins, 2010, 495 printed pages

As you can see from the sub-title this is a comprehensive study of the Atlantic Ocean.  It’s fascinating, but it may be way more than you ever wanted to know about the ocean that is so nearby by for those of us in the North and South East.

Winchester clearly loves the sea, and he delights in all its aspects, starting when the earth was formed and land masses emerged. Later as the continents began to drift apart an inlet that began somewhere east of Newfoundland widened over millions of years to create the Atlantic.

Peppered with his own explorations, Winchester details a Eurocentric view of the Atlantic, beginning with the tentative explorations out of the Mediterranean and eventually with the Spanish across the wide ocean.  Besides the ensuing sea battles, we are also treated to a detailed but interesting section on pirates.

Sometimes the author just seems to be showing off like when he refers to the Norsemen using “more stolid vessels known (in the plural) as knarrer.”  I dare you to try to slip that word into a holiday conversation!

Those who love the sea like Winchester will thoroughly enjoy this book.  For others it’s a long, trans-atlantic voyage.

Grade: B-

 

 

Masters of Sex, The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love, by Thomas Maier Basic Books, 2009, 411 printed pages.  Also a dramatic series on Showtime.  Currently available on demand.

I really stumbled into watching "Masters of Sex" on Showtime only because it came on after “Homeland." The show started slowly, but I became intrigued by Lizzy Caplan’s sexy, feisty portrayal of Virginia Johnson.   Michael Sheen accurately evokes the fussy, unlikable William Masters, but it's really how they begin their collaboration that proves interesting.

You start to root for them to overcome the prudish world of St. Louis and Washington University in the late 1950’s amid the same kind of authentic set design and dress as “Mad Men.”  Masters is married to Libby, played by the lovely Caitlin FitzGerald, but, ironically, he has his own sexual dysfunction, a low sperm count, that prevents them from having children.  Throw in a gay dean (played by Beau Bridges) who needs to approve Masters's study which includes the observation of people having sex, as well as Masters and Johnson deciding to become participants as well as observers, and you have plenty of plot twists available.

After the final show of the season where Masters tells Johnson, out of love or maybe jealousy, that he can’t live without her, I decided to read the book the series is based on.  Big mistake!

Although the basic outline is there, the show has taken some serious dramatic license with the book, which is a well-researched biography.  The truth, as usual, is much more complicated and, at the same time, more mundane.  A willing participant in the TV series, Johnson actually told the author she was coerced into having sex with Masters because she knew he would fire her if she didn’t.  Of course, the gay TV dean, who Masters blackmails to get his study started, is a total fabrication.

I’m not sure where Showtime plans on taking this in Season 2, but I hope it doesn’t follow too closely the depressing lives of Masters and Johnson after their initial success.  They marry but not happily as Masters eventually, and maybe in a fit of senility, divorces Johnson to wed his first college crush.  Professionally they never reach the heights of their first two books, and Masters sullies his reputation by claiming he can “cure” homosexuality.  Masters died in 2001, but Johnson is still bitter, living alone in a hotel overlooking the site of their first clinic.  It’s all very sad.

Grade for Showtime: B; Grade for book – DB  (for don’t bother!)

 

Betrayal, at the Barrymore Theatre, written by Harold Pinter, directed by Mike Nichols

This is another Broadway vehicle for Hollywood stars, this time with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz (Mrs. Craig). Craig looks somehow younger than he does on screen and Weisz even lovelier, and, while they are both good in "Betrayal,"  best of all is their third castmate, Rafe Spall  ("Prometheus," "Life of Pi").

As you might expect from Pinter, the plot is not straightforward; in fact, it’s in reverse.  Robert (Craig) and Emma (Weisz) are at the end of her marriage because of infidelity on both sides, but Emma's affair has been with Jerry (Spall) who is Robert's best friend.

Each scene takes you farther back into the past as the full story is told, and you start to see who has really been deceived.  There are multiple (and no wrong) answers to that question.

“Betrayal” is interesting, well acted and short.  Certainly worth your time and money, but you better hurry.  It closes January 5, 2014.

Grade: B+

 

Taking Care of Baby

This one has already closed, but it was a good one.  It starts as what seems a tragic, but explainable story about the death of first one, then another infant of the same young woman, Donna.  In a style known as documentary theater, the actors file out to discuss the case.  At first you are struck by the lack of staging, but as you get more involved in the story, it doesn't matter.

Donna’s mother Lynn is running as a long-shot candidate for Congress and what her daughter has or hasn’t done becomes vital to her campaign.  Unlike “Betrayal” where the truth is slowly revealed, the more you hear of the death of the infants, the less you know about what has really happened.

The ensemble acting in this Manhattan Theater Club production was impressive, with a particularly strong performance from Margaret Colin (Blair’s mother from “Gossip Girl”).  Add an intriguing story from Dennis Kelly (who wrote the book for “Matlida”) and the intimacy of the small stage at City Center, and you have a good night at the theater.

Grade: A-

 

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, at City Center

I’m amazed that I had never seen an Alvin Ailey production before we went en famille as an early Christmas celebration to see “Ailey/Ellington.”  Besides the incredible dancing to the wonderful music of Duke Ellington, we were also treated to the justly famous “Revelations.” 

The first piece was titled “Night Creature,” and showcased the lovely Alicia Graf Mack, who has the longest, most graceful arms I’ve ever seen on a dancer, making for a fluidity that is almost unreal. (Remarkably, besides her dancing, Ms. Mack has also found time to get a BA in history from Columbia and and MA in non-profit management from Washington University). The Ellington pieces were fun and vigorous, and both the men in our party remarked that several of the lead male dancers looked like they could play wide receiver in the NFL. 

But they saved the best for last.  “Revelations” is just that, a discovery of the beauty and passion of the movement and music of traditional Negro spirituals. 

Honestly, I was blown away by the whole evening.  We will be returning to Alvin Ailey soon.

Grade: A+

The Snow Geese

The Snow Geese, written by Sharr White

Like a lot of people, I went to this play for one reason: Mary-Louise Parker.  Broadway continues to cash in on our celebrity-obsessed culture, and we should all know better by now.  “The play’s the thing,” and unless it’s a good play, all you get out of these star vehicles is the chance to be in a big auditorium with (fill-in the blank famous person) and a few hundred other people.  In Ms. Parker’s case you would get as much from watching an old episode of Weeds.

“The Snow Geese” isn’t a terrible play, but I’m still trying to figure out its relevance.  It has a Chekov feel to it, with an extended family unraveling its secrets, but its theme of adapting to reduced financial circumstances seems hackneyed and its setting in upstate New York during World War I obscure.

There is always something to relate to in a play about family dynamics.  But this family is peculiarly narrow.  They are Germans from Syracuse, New York and have suffered from backlash as the U.S. entered World War I.  Another unfortunate example of our country's intolerant past, but trying to relate that to anything today, like the Muslims in America, is more than a stretch.  In fact, from what this play says, Muslim-American today are treated better than German-Americans were a hundred years ago.

Elizabeth Gaesling (Parker) is the mother of two sons, and her charming but irresponsible husband has just died.  She has retreated to the family's shooting lodge in the Adirondacks with her sister and her German-accented husband whose medical practice has been ruined by anti-German bias.  She is still trying to live the life of the debutante she once was.

The older son is her favorite because he reminds her of her husband.  He has gone to Exeter and Princeton and is leaving for army camp the next day.  He is flighty and obnoxious, while his younger brother is practical and increasingly morose. Since his father’s death he has been going over the books and figured out the family secret: they’re broke.

The first act of the play is a mad jumble, with characters talking over each other and many of them hard to hear.  (It didn’t help that two women in the audience were hacking most of the way through it.)  At intermission I felt more of a sense of confusion than anticipation.  Certainly confused about where the plot was going, but also wondering, no matter where it went, how it could possibly have anything meaningful to say.

The second act was certainly better focused as the family’s problems became clear and various characters had moments of catharsis.  My doubts about the play’s relevance, however, never were assuaged.

Plus, I never understood the significance of the play’s title.  Yes, it was a hunting camp and for a brief moment the brothers went out to shoot geese on their annual flyover.  But as a metaphor?  The permanence of nature versus the transience of human foibles?  The shared yet divergent experience of the brothers? Man’s inhumanity to geese?

I’m still stumped.  I don’t recommend the play, but if you’ve gone or plan on going, let me know what you think those damn geese mean!

Grade: C-