Jan 30, 2008
APK in NYC: Recap #4: So much Multimedia, So Little Time
Hola! My time in NYC is rapidly coming to a close, and because of an intense schedule of performances and research, it's been difficult to get to the internet cafe to update y'uns on my travels. So I'll just get down and dirty with 3 quick show recaps, with more to come soon. SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGEmusic and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, book by James Lapine
directed by Sam Buntrock
featuring Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell
Studio 54
As I approached seeing the new multimedia revival of Sunday in the Park, to quote Mr. S., I was quite "excited and scared." Since I directed the piece several years ago at New Stage with a similar production concept and a production that was very personal, seeing this revival was a bit like going to watch your child who has been adopted by someone else perform material personal to you. Suffice it to say, the experience lacked that transcendant feeling that so many artists have gotten from this piece, which we treat a bit like attending church. Visually, the production looked sensational, with a stunning forced perspective set, award-worthy lighting and projections sumptuously rendered (just guess how jealous I was seeing real money and a team of designer's culmination of a similar vision to mine!), although at times the specific figures projected (the dogs, the solider) seemed a bit too SIMlike rather than Seuratesque. The performances and the staging were a different matter. Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell have traveled with this production from across the pond in London, where it was a major hit. However, the British sensiblity has infected the entire production with...well, dullness. For me, Sunday is about tension, sexual and otherwise, which never seemed to appear onstage. While Evans and Russell at least had a relationship and comfortability on stage with each other, they didn't have the inner life to truly bring the music and words of this incredible masterpiece to life. The Americans that rounded out the cast have seemed to be directed to be as dull and uninnovative as possible. Truly talented performers all, they seem to have been encouraged to only make warmed-over attempts at characterizations similar to the original production, preserved like the 10 Commandments for all eternity on film for every future production to be measured up against. And director Sam Buntrock's staging lacks build and tension, instead making the piece a pastoral, drafty affair. You may gather that I feel that this production was...well, bad. That's not it. It's a very reverent, visually stunning revival. But it lacks life and power, and that hurts just as much. SPEECH & DEBATE
by Stephen Karam
directed by Jason Moore
featuring Sarah Steele and Gideon Glick
Roundabout Underground
The Roundabout Theatre Company has a new play developmental initiative, and have opened a new underground 62 seat black box theatre for the development and presentation of new plays. This teeny but swanky theatre with about 10 foot high ceilings, opened this fall with Speech & Debate, which has extended it's run several times due to ticket demand. The play is a fantastic gem of current high school life, written by a 20 something playwright who clearly has a papable knowledge of the innerworkings of high school dorkdom. Directed with a daringly so-almost-affected-but-true acting style by Jason Moore ( Avenue Q) with creative use of chalkboard projections, this comedy of getting back at the man while struggling epically with your own identity is both honest and hysterical. It's closing on February 24th, and well worth the cheap ticket price ($20 bucks!) SLUG BEARERS OF KAYROL ISLAND
music by Mark Mulachy, libretto by Ben Katchor
directed by Bob McGrath
featuring Peter Friedman and Bobby Steggert
Vineyard Theatre
Well, it was bound to happen. I caught an early preview of a new multimedia musical on Sunday, and it was the first truly, banally bad production of the trip. The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island, or the Friends of Doctor Rushower is the newest musical by cartoonist Ben Katchor, whose work has appeared in several print publications, including the New Yorker. The show features a sung through score composed by Mark Mulachy, a folkish rockish musician who's single known credit to me was writing the theme song from Nickelodeon's Pete & Pete. His idea of composition is to a make a single musical figure for one measure and repeat it endlessly with repetitive, non-insightful lyrics Katchor sung over it. This two hour musical verges on absurdism, and a plot so inane and (deliberately) inconsequential that it is neither affecting nor amusing. Katchor's cartoons are projected througout the entire show as the setting, and frankly aren't amusing nor interesting. Oy. The poor performers.
Jan 25, 2008
APK in NYC: Recap #3: Happiness is a Thing Called Denial
Salutations from a 42nd Street internet cafe, 'Natians! My NY theatre binge is continuing, and I'm quite amazed that similar themes keep cropping up in the work that I'm seeing, no matter how disparate the genres and styles. Case in point: NEXT TO NORMAL
music by Tom Kitt, book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey
directed by Michael Greif
featuring Alice Ripley and Brian D'Arcy James
Second Stage Theatre
On Wednesday night, I caught my first musical of my trip, Next To Normal, currently in it's first full week of previews at Second Stage Theatre, an incredible Off-Broadway institution, who most recently developed and transferred the Broadway hit The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.Next To Normal has been in development for several years by it's authors, Tom Kitt (whose music was heard on Broadway in High Fidelity: The Musical for a whopping 13 performances) and Brian Yorkey (who I very briefly got to work with while at NYU). Originally titled Feeling Electric, the show had a developmental run at the New York Musical Festival in 2005, and has been rewritten and further developed by director Michael Greif ( Rent, Grey Gardens). That's a long time for development, but for a brand new original musical not adapted from prior source material (a MAJOR anomaly) and incredibly difficult subject matter, smart brains and major time spent seem to be the perscription for success. In a nutshell , Normal is a rock musical about depression, psychotherapy, loss, overmedication, psychotherapy, and suburbia. More importantly, it's about the desperate struggle to find happiness when your brain refuses to let go from a trauma, regardless of how much time passes. Sounds like a real upper, right? But with Tom Kitt's haunting and rocking score and Brian Yorkey's honest, fresh, funny and surprising writing, this is a musical that draws back the curtain to a world we know but rarely see onstage, much in the way American Beauty did several years ago. I won't be too specific about the piece, since the production is in early previews, and changes are happening every day. But suffice it to say, an incredible cast of 6, especially Brian D'Arcy James (who eerily looked, acted, and sang almost exactly like Cincinnati's Charlie Clark) and newcomer Aaron Tveit in a fearless and vocally searing performance, tells this heartbreaking and electrifying story in a thrilling way. The production is aided by a truly exceptional design, and Mary Mitchell-Campbell (of Playhouse's Company) brings the score thrillingly to life with her terrific band. There are some pretty big structural problems in the last half an hour of the piece, but from what I understand, it's because of cuts and changes from the show's much more emotionally affecting ending in it's NYMF incarnation. I sincerly hope the powers at be make the changes/reinstatements necessary to fix the show before opening, because, as Richard Oberacker (who happened to be at the performance I attended) agreed, this could be the new musical Broadway has been craving. HAPPY DAYS
by Samuel Beckett
directed by Deborah Warner
featuring Fiona Shaw
at the Brooklyn Academy of Music
After an acclaimed run at the National Theatre in London, Fiona Shaw's lauded performance in Samuel Beckett's two-handed classic Happy Days has travelled to BAM, and the New York cognocenti are shlepping out in the cold to catch her blazing performance (on Thursday's performance, I spotted Peter Sarsgaard, Maggie Gyllenhall, and Isaac Mizrahi, among others). When I was a poor college student at NYU, I never made it out to BAM, which constantly programs trans-Atlantic tours by exceptional artists, from London and elsewhere. The BAM Harvey Theatre is an arrestingly crumbling house, with the lobby underneath the stage, and the chipping and cracking walls haven't seen a coat of paint in ages. The inside of the theatre feels literally like ancient ruins, and this makes Tom Pyle's extraordinary set feel like an extension of the theatre. A massive mountain of rock and rubble cover the entire space, which has been stripped of any and all dressings, is bathed in an incredible lighting design of complete white light. The thrilling preshow sequence, featuring a superbly apocalyptic sound score, features a new version of "curtain raising" that leaves the audience breathless. Ms. Shaw, who has collaborated many times with director Deborah Warner in galvanizing productions, does not disappoint in the stamina-testing role of Winnie. Stuck and sinking in her hole in a mountain, she is a almost scarily optomistic surviver, constantly speaking because she must. For a woman stuck in a whole, this a large, full, theatrical performance. Winnie does about everything but dance (and almost does with her arms), performing for her audience in her head, intentionally mugging and showing off because that's all she can do. At times, the performance seemed a tad too fast-paced for us to allow the pauses in Beckett's dialogue to break through to the humanity of the moment, but regardless, Shaw's performance was worth the hype.
APK in NYC Recap #2: Drunken Family Gatherings are Fun!
Greetings, all! It's Alan Patrick Kenny again, on a crusade to see the best NY theatre, and still living to tell you about it. :) On Tuesday and Wednesday, I got to take in my first Broadway shows in over a year, and it's ironic how two small cast hit plays, one a revival and one spankin' new, could use such a similar formula: take a dilapidated one room set with a staircase, some furniture (a few chairs and one couch sitting profile stage left), an upstage center alcove, add some vitrolic characters and alcohol, and PRESTO: draaama! THE HOMECOMING by Harold Pinter directed by Daniel Sullivan featuring Ian McShane, Eve Best, and Raul Esparza Cort Theatre It's the 40th anniversery of Harold Pinter's classic The Homecoming, and it's been given an exceptionally well-cast, scintillating revival directed by Daniel Sullivan. Now, admittedly, this is my first stage experience with a Pinter play, but woah! This one did a number on my head, though I'm not sure it was quite in the way the author wanted. It was stunning to see an incredibly well-rounded ensemble attack Pinter's classic spare, pause-ridden dialogue with remarkable control. Raul Esparza, who up until his performance in Company was known as a ball of fire-breathing physical energy on stage, turns in a near-motionless, yet still highly combustible performance.
His main partner in crime is Eve Best, an award-winning London actress who made her Broadway debut last year opposite Kevin Spacey in A Moon for the Misbegotten (and stole the spotlight entirely from him in that production), matches Esparza in the almost mythical role of Ruth, Esparza's brother in law who is accused of being a tart and eventually, shockingly, it seems that she could in fact be one.
The rest of the cast aquits more than admirably, and my ambivelence about the evening's proceedings lie more with the piece itself and the story's plotting. For those of you don't know the play, I won't spoil the details, as raptly watching the actors for a clue about what might happen next is one of the chief pleasures of the evening. However, although I'm sure The Homecoming shocked audiences 40 years ago in it's debut, I found this production without an overriding, ending reason or point to why the characters make the decisions that they do. The particular situation doesn't shock current audiences to the same degree as it's original observers, and I left the theatre more puzzled than anything else, wondering how this story could have flown 40 years ago. The answer, probably, is that it didn't.
THE SEAFARER
by Conor McPherson
directed by the playwright
featuring Ciaran Hinds and David Morse
Booth Theatre
The next day, less than 12 hours later, I took in a matinee of the highly recommended transfer production from the National Theatre in London, Conor McPherson's The Seafarer. As I walked in the theatre, I experienced a bit of deja vu, as it seemed that I was looking at the same set that I saw in the theatre at the evening before!
But, aided by the cadence of not-too-thick Irish accents and a much more physical, naturalistic performance style by the cast, I was launched into a frigid, drunk, Irish Christmas Eve unlike any other. I say that because the elderly yet irrepressable and newly-blind Richard (an incredibly appealing Jim Norton) and brother Sharky (David Morse, that bad guy from Disturbia who seems to be in everything), and friends end up playing poker with none other than the Devil in disguise (Ciaran Hinds, known from playing Caesar in HBO's Rome).
McPherson mercifully avoids all of the Christmas cliches that can plague stories about redemption over the holidays, and instead focuses first and formost on creating real and entertainingly hapless characters (Ivan Curry, playing a friend who always shows up and never seems to leave, has lost his glasses and drunkenly feels his way around throughout the play), and secondly focusing intensely on the Faustian aspects of his story.
25 years prior, after committing a severe crime, Sharky got off scott free after beating the Devil at cards, and he has come around to collect Sharky's soul. Mr. Hinds and Mr. Morse's private scenes are quite effective, particularly a gorgeous Act II speech by the Devil on what Hell is like.
However, most of the play is much lighter in tone, due to the charming obliviousness of the rest of the characters. And, perhaps most surprisingly of all, a feeling of old-fashioned uplift pervades the air, and because it doesn't push too hard, feels justified and just right.
Jan 22, 2008
APK in NYC: Theatre recap #1
Recap #1: When the Audience is a part of the show...or IS the show... Hi, everyone! This is Alan Patrick Kenny, writing you from a Starbucks in Astoria, NY. I'm taking my first (much needed) vacation in a year, thanks to having the inimitable Brian Isaac Phillips pinch-hitting for me on our production of Take Me Out.
So, much to the dismay (or joy) of my staff, I have high-tailed it to my old stomping ground of NYC, to selfishly catch up on some of the best that Broadway and Off- has to offer. If you've been following the theatre season, the new crop of the American musical has been anything but ripe, but there's been an explosion of exceptionally acted, ensemble-driven plays, and that makes a frigid Manhattan in January the place to be.
After arriving Sunday night after a relaxing 2 day drive through the windy mountains Pennsylvania, I hit the streets on Monday. For any neophytes who might be reading, Monday is basically THE dark day on and off Broadway, with a few exceptions of a couple megahits offering performances.
So to get my theatre fix on a not-so-Manic Monday due to the holiday, I ventured to the world of Off-Off-Broadway and site-specific theatre.
OFFENDING THE AUDIENCE by John Handke at The Flea featuring The Bats directed by Jim Simpson
The Flea has been an Off-Broadway/Off-Off-Broadway small experimental theatre for the last 10 years in TriBeCa. Sigourney Weaver - who is married to the artistic director Jim Simpson - has notably appeared there in the original production of The Guys.
Last November, the NY Times did a great feature on The Flea's resident company - The Bats. This ensemble of 38 actors is notable because the actors don't get paid, and they have to do 10 hours of work at the theatre - "Bat Hours" - each week. And yet they fight to work there. Their latest production is an experimental piece from the 60's by John Handke brashly titled Offending the Audience .
For those of you who have not ventured into the world of Off-Off-Broadway, any rag-tag experiences you think you might have experienced in our scene doesn't hold a candle to some of the storefront "theatres" NYC has to offer.
The Flea is relatively upscale by Off-Off- standards. Audience was performed in their subterranean Downstairs Theatre, an oblong former office room, fitting about 60 people in 2 rows of plastic folding chairs against a wall. The pinned-together, mismatched black curtain was pulled across the room by the artistic director to reveal a row off all 38 members of the Bats staring back at the audience.
Only...the "houselights" (actually stage fernels) pointed at the audience never went down. Instead we, the audience were directly spoken to for the next hour, told that "There is no play, there is no plot, there is only us".
What transpired was a well-modulated, well-staged under the circumstances, ode to a type of theatre stripped away of all pretense. At times fiercely poetic, this nameless ensemble intoned, bellowed, and contradicted themselves in a way that assumed nothing - no responsibility for what was occurring, what was not occurring, and our exspectations.
In an intimate space such as this (an understatement), the audience was forced to become part of the action by the players directly addressing each and every one of us. This was nerve-wracking, disconcerting, and sometimes exhilarating.
After a significant amount of time, the piece's premise began to wear thin, if only because the audience was so "put on the spot" that it became difficult to enjoy the poetry of the text and the beauty of the connection we had with the ensemble, because we were acting and responding too.
ETIQUETTE-
the Under the Radar Festival by the Public Theater the Foundry Theatre at Veselka Restaurant
at Midnight, I got to take in? perform in? BE in? a new site-specific, experimental piece called Etiquette by the Foundry Theatre. Managed by Cincinnati's and New Stage's friend Aaron Lee Morris, I got to participate in a late "showing" of this intriguing work? piece? experience?
The show, after being in view around the world, had it's New York Premiere as a part of the Public Theater's Under The Radar festival, and due to the popularity of a NY Times video feature, sold out in a few hours, and was recently extended.
2 people become the play and the players at a table in a restaurant. Person A and B put on headphones, and listen to sonorous British voices instruct you through the piece, full of "audience participation" with props that involve all of the senses. At a corner table in the busy, working Ukrainian restaurant Veselka in the East Village, a romantic, 3 act play, complete with complicated dialogue scenes, powerful imagery, and evocative sound design, Etiquette has the power to transport the open and willing, shock the curious, and alienate the self-conscious, especially if you "do" the piece with someone that you don't know.
Aaron did the piece with me, and because we've done, it was, I'm sure, a very different experience than the lay-person would have.
After experiencing both of these shows in the same evening, I was left with some significant questions on what the function of an audience really is in the theatre. Unlike most pieces of theatre, tonight I was asked to participate, to be present and viewed, to be the focus, and to be one of the players.
I've never personally been a fan of audience participation, because I've always loved the anonymity of theatre. Here, however, I was required to be a player in the proceedings. It certainly demanded that I be present in a fuller way during the proceedings, but I can't help but feel that I as robbed of that wonderful gift that an audience receives by just taking everything in, with the only obligation of response to beat their hands together in approval.
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