That Jagged Little Pill
May Lead To Grand Horizons.
Ask Harry Townsend
Playwright Bess Wohl named the location of where our central elderly couple lives “Grand Horizons,” the place where the retired come to live as their last stop before Assisted Living, the destination where they go to die, as the husband Bill [played with great specificity by James Cromwell] continues to remind his enduring wife Nancy [the always smart and captivating Jane Alexander]. And when Nancy, in the first spoken words of the play, announces “I want a divorce,” we are off on a trip meant to take us in, to experience what happens next to this bonded couple now seemingly on the edge of splittsville.
The same might be said of Wohl’s play. As an overall work, it falls somewhat short of presenting a solid story, and instead gives us a cogent and often engaging series of scenes that dramatize the mix in fractured relationships. Dramatis personae are the couple, their gay son Brian, unhappily single [Michael Urie, displaying the remarkable versatility that is becoming his trademark], their elder son Ben [a stolid Ben McKenzie playing it with conviction] and his near-term pregnant wife Jess [in a role she presents with a tad more conviction than required]. When the news of Nancy’s decision reaches the children, they encamp in the older couple’s living room/kitchen, determined to talk them out of it, an objective not particularly shared by Bill. A retired pharmacist now enrolled in a class for those who see themselves as future stand-up comics, Bill has found a willing companion in Carla [happily cast with vivacious Priscilla Lopez], who finds Bill amusing and a desirable companion, not assessments shared by his wife. It is noteworthy to observe that reactions to various developments reflect the disparate ages of audience members, in terms of who can relate to what is happening to the characters.
The stage picture is framed by a scene from above of a series of look-alike houses, meant to drive home the message that those living there are all in the same boat, as it were, waiting to be moved on, to their final venue. Ben emphasizes that a good marriage is one that doesn’t end. His wife is employed, conveniently, as a counselor who is generous with her advice to Nancy and Bill, and anyone else who will listen, and she appears to have little impact on the proceedings despite the expected advantage of her career choice. Partially disaffected son Brian, after everyone has retired, comes back from being out with a pick-up named Tommy [a very effectively aggressive Maulik Pancholy] whose modus operandi is role-playing. However, Brian is not in the mood for games, just a sexual brief adventure to take him out of the moment. When the encounter implodes, Brian is left with nothing but the same despair that got him out of the house in the first place. When Nancy comes down, she relates to Brian that she once had a secret lover named Hal, with whom she had a relationship back in the day, but it never really went anywhere, despite her lingering longing to make a go of it with him. Her confession starts much like that of Hannah in Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana” but it continued, as she tells how they managed to keep seeing each other on the QT. However, it never turned into something more serious, despite her wishes that it would. She decides to make a go of it with Bill, and stay married to him, and to her job as a librarian. When she begins to unfold the details of her sexual relationship with Hal in surprisingly graphic detail to Brian, he finally stops her. In one of the most affecting scenes in the play, Nancy decides not to stop, insisting to her younger son that “I will be a whole person to you!” It crackles with truth.
There are moments throughout that reveal how the familiarity between Bill and Nancy have never gone away completely. As he gets ready to pick up a U-Haul to move out his furniture, she tells him to wait while she makes him a sandwich to take for the trip. Later, a noise from upstairs has Bill reflexively calling up the stairs to find out if she is alright. Bonds are not easily broken. And he reveals that he has always known about her trysts with Hal. And when Brian reveals how barren his life has become, he points the finger at his parents, stating that he has never known how to express intimacy because he never witnessed it between his parents.
Throughout, there are very affecting scenes between various combination of the five people involved. There is also one between Nancy and Carla, Bill’s comedy sessions paramour, which ends badly when Nancy goes upstairs for something, and Carla takes the opportunity to gather up her things and leave, permanently. What there is not, however, is enough of a through line that keeps us rooting for one or the other or the other, the other other and his wife. What we are left with is recollections of those very strong moments, but because it ends inconclusively, it does not fully register as a panorama that comes to a satisfying end. It’s almost grand.
What is more than grand, much more, is “Jagged Little Pill,” at the Broadhurst. This electrifying musical is drawn from four songs by Canada’s Alanis Morissette, from her alternative rock album of the same name, released worldwide in June, ’95 and selling more than 33 million copies. The new musical [a front-runner in the Best Musical Tony Award category] has been written by Diablo Cody and Morissette, along with lyrics from her, and music she wrote with Glen Ballard. Its foundation does draw from her iconic album, but someone unfamiliar with it will have no trouble having a remarkable adventure in pure theatrics. It draws from some of the many memorable cuts, such as ‘All I Really Want,’ ‘You Oughta Know,’ ‘Hand in My Pocket,’ and ‘You Learn.’ Ballard is credited with introducing a pop sensibility to her angst, resulting in a score of new jack swing, post-grunge and dance-pop numbers.
We open with a familiar domestic scene where wife and Mom Mary Jane Healy is composing her annual Christmas update letter to friends and family, outlining the events of the previous year in very sanitized fashion. The opening set is bare, but evolves throughout the show through a wide range of elaborate scenes, aided at times with spectacular lighting from Justin Townsend and effective video design rear projections from Lucy MacKinnon. From there, we witness the epic occurrences each family member has undergone in much more frank detail, drastically opening up to the real truths of what has happened to each of them, and people they know. This is a complex tale brough to life by a stellar cast that includes Elizabeth Stanley as Mary Jane [‘M.J.’], her husband Steve [Sean Allan Krill], their A+ student son Nick [Derek Klena,] and their adopted black daughter Frankie [Celia Rose Gooding]. And among their friends is a star-making turn from Lauren Patten, as Frankie’s female girlfriend Jo. While the whole family is vividly actualized by this great cast, it is Patten, in a magnetic, forceful delivery, who stands out among them as that rare actor who can ‘live’ the lyrics, like the great vocalists of days past always managed to do, singers such as Rosemary Clooney, Jo Stafford, and in particular, Streisand.
The ‘pill’ in question is really a combination of oxycodone and fentanyl, both of which were controlled substances, legally prescribed, for temporary relief from the pain M.J. suffered from a serious car accident, but meant only for short term use. When the prescriptions ran out, M.J. discovered that she had become dependent on them. She takes to buying them illegally from a street-cred student in rendezvous behind the movie theatre. Her dependence grows, as she becomes engulfed while her dependence expands into addiction. And the ‘perfect’ Mom and wife and community perfectionist becomes trapped, falling into a deeper and deeper state. This leads to her finally O.D.-ing on the living room floor. Her downfall follows a series of events. We see Steve more and more caught up in working longer and longer hours, blindly spending office time to provide for his family. It also takes place following Frankie’s break-up with Jo, following the daughter’s unexpected attraction to a new male student at school, leaving Jo desolate. And when Nick attends an end-of-year party at an acquaintance’s house, he finds that he is the only credible witness to the rape of Bella [the powerful Kathryn Gallagher], assaulted as she lay passed out in an upstairs bedroom. He chooses not to come forward and dispute the girl’s recollection that she was not conscious and therefore did not provide consent to the sexual encounter. The school, and the town, turn against Bella, claiming that she has manufactured the story, to get attention, and to divert the accomplishments of the popular pupil hosting the gathering.
Each of these happens in isolation from the others. M.J. at first cautions Nick, just admitted to Harvard, to steer clear of testifying on Bella’s behalf, possibly jeopardizing his chances to take advantage of a bright future career, enmeshing him in a he-said, she-said saga that would capture headlines and paint him as a willing witness. It is a tale of lost innocence, as the young man sees his life’s possibilities crumbling because of his reluctance to come forward to assist the girl whom her fellow students characterize as ‘overly dramatic, liking attention.’ Frankie fails to alert Jo to the new development in her life, only to be discovered in bed with her new male friend when Jo innocently drops by the house and no one else is at home. Jo chooses to opt out of her unhappy station as a gay, offbeat girl in a rigid town environment, fleeing to New York’s East Village scene.
As each segment unfolds, they transcend their initial impact to link up as they affect M.J., the wife, the mother, the perfect neighbor and community fixture. And as the pressures mount, so do M.J.’s need for more and more pills.
What keeps the show from becoming episodic is their interconnectedness to the wife and mother and perfect friend and neighbor. Wise casting choices made by Stephen Copel give us actors of an indeterminate young adult age, so they can become, among others, high school students and teachers, a pharmacist, and among others, a cop. Instead, the show’s creative team has made some intensely bold creative decisions to keep us wanting more and more, using their collective skills as musicians, choreographers and directors to keep pulling us through the story, breathlessly. We are introduced to this vivid admixture right at the top, when the conventional chorus morphs into an ensemble of singer/dancer young people who assist in scene changes, personalize stories being told through movement, and at all times inviting us to be absorbed by the dramas being related by the key players. The effect is not distracting, but rather enhancing, as they give visual images to the emotions of the details of each character’s life. Morissette’s music and lyrics are heart-wrenching in their directness to human foibles and tragedies. And Cody does great work in the story-telling department, repeating the strength of her ability to relate a person’s conflicts in her work, in properties such as Showtime’s ‘One Mississippi,’ and her Oscar-winning screenplay for ‘Juno.’ And overall, the collective skills director Diane Paulus displayed in Tony Award shows such as the Best Revivals of “Hair,” “Pippin” and “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” and the current London production of “Waitress,” provide her with a multi-hued palette of motion and silence to leave us wanting to learn more about these people.
East individual tale comes to its own separate conclusion. M.J. writes that year’s annual Christmas letter, this time in a truth-telling mode, surprising her family, but giving Mary Jane a true new lease on life, without those pills.
Like ‘Grand Horizons,’ George Eastman’s “Harry Townsend’s Last Stand” chronicles another middle-aged child vs. elderly parent tale where the issue is how to handle the responsibilities of parent care. Only this time, it is a father/son relationship that is examined.
Harry is an 84-year-old retired radio announcer now permanently living in the family’s home in rural Vermont. His mostly absent son Alan sells real estate in California, and is an infrequent visitor. And now that Alan’s twin sister Sarah [whom we never see] has learned that her husband’s job will take them to New York fairly soon, the question at hand is ‘What do we do about Dad?’ Harry has become less and less able to fend for himself, putting coffee filters in the freezer, the coffee pot in the oven, and falling asleep with the vacuum clearer still running. But the old man, a living definition of the terms ‘codger’ and ‘old fogie,’ is defiantly independent, even forgetting that his long-bonded wife has passed away. He takes to speaking out loud to her, as though she is in the next room. Alan comes home, ostensibly to pay a rare visit, but in actual fact, there to make arrangements for his father to move into an assisted living facility in town. Some of Harry’s contemporaries already live there.
The term ‘dramedy’ came into regular usage a generation ago, referring to certain television programs that sought to combine comedy with serious drama, not always successfully. It migrated quickly to the stage, to describe plays that had a real story to tell, but peppered with jokes that stood out like that famous thumb. ‘Harry Townsend’s Last Stand’ fits that category.
Len Cariou as Harry easily projects the hail-fellow-well-met persona that made him a local celebrity. As Alan, Craig Bierko brings someone less credibility to his role, instead seeming to go from beat to beat in a rather pedestrian delivery. Harry has already taken to filling out the necessary forms to move Harry, but has a great deal of difficulty letting him know what’s ahead.
The Vermont chalet features outstanding scenic design work from Lauren Helpern, showing us the parts of the life Harry and his wife enjoyed for decades in that home, from board games and a well-placed fireplace, to ice skates and snow shows tucked away in a corner near the front door. Who would want to leave such a comfortable place? Well, certainly not Harry.
The drama part becomes fairly known to an audience soon after Alan arrives, despite his inability to broach the topic. The comedy part struggles to land comfortably within the proceedings, instead coming across as a series of jokes hanging off Harry’s ribald sense of bawdy humor. He manages to turn almost every banter-like conversation into a ‘life lesson’ about sex for his son, who is not in need of this tutelage. While sister is away, with Alan taking her place as Harry’s daily caretaker, how to take into consideration his daily needs is covered in a list of instructions from her, on the kitchen counter. They include noting that Harry does not like soup, preferring instead ‘fork food,’ and would choose pizza with mushrooms, sausage and anchovies whenever possible.
The proceedings strive to attain the same impact as the Elaine May vehicle several seasons back, Kenneth Lonergan’s “Waverly Gallery,’ where parent, child tensions are organically played out. And though possessing acting cred equal to that of May, Cariou, who won his Tony Award for bringing to fierce life Sweeny Todd in Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,’ is hampered by the uneven writing. How the material is received by an audience depends in part on the ages and life experiences they possess. Those with no parent issues to content with, or not yet the age when creeping dementia poses a serious problem, may not warm to the proceedings as much as others.
There is poignancy in seeing Harry become nearly defeated when his memory fails him, struggling to remember facts about his friends and family, and how to manage daily undertakings. The character seeks to be endearing, both in the writing and the performance. His plaintive admonishment that ‘Memories keep us old folks alive’ will ring true to those with a similar situation to compare to.
Predictably, Harry is resigned to his fate, saying a stoic good-bye to the place. His blunt assessment to his station in life that ‘nobody needs me for anything anymore’ reveals the deeply-felt pain he has been battling for many years, and hiding away in his well-practiced attempts at wit.
AfterPlay
The Peccadillo Theater Company mounts an unusual production. ‘Sideways: The Experience” brings to the stage an adaptation of Rex Pickett’s popular novel, adapted by the author, and its subsequent film, and combines a theatre event with a ‘Tasting Room’ food and wine event, overseen by the wine retailer Wine Access, and the food curator Mary Giuliani. Directed by Dan Wackerman, the double-barrel production runs from February 20 through April 12, at Theatre at St. Clement’s. Details are available at www.sidewaystheexperience.com for dates and costs. . . . anyone looking to build a career in theatre is invited to visit www.Careers.Broadway, presented by The Broadway League, as a service to the wide audience of people interested in theatre. The site seeks to demystify what goes on beyond the boards, in the offices and backstage of theatrical productions . . . the League recently announced its annual demographics report covering the period 2018-2019, stating, for example, that Broadway welcomed a record high number of admissions by non-Caucasian theatregoers, and welcoming more than 3 million admissions by those under 25 . . . currently underway is Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, featuring programming from David Rubenstein Atrium, and the LC Kids series for children and teens. The American Songbook events run through February 29, featuring artists performing Broadway, folk, classical and more . . . later this year, Cynthia Nixon will direct Jane Chambers’ “Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, which debuted off-Broadway in 1980. The play, to be produced by Ellen DeGeneres, Lily Tomlin, Harriet Newman Leve, Portia de Rossi and Jane Wagner, follows the story of a straight woman who unknowingly joins a group of lesbians on their summer vacation.
On Book
Acclaimed as one of last century’s most influential playwrights, affecting among others Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, August Strindberg wrote an extraordinary collection of plays that dug deeply into interrelationships between people, married or not. One of his most famous is ‘Dance of Death,’ about a married couple under extreme distress. To learn more about Strindberg, check out the comprehensive and accessible biography by Sue Prideaux, from Yale University Press . . . if great theatrical couples interest you, none was more impactful than the one between Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya. Their turbulent life apart and together is well chronicled in Ethan Mordden’s ‘ Love Song,’ from St. Martin’s Press . . . another couple who took on societal norms on two continents was the love relationship between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. For insight into their time together, pick up ‘When This You See Remember Me – Gertrude Stein in Person,’ by W. G. Rogers, from Discus Books, published by Avon.
TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the theatre series ‘Character Studies,’ for PBS. His play ‘Admissions’ won the Best Play award at the New York International Fringe Festival, was produced three times in New York, directed by Austin Pendleton, and is published by Playscripts. His play ‘Maisie and Grover Go to the Theatre’ is published by ArtAge. His documentary ‘Test of Time’ garnered a CableAce Best Documentary Award. He has covered theatre and the entertainment world for a variety of publications, including The Christian Science Monitor, Parade, Rolling Stone, Dramatics Magazine, Reader’s Digest and dozens of others. He has taught theatre classes at HB Studio, Columbia University’s Teachers College and other institutions. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild.
CARMEL CAR & LIMOUSINE SERVICE, in business since 1978, has been selected as the official transportation company for Intermission Talk. Its wide variety of services, including special theatre packages, and reservations, are available at carmellimo.com, the Carmel App, or at 212 – 666 – 6666.
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