Intermission Talk

Great Theatre Should Be

Everyone’s “Inheritance”

By TONY VELLELA

Matthew Lopez, whose new blockbuster play “The Inheritance” is currently running at the Barrymore, has been quoted as saying that “Reporting is a terrible word in drama – reported action is the most uninteresting thing.  But characters can also report on what they’re feeling, and in ways that they wouldn’t share with another character.”  Reporters are taught at the very start of their journalistic careers that they must honor the five W’s :’  Who, What, When, Where and Why.  Critics are meant to fold together the first four in service to their obligation to satisfy an audience’s desire to take away the fifth W, the Why component, to be satisfied at the point that the play concludes.   In the case of “The Inheritance,” there is an abundance [some say an overabundance] of What’s. This complicates [some would say overcomplicates] to no end the need to satisfy the audience’s desire to come away with the Why’s.

For a start, Lopez has encouraged the notion that his piece is a comedy.  Were there no take-aways of humor, the play would feel like a dry twig awaiting someone to snap it in half.  Thankfully, Lopez understands the need for humor, and he possesses the skill to introduce those moments organically in such a way so as not to damage the storylines the play relates.

“The Inheritance” whirls around the core event in the story, which is watching Toby Darling, a young writer, turn his successful novel into a play.  The people we are introduced to are both friends of the author, and consequentially, ‘characters’ in a play that one of the actors in that play decides to pen.  Ten gay men in contemporary New York City meet on Sundays for brunch, and what they share, apart from their wish to engage in a group-sharing meal, is the fact that they are all gay, and have a commitment to social justice.  What they do during the day hours– teach, administer, perform surgery, etc. – does not give them a shared purpose, but they do it because it is what they are best at, in the take-home-pay world.  Sometimes how they got to that decision is related explicitly, sometimes it is merely pointed out.  Their list of ‘careers’ is not meant to bind them together.  What they share is their sexuality.  How they choose to express it, is in itself as varied as the careers themselves.

It’s interesting to note that Lopez played the young boy Michael Darling in a school production of ‘Peter Pan.,’ giving Lopez the last name of his key character.  When young Toby’s book, “Loved Boy,” is tapped to become a play, it awakens, in the writer’s mind, “Howard’s End,” the iconic masterwork written in 1910 by E.M. Forster.  Forster also wrote “Maurice,” about two men in a sexual relationship, and decreed that it not be released until after his death, which did not happen until 1970.  His ‘Howard’s End’ presents the disparate decisions and consequences that occur in the lives of two sisters in turn-of-the-twentieth-century London, pitting people from opposite ends of the spectrum, in terms of class, status, gender, self-identity and ambition.  Toby, in Lopez’s work, upends that premise to include the impact of sexuality.  This is not to inject justification for equal rights for gay people into the mix.  That is assumed.  What is not assumed is the outcomes from making life choices, in terms of circumstance, that result in Toby coming to terms with the ‘lives’ of his characters.

Lopez decides that his central character, Toby, must attain the permission to proceed with this venture only after obtaining the ‘permission’ of Forster, or at least receive some sign that he has the right to do so.  To that end, he inserts a character named Morgan, a surrogate for Forster, to provide that assurance.  Morgan takes in what the young writer is seeking, listening as the assembled members of the Sunday brunch gatherings give Toby their individual and collective points of view on what the story is or should be.  Once they have exhausted their considered opinions, Morgan [the Forster stand-in] grants Toby the permission he so desperately needs, to continue unabated in his crafting of the play he desperately seeks to complete.  Morgan appears from time to time, to provide Toby with a compass meant to give him the guidance needed to finish the job.

And Who are these characters?  At the center of the ever-expanding circle of men is Toby, a twenty-something writer who has managed to get his personally-inspired novel commissioned into becoming a play.  It has taken him many months to produce the first draft of a playscript.  And his most prominent supporter is Walter, an older gay man whom he met at the Hamptons party, and who wishes to enable Toby to feel comfortable in the role of playwright and leave his conventional job behind a desk behind.  Toby gets support from his boyfriend Eric, who has the same objective for Toby, for him to settle into a life as a writer.  When Toby’s play gets a pre-Broadway try-out in Chicago, Adam, an actor in the cast, begins to write his own play.  In it, Adam appropriates the names and partial identities of the gather-for-brunch bunch, including some of their names.  And Toby’s brunch bunch are incorporated into Adam’s undertaking.  Each member of the cast chimes in from moment to moment, with Toby accepting or rejecting their proposed additions or corrections.  The result is what Toby crafts into his play.

While Toby is slaving away at his computer, pounding out scene after scene, his boyfriend Eric befriends Walter, an older man whom he met at that Hamptons party who has since moved into Eric’s building.  [Walter finds it highly amusing that Toby, while attending that party, gets engulfed in an incident involving a dog, many martinis and the projectile vomiting that spews forth onto Meryl Streep’s lap.]  Walter sees in Eric the potential for Eric to share a sense of purpose in crafting a family together with another man.  Eric does not see himself in that role.     He welcomes the attention, and enjoys those gathered in an expanded number of interests and conversational topics.  As time goes on, Eric finds himself spending more and more time with Walter, who does not put a limit on the amount of time they spend together.   Meanwhile, Eric finally pops the question to Toby, asking him to get married.  The question grips Toby, who resists the offer, but does not wish to end the relationship.  After Walter tells Eric about the house that he and his former partner bought at the height of the epidemic, he accepts Walter’s invitation to visit the house, where Henry is living.  When it comes time to leave the house, which Eric falls in love with on sight, Eric stays the night.  And when that overnight blossoms into many nights when Eric gets to know Henry as well, Eric resists the notion of wedding, but manages to keep the relationships alive, and thriving.  Later, going against Henry’s wishes, Eric begins to invite friends sick with AIDS, and even strangers similarly afflicted, to the house, where they could live out their life with a caring person who decides to tend to their needs during their final days.

As Adam’s play takes shape, it incorporates much the same issues in the life of Adam’s characters as the brunch bunch ‘cast.’  Walter uses this as a way to negate his own feelings of weakness.  Later, the needs of the house are shared with Margaret, a formerly homophobic late eighties-something woman, the mother of one of Walter’s hospice patients.  She is the only woman to appear in the play, and as delivered by the incomparable Lois Smith, in an extended monologue that can feel like a protracted speech lifted from an unashamedly guileless novel, offers the audience a display of flagellation yearned for during the previous intake of scenes and moments.

As the deathbed visits become more numerous, they provide more closure to so many more.  It is a plea to audience members to generate more consideration.  Margaret’s desperate monologue comes as balance to the opening pronouncements from Morgan [Forster], a greatly-earned closure that gives us the welcomed opportunity to assess what has come before, and to make our own judgments as to what the previous seven hours have delivered, however tortured they may have seemed.

With so many brunch bunch participants vying to contribute to Toby’s play, and so many ‘characters’ in Adam’s play emerging as that work takes place, the number of Who’s keeps growing.  It is almost impossible to keep track of all the named people, since many share the same name with someone else in either the play or the brunch bunch.   It’s nearly impossible to keep the Who’s straight [pardon that one].

And in straining to elaborate on the various Who’s, one gets a qualified sense of the What’s.  Lopez’s play reflects many aspects of his personal life, as it struggles to mirror the playwright’s real encounters as it spills onto the pages of “Loved Boy,” the play.  That play stars a talented young actor named Adam, who bears a striking resemblance to the down-on-his-luck sex worker named Leo that Toby meets outside the Strand bookstore where a mix-up of look-alike notebooks puts Leo the sex worker in touch with Toby, the writer.  A passing of his business card from Toby to Leo gives Leo someone to call on Christmas Eve, when Leo aches to find someone to talk to.  He tracks down Toby, who mistakenly thinks Leo is looking for a new client.  But all Leo is looking for is a place to shower and do his laundry.  They eventually wind up sharing a bed, and sharing a night.  And since Leo bears such a strong resemblance to Adam, an actor in Toby’s play, the attraction grows into something much stronger than a chance encounter and a one-night stand for pay.

This ever-exploding number of men in both plays and lives pretty much torpedoes any hope of keeping all the Who’s from getting clear.  And in trying to sort through all the Who’s, we find ourselves witnessing or hearing about so many more What’s.  Plays are being written, sex is being tried and tried [and tried again and tried some more, employing a variety of incantations] and found either lacking interest or giving the participants real pleasure that wants to be repeated, passions get ignited, styles get traded and just as soon as they reach climax, they are either ripe for being repeated or sworn off for good, and in the end, the What’s are also sworn off as elements in either play.  The What’s get exhausted.  And the When’s are made clearer in the re-tellings.  And the Where’s are either in someone’s apartment, in a rehearsal room, or in a convenient other site.  Finally, along comes the unanswered question – Why?

Before attempting to provide any answer to that, it must be made clear that, while it may seem that the proceedings may involve too many people and too much occurrence, the great value of the play rests with the skill that Lopez possesses as a story-teller.  The value of this writer is that of a dramatist, not as a novelist, per se.  Audiences are taken up with how they are captivated by the moment-to-moment slathering of events, one after another, which keeps them totally engaged.  They easily get caught up in how one thought or action leads, seemingly effortlessly, to the next one.  While the practice of naming two characters with the same name can make the need to follow things a bit problematic, seeing it rather than reading it provides all the clarity one needs to stay with the many storylines.  One needs to see the similarities and differences played out on the stage, with the look of the personalities providing all the separateness one needs to stay with all disparate story lines to enjoy how well Lopez has invented the overall story.  Lopez is, as a result, a much much better dramatist than he would be with the same material presented to us in novel form.  One needs to see it rather than put the pictures in one’s head through a reader’s imagination.  And in this instance, Lopez is very well-served to have such a talented collection of actors to perform that task so masterfully.

Now – the Why’s.  For a start, Eric has the belief that any relationship has the ability to either heal or burn.  To fall in love is to make an appointment with heartbreak.  One of the visitors is an up-and-coming young artist whose work captivates the men, but who has the dedicated habit of burning his paintings once they are completed.  Walter offers to buy one of his paintings and never look at it.  The fact that all involved are barefoot is never explained, but seems to indicate the easy familiarity they have with each other, wherever they are, whatever is happening.  It lends an air of casualness to whatever is happening, where it is happening, and the Why of it is never explicitly laid out.  The prevailing sentiment is that the future is not to be second-guessed, but that the major problem with trying to comprehend it lies with the fact that the future is written in invisible ink.  Toby finds that he likes to be wanted, but hates to be needed; he finds it to be a trap, as is any form of formal commitment.

When Terrence McNally saw the play, he proclaimed that it is not a play about AIDS.  He said it is a play about the human experience.  Lopez found that embracing his sexuality entailed an inheritance of grief.  But the mourning felt abstract.  How, he felt, does one contemplate loss on that level?  Walter tries to convey the scale of the tragedy by naming all his friends who have been affected by this tragedy, and how it touched the lives of people, by naming all his friends.  It takes the form of a litany delivered by naming all his friends – who has died, who is deadly ill, who has returned to his mother’s house to die there, who has travelled to Paris to try to locate HPA-23, who has peripheral neuropathy and can’t be touched, who has turned himself into a hermit.  Toby, though seeming to have an effortless confidence, has in fact strenuously constructed that identity.

Lopez insists that there are a lot of endings in his play.  However, he points out, there are a lot of endings in life.  Which is where this review ends.

AfterPlay

You’ve still got plenty of time to get yourself to the Met to catch an inspiring new production of “Porgy and Bess,” the Gershwin classic, featuring Angel Blue as Bess and Eric Owens as Porgy, which holds forth from now until Feb. 15, Frederick Ballentine takes on the challenging role of Sportin’ Life . . . underway now at the Public Theatre is their annual ‘Under the Radar’ Festival, with performances around town, and including an astronomical virtual-reality experience compliments of Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chen Huang and a solo piece by Daniel J. Watts.  Check it all out at publictheater.org . . . New Jersey’s All Musicals season continues starting January 30 through March 1 with “Unmasked: The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber” written by Richard Curtis, directed by Laurence Connor and choreographed by JoAnn M. Hunter.  Featured are selections from his “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Evita,” “Cats,” Phantom of the Opera” and “Sunset Boulevard” . . . the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment recently released its study of how the world of New York theatre stretches far beyond the theatre district, enumerating 748 off-Broadway and Off Off-Broadway venues, which account for more than 3,000 jobs,  Sites such as the New York Theatre Workshop [“Hadestown”,  and the Atlantic Theatre company’s “The Band’s Visit” stood out, while the Public Theater’s “Hamilton”  and “Fairview” from Soho Rep were recipients of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  Fully 97 operate at permanent locations.  Most of the nonprofit theatre organizations are in Manhattan, with 30 percent in Midtown and another 15 percent near the East Village and the Lower East Side.  Smaller theaters are especially dependent on philanthropy and government grants, while the larger ones generate most of their operating funds from ticket sales. . . from February 6 to March 1, with an official opening night on February 13, Michael Urie will present Drew Droege in “Happy Birthday Doug.”  The comedy, directed by Tom DeTrinis, tracks Doug as he turns 41, visited by friends, nightmares, some exes and especially, a ghost.  It follows his hit solo piece “Bright Colors and Bold Patterns” . . . The jazz musical version of ‘The Wizard of Oz,” has been extended through June 20.  The play, presented on a varied schedule available on wizardofozjazzmusical.com, is a jazzy stage adaptation of the classic film musical, is presented by Harlem Repertory Theater [HRT] and the Yip Harburg Lyrics Foundation, and features a multi-racial cast.  HRT is in the midst of a four-year project to present classic musicals with lyrics by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, and draws from the MGM film musical, with book by L. Frank Baum, composer Harold Arlen and Harburg’s lyrics.  The production is being presented at the Tato Laviera Theatre, 240 East 123 Street, near Second Avenue . . . Olivia Levine’s solo show “Unstuck” returns to The Tank for a limited engagement running from January 30 through February 23, with an opening night slated for January 30.  Directed by Molly Rose Heller, it follows her journey with OCD from childhood to adulthood . . . Symphony Space, at 2537 Broadway, at west 95^th street, offers you a great place to launch your New Year’s resolution to cut back your theatre bookshelf by donating books at their lobby space from Monday through Saturday from 9 AM to 6 PM, and from 1 PM to 6 PM on Sundays.  Details are available at 212 – 864 – 1414, x 202 . . . and on Monday, January 20^th, at 7 PM, the Space’s Leonard Nimoy Theatre, the Thalia, will be presenting Bernard Shaw’s “Major Barbara,” featuring Mark Waldrop and Karen Ziemba, directed by David Staller . . . two free musical events will be on view at Lincoln Center.  On Thursday, January at 7:30, the Arium 360 degrees features the C4 Trio: From Venezuela to the World, which transforms the cuatro guitar into a versatile and contemporary instrument with an entirely new musical vocabulary, and on Thursday, January, another free events, this one at Vaya! 63,has Los Cunpleanos, a psychedelic take on Colombian Cumbia, Son Caribeno, Salsa Criolla and other rhythms, presented in collaboration with the NYU Music and Social Change Lab . . . beginning this month, and originally staged by International Theater Amsterdam [formerly Toneelgroep Amsterdam] in 2014 in that city, writer/director Simon Stone is working with actors Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale in the lead roles of his contemporary rewrite of the Euripides tragedy “Medea.”  Presented at BAM’s Harvey Theatre, details are available at BAM.org, or 718-636-4129. . . progress update: the new Drama Bookshop is slated to open in March or April at its new location at 260 West 39^th street, about a block from its former location.  Watch this space as new developments happen . . . The George Street Playhouse premieres “Midwives” by Chris Bohjalian on January 21^st, that follows the events and subsequent criminal trial of a midwife charged in connection to a snowed-in caesarian birth by a midwife.  Set to run until 2/16, details are available at www.georgestreetplayhouse.org.

On Book

Talking of the brothers Gershwin, two volumes relate their lives in great detail.  Joan Peyser’s comprehensive study of the life of George, “The Memory of All That: The Life of George Gershwin,” from Hal Leonard, provides great insight into the genius of the man whose life was cut short in 1937 at the age of 38 . . . the less celebrated but equally brilliant brother Ira’s masterful brilliance is chronicled in “Ira Gershwin: Selected Lyrics,” edited by Robert Kimball, from the American Poets Project, whose gifts are presented.  Included are the verse of “Someone to Watch Over Me:” There’s a somebody I’m longing to see: I hope that he, Turns out to be, Someone who’ll watch over me,” or the tricky internal doubling back in the lyric for “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off:” ‘So if you like pajamas, and I Like pa-jah-mas, I’ll wear pajamas and give up pa-jah-mas, For we know we Need each other, so we Better call the calling off off, Let’s call the whole thing off!’ . . . and in discussing the role of off-Broadway on the New York theatre scene, the story begins and ends with Lucille Lortel, whose career as a producer helped launch the career of dozens of playwrights, actors and directors.  Her life story is captured in “Lucille Lortel – The Queen of Off-Broadway,” by Alexis Greene, from Limelight Editions, New York.

TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS theatre series “Character Studies.”  His play “Admissions” won the Best Play Award at the New York International Fringe Festival, and received three productions 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 Press.  His theatre and entertainment reporting has appeared in dozens of publications, from Rolling Stone and Parade to The Christian Science Monitor and Readers Digest.  He has written three books, hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, taught at several institutions including Columbia University’s Teachers College and HB Studio.  His “Test of Time” won the Best Documentary CableAce Award for Lifetime Television.  His new play “Labor Days” is in development at the Directors Company.

 CARMEL CAR AND 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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“Love,  Actually?” is Not

In Fact an actual “Slave Play”

By TONY VELLELA

Ever since it opened at Broadway’s Golden Theatre, moving uptown from a highly acclaimed off-Broadway run at downtown’s New York Theatre Workshop, “Slave Play,” by Jeremy O. Harris has been considered a front-runner for a Best Play Tony Award.   Take notice at how the playwright named his new, controversial work.  Is it a play?  Is it about the act of playing?  Neither?  Both?

When two colleagues at a university join forces to create a new method of exploring sexual misfunction within mixed-race couples, the result is a week-long exercise located in a former plantation in rural Virginia.  One of the real flaws in what has become a true exploration of how the couples relate within their partnerships is our lack of awareness of the regular activities these six people – two straight couples and one male gay couple – that is it that permits them to take a week off from whatever it is that  routinely occupies their time.  They are all professionals – some teach, some write, etc., but the specifics are left vague, except that they are not blue-collar types.  They can afford in every sense of that word to take the time to be away for many days.   While this may seem like a trivial point, it would go a long way in helping us understand who these people are, and what brought them to this project.  We don’t know if they were chosen from a group of volunteers, or whether they have previously undertaken any type of sexual therapy sessions.

The core question is what is wrong within their relationships and whether or how it can be remedied.  The study is designed to take a week, and we join them during and after day number four.  They have been paired up as ‘slave’ and ‘master,’ to identify the basic identities that the therapists believe need to be delved into.  On Day Four, we first meet Kaneisha as she is discovered scrubbing the floor, for her ‘master,’ Phillip.  She insists on being called a negress, to give her the feeling of being dirty.  Their physical activity makes it clear that the object of this particular exercise is to explore dominance and submission.  They are what has commonly come to be termed a BDSM couple – for Bondage, Dominance, Sado-Masochism pairing, by choice, it would seem.  But it is the underlying broken nature of their sexual attraction that is of interest to the therapists, who are testing out their ideas on how couples like this – one a dominant partner and the other the submissive one – that form the platform for their study, which has not been published or sanctioned yet by the profession.  The therapists seek acknowledgement that they are breaking new ground in their study.

The subjects are also not students, but functioning in-the-world adults.  We aren’t told how it is that they don’t seem to be being compensated for their participation, nor are we to know whether they are paying to be studied.  Their private lives do not define their careers or workplace behaviors.  What the therapists are eager to focus on is the role that race plays in how they relate to each other as sexual partners.  While dominance and submissiveness are at the core of the premise, it is the underlying racism that is the focus.  Are they now, or have they been willing to challenge this point of difference?  Do they bring it into their foreplay, their activity, their post-encounter talk?

What we do see is how their interplay plays out, in fairly graphic sequences that depict how they ‘do it.’  While nothing here is shocking per se, audiences are not used to seeing the degree of explicit activity we are privy to.  It is revelatory how much we learn from the non-verbal segments, about who takes the lead, who does the talking, etc.  While the relationships are pretty universal and timeless, playwright has even managed to insert the phrase du jour ‘down a rabbit hole’ into the conversations to prove how current it all is.

“Slave Play” is more about how the word ‘play’ is utilized here.  While it certainly defines what form of cultural activity we are witnessing, it is more about what we are seeing, which is the activity of sexuality, being played out.   This is usually ‘none of our business,’ but we are to assume that the selection process that created this particular grouping took into account the initial attraction that made them couples in the first place.  How did they choose each other?

What is surely tantalizing about the premise that the play seems to promise is answers to the core differences, the play does a masterful job of revealing all the possible reasons for the key questions, while at the same time not putting itself forward as having all the answers.   Yes, this is a play about sexual malfunctioning, but add in race as aa key factor, and you have an even more provocative premise – does the role of race come to be seen as the major component in this pairing-up process?  Do they address it, or even acknowledge it?  Do the discoveries mirror those commonly thought to exist in American society as a whole, or are they anomalies?

Slave Play

Our visit to Day Four includes the full treatment of looking at how they relate to each other were they living in pre-Civil War America , complete with appropriate costuming and language.  We are grateful for director Robert O’Hara’s deft manipulation of three couples keeping things fluid, and are especially thankful for the back wall mirror in the set design by Clint Ramos that lets us see ourselves as we really are, voyeurs in this process of trying to do more than play at being a slave – we are seeing ourselves as either the dominant one or the submissive one, or neither or both.  Harris is not playing around with these crucial, serious pieces of our identities.

What is not at all serious is the riotous musical “Love, Actually?,” which takes on the 2003 British film of the same title, set in London at Christmas time, which seeks to drive home the point that everyone in Britain is incapable of not falling in love with whomever is handy, from the charmer, a young British prime minister, to the extras on a movie set.  The producers label this concoction a parody [the usher hands you a Parodybill instead of a Playbill as you are seated in the cozy Jerry Orbach off-Broadway venue named Theatre Center, which also houses the record-breaking mystery play “Perfect Crime” and has also given “The Fantasticks” a home.  This time, it’s a flat-out rom-com [romantic comedy for those who never settle in for a few laughs with a television-style romantic comedy] that gets skewered, in what is actually a combination parody [an imitation of the original] and a satire [an attempt at making fun, often with a dose of making the host work look foolish or silly].  And this stage interpretation of the film “Love, Actually” actually skillfully manages to combine both forms, with an emphasis on parody.  There’s not a mean bone in its multi-character body.

And the key to its success as solid entertainment lies in that ‘multi,’ where all the actors in the film turn up in this comedy, and where the characters are all re-named as the actors who brought them to life in the perennially popular picture.  Hugh Grant depicts the prime minister, called ‘Hugh,’ who is irresistibly attractive to all people of the opposite sex, and are Liam Neeson and Emma Thompson really getting it on, and what about that wacky French dame who pops up from time to time?

Here’s the very good news for anyone shopping for a good time: you don’t need to have seen the film in order to enjoy the stage comedy.  If you were able to suspend disbelief when you were coaxed into seeing “Mamma Mia,” you will feel right at home here.  And believe it or not, one of the secrets to juggling all these folks as distinct from each other as you can lies with the true genius work created by the show’s wig designer Dustin Cross, who must have had a remarkable budget to work with in giving each new visitor to the set of this comedy a distinct enough identity carry you along so that the Emma Thompson character is never confused with Joni Mitchell.

One of the critical decisions that “Love, Actually?” creators Bob and Tobly McGrath [book & lyrics] and Basil Winterbottom [music & orchestrations] made from the get-go was to house this frenetically-paced little gem during the shooting of the film, so we see extras double as non-speaking characters, giving us the perspective that we, as audience members steeped in the land of movie-making, can bring to the proceedings.  We get it when camera work needs to be adjusted.  We understand it when the lead role gets all that attention.  Most of all, we feel like we are part of the story-telling, letting us ‘in’ on all the humor, without the need to have seen the original.  As an audience member, I had never seen the film, and was perfectly oriented to the goings-on from scene to scene.  The seamless continuity owes much to the quick timing presented by director Tim Drucker.

The writing so boldly, baldly up front about who is under the spotlight from moment to moment that there is no need to bring along a score card.  Everyone is a target, whether they are characters in the movie plot or actors big and not-so-big who agreed to star in this parody.  Someone once said that satire is what closes on Saturday night.  Here, what we have is a parody, and given the film’s iconic status among film-goers of all ages, is not likely to vanish by the end of the week.

AfterPlay

La Mama brings to New York “Winter Songs on Mars,” on December 21.  This theater event is a celebration, a ritual of the Carpathian Mountains, with performances by Yara Arts Group in collaboration with Nova Opera, an avant-garde music theater troupe from Kyiv, which is much in the news these days . . . on December 4, the limited three-week performance schedule of “A City of Refuge,” written and directed by Evan Cuyler-Louison begins for the Primitive Grace Theatre Ensemble’s schedule of performances.  The work traces experiences around the Washington Heights riots, featuring Dominican-born actor Wilton Guzman in the cast . . . Jersey City proclaims itself America’s most diverse city in America, and to highlight that claim, Shakespeare @ will launch its second site-specific production of “Romeo & Juliet” in locations familiar to residents of the city, and new to first-time audiences for this theatre group that specializes in featuring diverse, sprawling casts in often difficult-to-stage presentations.  This venture premieres in April; for more information, visit shakespeare-at.org . . . the South Street Seaport Museum plays host to “The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show Experience from now through December 29, with a schedule that features Friday and Saturday performances three times a day and details are available at www.seaportmuseum.org/hungrycaterpillar.  The show includes an interactive puppet show and a variety of activities.  The show is based on author/illustrator Eric Carle’s book that has sold more than 43 million copies worldwide to eager readers around the world . . . another production that presents marionettes is “A Christmas Carol,” by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre from December 19 to January 5.  If you attend dressed this Dickens classic, gets you a $2 discount on your ticket.  Ticket info is available at www.theaterforthenewcity.net.

On Book

“Love, Actually?” stirs the imagination as to the place of solid, well-written humor in today’s world, and no one exemplifies that objective, despite his work premiering more than half a century ago, than James Thurber.  For a great laugh-out-loud good read, pick up the playscript for “A Thurber Carnival,” and learn more about this American humorist genius in “My Life and Hard times” [Harper & Brothers] . . . during this endless-seeming holiday season, the iconic picture “It’s a Wonderful Life,” from director Frank Capra, and to discover the wide range of pictures that he created, and still survive generations of viewing, pick up his autobiography “The Name Above the Title,” from the Macmillan Company, as well as Harrison Kinney’s very comprehensive “James  Thurber – His Life and Times,” from Henry Holt and Company.

TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the theatre-themed PBS series “Character Studies.”  His play “Admissions won the Best Play Award at the New York International Fringe Festival, received three productions in New York, and is published by Playscripts.  His has written reviews and feature stories about the entertainment world in The Christian Science Monitor, Rolling Stone, Parade, Dramatics, Reader’s Digest and dozens of other publications.  His play “Maisie and Grover Go to the Theatre” is published by ArtAge.  He has taught theatre classes at the 92^nd St. Y, Columbia University’s Teachers College, at HB Studio and other institutions nationally, as well as in private coaching sessions.  His “Test of Time” won the Best Documentary CableAce Award for Lifetime Television.

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 package, and reservations, are available at carmellimo.com, the Carmel App or at 212 – 666 – 6666.

The Great Society

loves The Rose Tattoo

By TONY VELLELA

When a person gets a tattoo, unless it’s the name of a loved one, it’s meant to depict something from real life.  In the case of the dramatic valentine “The Rose Tattoo,” by Tennessee Williams, the object of adulation is a rose.  As presented in the current revival at the American Airlines Theatre, starring Marisa Tomei, that reality is skewed toward the cartoonish, despite its rich entertainment value.

Serafina Della Rosa, the Sicilian widow of a banana truck driver, took almost exclusively to remaining indoors ever since her husband was run off the road and killed, in connection with his side practice of running drugs stashed under his legitimate cargo.  It unfolds in the American South, centered around a small village on the Gulf of Mexico.  Unfortunately, due to decisions made by director Trip Cullman and set designer Mark Wendlund, her stultifying, provocative choice to cut herself off from others is undercut because they have decided to eliminate the walls and roof to her house.  She is instead inhabiting an open-space platform accented only by some furniture, a few door frames, a window and a small alter to the Virgin Mary. And this demi-house is perched on a stretch of sand bordered by hundreds of plastic, stationary pink flamingoes, pointing toward stage right.  Overall, the effect is one of a story set adrift from the real events and feelings of its inhabitants rather than allowing the claustrophobic element that so defines its heroine from landing with the impact it should.

When we meet Serafina, who makes her living as an accomplished seamstress, she is finishing the protracted undertaking of sewing white graduation dresses for the girls of the town.  Her fifteen-year-old daughter Rosa is among the graduates.  But because Rosa spent a few evenings with a sailor she met at a school dance, Serafina has confined the young girl to her bedroom, naked, as punishment for being “a wild thing in my house.”

The ladies of the neighborhood, populated with immigrants from Sicily, chide Serafina when she appears on her front porch clad only in a slip, to escape the heat of her living room, stiflingly hot because of the house’s tin roof.  [Williams had a thing about women and tin rooves.]  The local strega [a Sicilian old woman who spouts admonishing homilies] who heads up the women when they congregate in front of the house, warns Serafina that “there is something wild in the air, no wind but everything’s moving . . . I can hear the star-noises.”  She counsels Serafina to end her self-inflicted confinement and mingle with the other ladies.  Serafina resists, insisting that she is honoring the memory of her beloved husband, who was both a good provider and a world-class lover, to her mind, the best.  His ashes are encased in a ceramic jar on a shelf in the living room.

On graduation day, when the ladies come to retrieve their daughters’ special dresses, they find Serafina as disheveled as always, but even more agitated, having learned of her daughter’s transgression.  They explain that the young man is the brother of one of Rosa’s friends, and that he is a polite young man.  But Serafina refuses to believe that nothing untoward took place between the couple, after the dance, and the following night, following a visit to the movie house.  When Serafina finally relents and permits Rosa to make it to the ceremony, the girl decides to bring Jack, the sailor, back home with her, to meet her mother, and dispel her of any tawdry notions she has conjured up.  Jack’s visit becomes a comic opera of the mother insisting that the modest sailor, who swears he is also Catholic and a virgin, kneel before the homemade shrine Serafina has constructed in the corner of the living room, complete with rose-colored glass containers that hold lighted candles.  Tentatively satisfied that he will respect her daughter, Serafina relents, and Rosa and Jack high-tail it out of there to join friends on a picnic outing.  Serafina’s misgivings are not entirely misplaced, though, when we see the couple alone, with Rosa smothering the sailor in kisses, showing the same fiery passion that defines Serafina.

Her life is unended upon the arrival of a muscle-bound hunk of a truck driver, who was forced off the road by another driver, causing his truck to be damaged, and his delivery to be late.  After the two fight, the driver implores Serafina to let him in the house, where he can sob in private.  “I always cry after I fight,” he explains, and she joins him, noting that she always cries whenever someone else does.  The man is called Mangiacavallo, [Emon Elliot], which in Italian means “eat a horse.”  He relates the family legend that, back in Sicily, a grandfather was forced, due to lack of food, to consume one or starve to death, and that the truck driver is named in his honor.  His effusive behavior borders on slapstick, causing Serafina to bemoan that “he has my husband’s body, but with the head of clown.”

In a precursor to a modern ‘meet cute’ tale, he returns that night, stays over, and early the next morning surprises Rosa, who is asleep on the sofa.  Tantrums and yelling ensue.  Serafina confides to the strega that she is pregnant!  Happy ending.

This revival manages to get the story straight, relating what Tennessee intended to be the story he invented, dedicated to Frank Merlo, Williams’ long-time lover and partner, and himself a former sailor.  And while it was meant to present a host of comedic moments, there are stark serious threads women throughout the text, not the least of which has to do with the widow’s undying devotion to her idealized dead husband.   It is only when she accepts the truth that the whole town already knows, that her husband was carrying on a long-term affair with a brazen blonde casino worker, that she loosens her self-imposed exile, and permits the clown driver to come back at night, and stay with her.  He bemoans his fate as someone with three dependents, now possibly out of a job, and the object of her pity.

This production benefits from Tomei’s seemingly boundless energy, which explodes periodically whenever she needs to enforce her daughter’s confinement, or when she is taunted by the neighbor women, and their children.  Tomei certainly presents the picture of devotion carried to the extreme, and the other players are equally adept at depicting their characters.  The exception is Elliot, who, from the start, is the picture of comic overacting, making it that much harder to believe that Serafina would give him a second look, despite his obvious visual attractiveness.

This “Rose Tattoo” does strain to retain some of the touches Williams wrote in, especially the continuing appearance of women chanting, usually omitted in other productions, but definitely something that adds to the operatic nature of the tale.  Recall the off-stage singing in “A Streetcar Named Desire.”  So it is certainly worth a look, in particular to see the range Tomei is capable of.  But you will still need to read the play to get the full impact of the tale.

If there is one thing that Robert Schenkkan’s “The Great Society,” now at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre, has, it is impact.  Brian Cox stars as the 36th president.  Tasked with the monumental undertaking of recounting President Lyndon B. Johnson’s years following his assumption of the office following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the story needs to fold in a host of characters who legitimately belong in this retelling.  They range from civil rights icon, Grantham Coleman’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Garrison’s renegade Alabama governor George Wallace as well as future discredited President Richard Nixon, to Bryce Pinkham as brother JFK’s Attorney General and New York Senator Bobby Kennedy, Marc Kudisch’s challenged Chicago mayor Richard Daley, Gordon Clapp’s FBI dictator head J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Thomas as LBJ’s vice-president, Hubert Humphrey.  There are at least a dozen other ‘players’ in this saga.

While there are those who fault the play for its detailed chronicling of the events that crammed LBJ’s timeline during those fateful years, 1963 through 1969, there is simply no other way to present what the pressures were on this man.  Known for his dedication to civil rights, including voting rights,  and his  mastering of political manipulation of his at-the-time fellow senators, as well as the kneecapping effect of the build-up and increasing escalation of the conflict in Vietnam War on every other goal he held dear, any life this epic must by definition be ‘overstuffed’ with facts and details.  The stunning oppression alone of the assaults on the Edmund Pettus Bridge would make for an evocative, gripping story.  The openly-adopted replacement of non-violence with Black Power in the black community left him with little to bargain with.  He spent five long years battling traumatic travails foreign and domestic, in a career poised to mirror his idol, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who also attempted to balance an overseas war with a struggling society at home.   And the nearly inevitable foretelling that this was a story that would not end well came when America’s most trusted man, newscaster Walter Cronkite, counselled LBJ that the war was a lost cause.  Just as any reviewing of the life and times of FDR must necessarily include the involvement of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Russian dictator Joseph Stalin, vice-president Harry Truman, his wife Eleanor, as well as intimate advisor Harry Hopkins, so too must “Great Society” call on the contributions of the many people who affected LBJ’s efforts.

The unavoidable drawback of attempting such a comprehensive telling of his story is that those who may not be conversant with the names and events of his time may not fully grasp how the interplay of all these elements influenced the man’s tortured presidential years.  A comparatively quiet scene near the end, with LBJ and his devoted wife Lady Bird, trying to reconcile how much his political career has cost them, stands out as a look into the damage done to one human being, as the casualties numbered upwards of 40,000 from the War.  Most actors carry out their responsibilities quite well, with Pinkham’s Bobby Kennedy a stand-out, while Thomas’ Humphrey underplays the man’s gregarious nature to the point of making him simply a constricted ‘yes man.’ This is theatre at is gripping best – a time spent in an audience treated to a work that is, not stolid but solid in its dramaturgical choices, one that satisfies even without the knowledge afforded those who benefit from having lived in the period it covers.

AfterPlay

Eli Wallach once told me about the difficulties he and Maureen Stapleton, who both originated the leads in “The Rose Tattoo” in 1951, had with the play’s producers.   They were committed to doing the play, but were wary of how wrong choices with casting could sink it.  Williams wanted Italian actress Anna Magnani to do the female lead, but producers feared her heavy accent would prevent most audience members from hearing her dialogue.  And they were conflicted on how to choose the right actor to portray Mangiacavallo.  Finally, after being called back to audition again and again, Eli, speaking for both of them, told the producers “either cast us or stop asking us back.”  They got the roles.  Williams got Magnani for the 1955 film version, earning her an Oscar, and instead of going with Wallach for the male lead, they bowed to the demands of box office familiarity in choosing Burt Lancaster for the part . . . contemporary choreographer Chase Brock’s acclaimed evening-length production ‘The Four Seasons’ will be presented in a strictly limited 21-performance run on Theatre Row from November 21 to December 8.  Tickets can be purchased at telecharge.com, by phone at 212-239-6200 or at the Theatre Row box office . . . Wheelhouse Theatre Company will present a staged reading of  Jonathan Lynn’s “Oracles: Murder at the Crossroads and Oedipusgate – a Double Bill,’ at Manhattan Theatre Club Studios on Thursday, 10/31 at 1:30 PM, and Friday, 11/1 at 11 AM.  Details at contact@wheelhousetheater.org . . . Theatre for Humanity has announced its inception and inaugural season with Alfred Litwak’s “The Far Horizon,” at the A.R.T./New York theatre, 502 west 53^rd street = TFHNYC.org . . . “Let ‘Em Eat Cake,” the comic political satire with a book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind and music and lyrics by the Gershwins will be the opening offering from MasterVoices, directed and conducted by Ted Sperling.  It will be performed on Thursday, November 21 at Carnegie Hall.  Details about MasterVoices can be found at mastervoices.org.

On Book

To read more about his stint in “The Rose Tattoo,” as well as his remarkable stage and film career, check out “The Good, the Bad and Me – In My Anecdotage,” Eli Wallach’s easy-read Harvest Book autobiography from Harcourt . . .  among the myriad volumes about Tennessee Williams, stand-outs are ‘Tennessee Williams’ Notebooks,’ edited by Margaret Bradham Thornton [Yale University Press] and the Williams biography “Pilgrimage of the Flesh” by John Lahr, from Norton & Company . . . and to get some insight into a mayor who gave LBJ so much angst, track down Mike Royko’s “Boss – Richard J. Daley of Chicago,” from Dutton & Company.

TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS theatre-themed series ‘Character Studies.’  His play “Admissions” won the Best Play Award at the New York International Fringe Festival, received three productions in New York, and is published by Playscripts.  He has written reviews and feature stories about the entertainment world for The Christian Science Monitor, Rolling Stone, Parade, Dramatics, Reader’s Digest and dozens of other publications.  His play “Maisie and Grover Go to the Theatre” is published by ArtAge.  He has taught theatre classes at the 92^ndSt. Y, at Columbia University’s Teachers’ College, at HB Studio and other institutions, as well as in private coaching sessions.  His “Test of Time” won the Best Documentary CableAce Award for Lifetime Television.

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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Discover the Secret at

the Height of the Storm

By TONY VELLELA

How does one spell ‘loss?’  In a somewhat perverted definition of anachronistic, the word’s first letter may stand for ‘love.’   For whatever it is that is lost is truly missed because it had formerly been the object of a deep, and abiding love.  French playwright Florian Zeller has proven during his fifteen-year stage-writing career that he understands both.

In his recently-transferred-from London “The Height of the Storm,” Zeller again, as he has in past successes such as “The Father,” demonstrated how seemingly small-scale personal tales of lives lived in plain sight may be hiding agendas we all manage to withhold from even the closest of friends and especially family.  “The Height of the Storm” eases us into the lives of a married couple whose fifty-plus years together may have amounted to little more than the familiar repeating of patterned behaviors, however inoffensive, however laced with others’ assumptions about the couple’s true relationship.

Andre and Madeleine [the appropriately assertive Jonathan Pryce and  Eileen Atkins, delivering yet another mind-blowingly naturalistic performance],  typify the idealized hand-in-glove pair, two people who are genuinely enamored with each other’s fine qualities and sharpened personal traits.  He has been, for most of his adult life, a highly-regarded writer and poet.  She has been the loyal and supportive helpmate, keeping his sometimes untidy life in order, and managing the overseeing of their two daughters, now well into early middle age, each one carrying forth some of a parent’s behavioral characteristics.

But what of the ‘loss?’  One parent has died, and the other finds it nearly unbearable to continue on without being able to discern their rightful ‘position’ in their family’s life, let alone life in general.

What Zeller has so masterfully accomplished  is the creation of a story unfolding, where the dead partner’s identity is not so much withheld as it is inferred, from our ability to witness the usual daily patterns that held them together for half a century, unable fully to discern who is doing the remembering and who is the absent half of the memory.  Watching the pair navigate their time with the visiting daughters, [over]hearing the discussions about the disposition of the spacious, traditional house in the countryside, struggling to recall the names and associations of people who peopled their lives several decades past – all these windows into their lives give us our own window into who this couple is, and what the loss of one means to the other.  The house’s arms-wide-open kitchen stands in for the lives that it housed.  Its disposition, now that it may be a residence for only one instead of two, centers the ‘discussions’ about what comes next, in dealing with ‘the situation.’

Flowers are delivered.  We don’t learn who the sender is, even as Andre slips the card into his pants pocket.  The daughters discover unfinished poems and stories from their father – also a detail that slips in without much fanfare but symbolizing so much.  We soon forget these details, until the play’s end, when we are given a strong clue as to the mystery of who stayed and who left this dependent-interdependent life.

There is not simply one mystery in Derren Brown’s latest incarnation into the world of the mentalist magician mind-reader.  There are dozens [a hundred?] in “Secret,” which is not a play about a withheld fact nor is it an actual linear story-telling device, meant to keep us guessing.

And it really, really does.  These fascinating strung-together moments that pull in [willing] members of the audience manage to redefine what a Broadway play is, or can be, making it instead an experience rather than a well-told tale [see above].  Brown admits to being caught up in the world of the unexplained phenomenon since childhood, when a wily older uncle kept the contents of a well-appointed wooden case a secret, and not the actual object the title refers to.

Brown uses the very democratic method of determining who gets to come up on stage during a host of moments as the evening unfolds, by tossing randomly a variety of frisbees at the assembled attendees – in the orchestra and in the balcony – assuring a genuine cross-section of  people who made their way to the Cort Theatre stage, there to be entertained, although not in the manner they may have predicted.

These are not mere guessing-games slots of time, stating correctly someone’s first name, or the name of their pet dog.  Brown hides and uncovers facts, illustrations, numbers and all manner of things and facts.  He does it with a modicum of showmanship, not with the often unbearable cheesy remonstrations of a nightclub performer or a television show guest.  He is first and foremost an entertainer, and he fulfills that calling perfectly.  What he also does is keep his audience members off-balance, trying to figure out how he did what he just did, with barely enough time before the next one baffles and befuddles, all the while making sure that his audience is kept busy trying to figure out ‘how’d  he do that?’ again and again.

“Secret” delivers on its ‘promise’ of filling your time there with every manner of wonder.  About a third of the way through the play’s Act One, you will stop wondering how he did that.  In fact, it is not a play at all, but more of an event, and since it unfolds in a Broadway theatre, it is why it is classified as a Broadway show.  But given the correct environment, Brown could present his remarkable couple of hours in the dining car of a cross-country train, or a farmer’s empty barn.  It’s the ‘what,’ not the ‘where.’  And that ‘what’ will astound you.

AfterPlay

Magic is one of the topics covered in the 10^th Annual United Solo Festival, featuring productions ranging from motherhood, suicide  and LGBTQ topics to the Vikings and lots of comedy.  All performances take place at Theatre Row, going on now, until November 24.  Details at www.unitedsolo.org/us/fest . . . Midtown’s TADA Theatre plays host to Peter Levine’s new work “Apple, Table, Penny,” running from October 3 through the 13^th .  Consult www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4330947  or 800-838-3006 for details . . . Mark Erson’s new play “Marc in Venice” will play a limited run from October 1 through October 18 at the Theatre at St. John’s Lutheran Church at 81 Christopher Street, with tickets and facts available by contacting Bill Coyle at CoyleENtertainment@gmail.com. . . Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival is underway for its 10^th season, launching the U.S. premiere of “Nest” at 70 Lincoln Center Plaza .

On Book

So you miss the chance to curl up with a great ‘story’ for a few hours?  Here are three genius tale-tellers whose lives will fill you in on how they did it almost effortlessly.  “Shadow Man  – the Life of Dashiell Hammett,” from Richard Layman, opens the door to how this former Pinkerton detective reinvented the mystery genre in his five books written between 1929 and 1934, including “The Glass Key” and “The Thin Man.” . . . On screen, no better story-teller filled silver screens than Billy Wilder, from “Ninotchka” to “Sunset Boulevard,” whose life is chronicled in “Billy Wilder in Hollywood,” by Maurice Zolotow, an authentic page-turner . . . and no one turned more contract players into big big stars than Hal Wallis.  In “Starmaker,” his autobiography, written with Charles Higham and an intro by Katharine Hepburn, Wallis pulls back the curtain on how he discovered and then employed so skillfully the likes of Kirk Douglas and Bette Davis, [Davis happily proclaimed “I was one of them!”] in pictures such as “Casablanca” and “The Rose Tattoo.”

TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre ‘Character Studies.’  His play ‘Admissions’ was a Best Play winner at the NY International Fringe Festival, produced three times in NYC and published by Playscripts.  His musical “Mister,” was written for Anthony Rapp, with Misha  Piatigorsky.  His reviews have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Dramatics Magazine, and other outlets, and his performing arts pieces have run in dozens of publications, including Parade, Rolling Stone, the  Robb Report, Saturday Review and others.  He has taught theatre courses at HB Studio, the 92^nd St. Y, Columbia University and others.

CARMEL CAR AND 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 www.carmellimo.com, the Carmel App, and at 212 – 666-6666.

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Did “The Rolling Stone”

Create an Era When “The

Titans” Caused Paris’

“Moulin Rouge?”

By Tony Vellela

Clear a line in your agenda list right now for time to see “Rolling Stone,” which is in limited run at Lincoln Center for one more week.  Others may tell you that this new play is the story of a deeply troubled, life-threatened family, caught between blood-ties and their obligations to their God.  It is not.

It does involve both of those elements, to be sure, and contained as they are within the gripping story in this new play by Chris Urch, directed by Saheem Ali, they are symptoms of a condition, not the condition itself.  When a small-in-number immediate family in recent-history Uganda learns that their prized oldest sibling Joe [a volcanic James Udom] has been named the new pastor for the village and surroundings, to tend to the needs of the Christian-embracing residents, their initial response is one of pure joy.  The family’s widowed mother Mama [in a truly incandescent performance by Myra Lucretia Taylor]

has already been compiling her own secret list of acts and pronouncements her blessed son can now put into practice.  In her role as the Mother, she believes she assumes the right to encourage her children, especially Joe, to hold sway over her beliefs and actions.  Her immediate family consists of her younger son Dembe [who Ato Blankson-Wood presents with a quiet attractiveness that goes beyond good looks] and her daughter, Wummie  (Latoya Edwards) [close in age to Dembe, but who has rendered herself voiceless since their father’s death in the recent past].  Mama’s eldest has been chosen.  He will lead the congregation through this troubled time, when their congregation has been schooled in the warped beliefs of a black church from the American south, to risk eternal life if they don’t do all that is possible to eradicate their land of homosexuals and all they say or do.

It is not a spoiler to reveal that, in scene one, Dembe is seen sharing romantic and physical attractions with Sam, the white British-born vicar [a modest, appealing Robert Gilbert] who has come to this village to see the land where his now-deceased Ugandan mother met and married his English father, also passed away.  The unlit grenades have been laid out before us.  What Urch has done so skillfully is to avoid making the discovery by Mama

of Dembe’s secret gay liaisons the grenade.  Grenades need to be lit.  The match that is struck, to create the inferno that threatens to engulf all of them, is not telegraphed or played out live.  It gets ignited behind the eyes of every member of the audience.

Because the basic element, the condition, the universal consequence of an act everyone is capable of bearing the burden of, that unites every aspect of every thread of these story lines, is fear.   Strict doctrinaire types lead their small congregation into thinking any transgression from their beliefs will lead directly to the hell that awaits in the afterlife.  Their compulsion to act on these transgressions leads to lethal violence.  Fear of violating the wishes of parents will guarantee a hell-on-earth for children who cannot discern truth from mythology.  Fear of one’s own secrets being discovered can condemn one to a life filled with days and nights of unredeemable self-condemnation.

This is a play that welds together small stories and very big fears in an overwhelmingly powerful tale that can touch you, even if you have nothing whatever to do with its specifics.  It is, to use one of the most overworked phrases employed in criticism today, a must-see play.  Don’t be the one who does not see it.

The ‘rouge’[deep red] that turns the ‘moulin’ [the grand windmill that tops the towering stairway-steeped district in the heart of Paris] is the opposite of fear.  It is a blatant disregard for the consequences of joyfully vulgar actions that violate most every one of the commandments, and a few that were yet to be named.  At the turn of the last century, Paris was the center of the world’s grand explosion of sexual drives, the fulfillment of every waking moment with music and where everything always seemed to be in motion.  Everything moved, always, from the churning arms of the windmill to the barely-clad boys and girls [they all seemed so young] who draped themselves over bannisters and railings and iron-wound stairway handsets, all seemingly perilously close to falling onto each other, not to their peril, but to their delight.

It’s an old story.  Naïve young man Christian [this one is from Lima, Ohio, portrayed by Aaron Tveit, whose talents seem to grow bigger each season] turns up in decadent Paris to find himself engulfed in the world’s most opulent, most raucous, most outrageous cabaret-nightclub, where the star attraction is the sumptuous Satine [Karen Olivo, from the most recent ‘West Side Story’ revival which garnered her a Tony Award].  Her late-night act launches when she is lowered into the center of the room in sparkling skimpy attire and not much else.  In this dazzling spectacle of sparkle, sequins and shiny objects, Olivo falls somewhat short of depicting the centerpiece of ecstatic fantasy, whose very presence would/should drive men wild, wild, wilder.

Christian, poor and unworldly, is smitten.  But the entire environment is under threat of closure by an appropriately aggressive villain determined to own the windmill, the building itself, and even every one of the dozens of performers who spark life into every corner of the place.  Villain-in-residence is Harold Zidler [the lecherously antic Danny Burstein].

But wait!  This is a musical!  “Moulin Rouge! The Musical!”  And like the surprising ground-breaking spectacle that gives master set designer Derek McLane [more than 350 Broadway, off-Broadway and regional and international venues, winning Tony and Emmy Awards along the way], a canvas unmatched by any of his other award- winning sets, this musical’s score by the ingenious Justin Levine, aided by Matt Stine, Cian McCarthy and Ashley Rodbro, also breaks all the musical theatre rules.  McLane literally sucks you into the theatre space by surrounding you with red curtains, scarlet drapes, flame-colored set pieces and bright costumes and set pieces that dazzle effortlessly the moment you enter the theatre.  And the music does the same to your ears that the set does to your eyes – it overwhelms with song sections, snippets, choruses, lyrics and melodies from no less that seventy songs from the turn of the last century to last week, and somehow manages to forward the love-starved couple’s tragic story without missing a ‘beat’ in the telling of the tale.  Britney Speers meets Madonna who steals from Marilyn Monroe, while Elton John cozies up to “Lady Marmalade” effortlessly, all the while keeping your musical toes tapping and your story-line consciousness in perfect harmony.  It produces an excellent melding of lyrics with story lines.  An Annie Lenox tune joyously opens Act Two.  And among director Justin Levine’s razor-sharp instincts on display is his giving permission to lighting designer Justin Townsend the freedom to allow the lighting to serve as another silent partner in telling the story so vividly.

Broadway forged its brand by presenting dazzling entertainment that, from time to time, sent the audience out not just humming the score, but replaying in their mind’s eye the sights and visuals that accompanied it, from George White to Florenz Ziegfeld, and rarely matched – recall the recently-departed and mourned producer-director Hal Prince, whose opening sequence of the original “Cabaret” reminded audiences what Broadway musicals ought to be like.  It’s back.

While the cultural rules were being shattered, from Toulouse Lautrec to the can-can, at the end of the nineteenth century by thousands of Parisians and thousands more tourists from all over the world, it took only two men, four hundred years earlier, to shatter not merely the societal, but also the cultural, scientific, artistic, designer concepts, and even the very foundation of the era’s religious tenets.  Born slightly more than two decades apart, Leonardo da Vinci [1452 – 1519] and Buonarroti Michelangelo [1475 – 1564, pronounced MIK el angelo, not MIKE el angelo], these two men, rightly called Titans, changed forever nearly every aspect of human life.

But as the subject of a stage play?  Answer?  Yes.

Formally titled “The Titans Experience,” this compelling work is the product of nearly a dozen years of tireless endeavors by Mark Rodgers, who spent hundreds of hours conducting the research that led to “Da Vinci and Michelangelo: The Titans Experience,” a unique combination of visual depictions of these great men’s hundreds [yes, hundreds] of creations, accompanied by Rodgers’ colorful yet remarkably detailed descriptions of their lives.  They are known to most people who made it through their senior year of high school as artists [painters] and sculptors.  But Rodgers has amassed hundreds of other examples of their genius, even though they were rivals and often disliked each other personally.

During their lifetimes most people were illiterate, and so the poplar method of ‘learning’ about important events, real [military battles, such as the Battle of Cascina and the Fall of Rome] or the object of religious orthodoxy [the saints and the holy figures from the Bible, such as the Last Judgment] were discovered through the work of these men, some of which took years to complete.  Every inch of their paintings was scrutinized to learn about the stories behind the subjects of the art.

Like today’s popular political candidates, but not nearly as fascinating, they each have compelling childhood stories that led them down their respective paths to eternal fame.  This clever production, situated in the comfortable theater space at St. Luke’s Church on west 46^th street, brings their accomplishments to life.  It makes the connections between their individual discoveries and inventions, from the lantern style gear and the ball bearing, and the chain link bicycle and the life preserver, to the classic works of art such as the Florentine Pieta, the Mona Lisa, the Last Judgment, the marvelous Sistine Chapel and da Vinci’s classic sculpture, the 17 foot tall masterwork, the David.

While both men often competed for the same commissions from rich families, businesses and especially the church, their motivations were not entirely in conflict.  They both lived for their work.  Da Vinci famously pointed out that ‘Artwork is never finished.  It is only abandoned.”  And the observation he made that he took a flawed massive slab of stone, abandoned by others, and chipped away until the David appeared, made his point that the art was always already there, and only needed to be freed.

This engrossing performance piece is being presented on an unusual schedule of days and times, so it is advisable to phone ahead to 720-504-9408 for exact details.

TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre ‘Character Studies.’  His play ‘Admissions’ was performed three separate times in New York, directed by Austin Pendleton, and published by Playscripts.  He has written several other plays, books, musicals and newspaper and magazine articles, including for The Christian Science Monitor, Dramatics, the Robb Report, Parade and many others.  His work “The Test of Time” was the best documentary award-winner for Lifetime Television.  He is a member of the Writers Guild and 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 www.carmellimo.com, the Carmel App, or at 212 – 666 – 6666.

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“The Mountains Look Different,”

But a Great Play Remains Timeless

By Tony Vellela

“Bless us and save us” was the familiar warm-up that kicked off every junior high school history class, second period, conducted by the redoubtable Miss Haggerty.  What made her familiar greeting so comforting each time she said it, five days a week, was its undeniable authenticity, the slight echo of her Irish brogue creeping in between phrase one and phrase two.  And it was that same familiar plea to heaven that marks the authenticity of “The Mountains Look Different,”  Micheal mac Lianmoir’s minor classic, penned seventy-two years ago.    At the start of the Mint Theatre’s new season; it first welcomed audiences to share in their unique mission of reviving mostly forgotten work from the last nine decades.  This play takes place on the modest farm of the middle-aged Martin Graelish, in rural Ireland, a fact that, on its surface, also appears to be decidedly unremarkable.

That the story line now lays itself out in predictable fashion may cause some theatre-goers to wonder why the Mint selected it to kick off another successful season of reviving mostly overlooked semi-classics from the mid-century point of the 1900’s.  “The Mountains Look Different” fits that criterion perfectly.

Key to enjoying its special features at the start of this, our  new century, will be to remember what that world, and in particular any small Catholic Irish farm village, considered sacrosanct, unquestionable, moral.  Revisit the place and the era – think of it as a vacation into a past you never knew.  So when well-to-do London miller Matthew Conroy, [the memorably understated Con Horgan] seems to wander into this poorly-kept front yard at the rear of a thatched-roof cottage, sustaining just the appropriately seedy-enough side of shabby by the talented set designer Vicki R. Davis.  When he utters “bless us and save us,” his speech pattern, and his surprise at the state of the place, provide all the openings needed to join the events about to unfold on this St. John’s Eve and the morning that follows.

Conroy is there to locate and exchange seemingly modest current events conversation with his distant relative Tom, who has been overseeing the crops-growing and sheep-tending for the bygone decades.  What the nattily-attired Conroy [played with the learned reserve picked up from a life in the metropolis] did not anticipate upon his unexpected arrival, was the discovery that young-ish Tom [mid thirties] has only recently taken as his comely wife, the agreeably attractive Bairbre, also native born, and only now seeking to settle down in the place of her family’s roots.  When she left thirteen years ago, her understandable  reason was to explore the world beyond the farmland and livestock grazing, to see what the rest of the world had to offer to a young girl blessed with enough courage to explore, and enough savings to keep her alive for a year or maybe two, until her wild oats had been stripped clean, if not in grand style, at least in the manner she envisioned in her modest fantasies.

When Bairbre discovers that the decent young chap, Tom Graelish, who happens to wander in on a regular-enough café, is also a native son of their mutual homestead on the Irish west coast, they bond in sweet storybook fashion, vowing celibacy until the union can be blessed.   And it is strong enough to give each other reason enough to consider coupling and returning home.  It is a feat that gives them both a solid, purposeful excuse for their decision to return,  carrying with them the wedding vows plans, to begin a life together anew, him having had his taste of the London high life, and her having more than enough time to lose her distaste for the rural life she ran away from.

St. John’s Eve is a locally-celebrated holy day marked by the town’s grand annual bonfire,  welcoming  in the new season of crops-planting and sheep-herding.  That Tom’s spare income from what the farm yields offers little in the way of prosperous living is not much in the way of luxury.  However it does give Bairbre the hope for a God-fearing, home-loving future with family and friends, neighbors who lend and borrow at will, and an open sharing of what they have with whomever clearly has need of it.

It is more than a pastoral visit that Conroy has in mind.  He discovers that Tom has been sharing his digs with a father who carries both an agreeable public persona and a dark inner secret that keeps him at bay from most of those around him.  Conroy has decided to leave all claims he has to the place and its surrounding land, meaning what value there is in the farm and its holdings, to his nephew Tom, and it is the revelation of the elder Groelish’s secret that erupts all the surface cordiality and turns it into the most complex set of issues that defy simplistic definition.

Yes, the woman who left more than a dozen years ago was more than a waitress.  Yes, the hard-drinking paternal ‘head’ of this meager household cannot keep his prejudices from sinking the lives of those he professes to love.  A death that looks like an accident, then maybe a suicide is revealed to be a murder, possibly at the hands of the feeble-minded helper Bartley, who is presented as the least likely assailant.  And yes, every one of these characters, so easily pigeon-holed due to a long-ago transgression from their past, faces a future far more shattering than they ever expected – a future built on the vision of a fresh start joined together with a surprise legacy.

How does all this add it?  It adds up to one of the most popular dramas of its day, a distinction it still holds today.  “The Mountains Look Different” brings back to Broadway the solid, heart-wrenching story-telling that is so often overshadowed by juke box musicals and weak adaptations of motion pictures with household-familiar titles and neat-as-a-pin altered endings.

This time, give yourself the kind of theatrical experience you always hoped would unfold when that curtain goes up for the first time.  Give yourself an escape from what’s going down on the street outside, courtesy of the steady, un-showy sure instincts and skills of director Aidan Redmond.  Give yourself not a single reason to criticize any performance from this sharp ensemble of steady, un-sentimentalized actors. Give yourself a great play.

AfterPlay

Chicago is on fire again, but this time, the source is the Steppenwolf theatre, where the Pulitzer Prize finalist “Minutes” recently completed a new Tracy Letts offering.  Fresh off his starring role on Broadway, in ‘All My Sons,’ Letts is now tending to whatever modifications may be needed to “Minutes” before Broadway gets another opportunity to witness the genius of Letts, author   [”August: Osage County”] and actor [“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”].   This newest piece will encompass an eleven-person company, set for its New York premiere next February.  Set inside the workings of an average town’s City Council, the story line does not mean to suggest answers to today’s political questions.  In the words of the playwright “it is about this contentious moment we’re having in American politics.” . . . inspired by novelist E.M.Forester’s play of the same title, “The Inheritance” copped this season’s Olivier Award as Best Play.  No casting choices have been publicly announced.  It will be helmed by director Stephen Daldry, and scheduled to open its Sept. 27 preview period at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, followed by its American legit premiere on November 17.  The ambitious, much-lauded work is performed during more than six hours, over a two-day period. . . .  Quick!  Find a friend to join you, to see “The Prom,” which will end its Broadway run at the  Longacre Theatre on August 11.  A national tour may give you your chance to attend the prom after all . . .  partnerships, like love affairs, are almost always the product of some random, unplanned encounter.  Take “Hamilton,” if you can get in.  The downtown theatre group Freestyle Love Supreme, founded in 2003,  can lay claim to being a matchmaker linking Lin-Manuel Miranda [playwright & composer, “Hamilton,”] and Anthony Veneziale, co-founder of Freestyle, which specializes in improv skills development and other theatre topics.  Alumnus Thomas Kail, eventual director of the musical bonanza, also passed through its portals.  Its school, the Freestyle Love Supreme Academy, accepts a modest number of new students each season to work with, including the above-mentioned, Ars Nova founders Jenny and Jon Steingart, and “Hamilton” co-producer Jill Furman.  It’s one of the best places to go if you ‘…wanna be in the room where it happens.’ . . .  And at last, Bob Dylan will have a presence on the  GWW, when “Girl from the North Country,” built using Dylan music and fashioned around a Depression-era tale of struggle and survival.  The work of fiction will perform in two parts, starting on February 7 at the Belasco.  The times, they are a changin’.

On Book / AfterPlay

If the news that Marisa Tomei will head a revival cast of Tennessee Williams’ classic “The Rose Tattoo” this fall prompts you to explore a little more deeply the play and its cousins, you can pick up the playscript copy from Dramatists Play Service, or increase your Williams enjoyment with various collections that include that play, collections such as “Three by Tennessee,” a Signet Classic paperback that also offers “Sweet Bird of Youth” and “The Night of the Iguana.”   Real-life true tales of what went into the original casting process for “Rose” unfold in two autobiographies from original cast members: Maureen Stapleton’s autobiography [very chatty, very pleasurable reading] “A Hell of a Life,” written with assistance from Jane Scovell, as well as “The Good, the Bad and Me,” Eli Wallach’s extensive, behind-the-scenes autobiography from Eli Wallach, from Harvest Books. . . .

Eli’s frustration at being called back for several more auditions shines through as a [sadly] typical audition process, while his book, like Maureen’s delves into so many anecdotes and historical origins that you may want to set aside a generous block of time to sweep through their pages . . .given the masterful methods playwright Micheal mac Liammoir  employs to inter-weave the big issues inside the small lives in “Mountains,” it might open a whole new world of theatre to you, to become familiar with some other great Irish plays, old and new, famous and obscure.  Here listed with their authors are eight from among scores of titles to dive into – please note: most are found in collections instead of single copies, which will give you even greater insight into this vibrant land of outstanding, moving dramaturgy, giving light to the most relevant yet timeless topics they include, such as father/son relationships/ country/city living/ prostitution/ redemption, forgiveness, and how we all have personal views on what something [or a relationship with someone] is truly worth.

“Beauty Queen of Leanne” = Martin McDonagh

“Howie the Rookie” = Mark O’Rowe

“Dancing at Lughnessa” = Brian Friel

“Playboy of the Western World” = John Millington Synge

“Once” = Enda Walsh

“Trade” = Mark O’Halloran

“The Plough and the Stars” = Sean O’Casey

“The Importance of Being Earnest” = Oscar Wilde

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TONY VELLELA is a playwright, performing arts journalist, theatre critic, and theatre arts teacher.  His working sessions are limited to eight students.  His work includes “Admissions,” winner of the Best Play category in 2001 at the New York International Theatre Festival, performed three times in New York under the direction of Austin Pendleton, and published by Playscripts; other theatre work includes “Maisie and Grover Go to the Theatre,” published by ArtAge Publishing, plus several other plays and musicals.  They include “Mister,” the musical written for Anthony Rapp; “Aunts in Bed,” and others; he has written three books, as well as performing arts feature articles and reviews, which have been featured in Parade, Rolling Stone, the Robb Report,” Dramatics magazine, the Girl Scouts magazine, Pageant, The Christian Science Monitor, among many others, and included in The Whole Earth Catalog.  His small-class learning sessions, limited to no more than eight students at one time, are conducted from his home in Manhattan.  He is a member of the Writers Guild [East], the Mystery Writers of America and the Dramatists Play Service.  He has also taught at Columbia University’s Education Department and at HB Studios in New York.

CARMEL CAR & LIMOUSINE SERVICE, in business since 1978, has been selected as Intermission Talk’s official transportation company.  Its wide variety of services, including special theatre packages, and reservations, are available at www.carmellimo.com, the Carmel App, or at 212 – 666 – 6666.

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BOOKS recommended or referenced in Intermission Talk are available through the Drama Book Shop, the Tony Award-winning choice to secure any publication about theatre.  Currently undergoing renovation at its 250 west 40^th street site, the staff can be reached via 212 – 944 – 0595, or at www.dramabookshop.com.  When renovation or relocation plans have been completed, details can be found on its website, along with the taking of orders to be fulfilled when the new space is up and functioning.

Don’t Let “Oklahoma!”

Drown in Earth’s “Ink

by Tony Vellela

Haven’t the three of us met somewhere or seen each other before?,  Separately, I’m quite sure,  more than likely, or some other somewhere ?  Or somewhen before?  And in the visual parlance of one of the playscripts, a prominent ‘W?’

It begins to come back.  The ‘where’ – there were two – would have been thousands of miles apart – across ‘the big pond,’ as they used to pass off as sophisticated faux pas ‘slips of the tongues.’

The ‘whens’ were rather unknowingly incongruous.   They were set  on differing ends of a continent and a half – the 1980s.  Jonny Lee Miller, you were on telly and in a popular  Britcom called ‘Keeping Up Appearances.’    While [sort of]  the ever beloved Mary Testa was pulling it off [may that turn of phrase be used?] in the beloved off-Broadway musical piece called “In Trousers,” written, with score by William Finn.  Although the work was big distances apart both in length and stage presence [my favorite discovery of each of them was, for me,  Mary, as a memorable charwoman, while Jonny’s first was as Patricia Routledge’s  wordless boy toy.  Jonny appeared in a dialogue-less turn in William Graham’s “Keeping Up Appearances.”  Anyone with a keen eye could spot talent as it was, and still is.].

As many are fond of saying, last things first.  The current  revival of “Oklahoma!,” at Circle in the Square,  based on the Bard Summerscape Production  of the [last summer’s]  2018 version, based on the music of Richard Rodgers and the book and lyrics by writing partner Oscar Hammerstein II, was given its personal directorial style [at intermission, they even serve free chili in styrofoam cups!, by Daniel Fish.  Sheathe your hatchets.   There is very little that one would call sheath-worthy on display.

First, and as they also say, foremost, is Mary Testa.  Perhaps it was the aroma of the stewing chili being prepped for the free intermission doling [in styroform cups].  But how it came to pass that Aunt Eller became the sole and only inheritor of such a bountiful spread of cornfields passed right by.  As did the fact that her only niece  Laurey winds up residing in that remote, rather safe-seeming site.  Only other human person on the grounds is Jud Fry, an itinerant of sorts, going where the work needs him.

It is Aunt Eller’s singing voice we hear at first, extolling  this year’s successful corn crop [“. . . corn is as high as a elephant’s eye. . . “].  And among the  noteworthy elements of this American-import playing first in London during WWII was the voice, and then the sight and sound of a middle-aged woman, sitting on her front porch, all alone, churning butter.  American musicals were meant to be big brassy contraptions, all tap shoes, bright scenery drops and enough pretty dames to populate half the seats in the orchestra session, and every one of those  laps.

Gone.  Ev’ry bloomin’ Big Apple chorus cliche will open this ‘American musical,’ meant to give these ‘over-theres’ some taste of home that’s managed to get over.

Or has it?  American audiences, from the 1940s on down have come to identify the musical classic for what it has become , like Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town,” a somewhat fantastical recollection of their farm life or small town dusty-road street.  And just like Wilder’s brilliant refusal, ultimately, to turn that red balloon in the sky into the sun that will always go down, this, too, is slightly but easily visible to the attentive eye.

Eller’s cornfields look downright mouth-waterin’ to them cowboys’ cows.  And before you can whistle Mason and Dixon, [this here property tagged Oklahoma is just a territory, part of that missed meetings of the minds that has yet to have a statehood status settled, even if it means war].

There’s this hard-nosed, two-fisted, long-standing feud  between the settlers [read ‘farmers] and  the cowhands [read ‘cowboys who need grazing land wherever it shows up to keep those chows fed].  As feuds go, this is a dandy. because it’s local.  Whomever bids highest on Laurey’s famous good-eatin’ pie gets to escort her home and maybe such some.  Jud launched the gambling, but had to drop out when another of Laurey’s suitors starts upp-ing the bid.   The feverish almost child’s play gambling [who’s is bigger] ends up Curly bidding, and losing his horse, his saddle and his gun.

It’s a grand epic sweep of a fable, based originally on the Lynn Riggs play “Green Grow the Lilacs,” – Edna Ferber, where are you? – and then “Lilacs” was musicalized by Rodgers and Hammerstein.  Like many works deemed classics, “Oklahoma!” has earned the accolade for its longevity and spirit.

On to THIS production.  Given the reversal of trends nowadays, stage directors are again able to exert ‘creative control’ over what an audience experiences, be it cross-dressed central characters or runaway wolves chasing – what? whom? – in a recent production of Arthur Miller’s searing piece “The Crucible?”  Usta be, in theatre, that what was on the page is what’s on the stage.  Pretty much gone.

Not always bad, though.  The versatile, anchor-character of  this piece is not the young soon-to-be lovers or the second-banana twosome who get a plentiful and a half of the funny moments, or even poor Jud, the villainous handyman who is holed up in the make-do tool shed down below.

Aunt Eller [Mary Testa] needs a man’s assistance running the place, and Jud can do, make, put together or take apart most anything, except that one thing his hands can’t ever touch – Eller’s pretty, young, virtuous niece.  But some bad history behind him from another job, Jud has.

But in true R & H fashion, Jud and that rangy, well-liked but mostly unemployed Curly are doomed for each other.  After a rollicking good time at the town picnic where pies are auctioned off to help build a new school house, and guys take to tap-style dancing on the long wooden tables, Curly and Rod see less than eye-to-eye and trouble ensues via guns.  And this meant on the happy couple’s  wedding night.

Well, Jud winds up dead, Curly’s guilty hands are all over the place, and then Eller proposes to wait a day ’til the region’s minister of justice agrees, the cowboys and the milkmen all become friends.  Eller, you see, has fake news goods on the presiding magistrate ’til tomorrow, long after the train’s gone.  Cue, “Oklahoma!”

And don’t – do NOT forget that this piece has some of the most carefully-crafted, all-genre, easily transferrable tunes ever to resonate up and down Tin Pan Alley, such as “Surrey with the Fringe of the Top,” “I’m Justa Girl Who Can’t Say No,” “Poor Jud,” “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” and many more, which are now classics in many fields, such as jazz, country, Broadway, solo versions, etc. etc.  The ‘Can’t Say No’ club [Annie’s likely to be president]  puts her at the very top of any man’s hormones tending, and any good musician’s playlist.

Mercifully, as ‘they’ say, every cow must have a silver lining,  At least this middle-aged species of the bovine animal kingdom has but one, only one.  And this one even jumps over the moon.  Even though these three-quarters of a century has passed, it’s still faintly possible to hear that esteemed ground-breaking choreographer Agnes de Mille a faint squirm, a barely audible twist in that musty old coffin of hers.  Because, you see, Ms. de Mille is still heralded as one of dance’s queen bees, the one whom all the others mimic with assiduous fervor, lest the whole colony lose its way.  Experimenting with iconic movement can offer new perspectives, bold and often enlightening interpretations.  Ms. de Mille’s dance sequence, showing us how this near wayward, perversion-tempted chorine is genuinely torn between life’s good and evil, righteous yet close to seduction young woman [think of what happened to Julie in ‘Carousel’].  Billed as Lead Dancer, clearly talented Gabrielle Hamilton’s body language, scoots, scrapes and wall-huggings do not a bit to express Laurey’s anguish, even in a fantasy.  Her fifteen minute-plus gyrations give us nothing more than a steamy selection of mid nineteenth century gyrations.  This Act Two opening segment nearly  strangles the core of this revered piece.

Even during the elephant’s eye height of the sun, outstanding performances shine very brightly indeed.  Hard to locate a better-suited young woman than Rebecca Naomi Jones to capture the  ‘ will I – don’t I’  quandary of a late teen-aged girl during that isolated confusing state of mind, in this desolate place; Ali Stroker’s ready-to-bust exuberance of the aforementioned Ado Annie gives her an unexpected, very well-received couple of numbers;   and her on-again off-again beau Jim provides  James Davis that same untrained ambivalence mixed with the energy of hormones busting and a generous portion of downright dumbness to make a woman like Annie go nuts – and she almost does.  Her rendition of “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No” nearly explodes with  effervescence.

But the two leads in this big-cast  old-style feast of music and nostalgia, and in this production, they do so very well indeed.   Jones, as previously well-noted, combines the just-off-the-train-from-the-east with the steady-enough hand to give a pistol a solid home to play in.

But it’s Damon Daunno’s Curly who gives credence to the male lead role.  This is a character who knows when and how to shoot a gun [almost never] and how to give it all he’s got strumming a purdy love-like song.  This is the wild west version of the knight in shining armor, or more aptly, the very good night who wakes up next to you ready to give a meaningful warning shot to a territory buster, as he is to chow down two slabs of bacon, a dozen eggs and that third cup of coffee.

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Even before Rupert Murdoch [Bertie Carvel] gets in his first hunch over the breakfast-as-meeting meal, he’s hooked former college classmate Larry Lamb [Jonny Lee Miller] onto the fantasy dream of buying, then transforming Fleet Street’s losingest paper into a mass market behemoth.  The scheme, lure so many of the has-beens and also-rans from previous  rags, and give them the chance they’ve been fantasizing about all these many bygone years, when television became the news source of choice.  No pages of ads to clutter, near borderline salacious ‘coverage’ of ‘the news,’ and all manner of copy that would have you believe it’s all honest-to-God true.

Murdoch’s brainchild – and that it is – would NOT put another paper in competition, but create a new kind of competitor.  Murdoch sees a craving for fast-paced, minimal facts coverage of the news of the day, with the remaining ‘real estate’ used for other purposes, i.e. nearly illegal ‘Page Three’ girls [and by girls he meant girls] wearing, or almost wearing swimming suits that barely qualify to be called that.

Differences arise, mostly due to the two men’s divergent views on what their paper – the Sun – should be covering, or uncovering, as it were.  This is not a mere business ‘creative differences’ tale,  It says, on one hand, stick with the good old hold ’em ’til you fold ’em gamble gambit [the old way] versus branch out, conquer unchartered territory.  The new territory, their arch enemy – television.  First, get a foot in that door, then never pull it out like it’s your office and you are the boss.  And stay there until you are.

Times change.  They assuredly do.  But the way people get their news also changes.  Hurry, hurry, scurry.  Less ‘news,’ and more non-news.  Call it by its real name=filler.  And boy could Mr. Lamb fill those pages.  Astrology is now news.  Crossword games are now news.   Twiggy =types wearing barely enough fabric fashioned to keep a porno squad busy.   Even what the Queen wears, including the contents of those ubiquitous, color-coded  handbags serious state papers and such, might contain.

So Act One jives along, complete with a conga line and pop era tunes.  You know – fun.  Isn’t that what ‘news’ should be – not gloom and doom, war and bloodiness, but tenth grade reading level fun.

Along comes Larry Lamb [Miller], eager to take some kind of mid-thirties flyer that may sound a little risky, but . . . what the hell.  They’re British, after all.  The chance-takers from way back.  Miller accepts Murdoch’s plan, takes some of their mutual money, and jointly buy the low-rent news rag colleagues laugh at.

About face!  Miller re-imagines a new-type newspaper.  Those formerly-called scantily clad barely out of their teens girl-women eating up a third of the front page.  Inside, news of the city, country and world – at least as much as will fit.

And then, as in any good guy-bad guy-worse guy saga, a Third Act surfaces, because Miller is crazy like a Fox.  It’s the telly, not the pages, that pull in those buyers.

You may have already deduced a variety of endings.  None of us knows for certain the almost real-life Hansel and Gretel ending – who actually comes tumbling down.  Hopes, and stakes, run high.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the award-winning “Admissions” at the New York International Fringe Festival, produced three times off-Broadway directed by Austin Pendleton.  His play ” Maisie and Grover Go to the Theatre” is published by ArtAge.  He’s written three books, and numerous performing arts features for, among others, The Christian Science Monitor, Dramatics, Parade, The Whole Earth Catalog, Pageant, Life and many others.   He has taught theatre-related topics at several venues, including HB Studios, the 92nd St. Y, Columbia University, and elsewhere.  He now conducts private mentoring and auditions-related from home,

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CARMEL CAR 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 www.carmellimo.com, the Carmel App, and at 212 – 666 – 6666.

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“Life Sucks” on a

“Nantucket Sleigh Ride”

by Tony Vellela

What do “Nantucket Sleigh Ride” and “Mamma Mia” have in common?  They both require the maximum amount of suspension of disbelief in order to enjoy what they have to offer.

Playwright John Guare [“Six Degrees of Separation,” “House of Blue Leaves,” etc], at 81, had no need to add another unique work to his resume.  Like his other notable plays and screenplays, “Nantucket Sleigh Ride” delivers on many levels, not least of which is giving its audience lots and lots to chew over.  For a start, the central character, masterfully brought to life by John Larroquette, has both the acting chops and the energy to keep things rolling along apace, rather like an Aaron  Sorkin invention, racing along like a runaway locomotive, but with the benefit of a little humor. Larroquette is a wounded, disaffected writer whose one claim to fleeting fame is having penned a moderately successful work tiled “Internal Structure of Stars.”  In the present day, at work in his office, his secretary has discovered that her boss is THE Edmund Gowery, an answer in today’s Times crossword.  This catapults the action back to 1975, when he penned his hit.  Gower, using his newly-minted income from the play, is urged to purchase a property on Nantucket, as an investment – sight unseen.

Every conceivable turn of events, which include but are not limited to news that Roman Polanski wants to adapt him to write the screenplay for a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Suspicion,” the appearance of the local police due to a discovery that his house has been the headquarters for the distribution of photos of child porn, the explosion of “Jaws” onto the national pop culture scene, two unsettlingly off-center children, an electrocuted lobster, and the return of the cryogenically preserved Walt Disney.  If some of these references ring no bells for you, fear not – my 20-year-old guest was also unfamiliar with many of them, but picked up on just enough to come away having a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

But I digress  because the plot details require it.  Playwright Gowery’s memories of that time period barely keep up with his ability to try to sort them out.  There are, at times, a hectic air about all of this, proof that an intricate plot can twist, and still keep you engaged, especially when the laughs keep coming.

“Nantucket Sleigh Ride,” at Lincoln Center’s Newhouse Theatre, traces some of its pleasures of its measured madness to its director, Jerry Zaks, whose credits include two of Guare’s other familiar works, “The House of Blue Leaves” and “Six Degrees of Separation.”

A few words about one of the other major contributions to the production that help keep it moving along briskly.  David Gallo’s sets and projections meld together with great skill, built around a basic design of three ‘strips’ of doors, each able to slide in and out to reveal a playing area suited to what’s needed.  It’s a perfect example of how a designer can more than boost the accessibility of a difficult play.  You’ll only find it difficult if you attempt to organize the plot points and find logic where there is little.  What there is plenty of is Guare’s true craftsmanship.  Enjoy.

Borrow from the best.  Somewhere along the early way of his career, some teacher or mentor must have ingrained this advice into the fertile brain of writer Aaron Posner.  He took that advice and enhanced it, by either reworking or reimagining the classics of many, among the most notable of which is his ‘sort of’ adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”  When it premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1899, it was not immediately popular, but grew in stature and acceptance, enjoying productions throughout the provinces.  Here, Posner harvests so many of Chekhov’s signature styles in the creation of his characters and situations, then making them somewhat more contemporary in their development.  Don’t let the title “Life Sucks” either put you off or cause you to heap scorn on the playwright for trying to lure you in with a title that sounds like one of those new plays that labor over the tribulations of so many twenty-somethings, struggling to find themselves and along the way, a route to commitment with another something.

This is not that.  Transported to an unidentified American [suggested] locale and a time period of the day, “Life Sucks” unfolds on the country estate of a retired professor, his wife, his daughter by a previous marriage, the region’s doctor and others related to them by marriage, blood or circumstance.   The drive to maintain the estate’s value and beauty, defined differently by different people, drives all the action, which happens not in actual movement, but in encounters, conversations, disagreements and resignations to what is, and likely will transgress.  Director Jeff Wise, keeping all the balls in the air and then some, benefits from the welcome vision of The Wild Project, at the Wheelhouse Company Theatre.

Chekhov’s Yelena [wife of the professor] has undergone the most radical alteration.  Posner dubs her Ella, and has given her a far more educated history, including three degrees, the absence of which in the original makes her far more problematic to deal with.  She is still the object of serious romantic fantasies by the doctor, and by professor Vanya, and neither enjoys the thrill of having his fantasies realized, except for a hot kiss she bestows on the doctor.  About now you may be thinking ‘I don’t have enough knowledge of the Chekhov classic to take all this in.’ Your thinking is wrong.

Like the best of all Chekhov works, this adaptation by Posner retains the feature that has made Chekhov the revered master he still is – a rich, textured attention to the interplay among people who are from each other, near each other, at odds with each other, and subject to the entire range of every human emotion and passion.  These days, we’re lucky to get in new plays a tenth of that.

Afterplay

When an actor takes on the job of portraying a real person – living or dead – physical resemblance can enhance the performance.   Now comes word that the Manhattan Theatre Club will present  next season the world premiere of “Bella Bella,” a new solo show written by, and starring Harvey Fierstein.  And the first person to find this to be a smashing idea, I believe, would be Bella herself, because she had a great sense of humor.  She once told me how she found it funny that a reporter from another country [forgot which one] asked her, based on her first name, whether she was Spanish or Italian . . .  the Stage Directors and Choreographers  not-for-pofit  foundation will be accepting applications through April 22 for their 2019-2020 Observationship Program.  This is a unique project where early – to mid-career directors and choreographers can observe master directors and choreographers on Broadway, Off-Broadway and at leading American regional theatres, from first rehearsal through opening night.  Those chosen will receive a weekly stipend plus travel costs.  All questions can be answered at programassociate@sdcweb.org . . . more than 100 episodes of interviews with theatre professionals from around the world, conducted by playwright George Sapio, are available at onstageoffstage.org . . . if you weren’t around in 1992, when the new-at-the-time musical “Crazy For You” opened, [book by Ken Ludwig, music and lyrics from the various shows of the Gershwins], and shook up the Broadway universe by re-introducing great choreography onto the Great White Way, you’ll be pleased to hear that a revival is planned for next season, directed and choreographed by its original choreographer, Susan Stroman.  You may also recall that, during the preceding years, big musicals were mostly imports from the Brits, which were pretty much devoid of dancing.  Stroman told me later that there were so few trained dancers auditioning for the show that they had to make an extra effort to find qualified candidates to execute her work .

On Book

If you are really keen on learning about Anton Chekhov and his plays, one of the best sources is ‘The Complete Plays – Anton Chekhov,’ translated by Laurence Senelick, from W.W. Norton and Company . . .  and lest you think that Mr. Senelick is a one-trick pony, he also lent his commendable skills as an editor to “The American Stage – Writing on Theatre from Washington Irving to Tony Kushner,” from The Library of America.”  In his Foreword to this collection, John Lithgow writes “Open up this book to any page and experience the glories of two centuries of American theatre.”

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre, “Character Studies.”  His play “Admissions,” winner of the Best Play Award at the New York International Fringe Festival, received three productions in NYC and is published by Playscripts.  His play “Maisie and Grover Go to the Theatre” is published by ArtAge.  His musical “Mister,” written for Anthony Rapp, featured a score by Misha Piatigorsky. He has covered the performing arts in numerous publications, including The Christian Science Monitor, Rolling Stone, Dramatics, and Parade, and other work of his have appeared in The Whole Earth Catalog, Games Magazine and other outlets.  He has taught theatre-related courses at HB Studio, the 92nd St. Y, Columbia University Teachers College and other institutions around the country.

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CARMEL CAR AND LIMOUSINE SERVICE, in business since 1978, has been selected as the official transportation company Intermission Talk.  Its wide variety of services, including special theatre packages, and reservations, are available at www.carmellimo.com, the Carmel App, and at 212 – 666 – 6666.

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Can “Cher” and the “Maestro”

Find the “Choir Boy” Visiting

“The Waverly Gallery?”

 by TONY VELLELA

What does one plus one plus another one equal?  Add in another two.  Answer:  no one can count that high.

But here are the components: a play that should be on anyone’s ‘best of the season’ list.  Careful, metered direction.  And a dream cast, with each character given a just-right combination of highs and lows when called-for.  An old adage that covers all aspects of a successful play and production proclaims “if it’s on the page, it needs to be on the stage.”   This time, it’s the latest Kenneth Lonergan play “The Waverly Gallery.” [ He was, to be fair, collecting his Oscar for best screenplay, for the riveting “Manchester by the Sea.”]  Similar to his other great theatre work, this one zooms in on a rather small story, with just a few characters.  And similar to other Lonergan gems, such as  “Lobby Hero” and “This is Our Youth,” “The Waverly Gallery” allows us to drop in on a situation that may sound not especially engaging or stoked with enough ‘basics’ to hold our attention.  Its spot-on casting perfectly weds actor to role. And the masterful direction comes from its keen, very resourceful direction by Lila Neugebauer, who extracts every bit of substance a play needs.

And that second grade arithmetic question at the top?  It refers to the kind of ensemble interplay that any playwright prays for.  Gathered together to discuss the fate of a small, modest but respected Greenwich Village art gallery are three generations of the family who have given the place its respect, even when hard times nearly called for posting a closing sign on the door.  It was carved out of a space not suited for many uses, since it extends out from the first floor of a hotel.  This time, such a sign will announce that the gallery will be shuttered in a month’s time, because it has been rented all these dozens of years by Gladys Green and her now-deceased husband.  She is now in her eighties, a factor that complicates the proceedings as much as the firm decision by the landlord to convert it into a sort of breakfast nook.  And there’s also the absence of art lovers who no longer make it a regular place to visit when hunting down new talent.

What’s not new is the combined talent of the place’s main decision-makers, Gladys [Elaine May], her daughter Ellen [Joan Allen] and her grandson Daniel, [Lucas Hedges].   This trifecta of acting talents provides “The Waverly Gallery” with one of the most engrossing ensembles on view at the Golden Theatre.  Don’t put off taking it in before it’s gone.

Elaine May, now 86 and just as sharp and biting as she was as half the legendary ‘Nichols and May’ comedy team about half a century ago.  When the duo broke up in the early sixties, Mike went forward as an award-winning stage and film director, while Elaine remained almost unseen and unheard of, in rare acting and directing gigs on screen [one of the better examples was “A New Leaf”].  As Gladys, Elaine May returns to the stage, bringing with her four score’s worth of know-how when it comes to the requirements needed to meld solid moments of laughter with the over-arching presence of pathos.  Her Gladys is almost peerless when it comes to performances that are long-remembered after the play where it’s on view closes.  Here is a woman whose back story includes service as a lawyer while managing the gallery’s business.

As her daughter Ellen, Joan Allen turns in another performance that manages to balance light moments when she tries to convince Gladys that this deadline is real, with a just the right dose of the grim inevitability that the gallery, and her mother, must now suffer through.  The situation becomes all the more critical when Ellen must glide over her own fears that she may be headed for the same double trouble that has crippled her mother – fading memory and the dwindling of her hearing. Unlike so many actors, Allen has conquered the tendency that afflicts a large number of her cohorts – telegraphing a seemingly unavoidable development waiting in the wings for the moment when her character reveals the true consequences of the eviction.  It gives her Ellen room, consciously or not, to deal with the ever-changing realities she is expected to address.  Bringing to life the bottom third of this family ‘triangle,’ she constructs the foundation on which this small-details, large-impact set of  happenings must rest.

And the youngest of the three, Ellen’s son Daniel refuses to assume what his mother has accepted as inevitable, the closing of the gallery and with it, the ‘place’ where his grandmother becomes a woman with a rich history, but no real future.  Lucas Hedges makes Daniel’s plight nearly unavoidable.  Ellen’s decision spearheads a sharp turn in her son’s future, as well as this actor’s own life’s fortunes.  This character, struggling to navigate his boulder-strewn  pathway, played out on stage eight times a week, offers a close-up look at why Hedges has skyrocketed to the A-list of actors in a space of less than two years.  His Oscar-nominated work in “Manchester by the Sea” two seasons ago came at the start of a rich bounty of roles for Hedges to show off his wide range of skills.  About the time that the Oscar role was starting to be seen, Hedges, in the off-Broadway spiky drama “Yen,” undertook the harrowing mind-set facing a teen-ager trying to keep his life free of the influences that overtook him, coming as it were from the death or absence of both parents, while minding the meltdown of his brother, in their comic book, video games and hard drugs existence.  And seemingly in the blink of an eye, Hedges tackled the gripping fate of two other movie roles of teen-agers confronting addiction, in “Boy Erased” and “Ben is Back,” either of which should give him another Oscar nomination.

Lonergan’s  playscript, helmed by Neugebauer’s directorial mastery, results in one of the best stage productions of the year, which must be seen, providing as it does with an opportunity to see again [or for the first time] the vivid character development of Elaine May, and another chance to see Joan Allen on stage, even as her Oscar nominations continue to grow.

The race race is on.  Eager to capitalize on the country’s short attention-span when it comes to serious issues, the Manhattan Theatre Club’s production of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “Choir Boy” returns to the New York stage, having been previously presented by them off-Broadway in 2013.  Little has changed since that playscript was last produced.  Taking place in an exclusive Harlem boys prep school, it centers itself on the choir, where competition to become its coveted next lead singer leads the group into a clash of values between two camps, when the obvious candidate Phalus, whose mostly unacknowledged homosexuality provokes clashes between him and his allies, and the boys who need to enforce their own ideas about masculinity.   Pharus, the stand-out singer performed by the stand-out performance from Jeremy Pope, relies on his vocal acumen to carry him through the tough times when confrontations escalate from the verbal to the physical.  Pharus has, in his corner , his straight, tough-as-nails roommate  Anthony, the ideal supporter someone like Pharus dreams of having.  The sides are not an even match.  When Bobby [J. Quinton Johnson]  the son of the school’s headmaster [Chuck Cooper]  inserts himself into the challenge, the stakes get higher  It is decided that one way to cool down the heated atmosphere is to present seminars on ‘thinking, and to call in, out of retirement, a well-respected former teacher, named Mr. Pendleton.   The role is portrayed by the veteran actor Austin Pendleton.  As Jack Paar would have labeled this writer’s choice of names for the character –  ‘I kid you not.’], to conduct a session on ‘thinking.’  However much the well-intentioned but out-of-touch with today’s issues  he may be, his esteem has not bestowed on him the kind of influence that is hoped-for.

The gripping realities of these kinds of conflicts are only depicted in connect-the-dots plot points, that are obvious to us, but not to the headmaster.  There are great musical moments, courtesy of Jason Michael Webb [music direction, arrangements and original music] and Camille A. Brown [choreography], displaying both the character’s belief in the universality of the power of music and song to lift up a person’s spirit, and the strength of this cast, particularly Mr. Pope.  The contrast between those moments, and the all-too-obvious directing choices of director Trip Cullman, make the disparity clear.

For those who need to find a confirmation of their own anti-racism, “Choir Boy” satisfies that need in an easy-to-take outing at the Friedman Theatre.   Others would not leave the theatre with any greater understanding of, or any deeper discoveries about racism.

A unique type of challenge exists for any creative team assuming the task of bringing to the stage the life, talents and times of acknowledged icons.   In large measure the burden  lands on the shoulders of the lead performer.  Currently, two figures being canonized this way are composer/conductor Arturo Toscanini, in “Maestro” and singer/actress Cher, in “The Cher Show.”  In deference to the fact that Toscanini has passed away, we take a look first at “Maestro.”

There is an inherent, big problem facing anyone looking either to introduce, or to enhance the life of any artist, because of the private personalities many artists possess.  In the case of Toscanini, that problem is even more of an issue, because the expression of his artistry goes largely unseen.  In an odd parallel, Toscanini’s life and work mirror that of a great painter, whose final ‘product’ can be seen as it hangs on the wall of a museum, or even in its reproduction on the printed page.  Here, the central character’s contribution can be detected by the very educated few who understand the kind of undertaking Toscanini excelled at – they would be able to detect the influence a conductor has when a particular piece he has charge of is performed, and to a lesser degree, when it has been captured on a recording.

Eve Wolf’s text plays out on an intimate set consisting of a comfortable, yet traditional living room setting, constructed to give a grand piano the prominent feature.  Three Victrolas, and a few chairs ring the perimeter.  This collection of pieces takes up about three-fourths of the stage at the Duke on west 42nd street.  The remaining stage space  suggests a performing area where a recording can be captured.   Musicians who contribute live excerpts of famous compositions are violinists Mari Lee, Henry Lang and Matthew Cohen, along with Ari Evan on cello, Maximilian Morel on trumpet and at the piano, Zhenni Li. Portraying the maestro is John Noble.

Drawing from letters, newspaper and magazine articles and other writings about him, Wolf has stitched together moments of professional triumph, and personal challenge.  We do get a sense of this tortured period, when his enduring romance with pianist Aida Mainardi, during the 1930s and 1940s unfolds.  She was thirty years his junior.  To the great disappointment of someone looking to learn about and understand his intimate trials, her words are not heard or spoken.  The same can be said of his wife, to whom he was married during that entire period.

The maestro’s influence is here presented with sections of recordings, and some live performances by the above-named musicians.  Included in the playlist are sections of the works of Verdi, Finzi, Respighi, Wagner and Gershwin.

It requires a truly cultured palette to discern which meals have been prepared by a master chef, from those that have been assembled by one with fewer talents.  So too are the periods of Toscanini’s work when he did, or did not display the kind of virtuosity that the honorific ‘maestro’ has earned.

Is there another way to depict the life and times of someone who has risen to the peak of her/his world?  Sure there is, if the product is a book by Rick Elice, along with music supervision, orchestrations and arrangements by Daryl Waters, and choreography by Christopher Gattelli.  Face the facts.  In this case, if you are charged with creating a musical about Cher, acknowledge that she has had a few outstanding careers, depending on which part of her life you want to display.  Cher, as seen in “The Cher Show,” first came to the public’s attention while still a teenager, as the distaff half of the chart-topping pair of Sonny and Cher.  The public did not abandon her when she split, publicly and privately with Sonny Bono.  They heralded a new conquest by Cher when, in 1982, she took on a lead role in Broadway’s “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.”  She took on other acting roles, the most famous of them in her Academy Award winning performance as best actress in “Moonstruck.”  Even more milestones were heralded, including the world-wide controversial video in the 1980s ,”If I Could Turn Back Time.”  But there was more.  Her major hit “Believe” became a must-play in the disco world, launching a three-year, worldwide tour.

How to cover all these victories in one show?  The decision?  Have the lead role of Cher played by three different women.  Broadway veteran Stephanie J. Block, buttressed by Teal Wicks and Micaela Diamond, give audiences the opportunity of seeing Cher at all the high points in her seemingly never-ending career.

Jarrod Spector as Sonny Bono and Emily Skinner as Cher’s mother fill out the other major personalities in her life.  And Jason Moore’s direction provides us with the playful experience of turning back time, complete with the music that has woven itself through the decades.  Normally, few credits acknowledge the contribution of the person overseeing the costume decisions.  Here, the contributions of famed designer Bob Mackie are just as important as any of the show’s other creatives.   They also chose to insert a short nod to Cher’s welcoming advice from another true performing arts America icon, Lucille Ball.  Cher welcomed Lucy’s advice at the advent of her solo act playing Las Vegas.

Be clear about this basic fact: all these A-list people were given the challenge of dramatizing a true American icon.  In addition to numerous Grammy Awards and Emmy Awards, she took home an Oscar.  Her singular accomplishments were recognized when, in 2018, the Kennedy Center selected her as an honoree.  It’s a good thing the Pulitzer people don’t have a category that Cher could be considered for.

After Play

It was during his early days producing, writing for and directing theatre pieces  that laid the groundwork for Orson Welles to create his matchless success in the world of film, and Frank Beacham and George Demas have collaborated on a piece that explores the final days of his career.  “Maverick” will have its world premiere presented by Pam Carter and the Cliplight Theatre at the Connelly Theater, 220 east 4th street, between Avenues A and B.  Previews begin on February 6, with an opening date set for February 13, ending on March 2.  Details are available at www.mavericktheplay.com . . . HERE [145 Sixth Avenue] plays host to the world premiere of “Between the Threads,” from January 18 through February 10, a theatre piece about Jewish women in America, exploring their relationship to their Judaism.  The work will be performed, and was co-created by Zoa Aqua, Hannah Goldman, Lea Kilisch, Luisa Muhr, Daniella Seidl and Laura Lassy Townsend.   Performance schedule and production details are available at www.between-the-threads.com.

TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre, “Character Studies.”  His play “Admissions” was a Best Play winner at the New York International Fringe Festival, and is published by Playscripts.  He has written nine other plays and musicals, including “Mister,” with Misha Piatigorsky, for Anthony Rapp.  He has written other books, and numerous magazine and newspaper articles for publications, including Parade, the Christian Science Monitor, Dramatics, USA Today, Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, the Whole Earth Catalog and Reader’s Digest, among others.  His work was featured in the final edition of the Whole Earth Catalog.  He has taught theatre-related courses at HB Studio, the 92nd Street Y, Columbia University’s Teachers’ College and other institutions.

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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 www.carmellimo.com, the Carmel App, and 212 – 666 – 6666.

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Why I Can’t Take ‘Lenny’

To My High School ‘Prom’

by Tony Vellela

Who’s your date for high school’s biggest social event, The Prom?

In the hot new musical of the same name, featuring music by Matthew Sklar, book by Bob Martin and Chad Beguelin, and lyrics by Beguelin, at the Longacre,  you’d be sure to have a great time if you plan to attend “The Prom” with the love of your life.

That was fifteen-year-old Emma’s plan, at least.  Her plan, brilliantly portrayed by Caitlin Kinnunen, was to invite her secret love, classmate Alyssa, [played with welcome  modesty by Isabelle McCalla].   This simple idea for the story line of a musical, conceived by Jack Viertel, was based on a true-life event.  But simple ideas have a way of becoming complex problems.

Enter: Broadway!  Here, a pair of ‘seasoned’ performers,  now conclude that their Big Break may never come.  Barry Glickman [Brooks Ashmansksas] and Dee Dee Allen [Beth Leavel] believe they have discovered the secret to keeping a flagging career from declining any further. The best method of keeping their names and faces at the public’s top of mind is to associate themselves with a sympathetic cause.  A quick survey of the world of popular culture reveals that all the ‘best’ ones  have been snapped up:  Parkinson’s disease = Michael Fox; animal welfare = Betty White; etc. etc. etc.

Enter: a random Twitter search, read by Dee Dee and Barry’s agent.  It tells the human interest tale of a teen-age lesbian, who plans to ask her true love to be her date, despite the opposition of nearly everyone in her small home town,  Edgewater, Indiana.  Parents, teachers, students and nearly everyone else decide that the best remedy for this vexing problem is to cancel the prom.   The agent points out that this is a great ’cause’ for them to champion.  Dee Dee and Barry are joined by Angie, [portrayed by Angie Schworer], whose current role in another touring company of ‘A Chorus Line’ still has her in the back of the line, after twenty years.

And when the save-the-world group hits Indiana, they cause more than anyone’s fair share of melodrama, which Emma did not request. Their hidden agenda was to associate themselves with this unreported story.   Dee Dee is fleeing the Big Apple following a rotten review covering her open and shut participation in “Eleanor – the Musical.”  Brooks hasn’t been seen on stage in years.  His fan base was based on when he appeared in a three-episode arc in the story line of a police procedural, and a showy role in an ill-conceived sitcom called “Talk to the Hand.”   Showing up wearing ‘We’re All Lesbians’ T-shirts does even less to endear them with the aggrieved students.

Imagine everyone’s surprise when they learn that the out-front, lead-the-charge opposition to this worldwide cause is none other than the mother of  Emma’s girlfriend, referred to only as Mrs. Greene.  Plus – the principal’s secret passion is to savor every new cast album release of Broadway musicals.  And as an extra bonus – he turns out to be Dee Dee’s greatest fan.  Having now been  exposed as a musicals geek, he pulls some strings and arranges for a prom to be held not on school grounds.

This two-act entertainment manages to keep all its balls in the air, due in large part to two basic elements that outshine their usual contribution to how successful any new, standard-format musical will be: the choreography and the score.  This show’s tunes benefit from the collective experience of the music and vocal arrangements by Matthew Sklar, the direction by Casey Nicholaw, and the collaboration among Glen Kelly [musical arrangements], the music coordination work of Howard Jones, music direction of Meg Zervoulis,and John Clancy’s musical direction contribution, as well as the overall choreography by Casey Nicholaw.  His fiercely energetic dance moves are reminiscent of the exuberant explosion of the teen-age boys in “Newsies.”

Even the casting choices deserve credit, taking two examples from among many:  Nicholaw knows just what to do with dancer Angie Schworer.  Her height of nearly six feet gives a great boost to many numbers.  She is reminiscent of the great character actress Charlotte Greenwood, who was known among the Hollywood Golden Years regulars for her ability to do more than eye-high kicks.  If you’re not familiar with her, look at her long legs skills in “Oklahoma!” And above all others, the choice of Caitlin Kinnunen for the pivotal lead role as Emma, creates the best possible balance within the story.  She believes in her right to do this.  There is no mawkishness in her portrayal, which would have undercut the basic truth that Emma must project at all times, a sincerity that allows an audience to stay with her, through all the obstacles she confronts.  This is an A+ performance, in vocals and in dance, which Kinnunen   tackles with ease.   Giving Emma this groundedness sets up just the right balance between the over-the-top reactionary behavior of the town and school population, and her belief in what she knows is the best expression of her real self.  The touching  ballad “Dance With You” more than earns its ability to deliver a real emotional punch.

It’s not a punch but a jolt that still has the power to bring someone to their feet.  It’s a visceral jolt that hits you as you hear one of Lenny Bruce’s original monologues.  It comes not from hate or bigotry, but from the deeply ingrained lessons we learn as a child about the correct, proper response we’re conditioned to have when certain situations, in this case the use of certain words, enter the conversation.

In “I’m Not a Comedian . . . I’m Lenny Bruce,” playwright and actor Ronnie Marmo shares some of the monologues that landed Bruce in jail dozens of times.  Peering out over the audience, he would shade his eyes, asking something like “Are there any niggers here tonight?  What about kikes?  Any wops?   Or spics?”  And even though this one-man work starts with Marmo as Bruce, sitting naked on a toilet, it is still the sound of those words, rather than the sight of a naked man, standing up and slowly dressing, that gets the bigger response.

The setting for this endeavor, the new Cutting Room site, equipped to host cabaret, plays, concerts and film presentations, is in itself the ideal location for a work that manages to pull together so many of the types of self-expression that Bruce tried to legitimize.  “I’m Not a Comedian . . . ” fits perfectly in the nightclub, cabaret mold, including table service of drinks.

Lenny Bruce, during the identity-seeking fifties and early sixties, dared his audience to challenge themselves and their beliefs.  It’s reminiscent of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s gentle assault on the religious and traditional mores of their era, especially in the Pulitzer Prize winning song ‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” in “South Pacific,” which challenges the rigid forbidden mix of couples from different heritages and cultures.  Many of his eventual followers might be surprised to hear that Bruce was on the same page as R & H.

Bruce was a libertarian of the highest order, whose best times came during his marriage to his wife Holly, who never felt that she was promoting anything evil or negative, let alone sinful.   She embodied many of the same qualities he saw in his mother Sally Marr, herself a purveyor of comic routines that might still be offensive in today’s ‘better’ venues.

There are a few good reasons to let yourself go, and enjoy the opportunity of seeing and hearing this piece of American culture.  He often proclaimed that all he ever wanted to do was to find the answers to life’s big questions.  To do that, he observed, requires the use of language.  And when one judge sentences him to not perform, he responds painfully “Please don’t take away my words.  They’re all that I have left.”  This plaintive beg for mercy echoes Arthur Miller’s character John in “The Crucible,” to ‘please leave me my name.’

The style of this work may or may not appeal to you.  But it would be wise to set aside your own prejudice against one-man shows, stand-up performances or bio-based material.  You may believe that you ‘know’ Lenny Bruce.  But these days, we can’t avoid the assaults from government sources on the very means we have to communicate truths. We are seeing and hearing this societal mission to denigrate language, to twist phrases and redefine words.  It all represents even more of a challenge now than it did in Bruce’s time.  We should have listened.

After Play

When anything gets extended four times, it deserves to have attention paid to it.  Specifically, the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene production of “Fiddler On the Roof,” which has been running at the Museum of Jewish Heritage will continue its sold-out run there until December 30.  After a brief respite, the show will take up residence at the Off Broadway Stage 42 on February 21, again directed by Joel Grey . . . just as prejudice and bigotry were Lenny Bruce’s main targets, “The Baby Monitor,” by David Stallings examines the prejudice against same sex couples adopting children.  It performs from November 29 through December 16 at the Theatre at 14th Street Y [344 East 14th Street at 1st Avenue.  It will perform in repertory with “The Rebel Playhouse’s production of The Fantastical Dangerous Journey of Q.”  For more information, visit www.rebelplayhouse.org. . . . the provocative monologue about one woman’s unapologetic take on sexuality that drew so much attention in London recently in “Fleabag,” will – yes, since you asked – will move to Off Broadway at the end of February at the SoHo Playhouse.  As more details are announced, you can learn about them here.

On Book

The lyrics in “The Prom,” by Chad Beguelin are only the latest examples of his noteworthy scribblings.  To take in a more comprehensive overview of his writing talent, check out the librettos by this four-time Tony Award nominee, for “Aladdin,” and for “The Wedding Singer.” . . . his partner in rhyme, Bob Martin, crafted the clever book for “The Drowsy Chaperone,” and all of these are worth the time to gather, if you are an admirer of clever musical theatre writing. . .  a very different type of material, but exactly the same type of prejudice faced Philip Rose’s memoir “You Can’t Do That on Broadway.”  He chronicles all the obstacles he faced, trying so hard to finally get a production mounted, of Lorraine Hansberry’s iconic work “A Raisin in the Sun.”  If the tale of someone knocking down walls for the sake of bringing great, new work to the American stage interests you, what he endured will mesmerize you.

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TONY VELLELA wrote and produced the PBS series about theatre, ‘Character Studies.’  His play ‘Admissions’ received three New York City productions, directed by Austin Pendleton.  He has written nine other plays and musicals, including “Mister,” for Anthony Rapp.  He has written feature articles about the performing arts for Parade, Dramatics, the Christian Science Monitor and Rolling Stone, among many other publications.  He has taught theatre courses at HB Studio, the 92nd Street Y and the Columbia University Teachers’ College.

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CARMEL CAR AND 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 www.carmellimo.com, the Carmel App, and at 212 – 666 – 6666.

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Books recommended or referenced in Intermission Talk, are available at, or through Manhattan’s Tony Award winning Drama Bookshop, 250 west 40th street, NYC 10018, or at 212 944 – 0595, or at www.dramabookshop.com.

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