June was busting out all over…and I went to the theatre.

In June I went back to Brooklyn for Cirkus Cirkor at the BAM Opera House. 

          

It was not our first time enjoying this wonderful Swedish troupe, nor will it be the last. The Cirkus excels at death defying acrobatics.  These people are awe-inspiring (and always inspire me to exercise, if only for a few days).  One of the astounding acrobats, at the opening of the second half, came forward and told us all to stand up, put our feet together, and close our eyes.  She also advised those of us on the edge — by which she meant the first row of the Mezzanine — to be careful!  Our bodies would be constantly moving in tiny jerks to retain balance. When you’re not reading an e-mail or walking or driving or anything, stand still and close your eyes, and you’ll feel it — your new balance.  It was a pleasing exercise in the middle of a thrilling evening.

Check their scheduled appearances here — in 2017, they’re in Europe, but they usually play the U.S. every year or two!  https://cirkor.se/en/node/26523/turneplan

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Kristine Nielsen, Kate Burton, and Kevin Kline in Present Laughter.

Then back to Broadway for Americans playing Brits:

Present Laughter at the St. James is not Noel Coward’s best play, and this production seemed almost set in stone. Of course, Kevin Kline was brilliant; and yet, the piece so lacked spontaneity that it just rode around him, like stationary horses on a merry-go-round.  Still, Cobie Smulders made an excellent Broadway debut. Kate Burton was quite fine as the “estranged” wife, Kristine Nielsen hilarious if formulaic as Kline’s long-suffering secretary, and they all made Susan Hilftery’s costumes look fabulous on David Zinn’s gorgeous set, where I would be happy to live. And Reg Rogers was marvelous.  The production, directed by Morris von Stuelpnagel, was expertly done for what it was; however, I felt there was a desperation to the play. Perhaps influenced by the cameras filming it that evening. Perhaps because it was a play Noel Coward wrote for himself to play in ...  Perhaps it was all about the danger of me looking forward to something too much. I left the theatre a bit disappointed. 

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The Joyous cast of INDECENT (Photo by Sara Krulwich)

Later in June, Indecent at the Cort Theatre was threatening to close.  I’d walked by the theatre all spring, more and more interested.  Suddenly it was the weekend the play was scheduled to close, so  I broke my own rule and trucked into Manhattan for a Saturday matinee.  Theatre instincts won out over MTA dread.  

The play Indecent by Paula Vogel and this production created by Vogel and director Rebecca Taichman combined their radiant talents and hearts to create sheer brilliance:  This is what theatre is about. Indecent is light years beyond other plays of the season.  Its subject matter ranges over religious life, pogroms, homosexuality, immigration, prejudice in all its forms, life in the theatre, censorship, and love.  Oh, the love.  Indecent is not a musical, but it has music and flowing, aching choreography by the scintillating David Dorfman, on top of imaginative story-telling that brought us into the lives of human beings in frightening times.  My absolute favorite play of the season, Indecent is heart breaking and joyous at the same time.  I was overcome.  The play extended another 5-7 weeks past its closing date, but it is gone now, and I’m so sorry for everyone who did not see it. 

 

Photo by Carol Rosegg

I must call out Richard Topol’s gorgeous work as Lemml, the Stage Manager, and yet that's misleading because every performance was sterling, between actor/musicians and musician/actors. Oh hell, I’ll just list them all:  Cheers to exemplary work by Katrina Lenk, Mimi Lieber, Max Gordon Moore, Tom Nelis, Steven Rattazzi, Adina Verson, Matt Darriau, Lisa Gutkin and Aaron Halva.

Also outstanding were Christopher Akerlind’s Tony-winning lighting design, Matt Hubbs’ sound design, scenic design by Riccardo Hernandez, costume design by Emily Rebholz, projection design by Tal Yarden, hair and wig design by J. Jared Janas and Dave Bosa, and the soul-baring and joyous work of Co-Composers and Co-Music Directors Lisa Gutkin and Aaron Halva. 

And oh, the rain.

Molly Matera, signing off BUT I do have good news:  For those who missed INDECENT onstage, it will be aired on PBS Great Performances on November 17: http://www.playbill.com/article/broadways-indecent-sets-november-air-date-on-pbs-great-performances  Mark your calendars and DVR!

He Walks Again

The most exciting and discouraging aspect of a good production of a 134-year-old play is its timeliness.

The Almeida Theatre and Sonia Friedman Productions company has brought Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts to BAM.  This 95-minute adaptation by director Richard Eyre of Ibsen’s scandalous 1881 play is beautifully produced at the BAM Harvey Theatre, with a 19^th century living room backed by a dark scrim through which we could see the 19^th century dining room.  The smooth design of the play was gorgeously integrated, the scenic design by Tim Hatley merged with the lighting design by Peter Mumford and the sound design by John Leonard. Before the first word is spoken the play is set in its time, place, and mood.

Pastor Manders and Mrs. Alving.  Credit:  Almeida Theatre 2015

In 1881, Ibsen’s play shocked its readers and reviewers, dealing as it does with adultery, deceit, debauchery, and syphilis.  In 2015, when it appears nothing shocks us, we are still dealing with similar brainwashing. Yes, I call it that when a woman takes responsibility for a man’s actions. More than a century later, this attitude still resonates. It happens today (“look what you made me do”) and in 1881, the society, the church, and the people themselves put an unbearable load on the backs of women.  

The main character has been dead for ten years.  An orphanage donated by his widow will be dedicated on the day the play occurs, named after the Honorable Captain Alving, a misnomer.  Mrs. Alving is excited, this has been a long time coming.  Better, her son, who lives abroad, is home and promises to stay the winter.  Her little maid is a local girl who practices her French on Mrs. Alving and the lady’s business manager and pastor.  The son, an artist, sleeps late.  Oh, and there’s the maid’s father, a typical drunken brute with whom the girl Regina does not wish to live  She is part of the Alving household and wishes to remain so, in any capacity.

That’s the set-up.  By the end of the play, the dishonorable “honorable” Captain Alving is revealed to all, his orphanage is burned down, and his name will now be attached to a proposed home for sailors we’ve nodded and winked about all evening.  The Alving line ends here, onstage, with the only legitimate son suffering from inherited syphilitic fits before us.  That’s not a spoiler in a play first produced in 1882.

Lesley Manville takes wing as Mrs Alving

Mrs. Alving has known and hidden all these years that her husband was a debauched drunkard who took his sexual pleasures wherever.  She did her duty as a married woman, protected her son from his father as best she could, and made the family rich with her business acumen disguised as her husband’s.  The bull-headed pastor for whom she had unreasonable affection insisted she did her wifely duty. 

We are shocked to see her response when she first hears the “ghost.”  The “ghost” is a repetition of a sound, a sound Mrs. Alving heard when she realized her husband was having an affair with the maid, under Mrs. Alving’s own roof.  In the dining room.  The same sounds, the same murmurs recur with her son in the dining room with the maid.  But wait, it gets better.  The maid in the present dining room is the illegitimate daughter of Captain Alving and that other maid, and therefore half sister to young Oswald Alving. Stakes rise.

When Oswald’s behavior echoes that of his father, he raises the Ghost, causing all the truths to come out in exorcism.  

The revelations of the last act affect each character differently, but Mrs. Alving’s final revelation was the most distressing.  She seems to believe that, since Oswald wants the same things his father wanted, that this meant that Alving Senior’s profligacy, drunkenness, carousing and multiple adulteries were her fault. A distressing reaction.

I’m still bothered. That’s the effect the theater should have on its audience, days later, and longer. The son’s fits at the end of the play were disturbing and heart rending. The fact that Mrs. Alving and her son were totally alone in that big house was fitting as lights dimmed red into that dark dawn.

 

Dawn for Mrs. Alving and Oswald Alving.

Lesley Manville is a wonder, always a living, thinking, feeling human being on the stage, listening without artifice when the other characters — and the audience – focus away from her.  Sometimes beautifully still, always controlled, Lesley Manville as Mrs. Helene Alving was fascinating to watch and hear.  She held us all in her thrall from start to finish.  The evening was hers, as Ibsen intended.

Brian McCardie as an Irish version of Jacob Engstrand was rather standard as a habitual drunk, the alleged father of Regina, known to the region as unreliable at best.  He has a dream and a scheme woven through the lives of the other characters. Mr. McCardie’s performance held no surprises.

Charlene McKenna as Regina Engstrand was a bit much, playing “young,” eager to please, too jumpy.  Perhaps that’s what Mr. Eyre directed her to do in order to appear young and energetic and potentially joyful, but it didn’t ring quite true.

Will Keen as Pastor Manders was on the mark to the point that he annoyed me.  It’s right there in the lines that the man doesn’t listen, and Keen inhabited Manders well, showing us a man who is so sure of himself and his faith and his place in society, and everyone else’s place in society, that he hasn’t listened in decades.  His narrow beliefs, uncompromising and unfeeling ways, lead to his destruction, and Mr. Keen’s tightly strung body was on the verge of collapse once he realized he had indeed destroyed the orphanage and subsequently his own soul.

Billy Howie played Oswald Alving as about 17, although I believe he’s supposed to be in his mid twenties. He was sulky, spoiled, and totally his father’s son, and the only person who couldn’t see that was his mother.  But she heard it at last as he was ready to repeat his father’s history with the maid.  Mr. Howie’s final scenes were harrowing and heart-rending and brought the play to a shocking climax.

I liked Richard Eyre’s adaptation, I feel it captured the spirit of the original without being bogged down with 19^th century verbosity.  Good theatre is supposed to make us feel and think, and sometimes change comes of it.  Ibsen played his part in the early days of the quest for women’s social equality to men.  The quest is not yet realized, it is not won.  For this play, a 21^st century adaptation reminds us that while some advances have been made, it’s not enough.  Ibsen’s fears live on.

~ Molly Matera, signing off with a recommendation to see this production of “Ghosts,”  playing at BAM through May 3, 2015.

Friends, Romans, Dutch?

This is not really a review.  I am merely contemplating a production I saw the other week.  A production of three Shakespeare plays, one after another, intertwined.  A long Saturday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  But I’m not reviewing.  Merely musing, if you will. 

My anticipation had waned in the months between ordering tickets for Roman Tragedies and the date to attend.  In fact, I dreaded the advertised 5 ½ hour performance.  Mind you, having survived a 4 ¼ hour opera earlier this season, I felt I could do anything.

Now I know the truth: It is good to be mad, if it’s mad to book tickets for an adapted mash of Shakespeare’s Roman tragedies — Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony & Cleopatra — being presented with neither reserved seating nor intermissions.  In Dutch.  For those who wonder why I’d see a play in Dutch, it’s simple:  A good silent film still tells a story.  Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and glorious as the verse often is, he was a dramatist, a storyteller, and a good one.  More, consider this:  When the actors speak in a language I don’t understand, I don’t have to suffer anyone mangling the verse.  The story still works and the characters still live.  I can guarantee it works in Japanese, Swedish, Portuguese, French, and now Dutch.

In director Ivo van Hove’s interesting gambit with his company, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, news crawls of today’s reality (Israel, Gaza, Hurricane Sandy) combine with crawls of the Volscian War, which appeared below a huge screen showing some part of the onstage action.  Time recorded and broadcast somehow flies faster than time ignored.

The conceit was this.  The company of Dutch actors were in modern dress.  The stage was covered with seating areas you might see in a large lobby of a beige hotel whose guests enjoyed eavesdropping on one another’s conversations.  And the audience was allowed onstage for most of the play, during which time they could lounge in that lobby, wander at will, get a drink from the onstage bar, or access the internet from a work station.  They were encouraged to Tweet to #RomanTragedies during the performance, therefore no phones or cameras were hidden away.  [Note:  This is annoying.  Flashes from the stage should have meaning, not just be a nuisance factor.]  The audience could watch the actors live and watch the actors on the live feed while reading the English subtitles.  Set and lighting design by Jan Versweyveld supported van Hove’s parlor game, and the video design by Tal Yarden was quite good. 

And the crawl: Never forget the crawl.  Clearly van Hove assumed (rightly) that the audience knew nothing of 5^th Century BC Rome, or Volscians of any time, let alone that the new Roman Republic’s famed senate only represented the upper classes until the fifth century BC, and then the plebeian tribunes were barely tolerated by the less humble of the upper classes, all of which is rather important to understanding the action of the first play, Coriolanus — well, I don’t know where that sentence started, but suffice to say, the “news” crawl was welcome.

For our amusement, van Hove uses and abuses television and internet news styles.  By providing the barest necessary information in Tweet form along the bottom of the screens all over the stage and in the BAM café, the audience felt no pain at the production’s length and remained tightly focused on the action from the fifth century to 44 all the way to 30 BC.

It’s always odd to read a translation of Shakespeare back into English, but this adaptation is sharp: Large blades were applied to the texts of Coriolanus and Julius Caesar.  Rather unfortunately, by the time the shears got to Antony & Cleopatra, they’d been dulled a bit.

But I digress.  In any case, the news crawls explaining the wars and the politics and the power struggles were enlightening and often hilarious.  When somebody died, the name of the character with years of birth and death were displayed (e.g., Julius Caesar 100 BC - 44 BC), then augmented by startling spoilers, like “180 minutes to the death of Brutus;” or “240 minutes to the death of Cleopatra.” 

Each scene change included a countdown clock, telling the audience they had 4:36 to use the bathroom or down a half pint of a local harvest brew (mediocre).  Tweets that had made their way from the stage to the internet joined the crawl, some of which were quite amusing.

With all these shenanigans going on, perhaps we all laughed a bit more than we ought to have.  These are, after all, Roman tragedies.  The small but excellent cast left us in no doubt of that.  This is a remarkable repertory company production with most of the actors appearing in all three plays in roles of varying prominence. 

For instance, Chris Nietvelt played a television interviewer in Coriolanus (slyly interviewing the Volscian Tullus Aufidius after his defeat by Caius Martius a.k.a. Coriolanus, and later after his storming of Rome with Coriolanus after the latter’s exile — got it?); a fine nervous Casca in Julius Caesar; then she topped off the night with Cleopatra in Antony and.

The only actor I didn’t particularly care for was Roeland Fernhout, whose Cominius in Coriolanus and Thidias in Antony & Cleopatra were unobjectionable in themselves yet too similar in the same evening.  His Brutus in the middle was mostly dull, until he called for his slave Lucius, and answered… himself.  Sweetly.  Is Brutus mad?  Was there a political point to be made by Brutus speaking for or as Lucius?  Am I dense?

The production had, perhaps, three minor flaws: 

1. The audience onstage, moving freely about, was distracting and sometimes annoying (see earlier note re cameras flashing). 
2. Microphones in addition to the audience onstage.  I couldn’t tell where Tullus Aufidius was for most of his first scene with Caius Martius because he was surrounded by audience members and the voices of miked actors all come from the same place.  It was the same feeling I’d had years ago when the Delacorte staged Richard III with Mary Alice’s powerful Queen Margaret speaking from behind a crowd of men on her first entrance.  She could have been a ghost, since we could not hear where she was until the men parted and she came through.  Annoying in 1990, miking of actors without compensation in staging by directors is barely forgivable in 2012.
3. Finally, if the director and translator could shorten Coriolanus and Julius Caesar as much as they did, surely they could have cut 20-30 minutes out of the Antony & Cleopatra. 

A high point was when there was … nothing.  There was no noise beyond the audience shuffling about on the stage.  Television screens showed a pop band performing, but there was no sound.  Cleopatra cried out for music.  Marc Antony finally came out and said “let’s take it back to….” [I could swear he said it in English but cannot be sure.]  Then Cleopatra and Charmian essentially said to hell with the absence of music and started to dance wildly, to which the audience responded with uproarious approval.  Great way to get past a technical glitch. 

The end of Coriolanus, taken as a rebuke against anyone attempting to mess with the Republic of Rome, jumped ahead 400 or so years to blend seamlessly into Julius Caesar.  There are great speeches in this play, family relationships galore, and many ways to confuse an audience. Director van Hove and Adaptor/Translator Tom Kleijn avoided them cleanly. 

Julius Caesar rolled naturally into Antony & Cleopatra with the same actors continuing in the roles of Octavius, Lepidus, and Antony, joined by Chris Nietvelt as Cleopatra.  Here the actors who played larger roles in the first two plays play smaller (still vital) roles in the last play, finishing up with a bang.  A hoot and a holler.  An altogether marvelous evening in the theatre. 

~ Molly Matera, signing off to re-read the Roman tragedies before she goes back to BAM to see the Trojan Women…in English.

Stars Shine on and in "John Gabriel Borkman"

Ibsen is tough. His plays are long, dense, and melodramatic. The Abbey Theatre’s production of “John Gabriel Borkman” presently running at the BAM Harvey Theatre is 2 hours and 40 minutes long (with intermission). The night we went, I was beginning a nasty winter cold, so when I learned the play’s intended length, I drooped.

However, this tight production featured three shining stars in the theatre firmament, and they kept this piece from becoming deadly. It didn’t hurt that this new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play is concisely written by Frank McGuinness and deftly directed by James Macdonald. Alan Rickman, Lindsay Duncan, and Fiona Shaw lift Ibsen’s “John Gabriel Borkman” above itself. It’s still melodrama, but it’s the best melodrama imaginable.

The set-up: It has been many years since bank manager John Gabriel Borkman’s arrest and imprisonment by the state for embezzlement. He lives incarcerated now in his own house – his wife downstairs, himself upstairs. The house is in fact owned by his sister-in-law, Miss Ella Rentheim. It's a visit by Miss Ella that starts the action of the play.

Alan Rickman is the titular John Gabriel Borkman, a 19th century Bernie Madoff who insists that, had he been left to his own devices for one more week, all his investors would have their money. Rickman moves like a big cat trapped in a dark Norwegian cage, pacing predictably over his wife’s head. And occasionally growling.

Fiona Shaw plays Borkman’s wife Gunhild, a woman who whines the livelong day of the ills done to her and her perfect son by this man. Reputation, of all things, cannot be restored for a convicted thief (she refers to him as “the bank manager,” “him,” never by name). She leans slightly forward as if she carries a weight on her shoulders, balanced by the bustle.

Lindsay Duncan’s Ella Rentheim was Borkman’s first and only true love, and she stepped in to buy the entire estate at auction when Borkman went to jail. Everyone lives now on her dime. She also took in the young son, Erhart, for several years, and developed a close relationship with him.

Where Borkman was once the contested property of the two sisters, this uncoveted role has been transfered to the son, whose heart, soul, and loyalty are the prey of Ella and Gunhild.

The triangle of Borkman, Gunhild, and Ella has been at odds for decades, and the one day and night in which the play takes place is the culmination of all the years, all the emotions, all the blame, all the lies, all the truths.

I first saw Lindsay Duncan 24 years ago when she starred in “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” with Alan Rickman on Broadway. She was luminous then and she still is. He was grace and lethality then, and he is now, although he’s not the same kind of dangerous. Fiona Shaw brings the excitement of a fulfilled character every time we see her, with an oddity, a twist, a quirk, always a real human being in a strange or terribly ordinary place. She opens and closes this play and is one of the few actresses who could assuredly be one of a threesome of stars and not just a third wheel to the Dynamic Duo of Rickman and Duncan.

Cathy Belton, as the divorced (shocking in the time period of the play) woman Mrs. Wilton, came in too high, at the height of her game, like a musical theatre actress starting at the top end of her range with nowhere else to go. She continued in this vein, as if seeking applause, trying to play as big as Rickman, Duncan, and Shaw without quite knowing how to go over the top without appearing to overplay.

The eagerly anticipated Erhart Borkman was fine – Marty Rea played kindly with the women who each wanted to smother him, was barely civil to his father, and warm with Mrs Wilton and Miss Foldal. Erhart is in high demand, with expectations from his mother, his aunt, his paramour. Mr. Rea is appropriately at sea amongst all these women pulling him this way and that. He will long earn his living in the theatre with few people knowing his name. He didn’t stand out amongst the stars here, but that wasn’t his job, and he knew it.

We wondered why the maid spoke in an Irish accent, forgetting that this was a production by Ireland’s Abbey Theatre. Whatever accent, Joan Sheehy as “Malene” had that mixture of subordination and familiarity an old family retainer needs.

Frida Foldal, the young girl giving music and naïveté to John Gabriel Borkman, was played demurely by Amy Molloy. Or perhaps brilliantly. She had no special something, but the character hasn’t. Frida is the girl that fades into the background in the room, the girl who wants to dance at the party but acquiesces to play the piano so that others may dance. She always will. That her character came through so clearly to me tells me that Ms. Molloy did her part well, serving the play. No shimmer or sparkle, since the character has none.

Finally, John Kavanagh embodies the role of Vilhelm Foldal, the sad sack friend of John Gabriel Borkman. Vilhelm is the would-be poet, and father of the wallflower behind the piano. Vilhelm is as naïve in middle age as Frida is in her youth. He cannot see what is right before him, even when Borkman cruelly tries to drive the message home. The story gets uglier and uglier, with everyone with any money at all (therefore excluding the Foldals and the maid) behaving terribly in the past and the present – let’s call it a sliding scale. The machinations of Mrs. Wilton are as nefarious as the fiscal manipulations of Borkham all those years ago.

These more-than peripheral characters serve as a glimpse of reality of the rest of the world of which John Gabriel Borkman, Gunhild Borkman, and Ella Rentheim have no clue. Their world has always been self-centered, selfish, and pointless. Mind you, the world around them isn’t so great either.

The story of the play is convoluted – neither life nor melodrama is simple or linear. “John Gabriel Borkman” requires exposition to explain the play’s forward movement, and I tend to think I’d hate it but for this production’s nimble pacing and superlative performances.

There is, however, a problem in the second half, near the end. The play’s already over, but it continues. No amount of whirling snow blown around the stage will change the fact that it’s time for the play to be finished. Everything’s been said, everything’s been done, everyone’s been left by their vain hope for change. Drop the curtain.

Whatever weaknesses of the play – its dated style, the unpleasantness of characters with whom one cannot really identify -- one thing will always resonate: Alan Rickman’s melodious voice.

Am I a fan of Ibsen? Yes and no. His plays are important in the history of theatre, and many a fine play that followed would not have been produced without Ibsen having come before. Ibsen’s plays were very bold, even scandalous, and searingly honest, in a time when such attributes in a theatrical production took actual courage. Watching those plays now, however, is rarely fun. Nevertheless, kudos to the Abbey Theatre, adapter/writer Frank McGuinness, director James Macdonald, for giving us a production that was fun to watch. Their production made the time far more than bearable, and the actors almost made me care about their archetypal characters.

And let’s not forget the other artists. Fine design all around: Set design by Tom Pye, lighting design by Jean Kalman, costume design by Joan Bergin, and sound design by Ian Dickinson.

This production of “John Gabriel Borkman” is worth your time, and it’s running at the BAM Harvey Theatre through February 6. Good productions of Ibsen in your lifetime will be rarities. Catch this one while you can.

I will close with my favorite line from the play: “Winter can drag on.” Can’t it just.

~ Molly Matera, hoping you’ll log off and go to the theatre.