9 to 5 + Trickster = Disappointing

This month the Women’s Project is putting on an experimental play — experimental in that it has multiple playwrights and directors creating it, rather like the large writing staffs of television sitcoms.  Not surprisingly, that’s what We Play for the Gods seemed like, except that it lacked a laugh track.  The laughs, chuckles, even giggles, were provided by a living audience.  However, in terms of the evening’s entertainment meeting the barest structural elements needed for a “play,” well: a beginning (none), middle (muddle), and end (still waiting). 

(C) 2012 Women's Project

The actors in We Play for the Gods are valiant creatures, so talented they make this play appear to work. Alas, it does not.  Is it a case of too many cooks?

As the audience enters the Cherry Lane Theatre, a woman sounding vaguely like a BBC Newscaster makes real and unreal announcements, asking (so discreetly) for donations for the Women’s Project in a soothing voice.  It’s rather difficult, therefore, to know when the play starts, since the same voice apparently proceeds as a radio broadcaster, awakening Simi, aptly described as a dysfunctional scientist.  Simi is well played with quiet pain and passion by Amber Gray.  A clip-clopping is heard — happily not a latecomer coming down the aisle but rather Annie Golden as Marla, office manager/administrative assistant/what have you for decades at the May Institute, “a world-renowned research institute dedicated entirely to the study of human behavior….” and so on.  Marla is experienced and practical, broken, used up.  Next in is Susan, a temp whom you just know will be arty. She’s terrified, oddly dressed for corporate America, and as we come to learn, a poet.  With an MFA, no less.  Irene Sofia Lucio plays this lost young woman beautifully, as Susan tries desperately to fit in, using her powerful “confident” voice that fools no one.  Lisa is the boss, perhaps once a scientist but now a brusque, tightly wound fund-raising executive with a repressive and probably vulgarian (male of course) boss above her.  She is bound to break into sharp shards before the evening is out, based upon this pitch perfect performance by Erika Rolfsrud.  And finally, the uninvited guest, a trickster “god” in blue, messing with everybody as if their real lives weren’t bad enough.  This mad woman, called the Provocatrix in the program, is played irreverently by Alexandra Henrikson.

Left to Right:  Erika Rolfsrud, Amber Gray, Alexandra Henrikson, Irene Sofia Lucio, and Annie Golden

These five dauntless women work very well together onstage and make us almost care. 

Was the point to show us that disparate desperate people are forced in our society (as if it’s different in any other) to work together in a place where nobody wins, nobody thrives, no one survives?  Or is it about “Trix,” the blue bitch who comes by to throw wrenches, high winds, and seagulls into the works to destroy what little these people have.

Only Susan, the frustrated poet — who seems to believe the Trickster may be her mischievous, miserably mean muse — seems to accomplish anything by the end of the play.  Simi appears to have gone quite over the edge, and Lisa and Marla will live on through Scotch. 

Yes, the Trickster god is not beneficent.  Nevertheless, just what was the point?  What we have here are four interesting characters in search of a story.  If those staff writers — seven playwrights, four directors, three producers — can find one, they may be able to write a play instead of a sitcom episode about working women, a derogatory phrase if ever this working woman has heard one. 

The Women's Project's latest project was disappointing.

~ Molly Matera, signing off to search the Internet for episodes of Murphy Brown.

Ghostly Follies

After years of listening to the extraordinary score of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” on various albums and PBS programs, I have finally seen a full production.  This production of “Follies” directed by Eric Schaeffer was presented earlier this year at Kennedy Center and is now running at the Marriott Marquis on Broadway. 

All that listening, and certain songs never seemed to fit.  Now at last I’ve seen the flow of the story, in the present, in the past, and in the actual “Follies” sections of the second act, and I get it.  

Mind you, that second act was theoretical the night I saw it.  On entering the theatre we were told that, despite the printed program proclaiming one fifteen-minute intermission, the play would run two hours and twenty minutes with no intermission.  Artistically this is a valid choice.  However, it does make concentration on the second half of the show more difficult for many people in the audience.  Producers will have to weigh their choices — if they continue the run without intermission, send a forewarning:  "At your pre-theatre dinner, eat light, drink less!" 

 The story — this old theatre, the Weismann, is being torn down to make way for a parking lot, its former showgirl stars are coming together for a reunion, and among them are Sally and Phyllis, who were wooed, bedded, and wedded, in various orders, by Buddy and Ben.  In the intervening thirty years, these couples, like the other former “Weismann Girls,” have had full lives, but reunions have been known to shatter the status quo.  What memories are accurate, which romanticized, who were they then, who are they now?  One might expect a different story from book writer James Goldman and Sondheim, and yet…. many a simple, if tangled, storyline of primary romance, secondary romance, and comedic romance have occasioned some great, great show tunes in the past.  The “Follies” score does not disappoint.

The show is a bit too long, but most of the performances are top notch.  The house is hung in a funereal manner and blends into the stage set by Derek McLane.  “Follies girls” from 30, 40, and 50 years before return in 1971, dressed to the nines (mostly) with their spouses (mostly).  The women, ranging in age from 49 to 79, make their entrances down a staircase wearing beauty pageant banners proclaiming the year of their reign:  1919, 1926, 1931, all the way into the early 1940s.  They are shadowed by their ghosts…. beautiful young women dressed as “Ziegfeld girls” (or in this case, “Weismann”) moving as they did in the past, accompanying the women’s entrances, songs, dances….The present day women are aging, but clearly some still dance, as evidenced in my favorite song-and-dance number, “Who’s That Woman” (which I think of as “Mirror, Mirror”) led by a joyously boisterous Terri White as Stella.

A stunning use of the ghost girls was “One More Kiss,” a very old-fashioned operetta number sung by Heidi (opera singer Rosalind Elias) and the ghost of the girl she was (Leah Horowitz) in an absolutely fabulous dress (one of many perfect outfits by costume designer Gregg Barnes).  It was a beautiful duet from another time, or two.

One of the most famous songs from the show, “Broadway Baby,” sung elsewhere by everyone from Betty Garrett to Elaine Stritch, is here sung by Jayne Houdyshell.  Ms. Houdyshell doesn’t quite have the pipes for it, but she’s got the acting chops, so it works.

“Could I Leave You” is a show stopper in this show full of numbers that can bring down any house. I’ve heard it sung by men and by women, and Jan Maxwell wins. 

Jan Maxwell as Phyllis Rogers Stone owns this show.  It’s not just that she’s tall and sleek and has a fabulous dress.  She is a goddess, she sings, she dances, and her acting notes are perfection.  She has emotional responses to people, she’s relating to them while she’s singing and dancing.  And she’s having a helluva good time. 

Elaine Paige is just fabulous as Carlotta — having listened to her for years, I’m happy to finally see her in action.  She most certainly is “still here,” as she sells “I’m Still Here” with emotion, cynicism, and a still solid voice breaking through any limitations of time and space. 

Alas, Bernadette Peters is not at the top of her game as Sally.  She’s overacting here and there, and her upper register was not serving her in the performance I saw.  Bernadette was too turned into herself, her Sally.  She telegraphed her frantic emotions from the moment Sally entered.  I was in the back of the house, how false must that have appeared to those in the front?  Then in her most important song, “Losing My Mind” in Sally’s Folly, she internalized too much.  She not only didn’t move left or right, she didn’t move us, either.

I’ve barely mentioned the men.  Well, while the women performed functions of plot, they were also fully fleshed out.  This is not just the actors, this is Sondheim and Goldman.  The men, on the other hand, could be traded in for other men in similar stories — the sincere second choice guy, the one you rely upon but don’t love; the ambitious insincere guy that women fall for blindly or with clear vision.  While Danny Burstein as Buddy Plummer (the sincere guy, Sally’s husband) and Ron Raines (the insincere guy, Phyllis’s husband Benjamin Stone) did their jobs more than adequately, still those guys are not memorable or distinct from characters in countless black-and-white movies seen in my (and probably Sondheim’s and Goldman’s!) youth. 

The section of the show I least understood aurally was delightful onstage, the outlandish Follies.  Throughout the play, the younger versions of Ben (Nick Verina), Sally (Lora Lee Gayer), Phyllis (Kirsten Scott), and Buddy (Christian Delcroix) had shown us what really happened in the past.  Finally they have their own folly, “You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow.”  As the “Folly of Youth,” it’s sweet and hopeful, leading in to the Follies of the same people thirty years later, which are neither. 

I particularly enjoyed Buddy’s Folly (“The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me Blues”), which was much better than his earlier number (“The Right Girl,” which was one long note no matter how athletic the choreography), and Phyllis’ Folly, the quirky “The Story of Lucy and Jessie.”  These numbers were significant to the characters’ problems, but neither self-indulgent nor maudlin.  On the other hand, Sally’s number was dull and Ben’s went on much too long. 

James Moore’s musical direction of the show is just marvelous, the music gorgeously grand and lush with a full orchestra in the pit.  It’s one of the traditions of Broadway musicals that should be revived more often.  Visually the show gave us the remains of old show business, including those gorgeous ghosts …. showgirls dressed in impossibly high headdresses, high heels and scanties, moved slowly along the catwalks, steep staircases, sometimes in tandem with the modern women, sometimes drawing attention from the center stage action.  This production is very well done, just not perfect.  But what is?  The play’s last moments were lovely — a lone “ghost” reaches toward the last living beings to leave the theatre, leaving us to wonder what happens to all those graceful ghosts when the parking lot paves over the theatre.

And then I start thinking of Joni Mitchell…..

~ Molly Matera, signing off to sing and dance to an old recording…..

"As You Like It." Or Not.

Time was, I worked in my day job with a friend as passionate about theatre as I. I’d come into the office with my program the morning after seeing a play, and we’d go over it together. I would already have marked it up with Xs and check marks, and scribbles throughout, so we’d relive the good and bad bits of the production for a little while before the work day robbed us of our real lives.

Alas, we no longer work together, so I write reviews instead of speaking them. I still mark up the program with X’s and checkmarks and scribbles, and did so again on the subway ride home from seeing “As You Like It” (hereinafter “AYLI”) by William Shakespeare, at the BAM Harvey Theatre on Wednesday night, as directed by Sam Mendes for the Bridge Project. I’d been looking forward to it. The idea of the Bridge Project has been my dream of the perfect working life since I was about 14 – a group of actors playing in repertory, this one bettered by the ‘hands across the water’ aspect of the Bridge Project’s Anglo-American company.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

AYLI is not a play for which I have strong feelings – I’ve never acted in it or seen the perfect production. Nor do I have directorial yearnings to do an interpretation that brings the play to life in my mind. I preface my review so as to explain that I have no expectations that need fulfilling for this play. No hurdles need be leapt. I do, however, have expectations of the Bridge Project and Sam Mendes, and Wednesday night both were sorely disappointing.

Some highly skilled actors and some with lesser skills have not found the heart of this play. My conclusion: The director did not lead them to it. Sam Mendes, do not take a bow for this one. In fact, Mr. Mendes, tell me this: Have you read AYLI, and do you realize it is a romantic comedy? By the rules of Shakespeare, AYLI is a comedy because the young lovers, despite all the obstacles in their way, get married at the end. Romance. Get it?

This is not to say I had a dreadful time. There were plenty of good, even lovely moments during the evening. Just not a coherent whole.

POSITIVES (or "Good Stuff"):

Stephen Dillane as Jacques. His presence is entrancing – it’s an indefinable thing some performers have, and he’s got it. He’s so alive onstage that he owns it although he’s not trying to pull focus from anyone else. His phrasing is spot on, his wit disarming. In one brief scene I couldn’t quite hear him, and I hope someone from the production was in the audience so as to tell him to pick up that one scene with Rosalind-as-Ganymede. Beyond the technical, I have heard complaints that he wasn’t melancholy enough. But really, what does anyone think those quips and jibes are about. Dillane’s Jacques may not seem melancholic, unless you’ve ever met a comic. Melancholy does not mean his assessments aren’t on the mark or that he’s not funny. He’s scary funny. Jacques is just smarter than your average melancholic.

Alvin Epstein’s old Adam. Servant to Orlando’s family for decades, he chooses to follow our hero into exile. Epstein was believable, living, loving, as he trudged faithfully to the Forest of Arden, and dies beautifully at the end of the first half. With music.

Music: A positive and a negative. The music was well done, pretty, sweet and melancholy. With all the depressed people in this production, Jacques need not be morose. As I write this, I can hear Dana Falconberry’s new album, Halletts, in the other room. She can combine sweetness, light, and a touch of melancholy in a single phrase. Perhaps if Mr. Mendes had remembered AYLI was a comedy, he could have hired Dana for the music.

Edward Bennett’s Oliver. As the nasty elder brother of our hero Orlando, Edward Bennett was smarmy and mean. His transformation in the Forest to a better man, quite unusually, worked. More, I believed that sparks flew between him and Aliena/Celia. That instance of love-at-first-sight was played sweetly and surely, and not just for a laugh, as was Rosalind and Orlando’s. But more of that anon.

Michael Thomas as both Dukes, the usurping younger brother at Court, and Senior in the Forest, was solid as a rock, the actor in the company that plays whatever role he’s given well and honestly. He delineated both roles and played them surely, even when other actors on the stage may not have given him much to work with.

Ron Cephas Jones played the usurping Duke's wrestler Charles quite well, then reappeared in the Forest of Arden as the First Lord accompanying Duke Senior, doing his double duty well.

Thomas Sadoski as Touchstone was excellent, funny, and I wished him onstage much more often than he was. He’s in love, he’s not, he was, he wasn’t, he wants to wed Audrey, just not permanently. He’s hilarious and he had more heart than many a clown and just about anyone else on the stage, with the exception of Anthony O’Donnell and Aaron Krohn.

Anthony O’Donnell as the old shepherd, Corin. A funny fellow, good company, a wise old teacher, he is much smarter than those city folk think he is, rather sly, and sweet voiced. I quite enjoyed him.

Aaron Krohn was Silvius, the foolish young shepherd in love with Phoebe. He was sweet, sincere, focused, and paying attention. We should pay attention to him.

Jenni Barber’s Audrey was delightful. She lifted the scenes she was in, often in silence. The girl doesn’t need lines to be entrancing. She’s one of those small women often cast in ‘clown’ roles, presumably so she can throw herself into the arms of any size man and not only not knock him down, but bowl him over wrapping her legs around his waist -- as Elton John might have put it, “like a well worn tire.”

Ashlie Atkinson played Phoebe intelligently. She’s got the smarts but not the chops yet. I watched her and felt she was still in training, not yet fully committed or developed, or self confident. Brain, not heart. Nevertheless worth watching in years to come.

I’m torn on this one. I’m not sure if I liked this, but it certainly gave me a start when William (Ross Waiton), the “country youth” who also loves Audrey, with whom Touchstone is smitten, head-butted Touchstone. I actually let out a cry. Waiton was charming in his brief conversation with Touchstone, and certainly left an impression.

Michelle Beck rather overplayed Celia in the Court scenes at the beginning of the play, but came into her own when disguised as “Aliena.” She handled the abuse of Aliena well – the poor actor in that role is always stuck on stage with Rosalind talking and talking and talking. This may not always be hell, if the Rosalind/Ganymede is fun and not reciting rote lines with intellectual rigor. Through it all, Aliena must always stand witness. Ms. Beck had a response to all of these scenes, and it was negative – loyal to the death to her cousin doesn’t mean she can’t be angry with her and disapproving of her behavior. A valid choice well played in difficult scenes.

NEGATIVES (or "Not So Much"):

Alvin Epstein’s Oliver Martext. Yes, I know, I get it, the name is Mar text, but I didn’t understand a word he said, I didn’t know what he was doing, where he was going, who he was. He seemed to be from a different play. (Clear positive being that I didn’t recognize Epstein.) For me, that scene was wasted time on the stage. I believe it was one of too many contributing to this comedy running 2 ¾ hours.

Time. Comedies should not be 2 ¾ hours unless they’re interrupted by singing and dancing and good stuff. The Love's Labour's Lost I saw at Pace last month was three hours long and not a moment of it was wasted or annoying -- it was delightful. Generally, if Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers can do the main romantic comedy, sing and dance, plus subplots in about 80 minutes, everyone should. That may be extreme, but it’s a theme for me.

Dunking Oliver’s head into a bucket as inducement to get information on Orlando was far too reminiscent of modern waterboarding and did not belong in the play. I repeat: AYLI is a romantic comedy. Please!

I recognize that a director or actor may say, “Comedy, sure, but they are still people, with feelings, including anger and fear, etc., etc.” Yes, quite so. Please do play the character in the moment, stakes for each person must be high. That does not mean that the usurping duke’s methodology should in any way resemble Gitmo. And that’s all I have to say on the matter.

Final dance. I’ve seen it too many times before at the end of too many plays to find it charming, no matter how well the lively Audrey begins it.

Flow. Scene followed scene, but there was no flow, no ebb, no build, no rhythm to carry the story forward. In fact, what was the “story” of the play in this production?

Core issue: This is a comedy and a romance. The primary romance is between Orlando (Christian Camargo) and Rosalind (Juliet Rylance). Sound out those characters’ names. Or – lan – doooooooo. Rozzz – a lind. Lengthen the vowels. Relish them. These people are supposed to have fallen in love at first sight, they should speak each other’s names as if they were the most beautiful sounds in the world. They do not. (“All the beautiful sounds of the world in a single word… Maria. Maria Maria Maria.” Thank you Stephen Sondheim.) If we don’t believe in the love story, if we don’t care if the lovers ever get together, where’s the story? Why was the audience expected to sit there for so very long waiting to see if those two people who did not appear to be in love would get together at the end?

Juliet Rylance was too busy showing off her skill in scansion to take the time to say Or Lannn DOoooo. She was, in fact, Johnny One Note throughout the evening, with minimal changes in her rhythms or stock of vocal and facial expressions. And she wouldn’t stand still. An annoying actor.

Christian Camargo as Orlando began the play dully (in an admittedly difficult opening scene in which his entire first monologue is the exposition of his own back story). (Aside: In this very same scene, Alvin Epstein showed inexperienced actors how to listen without appearing to be listening too hard.) Orlando’s wrestling scene with the Duke's man, Charles, appeared overly choreographed – as well as poorly lit -- as if Mendes couldn’t decide between a totally stylized or a realistic fight. After said match, Camargo was actually funny, when he could not speak in response to Rosalind. I had hope, then. Alas, he continued dull through the rest of the play. He lacks rhythm. He knows how to speak the verse, everyone in this production knows how. The intellect should take care of the scansion and memorization, and then let the character take over.

There should be a tug of war between Orlando and Rosalind-as-Ganymede-as-Rosalind in their wooing scenes in the Forest, but there’s really nothing going on. Even after the faux wedding performed by Michelle Beck as Aliena, Orlando and Rosalind kiss – this should reverberate through the theatre, but it does not even cause a ripple between the pair. This does not bode well for a love life.

These two actors may be married in real life, but they have no chemistry onstage.

I think the primary problem is that Camargo is miscast as Orlando. Even when Rosalind’s not around, the man’s uncomfortable in his skin. The stage does not belong to Christian Camargo. Orlando is a disgruntled boy, not a man until more than halfway through the play (and that’s about Adam, not Rosalind). When Orlando rushes the camp of the banished Duke in his armed attempt to steal food for his old servant, the Duke and his men refrain from killing Orlando-as-Armed-Interloper only because it’s in the script. Orlando’s actions should be totally inept, he should appear as the desperate child he is. That’s the reason Duke Senior should spare and befriend him. But Camargo appears to be about 15 years too old for this part, so Michael Thomas’ Duke Senior had to play the scene as if Camargo’s Orlando was clearly more endangered than dangerous despite what the audience could clearly see.

So where does that leave us? For me, at least, there are three major problems here.

1. Juliet Rylance playing Rosalind like a lit major with no training in acting, just interpreting verse. Conceivably her reserve could have been broken down by a sweetly romantic likeable Orlando.
2. Unfortunately she didn’t have that to play with, since Christian Camargo just doesn’t have “it” and doesn’t seem to try. He was a very languorous Orlando. Still, these first two problems are not insurmountable.
3. Insurmountable is a director who doesn’t recognize a comedy when he sees one, who directs the designers to be dark, dull, sullen, and sodden as the actors fade into strange backgrounds that belong in a Beckett play, when said actors should be leaping into the light.

How and why did Sam Mendes come to interpret this play as dark and gloomy even after all the characters arrive in the Forest of Arden? I cannot know, but he did not direct a comedy, and that’s a shame. It could have been fun.

"Quartette" n'est pas "Les Liaisons Dangereuses"

Quartette is a play by Heiner Müller, in French with English supertitles projected above the BAM Harvey stage. It is allegedly based on Les Liaisons Dangereuses, although Müller admits he never finished the original novel when he wrote this play in 1980-1. Since I know the story, I didn’t think the supertitles would be necessary. As it happens, though, the production was “conceived and directed” by Robert Wilson. The result is, while somewhat linear, not a straight line. Or a single line. In fact I suspect many sections of the line were erased.

I spent far more time reading brief but repeated text than I had expected, although my ear picked up more of the French as the evening went on. As M said, this evening fulfilled my opera quota for the year. No, they weren’t singing. But Isabelle Huppert’s monologues and, for want of a better term, dialogue, were certainly arias, as were those of her male counterpart (in more ways than one), Ariel Garcia Valdès.

The opening drew us in with elements visually and aurally interesting. A scrim showed a landscape painting with somewhat clothed musicians in the foreground (Frans Wouters’ “Le Concert Champêtre”). Before it, Mlle. Huppert crossed the stage extremely slowly; an old man sat at the head of a table, a slim young woman with an exceptionally long braid bouncing along her back danced in giggling; and a young man entered, pointed his dancer foot at the old man, and “shot” him. Shortly after this, the old man took out a pistol and shot the young man. Visual and sound designs were sharp and engaging. We were in for a treat.

But soon the opening passed into the next staging, and the next. Not scenes, as such. Stagings. Watching Huppert, in her deep purple off-the-shoulder dress, very pale makeup, and distinct red lips, speak French exceedingly fast (but not so fast that we didn’t know she was repeating the same few lines over and over again) is really only fascinating for a little while. (It is entirely possible some heterosexual men and/or homosexual women will disagree with me on that point.) Apparently Mr. Wilson consistently has one of his characters appear in Kabuki style, and last night it was Valmont: a red devil of a creature, who was sometimes green, and once off white. His vocalizations sounded like those of someone using a machine to disguise his voice during a particularly loud obscene phone call.

In case you don’t know “LLD,” this story is about sex. Carnal, illicit, lusty, ex-marital, blackmailing, controlling sex. Huppert’s brash laugh was frequently followed by a wink to the audience or a long curling tongue. The play is filled with audacious images, quite a few of which are amusing and/or affecting. This to assure you I did enjoy some of the evening.

Huppert plays the Marquise de Merteuil (except when she appears to be playing Valmont), Valdès the Vicomte de Valmont (except when he appears to be playing Merteuil or Madame de Tourvel). Three other performers play with them – Louis Beyler, Rachel Eberhart, and Benoît Maréchal. These three people were welcome additions to the stage, but it is difficult to say who they played. One of the men is young, very fit, and presumably represents Danceny. The young woman is sometimes Cècile, the virginal convent-trained niece Merteuil wants Valmont to seduce, and sometimes Mme. de Tourvel, whom Valmont wishes to seduce. One of them is an old but remarkably spry man, and no one knows who he’s playing. He’s a hoot, out there dancing in his white nightshirt while men and women in black (a.k.a. stagehands) change the drapings and set pieces rather too often.

Mlle. Huppert and M. Valdès habitually looked anywhere but at each other. While each spoke to someone outside his or her line of sight, other characters would appear behind or beside them. Perhaps the young man, with a length of thick chain around his neck, grimacing as he pulled it tight. Perhaps the young woman, laughing delightedly, or looking at the young man when he was suspended upside down from a noose.

In the second half of the play, shouts of Vengeance! recurred. These came from Valmont when played by Valdès. And Merteuil spent more and more time in what appeared to be a bathtub. Perhaps. This is how I knew that Mr. Wilson, if not Mr. Müller, had a good idea of how the original story turned out in other dramatizations.

Luckily the sound design included the cracking of a stick somewhere offstage. Its repetition jolted me into wakefulness at regular intervals. I never completely nodded off, but it became increasingly difficult to focus my eyes, despite the vibrantly colored images appearing on the stage.

Not vibrantly colored but alive, a lonely fish traveled from stage left to stage right in a tall aquarium while Mlle. Huppert traversed the perpendicular upstage, repeating “the whore is dead” (in French, of course). The fish probably wondered why its sea was moving across its earth. It was seasick.

I have read Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. Mille pardons, en anglais. I experienced Christopher Hampton’s play on Broadway with the delicious Alan Rickman as Valmont and Lindsay Duncan as Merteuil. I have seen four film versions of the story (only one in French, and two set in the time period of the novel). These are barely a dent in the number of adaptations of this novel out there, yet perhaps I should have left it at that. Productions like this one make me feel quite stupid. I feel sure, had I a bit more energy, I might have deciphered some of the symbolism Mr. Wilson presented, although I’m equally sure re-reading the novel would not have helped. Perhaps, to comprehend one work conceived and directed by Robert Wilson, one must have experienced the entire oeuvre. In which case, where (or when) is one supposed to start?

I feel downright déclassé, but I believe I would have enjoyed the Duplex Cabaret Gala far more.

~ Molly Matera, signing off. Thanks for stopping by.

All right, all right, I’ll say it: “The Royal Family” Rules!

Why should one see an 82-year-old play on Broadway? 15 Reasons:

1. Rosemary Harris. Unlike my friend “M,” I was not enjoying the double déjà vu pleasure of seeing Rosemary Harris as the Matriarch of the piece, Fannie Cavendish, after having seen her as leading lady Julie Cavendish in the mid-1970s revival. Nevertheless, seeing Rosemary Harris do anything means unalloyed joy. Seeing her as the Grand Dame of the Royal Family of the NY Theatre is to die for. She is grace, she is humor, she is wit, she is style, she is passion. She is fluid, she is life. She is why some of us wanted the theatre to be our lives.
2. Tony Roberts. As Oscar Wolfe, the family’s manager, Roberts takes the stage discreetly and quietly. He is the calm at the center of the chaos that is the Cavendish family. Oscar is the non-actor in the maelstrom, and Roberts steps back and underplays this deviously caring role beautifully.
3. Jan Maxwell. Take a deep breath and watch her fly. As Julie Cavendish, Jan Maxwell holds her own with Rosemary Harris. However generous Ms. Harris may be – and she is extremely so – this is no easy feat. Playing the role Harris played over 30 years ago may be daunting to lesser mortals, but Maxwell does it with style and grace. She poses, she soothes, she seethes, she’s the sane one in a madhouse, and she’s utterly mad. Her voice and diction are clear as a bell throughout the evening. She’s delightful and powerful, driving the play’s storyline from start to finish.
4. John Glover. As the impoverished, perhaps not has-been but never-was brother of Fannie, Herbert Dean, Glover is a bundle of nerves unable to get work for himself or his wife. He ages handsomely but not gracefully, unwilling to let go of his leading man status. Needy and obvious, Dean’s annoying -- and yet, and yet, he’s a member of the family, and he adores them all. The Royal Family becomes our family, and the wayward uncle is part of it.
5. Reg Rogers does a mean John Barrymore. He embodies the maddest of the Cavendishes, Fannie’s son Tony. Rogers’ Tony is never still, he fences, he leaps, he dances, he whirls. He’s utterly delightful (and put me pleasantly in mind of an old Star Trek “villain,” the Squire of Gothos a.k.a. “General Trelane, Retired” as played by William Campbell). Rogers is physically marvelous, bursting with energy and technical prowess, and a big heart; but a little more elocution would be welcome.
6. Larry Pine. As Gilbert Marshall, the long lost love of leading lady Julie Cavendish, Larry Pine discreetly shines as the businessman who went off and made a massive fortune in South America when Julie turned him down 20 years before. He comes back just when Julie desperately needs his personification of solid, steady, and sane, and therefore quite disrupts royal family life. Pine is refreshingly normal, then rather frighteningly so. The man’s a pro at aplomb.
7. Kelli Barrett. The younger generation, Julie’s daughter Gwen Cavendish, is an exuberant, energetic, melodramatic ‘ingénue’ who can hold her own opposite the powerhouses on the stage. She’s sweet, fretful, spoiled. Barrett’s Gwen has the grace of her grandmother and the strength of her mother, and her very own gumption. Barrett has power. She’s someone to watch.
8. David Greenspan. What a delight he is playing “Jo,” the family retainer/butler/majordomo/whatever-the-family-needs-him-to-be. He’s quiet, witty, the perfect foil to the staid maid and the wild family. His voice penetrates the madness just when it is needed.
9. Freddy Arsenault. Arsenault makes a sweet Broadway debut as Gwen’s beau Perry, the society boy/stockbroker, as opposite to the Royal Family as he can be. The role doesn’t make an impact, but his on the mark performance shows he’s got the stuff.
10. Ana Gasteyer. It’s been difficult to make up my mind about Ana’s Kitty Dean, Herbert’s wife. She has hilarious moments, and all in all I’d say she did a marvelous job of playing the dislikeable and disliked character. In a family of great actors with cultured voices and styles, she’s an outsider. The one who married in and cannot act although she thinks she can. She’s a sad creature really – but Ms. Gasteyer’s tones are so sharp we flinch to hear her speak. Which makes me think that maybe, just maybe, she was quite brilliant.
11. John Lee Beatty. Of course the set is his and perfect and magnificent, and of course
12. Catherine Zuber’s costume design works perfectly in the space.
13. Doug Hughes directed with love, reverence, joy, controlled abandon. A fine piece of work with staging more than pleasing to the eye, and reminiscent of the black-and-white comedies I loved.
14. Let us not forget the playwrights: George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber -- sparkling wit, brilliant characters, the fastest-paced 3 hours you could wish. Just say the family names out loud and embrace them: Tony Cavendish, Julie Cavendish, Fannie Cavendish, Gwen Cavendish, and the late patriarch whose portrait oversees all in the living room, Aubrey Cavendish. Cheers to the brilliant playwrights! “The Royal Family” makes one yearn for more – the madcap of “Stage Door” (film version, please!), the culture clash of “Dinner at Eight” and “You Can’t Take It With You,” one of Kaufman’s collaborations with Moss Hart. Ah, the days of large casts – so much better than helicopters.
15. And finally, Panache.
    

A marvelous piece of work at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Go.

~ Molly Matera, signing off. I must go watch the Yankee/Phillies game now.