Author Archives: caroleditosti
The Fine June Squibb Heads up the Stellar Cast of ‘Marjorie Prime’
When Marjorie Prime opened Off Broadway in 2015, starring Lois Smith, it appealed as science fiction. Ten years later, the use of various forms of artificial intelligence to support human behavior is ubiquitous. Reinforcing this new reality Harrison and director Anne Kauffman dusted off the prescient family drama and shined it up for its Broadway premiere with few changes to the script. Maintaining the prior production values, director Anne Kauffman works with set designer Lee Jellinek, sound designer Daniel Kluger and Ben Stanton’s lighting design to create the almost surreal and static atmosphere where AI takes over the lives of a family and exists for itself in the last scene.
The production runs at the Helen Hayes Theater with the superb cast of June Squibb, Cynthia Nixon, Danny Burstein and Christopher Lowell through February 15. They are the reason to see the revival.
On one level the excellent performances outshine the tenor and weight if not the themes of Marjorie Prime which seem droll if not heartfelt as they deal with death, identity, the grieving process, artificial intelligence and more. The science fiction aspect of the play, so striking before, has diminished in light of our extensive use of chatbots and artificial intelligence.
Harrison’s conceit that AI holograms might be used to reconcile the death and loss of a loved one fascinates, especially now that this is closer to reality than one might think. Our culture fights death and aging (there is no way to age gracefully) with its emphasis on ageless appearance, looking 25-years-old at the chronological age of 90-years-old. Other cultures have a healthier approach, viewing death and aging as a normal part of life. However, with technological advancements, regardless of the culture or country, it is inevitable that AI has its uses in the battle against disease, dying, death and mourning. Harrison’s conceit of “Primes” assisting with the grieving process makes sense now more than ever.
The “Primes,” in Marjorie Prime are the spitting image of loved ones at a particular time in their lives. They are designed to help the bereaved get through inconsolable grief. Isn’t it easier to adjust to a loved one’s physical absence, if their holographic duplicate is present to sustain, comfort and be the companion they crave? Won’t the “Prime” keep them engaged, sentient and interactive, unlike passively watching TV?
Such is the function of Walter Prime (Christopher Lowell), a hologram of Marjorie’s deceased husband. However, Walter Prime is a replica of the younger, good-looking Walter in his thirties, not the morbidly sick and dying Walter with a funeral around the corner. Walter’s programming and presence give Marjorie company and help stir her memory which is fading. A work in progress, he evolves based on the information that 85-year-old Marjorie (June Squibb), her daughter Tess (Cynthia Nixon), and son-in-law Jon (Danny Burstein), give him about events and specific details about his life with Marjorie.
Thus, at the top of the play Walter Prime and Marjorie discuss movies they went to, for example, My Best Friend’s Wedding, which Marjorie has forgotten until Walter tells her the synopsis. The spry 96-year old Squibb, who made her Broadway debut playing one of the strippers in Gypsy (1959), portrays the spicy, funny, confused, chronologically younger woman with a failing memory, an irony that amused me to no end. Squibb is just terrific.
As Marjorie’s identity and memory dissolves, Walter Prime slows down that process, and builds up the identity of Walter with her help. Various questions raised by the scenarios are never answered. For example, how can Walter Prime in his thirties be emotionally and intellectually programmed for the Walter in his fifties and how can Marjorie be expected to keep track of details of their time together from their thirties to their elderly years in order to feed him information since her memory grows increasingly wobbly?
Indeed, facts and details shift and the truth is mislaid at times. An imagined past becomes easier to accept with one’s husband “Prime” who relies on others for “details.” This problem never resolves. Neither does the issue that Walter’s function as a presence to stimulate Marjorie is the benefit that Senior Serenity, the company that made him, affirms. The impatient, edgy Tess has doubts about Walter’s usefulness, but the upbeat Jon thinks that Marjorie’s engagement and memory have improved.
In fact Walter’s presence annoys Tess. Jon accuses her of jealousy because Marjorie seems to prefer Walter over Tess, who must nag her mother to eat and “obey” her in the reversal of mother/daughter, parent/child roles. Losing her autonomy Marjorie relies on Tess and Jon in her living arrangements. The three of them converse in Jellick’s minimalist, nondescript living room-kitchen combination that lacks futuristic character or style. Walter Prime is present, sitting on a sofa in the living room area in a “listening mode” ready to engage when needed.
For his part Jon is positive about Walter’s impact on Marjorie. As the scene progresses, Tess mentions after an interval that her mother surprisingly recalls a situation long buried in pain. We learn the specifics of this later in the play which progresses in jump intervals in time with a good deal of the action referred to happening off stage. (i.e. Tess and Jon take Marjorie to the hospital after a fall).
Guided by the “Primes,” who Harrison sequences to move the action forward, time jumps. Marjorie has died and Jon and Tess engage Marjorie Prime to help console Tess and move her through her bleak depression and grief at her mom’s passing. After that we learn through Jon’s conversation with Tess Prime what transpired with Tess. In the various scenes Nixon’s Tess gives a heartbreaking speech about her mother, memory and imagination which sets up the rest of the play. Burstein’s Jon listens and responds with an uncanny authenticity. Both are superb.
Since the “Primes” “live” forever in holographic form until someone decommissions them, they occupy the home in the last scene. Jon is elsewhere, so they converse among themselves having been given life from their human counterparts as an ideal, evolved “being.” Eerie perfection.
Marjorie Prime runs 1 hour 15 minutes with no intermission at the Helen Hayes Theater on 44th Street until the 15 of February. 2st.com.
Kara Young and Nicholas Braun Fine-Tune Their Performances in ‘Gruesome Playground Injuries’
What do people do when they have emotional pain? Sometimes it shows physically in stomach aches. Sometimes to release internal stress people risk physical injury doing wild stunts, like jumping off a school roof on a bike. In Rajiv Joseph’s humorous and profound Gruesome Playground Injuries, currently in revival at the Lucille Lortel Theater until December 28th, we meet Kayleen and Doug. Two-time Tony Award winner Kara Young and Succession star Nicolas Braun portray childhood friends who connect, lose track of each other and reconnect over a thirty year period.
Joseph charts their growth and development from childhood to thirty-somethings against a backdrop of hospital rooms, ERs, medical facilities and the school nurse’s office, where they initially meet when they go to seek relief from their suffering. After the first session when they are 8-year-olds, to the last time we see them at 38-year-olds at an ice rink, we calculate their love and concern for each other, while they share memories of the most surprising and weird times together. One example is when they stare at their melded vomit swishing around in a wastepaper basket when they were 13-year-olds.
How do they maintain their relationship if they don’t see each other for years after high school? Their friends keep them updated so they can meet up and provide support. From their childhood days they’ve intimately bonded by playing “show and tell,” swapping stories about their external wounds, which Joseph implies are the physical manifestations of their soul pain. After Doug graduates from college, when Doug is injured, someone tips off Kayleen who comes to his side to “heal him,” something he believes she does and something she hopes she does, though she doesn’t feel worthy of its sanctity.
Joseph’s two-hander about these unlikely best friends alludes to their deep psychological and emotional isolation that contributes to their self-destructive impulses. Kayleen’s severe stomach pains and vomiting stems from her upbringing. For example in Kayleen’s relationship with her parents we learn her mother abandoned the family and ran off to be with other lovers while her father raised the kids and didn’t celebrate their birthdays. Yet, when her mother dies, the father tells Kayleen she was “a better woman than Kayleen would ever be.” There is no love lost between them.
Doug, whose mom says he is accident prone, uses his various injuries to draw in Kayleen because he feels close to her. She gives him attention and likes touching the wounds on his face, eyes, etc. Further examination reveals that Doug comes from a loving family, the opposite of Kayleen’s. Yet, he may be psychologically troubled because he risks his life needlessly. For example, after college, he stands on the roof of a building during a storm and is struck by lightening, which puts him in a coma. His behavior appears foolish or suicidal. Throughout their relationship Kayleen calls him stupid. The truth lies elsewhere.
Of course, when Kayleen hears he is in a coma (they are 28-year-olds), after the lightening episode, she comes to his rescue and lays hands on him and tells him not to die. He recovers but he never awakens when she prays over him. She doesn’t find out he’s alive until five years later when he visits her in a medical facility. There, she recuperates after she tried to cut out her stomach pain with a knife. She was high on drugs. At that point they are 33-year-olds. Doug tells her to keep in touch, and not let him drift away, which happened before.
Joseph charts their relationship through their emotional dynamic with each other which is difficult to access because of the haphazard structure of the play, listing ages and injuries before various scenes. In this Joseph mirrors the haphazard events of our lives which are difficult to figure out. Throughout the 8 brief, disordered, flashback scenes identified by projections on the backstage wall listing their ages (8, 23,13, 28, 18, 33, 23, 38) and references to Doug’s and Kayleen’s injuries, Joseph explores his characters’ chronological growth while indicating their emotional growth remains nearly the same, as when we first meet them at 8-years-old. In the script, despite their adult ages, Joseph refers to them as “kids.”
Toward the end of the play via flashback (when they are 18-year-olds), we discover their concern and love for for each other and inability to carry through with a complete and lasting union as boyfriend and girlfriend. When Doug tries to push it, Kayleen isn’t emotionally available. Likewise when Kayleen is ready to move into something more (they are 38-year-olds), Doug refuses her touch. By then he has completely wrecked himself physically and can only work his job at the ice rink sitting on the Zamboni.
Young and Braun are terrific. Their nuanced performances create their characters’ relationship dynamic with spot-on authenticity. Acutely directed by Neil Pepe, we gradually put the pieces together as the mystery unfolds about these two. We understand Kayleen insults Doug as a defense mechanism, yet is attracted to his self-destructive nature with which she identifies. We “get” his protection of her because of her abusive father. One guy in school who Doug fights when the kid calls her a “skank,” beats him up. Doug knows he can’t win the fight, but he defends Kayleen’s name and reputation.
The lack of chronology makes the emotional resonance and causation of the characters’ behavior more difficult to glean. One must ride the portrayals of Young and Braun with rapt attention or you will miss many of Joseph’s themes about pain, suffering and the salve for it in companionship, honesty and love.
In additional clues to their character’s isolation, Young and Braun move the minimal props, the hospital beds, the bedding. They rearrange them for each scene. On either side of the stage in a dimly lit space (lighting by Japhy Weideman), Young and Braun quickly fix their hair and don different costumes (Sarah Laux’s costume design), and apply blood and injury-related makeup (Brian Strumwasser’s makeup design). In these transitions, which also reveal passages of time in ten and fifteen year intervals, we understand that they are alone, within themselves, without help from anyone. This further provides clues to the depths of Joseph’s portrait of Kayleen and Doug, which the actors convey with poignance, humor and heartbreak.
Gruesome Playground Injuries runs 1 hour 30 minutes with no intermission through 28 December at the Lucille Lortel Theater; gruesomeplaygroundinjuries.com.
‘The Baker’s Wife,’ Lovely, Poignant, Profound
It is easy to understand why the musical by Stephen Schwartz (music, lyrics) and Joseph Stein (book) after numerous reworkings and many performances since its premiere in 1976 has continued to gain a cult following. Despite never making it to Broadway, The Baker’s Wife has its growing fan club. This profound, beautiful and heartfelt production at Classic Stage Company directed by Gordon Greenberg will surely add to the fan club numbers after it closes its limited run on 21 December.
Based on the film, “La Femme du Boulanger” by Marcel Pagnol (1938), which adapted Jean Giono’s novella“Jean le Bleu,” The Baker’s Wife is set in a tiny Provençal village during the mid-1930s. The story follows the newly hired baker, Aimable (Scott Bakula), and his much younger wife, Geneviève (Oscar winner, Ariana De Bose). The townspeople who have been without a baker and fresh bread, croissants or pastries for months, hail the new couple with love when they finally arrive in rural Concorde. Ironically, bread and what it symbolically refers to is the only item upon which they readily agree.
If you have not been to France, you may not “get” the community’s orgasmic and funny ravings about Aimable’s fresh, luscious bread in the song “Bread.” A noteworthy fact is that French breads are free from preservatives, dyes, chemicals which the French ban, so you can taste the incredible difference. The importance of this superlative baker and his bread become the conceit upon which the musical tuns.
Schwartz’s gorgeously lyrical music and the parable-like simplicity of Stein’s book reaffirm the values of forgiveness, humility, community and graciousness as they relate to the story of Geneviève. She abandons her loving husband Aimable and runs away to have adventures with handsome, wild, young Dominique (Kevin William Paul), the Marquis’ chauffeur. When the devastated Aimable starts drinking and stops making bread, the townspeople agree they cannot allow Aimable to fall down on his job. The Marquis (Nathan Lee Graham), is more upset about losing Aimable’s bread than the car Domnique stole.
Casting off long held feuds and disagreements, they unite together and send out a search party to return Geneviève without judgment to Aimable, who has resolved to be alone. Meanwhile, Geneviève decides to leave Dominique who is hot-blooded but cold-hearted. In a serendipitous moment three of the villagers come upon Geneviève waiting to catch a bus to Marseilles. They gently encourage her to return to Concorde, affirming the town will not judge her.
She realizes she has nowhere to go and acknowledges her wrong-headed ways, acting like Pompom her cat who also ran off. Geneviève returns to Aimable for security, comfort and stability, and Pompom returns because she is hungry. Aimable feeds both, but scolds the cat for running after a stray tom cat in the moonlight. When he asks Pompom if she will run away again, DeBose quietly, meaningfully tells Bakula’s Aimable, she will not leave again. The understanding and connection returns metaphorically between them.
Director Gordon Greenberg’s dynamically staged and beautifully designed revival succeeds because of the exceptional Scott Bakula and perfect Ariana DeBose, who also dances balletically (choreography by Stephanie Klemons). DeBose’s singing is beyond gorgeous and Bakula’s Aimable resonates with pride and poignancy The superb ensemble evokes the community of the village which swirls its life around the central couple.
Greenberg’s acute, well-paced direction reveals an obvious appreciation and familiarity with The Baker’s Wife. Having directed two previous runs, one in New Jersey (2005), the other at The Menier Chocolate Factory in London (2024), Greenberg fashions this winning, immersive production with the cafe square spilling out into the CSC’s central space with the audience on three sides. The production offers the unique experience of cafe seating for audience members.
Jason Sherwood’s scenic design creates the atmosphere of the small village of Concorde with ivy draping the faux walls, suggesting the village’s quaint buildings. The baker’s boulanger on the ground floor at the back of the theater is in a two-story building with the second floor bedroom hidden by curtains with the ivy covered “Romeo and Juliet” balcony in front. The balcony features prominently as a device of romance, escape or union. From there DeBoise’s Geneviève stands dramatically while Kevin William Paul’s Dominique serenades her, pretending it is the baker’s talents he praises. From there DeBoise exquisitely sings “Meadowlark.”
Greenberg’s vision for the musical, the sterling leads and the excellent ensemble overcome the show’s flaws. The actors breathe life into the dated script and misogynistic jokes by integrating these as cultural aspects of the small French community of Concorde in the time before WW II. The community composed of idiosyncratic members show they can be disagreeable and divisive with each other. However, they come together when they attempt to find Geneviève and return her to Aimable to restore balance to their collective, with bread for their emotional and physical sustenance.
All of the wonderful work by ensemble members keep the musical pinging. Robert Cuccioli plays ironic husband Claude with Judy Kuhn as his wife Denise. They are the cafe owning, long married couple, who serve as the foils for the newly married Aimable and Geneviève. They provide humor with wise cracks about each other as the other townspeople chime in with their jokes and songs about annoying neighbors.
Like the other townspeople, who watch the events with the baker and his wife and learn about themselves, Claude and Denise realize the lust of their youth has morphed into love and great appreciation for each other in their middle age. Kuhn’s Denise opens and closes the production singing about the life and people of the village who gain a new perspective in the memorable signature song, “Chanson.”
The event with the baker and his wife stirs the townspeople to re-evaluate their former outlooks and biased attitudes. The women especially receive a boon from Geneviève’s actions. They toast to her while the men have gone on their search, leaving the women “without their instruction.” And for the first time Hortense (Sally Murphy), stands up to her dictatorial husband Barnaby (Manu Narayan) and leaves to visit a relative. She may never return. Clearly, the townspeople inch their way forward in getting along with each other, to “break bread” congenially as a result of an experience with “the baker and his wife,” that they will never forget.
The Baker’s Wife runs 2 hours 30 minutes with one intermission at Classic Stage Company through Dec. 21st; classicstage.org.
Lesley Manville and Mark Strong are Mindblowing in ‘Oedipus’
Just imagine in our time, a leader with integrity and probity, who searches out the truth, no matter what the cost to himself and his family. In Robert Icke’s magnificent reworking of Sophocles’ Oedipus, currently at Studio 54 through February 8th, Mark Strong’s powerful, dynamically truthful Oedipus presents as such a man. Likewise, Lesley Manville’s lovely, winning Jocasta presents as his steely, supportive and adoring help-meet. Who wouldn’t embrace such a graceful couple as the finest representatives to govern a nation?
Sophocles’ classic Greek tragedy, that defined the limits of the genre and imprinted on theatrical consciousness the idea that a tragic hero’s hubris causes his destruction, evokes timeless verities. In his updated version, Icke, who also directs, superbly aligns the characters and play’s elements with today’s political constructs. Icke retains the names of the ancient characters. This choice spurs our interest. How will he unravel Sophocles’ amazing Oedipus tragedy, especially the conclusion?
Cleverly, he presents Oedipus as a political campaigner of a fledgling movement that over a two-year period gains critical mass. The director reveals Oedipus’ backstory in a filmed speech to reporters on the eve of the election. The excellent video design is by Tal Yarden.
During his speech Oedipus goes off book and makes promises. Though his brother-in-law Creon (the fine John Carroll Lynch) tries to stop him, proudly Oedipus shows himself a man of his word. He galvanizes the crowd when he states he will expose the lies of his opponents. Not only will he reveal his birth certificate (an ironic reference to President Obama), he will investigate the mysterious death of Laius. The former leader from decades ago married Jocasta when she was a teenager. After Laius’ death, Oedipus meets and marries Jocasta despite their age difference. Over the years they raise three children: Antigone (Olivia Reis), Eteocles (Jordan Scowen) and Polyneices (James Wilbraham).
How has Oedipus become the people’s candidate? Without ties to the political system, he speaks a message of reform and justice. Indeed, he will override the corrupt, derelict power structure. Former leaders served their rich donors and let the other classes suffer. Oedipus runs on a mandate of equity and change.
After Oedipus’ speech, the curtain opens to reveal the campaign headquarters that staff gradually dismantles as the campaign phase ends. To signify the next phase the countdown clock, placed conspicuously in scenic designer Hildegard Bechtler’s headquarters, ticks away the seconds down to the announcement of the winner. As the clock ticks down toward zero (an ironic symbol), the contents of the campaign war room are removed like the peeling of an onion to its core. Ironically, the destined announcement nears with the ticking of the clock. So, too, comes the revelation of Oedipus’ true identity. Icke has synchronized both to happen concurrently.
Icke’s anointed idea to shape Oedipus as a newbie politician, whose actions and words are singularly unified in honesty, resonates. He represents the iconic head of state we all yearn for and believe in, forgetting leaders are flesh and blood. Of course Icke’s flawed tragic hero, like Sophocles’ ancient one, results in Oedipus’ prideful search for the truth of his origin story and Laius’ cause of death.
Oedipus’s determination is spurred by the cultist future-teller Teiresias (the superb Samuel Brewer). His authoritative and relentless drive to prove Teiresias wrong, despite warnings from Creon and Jocasta, shows persistence and courage, positive leadership qualities. On the other hand, Oedipus doesn’t realize his search has a dark side and his persistence is stubbornness prompted by a prideful ego. This stubbornness causes his destruction. His pride leaves no way out for him but punishment.
Because the truth is so horrid, Strong’s Oedipus can’t suffer himself to cover it up. In searching to validate his true self, he discovers the flawed human that Teiresias proclaims. Indeed, he is more flawed than most. He is lurid; a man who killed his father, married his mother, and had three children born out of love, lust and incest. He can never be the leader of the nation. He must hold himself accountable after he sees his debased true self. How Mark Strong effects Oedipus’ self-punishment is symbolic genius. Clues to Jocasta’s end are sneakily tucked in earlier.
Because of Icke’s acute shepherding of the actors, and the illustrious performances of Manville, Strong and Brewer, with the cast’s assistance, we feel the impact of this tragedy. The love relationship between Jocasta and Oedipus, drawn with two passionate scenes by Manville and Strong, especially the last scene, after they acknowledge who they are with one, long, silent look, devastates and convicts.
Those who know the story feel a confluence of emotions at the irony of mother and son lustily loving and pursuing their desire for each other off stage, while Oedipus delays speaking to his mother Merope (Anne Reid). Manville and Strong are extraordinary. Both actors convey the beauty, the wildness, the uniqueness and enjoyment of their characters’ love, that is unlike any other.
In the last scene when Strong and Manville untangle from their hot grip, clinging to each other then letting go, they acknowledge their characters’ unfathomable and great loss. Manville’s Jocasta crawls away to reconcile the enormity of what she has done. In her physical act of crawling then getting up, we note that fate and their choices have diminished their majestic grace. Their sexual likeness to animals, Oedipus ironically referenced earlier with family at the celebration dinner. Through the physical staging of the final sexual scene, Icke recalls Oedipus’ earlier comparison.
As a meta-theme of his version Icke reminds us of the importance of humility. The more humanity presents its greatness, the more it reveals its base nature.
All the more tragedy for Oedipus’ supporters and the unnamed country. Because fate catches up with him and conspires with him to cut off his acceptance of the position he rightfully won, the nation loses. All the more sorrow that the truth and his honest search is what Oedipus prizes, even more than his love for Manville’s Jocasta, the brilliant, equivalent match for Strong’s Oedipus.
Rather than live covertly hiding their actions, both Oedipus and Jocasta hold themselves accountable with a fatalistic strength and nobility. Initially, we learn of her strength as Jocassta tells Oedipus about her experience with the evil Laius (a reference to current political pedophiles and rapists). We see her strength in her self-punishment. Likewise, Oedipus’ strength compels him to face his deeds where cowards would cover up the truth, step into the position and govern autocratically censoring and/or killing their opponents who would “spill the beans.” Oedipus is not such a man. It is an irony that he is a moral leader, but is unfit to lead.
Icke’s masterwork and Manville and Strong’s performances will be remembered in this great production, filled with ironic dialogue about sight, vision, blindness and comments that allude to Oedipus and Jocasta’s incestuous relationship and downfall. Those familiar with the tragedy will get lines like Jocasta’s teasing Oedipus, “You’ll be the death of me,” and her telling people she has four children: “two at 20, one at 23, and one at 52.”
Though I prefer Icke’s ending in darkness with the loud cheers of the supporters, I “get” why Icke ends Oedipus in a flashback. In the very last scene the date is 2023, the beginning of the end. We watch the excited Oedipus and Jocasta choose the rented space (the stripped stage) for their campaign headquarters. The time and place mark their disastrous decision which spools out to their destruction two years later. I groaned with Jocasta’s ironic comment, “It feels like home.”
Her comment resonates like a bomb blast. If Oedipus had not had the vision of himself as the ideal, righteous leader with truth at his core, the place where they are “at home” never would have been selected. Oedipus, a humble mortal, never would have run for high office.
Oedipus runs 2 hours with no intermission at Studio 54 though February 8. oedipustheplay.com.
‘Liberation’ Transfers to Broadway Solidifying its Excellence
Bess Wohl’s Liberation directed by Whitey White in its transfer to Broadway’s James Earl Jones Theater until January 11th doesn’t add references to the 2024 election nor the disastrous aftermath. However, the production is more striking than ever in light of current events. It reaffirms how far we must go and what subtle influences may continue to derail the ratified ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) from becoming settled law.
To draw parallels between the women’s movement then and now, Wohl highlights the “liberation” of the main character/narrator Lizzie, an everywoman, with whom we delightfully identify. With Lizzie (the superb Susannah Flood) we travel along a humorous journey of memory and self-reflection as she evaluates her relationship to her activist mom, who gathered with a community of women in Ohio, 1970 to “change the world and themselves.”
Wohl’s unreliable, funny narrator, directs the action and also is a part of it. The playwright’s smart selection of Lizzie as a device, the way in to tell this elucidating story about women evolving their attitudes, captures our interest because it is immediate. Her understanding is ours, her revelations are ours, her “liberation” is also ours. Lizzie shifts back and forth in time from the present to 1970-73, and back to the present. One of the questions she explores concerns why the women’s movement cascaded into the failures of the present?
Assuming the role of her mother, Lizzie enacts how her mom established a consciousness-raising group. Such groups trended throughout the country to establish community and encourage women’s empowerment. Six women regularly meet in the basement basketball court at the local rec center which serves as the set throughout Liberation, thanks to David Zinn’s finely wrought stage design. The group, perfectly dressed in period appropriate costumes by Qween Jean, includes a Black woman, Celeste (Krisolyn Lloyd), and the older, married Margie (Betsy Aidem).
Having verified stories with her mom (now deceased), and the still-living members of the group, Lizzie imagines after introductions that the women expansively acknowledge their hope to change society and stand up to the patriarchy. As weeks pass they clarify their own personal obstacles and their long, bumpy road to change, with ironic surprises and setbacks.
For example, Margie voices her deeper feelings about being a slavish housewife and mother. After months of prodding, her husband actually does the dishes, a “female” chore. Margie realizes not only does she complete housework faster and better than he, but her role as housewife and nurturer satisfies, comforts and makes her happy. Betsy Aidem is superb as the humorous older member, who introduces herself by announcing she joined, so she wouldn’t stab her retired husband to death.
Some members, like Sicilian-accented Isidora (Irene Sofia Lucio), and Lloyd’s Celeste, belonged to other activist groups (e.g. SNCC). Circumstances brought them to Ohio. Isidora’s green-card marriage needs six more months and a no-fault divorce, not possible in Ohio. Celeste, a New Yorker, has moved to the Midwest to take care of her sickly mom. The role of caretaker, dumped on her by uncaring siblings, tries her patience and stresses her out. Expressing her feelings in the group strengthens her.
Susan (Adina Verson) is an activist burnt out on “women’s liberation.” Frustrated, Susan has nothing to say beyond “women are human beings.” She avers that if men don’t treat women with equality and respect, then women’s activism is like “shitting in the wind.”
Lizzie and Dora (Audrey Corsa) discuss how they suffer discrimination at their jobs. Despite her skill and knowledge Lizzie’s editor demeans her with “female” assignments (weddings, obituaries). Dora’s boss promotes men less qualified and experienced than Dora. Through inference, the playwright reminds us of women’s lack of substantial progress in the work force. Very few women break through “glass ceilings” to become CEOs or achieve equal pay.
Act I engages because of the authentic performances and various clarifications. For example, Black women have a doubly difficult time at overturning the patriarchy. Surprisingly, at the end of the act a man invades their space and begins shooting hoops. Is this cognitive dissonance on Lizzie’s part for including him? Have women so internalized male superiority that they become misdirected back to the societal default position of subservience? Is this what thwarted the movement?
When Lizzie refers to the guy as Bill, her father (Charlie Thurston), we get the irony. How “freeing” that her mom meets her dad as she advocates for liberation from male domination, only to be dominated by an institution (marriage) constructed precisely for that purpose.
Act II opens with additional dissonance. To extricate themselves from the psychological trauma of men’s objectification of their bodies, the women free themselves from their clothes. Sitting in the nude, each discusses what they like and dislike about their bodies. The scene enlivened heterosexual men in the audience, an ironic reinforcement of objectification. We understand that these activists try to overcome body shame that our commercial culture and men use to manipulate women against themselves and each other (surgical enhancements, fillers, face lifts, etc.). On the other hand the scene leaves a whiff of “gimmick” in the air, though Whitney White directs it cleverly.
After the nude scene Lizzie reimagines how her mom and Bill fell in love. To avoid discomfort in “being” with her father, she engages Joanne (Kayla Davion), a mother who drops into the rec room looking for her kids’ backpacks. Through Bill and Joanne’s interaction, we note the relationship that Lizzie keeps secret. When Lizzie finally reveals she is engaged, the dam bursts and each of the women reveals how they have been compromising their staunch feminist position. One even admits to voting for Nixon with a barrage of lame excuses.
This scene is a turning point that Lizzie uses to explore how women in the movement may have sabotaged themselves at advancing their rights. Reviewing her mother’s choice to get married and co-exist as a feminist and wife, Lizzie reimagines a conversation with her deceased mother played by Aidem’s Margie in an effecting performance. When Lizzie asks about her mom’s happiness, Margie kindly states that Lizzie has gotten much of her story wrong.
Lizzie condemns feminism’s failures. This is the patriarchy, internalized by Lizzie, speaking through her. With clarity through Margie’s perspective, Wohl reminds us that all the stages of the feminist movement have brought successes we must remember to acknowledge.
Lizzie realizes the answer to whether one might be “liberated” and fall in love and “live equitably” within an institution which consigns women to compromise their autonomy. It depends upon each individual to make her own way. Her investigation about her mother’s consciousness-raising group establishes the first steps along a journey toward “liberation,” that she and the others will continue for the rest of their lives.
Liberation runs 2 hours, 30 minutes with one intermission at the James Earl Jones Theater through Jan. 11th. liberationbway.com
‘Diversion.’ Nurses under Pressure, Forgotten Heroes in Crisis, Review
In Scott Organ’s Diversion, the break room of a hospital intensive care unit is a place to let off steam. It is also the location where crimes happen and perps are exposed. Organ cleverly uses this setting for his 90 minute play in an extended run at the Barrow Group’s Studio Theater until December 21st.
The play’s tensions increase after Organ introduces us to four nurses who we later discover negotiate their own personal traumas, while assisting others to live or die. Though we don’t see their trauma, we hear about it and hear about how they may attempt to overcome it through opioids. When their own supply runs out, one or more may have stolen the hospital’s medications to satisfy their addiction. However, the program monitoring the opioids is impossible to bypass without triggering an investigation.
We learn of the conflict when the head nurse Bess (Thaïs Bass-Moore) tells the staff that their unit has been targeted. One or more of the nurses or doctors have diverted drugs. Bess offers to get the individuals into a program to clean up if they quietly come to her first before the company investigator, Josephine (Colleen Clinton), discovers who they are and turns them over to the police.
Having been through a disruptive investigation 8 years before when medications were taken, Bess shares her distress. She looks to experienced staff member Emilia (Tricia Alexandro) for help to be her “eyes and ears.” Josephine, a former nurse herself, attempts wisdom and a friendly approach to glean proof she refers to as “data,” by having informal conversations with the staff members. From her perspective, all are suspects, each may have diverted. She will not stop until she proves who the culprit is.
The youngest and least experienced nurse is Mandy (West Duchovny). She keeps late hours, always seems exhausted, and catches up on her sleep in the break room, a clue. The only male of the group, Mike (Connor Wilson), shows his hand when he discusses the street value of a fentanyl patch. The edgy, angry Amy (Deanna Lenhart), insults Josephine publicly to her face, but hypocritically shares the compromising life problems of other staff members to Josephine behind their backs.
Emilia, the kindest, most compassionate of the group is recently divorced and recovering from the psychological stresses of working through COVID’s long hours, extraordinary emotional demands and understaffed conditions. However, she does admit to Amy that Josephine’s presence is disruptive and adds to their stress, when they should be able to take their breaks from ICU high anxiety in peace.
No one confesses. However, Organ does reveal the addict at the end of Act I. Instead of judgment, Organ’s sympathetic characterizations and the actors’ acute ensemble work create empathy. We easily identify with the individual who is filled with regrets and self-recrimination. In Act II, when they still do not confess, we understand that the cost is too great, as they try to handle their addiction on their own, unsuccessfully. When Josephine closes in to identify the culprit/culprits, Organ allows us to feel what it is like to be a good person stuck in a tunnel of pain and darkness with no way out.
Organ’s poignant, suspenseful and humanly engaging drama has strong elements of comedic relief so we appreciate the relationship dynamic among the nurses which is both tense and humorous. Importantly, the play’s subject matter is topical. It focuses on nurses as the heroes of healthcare. They have been underestimated, underappreciated and, like military veterans, ill-used without proper support. Of course, the opioid epidemic should be front and center in light of our failing healthcare system which is under duress and about to be further de-funded with impactful cuts to Medicaid and possibly Medicare.
Though the production might have run without an intermission to heighten the suspense, director Seth Barrish incisively shepherds the excellent cast for maximum understanding and empathy. The set, costumes, props and lighting cohere with what one imagines of a hospital ICU break room for staff, who seek its respite without gaining comfort, especially since they are suspects of an investigation that can have no happy outcome.
Diversion
The play runs 95 minutes with one intermission through December 21, 2025 at The Barrow Group Performing Arts Center, Studio Theater (520 8th Ave, 9th floor). Barrowroup.org
‘Archduke,’ Patrick Page and Kristine Nielsen are Not to be Missed
What is taught in history books about WWI usually references Gavrilo Princip as the spark that ignited the “war to end all wars.” Princip and his nationalist, anarchic Bosnian Serb fellows, devoted to the cause of freeing Serbia from the Austro-Hungarian empire, did finally assassinate the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Duchess of Austria-Hungary. This occurred after they made mistakes which nearly botched their mission.
What might have happened if they didn’t murder the royals? The conclusion of Rajiv Joseph’s Archduke offers a “What if?” It’s a profound question, not to be underestimated.
In Archduke, Rajiv Joseph (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo), has fun with this historical moment of the Archduke’s assassination. In fact he turns it on its head. With irony he fictionalizes what some scholars think about a conspiracy. They have suggested that Serbian military officer Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijevic (portrayed exceptionally by Patrick Page), sanctioned and helped organize the conspiracy behind the assassination. The sardonic comedy Archduke, about how youths become the pawns of elites to exact violence and chaos, currently runs at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater until December 21st.
Joseph’s farce propels its characters forward with dark, insinuating flourishes. The playwright re-imagines the backstory leading up to the cataclysmic assassination that changed the map of Europe after the bloodiest war in history up to that time. He mixes facts (names, people, dates, places), with fiction (dialogue, incidents, idiosyncratic characterizations, i.e. Sladjana’s time in the chapel with the young men offering them “cherries”). Indeed, he employs revisionist history to align his meta-theme with our current time. Then, as now, sinister, powerful forces radicalize desperate young men to murder for the sake of political agendas.
In order to convey his ideas Joseph compresses the time of the radicalization for dramatic purposes. Also, he laces the characterizations and events with dark humor, action and sometimes bloodcurdling descriptions of violence.
For example in “Apis'” mesmerizing description of a regicide he committed (June, 1903), for which he was proclaimed a Serbian hero, he acutely describes the act (he disemboweled them). He emphasizes the killing with specificity asking questions of those he mentors to drive the point home, so to speak. Then, Captain Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijevic dramatically explains that he was shot three times and the bullets were never removed. Page delivers the speech with power, nuance and grit. Just terrific.
Interestingly, the fact that Dimitrijevic took three bullets that were never removed fits with historical references. Page’s anointed “Apis” relates his act of heroism to Gavrilo (the winsome, affecting Jake Berne), Nedeljko (the fiesty Jason Sanchez), and Trifko (the fine Adrien Rolet), to instruct them in bravery. The playwright teases the audience by placing factual clues throughout the play, as if he dares you to look them up.
History buffs will be entertained. Those who are indifferent will enjoy the fight sequences and Kristine Nielsen’s slapstick humor and perfect timing. They will listen raptly to Patrick Page’s fervent story and watch his slick manipulations. Director Darko Tresnjak (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder), shepherds the scenes carefully. The production and all its artistic elements benefit from his coherent vision, his superb pacing and smart staging. Set design is by Alexander Dodge, with Linda Cho’s costume design, Matthew Richards’ lighting design and Jane Shaw’s sound design.
In Joseph’s re-imagining before “Apis” delivers this speech of glory and violence, the Captain has his cook stuff the starving, tubercular, young teens with a sumptuous feast. As they eat, he provides the history lessons using a pointer and an expansive map of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Like brainwashed lap dogs they agree with him when he tells them to. They are inspired by his personal story of glory and riches, and the luxurious surroundings. Notably, they become attuned to his bravery and sacrifice to Serbia, after their bellies are full, having devoured as much as possible.
Why them and how did they get there? Joseph infers the machinations behind the “Apis'” persuasion in Scene 1, which takes place in a warehouse and serves as the linchpin of how young men become the dupes of those like the charming, well-connected Dimitrijevic. From the teens’ conversation we divine that a secret cabal cultivates and entraps desperate, dying young men. Indeed, in real life there was a secret society (The Black Hand), that Captain Dimitrijevic belonged to and that Gavrilo was affiliated with. The playwright ironically hints at these ties when the Captain gives Gavrilo and the others black gloves.
In the warehouse scene the soulful and dynamic interaction between Berne’s Gavrilo and Sanchez’s Nedeljko creates empathy. The fine actors stir our sympathy and interest. We note that the culture and society have forgotten these hapless innocents that are treated like insignificant refuse. As a result they become ready prey to be exploited. The nineteen-year-old orphans have similar backgrounds. Clearly, their poverty, purposelessness, lack of education and hunger bring them to a conspiratorial doctor they learn about because he is free and perhaps can help.
However, he gives them the bad news that they are dying and nothing can be done. As part of the plan, the doctor refers both Gavrilo and Nedeljko to “a guy” in a warehouse for a job or something useful and “meaningful.”
True to the doctor’s word, the abusive Trifko arrives expecting to see more “lungers.” After he shows them a bomb that doesn’t explode when dropped (a possible reference to the misdirected bombing during the initial attempt against the Archduke), Trifko browbeats and lures them to the Captain (“Apis”), with his reference to a “lady cook.”
Why not go? They are starving, and they “have nothing to lose.” The cook, Sladjana, turns out to be the always riotous Kristine Nielsen, who provides a good deal of the humor during the Captain’s history lessons, and the radicalization of the teens, the feast, sweets, and “special boxes” filled with surprises that she brings in and takes out. Nielsen’s antics ground Archduke in farce, and the scenes with her are imminently entertaining as she revels in the ridiculous to audience laughter.
With their needs met and their psychological and emotional manhood stoked to make their names famous, the young men throw off their religious condemnation of suicide and agree to martyr themselves and kill the Archduke to free Serbia. Enjoying the prospects of a train ride and a bed and more food, after a bit of practice, shooting the Archduke and Duchess, with “Apis” and Sladjana pretending to be royalty, they head off to Sarajevo. Since Joseph’s play is revisionist, you will just have to see how and why he spins the ending as he does with the characters imaging their own, “What if?”
The vibrantly sinister, nefarious Dragutin “Apis” Dimitrijevic, who seduces and spins polemic like a magician with convincing prestidigitation, seems relevant in light of the present day’s media propaganda. Whether mainstream, which censors information, fearful of true investigative reporting, or social media, which must be navigated carefully to avoid propaganda bots, both spin their dangerous perspectives. The more needy the individuals emotionally, physically, psychologically, the more amenable they are to propaganda. And the more desperate (consider Luigi Mangione or Shane Tamura or the suspect in the recent shooting of the National Guard in Washington, D.D.), the less they have to lose being a martyr.
Joseph’s point is well taken. In Archduke the teens were abandoned and left to survive as so much flotsam and jetsam in a dying Austro-Hungarian empire. Is his play an underhanded warning? If we don’t take care of our youth, left to their own devices, they will remind us they matter too, and take care of us. Political violence, as Joseph and history reveal, is structured by those most likely to gain. Cui bono? All the more benefit of impunity and immunity if others are persuaded to pull the trigger, cause a riotous coup, release the button, poison, etc., and take the fall for it.
Archduke runs 2 hours with one intermission at Laura Pels Theater through December 21st. roundabouttheatre.org.
Laurie Metcalf is Amazing in ‘Little Bear Ridge Road’
On 12 acres of property in Idaho on the top of the ridge, the sky is so intense it makes Ethan (Micah Stock) panicky because he feels that his life is insignificant against the vastness of the galaxy glittering before him. Sarah (Laurie Metcalf), Ethan’s aunt who owns the property and appreciates the nighttime view tells him she “thought once about buying a telescope, but you know. Then I’d own a telescope.” The audience laughter responding to Metcalf’s pointed, identifying statement that reveals her edgy, funny character peppers Samuel D. Hunter’s powerful, sardonic Little Bear Ridge Road currently at the Booth Theatre.
Metcalf is terrific as Sarah who delivers comments like darts hitting the bullseye and evoking laughter because her words are heavy with authenticity. Her statements convey meaning and pointedly eschew the gentility of polite conversation. Micah, Sarah’s nephew, is withdrawn, remote and masked, not only because the play begins during the COVID-19 pandemic, but because he wears his soul damage on the exterior with a covering of silence that withholds speech. Interestingly, these two estranged family members, one a nurse who doesn’t even nurture her own wounds, and the other, a self-damaged young man of thirty, who can’t really get out of his own way, eventually get along,
With this Broadway debut Hunter (The Whale, A Bright New Boise) weaves a poignant, humorous, fascinating dynamic. Metcalf and Stock inhabit these individuals with humanity and a fullness of life that is breathtaking.
Directed crisply with excellent pace and verve by Joe Mantello, Hunter’s comedic drama that premiered at Steppenwolf Theater Company, confronts human isolation and failed familial relationships. Hunter presents individuals who confuse self-supporting independence with misguided self-reliance. With spare, concise dialogue the playwright explores how Metcalf’s Sarah and Stock’s Ethan rekindle their sensitivity and open up while nursing their fractured, self-victimized souls, to help each other without acknowledging it as help.
Finally, Hunter’s dialogue has flourishes of well-placed poetic grace and rhythm. Within its meta-themes about human beings struggles with themselves, it’s also about knowing when to let go to encourage another’s growth.
Aunt Sarah and nephew Ethan have an ersatz reunion, when Ethan’s father, Sarah’s brother, dies and leaves the nearby house and estate to Ethan to dispose of. Estranged from his father and from her for a number of years, Ethan, who is gay, lived in Seattle with a partner, who emotionally abused him and self-medicated with a cocaine habit. Eventually, they split. Graduating from university with an M.F.A. in writing, Ethan has drifted, stunned by his devastating childhood where he was raised by an addict father, since Ethan’s mother abandoned the family when he was little. How does Ethan learn not to duplicate his problematic relationship with his father, with love relationships with other older men?
For her part Sarah remained in Idaho near where she was born and worked as a nurse during and after her husband left her. Fortunately or unfortunately, they had no children. This means that she and Ethan are the only Fernsbys left on the planet, dooming their family line to extinction, which according to Ethan seems pathetic. Selling her home in Moscow, Sarah tells Ethan she moved to a more remote area because “It suits me better. Not being around—people.”
With her prickly, self-reliance and proud stance refusing help, Sarah has taken care of her house and property, worked, organized documents and paperwork for Leon (Ethan’s dad, her brother). She generously gave Leon money to help him with his bills. When Ethan affirms that was a bad idea because his addict father used it for his meth habit, Sarah states she doesn’t know what he used it for. After all, Leon told her that he never did meth in front of Ethan. The truth lies elsewhere.
As the pandemic passes and circumstances improve, the relationship between aunt and nephew also improves. They communicate more intimately. They watch a TV series and comment about the characters. The dialogue is funny and Sarah and Ethan become family. Assumptions and mistaken views are dismissed and overturned. Realistic expectations fill in the gaps. A surprise occurs when Ethan meets and forms an attachment with James (the excellent John Drea).
Hunter uses James as a catalyst, who provokes a turning point to continue the forward momentum of the play. James comes from a more privileged, loving background and is studying at a nearby university to be a star-gazer for real, an astrophysicist. With eloquence James explains the magnificence of Orion’s Belt to Ethan, as it relates to our sun. Sarah welcomes him and encourages his relationship with Ethan, until once more circumstances gyrate in another direction, all perfectly unfolding with the emotion of the characters.
Mantello arranges the interlocking dynamic among Sarah, Ethan and then James, center stage on a “couch in a void.” From there the characters converse, sit, enter and leave stage right (to an invisible kitchen), stage left (to bedrooms). The recliner couch on a turntable platform in different positions establishes the passage of time between 2020 and 2022. Scott Pask’s set and the lighting by Heather Gilbert are symbolic and interpretive. Our focus becomes the characters and the actors’ exceptional portrayals as they struggle to find a home with each other and themselves, until the threads of grace in their alignment come to a necessary end.
After all, the Fernsbys have to have a legacy, if not in offspring, then in words. And the respite and connections they find together talking and watching TV on a “couch in void” becomes the place where Ethan’s legacy in writing is born, and the Fernbys legacy prevails.
Little Bear Ridge Road runs 1 hour 35 minutes with no intermission at the Booth Theater through February 15th littlebearridgeroad.com.
‘Ragtime’ is Magnificent and of Incredible Moment
Between the time Lear DeBessonet’s Ragtime graced New York City Center with its Gala Production in 2024, until now with the opening of DeBessonet’s revival at Lincoln Center, our country has gone through a sea change. The very core of its values which uphold equal justice, civil rights and due process are under siege. Because our democratic processes are being shaken by the current political administration, there isn’t a better time to revisit this musical about American dreamers. Ragtime currently runs at the Vivian Beaumont Theater until January 4.
DeBessonet has kept most of the same cast as in the City Center Production. The performers represent three families from different socioeconomic classes. In each instance, they face the dawning of the 20th century with hope to maintain or secure “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” in a country whose declaration asserted independence from its king. In affirming “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all ‘men’ are created equal,” America’s promises to itself are fulfilled by its citizens. Ragtime reveals who these citizens may be as they strive toward such promised freedoms.
Above all Ragtime is about America, the saga of a glorious and terrible America, striving to manifest its ideals and live up to them, despite overarching forces that would slow down and halt the process.
Based on E. L. Doctorow’s classic 1975 historical novel, and adapted for the stage by Terrence McNally (book), Stephen Flaherty (music), and Lynn Ahrens, (lyrics), Ragtime‘s immutable verities are heartfelt and real. As such, it’s a consummate American musical. DeBessonet’s production celebrates this, and superbly presents the beauty, tragedy and hope of what America means to us. In its concluding songs (Coalhouse’s “Make Them Hear You,” and the company’s “Ragtime/Wheels of a Dream”), the performers express a poignant yearning. Sadly, their choral pleading is a stunning and painful reminder of how far we have yet to go to thoroughly uphold our constitution.
The opening number “Ragtime,” introduces the setting, characters and suggested themes. Here, DeBessonet’s vision is in full bloom, from the lovely period costumes by Linda Cho, David Korins’ minimally stylized scenic design, DeBessonet’s staging, and Ellenore Scott’s choreography. As the company sings with thrilling power and grace, they gradually move forward to take center stage. They are one unit of glorious interwoven diversity and destiny. The audience’s applause in reaction to the soaring music and stunning visual and aural presentation, heightened by a bare stage, emotionally charged the performers. Thematically, the cast had an important mandate to share, a cathartic revelation of the sanctity of American values, now on the brink of destruction.
Watching the unfolding of events we cheer for characters like the talented Harlem pianist and composer of ragtime music, Coalhouse Walker, Jr. (the phenomenal Joshua Henry). And we identify with the ingenious, Jewish immigrant Tateh (the endearing Brandon Uranowitz). Tateh must succeed for the sake of his little daughter (Tabitha Lawing), despite their impoverished Latvian background. Likewise, we champion Mother (the superb Caissie Levy), who reveals her decency, kindness and skill, running the house, family and business. She must fill in the gap while her husband (Colin Donnell), goes on a lengthy expedition to the North Pole as a man of the privileged, upper class patriarchy.
The musical also reflects the other side of America’s blood-soaked history, best represented by characters along a continuum. Their misogyny, discrimination and greed often overwhelm, victimize and institutionalize innocents in the name of a just progress. These include tycoons like J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford, and the garden variety racists that brutalize Coalhouse Jr. and his partner Sarah (the fine Nichelle Lewis), in the name of order and security. Finally, to inspire all, the musical includes wily entrepreneurs like Harry Houdini (Rodd Cyrus), social justice advocates like Emma Goldman (the wonderful Shaina Taub), and accepted reformers like Booker T. Washington (John Clay III). All these individuals make up the living fabric of America.
At its most revelatory, Ragtime exposes elements of our present as the continuation of entrenched issues never resolved from our past. Despite our great strides in nuclear fission and quantum computing, retrograde darkness still lurks in the nation’s beating heart, in its violence, in its human rights inequities. Clear-eyed, incisive, DeBessonet’s spare choices about spectacle and design, and her focus on great acting and singing by the leads and ensemble, ground this masterwork.
Ragtime begins with an interesting unexplained entrance: a winsome and beautiful Black male child in period dress frolics across a bare stage. At the conclusion the circle comes to a close and he appears again. We discover who he is and what he symbolizes in a stark, crystallizing moment of elucidation. After the opening number (“Ragtime”), Mother’s adventure as head of her household begins when Father leaves (“Goodbye My Love”). Her helpers include her outspoken, prescient, son Edgar (Nick Barrington), her younger brother (Ben Levi Ross), and her opinionated, crotchety father (Tom Nelis).
However, the peace and serenity of their lives become interrupted when Mother discovers an abandoned baby in her garden. After much deliberation, Mother takes in the infant and traumatized mother, Sarah. Clearly, this startling act of redemption never would have occurred if Father was present. As an assertion of Mother’s right to make her own decisions, her grace becomes a turning point in the lives of the baby’s father, Coalhouse, and his love, Sarah. Apparently, Coalhhouse left Sarah to travel for his career, not knowing she was pregnant. He was pursing his dream of being a singer/composer of the new ragtime music.
By he time Coalhouse searches for Sarah to eventually find and woo her back to him, we note the tribulations of Tateh, who tries to survive using his artistic skills (like Harry Houdini). And we note the moguls of a corrupted capitalism, i.e. Ford, Morgan (“Success”), who Emma Goldman accuses of exploitation. They keep the workers and society oppressed and poor.
Using his charm and daily persistence (“he Courtship,” “New Music,”), Coalhouse wins Sarah back. In a dramatic, dynamic moment, Henry’s Coalhouse sings with emotion, “Sarah, come down to me.” When Lewis’ Sarah descends, their fulfillment together is paradise. The stunning scene like the ones that follow, i.e. “New Music,” and especially Henry and Lewis’ “Wheels of a Dream,” where Coalhouse and Sarah sing to their son about America, are hopeful and heartbreaking. Again, the audience stopped the show with applause and cheers as they periodically did throughout the production.
On the wave of Coalhouse and Sarah’s togetherness and love reunited, we forget the underbelly of a dark America that looms around the corner. It does appears during Father’s reunion with Mother after his lengthy voyage.
Unhappily, Father returns to a household in chaos with Sarah, Coalhouse and the baby under his roof. He can’t imagine what “got into” his wife and makes demeaning remarks about the baby. His conservative, un-Christian-like attitude upsets Mother. She defends her position and replies with demure, feminine instruction. Interestingly, her comment indicates she will not heel to him like the good lap dog she was before he left. As with the other leads, Levy’s performance is unforgettable in its specificity, nuance and authenticity.
Clearly, the characters have made inroads with each other bringing socioeconomic classes together during events when activists like Emma Goldman and Booker T. Washington make their mark and reaffirm equality. As a representative of the wave of immigrants coming to America from other teeming shores, Uranowitz’s Tateh steals our hearts and pings our consciences, thanks to his human, loving portrayal. Despite his bitterness in having to brace against the poverty he came to escape, he tries to overcome his circumstances and with ingenuity and pluck continually perseveres. Uranowitz’s Tateh particularly makes us consider the current government’s cruel, unconstitutional response toward migrants and immigrants today.
Act II answers the conflicts presented in Act I, leaving us with a troubling expose of our country’s heart of darkness. Yet, the musical uplifts bright halos of hope with the return of the adorable Black male child. We discover who he is and understand his mythic symbolism. Also, we learn the fate of the characters, some justly deserved. And the audience leaves remembering the cries of “Bravo” that resounded in their ears for this mind-blowing production.
Ragtime
With music direction by James Moore Ragtime runs 2 hours 45 minutes with one intermission through Jan. 4 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater lct.org.
‘Chess,’ a Terrific Aaron Tveit, Lea Michele, Nicholas Christopher Electrify a Less Troubled Book
In all of the adventures of the musical Chess, from concept album to initial production in the West End (1986), to its Broadway premiere (1988), concerts, revivals, recordings and tours up to the present, there might be an object lesson in how to develop a winning book. The memorable score by Abba’s genius collaborators, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus will always resonate. But the musical with lyrics by Ulvaeus and Rice, and new book by Danny Strong may have alighted on the merry-go-round of success never to return to a troubled past. The musical currently runs at the Imperial Theatre until May 3rd.
In its current iteration, the Broadway revival, starring three powerhouses in the lead roles, makes Tim Rice’s idea about a Cold War musical more coherent and interesting. This seems especially so if one lived through the hell of President Reagan’s escalating nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union, and saw the 1983 TV movie The Day After (about nuclear annihilation). Watched by 100 million viewers in one sitting, the TV movie, also watched by Reagan, allegedly influenced him against continuing proliferation.
Strong’s book ties in to the arms race, SALT talks, CIA and KGB compromises, and a controversial, frightening event (Able Archer ’83). All become aligned with two chess matches and chess gambits played by the Soviets and Americans to enable communications during a dangerous time in the 1980s, when nuclear war seemed imminent and chess was used as a form of negotiation to save face and make deals (“Difficult and Dangerous Times”).
To frame the story, clarify the events with a through-line, and provide a critique, Strong presents this version of Chess through the perspective of an omnipotent narrator, The Arbiter, superbly played by Bryce Pinkham. Snapping his fingers to move the action, he introduces the players, as he selects and explains the events which the company enacts. Invariably, he shares his opinions. Accordingly, the characters subtly move around like chess pieces (the metaphor) in the Cold War game.
This is an important conceit that can be overlooked as one becomes caught up in the powerful music, well choreographed dances, and love triangle between Freddie (Aaron Tveit), Florence (Lea Michele) and Anatoly (Nicholas Christopher). We thrill to their sterling voices and the ensemble’s striking dances. Amidst the glory, the emotion and the angst, Bryce Pinkham’s Arbiter holds the Cold War musical together and gives it a new coherence. He dishes up humor and irony as he tosses off snarky one-liners that sometimes relate the events of the past to events in the present. In one aside he infers the US and NATO countries are in a second Cold War.
Accompanied by the ensemble, Pinkam’s Arbiter presents a wild and woolly number in which he introduces himself as a new character, and critiques his song (“The Arbiter”) with a confident, “I’m going to crush it.” Pinkham does “crush it,” then his character arbitrates the first chess match between Freddie and Anatoly. After the match Freddie’s Second, Florence, eventually falls out of love with wired Freddie (“Pity the Child #1), and into love with the depressive Anatoly (“Where I Want to Be”). The struggle for all to remain on an even keel against the backdrop of the spy games creates the musical’s tension and generates the fabulous songs.
In Strong’s book whether one agrees with the character’s attitude or not, Pinkham’s Arbiter presents clarity and the symbolism that the Soviets vs. the Americans “Cold War” was an overarching chess match containing a series of smaller chess matches between the players, even between Anatoly’s two love interests, his wife, Svetlana (Hannah Cruz) and Florence. Their powerful duet (“I Know Him so Well”), strikes gold in Act II. After Anatoly defects to England and lives with Florence, he plays against the Soviet champion Viigand in Bangkok (Act II), which underscores the frightening Able Archer 83 event.
In Strong’s version, the CIA agent Walter de Courcey (Sean Allan Krill), and KGB agent and Anatoly’s chess mentor Alexander Molokov (Bradley Dean), negotiate compromises and deals behind the scenes of the first match and the second. Of course, this is for the purpose of winning the larger game of chess which is a deescalation of nuclear weapons to insure the safety of the planet. Indeed, there were real chess matches between the countries, and Pinkham’s Arbiter infers this with his suggestion that some of these events are true. The video projections go a long way toward filling in the gaps in information and de-mystifying what happened during the time befor the Berlin Wall fell.
Chess is acutely, incisively directed by Tony-award winner Michael Meyer (Swept Away, Hedwig). Meyer stages many of the numbers with the concert style approach. Kevin Adams’ lighting design of blues, reds, purples, yellows, effectively dramatizes the dynamic between and among the specific characters, the Soviets and Americans, and the shift of settings, i.e. Bangkok in Act II.
David Rockwell’s multi-tiered scaffolding enhanced by neon and chrome gives the production a stark, period look which is softened for an intimate bedroom scene between Florence and Anatoly with minimal props. Video by Peter Nigrini enhances the historical background needed to provide context, i.e. the Hungarian Revolution, or add interest. Lorin Latarro’s energetic, at times mannered (“Difficult and Dangerous Times” ), at times wild, erotic (“One Night in Bangkok”), energetic movement and dance enhance the ensemble’s pivotal numbers. These reflect the stereotypical thinking of that time, the cold war policy and the feverish, hot, atmosphere in Bangkok where the second chess match is held.
Appropriately, the ensemble’s tailored, grey suits (Tom Broecker), reflect the somberness of countries at war with the threat of their antagonisms heating up. The leads in dark colors contrast with the ensemble, and Anatoly’s wife dressed in maroon “leather.”
The phenomenal score played by an 18-20 piece orchestra with Ian Weinberger’s musical direction, and Anders Eljas and Brian Usifer’s orchestrations power up the ballads, pop rhythms and near operatic ensemble numbers gloriously. Finally, the orchestra, carefully positioned onstage by the back wall, is always witnessed by the audience who engages with it.
The sexy “One Night in Bangkok” received applause of recognition by the audience with the first notes of the charted global hit song (1984-85), as the exotic dancers and Tveit rocked Latarro’s movements with mastery. The superbly performed numbers by Tveit (“Pity the Child #2”), Michele (“Someone Else’s Story,” “Nobody’s Side”) and Christopher’s “Where I Want to Be” and “Anthem,” sung with the ensemble, are show-stoppers.
Finally, as the games conclude and presumably the first Cold War is over, Pinkham’s Arbiter sings “One Less Variation.” Then, Tveit, Michele, Christopher, Pinkham and the company end with the warning lyrics from “Nobody’s on Nobody’s Side”: “Never stay (a minute too long), don’t forget the best will go wrong, nobody’s on nobody’s side.”
Chess runs 2 hours 45 minutes with one intermission through May 3 at the Imperial Theater. chessbroadway.com.
CAROLE DI TOSTI 