Category Archives: Broadway
‘The Piano Lesson’ is a Striking Revival That Delivers Exceptional Acting, Acute Direction and Prodigious Mastery
How do we reconcile a past of misery, torment and devastation? Do we bury it or embrace the goodness our ancestors brought to bear as they raised us? Do we take the next steps to rise up to the inner glory they encouraged, or mourn in resentment never exorcising the anguish that seeped into our psyches? In August Wilson’s richly crafted Pulitzer Prize-winning play The Piano Lesson, currently running at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, the character Berniece (superbly portrayed by Danielle Brooks) must reconcile herself to her past and become the conduit that translates legacy into new beginnings for her family and her daughter.
The Piano Lesson symbolizes how African Americans must approach their painful history of slavery as a planting field which may give birth to strong generations that carry new hope and opportunity for a positive future. Additionally, in this production directed by Latanya Richardson Jackson, Wilson suggests what that future might be with an uplifting conclusion where family understanding and unity are restored after nefarious forces steeped in colonial, paternalistic folkways and institutional racism, sought to keep the family divided and conquered.
August Wilson’s play debuted on Broadway in 1990, not only winning the Pulitzer Prize but also winning the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, as well as the New York Critic’s Circle Award for Best Play. The Piano Lesson which takes place in Pittsburgh, 1936 is one in a collection of 10 plays in Wilson’s American Century Cycle. Each of the plays, set in a different decade, chronicles African American struggles and triumphs as various families move away from the remnants of slavery and its impact from 1900 through the 1990s. The work has enjoyed three revivals, one Off Broadway in 2013 and the two Broadway outings (1990, 2022).
This outstanding revival features seminal performances by a superb ensemble and a clarifying vision about the play by the director. Each actor brings vitality and authentically to manifest the roiling fear and oppression that still hangs over the lives of characters Berniece (Danielle Brooks) Boy Willie (John David Washington) and family uncles Doaker (Samuel L. Jackson) and Wining Boy (Michael Potts) as they attempt to move beyond their traumatic past. It is a slavery past where ancestors saw toil and heartache and a recent past where Berniece and her family saw violence, bloodshed and anything but a peaceful passing to ancestral graves.
Events come to a head when Boy Willie visits the family for the first time in three years since Berniece lost her husband Crawley. Boy Willie comes with a vital personal mission so he braves his sister Berniece’s ire because he is at a turning point in his life. Berniece and Boy Willie have been estranged because she blames him for Crawley’s death. Tired of sharecropping for others, Boy Willie leaps when he is offered an opportunity where he, too, can embrace the “American Dream.” In an ironic twist he would be purchasing land his ancestors worked as slaves made available after the slave master’s descendant, the head of the Sutter family, fell down a well and died. Boy Willie’s purchase would allow him to end being exploited by others so he might work to lift himself to a better life.
However, he needs to raise more cash to complete the land deal, so he intends to sell their family heirloom, a beautifully carved upright piano which is housed in Uncle Doaker’s Pittsburgh home where Berniece and her 11-year-old daughter live. As is often the case with inheritances, there are family squabbles about how to dispose of various items. The piano not only is valuable materially, it symbolizes the family’s history and legacy, which is both beautiful and terrible. An ancestor carved the faces of family members on it to soothe the slave master’s wife who was missing her slaves that were traded for the piano. Over the years, the piano has become the family totem that conveys a spiritual weight and emblematic preciousness. Wilson signifies this when Boy Willie and friend Lymon find it nearly impossible to lift by themselves.
Berniece understands the piano’s significance to the depths of her soul and refuses to allow Boy Willie to remove it. For seven years after their mother died, Berniece stopped playing it to honor her mother’s remembrance. Though only Maretha (played by Jurnee Swan at the performance I saw) and Uncle Wining Boy play it, Berniece justifies keeping it because of Mama Ola Charles. Mama Ola daily polished it “til her hands bled, then rubbed the blood in…mixed it up with the rest of the blood on it” and mourned over the tragic loss of her husband, Boy Charles who was murdered after he stole it and hid it to retain its ownership. He believed if the Sutter family kept the piano, they symbolically “lorded” it over the Charles family, who they would oppress as their ersatz slaves, if not physically, then psychically and emotionally.
Gradually, Samuel L. Jackson’s Doaker reveals the story of the piano’s history since slavery days. With understated reverence as an explanation why Berniece will never let it go, he discusses how the carvings of each ancestor and their stories reside there as a remembrance of their identity and the sacrificial death of his brother Boy Charles, who first imbued the piano with the symbolic and spiritual significance of their family’s legacy of forward momentum.
Jackson’s Doaker and Danielle Brooks’ Berniece superbly translate the importance of this magical object with nuance and power that gives rise to our understanding why the ancestral spirits are hovering in the piano’s majesty in a battle that becomes otherworldly between the Sutter and the Charles family. It is a battle which has been continuing revealed at the top of the play with Boy Willie’s excited, impassioned entrance and reflected in Beowulf Boritt’s incredible set of Doaker’s simple four room house whose spare roof timbers exposed to the sky appear to be split and separating.
Indeed, the Charles family is a house divided by disagreement, disharmony and mourning tied in and caused by the racial discrimination, and inequitable economic opportunities intended to keep African Americans entrenched in poverty and peonage. To be free of Sutter oppression the Charles family must move away from the Sutters’ (symbolic of white racists) murderous, thieving behaviors, exploitive folkways and lack of empathy for others. They must free themselves from materialism, selfishness and criminality that has destroyed their humanity, as Brook’s Berniece expresses in her indictment of the men in her immediate family, including her dead husband Crawley.
Boy Willie’s presence at this point in time after Sutter is found at the bottom of a well is intriguing. Has Sutter’s wicked ghost driven him up to trouble Berniece about the piano despite its legacy? Or does he just want to make a better life for himself as he suggests? Berniece believes he pushed Sutter to his death, knowing the Sutter land would be put up for sale. Though Washington’s Boy Willie makes a convincing argument that he is not a murderer and Pott’s colorful Wining Boy suggests it’s the vengeful “Ghosts of the Yellow Dog” that caused Sutter’s fall to his death, Berniece is not convinced. Boy Willie’s presence has brought confusion and turmoil, exceptionally rendered by Washington’s Boy Willie, who appears so impassioned about selling the piano, he acts like a man possessed.
Additionally, Boy Willie’s obviation of the importance of the piano as their family legacy is answered with his apology to Berniece as if that is enough because he will sell it regardless. That answer isn’t enough for her. However, Boy Willie insists forcefully almost manically that he will use the land and make something with it, even though the deal is by word of mouth and could be another bamboozle by the Sutter family as Uncle Wining Boy suggests.
That the ghost of Sutter appears to members of the family around the same time that Boy Willie appears is more than a coincidence. That Boy Willie is the only one who doesn’t see the ghost is also more than a coincidence. Berniece, Doaker, Maretha and Wining Boy see the ghost who has been manifesting on the second floor above where Boritt’s roof timbers separate, threatening with well-paced grinding sounds (Scott Lehrer) to split the house up and fragment it completely.
Why doesn’t Boy Willie see Sutter’s ghost? Has Boy Willie become an instrument of the Sutter family, influenced/possessed by Sutter’s ghost to continue the tradition of theft, exploitation and bloodshed (the chains of slavery days) luring Boy Willie with the dream of being “his own boss?” The longer Boy Willie stays to sell a truck load of watermelons, the more the arguing and airing of grievances continues, intermingled with wonderful songs they sing, the first led by Jackson’s Doaker and the last by Potts’ Wining Boy who made a profitable living which he couldn’t sustain playing piano and cutting a few records.
However, nothing will ameliorate Boy Willie’s lust for the money the piano will bring. Finally, when push comes to shove, Berniece and Doaker do take out their guns ready to shoot Boy Willie if he and his friend Lymon (Doron JePaul Mitchell when I saw the show) remove the piano.
Brooks’ Berniece is so fervent that we believe she will shoot her brother to protect her ancestors’ legacy whose symbolism and spiritual strength she has embraced during Boy Willie’s importuning her to give it up. Washington’s Boy Willie is every inch her equal, stoked by the Sutter relative with the lure of land and his own ambition, like the Biblical Esau, willing to sell his birthright without any guarantees. Brooks and Washington are perfect foils and deliver amazing performances. Jackson’s Doaker and Pott’s Uncle Wining Boy present the stabilizing, humorous counterbalance to the frenzied brother and sister. If not for Wining Boy’s playing the piano at that heightened moment when Berniece has the gun, she would shoot Boy Willie, and Sutter’s ghost would have triumphed, completely destroying the family. Jackson’s direction and the timing of Potts and Samuel L. Jackson’s interference and distractions round out the incredible drama that moves toward the last scene of the play.
It is then that all the characters acknowledge the ghost of Sutter’s presence in the grinding sound of the house being pulled asunder by the warring spirits which also represent the values which the families prize. These are the values which Boy Willie must decide on. Should he be like the Sutters or raise up his own family’s legacy as Doaker has learned to do as a trainman and as Berniece has done steadfastly living one day at a time? Does Boy Willie have the resolve to shake off destructive forces and slowly carve out a life for himself with a lasting peace? At the top of the play Washington’s Boy Willie is so possessed by the Sutter’s offer and righting the past exploitation of his family, he can’t wait to follow them down the same pathways. However, Washington’s Boy Willie does change and is redirected.
Encouraged by everyone who feels the presence of Sutter’s ghost, preacher Avery (Trai Byers-another superb performance) who Berniece has been seeing, attempts to cast out the pernicious Sutter. He fails. Only Berniece calling on the help of her ancestors’ spirits who assist in the spiritual battle overcomes the ghost of Sutter’s presence and hold over their family. As she sings and plays the piano, on the second floor we watch the impact of her prayers and the Charles family’s spirits on Boy Willie as Washington manifests the struggle with Sutter’s ghost. As his body arches over then releases, we note that Sutter’s ghost, its tormenting lures that possessed Boy Willie leave. The two siblings are finally in agreement with Doaker and Wining Boy that what Sutter represents has no place in their family. As it leaves Boy Willie, miraculously, the house is made whole. With a grinding sound and the final sighting and restitution of the Ghosts of the Yellow Dog (you have to see the play to understand what happens) the separated timbers rejoin. It’s an incredible effect and magnificent, symbolic realization of Wilson’s immutable themes, about family unity in reconciliation with the past to move forward, thanks to the creative team, wonderful actors and Jackson’s direction.
Jackson’s staging and use of special effects (Jeff’s Sugg’s projection design, Lehrer’s sound design, Japhy Weideman’s lighting design, Boritt’s fabulous set) convey Boy Willie’s struggle, exorcism and redemption from the tradition of oppression, bloodshed and materialistic selfishness that have corrupted the Sutters and work to corrupt him and completely divide his family. He is only able to gain strength to be released when Brooks’ Berniece accepts how the legacy of past can be turned into a positive future by becoming the conduit of the ancestral spirits. It is their beauty, sanctity and strength that rise up to lead her, Maretha and the others forward, if they allow themselves to be led.
Boy Willie and Berniece join hands in unity. His demeanor transforms into calmness. He no longer wants to sell the piano, understanding that his family history and his identity are in unity. With the house returned to wholeness, the wicked impulses will no more occlude the lives of Berniece, Boy Willie and the others. Now they can move forward and carve their own history in the reality of their lives.
Throughout Wilson raises questions whether Boy Willie got revenge on Sutter for having his father burned alive and the question of whether he killed him to get the land in an ironic triumph. Another question is whether the Sutters are serious about selling the land to Boy Willie given the history between the two families. In the production these questions are emphasized by director Jackson’s vision of the themes and characterizations of this complicated work brought to a phenomenal apotheosis at the conclusion. However, as in life, ambuity is the spice that keeps us enthralled along with the chilling presence of the supernatural hovering.
This is a one of a kind production that exceptionally realizes August Wilson’s intent with every fiber of the artists’ prodigious efforts. I have nothing but praise for what they have done and will do for the run of the play.
For tickets and times to see this living masterpiece go to their website: https://pianolessonplay.com/
‘Ohio State Murders,’ Audra McDonald’s Performance is Stunning in This Exceptional Production
For her first Broadway outing Adrienne Kennedy’s Ohio State Murders has been launched by six-time Tony award winner Audra McDonald into the heavens, and into history with a magnificent, complexly wrought and richly emotional performance. The taut, concise drama about racism, sexism, emotional devastation and the ability to triumph with quiet resolution is directed by Kenny Leon and currently runs at the James Earl Jones Theatre until 12 February. It is a must-see for McDonald’s measured, brilliantly nuanced portrayal of Suzanne Alexander, who tells the story of budding writer Suzanne, in a surreally configured narrative that blends time frames and requires astute listening and thinking, as it enthralls and surprises.
This type of work is typical of Kennedy whose 1964 Funnyhouse of a Negro won an Obie Award. That was the first of many accolades for a woman who writes in multiple genres and whose dramas evoke avant garde presentations and lyrically poetic narratives that are haunting and stylistically striking. As one who explores race in America and has contributed to literature, poetry and drama expressing the Black woman’s experience without rhetoric, but with illuminating, symbolic, word crafting power, Kennedy has been included in the Theater Hall of Fame. In 2022 she received the Gold Medal for Drama from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Gold Medal for Drama is awarded every six years and is not bestowed lightly; only 16 individuals including Eugene O’Neill have been so honored.
This production of Ohio State Murders remains true to Kennedy’s wistful, understated approach to the dramatic, moving along an arc of alternating emotional revelation and suppression in the expose of her characters and their traumatic experiences. Leon and McDonald have teased out a 75 minute production with no intermission, intricate and profound, as Kennedy references and parallels other works of literature to carry glimpses of her characters’ complexity without clearly delineating the specifics of their behaviors. In the play much is suggested, little is clarified. Toward the unwired conclusion we find out a brief description of how the murders occurred and by whom. The details and the motivations are distilled in a few sentences with a crashing blow.
Much is opaque, laden with sub rosa emotion, depression, heartbreak and quiet reflection couched in remembrances. The most crucial matters are obviated. The intimacy between the two principals which may or may not be glorious or tragic is invisible. That is Kennedy’s astounding feat. Much is left to our imaginations. We can only surmise how, when and where Suzanne and Robert Hampshire (Bryce Pinkham in a rich, understated and austere portrayal) who becomes “Bobby” got together and coupled when Suzanne supposedly visited his house. Their relationship mirrors that of the characters in Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. It is this novel which first brings the professor and student together in mutual admiration over a brilliant paper Suzanne writes and he praises.
What is mesmerizing and phenomenal about Kennedy’s work is how and why McDonald’s Suzanne follows a process of revelation not with a linear, chronological storytelling structure, but with an uncertain, in the moment remembering. McDonald moves “through a glass darkly,” unraveling recollections, as her character carefully unspools what happened, sees it anew as it unfolds in her memory, then responds to the old and new emotions the recalled memories create.
Audra McDonald is extraordinary as Suzanne Alexander, who has returned to her alma mater to discuss her own writing which has been published and about which there are questions concerning the choice of her violent images. The frame of Suzanne’s lecture is in the present and begins and ends the play. By the conclusion Suzanne has answered the questions. Kennedy’s circuitous narrative winds through flashback as Suzanne relates her experiences at Ohio State when she was a freshman and her movements were dictated by the bigotry that impacted her life there.
In the flashback McDonald’s Suzanne leaps into the difficult task of familiarizing us with the campus and environs, the discrimination, her dorm, roommate Iris Ann (Abigail Stephenson) and others (portrayed by Lizan Mitchell and Mister Fitzgerald), all vital to understanding Suzanne’s story about the violence in her writing. Importantly, McDonald’s Suzanne begins with what is most personal to her, the new world she discovers in her English classes. These are taught by Robert Hampshire, (the astonishing Bryce Pinkham) a professor new to the college. Reading in wonder and listening to his lectures, Suzanne’s fascination with literature, writing and criticism blossoms under his tutelage.
Within the main flashback Kennedy moves forward and backward, not allowing time to delineate what happened, but rather allowing Suzanne’s emotional memories to lead her storytelling. After authorities expel her from Ohio State, she lives with her Aunt and then returns with her babies to work and live with a family friend in the hope of finishing her education. During this recollection she refers to the time when she lived in the dorm and was disdained by the other girls.
Kennedy anchors the sequence of events in time by using the names of individuals Suzanne meets. For example when she returns after she has been expelled, she meets David (Mister Fitzgerald) who she dates and eventually marries after the Ohio State murders. What keeps us engrossed is how Suzanne fluidly merges time fragments within the years she was at the college. She digresses and jumps in memory as she retells the story, as if escaping from emotion in a repressive flash forward, until she can resume her composure. At the conclusion, Suzanne references the murders of her babies.
Thus, with acute, truncated description that is both poetic and imagistic, McDonald’s Suzanne slowly breaks our hearts. McDonald elucidates every word, every phrase, imbuing it with Suzanne’s particular, rich meaning. Though the character is psychologically blinded and perhaps refuses to initially accept who the killer of her babies might be, there is the uncertainty that she may know all along, but is loathe to admit it to her self, because it is incredibly painful. At the conclusion when she reveals the murderer’s identity and events surrounding both murders, she is remote and cold, as is the snow falling behind outside the crevasse. At that segment McDonald’s unemotional rendering triggers our imaginations. In a flash we understand the what and why. We receive the knowledge as a gut-wrenching blow. Fear has encouraged the murderer in a culture whose violence and racism bathes its citizens in hatred.
When McDonald’s Suzanne Alexander brings us back to the present as she pulls us up with her from the recesses of her memory, we are shocked again. We have been gripped and enthralled, swept up in the events of tragedy and sorrow, senseless violence and loss. The question of why bloody imagery is in Suzanne’s writing has been answered. But many more questions have been raised. For example, in an environment of learning and erudition, how is the murder of innocents possible? Isn’t education supposed to help individuals transcend impulses that are hateful and violent? Kennedy’s themes are horrifically current, underscored by mass shootings in Ulvade, Texas and other schools and colleges across the nation since this play was written (1992). At the heart of such murdering is racism, white domestic terrorism, bigotry, hatred, inhumanity.
The other players appear briefly to enhance Suzanne’s remembrances. Pinkham’s precisely carved professor Hampshire reveals all the clues to his nature and future actions in the passages he reads to his classes from the Hardy novel, then Beowuf and in references to King Arthur and the symbol of the “abyss” he discusses in two lectures Suzanne attends. All, he delivers tellingly with increasing foreboding. Indeed, the passages are revelatory of what he is experiencing symbolically in his soul and psyche. When Suzanne describes his physical presence during the last lecture, when she states he is looking weaker than he did when he taught his English classes, it is a clue. Pinkham’s Hampshire is superbly portrayed with intimations of the quiet, profound and troubled depths of the character’s inner state of mind.
Importantly, Kennedy, through Suzanne’s revelations about the university when she was a freshman, indicates the racism of the student body as well as the bigotry of the officials and faculty, which Black students like Suzanne and Iris must overcome. There is nothing overt. There are no insults and epithets. All is equivocal, but Suzanne feels the hatred and the injustice regarding unequal opportunities.
For example it is assumed that she cannot “handle” the literature classes and must go through trial classes to judge whether she is capable of advanced work as an English major. When she tells professor Hampshire, he insists that this shouldn’t be happening. Nevertheless, he has no power to change her circumstances, though he has supported and encouraged her writing. The college’s bigotry is entrenched, as she and other Black women are discouraged in their studies and forced out surreptitiously so that they cannot complain or protest.
Kenny Leon’s vision complements Kennedy’s play. It is imagistic, minimalistic and surreal, thanks to Beowulf Boritt’s scenic design, Jeff Sugg’s projection design, Allen Lee Hughes lighting design and Justin Ellington’s sound design. At the top of the play there are two worlds. We see black and white projections of of WWII and the aftermath through a v-shaped crevasse that divides the outside culture and the interior of the college in the library symbolized by faux book cases. These are suspended in the air and move around symbolically following what Suzanne discusses and describes.
The books are a persistent irony and heavy with meaning. They sometimes serve as a backdrop for projections, for example to label areas of the campus. On the one hand they represent a lure to Suzanne who venerates literature. They suggest the amalgam of learning that is supposed to educate and improve the culture and society. However, the bigoted keepers of knowledge in their “ivory” towers use them as weapons of exclusion and inhumanity, psychologically and emotionally, harming Blacks and others who are not white or who are considered inferior. Leon’s vision and the artistic team’s infusion of this symbolism throughout the play are superb.
In the instance of the one individual who appreciates Suzanne’s writing, the situation becomes twisted and that too, becomes weaponized against her. However, that she has been invited back to her alma mater all those years later to discuss her writing indicates the strength of her character to overcome the incredible suffering she endured. At the conclusion of her talk in the present she reveals her inner power to leap over the obstacles the bigoted college officials put before her. Her return so many years later is indeed a triumph.
Leon and the creative team take the symbolism of rejection, isolation, emotional coldness and inhumanity and bring it from the outdoors to the indoors. Beyond the crevasse in the wintertime environment, the snow falls during Suzanne’s description of events. Eventually, by the end of the play, the exterior and interior merge. The violence we saw at the top of the play in pictures of the War and its aftermath has spread to Ohio State. The snow falls indoors. Finally, Suzanne Alexander is able to publicly speak of it openly and honestly after discovering there was a cover-up of the truth that even her father agreed to out of shame and humiliation.
Ohio State Murders is a historic event that should not be missed. When you see it, listen for the interview of Adrienne Kennedy before the play begins as the audience is seated. She discusses her education at Ohio State and the attitudes of the faculty and college staff. Life informs art as is the case with Adrienne Kennedy’s wonderful avant garde play and this magnificent production.
For tickets and times to to their website: https://ohiostatemurdersbroadway.com/
‘Ain’t No Mo,’ the Uproarious Satire Explodes With Brilliance on Broadway
Ain’t No Mo which premiered at The Public Theater in 2019 brings its scathing, sardonic wit and wisdom to Broadway in a broader, handsomer, electrically paced production with incredible performances and extraordinary, complex dynamism. Presented by a host of producing partners with Lee Daniels topping the list and The Public Theater end-stopping it, Jordan E. Cooper’s brilliance now can be appreciated by a wider audience. Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb, the production shines brightly with the creative team of Scott Pask (scenic design) Emilio Sosa (costume design) Adam Honore, who also was responsible for lighting design in the Public Theater production, Jonathan Deans and Taylor Williams (sound design) and Mia M. Neal (hair & wig design).
The tenor, structure and characterizations which send up Black cultural attitudes and systemic white institutional racism and fascism in Cooper’s excoriating farce and brash, in-your face cataclysm of vignettes, remain essentially the same as the Public’s production which I adored and thought incredibly trenchant (https://wordpress.com/posts/caroleditosti.com?s=ain%27t+no+mo). Based on the premise of the political collapse of the country with Putin installing Donald Trump as president (my opinion as per the Mueller Report) as the main conceit of the play, the government offers a one-way flight back to Africa for all Blacks.
This was a perfect trope in 2019 and still is. Though we have a different administration in the presidency, the same pernicious elements that uplift oppression and inequity refuse to submit to the constitution which safeguards Black citizens and all citizens’ rights. Indeed, since 2019 the villians are hell bent to vitiate as many of our rights as they can. So Cooper’s play is tremendously vital as a clarion call against white supremacist tyranny and despotism at the heart of Trumpism and Republicans’ silent agreement with it.
Cooper attempts a few updates in this production since 2019. He references Black Lives Matter and Vice President Kamala Harris. However, he omits references to the horrific changes in the political climate which has worsened. Nor does he reference the Biden presidency which has sought to reverse every perverse corruption the Trump presidency and Republican party in silent complicity wrought on the country. Trump’s blasphemy of democracy, the January 6th insurrection and COVID botch job (read Bob Woodward’s book Rage) where Trump wittingly exacerbated the proliferation of the virus, killing the most vulnerable communities (persons of color, the elderly) are not mentioned in this production. The updates are unnecessary because Cooper’s themes are more current than ever. In fact they are prescient and hilariously frightening.
The Trump Republicans have continued their fascism and racism with a new vengeance against the Democratic Party which appears to stand for democracy and accountability. At this writing the entire Republican Party has not raised the hue and cry necessary to condemn Trump’s association with two individuals who support white supremacy, Nazis and in particular one individual’s praise of Hitler as a Holocaust denier.
Such white supremacist oppression and outright tyranny are the key points of Ain’t No Mo which suggests truth in ridicule and doesn’t posit simplistic solutions. Cooper’s genius with Stevie Walker-Webb’s superb director’s illumination REPRESENT metaphorically. Within the high-anxiety, farcical elements of the play are the roiling currents of fear and anxiety that reveal what it is to be black in the United States today, regardless of whichever black socioeconomic class one fits into.
This is especially so after the January 6th insurrection, 1,100,000 pandemic deaths and the screaming lies of white supremacist terrorist QAnon politicos like Louis Gomer, Marjorie Taylor Green and fist pumping Josh Hawley. It is especially so as Trump acolytes whitewash violent behaviors as patriotic expressions of freedom, in a cover-up of what they actually are, crimes against humanity and an attempt to destroy the constitution and the rule of law which holds white supremacist terrorist criminals like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and their encouragers (Trump’s allies) accountable.
Thus, Cooper’s prologue set in a local black church in 2008 at a metaphoric funeral service of Brother Righttocomplain is beyond perfect. Pastor Freeman, the wonderful Marchant Davis, proclaims that the election of black president Barack Obama will save the black community and remove their need to protest injustice, inequity, police brutality and lynchings, and racial hatreds. Parishioners (Fedna Jacquet, Shannon Matesky, Ebony Marshall-Oliver, Crystal Lucas-Perry) dressed in tight white dresses, thanks to Emilio Sosa’s outrageously funny costume design, scream and shout the glory. These congregants affirm with Pastor Freeman that the “light-skinned” (an irony) Black president will solve all their problems as their very own messiah whose freeing power they “own.”
Cooper’s memes and jokes are acutely ironic and a veritable laugh riot. For example he affirms that Obama is their “ni&&er” and as such there “ain’t no mo discrimination, ain’t no mo holleration, ain’t gone be NO more haterration…” The good reverend lists an end to every conceivable example of racist terror visited upon Blacks since the Civil War because with a Black president, abuse of the Black race by an unjust government will now stop. Of course, this is an irony because learned behavior and systemic institutional racism is so complex and entrenched, everyone in the nation must work very hard to overcome it. Given the pockets of prejudice and discrimination even in blue states, this is easier said than done. Cooper illustrates this beautifully by the conclusion of the opening scene.
With the burial of Brother Righttocomplain, “Freeman” preaches “ain’t no mo strife, no more marches to be led, no more tears to be shed…” in celebration of a real “going home party.” Of course, when Pastor Freeman hears gunfire as the parishioners praise, sing and dance, reality makes its ugly appearance. With sirens, cop cars’ flashing lights and gun shots, the future descends during the Obama presidency and afterward to the annihilating Trump presidency.
Above the shouts of praise Marchand’s Freeman hears the overwhelming news reports of the Flint water crisis, deaths of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Aiyana Jones, Rekia Boyd, Jordan Davis, Alton Sterling, The Charleston Nine and countless others. The reports reveal Freeman’s overestimation of Obama’s power as a Black president to mitigate racial hatreds and alleviate the social oppression Blacks experience every day. The same discrimination and violence raises its ugly head, despite President Obama’s best efforts to stop it. So the foreboding harbinger of the Trump presidency’s return to Jim Crow 2.0 terrors hover, unless blacks hop on those flights to Africa on African American Airlines. If they evacuate, they will save their lives. If they stay, they lose everything including their black identity and will end up dead or in prison.
Of course Cooper’s Africa evacuation is what President Abraham Lincoln suggested as a way to solve the “negro question” after the Civil War was over. However, Frederick Douglass stood up to Lincoln and vociferously opposed leaving because the United States was their country since 1619, and their association would never be African because their tribal history had been taken from them.
As a solution to the hell of Black America’s unequal treatment under the law, evacuation to Africa is Cooper’s over-the-top response. It is a double irony considering that once again, Blacks are introduced to a new form of dispossession, alienation, abandonment and diaspora, while the oppressive white culture “owns” all of the historical contributions Blacks have made in the arts, sciences, government, technology, industry and every field imaginable. In the play African Americans’ contributions reside metaphorically in a lovely bag which flight attendant Peaches (the inimitable Jordan E. Cooper) tries to take with her as she attempts to board the flight. But symbolically, the bag cannot be removed to Africa. And trying to leave with it, Peaches misses the flight and loses her identity and everything she’s fought for as an American. She is reduced to the state of those who survived the Middle Passage and were set up to be auctioned off as slaves. But she is “keeper” of the bag and recognizes that she is left to represent Black culture and identity.
Another key point Cooper makes with the symbolism of the “bag” is that the greatest Black contributions have been forged in the crucible of slavery and subsequent decades of oppression as Blacks and the culture have changed laws to be more equitable. Black contributions are as indelible to who Americans are as a culture and society as the Native Indian lands are the foundation upon which this nation has been built and has prospered. Though white oppression and white supremacist tyranny vaults its own greatness in lies, ignoring such contributions, it is a dangerous oversight and underestimation of Black energy, vitality and creativity. American greatness is in its diversity, and the culture and society will thrive if no one is left behind or evacuated. We must work together and seek equity for all to be great (an underlying theme of Cooper’s play).
After the opening prologue the play’s structure alternates between vignettes of various Black Americans’ response to escape to Africa and Peaches’ growing frustration boarding passengers under a deadline as an exit strategy from the hell of the coming white oppression. Cooper’s Peaches is wonderful as the wired, loud, candid, funny flight attendant who prods her passengers with the consequences of staying: prison and confiscation of everything they own or death (transmogrification). With each vignette we are apprised of the oppression Blacks have been conditioned to which is the foremost reason why Blacks should leave.
In the “Circle of Life” sequence which takes place at a clinic (since Roe vs. Wade was overturned with Dobbs, this is a particularly poignant scene) we watch the digital counter enumerate that are millions in line to terminate their pregnancies rather than give birth to a child whose days are numbered. Surely odds are they will end up as a statistic of police brutality, gang violence or other casualty of an oppressive culture which has come to kill those who drive or walk “while black.” Damien (Marchant Davis) tries to convince the pregnant Trisha (Fedna Jacquet) to keep his child rather than abort it. However, he is a spirit, shot to death, so Trisha who waits with another woman for almost two months finally goes into the room for the procedure as the plane arrives to begin boarding passengers in a humorous end of the scene as one pregnant woman thinks the plane is filled with the “9/11 bit*&es,” coming for their heads.
In a revelation of how Black identity is twisted and nullified by the culture, “The Real Baby Momas of the Southside” is a hysterical parody of any of the puerile reality series which reduce women to silly, gossipy, back-biting, angry, fools, whether black or white, as “benign” entertainment value. God forbid if this were a political show which demonstrated their intelligence and erudition. Instead, memes of what Black identity means come to the fore in this humorous and drop-dead serious send-up of shows which exploit the idea of “being Black.” Some of the funniest lines come when the women are off camera (the cameramen are white) and we discover that they don’t have children and speak without accents and epithets. We see the show is a blind to please and brainwash the audience, who enjoys seeing how “low-class” Black women are. Meanwhile, there are other ways of being, but this isn’t a show about how strong, forthright, powerful and intelligent Black women are.
“The lighter the skin, the better” is a reality Blacks have had to deal with because of white fascist physical mores. The trend has morphed over the decades into a perverse reverse. Other ethnic groups including whites have embraced the “Black ethos” in a perverse acceptance of only the superficiality of “being black” without accepting or recognizing any of the horrific sacrifices Blacks have made over their 400-year history in this nation. Cooper’s beautiful example of this appears on steroids with the character Rachonda, whose real name is Rachel (Shannon Matesky). She is a baby mama the others reject because she is white and is going through transracial treatments to become Black. When she is called out on it in a LOL moment by Tracy (Ebony Marshall-Oliver), Kendra (Fedna Jacquet) and Karen (Crystal Lucas-Perry), she reveals that she has no clue about Black American sacrifices and and just wants to ride the current wave of Black female “cool,” generated by Michelle Obama. She never receives the email inviting her to escape to Africa, caught between her memes and unconverted to her “full Blackness,” an irony.
In the last two vignettes before Cooper’s exceptional, heartfelt conclusion, the first reveals a wealthy Black family who embrace white upper class mores, genociding their own identity to convince themselves they belong to the superior, fascist, master race (like a celebrity who recently praised Hitler). By internalizing white supremacist values, they don’t even realize they have destroyed their identity, their souls and their uniqueness. Furthermore, by adopting the”white” ethos as the proud bourgeois class, they have trampled all those who have shed blood to advance the hope of achieving civil rights, equal opportunity and justice by overcoming institutional racism. The bourgeois family don’t believe they are oppressed because they live by the “green.” The supremacists would never come for them because they have money.
We don’t realize how brainwashed they are until Black (the amazing Crystal Lucas-Perry) emerges from her prison underneath the mansion where their wealthy father has chained her for forty years. Finally free, Black confronts them in one of the most wild, convulsively humorous and hyperbolic rants about their blackness and the imperative to leave for Africa. They are so “white-fascist-think,” the truth she speaks is anathema. They kill her (typical Black on Black crime). The neighbors hearing “Black” screaming non bourgeois are infuriated about it. They call the police right at the precise moment Black has been genocided.
The scene is a powder keg of dynamite performances which are memorable and tragic because the family believes that they are a different identity via the “green” (money). It doesn’t matter if they stay or go. They have already lost everything valuable about what their culture means. Staying, they lose their lives. Cooper’s theme is clear. An oppressive fascist culture has as its most horrific tactic, get blacks to destroy the finest traits about them, their Blackness, by rejecting it and internalizing white tropes. Without that Blackness, they embody the worst of the fascist “master race.” They genocide their own and themselves.
Cooper also identifies the Black, female prison population in a very powerful scene. When freedom is posited, one of the prisoners, Blue (Crystal Lucas Perry transitions to a completely different mien and aura) hesitates to leave. In great fear and rage from all the abuse of her past, she creates a situation where she almost destroys her chances for freedom and is killed (or never makes the plane and is transmogrified). How Cooper ends this vignette and the last one when Peaches doesn’t make the flight to join those evacuating the US, are memorable scenes. They leave the audience in awe. The majesty of the actors’ performances and the stark language laden with substance and richness are stunning.
It is a supreme irony that though there is not one Caucasian in his play, Cooper’s themes and messages are particularly for those who have been blinded to believe that their skin color exempts them from white supremacy’s tyranny. It is only a matter of degree. Despotism impacts everyone in the culture as Cooper indicates in the last scene of the play.
In the end scene, the jet pulls away as the Blacks leave for Africa renouncing everything to go to a safe haven, while Peaches is left “holding the bag,” though it cannot be pulled up from the very place on which it rests, having become rooted to America. Cooper’s hyperbole may seem a farcical extreme. However, what they escape in the play we all faced because of the tyranny of the former president, who weaponized of a pandemic which killed a larger proportionate number of blacks and people of color. The blasphemous white supremacist tyranny the Blacks escape via his play’s metaphor, in reality, incited an undeclared war against U.S. democracy in a violent insurrection to thwart the peaceful transfer of power when Trump lost the election. Cooper’s understanding of the murderous intent of white supremacy is divinely inspired. He is a veritable Cassandra in his ability to read the ominous signs and incorporate them in this play. So the point that the only safe haven from such white tyranny is a return to Africa has been made palpable in the Ain’t No Mo, 2022.
The work is breathtaking in its themes, performances, writing and artistry. Don’t miss it. For tickets and times go to their website https://aintnomobway.com/ You will belly laugh and be moved at the same time.
T
In ‘A Christmas Carol,’ Jefferson Mays is The Masterpiece
Someone once said, “It is easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Increased with golden toilets, their own airplanes and wanting for nothing, the rich don’t need to believe in God nor be accountable to anyone. Indeed in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol adapted by Jefferson Mays, Susan Lyons and Michael Arden, currently at the Nederlander Theatre, we recognize what it takes for a stingy, greedy, penurious rich man like Scrooge to transform into a generous, kind soul who demonstrates God’s love. Scrooge must be kidnapped by ghosts and taken on a spiritual journey toward a horrific ending. He must face the black night of the soul as death comes for him. If you’re familiar with Dickens’ story, you know the outcome. “Bah! Humbug!”
With Jefferson Mays in the driver’s seat of this truly heavenly Christmas Carol, directed by Michael Arden, running until 1st of January, we glory over Mays’ Scroogey ending. Employing magnificent performance skills honed to perfection, Mays brings to life Dickens’ popular story in a viscerally charged solo performance for the ages. The man of many faces, voices, gestures and personalities, Mays (Tony Award for I am my Own Wife) inhabits 50 or more characters to proclaim the message of goodness, love, joy and redemption in the true spirit of Christmas for audience members fortunate to catch him live this holiday season. He even portrays a cooking potato and enlivens the mist and fog that enters Scrooge’s chambers. Shriek!
Conceived by Michael Arden and Dane Laffrey, the production is an acutely tailored phantasmagoria of delight, fear, fun, strangeness and the macabre on steroids. It flies on ghostly wings at the speed of light and sound without an intermission, then it ends in Mays’ virtuoso curtain call to a standing ovation. Though you swear there are heavenly hosts that accompany him during his bows, look again. Yes, during the production there were many individuals onstage taking part in this amazing interactive storytelling. But no. Only he stands grinning in the spotlight pleased that the audience was hushed and enthralled, and suspended in time, caught up with him in the ethereal web of make believe, that is too real to accept for all of its mortality in immortality.
With the streamlined Mays, Lyons, Arden adaptation, Dickens’ prose is steadfast, ironic, cryptic, paired down to an acute sensibility so that Mays vibrates his instrument to produce Scrooge, Marley, all the Cratchits, his nephew Fred, Scrooge’s sister, Fezziwig, the Christmas spirits, Londoners and other souls and beings with pointed, sonorous, gravelly, delicate, squeaky, smooth, guttural vocal modulations. In other instances with a mere look, smile, shake of the head, shrug of the shoulders or flip of the hand, we see each member of the Cratchit family sitting around the dinner table. The scene is the centerpiece of Mays’ wit and whimsy assisted by no special effects because he IS the master of the “stuff” of kinetic presentation.
All these lovely and frightening individuals are authentically realized, as Mays fuses various genders, ages, mortals and immortals seamlessly with heartfelt, poignant and unmistakable generosity, a veritable melting pot of democracy. To say that Mays pours out every cell of his being to clarify Dickens’ message to update it for our time, is an understatement. With humanity he filters through his own soul the two most mortal of sins (a denial of God’s commands to love Him and love thy neighbors). Effecting this, Mays materializes and elucidates the stark, craven distinctions between the haves and have nots. Even Dickens, who railed at the predation of the owner class upon the worker class, shoved into debtors prisons and workhouses, would be proud to see what his words have wrought in Mays’ prophetic and brilliant enactments.
Clearly, this Carol slams the shameful indecency flying about the heads of grasping, rich owners like Scrooge and Marley whose greedy, hardened hearts perpetuate the impoverishment of workers in order to squeeze obscene profits for themselves because “they can,” for no one in the complicit government stops them.
But I have gotten ahead of myself. This production is without sentimentality, chiefly because with bounteous affection, Mays adheres to Dickens’ renderings. He allows the richness of Dickens’ words to organically inspire his every emotion, bringing a new understanding to what Dickens has achieved and revealing why this work is timeless.
The script is similar to the one that Dickens toured and enlivened himself with presentation foremost in his mind. The plot points are essentially the same, however, the creative team transfigures Dickens’ work, heightening it to a dimensional reality that is beyond our tangible realm. Dane Laffrey (scenic and costume design) Ben Stanton (lighting design) Joshua D. Reid (sound design) Lucy MacKinnon (production design) Cookie Jordan (hair, wig & makeup design), attend to details, carving them from Dickens’ language, lifting our felt experience to a transcendence that is breathtaking. Mays and the creative team’s efforts perfectly complement each other to reveal the characters like never before.
First, this version of A Christmas Carol is about darkness. Ebenezer Scrooge and his kindred partner in spiritual crime Marley, are souls without light. The moment the audience members enter, the show has begun. It is a viewing of a casket on a bier, surrounded by total stygian darkness, if not for the inky-greenish, backlit glow, eerily portending the supernatural after the irrevocable end to Marley’s mortal flesh. Then with a shock and thunderous clap, darkness and fear descend, snuffing out the light everywhere.
The evening I was present in the audience, there were nervous titters of laughing fear and what seemed an interminable wait which increased our tension. Then one, lone candle flickered in the palpable darkness, lit by “The Mourner” draped in black Victorian dress with top hat. Jefferson Mays, the narrator! Loudly, Mays proclaims the immutable fact that “Jacob Marley was dead,” to a community of mortals who, like Scrooge, don’t believe death will come for them. But then neither did Marley. The joke is a blasphemy to those who believe in money and no God.
Well, mystery solved. We know that it is Marley who is in the coffin. But what was that horrifying loud clap like a door closing on light forever? As Mays makes his way across the stage to light another candle which sends a weak glow through the caliginous room, we are rapt, mesmerized by the creative team’s ingenuity to fill us with an anticipated dread. It comes as Mays’ narrator begins the tale of the man in the coffin and the frightening events that happen to his partner Scrooge on this night, Christmas eve, a night signifying that grace is available even to a man of wicked greed like Scrooge, who believes Christmas (God’s love and gift of redemption) is a “Bah! Humbug!” fiction.
There is no end to the shocks erupting throughout this spectral and darkly fabulous presentation. The frightening effects and accompanying sounds startle and thrill. I was amazed by the amorphous, yet defined steam engine pealing out whistles and chugging puffs of smoke; in the twinkling of an eye present, then vanished as Dane Laffrey’s scenic design, Ben Stanton’s lighting design, Joshua D. Reid’s sound design and Lucy Mackinnon’s production design evoked the setting of a Victorian London. In the drapes and accoutrements of Scrooge’s bedroom to the “horn of plenty” abundance of the the groaning table of Christmas Present, everywhere on stage and with that locomotive, the audience is there “back in the day,” 150 years before. Calling me to attention, the immediacy alerted my expectations. I barely had time to wonder what other ghostly remnants of the past like that steam engine would present the shifting atmospheres of time and place in present, past and future Christmases, when Mays was in his states of becoming. From crotchety Scrooge to cheery nephew Fred to beloved, Bob Cratchit, all three sprung into spontaneous interaction.
Throughout, I heard, maybe for the first time, Dickens’ precise word craftsmanship. For example in this script Dickens strings together acute descriptors of Scrooge’s covetousness-squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, etc., and ends with an incalculably gobsmacking simile that identifies the man’s state of being as a result of covetousness: “Scrooge was as solitary as an oyster.” I’ve always appreciated Dickens’ genius. This production vaulted him to higher heights in my writerly estimation.
The thing is Mays is hyper aware of every word and he evokes its meaning with an appreciation of Dickens’ style, humor and ironies. And he wants us to catch these gems and have fun with them as he does. His performance is so immediate and embracing it is impossible to “intellectualize.” You just have to watch and react to whatever laugh comes up or be afraid of whatever fearful demon or entity comes next. I thought that the projected, darkness-filled children, one of which was pronounced to be “doom,” were particularly galling. With the darkness as it moves into the light-filled joy, Mays in collaboration with Arden and the production designers, creates a beloved tribute to Dickens’ greatness.
The emotions and reactions conveyed by various scenes are too many to enumerate. A few include Mays’ terrible infusion of Marley’s spirit, more chilling than Hamlet’s father for there is no surcease in his torment in a purgatory. Marley’s mortal sins have brought him to his irrevocable destination and he cries to be heard and listened to. That he visits Scrooge to reveal there are consequences in an afterlife where there is a God and where damnation is of one’s own making is grace enough bestowed on his partner in crime. Thus, Scrooge is taken up short at this visitation of one as godless and unbelieving as he. Mays’ seamless segues between Scrooge and Marley are incredible.
Likewise, as mentioned, the Cratchit scene is just superbly riotous. I found the wondrous Christmas Present segment one of joy, happiness, abundance and light. It is sandwiched between the previous Christmas Past scene of lugubriousness, and the coming gloom of Christmas Future’s portentous finality.
Of course for all of us, whether young or old, it’s memento mori another theme of this spectacular production. The incarnation of Death (Danny Gardner) when the creative team pulls out all stops is terrifying. It is enough to appall the most avuncular, sweet, scientific atheist who swears god is a fiction for frightened children. No wonder the irascible incorrigible goes down on his knees against such a being.
No more need be said except this production is a shining light, at a time when all around are dark hearts waiting to devour goodness and mercy because they can’t distinguish it from the light of joy the opposite to be “Bah Humbug!” fictions. Once live captured streaming two years ago, this live performance will most probably not be seen again, unless there is a return of grace in years to come. That’s why you should see it now. Mays is amaysing! For tickets and times go to their website: https://www.achristmascarollive.com/tickets/
‘Almost Famous’ The Broadway Musical Gives a Shimmering Nod to 1970s Rock ‘n’ Roll
From the response of the audience’s standing ovation and cheering, the snarky comparison by critics to the lead actors of Almost Famous and Dear Evan Hansen and other criticisms didn’t seem to matter. That is because Almost Famous delivers. This is especially so if one has seen the titular film (2000). If you appreciate a nod to what Howard Stern refers to as the best music of the past (better than the 1960s), and take that love or fandom to The Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, you will be happy you went to see this enjoyable production of Almost Famous directed by Jeremy Herrin.
Written by Cameron Crowe (book and lyrics), and Tom Kitt (music and lyrics), based on the Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures film written by Cameron Crowe, the show spreads its uplift and hope during a holiday season that is bringing crowds to Manhattan. Tourists, rockers and Broadway fans up for an entertaining night out will be pleased at the sterling voices, the humor, the energy of the performers and the music which connects the familiar story-line to the historical 70s music scene with nostalgia and poignance.
The classic rock covers (i.e. Deep Purple, the Allman Brothers), sustain us while Kitt’s original music is interesting with memorable songs like “Morocco,” “The Night Sky’s Got Nothing on You,” and “Everybody’s Coming Together.” The new melodies (a combination of rock and pop), convey the heart of the characters who are subtly drawn.
Fandom is the key to frequent successful film to stage transference. It may or may not apply here. The creators have taken a leap into the Broadway musical genre. They’ve created original songs for live performance and they have slipped in songs from the period (Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Lynard Skinner, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and Elton John) into the musical’s action but not in the same way as in the film, whose background was replete with rock ‘n’ roll songs from start to finish. That doesn’t happen with this musical that has 18 newly-written songs. Included are four reprises from Tom Kitt (music) and Cameron Crowe (lyrics). The songs move the action as the characters express their conflicts, issues, desires and feelings and get tangled up in each others’ agendas.
Staged cleverly with Sarah O’Gleby’s movement, director Jeremy Herrin and the creative team eschew traditional choreography and keep the sets simple and minimalist to suit roadies on tour with the exception of William’s and Elaine’s home. This is in the service of suggesting the free form movement of the 1970s. The concept of great rock was fading into new musical trends like Rap then moved in the 1980s to MTV domination. Ultimately, the musical is a nod to 1970s rock ‘n’ roll and its ethos before commercialization and digital technology skewed it into something else.
Though the action is condensed with the added musical numbers, the arc of plot development, based on Crowe’s real-life journey as a teenage rock writer, follows the film. Wisely, the humorous lines in the production are lifted from Crowe’s writing, which won an Oscar for best original screenplay (2001).
One of the most important themes of the musical reveals an ambience of the 1970s, that was culturally strained between liberalism and conservatism. This is partly suggested by the opening number “1973,” when William Miller (the excellent Casey Likes), confesses to rock ‘n’ roll critic Lester Bangs (a manic, funny Rob Colletti). William sings about his conflicts with his mom. She stands in the way of his discovering “who he is.” In a state of flux, his mother Elaine (the humorous Anika Larsen), a teacher fearful of “drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll,”controls William and his sister Anita to the point where Anita (Emily Schultheis), rebels and leaves home.
However, Elaine can’t quite figure out who she is either. She adopts a healthy vegetarian/vegan lifestyle, clearly a liberal cultural influence. Yet, conservatively, she disagrees with subversive music (the rock ‘n’ roll Anita loves), and its cultural aftereffects (sex, drugs, wild partying). The pull of conservatism and liberalism is one William faces in his conflict with Elaine, but he’s leaning toward the underground and subversive, reinforced when his sister gives him all her rock ‘n’ roll albums to be “cool.” These inspire him to write for his school newspaper with the hope of a possible career as a writer or future music critic.
One element of his confusion, unbeknownst to him. is that his mother had him skip grades and lied about his age. Meanwhile, he is embarrassed because he has no pubes, is alone, uncool and alienated by classmates who humiliate him. Naturally, when he receives a response from Lester Bangs, the finest rock critic in Christendom, who accepts and encourages him, he jumps at the chance to write for Bangs’ Creem Magazine. On the road to being a bone fide critic, he lands an assignment from Rolling Stone to profile a rising band called Stillwater.
William manages to obtain Elaine’s permission by swearing he will remain pure and stay away from drugs and sex. Elaine relents because she dimly thinks it is better to connect with him and “keep him near,” (which fails), rather than lose him like she lost Anita. Ironically, she loses him in a different way. The rock band “kidnaps her son,” a funny and wonderful refrain in “Elaine’s Lecture” which is a lament that carries her angst about what is happening to William. He goes on the road with the band to get an interview, for which Ben Fong-Torres (Matthew C. Yee), will pay him handsomely. It’s an opportunity too good to pass up.
Likes’ William enjoys the excitement of “getting down” with beautiful young women who assist bands in their mission to be great. These groupies, cheering the praises of their leader Penny Lane (Solea Pfeiffer), have re-branded themselves as The Band-Aids. They are rock ‘n’ roll muses and their mission is “all about the music.” Indeed, Penny Lane has so fulfilled her role, that musicians have written 14 songs about her, and “all of them good,” affirms Estrella (Julia Cassandra).
With such a build-up of excitement Likes’ William is smitten with Penny (Solea Pfeiffer), and her Band-Aides who, along with Estrella, include Sapphire (Katie Ladner) and Polexia (Jana Djenne Jackson). Solea Pfeiffer is an “all that” Penny Lane who doesn’t quite convince us that she is about the music and so “cool” and scintillating to musicians, that she is their fount of inspiration. But then she is not supposed to. The Band-Aids, Penny and Stillwater’s Russel Hammond (Chris Wood), Jeff Bebe (wild, rocking Drew Gehling), Larry Fellows (Matt Bittner), and Silent Ed (Brandon Contreras) are “hype.” The actors (the Band-Aids and Stillwater), do a superb job of managing their characters’ “cool” with enough awkwardness for us to know that they are “almost famous,” but not there yet. And as a result, they will never really achieve super stardom because they get in each other’s way and are totally “uncool.”
The Band-Aides and Stillwater must walk the tightrope of not believing their own image to avoid falling into a destructive abyss which threatens throughout. This conflict and tension abates after the moment of truth on the airplane, especially when Woods’ Hammond and Gehling’s Jeff Bebe reveal their deepest secrets because they fear the plane will crash. This scene is technically delivered to surprising effect. Humorously, the tiny jet “flying” on a chord from one side of the stage to the other was so “over-the-top,” it worked in the service of farce.
The actors did a great job with the scene to convey just enough humor and fear to “spill the beans” and further wreck Stillwater’s “togetherness.” Believing their own hype brought them to facing this catastrophe on the plane. If they continued to take their humble tour bus, they would have been safer. The real dose of reality that Hammond says he wants is a pose only revealed when he thinks he’s going to die. Thanks to Derek McLane (scenic & video design), Natasha Katz (lighting design), Peter Hylenski (sound design), and the actors’ authenticity, the scene embodies their magical thinking vs. truth, a key conflict and theme of the musical.
Williams’ adventures initially captured in his journey through the songs, “Who Are You With?,” “Ramble On,” “Penny and William,” “Fever Dog,” and “Morocco,” evidence the pitfalls of being a rock ‘n’ roll critic who is always a “watcher” of the action, not a creator of it. Colletti’s Bangs humorously warns William to be “honest and unmerciful.” When William gets a taste of the band culture, its groupies and the challenge to be accepted, he tries not to be overwhelmed or lose his “objectivity.” Yet, he succumbs to their manipulations. First, there’s the rejection of him as a critic (called “The Enemy” by Stillwater’s Jeff Bebe). This wears him down and makes him want to “fit-in.” Though he resists and manipulates band members with flattery, he never adheres to Lester Bangs’s sage advice. Gradually, William is sucked in because Stillwater’s Bebe, Hammond and Penny Lane are good at “the game.” William is clever, but he’s a neophyte.
This “congenial” conflict between William, the band and Penny Lane disappears when he believes he is a friend, (“Something Real,” “No Friends,” the healing of divisions with “Tiny Dancer,” “Lost in New York City, Pt. 1” and “River/Lost in New York City Pt. 2”). But this “friendship” is a blind and his presumed love with Penny Lane eventually clarifies for him when she leaves him to the Band-Aids and joins Hammond (“It Ain’t Easy”). He is discouraged, but hangs on and writes a piece for Rolling Stone. However, it is rejected by fact-checker Allison (Emily Schultheis), and he is accused of writing a puff piece that Stillwater encouraged him to write. Only until Wood’s Hammond finally verifies William’s honest and “unmerciful” article to Rolling Stone, is the “magical fake world” of the band blown apart. However, this is beneficial for it allows the band and groupies to begin a new day.
Through lines in characterization are consistently effected. The conflict between son and mother abides from start to finish and provides much of the humor. Anika Larsen deftly balances Elaine as a typical loving parent, whose concern, knowledge and control are acceptable to the audience. She is never acerbic or preachy in the songs “He Knows Too Little (And I Know Too Much),” “Elaine’s Lecture,” and “Listen to Me.” Resolutions occur by the conclusion, when Anita has found herself and the full company sings the reprise of “Everybody’s Coming Together,” a rousing standout.
The actors, shepherded by Jeremy Herrin, do an excellent job of precluding who will end up on the floor of their own demise. This is strongest when we note the rifts between Bebe and Hammond, beginning when the T-shirts are distributed, then moving to the partial healing of their divisions on the bus with the singing of “Tiny Dancer,” another knockout scene and high-point at the conclusion of Act I. Though manager Dick Roswell (Gerard Canonico), has brought them together for a while, the conflicts among band members continue. They encompass Penny Lane and Russell’s relationship. Penny Lane is sold out in a bet that William witnesses during the Poker game scene. Pfeiffer’s Penny Lane and Likes’ William are excellent together with resonating lyricism and power when he saves her life after she overdoses on Quaaludes.
Most of the new songs work. Additional strong scenes/songs include Penny and William’s “The Real World,” Russell and Penny Lane’s “The Night-Time Sky’s Got Nothing on You” and “Something Real” when Woods’ Hammond falls apart at a fan’s house. At this point before the end of Act I, William attempts to keep Russell away from acid and fails. Woods and Likes do an excellent job revealing the negative pressure on their characters from the hype that Wood’s Hammond attempts to escape. It is an irony that he can’t because he is as needy and “uncool” as Penny Lane, Jeff Bebe and the others. However, he just hides it better.
Interestingly, in his immersion with the band, the only time they all come out of their “image” is when Likes’ blows it up with the final Rolling Stone piece about them, something that Wood’s Hammond encourages and has yearned for. Then, even Penny Lane is able to gain the strength to go to Morocco, leading to a satisfactory conclusion with “Fever Dog Bows,” which the entire company sings as a tribute to 1970s rock ‘n’ roll.
Kudos to the creative team already mentioned with special praise for Bryan Perri’s music supervision and direction, and Lorenzo Pisoni as physical movement coordinator. This is one to see for the shimmering performances, rousing music and nostalgia for a time we will never see again in its wacky innocence and silly “hedonism,” which seems quaint viewed through our current perspective. For tickets and times go to their website: https://almostfamousthemusical.com/
‘Walking With Ghosts,’ Gabriel Byrne’s Sonorous Solo Performance Resonates With Power and Intimacy
One way to reconcile being haunted by a past that is anchored to memories of people and places which have long disappeared, is to connect them to the present in the hearts and minds of those interested in their elucidation. Gabriel Byrne accomplishes this with his superb solo performance of his memoir Walking With Ghosts, adapted for the stage and directed by Lonny Price. The ghosts of Byrne’s past come to life through this humorous and poignant one-man show, currently at the Music Box Theater in a presentation that runs with one intermission.
In Walking With Ghosts Byrne captures the lyrical Irish rhythms of language as he touches upon the innocence, beauty, awkwardness, fear and grace in his childhood, growing up in Walkinstown, Dublin, Ireland before he left for the seminary in England at 11 years old to answer God’s call to be a priest. Through monologues, and evocative dialogue humorously peppered with the accents, voices and gestures of his parents, town characters, friends, a noxious teacher, even a brief encounter with writer Brendan Beehan, Byrne conveys the circumstances which contributed to forming his character and inspired him to expand his dramatic sensibilities.
These burgeoned into a globally renown career as a stage, film and TV actor as well as a film director, screenwriter and producer. Byrne has been twice nominated for a Tony award, has been nominated for Emmys and has won a Golden Globe and two Satellite Awards to name a few of the accolades he’s received for his work over the years. To understand the public, artistic Byrne, see his work and become acquainted with how he grapples with each genre, sometimes wearing a different hat than that of the actor.
To understand the private Byrne, Walking With Ghosts provides that portrait with illuminating, enjoyable glimpses into his childhood. He includes profound excavations that are personal and trenchant experiences which he relates as a forthright and raw expose coming “to know the world.” And as a coda to his successful career, which he leaps over and saves for another time (for there are no ghosts there), he recalls his parents’ humorous responses to his celebrity and ruefully admits to finally hearing their voices after they are gone.
In this third of his Broadway outings, Byrne showcases his remarkable talents. He appears onstage alone with minimal spectacle, directed lighting, spare props, and unadorned in the same clothing throughout. Indeed, Byrne is the transformative vehicle we focus upon, riveted with his immersive storytelling as both narrator and character, the elusive ghost boy, who has attempted to dodge and forget individuals in his past, but now stops and reflects about them lovingly, starkly for a few stirring hours with a ready, curious audience.
With lush, evocative descriptions and acutely crafted details, Byrne introduces his dreamscape and forages bravely into his past. He recalls his return to his vastly changed hometown overrun by development, where he feels like an intruder and claims himself “emigrant, immigrant and exile.” When he invites us in to receive his ghostly re-imaginings in haunted environs where ghost boy is running, we understand it is an incomplete and picaresque rendering. As in scripture, we see through a glass darkly without enough illumination and clarity to process everything. Yet what we see, hear and appreciate is from the depths of Byrne’s heart and private revelations bravely embodied so that we may identify and receive the gift he has humbly given to us.
Symbolically, the set design by Sinéad McKenna, features a back wall that is an artfully fractured mirror in need of repair, rather like a soul that has weathered the shocks and batterings evidenced by the damage but still holds together as one piece. McKenna’s lighting reflects a blur of colors and upturns Byrne’s shadow, so that it is an upside down pendant. It reminds one of the Tarot Card, the Hanged Man, which, in one interpretation indicates sacrifice and surrender.
Byrne’s remembrances structured in a fleeting chronology, like all memories, are vivid paintbrush images that strike then evanesce in humor and empathy. Other times his tellings sear into our minds, especially if we’ve experienced something similar. Throughout and together, Byrne’s recollections are a meditation on life that unfolds with beauty, synergy and power. To attempt to define one event or another as pivotal to his life remains an uncertain guess and requires thought. For all the memories he selects fashion who Byrne is from clearly apparent career profile and beyond to where the lines blur as son, brother, religious acolyte, amateur actor, friend and so much more. Thus, Byrne’s ghost boy leaps into characterizations and stories using themes and threads of ideas rather than a linear historical accounting.
Some recollections are unspooled in anectedotes and many of them land with humor. Enjoyable are his remembrances about his mother, i.e. her comments about his birth and his mystical naming received through an angelic visitation. Then there’s the soft, comforting recollection of his mother singing him a lullaby and his kneeling in prayer with his invisible guardian angel, who he knows stands near to protect him through the night. And there’s the memory of his father coming home from work as a cooper. Right afterward, he begs his father to ride on his knee playing “horsey, horsey,” his favorite game as father and son show affection for one another.
More acute, prickly memories move to the influence of the Catholic Church teachings and his first day of school when Byrne’s mother accompanies him and delivers him over to a formidable nun whose waxy hand he takes. Funny are his impressions of Christ on the cross, bleeding and naked except for a “nappy,” and his knowledge about heaven as he gives us his child’s take on the soul, limbo and the holy ghost as a pigeon. The latter prompts a sister to rebuke him, “It’s a dove not a common dirty pigeon off the street.”
And after recalling episodes of his days at school, the floodgates open and other aspects of the world enter. There’s his mother’s friend Mrs. Gordon, an iconic, crone-like figure, who enjoys frightening him so he wets the bed at night. And the joy of the thrilling Bicentennial Fair which is the epitome of a child’s play-land. He enjoins the exciting sights, sounds and feelings about the rides, candy, food and fireworks Irish-style, all of which Byrne relates in vivid technicolor.
The import of religion to his family is as palpable as open flame to flesh. From humorous quips about mortal sins to how Jesus could be in a wafer and where he goes when you swallow him, he discusses Holy Communion. We calculate his poignant revelation preparing for this sacred day. First his mother takes him to tea at the Shelbourne Hotel, then on to famous Clery’s for his outfit. We note the family’s struggle with finances and flinch when he is ashamed at his mother counting out the coins to pay the bills. Equally touching is Byrne’s description gorging on candy and sweets that he doesn’t have very often and that he buys from his Holy Communion donations. He becomes so sick he soils his expensive outfit and hides in the bushes for hours fearful his mother with be angry with him. When she finds him, he discovers she loves and soothes him despite ruining what costs so much, an item that means so much, but they can’t really afford.
Byrne’s humor and enthusiasm extends to a meditation on his beloved grandmother who took him to the “pictures” and inspired a love of film. His description of a brutal and abusive teacher in his elementary school is only ameliorated when students get revenge then stick together and don’t confess, despite the pressure to do so. These and other events amass the ghosts that walk with Byrne in his childhood that fade. However, there is one ghost that haunts him for much of his life.
Enchanted by the idea that God might be calling him to be a priest, he goes to England to the seminary where he is happy. Enjoying being in England and getting away from home, he believes he has found a place of refuge. He is not hit or humiliated by the other kids as he was in Ireland. Also, he plays football and he makes easy friends. However, this changes on a dime. Byrne’s description of how the priest who favors him, gives him wine to drink, and absolves him of any impure thoughts he might have uses these sly techniques to insinuate and initiate a predatory sexual attack. The dialogue is pointed as Byrne assumes the accent and soothing demeanor of the priest. The event is so clearly disclosed and so classic of sexual predators, we shouldn’t be surprised. However, we are shocked and horrified. Byrne’s expose of the Catholic Church and the priest reveals the turning point in his life. The glorious faith that his parents believed in and lovingly shared with him in hope, his naming brought by an angelic visitation, his innocence and his desire to be holy is devastated and destroyed.
Years later after he’s found himself, Byrne shares that he located the priest via the internet and calls him, perhaps searching within to forgive the priest and forgive himself. On the phone he can’t bring himself to tell the elderly retiree with a poor memory in a retirement home that he wishes hell on him. In a confused daze, the priest thanks him for calling. He hangs up; empathy overtakes him. Throughout the the rest of the play, it is clear that this event contributed to Byrne’s choices after he left the seminary. He expresses the incident so vividly, it is indelible, irrevocable. That is the keen point Byrne makes through understatement without ranting or passion.
What happened to him happened throughout the global Catholic Church then and most probably is still happening today. However, if one doesn’t understand faith, religion and the power of a culture and family that holds God dear to them and has for centuries, the ghostly impact of this priest on Byrne’s life will be completely lost or misunderstood. As a reverential dramatic moment, the scene is incredibly rendered by Byrne. We sense that this raw incident he expresses not only for himself, but for every other person who has been sexually abused by a cleric whether Catholic, protestant, New Age, Hindi, etc.
In Act II we understand how the events in the seminary emotionally jack knife and send Byrne wandering away from his association with the Catholic Church to atheism. After he returns home from the seminary (Does he tell his parents what happened?), a series of unenlightened jobs that worsen (plumber, dishwasher, toilet attendant), keep him foundering until eventually, his friend suggests he join a non professional repertory company of actors. They are so welcoming, it is then he finally feels he belongs and is at home. As he outlines how he does various parts with his actor friends, a lively take on how each of his colleagues takes their bows is smashing. It is one of the more exuberant stagings by Price that segues into Byrne’s career moving off to the Focus Theatre and sojourns into professional acting and subsequent humorous disasters until he begins to support himself.
The second act has two other significant reverential moments recalled by Byrne. His sister Marian who he was close to pursues an acting career in London. However, though no one can explain how, she ends up in a mental asylum and they call Byrne to pick her up and take her home. What he describes, we’ve seen in films and we shouldn’t be surprised. Yet, his recollections are vivid and disturbing. Again, we are shocked by his incredible rendering of the asylum and the treatments she receives to “make her well” but which don’t. Byrne’s metaphor for her, “a wildflower in a crumbling wall,” expresses the culture that has caught her, but one in which she still provides beauty. However, the stigmatized by her mental illness, that beauty is not recognized. Thus, we empathize with his emotional response when he receives a call that she has died unexpectedly. She’s in her early thirties. She is one more ghost who haunts him.
Byrne’s episode with Richard Burton is not only fascinating, it, too, is heart-breaking. Drinking is a part of the culture in Ireland as it is in Wales where Richard Burton became addicted. It also is embedded in the culture of the entertainment industry which is a destroyer of artists. Byrne shares the time in Venice when he and Burton are working together and become drinking buddies. The occasion segues to Byrne’s recognition that he’s an alcoholic and must seek help which he does relaying he’s 24 years sober. He reminds us and himself that he has made it out of that hell, whereas Burton died with alcohol crystals coating his spine at his death. Once again Byrne’s understatement and lively reminiscences are the tip of the iceberg. Below are the miserable trials, the pain of alcoholism, the hangovers, the physical and emotional devastation and looming death. But this doesn’t need to be spoken and Byrne is not preachy, just thankful. The warning to others is clear. It’s possible to come out of it, if you get help.
A quick note about Sinéad Diskin’s music and sound which floats in and out unobtrusively. Like the structure of Walking With Ghosts, it is thematic and threaded, conveying the elusive emotions that substantiate Byrne’s episodic meditations. With the prosceniums frames that sometimes are gold other times red, etc., the mirror effect is enhanced as they appear in perspective to diminish in the distance suggesting the motif of fading away and evanescence. Such is the nature of memory that erupts and disappears unless one keeps it alive in another repository which Byrne does evoking their ghostly presence each night on stage. He identifies our part in this process or reconciliation in his final statement. The ghosts he was walking with are in him. He is no longer running. He has made peace with himself and them.
This must-see production is a heartfelt encomium to Byrne’s past spoken with the lilt of poetic feeling that is never overdone, but is as light as mists that burn off in daylight. For tickets and times go to their website: https://gabrielbyrneonbroadway.com/
‘Leopoldstadt,’ Tom Stoppard’s Brilliant Chronicle of Family Holds a Trenchant Warning
In five acts spanning the years from 1899 through 1955, Tom Stoppard focuses on a wealthy, Jewish, Viennese family as they navigate the turbulent waters of social and cultural transformation in Leopoldstadt. Stoppard’s latest play begins at the turn of the century and moves through two World Wars. In it the playwright heightens the most salient themes about antisemitism, social responsibility, discrimination, human rights, family, ancestry and ever-changing political power structures which promote tribalism.
Stoppard weaves these concepts into the story of the multi-generational Merz and Jakobovicz families. With a panoramic view, Stoppard shadows their journey forward and backward as Jews, who attempt to maintain their identity and place in the culture and society of Vienna, Austria. Stoppard’s masterwork which first premiered in London, is currently in its Broadway run at the Longacre Theatre, coming in at 2 hours, 10 minutes with no intermission. Leopoldstadt, directed by Patrick Marber, is one of Stoppard’s finest works.
When we meet the members of the two families in the large Merz drawing room as they celebrate Christmas 1899, Hermann Merz (David Krumholtz) affirms that they can be grateful for Emperor Franz-Joseph’s new freedoms. For over fifty years as Jews, they have said goodbye to “wearing a yellow patch and stepping off the pavement to make way for an Austrian.” They must only withstand discrimination “now and then.” Wealthy textile manufacturer Hermann, baptized a Christian, has married the elegant and lovely blonde-haired Gretl (Faye Castelow), who is having her likeness painted by the foremost artist of the Vienna Succession, Gustav Klimt.
During the conversations we note the prosperity and culture of these two families, who inhabit the same social circles as the foremost professionals and artists in Viennese society. They name-drop Mahler, Schoenberg, Schnitzler and Freud. Hermann affirms his evolution as a Jew. “My grandfather wore a caftan, my father went to the opera and wore a top hat, and I have the singers to dinner-actors, writers, musicians.” Professor Ludwig Jakobovicz (Brandon Uranowitz) is a patient of Sigmund Freud and interested in his own dreams. Ludwig shows his theoretical mathematical prowess by questioning Hermann and Gretl’s son Jacob about Riemann sums. Doctor Ernst Jakobovicz (Aaron Neil) is meeting the lecturers for a Christmas drink. This is protocol, for he is a Christian.
To emphasize his full embrace of the cultured Vienna as the Promised Land, Hermann repudiates any interest as a Jew in Theodore Herzl’s Zionist idea of a liberal state in Palestine. Ludwig agrees that no one would want to go to the desert, certainly not the Jews who are part of Austrian bourgeois high society. Obviously, Hermann is not prejudiced. He practices the dictum that Jews in business should to be opened-minded to all cultures and religions to expand their opportunities, if they are to succeed. We discover later in the play, that success is paramount in Hermann’s life. With forward momentum, Hermann’s wealth and cultural aspirations have been bolstered by his marriage to his Christian wife Gretl. He is the first Christian of Jewish descent in the family.
However, Grandma Emilia (Betsy Aidem) reminds Hermann of the cost of his sacrifice for his children to be Christian. He has thrown over what he should have valued most, family and ancestry. But it’s no matter. Attitudes toward Jews have shifted. Grandma Emilia points out that once “hated as Christ-killers, Jews are now hated for being Jews.” Illustrating how much Hermann has changed for the sake of his career, Ludwig supports her comment with the terrible reality: he will always be a Jew. Grandma and Ludwig toast to a future territory for Jews, where they might be safe. That their wish comes true after the horrific Holocaust and murder of millions gives us chilling pause. However, safety, even in modern Israel, is elusive.
In this first act Stoppard has laid out the ground rules, intimating how the principle theme, “it can happen here and it can happen again,” will come to resonate as an irrevocable truth. As a family member states toward the play’s end, “barbarism can’t be eradicated by culture.” Indeed, the rational is often supplanted by the irrational. In the subsequent acts we understand how this becomes a reality for the two Jewish families in the play. They ignore the burgeoning antisemitism in Vienna. Ineffectively, they attempt to navigate around it by sticking together and celebrating tradition, until it is too late to leave.
In Act 2 (1900) Stoppard unspools his themes to reveal that the discrimination that Hermann refers to runs deeper than “now and then.” Fritz (Arty Froushan), an Austrian dragoon, eschews the younger Jewess Hanna and falls in love with the older Gretl, Hermann’s wife. They carry on an affair for a time, until she tells him she must break it off because Klimt’s painting of her will be finished, and she will be recognized sneaking around with him. When Fritz boasts about his affair making a Jewish slur in the company of gentlemen and in Hermann’s presence, Hermann initially doesn’t realize Gretl is Fritz’ lover. He thinks Fritz is insulting Gretl and attempts to recover their honor by proposing a duel. Refusing to engage Hermann because he is a Jew, Fritz insults him further by telling him his military status forbids him dueling with Jews.
Humiliated and doubly stripped of his honor, Hermann must bow to Friz, whose antisemitism holds sway. This prejudice is a warning that Hermann will always be an inferior in a culture that despises his heritage. Though Fritz’s rejection saves Hermann’s life, Hermann is gravely affronted and embittered because he doesn’t consider himself a Jew. However, Hermann later exploits the situation to his and his family’s advantage, after he realizes that Gretl and Fritz have had an affair. Ironically, being identified as a Jew upsets Hermann more than his wife’s infidelity. From this moment afterward, the situation worsens for Viennese Jews and members of these two families.
In subsequent acts we see the families experiencing events with less emphasis on the culture, as they uplift the Jewish traditions to humorous effect because they are not religious. For example, Stoppard has them confuse the banker Otto with the Mohel who is late to Nathan’s brit milah, as Sally runs to and fro conflicted about her son’s painful circumcision. She is not mindful about the symbolism of the circumcision, which means he is bound to God. Instead, she wants him to “be like his father,” following tradition. Interestingly, her decision is fateful. Stoppard intimates the importance of his being bound to God at the conclusion of the play.
Richard Hudson’s set design manifests the transformations in the society and family fortunes from 1899 to 1955, as we note the movement in time from Belle Époque opulence (1899, 1900) to spare minimalism after World War I (1924) to the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria, and Krystallnacht (night of broken glass, 1938), after the room is stripped of valuables. Finally, the once elegant drawing room is completely bare and stark, when we come upon the reunion of three remaining family members in 1955 (Act 5). However, we are reminded of the once glorious decor via flashback to the 1900 Seder of Act II, when Rosa remembers her shame at forgetting where she hid the afikomen (a symbol of redemption). The scene in Act 5 then flashes forward, as Rosa enumerates the family members murdered by the Nazis, family she couldn’t get out because of quotas, though as a citizen of the United States, she was willing to sponsor them on her meager salary. Stoppard’s irony about Rosa losing the afikomen runs parallel to her inability to save any of her family from dying at Auschwitz.
It is Gretl, clueless about the Seder and the afikomen’s meaning, who produces another matzo to calm everyone, though the ceremony’s meaning is blown apart. In later years Gretl has brain cancer. She dies, unable to save herself or Hermann with her Christianity. Hermann’s conversion is not recognized under the race laws of a unified Austria/Germany. Like Ludwig said, regardless, Hermann is a Jew. The ancestors he has rejected are irrevocably his relatives through blood ties. However, he doesn’t fully realize he has rejected one world for entrance into another. But he remains in “no man’s land,” without a ‘territory,” because the anti-Semites will not allow him to gain entry.
Effectively using the drawing room set to reveal the Merz family’s dwindling fortunes with fewer and fewer adornments as time marches on, the family members age before our eyes, though there are always four of the youngest generation present to carry on the bloodline. Stoppard continues building on the themes he introduced in Act I, as political and social issues become more complex after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the aftermath of WW I the losing nations rally and attempt to recoup their power. Austria becomes a Republic overrun by various political parties (communists, democratic socialists, nationalists), who struggle for ultimate control.
In Act 3 (1924) as the family is in an uproar with Nathan’s brit milah, Hermann makes arrangements with his banker Otto to adjust to gyrating markets in an Austria roiling with the demands of WWI reparations payments. Otto (humorously, ironically mistaken for the Mohel), warns Hermann about the country’s nationalistic future. Austrians are voting for uniting Austria and Germany to “restore their destiny together as one Christian nation leading in science and culture.” Where will the Jews fit in? When Hermann questions this, Otto suggests that class war turns people against each other, but nationalism binds them together. Austria is embracing German nationalism as its own. As they conclude the discussion, Nathan’s circumcision is cheered by family.
The celebration has an air of ironic doom. As one more Jewish male is bound to God, it is one more Jew who will be subjected to oppression and persecution in a society that will strengthen itself by excluding him as “the other.” In a seamless movement between Act 3 and Act 4, the circumcised Nathan emerges fourteen years later and stands in the street, looking at the sky to see bombers flying overhead. The family has not immigrated to another country. Only Rosa is in New York. The net is closing in on them.
As predicted by Otto and intimated by Ludwig, things have gotten worse and are heading backward toward the time when yellow patches were worn on clothing in the 1830s in the Jewish ghetto of Leopoldstadt. The drawing room is stripped of valuable items and Klimt’s painting of Gretl is gone, as the family gathers once more united for strength and information.
Act 4 (1938) is the devastation of an Austria in lockstep with Hitler’s despotism, manifesting even greater antisemitism than that shown in Berlin, which still allows Jews to go to cafes, movies, etc. The underlying discrimination which appeared to be residual is no longer sub rosa in Austria. That which Hermann and others said wouldn’t happen again, is striking up the band in their faces, indecently, aggressively, proudly. But what are they doing about it?
Percy (Seth Numrich), a journalist and fiancee of Nellie (Tedra Millan), tells them that as Jews, they are political refugees. They are subject to quotas dictated by 32 countries that met at a conference to discuss what to do about receiving Austrian Jews. Particularly appalling is the antisemitism in the countries who shrink their quotas to receive Jews based upon the will of the trade unions. Members of the family hear that their cultured friends and colleagues are leaving on special visas. Shouldn’t they also leave?
Stoppard intermingles Percy’s admonitions with Sally (Sara Topham) reading Grimm’s fairy tales to the children (an ironic symbol), while Ludwig discusses the knots on a cat’s cradle puzzle with Leo and Nathan. The juxtaposition of their calm interactions with the children, and Percy’s insistence that Nellie must marry him and leave her parents to then help family immigrate to England, creates tension. As Ernst adds his information, the suspense increases. In treating writers and artists and interpreting their dreams, Dr. Freud senses the underlying tribal chaos to come. He decides to leave. Additionally, Ernst discusses Klimt’s wild paintings for the university that suggest, on a subliminal level, that the “rational is at the mercy of the irrational,” and “barbarism will not be eradicated by culture.” Once in fashion, the paintings are considered subversive.
In a vast and growing conservatism, Klimt’s art is labeled as nonsensical and offensive. The labels are a harbinger of the Third Reich’s future confiscation of valuable paintings, censored then banned as decadent. It is a ruse to steal millions of dollars of valuable art, that wealthy Jewish merchants and families purchased in the golden years of cultural blossoming. As the “now and then” discrimination has increased, culture has been supplanted by tribalism and propaganda that “proves” Jews’ dirty genetic inferiority. Not only does Dr, Freud leave, so do other bright lights, once the “toast” of Viennese culture and society.
Percy tells them the discrimination will only worsen.Nellie ignores him and insists that things will get better. As if to punctuate Percy’s accuracy, an Austrian civilian (Corey Brill) with a swastika armband abruptly enters. He checks their racial identity as Jews and stipulates that Hermann is not exempt from his blood heritage. He insults Ernst for “hanging around” and doesn’t allow him to accompany his wife Eva to the mental asylum, though she is deaf and blind. After the Civilian harasses and demeans the children with epithets, he directs Hermann to sign over the business to the state because he has used it to commit crimes (convenient lies to justify theft). As the Civilian leaves, he warns them they are to be evicted the following day and can only take one suitcase with valuables under 15 reichsmarks. It is then Hermann discusses how he has protected his business from legal confiscation and tells the family they must go to live in Leopoldstadt. As sounds of “the night of broken glass” increase, little Heini plays on his toy piano to drown out the terror, a symbol of culture’s diminutive power against barbaric acts of tyranny.
One hundred years before, the Merz and Jakobovicz family’s ancestors were forced to wear a yellow patch of exclusion that justified the limitations of their easy movement in Viennese society. Only for a brief period were the Merz and Jakobovicz’s free, thanks to Emperor Franz Joseph. Sadly, they were duped because the hatred and antisemitism was always bubbling underneath, despite their great contributions creating an amazing culture. At this point, Grandma Emilia’s adjurations come home to roost. Jews are hated for their bloodline, a fact which Hermann nor the others can accept. That they are not Orthodox nor very religious makes their bloodline even more damnable. Stoppard’s irony hits with a double impact.
In the last act (1955) during the reunion of American Aunt Rosa (Jenna Augen), Nathan (Brandon Uranowitz), and Englishman Leo (Arty Froushan), we watch these family members attempt to reconcile their different experiences as Jews during the Holocaust. Rosa and Nathan almost indict Leo for not understanding the heartbreak they’ve experienced. Only until Leo remembers an incident in the drawing room, when Ernst stitched a wound on his hand after he broke a cup, does he remember the family, the drawing room, Ludwig and the cat’s cradle. It is then Leo breaks down in tears at the revelation of feeling. It is then that he begins to understand the import and impact of the Holocaust and the hatreds that stole his family from him.
The three conclude with uncertainty about Austria which acts the innocent victim, though many complicit Austrians were guards in concentration camps and helped round up Jews for transports to the camps. Aunt Rosa, who purchased Hermann’s apartment, vows to get back what was stolen, Klimt’s painting of Gretl. Nathan counters that there will be difficulty proving the painting’s provenance. As Aunt Rosa, Leo and Nathan look over the family tree, they review family members (Ernst, Gertl, Hermann, Jacob, Eva,Hanna, etc.), we’ve come to know and empathize with. Many of these died, at Auschwitz. Some died in Vienna, one committing suicide in Leopoldstadt, one committing suicide after the war is over. Their deaths are a poignant, heartbreaking devastation. The doom, revealed in dreams and in artists’ works, warned what was to come. There were many warnings. Family members ignored them at their own peril.
There is much about this production that is astounding. The opening act is spectacular, as we see the beauty of that time in Vienna, thanks to Richard Hudson’s scenic design, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s costume design, Neil Austin’s lighting design, Adam Cork’s sound design and original music, and Isaac Madge’s projection design. Because of the efforts of the creative team, we recognize how two World Wars smashed the greatness of the people and their contributions of genius to enlighten and uplift. The society that benefited, boiled up with masochistic barbarism to devour that genius. Thus, in seeing the panorama of this time period (1899-1955) through the lives of family members, it becomes clear how the demonization of groups, injustice and war set back civilization in unthinkable ways.
Leopoldstadt encapsulates the questions that many have asked, and it answers them. If the Jews had not been “free” under Emperor Franz Joseph, would they have been able to do the exploits they accomplished? The subsequent Acts 2-5 reveal the answer, and affirm the political brutality and will to destroy encouraged by the prejudiced, the barbarians, the tribalists. By oppressing/destroying others to effect a genocide, what exactly is gained? Is not the annihilation of talent and brilliance for all time an irrevocable loss for humanity?
Stoppard’s work is filled with ironies and quotes that resound with pithy fervor. A final irony is that the most Jewish one in the family is Leo (Leopold), who was taken to England by his mother Nellie, and Percy, his stepfather. His own father was killed by Austrians. However, Leo doesn’t realize his ancestry, which his mother fearfully kept from him. Instead, he conveniently identified with England and all its blessings, “a top country,” while eschewing its most horrific acts of “still upper lip” genocide, colonialism and crass exploitation of “inferior” non white cultures. When Nathan tells Leo that both his parents and both sets of grandparents were Jewish, it is a revelation. That Leo receives it, at a point when he can most appreciate it, is poignant. For as he joins Nathan and Rosa in remembering those lost, he begins to understand his own history and identity.
As a minor criticism of the production, in Act 4, the scene when the Civilian and two police enter, the action is restrained. The acting in that section of Act 4 (from all involved), lacked the fervor necessary to reinforce the point that the once enlightened Austrians have revealed themselves to be barbarians. A greater intensity might have strengthened the conclusion and the emotional empathy for the family stolen from Nathan. That intensity then would reinforce the contrasting triumph and truth residing in Nathan, the only one who made it out of Auschwitz to give his testimony that the Holocaust is not a fiction.
Leopoldstadt is an incredible achievement. Kudos to the director Patrick Marber and the creative team who explored the director and Stoppard’s vision. And kudos to the fine actors who portrayed Stoppard’s characters. Their work warns us about ourselves and our penchant for escaping damning, painful, inconvenient truths. The production is horrifically current in revealing that denialism and silence in all its forms will be exploited by opportunistic, political criminals, for whom tribalism and barbarism are the only way to get what they want.
To see this magnificent work, go to their website: https://leopoldstadtplay.com/
‘Death of a Salesman,’ Starring Wendell Pierce, Sharon D Clarke in Dynamic, Powerful Performances
Director Miranda Cromwell has given Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman another go round in a revival elucidating the most salient features of Miller’s modern tragedy. Cromwell’s version, currently at the Hudson Theatre, reminds us that as a classic of the 20th century, the play’s themes are timeless, and Loman’s fall is representative of what the powerless man experiences every day of his life.
Starring the dynamic, stirring Wendell Pierce as Everyman Willy Loman and Sharon D Clarke as wife Linda, the cast and creatives provide a dramatic and thought provoking view of Miller’s American family. With tremendous currency Cromwell’s version explores the heartfelt tragedy of the diminishing patriarch whose foibles are easily identifiable and relatable to our lives.
From beginning to the conclusion Cromwell shepherds her remarkable cast in a unique reexamination of Willy and Linda Loman, a husband and wife team who cling to falsehoods and illusions for the sake of each other to get to the next day. Fatefully, Willy’s end is irrevocable and Miller’s play expertly imagined by the director reveals the steps which ensure that Willy’s train wreck life moves with increasing devastation to come to the “end of the line,” Willy’s complete breakdown and suicide. Miller’s characterizations are heightened in this revival brought to life from moment-to-moment by the ensemble all of whom are spot-on sensational.
Particularly wonderful, Pierce’s Loman spools out Willy’s loss of power, self-esteem and confidence as he clings to his fantasies and is beaten by memories of his past failures. These become more stark and tormenting until until his ghostly guide, the wonderful, stately André De Shields as Ben, encourages him toward the “proposition” (a life insurance payout) he can’t refuse.
Cromwell’s, staging, Jen Schriever’s lighting design and Mikaal Sulaiman’s sound design relay Willy’s searing flashback visions. Pierce’s Willy makes these physical as if they slash his mind so that he is forced to respond with fury, as he attempts to stop the fears and guilt that drive him toward insanity. Clarke’s Linda kindly couches Willy’s lies and bombast with her own obfuscations and illusions. She is frustrating and infuriating for pandering to Willy’s babble. That Pierce’s Willy ignores and berates her and Clarke’s Linda puts up with him out of love is typical of such relationships of endurance and suffering. However, it becomes obvious that Linda fronts Willy and hides her underlying hopelessness and fear which she confesses to their sons Biff (Khris Davis) and Hap (McKinley Belcher III). Thus, Linda is two people. The loving wife to her husband who puts up with his abuse. And the truthful mother who upbraids her children and seeks their help with her ill husband.
Indeed, Linda knows Willy is desperate and on the brink of suicide. However, she spins her own conundrum. Fatalistically she watches Willie, expecting him to finish himself off in the basement. Yet, at the conclusion she dupes herself into believing Biff exacerbates and is the cause of Willie’s torments. Believing that Biff and Hap’s absence will relieve Willy and he will be “OK,” her delusion contributes to Willy’s suicide as she “lets him go.” Even at the end, she can barely confront what she knew was coming all along. She questions it. Clarke’s Linda can’t process his suicide and is still oblivious to the lies he’s told her to glorify his life. This is so even after Biff in his revelation scene exposes the family as predicate liars. Clarke’s Linda is numbed to realizing the truth of who Willie is. Throughout Clarke’s vital acting reveals a woman at sea going only so far in her realizations, then pulling back just short of making a difference for her entire family. Pierce and Clarke authentically create the type of marriage that reveals how blind love is, especially when it is slathered with lies and illusions.
The morass Willy and Linda have built for each other and their children has so entangled the family, they cannot bear to be around each other for the continuous gaslighting and exaggerations. Willy responds to thirty-four-year-old Biff in extremes ranging from insult to encouragement and mostly argument if Biff doesn’t agree and bow to his “judgment.”
Pierce’s Willy pitted against Davis’ vibrant and soulful Biff works with authentic poignance. Revealing their relationship built on lies, Cromwell with acute minimalism sets up the climactic flashback when Biff, encouraged by Willy to ignore his studies, fails math and runs to Willy in Boston for help. Finding Willy with another woman devastates Biff. It demeans Linda and shows Willy’s life with family is a sham since he can’t uphold his marriage vows. In a dynamic scene between the two actors Pierce’s Willy uses pretense to con his son and overwhelm Davis’ Biff from understanding the facts. But Biff realizes who his father is and can’t forgive him, feeling terrible for Linda. Crying, Biff leaves, forever sealing Willy’s guilt that he has destroyed Biff’s life and proven himself a fraud.
For his part Belcher III’s Hap is a convincing “chip off the old block,” on steroids. He follows in Willy’s footsteps and abides in his own delusions that he’ll make a success of himself, though he can’t admit he is at a low rung in the hierarchy of his company. Belcher III and Davis work hand in glove as the two brothers, one selling himself 24/7, the other seeking his identity and finally discovering it. Biff, the hero of Miller’s play because he faces the truth and confronts the family with their lies, courageously admits he has hit rock bottom. Too resounding for Willy to accept, it is one more torment slashing Willy’s mind. Davis, especially as the truthful Biff in the last scenes is superb.
During the flashbacks, Hap, Biff, Linda and Willy enliven the family interactions and dynamics along with neighbor Charley (Delaney Williams in a terrific portrayal), and son Bernard (Stephen Stocking masters the young and the older Bernard with solid acting chops). Charley and Bernard are admirable and kind; their decency in the face of Willy’s insults is smashing. Williams and Stocking are another team to round out this fine ensemble, all of whose work is authentic and beautifully synergistic.
For example Pierce and Davis’s performances along with Lynn Hawley as The Woman perfectly render Biff and Willy’s destruction of their relationship with the awkwardness of a naked expose, as Biff and The Woman catch up Willy blabbering in his lies. Also, as we do during the flashbacks of the family, including the high school days with the excellent Williams and Stocking, we follow, engrossed with the Loman family as we “get” how the fabric of their lives unravels, and we realize why Willy’s suicide comes when it does.
Willy’s breakdown is Pierce’s gradual tour de force with each flashback, each event showing how Willy is brought closer to the brink until he can take no more. Miller reveals that much could have happened to stop him. However, the obfuscations and self-delusions are so great, only Biff could help. But it is too late. Biff can only save himself. Not even the hero can save Willy from his ghostly dreams to die “the death of a salesman” with a fulfilled proposition of $20,000 for his family, a fallen hero after all.
The scenic design by Anna Fleischle is minimalistic and suggestive with wooden frames introducing Willy and Linda. Unadorned furniture suggests Hap and Biff’s bedroom, Howard’s office, the hotel room, etc., revealing the play unfolds mostly in flashback at crucial points in Willy’s past in his memories. The flashback scenes are without framing and the staging is free formed, revealing Willy’s flights of fancy that make him happy. The guilt and fear torments are staged accordingly as Willy attempts to escape himself but can’t. The change in time Cromwell has reflected in the costume changes (co-costume designers Anna Fleischle, Sarita Fellows) of Linda, Biff, Hap, Charlie and Bernard. Only Willy wears the same outfit, always his suit whether jacket on or off, a salesman to the last.
Cromwell uses funeral music in the beginning and at the ending to frame the play about Willy’s life. This structural unity adds grace and embodies the concept of Willy’s death and the life he lives elucidated to reveal why he commits suicide. However, Charlie exonerates Willy and suggests, “nobody dast blame this man. A salesman has got to dream. It comes with the territory.”
This revival is illuminating and fresh, a must-see, especially for its performances and enlightened direction. For tickets and times go to their website: https://www.thehudsonbroadway.com/whatson/death-of-a-salesman/
‘Topdog/Underdog,’ The Cons’ Slow Walk Into Violence
Suzan-Lori Parks’ revival of her Pulitzer Prize winning Topdog/Underdog currently at the Golden Theater measures all the worst elements of America’s love affair with hustlers, grifters, swindlers, confidence men and bamboozlers. Clever con artists encourage the falsehoods of the American Dream, the greatest con ever, that prosperity buys happiness. Brothers Booth (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II), and Lincoln (Corey Hawkins), have bought into the idea that to be “the man” they must do the con, in other words, financially “make a killing” easily and quickly.
Oftentimes, the admirer of the confidence game identifies with the artistry of the hustler, who dupes his mark because he plays upon his vulnerabilities. Of course, the fan never believes that he could be the sucker who falls for the scam. Thus, arrogance and self-deception increase his susceptibility to the con artist’s fraud. Bamboozlers at the top of their game sense the weaknesses of their pigeons (greed, dishonesty, vanity, opportunism, lust, compassion, credulity, desperation and naïveté). They mine them like gold to bring their con home.
Topdog/Underdog reveals Parks’ sardonic genius, as she plays her audience with irony upon irony. Under the apt direction of Kenny Leon and his creative team we are sucked in to the long con as Parks prompts us to laugh at her brilliantly conceived characters Lincoln and Booth, expertly played by Hawkins and Abdul-Mateen II. Parks and Leon draw us into the illusion the characters create, as the hustler (Lincoln or Booth?), slowly lures his mark and exploits his vulnerabilities. The unfolding of the long con happens through a series of short cons where Lincoln and Booth circle each other, get the upper hand, then lose it as they temporarily fall for each others’ lies and posturing. However, one must look closely through the humor and the repartee because what is happening is the draw down to “make a killing.” Who the final winner is depends on how you see it.
Thematically, Parks uses the concept of the confidence game to expose the American culture’s hustle, primarily of Blacks, and of all who are not wealthy. Parks ridicules sub rosa all who believe they escape the oppressive economic structure which cons Lincoln and Booth to commit fraud, lie and steal. Indeed, the “unoppressed” don’t have to engage in such “criminal” behaviors to survive. Instead, they are duped into perpetuating the demeaning economic system and its institutions, only to create a different form of oppression in their lives, one that is harder to detect, and difficult to overcome.
Thus, as the audience watches Lincoln and Booth shred, front, insult and play each other as chumps, they sit smugly back laughing and missing the point. Parks, the con master, tapping their vulnerabilities has them on. This is especially so if the audience believes that not being of color exempts them from oppression. For in her primal message in this amazing work, Parks challenges us to empathize with the characters to fully understand how the profound racial themes, ironies and symbolism of Topdog/Underdog relate and interlock with the oppressive systems that hoodwink us and govern our lives.
The cleverly constructed two-hander, shepherded by Leon and performed with perfection by the actors, fascinates with dynamic, power shifting twists from beginning to conclusion. Lincoln is the older brother and the apparent “top dog.” He has what Booth wants, the talent and artistry to “make a killing” at three-card monte. However, Lincoln doesn’t “touch the cards” since the demise of one of his sidekicks in their scam that used to pull in $1000 a day. Lincoln’s teammate got shot. so Lincoln lays low and stops hustling. We discover this at the top of the play as Booth importunes his brother to teach him his moves and continually pesters him throughout Act I and II to join him and make tons of money at three card monte. Lincoln tells Booth he is done with the grift and involved with something else. However, Lincoln is blind to the import of what he’s chosen to do.
After his life fell apart and he lost his wife and his apartment, Lincoln was dislocated, a shadow of his former “cool” self, without wads of cash at his disposal. Desperate for money, at his wits end, Lincoln demeans himself by taking a job that racially exploits his dignity. Lincoln grovels for his money by sitting in a penny arcade dressed up as Abraham Lincoln, while visitors pay to shoot him. Booth finds the job despicable. He intuits that his brother is being “played” by his bigoted boss and the racists that pay to be the assassins of a black facsimile of President Abraham Lincoln. Part of Lincoln’s costume, along with the beard, hat and long coat of the type President Lincoln wore is the make up which is white face paint.
Parks’ irony in depicting the character of Lincoln is layered and upon examination, both humorous and tragic for many reasons. Lincoln playing Lincoln who “freed the slaves” out of convenience in the power struggle of the Civil War is a deprecating self-effacement and loss of empowerment for the once talented hustler. Lincoln’s white face is a further diminution into enslavement and toadying to “the man.” You can’t get much lower than a Black man putting on white face in an egregious parody which has him assume the role of his oppressor who conned the culture with his signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The irony that President Lincoln wanted to send all the Blacks back to Africa doesn’t matter to Lincoln, whose lack of knowledge and desperation damn him to willingly accept the demeaning job which erodes his confidence and self-determination. Additionally, his small salary given to humiliate him by “playing” a president who was the dubious “savior” of Blacks and was hated by Southern bigots, who possibly have come to ridicule him, reveals the extent to which Lincoln is in bondage to the white power structure. That he tells Booth it’s an easy job is Parks’ further thematic irony. Indeed, it is easy to be hoodwinked by “the man,” to internalize oppression and enjoy it because it is safer than to struggle and stand up against it. Lincoln has integrated slavery into his being. He represents one type of Black man in the society who works for a pittance in a job not worth his dignity.
Already, we understand that Parks is having us on, as she has us on about the names of these brothers which their father gave them as a crude and blasphemous joke. It intimates one will murder the other at some point in their miserable lives. As Booth and Lincoln discuss their parents and upbringing, we realize it is a continuation of dis-empowerment, self-effacement and abuse in a continuum, Parks suggests, hearkens back to slavery days. Their parents have passed down to them a diminished life, where they believe dignity and empowerment are only achieved in perfecting “the con.”
Every aspect of their existence reflects their bondage to cultural oppression and impoverishment of opportunity. Lincoln and Booth live together in one raggedy, shabby room in a boarding house without a sink and a toilet. Arnulfo Maldonado’s pointed, superb set design speaks of the realistic poverty and destitution that discloses they are one level above homelessness. The few pieces of furniture and other items most probably are cobbled together from found objects on the street or those stolen, “boosted” by Booth which is his main hustle. It is Booth’s room, so he gets to sleep in the bed that looks like it was pulled from a 1940s psychiatric hospital shown in old black and white films. The recliner where Lincoln sleeps is uncomfortable without a mattress, pillow or blanket.
The beauty of this play is in deciding who the mark is for the long con, as the con artist lures him by degrees and allows him to think he is winning. It is also in understanding the degrees of subtly Parks uses to develop the manipulations of the brothers from their initiation of the first “throw down of the cards” metaphorically, to the last winning hit at the play’s conclusion in Act II. The actors ply their on-point artifice by degrees. Importantly, in Act I they both appear to be genuine and organic as the brothers congenially front each other and appear generous. Booth shares his boost of clothes with Lincoln. Lincoln shares his paycheck to cover the rent, food, etc. However, as the game is on and we get to know each brother, the tension mounts especially as Booth insists upon teaming up with Lincoln in the grand hustle, which Lincoln refuses to do throughout the play. Seemingly without intention, Lincoln’s refusal is a come-on, which makes Booth all the more hungry for Lincoln to engage with him.
In a progression of ironic comments Hawkin’s Lincoln lays bare Abdul-Mateen II’s Booth and his braggadocio about his “girlfriend” Grace. On the other hand, Booth massages Lincoln’s pride in his hustling expertise. He builds him up so he can then compete with him and indicate he, too, is an adept. Then, eventually he will take him down as he hoists Lincoln on his own arrogant petard. Theirs is a constant thrust and parry, dodge and pivot, shuck and jive. By the conclusion they slash and burn with cruelty. As the older brother, Hawkins’ Lincoln appears wiser. However, depending upon our interpretation and Parks’ ambiguity, which allows for a number of possibilities, his wisdom is turned on its head.
Both actors superbly intimate the growing rivalry via the subtext between the brothers. Lincoln’s talent is always in control of the thrust and parry required to lure in the stooge. This riles competitive Booth. Though neither understands their own identity, nor their place as pawns-suckers in the overall scheme of things, Booth has a better understanding of the white oppression that keeps Blacks demeaned. Lincoln has a greater understanding of human nature. Instead of uniting to benefit each other, both are debilitated by their own loss of machismo and pride, their self-confidence stripped by their upbringing and the surrounding culture. In attempting to get it back through “the con,” they only fall in the abyss. They don’t understand the extent to which they are duped by the economic system and its vast inequities. The only thing that Lincoln fully understands is that he is talented enough to rig the game of three card monte and win. It is this he attempts to teach Booth, who fails and answers Lincoln’s grift in the only way he knows how.
Parks indicates that both brothers are blind to their own entrenchment in the falsehoods of the power structure which suggests one can “get ahead” by any means necessary. Of course, ignorance of the game and not knowing one is being played is 90% of “the man’s” success. That the culture’s long con pits the players against each other, sometimes to the death, as in the case of Lincoln’s sidekick is a danger which rightly gave Lincoln pause. But Lincoln’s hands and ego, spurred on by Booth, are “itching” to throw the cards again. That he is “one of the best” is his tragedy.
Both of the brothers con each other until the game is over. Their persistence results in the fated ending which Parks intimates is an inevitability given the cultural context in which Black men, like Lincoln and Booth, attempt to survive. The way to figure out the winning card in the game of three-card monte is to watch the first move of the hustler’s hand at the outset. Lincoln sarcastically tells this to Booth in the last scene of the play, as he demeans his little brother with his perfect moves. Though Lincoln presents his mastery to Booth, both brothers are chumps, duped by the white patriarchy to see each other as “the enemy.”
They don’t understand their place in the culture because they lack the knowledge of the past. Without that knowledge they are conned into scamming money as a way to be in control and get power. However, the cultural long con is so viciously rigged against them and all the classes, even brothers turn against each other to prove themselves. It is a psychotic, racist society that perniciously strips Black men of their beauty and vitality, then entices them to self-destruction by getting them to believe they can win in a game that has been rigged against them from before the time they were born. In Topdog/Underdog Parks indicts the racist culture and condemns its wickedness in establishing, fueling and perpetuating the long con that annihilates.
Parks’ metaphor of cons as it relates to our culture is even more current today than when the play premiered on Broadway in 2001. As Lincoln and Booth try to get over to make it to the next day, they are representative Black men. On a fast track to hell, the brothers can’t win for losing. The economic and social system won’t let them succeed. They are fated to play each other until both are played out. Parks reveals with her trenchant use of the names that since the Emancipation of the Slaves, the con of freedom was just that, a con. For Blacks freedom is a bitter “pie in the sky” lure. The lure persists today more than ever as institutions are set up for the corporations and the uber wealthy to be the winners. Politicos use the long con to dupe their constituents that they will help them be prosperous. Considering that our freedoms are currently under siege from political con artists who lie, cheat and steal, thumbing their nose at the judicial system, Park and Leon’s production is horrifically in the moment.
The play’s symbolic themes are conveyed in Lincoln and Booth’s stylized world, rendered astutely by Maldonado, Dede Ayite’s costumes, Allen Lee Hughes’ lighting, and Justin Ellington’s sound design. Within that world are the deceptions that we think don’t apply to us. Yet, using Lincoln as her mouthpiece, Parks reminds us about what is key. “You win only if ‘the man’ lets you.” The power structure, the patriarchy, the haves will draw you with the short con so you stay to play the long con, where they attempt to take it all, even your illusions of democracy.
Parks brilliant play reminds that all of us are marks subject to the game controllers of the corrupt culture that values money over people. As Lincoln and Booth do, we guide our lives based on the lies of prosperity, of money equaling happiness, as we sacrifice the most important verities in our lives (love, family, friendship), to “get over” and prove we are “somebody.” Following this paradigm to its ridiculous conclusion, the “top dogs” of the culture are the most duped. They have ultimately rigged the game against themselves.
If Parks’ microcosm of the events that occur between the brothers is stretched to the macrocosm, no one wins. In fact the game destroys everyone who plays it. The controllers ultimately lose, because the values that make up the foundation of the game, that prizes money over people, are illusory. The controllers, too, are people, buying into the lie that money is more valuable than their own lives. Thus, the “top dogs” destroy the possibilities for their own goodness and benefit by harming others who are valuable human beings. Indeed, the “top dogs” are more blind, deaf and dumb than Lincoln and Booth. And ironically, with all their power and money, they are worthless. It is the brothers who we care about and with whom we identify and cry with, thanks to Hawkins and and Abdul-Mateen II’s wonderful performances.
Kudos to all the creative team who make this production scintillate with life. Once again these include Arnulfo Maldonado (scenic design), Dede Ayite (costume design), Allen Lee Hughes (lighting design), Justin Ellington (sound design), Don’t miss Hawkins and Abdul-Mateen II’s superb performances in this gripping and matchless play. For tickets and times go to their website: https://topdogunderdog.com/tickets/
‘1776,’ The Revival Revolutionizes our Insights and Revitalizes an Appreciation for our Nation
The original Tony award-winning musical ‘1776’ with music and lyrics by Sherman Edwards and book by Peter Stone is for all time an exceptional distillation of events memorializing with artistic license the most salient moments of how the Declaration of Independence was eventually drafted and signed. With the force of a new and treasonous law established by a country that was first formed in the minds of an elite group of white, male land owners, the physical document was a presumptuous act of rebellion. Many disagreed with it. Those without property in the 13 colonies, i.e. women, Native Americans, slaves, white laborers and others, whose lives wouldn’t change much either with rule by propertied colonists or rule by King George III, most probably didn’t care.
In Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus’ revival of the musical 1776 at the American Airlines Theatre, the directors revolutionize the play’s casting with inclusion of those not represented in the forging of the Declaration of Independence. As a remembrance of the excluded and an indication of “how far we’ve come culturally,” the directors cast multi-racial actors who are female, nonbinary and transgender in the roles of the white, male founders normally cast in Edwards and Stone’s 1776.
Led by the “obnoxious” John Adams portrayed by the exceptional Crystal Lucas-Perry (“Sit Down John”), 1776 begins as the Second Continental Congress, after months of delay (“Piddle, Twiddle, and Resolve”), finally gets down to confronting whether or not to declare independence from England’s King George III and establish America as a sovereign nation. Massachusetts delegate Adams encouraged by Dr. Benjamin Franklin (the wonderful, wry Patrena Murray) are continually rebuffed by British leaning colonists led by Pennsylvania’s John Dickinson (Carolee Carmello gives a powerful and nuanced performance as the opposition).
When it appears they are moving forward, it is suggested that approval must be unanimous, which John Handcock, President of the Congress (a commanding Liz Mikel) agrees with in order to prevent any of the colonies siding with England, incurring a civil war. Adams and Franklin join together with Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson (Elizabeth A. Davis) the recalcitrant author of a formal Declaration of Independence. The opposition continues with delays, though Franklin, Adams and Jefferson manage to pull in others as the typical manipulations of congress continue.
Washington’s difficulty with raising an army and keeping it equipped and fed is the bad news brought by the Courier (Salome B. Smith), as the Courier sings about soldiers dying on the battlefield while delegates listen with guilt and horror (Smith’s powerfully rendered “Momma, Look Sharp”). South Carolina’s Edward Rutledge (Sara Porkalob) indicts the hypocritical and self-righteous Northern colonies, reinforcing that they, too benefit from the Triangular Slave Trade (the show-stopping “Molasses to Rum”).
Infuriated, Rutledge walks out of the session and won’t return until an anti-slavery clause in the preliminary Declaration of Independence is removed. Unanimity seems far away. Yet, Adams, encouraged by wife Abigail (Allyson Kaye Daniel) throughout (“Yours, Yours, Yours”) and with the help of Franklin and Jefferson and changing results by Washington, make concessions and revisions. Finally, all agree to sign and we see their iconic signatures projected on the curtain at the conclusion.
Page and Paulus’ casting inversion ends when they cast females in the roles of Martha Jefferson (Eryn LeCroy) and Abigail Adams (Allyson Kaye Daniel) with Daniel dressed in a colorful turban and African shift. From a positive perspective, the casting adds new interpretations and vitality, if one isn’t so well acquainted with or enamored of the original musical as to be offended with its “tampering.” Assuredly, 1776, regardless of iteration, stands on its own as a dynamic, ingenious musical.
Importantly, each unique rendering, illuminates additional perspectives. Each version should yield a new appreciation for the Founding Fathers’ humanity and blindness, which still exists today in American attitudes that have carried over for generations from a racist past that cannot be ignored by culture wars of political convenience. However, this latest 1776 outing pegged to our present generation must give pause for its daring. If one viewpoint is modified, the version has done its job. For Page and Paulus’ revival affirms that the essential concepts in the elite, propertied white men’s minds were the immutable verities of spirit that ultimately, if allowed to, transcended demographic differences to help us arrive at the expanding social and cultural contracts we have today in most of the country.
The revolutionary casting provokes humor and thoughtfulness. Interestingly, it often evokes a celebration of the success of the “American experiment.” Specifically, with a pregnant female Thomas Jefferson (Elizabeth A. Davis is expecting and plays the violin exquisitely) the birthing of a nation takes on an ironic and humorous meaning, especially during the song sung by Adams, Franklin and the company entitled “The Egg.” In Act II after Jefferson writes the preliminary document and Adams decides that the eagle will best symbolize the new nation, they suggest that they are like midwives to an egg hatching. During the rousing, cleverly re-imagined song, a video of the new nation’s history to come is projected on a curtain behind the actors. As the multi-cultural nation spools historical events in the future, the pregnant Elizabeth A. Davis’ Jefferson fiercely accompanies with riffs on the electric violin.
Indeed, we see what has been birthed from past to present. Our nation’s potential is amazing thanks to spiritual concepts which move beyond definition in this revelatory 1776.
The actors reveal their beautiful voices and superb acting talents during other numbers staged imaginatively. Many are standouts, however a few deserve special mention. “Momma, Look Sharp” sung by Salome B. Smith, with Tiffani Barbour and the company is a show stopper as is “Molasses to Rum” sung by Sara Porkalob. The latter song humbles the Northern colonists who participate in the Triangular Slave Trade. In pointing out the blindness of hypocrisy, the should humble everyone today who has a mobile phone, uses a laptop, wears a diamond, eats certain foods, for they have a slave footprint and participate in some for of wage slavery.
Does this new iteration work? What are the directors and actors intending to express with this revolutionary casting approach to a beloved musical? And it is beloved. One only has to read YouTube comments connected with the film version and various songs that users have uploaded, to discover that Americans trot out the filmed version of 1776 (released in 1972) occasionally. Some even claim to watch the film on July 4th to reaffirm their patriotism and appreciation of this nation with its viewing. Thus, fans of the original will perhaps bristle at this version.
However, for younger audiences, the zaniness of the production, its show-stopping numbers and the audacity of this bold cast will appeal. When at times, some of the numbers take on an irreverent, spoofy quality (“He Plays the Violin”) they will find the overall effect amusing. After all, the overarching meaning of Edwards and Stone’s musical cannot be lost, because the script and song lyrics adhere to the original. Also, there is a salient addition with Abigail’s March 1776 letter to her husband, widely quoted as a statement for women’s rights. Abigail reminds him to include women in their endeavors in her adjuration to “remember the ladies.” In spirit and irony, Page and Paulus answer Abigail’s call, devoting the entire production to female, nonbinary and transgender actors.
Thanks to choreography by Jeffrey L. Page and free flowing staging by Page and Paulus, the musical is heavily stylized and stripped of spectacle and intricate set design. One is able to concentrate and align the events and their significance to our history then and now. Costumes by Emilio Sosa intimate the setting and the respective colonists. After the principals enter wearing modern clothing, with Sosa’s magic, they cleverly turn white socks into stockings, black leggings into colonial breeches, then slip into square-toed buckle shoes of the period. Their intricate and lovely frock coats differentiate the colony each represents and reveal the varied styles of our country’s Northern, Mid-Atlantic and Southern colonies.
What Edwards and Stone’s musical did in 1969 was remind Americans of their beginnings, during a time of social upheaval and divisiveness. Then, the musical may have recalled our Founding Fathers’ desire for self-governance as the populace questioned policies that escalated an unpopular war in Viet Nam, which to many seemed hypocritical because it interfered with another nation’s right to choose its own government.
Likewise, this revival seems appropriate at a time of divisiveness and polarization. When our rights are under siege (the right to privacy under Roe vs. Wade, along with the gutting of voting rights), once again we need to be inspired toward true patriotism, taken from our Founding Fathers’ rebellion against despotic and autocratic-acting King George III. Importantly, we need to hearken back to the time when our Founders established the path toward a constitutional democracy, which forces ranging in this nation today appear to want to jettison.
Thus, the musical’s cast solidifies that the “American experiment” of a nation of liberty, accepting of all races, creeds, genders, colors is burgeoning, even though in some places this version might not fall coherently and seamlessly in every moment of the production. The revolutionary cast concept cannot be easily dismissed. Nor can this version be glibly criticized for confusing history or the ideas.
If one reads extensively of the time during the Declaration of Independence and the Founding Fathers, it is clear that great artistic liberty was taken by Edwards and Stone to dramatize the Declaration’s signing in 1776. For example there are inaccuracies in the character of Adams who describes himself as obnoxious as the others concur in the expertly staged and performed opening number that establishes conflict. The description of “obnoxious” is contrary to what David McCullough suggests in his biography of Adams, who was well respected by his compatriots.
The historical inaccuracies are in the service of dramatization. Likewise, the casting of this version is historically inaccurate. However, as a musical for our time and nation, whose democracy appears to be hanging in the balance, it is extremely relevant and in keeping with the immutable spirit of freedom. Whether fans of the original will like it, hopefully, will not deter from their understanding of how the original and this present version are in concert with the nature and substance of a “declaration of independence.”
Kudos to Scott Pask’s fine set design, Jen Shriever’s lighting design, David Bengali’s projection design, John Clancy’s orchestrations Ryan Cantwell’s music direction, AnnMarie’s vocal design, Dean Sharenow-music coordinator and the other creatives who helped to bring this version to life. For tickets and times go to their website: https://www.roundabouttheatre.org/get-tickets/2022-2023-season/1776/
CAROLE DI TOSTI 