‘New York Botanical Garden Holiday Train Show’
The NYBG Holiday Train Show has begun. And what a magnificent, vibrant show it is.
Now in its 32nd year the show reflects its beginnings.
In 1992, landscape architect and model train enthusiast Paul Busse of Applied Imagination came to the Garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory to express his unique vision for a special exhibition during the winter holidays.
He created The Holiday Garden Railway Exhibit. The following year the “Railway Exhibit” blossomed outdoors in the Garden landscape featuring bridges and a viaduct situated near the LuEsther T. Mertz Library.
This year’s 2023 Holiday Train Show returns to Busse’s outdoor landscape design. However, it is more expansive with a clever theme for it’s outdoor exhibit. The addition is an all-new enchanted woodland train display, replete with forest animals, winter-interest plants and fantastical fungi set on the Haupt Conservatory Lawn.
Don’t underestimate the outdoor display or move too quickly to appreciate that all the elements are plant/botanically based.
The large mushrooms that look like they are out of a Disney cartoon, that kids will appreciate, are recreations, not of ceramics, but they are made of wood, intricately shaped and detailed.
Applied Imagination’s creativity and attention to detail is bar none.
The imagination of the craftspeople at Applied Imagination to recreate their counterparts in nature is astounding. It inspires us in so many directions, conservation, environmental use and protection and appreciation of nature’s wonders. All of these values conjoin with the Garden’s efforts toward the natural world and conservation of plants especially exotic species globally.
Likewise, the woodland animals are botanical creations. For example, the owl which you might miss if you don’t look overhead (it had to be pointed out to me) is predominately made of artichokes.
The lovely flowers that adorn the top arches are made of gourds. And the shelf mushrooms attached to the bridges and fences are themselves.
Look at the vines, coated in plant based resins to give them the glossy finishing touches that look like they are metal or iron. The butterfly creation that looks like it might be featured in any high-end store for home decorations is totally plant based.
That glossy look on the wings is achieved by the same resin that is used on the windows of the miniature of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory inside, in the rotunda with other structures of the Garden like the LuEsther T. Mertz Library.
The Conservatory miniature is a gloriously detailed structure that took over 1000 people hours to put together. Of course, the visible structure is made of reeds. Interestingly, the cupola rests on “a ring of large pine cone scales.” For the piece de resistance at the very top, artists used seedpods: one mahogany and one lotus. If you didn’t know what these seed pods looked like in their natural habitat, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish their botanical ancestry from plastic. However, the last thing that Applied Imagination would ever employ in its presentations is plastic. Busse and the entire staff support the environment and the wonders of how nature is reflected in design structures.
The outdoor expansion combines with the the New York City and upstate New York miniatures that sprawl indoors throughout the conservatory’s galleries that have been enjoyed in previous years. However, the Garden staff and staff at Applied Imagination make sure that the displays are differently arranged.
Walking through as I have done each year, I try to remember which sections of the city appear in the Palms of the World Gallery or the Centerpiece Rotunda, and I am often at a loss. The show is botanical theater and as such changes from moment to moment, from year to year. Each year, it seems more spectacular than the next. And neither still photographs nor videos do justice to reveal the wonder of exuberant plant life whether in the daytime or the magical and mysterious nighttime of the conservatory.
Like live theater which is akin to an interactive spiritual experience, the NYBG’s botanical theater feels different through the run of the show. To keep the exhibit shining, plants are swapped out. Others are added and the effect is continually one of shifting, lush tropical splendor. This year’s exhibit is a pantheon of color. Wherever you turn there are dazzling orchids, poinsettias, cyclamen and variegated plants, begonias, ferns and the permanent plantings some of which are flowering trees. It is too beautiful to miss.
PROGRAMMING
On 17 Select Nights, Holiday Train Show Visitors of all ages can enjoy NYBG GLOW, the OUTDOOR LIGHT EXPERIENCE. It is returning for its fourth year. NYBG GLOW will take place from 5 to 10 p.m. on the following dates: friday, December 8; Saturday, December 9; Friday, December 15; Saturday, December 16; Sunday, December 17, Friday, December 22, Saturday, December 23; Tuesday December 26; Wednesday, December 27; Thursday, December 28; Friday, December 29; Saturday, December 30, 2023; Saturday, January 6; and Saturday, January 13, 2024.
FAN-FAVORITE BAR CAR NIGHTS, FOR ADULTS AGE 21 AND OVER, WILL ALSO MAKE A COMEBACK THIS SEASON ON THREE SELECT DATES. These are Thursdays, December 7 and December 14, 2023, and Friday, January 5,202 4. Bar Car Nights feature adults-only nighttime viewing of the Holiday Train Show and NYBG GLOW, with light bites and curated beverages available for purchase as visitors journey through the exhibition with friends and loved ones.
For more information, go to the NYBG website. https://www.nybg.org/event/holiday-train-show/
Susan Stroman Interviewed by Sharon Washington, a LPTW Event
On Friday, November 17, the League of Professional Theatre Women held an interview of an icon in the theater, Susan Stroman. The event was part of The Oral History Project which is held at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The venue was the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center/Bruno Walter Auditorium.
Currently produced for the League by producer and director Ludovica Villar-Hauser, The Oral History Project was founded and produced for 26 years by the late Betty L. Corwin. The interview of Susan Stroman by friend and colleague Sharon Washington was video taped and will be archived in the collections of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
How Sharon Washington and Susan Stroman met
After comments by President Ludovica Villar-Hauser, and introductions, Sharon Washington (check out her credits and work on https://iamsharonwashington.com/), began by sharing the story of how she came to first meet Susan Stroman in 2009. At the time, Washington’s agent suggested she audition for a part in a musical, though Washington was a dramatic actress. When Washington posed that she hadn’t been in any musicals, her agent reassured her that in this one, she wouldn’t have to sing, dance or speak. Ironically, Washington questioned why she would even consider such a part. However, her agent countered that it would be directed by Susan Stroman.
Thus, Washington and Stroman collaborated on the 12 times Tony nominated Scottsboro Boys. The musical went on to win the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical in the UK. Though the production didn’t win any Tonys, Washington emphasized that then and now, Stroman’s process is exhilarating.
Specifically, Stroman creates a safe room that is caring. Washington and the other cast members felt so comfortable that they could work freely. Washington pointed out during the interview that Stroman imbues a quality of trust to be a creative collaborator. In her safe space one can try things out and make suggestions. This artistry of bringing out the best in the cast and creative team has brought Stroman accolades and forever friends. Sharon Washington is one of them.
Susan Stroman is a theater Icon
Susan Stroman (Director/Choreographer), is a five-time Tony Award-winning director and choreographer. She has won Olivier, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel Awards. Also, for her choreography, she has won a record number (six) of Astaire Awards. Recently, she directed and choreographed the new musical New York, New York, which was nominated for nine Tony Awards and which won Best Scenic Design for a Musical (Beowulf Boritt). The music was by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb and Lin Manuel Miranda, and a book by David Thompson and friend Sharon Washington.
In other recent work, she directed the hysterical, LOL new play POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. And this season in London’s West End, she directed and choreographed the revival of Crazy for You at the Gillian Lynne Theatre.
Past exceptional productions include her direction and choreography for The Producers (12 Tony Awards including Best Direction and Best Choreography). She co-created, directed and choreographed the Tony Award-winning musical Contact for Lincoln Center Theater. She received a 2003 Emmy Award for Live from Lincoln Center. Broadway credits include Oklahoma!, Show Boat, Prince of Broadway, Bullets Over Broadway, Big Fish, Young Frankenstein, The Music Man and others. Her Off-Broadway Credits include The Beast in the Jungle, Dot, and Flora the Red Menace to name a few.
Stroman has experience with ballet and opera
She garnered additional theater credits and to these add ballet and opera which include The Merry Widow (Metropolitan Opera); Double Feature, and For the Love of Duke (New York City Ballet). She received four Golden Globe nominations for her direction and choreography for The Producers: The Movie Musical. Additionally, she is the recipient of the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater, and an inductee of the Theater Hall of Fame in New York City. For her complete list of accomplishments, credits and awards, go to www.SusanStroman.com
After Washington and Stroman discussed her beginnings growing up in Delaware in a house of music, where she danced and was in dancing school, she would always create dances when her father played the piano. She grew up appreciating her father’s storytelling and musical talent. She majored in English at the University of Delaware and was attracted to story telling and its different forms which, of course, included music and dance. She mentioned that her family would watch movie musicals together on their sofa, and as she watched, she intuited the synchronicity between the dance and the music and the feeling it created. Storytelling through the dance came easily to her because of her parents and their appreciation of musicals, music, movement and how dancing conveyed the story.
Choreography helps to move the plot forward
For Stroman, today, especially with the virtual media environment, choreography is imperative for moving the plot and story forward in immediacy. The audience wants the story to move forward constantly, which can be accomplished with choreography transitioning the turning points so the events have a forward momentum. In recognizing the importance of the staging and the dance, every corner of the stage must be considered. There is no empty part of the stage that doesn’t have the element of storytelling through dance, music and dialogue.
It is a testament to Stroman’s ability to continually provide fascinating visuals, color and movement so entrancing to audiences, who love her work, if sometimes critics don’t fully understand or appreciate the genius she displays. Indeed, with the stage beginning as a writer begins with a blank page, Stroman thinks profoundly about every dancer, every performer, every musical note, every word of dialogue and of course all the elements in the story (Aristotle’s poetics).
For my mind, her works should be studied in musical theater classes in universities for their immediacy, their vibrance, their emotional grist and their coherence as they synchronize elements of scenic design, costume design, and hair and wig design, lighting, sound, to effect the beauty, sorrow, majesty of the story being told.
The film The Sound of Music was an influence
Stroman emphasized that she and her brother saw The Sound of Music together and it impacted her understanding. She stated, “I was blown away by that movie. I guess I was twelve.” She couldn’t believe the story that was being told and how important the story was, realizing it could be something which is really profound. Stroman followed with the idea that she visualizes music with a story following along. Additionally, she imagines how the dancers would be dancing. Immediately, her “brain begins to spin about what story is being told through the music, the instrumentation and the orchestrations.”
When Stroman puts a show together, she “works very much with the show’s composer and arranger,” of how to open up the music. She manipulates the time signature of the music to help represent the emotion she wants the actors to play and to move forward the momentum of the story. She does a lot of research on every musical. This might include the history of the decade, the geographical area, the setting. She immerses herself in research and thinks extensively about the characters. This helps to inform how she choreographs the music.
Working with performers is about collaborating in a safe space.
Working with actors is about collaborating in a safe space. First, comes the research. Then comes the time and effort put into using what has been learned. Washington attested to Stroman’s being there early before everyone else, and staying late after everyone was gone. Stroman works extensively with her musical partners. Additionally, she is aware of the actor’s process. Each have their own process. Some pick up elements very quickly and others don’t. It is a balancing act to get all on the same page and not make them feel inferior.
In making sure all feel comfortable in the learning process, Stroman stays positive and roots for her actors, wanting them to do their best. Getting the performers to the point of excellence, she has to do her research and be prepared before she ever creates the safe space in the rehearsal room. When they arrive there together, she’s worked through almost the entire show. However, part of creation and allowing the cast to feel comfortable, she doesn’t share all of what she knows. She wants them “to feel free” and be creative and “feel a part of it.” She’s also inspired by the performers who come up with their own creative suggestions. She allows for actors and dancers’ agency, encouraging them to try something different.
Stroman collaborated with Washington during the production, Dot
Stroman shared a moment in Dot where Sharon Washington’s character had extensive monologues and she gave her the stage action of cooking eggs. Stroman had Washington pace the dialogue with cooking eggs so that she finished every time on a particular word. Though Washington was skeptical at first, she become so attuned, that the timing was perfect. With Stroman’s encouragement, she finished when the eggs were done and landed precisely on the designated “word” in the monologue. Both Stroman and Washington discussed the wonder of creating something that didn’t exist before. Considering all the people that collaborated in the creation, the artistry of that collaboration to present something amazing is miraculous.
Stroman discussed how the ideas for various scripts or stories come from various places. The seminal idea for the show Contact came surprisingly with the image of the girl in the yellow dress. Stroman discussed that she was in a bar at one in the morning, and in a bar where all the New Yorkers wore black. And “in walked this girl with a yellow dress which I thought was quite bold for one in the morning.” Stroman described the girl’s action, “She would step forward when she wanted to dance with somebody, and then she would retreat back when she was done with them.” According to Stroman, she was an amazing dancer and she was only there to dance. Stroman watched her dance with various men. Then she disappeared into the night.
The girl with the yellow dress becomes Contact
Around two weeks later at Lincoln Center, Stroman was approached about having ideas. She said, “You know, I think I have an idea.” And from then on, the story of the girl in the yellow dress took flight, bringing in all the elements of music, dance, and storyline. That’s how Contact came into existence, from a visual and organic, raw experience that stirred Susan Stroman’s imagination. Amazing! Contact ran for three years. Humorously, Stroman discussed how pictures of the “girl in the yellow dress” were on busses and billboards and she was thinking the girl would come forward and say something. She never did.
Stroman shared another story about the time she met with Mel Brooks. She was working on A Christmas Carol when she received a call to meet with Mel Brooks. Familiar with his work, she wondered what he wanted to talk to her about. There was a knock at the door. And when she opened it, he started singing, “That face, that face…” and he danced down Stroman’s long hallway, then jumped up on her sofa and said, “Hello! I’m Mel Brooks.” Stroman shared that she didn’t know what would happen. She thought, “But whatever it is, it’s going to be a great adventure.” Indeed, the experience was, “the adventure of a lifetime.”
Regarding working with Mel Brooks, Stroman suggested that she learned from him, collaborating and observing. Of course, it was a new art form for him, so he was flexible and learned from Stroman’s theatrical experiences and process of working. It appears they developed a mutual admiration society.
Facing obstacles as a woman
Washington asked about the obstacles Stroman faced as a women. When Stroman got in the business, she stated, “It really was male dominated.” And she mentioned that it has only been in the last fifteen years that there have been women directors. However, she was not certain about “why that is or was.” When she started, she wanted people to believe, “In the art of what I was doing.” She didn’t dress up. She wore a baseball cap. At that time there was a pressure to “dress down,” and be “strong, but not too strong.” Stroman felt like she “could do it,” when she came to New York. However, she didn’t know if she would “be allowed to do it.”
In sharing a story to encourage young people or anyone in the business, she suggested “always ask questions.” The worst that can happen is that “they” say “no.” One day she and another actor were throwing out ideas and came up with the idea to approach Cabaret’s Kander and Ebb and ask if they could take one of their shows and direct and choreograph it for Off-Broadway. They were shocked when Kander and Ebb agreed and they took Flora the Red Menace, reworked it and brought it to The Vineyard Theatre.
Critics
Stroman discussed critics. She mentioned that “bad reviews are very hurtful.” She also suggested that women’s work is more harshly criticized than men’s and that the same applied in politics. She referenced her great disappointment that New York, New York didn’t have staying power and closed. They were waiting for the tourists, but they never came. Regarding the collaboration, she enjoyed working with the creative team tremendously. Of course, that made the show not lasting more poignant. The show received positive and negative reviews. Regarding any positive reviews received over the years, Stroman quipped, “The good reviews are never good enough.” And when there’s a great review, “You think, well, why didn’t they talk about that?” You just “have to feel good about what you are creating,” she insisted.
In discussing mentorship Sharon Washington suggested Stroman is very gracious and lets everyone participate. With every show she does, she usually has “A young observer who comes on the show and they get to be there for the whole process.” She said, “It’s important to be in the room where it happens.” Young people learn best when they see the process unfolding and join in it, participating whenever it is feasible. They learn, then, that it’s a collaboration. As the team works together, the director coheres with all the designers. It is the director, who has a clear vision of what the production should be. Then, the director shepherds the creatives and negotiates through and around the various egos.
For more on Susan Stroman https://www.susanstroman.com/ or Sharon Washington https://iamsharonwashington.com/ go to their websites. For a video of the interview, visit the New York Library for the Performing Arts archive in person.
The League of Professional Theatre Women is a membership organization for professional theatre women representing a diversity of identities, backgrounds, and disciplines. Through its programs and initiatives, it creates community, cultivates leadership, and seeks to increase opportunities and recognition for women in professional theatre. Its mission is to champion, promote, and celebrate the voices, presence and visibility of women theatre professionals and to advocate for parity and recognition for women in theatre across all disciplines.
Dianne Wiest in ‘Scene Partners,’ a Wild, Woolly Romp Through The Reality of Imagination
How many women have dreamed of a career in Hollywood only to be dunned by everyone in their lives, except the still small voice encouraging them to try? And after they’ve reached their seventies and it’s too late and they attempt a career in the movies? WTF! Are they out of their minds? In Scene Partners, currently running at the Vineyard Theater, John J. Casewell, Jr. (Wet Brain) presents such a woman in his character Meryl Kowalski, portrayed with exceptional authenticity by Dianne Wiest in a bravura role that challenges expectations.
If Meryl’s relatives believe her packed bags, they would stop her and instead, shore up her living will and have her make final payments on her cemetery plot. Actually, they don’t have to. It’s 1985 and the entertainment industry patriarchy is in full swing, still the perfect place for abuse and rejection. After all, women in their late thirties are considered ancient and unbankable. Men and their puppet females in the industry will send Meryl to an insane asylum or to the grave toute suite, once she discovers how uncooperative they will be. Let her go to Los Angeles and make a fool of herself, a lesson she will never recover from. NOT!
the rub of John J. Casewell, Jr.’s genre-bending play is that Wiest’s enigmatic, nuanced Meryl succeeds beyond our wildest dreams. And she succeeds at a fractious time in the factory town when she should crash and burn immediately. Instead, Meryl and the acolytes she picks up along they way, unspool her anti-matter adventures that involve lift chairs and elevator shafts, and defy sense and sensibility, just for the fun of it.
Indeed! What else has a 75-year-old to do after her mouche (fly projected on a screen), husband dies and frees her from his battering abuse and emotional terrorism? Of course, she must free herself and follow the yellow brick road of her dreams sans money, sobriety and nihilism to become a movie star.
Part of the charm, humor and horror of Casewell Jr.’s Scene Partners, guided by astute director Rachel Chavkin, is that he playfully strings together scenes that appear haphazard but eventually have their own coherence, for a time. He stands familiar tropes (like logic and reality), on their heads, juxtapositioning them so that up is down, left is right. Then he turns them around again. Where is this lack of structural structure taking us, deep into the recesses of Meryl’s imagination? Or is this the stuff that dreams are made of and we all will wake UP back in Meryl’s kitchen, her bags ready to be unpacked?
This out of the box thinking is a good thing, for along the journey, we come to admire this unusual protagonist and find her humorous and adorable. Engaged, we watch as Meryl (turns out she was the first “Meryl” before the other actress), uses her determination and nimble mind, in whatever state it’s in to live in irony, freedom and her fantastic imagination. After all, what is reality anyway but quarks, particles, protons and electrons spinning beyond the speed of light so that what we think is a solid, is actually an illusion of spinning particles. What better place for Meryl to be than the land of illusions to add her own fantasies and realities to theirs! And lo and behold, she gets people out there to believe her! Could this happen as easily in New York City?
In a non-linear, fractured fashion, Meryl eventually spills the beans about her life which is being made into a film with her scene partners from acting class. Born in Los Angeles her father loved her, but her parents divorced and her mother ran away with another man, dragging her along. This stepfather fancied Meryl’s youth and expended himself on her, raping her for his good pleasure, though her mother and stepsister Charlize (the excellent Johanna Day), refused to acknowledge his sinister, sick lechery.
Masochistically continuing the abuse, instead of seeking freedom, we learn, she marries an abuser for life, named Stanley Kowalski. She explains, and we laugh, “I have no idea who’s responsible for feeding the details of my life to Mr. Williams for his little play.” Seeing her father relentlessly beat her mother, daughter Flora (Kristen Sieh), another victim, becomes an addict who depends on Meryl for food, clothing, everything.
Appalled that her mom is leaving her with no food in the house and abandoning her to confront her own addictions (principally self-destruction), Flora criticizes and insults Meryl for following her dreams. Meryl replies, “I have been acting all of my life! It’s about time I get paid for it!”
Indeed, I cannot imagine anyone else in this role, even Meryl Streep. In every breath of dialogue, Dianne Wiest appears to comprehend this victim turned hero, who is a combination of fantasist, Norman Vincent Peale practitioner and chronic traumatic encephalopathy survivor (battered brain syndrome). The power in her will to carve out her own reality out of life goal takes an inner truth and determination that Wiest so capably expresses. She has done similarly in each of the roles she performs, i.e. the sweetly accepting mother in Edward Scissorhands, the hysterical actress Helen Sinclair in Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway (1994). In this ironic, wildly insentient role of Meryl, she achieves a pinnacle, if that is possible. I hope not, for she is imminently watchable and must do more stage productions.
When she points the gun at Josh Hamilton’s Herman, you believe she will shoot as she smiles at him. She’s happily dead serious. Thus, he believes her and he takes her on as his client, interested at her new approach and believability.
Additionally, at times Wiest’s Meryl is out of focus as if in medias res, in a chopped up segue which has no before and a questionable after, confused, wobbly, unsure of herself. This is especially so in the opening scene when she appears on camera (David Bengali’s video & production design), via projection. Styled with make-up and hair for her “close-up, Mr. DeMille,” her wide-eyed, silent response to the voice-over director’s, “Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart,” appears vacantly shocked. Is she amazed that she actually is where she said she would be? Or is something else going on, like a lapse in memory or identity? Wiest keeps her portrayal fresh, surprising, astounding. You can’t take your eyes off her.
Intentionally difficult to describe, Caswell, Jr.’s play hides in the shadows, as if throwing onto the stage anything that is humorous, upended and Wiest is up for. He twits our need to grasp onto something firm, like an arc of development that doesn’t involve Meryl’s strange train ride and sexual intimacies with a Russian conductor. And then there is a hop, skip and jump to “Horray for Hollywood!” and Meryl is threatening Herman Wasserman for auditions and parts with a gun. Speedily after that, she is in acting class with fellow actors.
Scene Partners succeeds because it cracks open another realm of being that is illogical and brashly, humorously defiant. It asks us to accept Meryl for who she is and what she learns about herself in her fragility, lapses, unreal realities and bits and pieces from movies that have clearly impacted her psyche. With help from a fine ensemble, Johanna Day’s grounded stepsister, John Hamilton, edgy and annoying in various roles, Kristen Sieh and others, the vignettes created and cobbled together form a life resurrected into one of purpose, joy and happiness. Does it truthfully matter if we don’t understand all elements about Meryl? Do we ever understand all elements about ourselves?
If we see through a prism the rainbow colors, some emphasized one day, others the next, maybe that’s a good thing. And if we follow dreams, even if only in our imaginations, perhaps that’s all that matters if we don’t harm anyone else. In fact, we may even bring others together pursuing the “unlikely” or the “ridiculous.”
Kudos to the creative team which includes Riccardo Hernandez (scenic design), Brenda Abbandandolo (costume design), Alan C. Edwards (lighting design), Leah Gelpe (sound design), Leah Loukas (hair, wig & makeup design), David Bengali (video & projection design) and others. And special kudos to the director, actors and Wiest, who helped to make Meryl’s world authentic in its wild and crazy configurations.
Scene Partners is a must-see for its zaniness and for Wiest’s dynamic, fascinating performance. For tickets go online https://vineyardtheatre.org/shows/scene-partners/
Susan Stroman Interview by Broadway Playwright Sharon Washington
On Friday, November 17th The League of Professional Theatre Women is sponsoring a free event at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center (111 Amsterdam Avenue at 65th Street, New York). The public is invited to this special interview of Tony Award winning Director/Choreographer Susan Stroman about her brilliant career by Broadway Playwright Sharon Washington, at 6 p.m.
The event, which is open to the public, is part of the League of Professional Theatre Women’s (LPTW) Oral History Project in partnership with the Library and is a highlight of LPTW’s 41st season.
Susan Stroman, Director/Choreographer is a five-time Tony Award winning director and choreographer known for the Broadway musicals Crazy for You, Contact, The Scottsboro Boys, and The Producers. She is the winner of a record-making 12 Tony Awards including Best Direction and Best Choreography. Her work has been honored with Olivier, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, and a record six Astaire Awards.
For Broadway, she most recently directed and choreographed the new Kander & Ebb musical New York, New York and directed the new play POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. This season in London’s West End, she directed and choreographed the revival of Crazy for You at the Gillian Lynne Theatre. Other Broadway credits include: Show Boat, Prince of Broadway, Bullets Over Broadway, Big Fish, Oklahoma!, Young Frankenstein, Thou Shalt Not, The Music Man, Big, The Frogs, and Steel Pier.
Off-Broadway she directed and choreographed Little Dancer, The Beast in the Jungle, Dot, Flora the Red Menace, And the World Goes ‘Round, Happiness, The Last Two People on Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville, as well as The Merry Widow for The Metropolitan Opera. She has created ballets for New York City Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Martha Graham. She received the American Choreography Award for her work in Columbia Pictures feature film Center Stage. She is the recipient of the George Abbott Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater and an inductee of the Theater Hall of Fame in New York City. www.SusanStroman.com
Sharon Washington, Playwright/Actor was nominated for a 2023 Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical as co-writer of New York New York. She made her debut as playwright with her solo play Feeding The Dragon which played Off-Broadway at Primary Stages and was nominated for Outer Critics, Lortel and Audelco Awards. She was the Primary Stages 2017-18 Tow Foundation Playwright-in-Residence. The play was recorded as an Audible Original and selected as an Audible Essentials Top 100 pick.
As an actor, last summer Sharon was seen as Queen Margaret in the Public Theater/Shakespeare in the Park production of Richard III, broadcast on PBS Great Performances. Recent film and television appearances include Power Book III: Raising Kanan, Bull;the short film Birdwatching co-starring Amanda Seyfried, and the Academy-Award winning Joker. You may also recognize her voice as the narrator of several documentary series for Animal Planet, Discovery and NOVA.
On Broadway Sharon appeared in The Scottsboro Boys musical. Off-Broadway credits include Dot (Vineyard Theater); Wild with Happy (Public Theater/NYSF – Lucille Lortel nomination and Audelco Award among many others; and numerous regional theaters around the country.
Sharon holds an MFA from the Yale School of Drama and a BA from Dartmouth College.
To attend this event, please RSVP at this link: https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2023/11/17/league-professional-theatre-women-susan-stroman
‘The Refuge Plays,’ Nicole Ari Parker and Daniel J. Watts are Smashing
Nathan Alan Davis’ The Refuge Plays, directed by Patricia McGregor, chronicles a family’s survival with a play whose structure employs an interesting twist. The production, a world premiere, begins in the present and flashes backward in generational segments to 70 years prior, spanning four generations. Though the three plays or segments may stand alone, the characters repeat in each and the thread of the main character’s resilience is the principle linchpin around which the events revolve.
In its world premiere presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company in association with New York Theatre Workshop, The Refuge Plays unspools its epic saga during three hours and twenty minutes, and two intermissions. It runs until November 12th at the Laura Pels Theatre.
In Davis’ epic of family bonds happening away from any social construct after World War II, we note how the reigning matriarch and great, grandmother Early wields subtle power and presence despite her advanced years. The superb Nicole Ari Parker is a standout in the role as she evokes the elderly, middle aged and teenage Early.
Contrasted with her great grandson Ha, Ha (JJ Wynder), who expects others to do for him, Early takes it upon herself to chop wood for the stove which also provides heat, despite her granddaughter Joy’s protests that her seventeen-year old son Ha Ha should be doing the chopping, which he says he doesn’t know how to do.
From that action alone the clue is given that Early’s age belies her life force and vibrancy. Living in this cabin in the woods off the grid, which she and husband Crazy Eddie (the superb Daniel J. Watts), built with their own hands decades before, she makes the best of her roughly-hewn life, which she shares with family. Remaining isolated from culture, technological developments and progress, they have managed to find a measure of comfort and peace that society doesn’t offer. The inference is that is perhaps that is why they are still alive. Though not living in the lap of luxury, they want for nothing. What carries them onward are the the authentic community and relationships they forge with each other.
Davis symbolizes Early as the seminal earth mother who sustains her family’s survival, which we understand watching the characters in the present and their movement into the past. From the outset, we note the elderly Early is determined, feisty, funny and authentic no nonsense with family members.
Though she doesn’t get along with her son’s wife Gail (Jessica Frances Dukes), she allows her to stay with them for the sake of their daughter Joy, who once left then came back. Making cryptic comments at times, Early puts up with Gail, though it is obvious she approves of her granddaughter for what they share. Both mourn Walking Man (Jon Michael Hill), who we hear died in a freak accident when a cow crushed him with its weight as he slaughtered it.
In the first segment, “Protect the Beautiful Place,” Davis sets the tone and presents the four generations of family members living in a two room cabin, cramped together, not seeming to mind the lack of personal and private space. This cabin that they call home is a refuge from all that would destroy and divide them, we realize, by the play’s conclusion.
Arnulfo Maldonado’s set design reveals the rawness of their life that indicates economically that they are lower middle class. Only Gail has her own bedroom. Early, Joy and Ha ha sleep together in the living room in a chair, a sofa and the floor. In the same room they cook and eat with spare utilitarian minimalism. The outhouse is around the corner and in the distant past, a younger Early took the water in pails up from the river.
In “Protect the Beautiful Place,” the supernatural eerily wends its way into the family’s routine as they wake up and get ready for their day. The spirit of Gail’s husband Walking Man is a welcome visitor. He moves between the veil of life and the afterlife, and all know of his presence and communicate with him. Recently, he has appeared and announced to Early that Gail will pass on and join him. The family, even Ha ha, accepts this notion, though Gail resists it. During the course of the family interactions, we learn that the women hope that Ha Ha finds a woman to love and have children with to continue the family’s bloodline, though he is only seventeen. We also learn clues about the family history that Davis clarifies in subsequent segments.
When Walking Man visits Gail in a dream, he helps her to make up her mind about joining him. The eventual result occurs through an interesting sequence of events. Thus, we see that the family, encouraged by Early, has created its own myths and folklore which is as natural to them as breathing. Importantly, that one generation has exceeded another is striking and a testament to Early’s resilience and survival instincts. By the conclusion of The Refuge Plays, we understand how Early’s youthful struggles strengthened her, gave her courage and fostered the thriving of this family whose dominance will be taken up by the innocent, clever, book-smart Ha Ha with his new found girlfriend.
The second part, “Walking Man” features Early’s son after he leaves home, wanders to Alaska and other parts of the world, then returns home to his mother and father. Maldonado’s sets include the outdoor space in front of the cabin which is indicated by a front door. During the course of Walking Man’s return home, he talks to his father’s brother, uncle Dax (the humorous Lance Coadie Williams), and two spirits who are his grandparents Clydette (Lizan Mitchell) and Reginald (Jerome Preston Bates). Through them he discovers the truth of his legacy and why he has no birth certificate, why his mother raised him to be self-sufficient and why he is compelled to wander the earth, which he doesn’t understand.
After he learns this truth, Walking Man doesn’t have the heart to confront his mother with the specific details, though he confronts Crazy Eddie who he has accepted as his father. Angry, Walking Man intends to take revenge on the world and kill anyone he finds who exhibits the wickedness of his blood father. Early, stalwart, trusting in God, doesn’t insist with her son, but makes a suggestion and leaves him to his own decisions.
The segment ends with a new influence in Walking Man’s life, his future wife Gail, who the spirits have brought to him. We know this because of the lighter which Gail has been given by Clydette and Reginald and which she uses to light Walking Man’s pipe. The lighter, exhibited by Gail in the first segment which Ha Ha’s girlfriend Symphony (Mallori Taylor Johnson), picks up and uses, reveals the spiritual and ancestral influences that surround this family and guide it to peace and security.
The third segment, “Early’s House” flashes back to Early as a teenager living in the forest with her baby, Walking Man. Through her conversations with Watts’ Crazy Eddie who seeks her out and brings her food, we discover how she has survived through the winter after bearing her child alone. The relationship they develop over the course of the segment is powerfully drawn by Davis and acted with smashing resolve by Parker and Watts. As Crazy Eddie draws her out of herself so she trusts him, similar to how a feral animal is wooed by a well-meaning animal lover, Early reveals herself.
The place by the river she has chosen to be her sanctuary to receive respite and peace. Because she has been forbidden to return home, she determined to turn her back on society and her parents and make it in the woods. Nature has embraced her and with faith in God and the supernatural, she has received sustenance and wisdom to survive with Walking Man.
Parker’s amazing portrayal of the young Early reveals the depths of a woman who will fight against all odds to live and care for her child whom she loves. Ironically, there is more peace in nature than there could be found back in her home and former lifestyle which she has renounced to keep Walking Man with her.
The gentle Crazy Eddie is the only one who seeks her out and attempts to help her. Because he, too, has been wounded like Early, hobbled by extensive war injuries, she pities, accepts and trusts him. Both need one another and gradually they receive each other’s help and care. And it is in this place by the river that Eddie and Early sanctify their union and build a rudimentary cabin where they will live and raise Walking Man, whom Eddie unofficially adopts as his son.
“Early’s House” is poignantly written and acted with spot on authenticity. Davis brings together all of the character threads and elements so that we realize how Early compelled herself to forge a family which burgeons and will be sustained past the seventy years that we witness this saga. Excellently directed with fine performances all around, The Refuge Plays is fascinating especially in its structure and poetic, striking dialogue.
A fault at the outset was in the sound design which was corrected in the latter segment. Props go to Emilio Sosa’s costume design, Stacey Derosier’s lighting design, Earon Nealey’s superb hair and wig design and J. Jared Janas make-up design.
For tickets to the unique production, The Refuge Plays, go to their website https://www.roundabouttheatre.org/get-tickets/2023-2024-season/the-refuge-plays/performances
‘Gutenberg! The Musical!’ Featherbrained, Loopy, Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells Shine!
If you are looking for laughs and ridiculous fun, Gutenberg! The Musical! is the show for you. Thanks to the superbly wacky performances in this farce where Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells make a twosome of bat-sh*t silliness, Gutenberg! is a standout. Currently running at the James Earl Jones Theatre with one intermission in a two hour time slot, the zaniness is a treat to take you out of yourself. And who doesn’t need to “forget your troubles and get happy” in these times that try all of our souls?
The premise is well known: amateurs strike out for Broadway, draw in by the allurement of the “great white way.” In this iteration, two guys from New Jersey decide to toss the dice and bankroll a musical they’ve written to pitch it at a backer’s audition they set up at the James Earl Jones Theatre for a one night rental. Because they have to scrounge up the money by using the last dime of their inheritances, they can only afford a bare bones cast. Both play a total of twenty parts. They never change costumes except for hats in bold, black print which state their roles. For accompaniment they’ve hired a three-piece, local band that plays weddings, bar mitzvahs, retirement parties, etc.
Their thought is if they are good enough (ah, there’s the rub), they will get funding from producers to mount their musical on Broadway. Thus, Gutenberg! is theater “vérité,” happening with immediacy. Sitting in the audience, we are told, are various producers who’ve received invites. Thus, the audience bears witness to whether or not these Jersey guys have what it takes to sizzle and shine or fizzle and die on the vine of their dreams.
Scott Brown and Anthony King (book, music and lyrics), launch the show into the stratosphere of inanity. Not only are Bud (Josh Gad) and Doug (Andrew Rannells) below average talents, they have little expertise about what makes a musical or any show for that matter. Furthermore, their lyrics, rhymes and meaning rival the simplicity of Dr. Seuss.
But all is not lost. Interestingly, Dr. Seuss is extremely popular because it capitalizes on being silly. Additionally, the wild duo are winning and lovable. What Bud and Doug lack in talent and expertise, they make up for with enthusiasm, joie de vivre and hilarious, charming schtick.
As a side note, Gad and Rannells, who haven’t been together since Book of Morman, are terrific in curtailing their exceptional talent just enough to be a tad off, making their portrayals as Bud and Doug even funnier. Of course, this adds to the inside joke about who they really are and what they are capable of. Indeed, the audience was tuned to the inside jokes.
Gad and Rannells have fun playing it to the hilt with tongue in cheek direct addresses to the audience and a shattering of the fourth wall, as they move along the plot about a dry subject, the life and times of Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press. As it turns out Gutenberg is a topic about which little is written and much can be embellished and fictionalized. That is why Bud and Doug have found it to be a glorious subject for a “fantastic” musical.
Ironically, referring to their content as historical fiction, they share little factual information about the man and the time. In falling back on fabrication, which currently is trending in political news and the radical conservative, nihilistic, QAnon wing of the “Republican” Party, Bud and Doug’s fantastic tale is hugely satiric. It indirectly points the finger at the last seven years of Trumpism, when the playing field of misinformation became normalized through the efforts of conservative media. Lies of omission, conspiracy theories and sheer made-up junk swanned as legitimate and newsworthy.
Take for example reports on Italian space lasers causing the 2020 election to be stolen from former president Donald Trump. (Look up recently convicted Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, if my reference to Italian space lasers eludes you.) Such theories are inane fabrications such as those found in this musical.
On the other hand for all its guffaws, belly laughs and puerility, Gutenberg! is as serious as a heart attack. If you peek underneath the abundant blanket of hysteria, it actually makes grave points.
That Scott Brown and Anthony King convert the momentous occasion of the birth of Gutenberg’s printing press, a turning point in history, into a farce that nuances themes about the perils of illiteracy, is profound as well as riotous. In truth illiteracy and “not reading books” is disastrous, when considering the culture wars of the South and their twisted turn into banning books. Making indirect inferences to the QAnon pride of ignorance against the elitism of the educated, Gutenberg! twits us with its ridicule about our present time.
This is especially so with the musical’s humorous, historical reminder of how ignorance leaves an open door for the power hungry. In its Act II arc of development, after the printing press has been invented, the villainous, devilish monk completes his scheme to target Gutenberg and destroy his press. Representing the power of the church which historically exploited the ignorant and illiterate, we understand the benefits of keeping the uneducated, non-reading masses brainwashed, oppressed and afraid.
In portraying the monk with a nefarious purpose, Gad is riotously funny. He pings all the notes of the stereotypical wicked, leaving the audience LOL. Of course, his crafty portrayal stings, if one moves beyond the laughter to the quiet message underneath. Despotism only works well with the uneducated, non-reading, non-thinking masses who are often too distracted to distinguish the truth from fiction and lies.
Throughout the winding action which involves anti-semites, Gutenberg’s fictional German town of Schlimmer, a wine press becoming a printing press, a pretty, violent white cat named Satan, a maid named Helvetica, pencils that kill, Brechtian breaks and commentary about the musical, and so much more, Gad and Rannells create their comedic, whirlwind sketches at Alex Timber’s breakneck pace. Seamlessly stirring the narrative segues, then plunging back into the action as they don the various hats of the characters they portray to trigger spot-on caricatures with their voices and gestures, they send up the “politically warped” stereotypes and spin this delightful musical farce with lightening speed.
We have been led into the “secret world” of a backer’s audition for a production that is a loser and a winner. Maybe with a little revision, a tweak here and there, a consolidated cast, a reworking of the more incredible elements, a producer will envision its commercial vitality? Maybe not. You have to see it to find out if the producers line up to sign on or hold their noses and back out quietly.
Importantly, during the process, Gad’s Bud and Rannells’ Doug steer the audience from joke to quip to zany song with an aplomb that is exhaustive and exhausting. Assisted by Scott Pask’s scenic design of the stripped down stage, Emily Rebholz’s costume design which is appropriate for Doug and Bud’s dorkish affability, Jeff Croiter’s lighting design and Tommy Kurzman’s hair design, the actors fulfill Timber’s tone and vision for this seemingly facile, but humorously febrile, profound musical. M.L. Dogg and Cody Spencer’s sound design is spot on; I could hear every word.
Kudos goes to the orchestra which includes Marco Paguia (conductor/keyboard 1), Amanda Morton (associate conductor/keyboard 2) and Mike Dobson (percussion). Additional arrangements are made by Scott Brown and Anthony King. T.O. Sterrett is responsible for music supervision, arrangements and orchestrations.
This is one to see for the fun of it. It is also a sardonic criticism of our time, which, thankfully, doesn’t slam one over the head with pretentious probity. For tickets go to the Box Office at 138 West 48th Street or visit their website online https://gutenbergbway.com/ It closes January 28th.
‘Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,’ Hysterical, Fun, Profound
Jaja’s African Hair Braiding by Jocelyn Bioh in its world premiere at the Manhattan Theatre Club (Samuel J. Friedman Theatre), is a rollicking comedy with an underlying twist that, by the conclusion, turns as serious as a heart attack. Bioah’s characters are humorous, quick studies that deliver the laughs effortlessly because of Bioah’s crisp, dialogue and organic, raw themes about relationships, community, female resilience and the symbolism of hair braiding which brings it all together.
The setting is in Harlem, at Jaja’s Hair Salon where African hair braiding and the latest styles are offered. For those white gals and guys who envy the look of long lovely extensions but are too afraid to don them, it is understandable. You have to have a beautiful face to sustain the amazing, freeing look of long braided tresses that you can fling with a gentle or wild toss, evoking any kind of emotion you wish.
During the course of the play, we watch fascinated at the seamless ease with which the actors work their magic, transforming otherwise unremarkable women into jaunty, confident and powerful owners of their own dynamic presentation. While we are distracted by the interplay of jokes and mild insults and gossip, the fabulous shamans weave and work it.
In one instance, Miriam (the fine Brittany Adebumola) takes the entire day to metamorphose her client Jennifer (the exceptional Rachel Christopher). Jennifer comes into the shop appearing staid, conservative and reserved with short cropped hair that does nothing for her. But once in Miriam’s chair, something happens beyond a simple hairdo change.
After MIriam is finished discussing her life back in Sierra Leone, which includes the story of her impotent, lazy husband, her surprise pregnancy and birth of her daughter by a gorgeous and potential future husband, and her divorce from the “good-for-nothing”, paternalistic former one, Jennifer is no longer. Miriam has effected the miraculous during her talk. Jennifer has become her unique self with her lovely new look. As she tosses her head back, we note Jennifer’s posture difference, as she steps into the power of how good she looks. Additionally, because of Miriam’s artistry, Jennifer is the proud receptor of a new understanding and encouragement. She has witnessed Miriam’s courage to be open about her life. If Miriam can be courageous, so can she.
Jennifer leaves more confident than before having taken part in the community of caring women who watch each other’s backs and hair, which by now has taken on additional symbolic meaning. Incredibly, Miriam works on Jennifer’s braids the entire play. However, what Jennifer has gained will go with her forever. The dynamic created between the storyteller, Miriam, and the listener, Jennifer, is superb and engages the audience to listen and glean every word they share with each other.
On one level, a good part of the fun and surprise of the production rests with Bioh’s gossipy, earthy, forthright characters, who don’t hold back about various trials they are going through involving men, who exploit them. Nor do they remain reticent if they think one of their braiding colleagues has been surreptitiously stealing their clients, as Bea accuses Ndidi of doing in a hysterical rant
Another aspect of the humor deals with the various clients who come in. Kalyne Coleman and Lakisha May each play three roles as six different clients. They are nearly unrecognizable for their differences in appearances. They change voices, gestures, clothing, mien, carriage and more. For each of these different individuals, they come in with one look and attitude and leave more confident, happier and lovelier than before.
Portraying three vendors and James, Michael Oloyede is hysterically current. Onye Eme-Akwari and Morgan Scott are the actors in the funny Nollywood Film Clip that Ndidi imitates.
For women, hair is key. Bad hair days are not just a bad joke, they are a catastrophe. Bioh capitalizes on this embedded social, cultural more. Presenting its glories, she reveals the symbolism of “extensions,” and “new appearances” as they relate to uplifting the spirit and soul of women who are required to look gorgeous.
Above all, Bioh elevates the artists whose gifted hands enliven, regenerate, encourage and empower their clients. Along with Miriam (Brittany Adebumola), these include Ndidi (Maechi Aharanwa), Aminata (Nana Mensah) and Bea (Zenzi Williams). Sitting in their chairs, under their protection, trusting their skills at beautification, we recognize the splendid results, not only physically in some instances but emotionally and psychically.
The only one who isn’t an African braiding artist is Marie (Dominique Thorne). She is helping out her mother Jaja (Somi Kakoma), who owns the salon and who is getting married that day, so she can get her green card for herself and Marie. Jaja who appears briefly in wedding garb to share her excitement and happiness with the women who are her friends, then goes to the civil judge to be married. However, Marie can’t be happy for her mother. Likewise, neither can old friend Bea, who has told the others the man Jaja is marrying is not to be trusted.
Nevertheless, the point is clear. Within the shop there are artists who are working their way toward citizenship. And Miriam is saving money to bring her daughter to the US. Though Bioh doesn’t belabor the immigration issues, but instead, lets us fall in love with her warm, wonderful characters, it is a huge problem for the brilliant Marie, who has been rejected from attending some of the best colleges. Her immigration status is in limbo as a “Dreamer.”
And like other immigrants, she is living her life on hold in a waiting game that is nullifying as well as demeaning because, as Jaja points out repeatedly to her, she can be a doctor or anything she wants. Her daughter, Marie, is brilliant, ambitious and hard working. Taking over the African hair braiding salon is not good enough. She can do exploits. But without a green card, she can do nothing.
Directed by Whitney White whose vision for the play manifests the sensitivity of a fine tuned violin, the play soars and gives us pause by the conclusion. The technical, artistic elements cohere with the overall themes that show the hair salon is a place of refuge for women to commiserate, dig deep and express their outrage and jealousies, then be forgiven and accepted, after a time. It is a happy, busy, brightly hued and sunny environment to grow and seek comfort in.
David Zinn’s colorful, specific scenic design helps to place this production on the map of the memorable, original and real. This salon is where one enjoys being, even though some of the characters snipe and roll their eyes at each other. Likewise, Dede Ayite’s costume design beautifully manifests the characters and represents their inner workings and outer “brandings.” From her costumes, one picks up cues as to the possibilities of what’s coming next, which isn’t easy as the production’s arc of development is full of surprises.
Importantly, Nikiya Mathis’ hair & wig design is the star of the production. How the braiding is done cleverly with wigs so that it appears that the process takes hours (it does) is perfect. Of course the styles are fabulous.
Kudos to the rest of the creative team which includes Jiyoun Chang (lighting design), Justin Ellington (original music & sound design), Stefania Bulbarella (video design), Dawn-Elin Fraser (dialect & vocal coach).
This is one to see for its acting, direction, themes and its profound conclusion which is unapologetic and searingly current. Bioah has hit Jaja’s African Hair Braiding out of the park. She has given Whitney White, the actors and the creatives a blank slate where they can enjoy manifesting their talents in bringing this wonderful show to life. It is 90 minutes with no intermission and the pacing is perfect. The actors don’t race through the dialogue but allow it to unfold naturally and with precision, humor and grace.
For tickets go to the Box Office on 47th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues or their website https://www.manhattantheatreclub.com/shows/2023-24-season/jajas-african-hair-braiding/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&gclid=CjwKCAjwvfmoBhAwEiwAG2tqzDaZkpYxm9EVbEs9yQ0hCPDF5gTyx9a8iy4yFCkwZxfd3skrmdD8oxoCAfgQAvD_BwE
‘Purlie Victorious,’ a Riotous Look in the Backward Mirror of 1960s Southern Racism
White power structures die hard. However, they do fall apart when the younger generation helps to topple them.
This is particularly true in Purlie Victorious, a Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch, currently in revival on Broadway at The Music Box. It is the next generation that overwhelms the cement-like apparatus of noxious, white paternalism in Ossie Davis’ trenchantly funny play. Thus, we cheer on the pluck, humor, audacity and cleverness of the young reverend Purlie Victorious Judson, exquisitely inhabited by the unparalleled Leslie Odom, Jr. of Hamilton fame. Odom, Jr. leads the cast with his kinetic and superb performance.
The premise for the play that initiates the action is steeped in hope and youthfulness-the righting of a an ancestral wrong symbolically-the despotic terrorism of slavery’s oppressive violence. With mythic actions and intentions Purlie returns home to the Georgia plantation where he was raised, to claim his inheritance and take back the honor which racist owner Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee siphoned off from his family through peonage (servitude indebtedness).
How Purlie does this involves a fantastic and hysterical scheme, eliciting the help of the adorable Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins (the riotous Kara Young). Purlie, who met Lutiebelle in his travels, intends to pass her off as his Cousin Bee, who will charm Ol’ Cap’n (the perfect foil, Jay O. Sanders), into giving her the $500 cash that was bequeathed to their aunt by her wealthy lady boss. After succeeding in the scheme to dupe Ol’ Cap’n, Lutiebelle will give Purlie the cash. With cash in hand, Purlie will purchase and restore the Old Bethel Church, so he can preach uplifting freedom to the sharecroppers, who are enslaved by peonage to Ol’ Cap’n.
As Purlie relates his scheme to family, Missy Judson (the fine Heather Alicia Simms), and Gitlow Judson (the riotous Billy Eugene Jones), they avow it won’t work. At first, Gitlow refuses to take any part because he is one of Ol’ Cap’n’s favorite “darkies.” Gitlow has risen to success through his amazing cotton picking labors. Ol’ Cap’n bestows upon him the anointed status of chief oppressor of the “colored folk” working for Ol’Cap’n. He keeps them nose to the grindstone at their backbreaking work.
However, when Purlie introduces his relatives to Lutiebelle, and unleashes his persuasive and inspiring preaching talents on his kin, they give the scheme a whirl. What unfolds is a joyous, sardonic expose of all the techniques that Black people used when dealing with the egregious, horrific, white supremacists of the South, represented by Ol’ Cap’n, The Sheriff (Bill Timoney), and The Deputy (Noah Pyzik).
The irony, double entendres and reverse psychology Purlie and family use when confronting Ol’ Cap’n are sharp, comedic, and of moment. Though Ol’ Cap’n owns the place and exploits the sharecroppers using indebtedness, on the other hand, we note that Gitlow is able to manipulate Ol’ Cap’n with his “bowing and scrapping” which, as we are in on the joke, is brilliantly humorous.
It is in these moments of dramatic irony when Ossie Davis’ arc of development reveals how the characters work on a sub rosa level, that the play is most striking and fabulous. The enjoyment comes in being a part of knowing that Purlie and the others are able to “get over,” while Ol’ Cap’n is unable to see he is “being had.” Additionally, with the assistance of Ol’ Cap’n’s clever, forward-thinking son, Charlie (the wonderful Noah Robbins), Ol’Cap’n is completely flummoxed, having missed all the undercurrents which indicate he is being duped.
The actors, beautifully shepherded by director Kenny Leon, effect this incredible comedy, which also has at its heart a deadly, serious message.
Black activist, writer, actor, director Ossie Davis wrote Purlie Victorious, which premiered on Broadway in 1961 at a time when Martin Luther King, Jr. had strengthened the Civil Rights Movement and celebrities were taking a stand with Black activists. In fact, Martin Lurther King, Jr. saw the production and was pictured with the cast, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, his wife, who portrayed Lutiebelle.
Particularly in the final speech that Purlie delivers, we can identify with the important themes of a unified human family being together on an equal plane. It is a message that is particularly poignant today, considering the political divisiveness of the white nationalists, a throwback to the Southern racists of the 1960s, like Ol’ Cap’n, who Jay O. Sanders makes as human as possible to allow his racial terrorism to leak through with humor. Because of Sanders’ balanced portrayal, Ol’ Cap’n is an individual who has become his own hysterically funny caricature and stereotype, precisely because he is so obtuse in his self-satisfied mien as their “great white father.”
In the play Davis’ themes about the cruelties of peonage resonate today in the corporate structures which have kept wages low while giving CEOs 500 times what their average workers make. Indeed, the play resonates with the idea of servitude and keeping the labor force however indebted (with student loans, loans, mortgages, credit card debts), so that individuals must work long hours to keep one step ahead of financial ruin. We note the parallels between then and now. The inequities then are in many ways reflective of current economic disparities between the classes, allowing for very little upward mobility from one generation to the next.
It is this that Purlie attacks and preaches against throughout the play. It is this inequity and enslavement indebtedness that Purlie intends to educate Black people about, so that they become free and whole. It is for this reason Purlie wants to purchase and renovate Bethel Church, where he will preach his message of freedom. As we listen, we also realize that the message resonates with everyone, regardless of race, except, of course, the white oppressors, who stand to lose their power, lifestyle and privilege.
This material loss, which would be their spiritual gain, is unthinkable to them. Davis’ indirect message is that this is the oppressors’ greatest sin. They don’t see that by internalizing the defrauding and inhumane values of white supremacy, they are the truly hellish, loathsome monsters, the “other,” they seek to destroy. The destruction only happens to them, while the strengthening happens to those they oppress.
Kenny Leon’s direction expertly guides his actors, moving them with perfectly timed pacing and comedic rhythm. The play develops from broad farce and hi jinks and moves to an ever-expanding roller coaster ride of frenetic humor and excitement. We note Purlie’s desperation and frustration with Ol’ Cap’n’s arrogance and presumptions about Black inferiority, which Purlie will not scrape to. Of course, Idella Landy (the wonderful Vanessa Bell Calloway), who has been a mother to Charlie, with love, influences him to override his father’s brutal attitude toward their family. Indeed, Charlie adopts the Judsons as the family he chooses to be with, rather than his arrogant, ignorant, abusive father.
Leon manages to seamlessly work the staging and find the right balance so the irony and true comedy never becomes bogged down in the seriousness of the message. Because of the lightheartedness and good will, we are better able to see what is at stake, and why Charlie comes to the rescue of his Black family, against his own father, who is an inhumane obstructionist past his prime.
The set design by Derek McLane allows the action to remain fluid and shape shifts so that we move from the Judson family home, to Idella Landy’s kitchen, to the Bethel Church at the conclusion. With Emilio Sosa’s costume design, Adam Honore’s lighting design, Peter Fitzgerald’s sound design and J. Jared Janas hair, wig and makeup design, the creatives have manifested Leon’s vision for the play. Additional praise goes to Guy Davis’ original music, and Thomas Schall’s fight direction.
This revival of Purlie Victorious is a wonderful comedic entertainment that also has great MAGA meaning for us today. For tickets to this must-see production that runs without an intermission, go to their Box Office on 239 West 45th Street or their website https://purlievictorious.com/tickets/
‘Dig’ by Theresa Rebeck, Caring for Plants and People, Review
In her comedy/drama Dig Theresa Rebeck (Bernhardt/Hamlet) examines the transformative moments that happen imperceptibly to individuals, when no one is paying attention and they are least expected. With serendipity and the synergy of human need, responsiveness and emotional immediacy, the energy for change becomes the forward momentum of this superb, exceptionally acted and directed production. Rebeck, wearing two hats as director and writer, effects a powerful character dynamic in the play, which first premiered at the Dorset Theatre Festival in Vermont, and is now enjoying its New York City Off- Broadway premiere at Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters.
With striking characters that Rebeck displays in their quirky, raw humanity, gradually stripped away to their bloody core in an identifiable, magical coalescence, the themes of hope and resurgence are unveiled. That this happens in a small town which is imploding for want of commercial viability, and to an insular shop owner in need of a personal revolution, is all the more engaging.
Importantly, in Dig, Rebeck prods us to recall verities of redemption and reconciliation, which abide in all of our lives. Second chances are possible, regardless of how dire or malevolent the circumstances appear in the lives of the damaged, lost and hurting.
The setting for hope and transformation is fitting. It is the plant shop, “Dig,” where set designers Christoper Swader and Justin Swader have done a magnificent job in displaying wall to wall greenery, and later, as the characters spark to life and regeneration, floral beauty. Roger is the reticent, thoughtful owner who has created “Dig.” He controls his singular botanical world, is knowledgeable about plants, and is an amateur botanist who has a “knack” with encouraging dying plants back to life. Healthy and unhealthy plants are a perfect metaphor for the human condition, and Rebeck with tongue-in-cheek amply uses this metaphor selectively and profoundly.
The playwright initiates this metaphor and other concepts in the opening scene between Roger (Jeffrey Bean in a brilliant, nuanced performance), and his longtime friend, Lou (Triney Sandoval effectively portrays his feisty and catalytic counterpart). Lou has abused a plant Roger gave him with the unwitting behavior of a plant neophyte. He’s underwatered and overwatered the “elephant ears” to it’s last “breath.” As Roger chides him like a school teacher, Rebeck’s humor gains traction. Immediately we understand the relationship between Lou and Roger and the otherworldly importance plants have in Roger’s life. After scolding Lou, he assures him that he will salvage the dying plant. Lou is relieved.
The action redirects when Lou’s daughter Megan (the terrific Andrea Syglowski), speaks up in defense of Roger about the money he gave Everett (Greg Keller in a humorous, off-beat turn) to buy them coffees. Megan, who has quietly disappeared into the background, sitting near the door, is barely noticeable because of her withdrawn posture. Additionally, she is overshadowed by the lively, antic banter between Lou and Roger. Clearly, there are undercurrents in Lou’s neglect of the plant and Roger’s gentle upbraiding. Concurrently, Lou’s suspicion of Everett, Roger’s truck driver, who Lou says smokes pot, is a criticism which chafes Roger.
Lou’s neglectful plant care and his guilty response have more meaning we discover later, when the parallels between caring for plants and caring for human beings comes to the fore. Likewise, Roger’s permissiveness with Everett comes back to “hit him in the face” like a bad karma rash.
In this initial exchange Rebeck has laid the foundation for the interactions among Roger, Lou, Megan, Everett, and Molly (the fine Mary Bacon), who drops in a bit later looking for tulip bulbs. Like strategically placed dominoes that topple and swerve around corners, do complicated gyrations and elaborate tricks, the characters’ knock and shuffle against each other with various encounters, emotional explosions, jealousies and eventual quietude, which Rebeck brings to a poignant and satisfying conclusion at the end of the two hours and one intermission.
How she effects this character sleight of hand, under-girded by the superb actors, leaves the audience feeling they’ve experienced a series of events with surprisingly disparate individuals who, are somehow similar. Each attempts to affirm their identity and place in a life that may or may not have meaning for them, save Roger who is perhaps ahead of the others in finding his place, though the town is dying like a poorly cared for plant. Into this mirror of humanity, we note the pain and struggle of finding a way to understand others, when not all of their truth has been revealed.
Megan, fresh out of prison and rehab is living with Lou, her adoptive father, who has taken care of her for her entire life. She lives with him because she has no money and nowhere else to go. She is responsible for an accident during which she killed her son through negligence. Confused, filled with guilt, Megan tried to end her own life and failed.
This backstory is revealed gradually by discovery through the comments the other characters make about Megan when she isn’t in their presence. Rebeck’s skill in disclosing who Megan and her father are, their close relationship, and the town’s response to Megan’s responsibility in the accidental death of her son, is effected with power and realism. It is a sad tale that has hushed up the community and left Megan with few friends except for the comfort of her father, her trying, martinet-like AA group, and Roger, Lou’s best friend.
Apprised of Megan’s story, Roger is tentative and gentle with her. But he is bewildered when Megan screams at a customer for being nosy about recognizing her (most probably in the news reports on TV). In a follow up of her anger, Megan curses Everett and forces her father to leave before they’ve enjoyed their coffees. Her fury is shocking, however Roger takes it in his stride and defends her against gossip which Everett repeats. It is in Roger’s and Everett’s discussion we learn the way which Megan accidentally caused her son’s terrible death.
In this pivotal scene the stakes are unveiled and Megan’s volatile, unbalanced personality which Lou has confided to Roger places her on a knife’s edge. However, Megan returns the next day to apologize to Roger and is manipulative in wanting to ingratiate herself with him for a job. Interestingly, the job would make her feel useful; she does not want to be paid. And though Roger says he needs no one and rejects her, she pushes her way in, immediately demonstrating her usefulness by potting a plant, Perhaps, she can make a difference in the shop, can stabilize her life and reinvigorate Roger’s life as well.
In her actions, we are watching Megan throw herself a lifeline. Drawn to something in Roger’s nature, perhaps his empathy and his incredible weirdness in caring for his plants and in setting up his environment which is soothing and peaceful, she attempts to try something different.
That Roger allows her into his life to “disturb his peace,” and assist him for no pay, is something that Lou objects to out of fear for his friend. He knows her unreliability and feels guilt for Megan’s causing the accident. Furthermore, with her alcoholism, unless controlled, she can “fly off the handle” and explode into a frenzy.
In a protective mode, Roger recognizes that she is willing to change and work toward improving herself with her apology. It is unmistakable that she took responsibility for acting improperly. Her humility to change is again affirmed for Roger when Molly comes into the store and Megan apologizes to Molly and accepts Molly’s invitation to a prayer meeting at church.
In Act II “all’s well that ends well,” until it isn’t. By that point the shop is blooming with lovely flowers and Roger has fired Everett for his pot smoking antics in the truck and his disrespectful, judgmental attitude about Megan. In an argument which Roger won, Roger suggests his critical attitude toward Megan is unfair because the details surrounding her son’s death were uncertain. Roger has feelings for Megan. And though she senses it and tries to advance their relationship beyond friendship, we learn that Roger has spurned her attentions.
It is in this act when her former husband Adam ((David Mason’s portrayal is potent and searing), tracks her down to to confront her about their son’s death. Once again, Roger defends her. However she stops him and forces him to leave so she can hash out the issues with Adam. This revelatory scene is another turning point where we understand their relationship in an explosion that Roger cannot mitigate or influence. It is up to Megan to deal with the shreds of her life that remain, with the only intervention that might heal her-Roger and the plant store-which she has influenced and helped to make thrive in the fading town. But there are obstacles. Everett resents her taking his place. And in an underhanded, slick seduction, his actions influence her to leave so he can get back into Roger’s good graces.
Rebeck and her cast and creatives have put together a smashing work whose honesty and power is breathtaking. DIG is a refreshing, bold, funny and poignant production which defies easy definition.
In magnifying Rebeck’s vision, the superb design team worked overtime. They include Christopher Swader and Justin Swader (scenic design), Fabian Fidel Aguilar (costumes), Mary Ellen Stebbins’ atmospheric, mood-suggesting lighting design and Fitz Patton’s original music and and sound design. These creatives give the production the medium which allows the actors to seamlessly move and inhabit their characters with humor and probity.
DIG is memorable and metaphoric and profound. In a limited engagement until October 22nd, it is not to be missed. For tickets and times go to their website https://primarystages.org/shows/current-season/dig/
‘Infinite Life’ by Annie Baker, a Review
The premise of award-winning Annie Baker’s play Infinite Life, premiering off-Broadway at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater, is that pain is the crux of life. Directed by James Macdonald, the production focuses on individuals who deal with pain along a continuum from heart-wrenching emotional angst to stoical virtuousness. Regardless of how they confront their suffering, it is never, ever easy. Indeed, most of the time, the pain endured by the characters we meet in Baker’s play foments a nightmare world of shattering identities, where the characters can’t recognize themselves through the agony.
Baker exemplifies this concept superbly with her characterization of Sofi (Christina Kirk) at various segments throughout her ironic, profound work. Through Sofi’s emotional outbursts and wild, antic, verbal expressions of sexuality, we understand the humiliation and self-loathing that often accompanies the resistance to pain’s annihilation of self, which Sofi and other patients acknowledge.
At the top of the play, Sofi converses with Eileen (Marylouise Burke), who walks very very slowly as she joins Sofi in the resting area where they become acquainted. It is then, we begin to understand where they are and why, when Eileen asks about Sofi’s fasting. Armed with a book she is reading, George Elliot’s Daniel Deronda, (an ironic, related, situational reference), Sofi answers Eileen’s simple questions haltingly, which indicates she may not want her “peace” or privacy disturbed by the talkative, fellow patient.
With just a smidgen of dialogue, Baker introduces elements which arise throughout the play and form the nexus around which Baker invites salient questions about consciousness and the synergy of mind, body, psyche and emotions. Key questions encompass the philosophical conundrum of what the characters must do with and for themselves in this “infinite life” of self, from which there is no escape, and fleeting happiness exists in an unwitting past where there was no physical torment caused by disease.
In a slow, dense, heavy unspooling, Baker introduces us to six characters, five women and one man. The women are dressed in casual workout clothes, loungewear and flowing tops (Ásta Bennie Hostetter’s costumes). These indicate the state of treatment they are in, whether “working it,” seeking comfort or relaxing.
The setting is an unadorned, outdoor space with scruffy, lounge chairs they recline on, bordered by a cheap, latticed, concrete block wall (scenic design by dots). We come to learn this area is the patio or balcony of an alternative healing clinic, that was once a motel. The entire production takes place in this outdoor area that overlooks a parking lot with a bakery wafting aromas of fresh bread from across the street that the characters comment on.
Here, as they “take the air, sun and dark night sky,” the women and man who have various maladies share the unifying, dire reality that they are in terrific pain with illnesses that have no solid cure and will probably reoccur. A variety of upbeat attitudes, modified hopelessness, positivity and stoicism resound through their conversations to distract themselves and each other. The conversations reveal the tip of the iceberg, below which the pain they endure alone, unseen, fills their days and nights.
Admirably, perhaps, these patients look to mitigate and heal seemingly without chemicals (no Oxycontin) or conventional medical methods. Nelson (Pete Simpson), who arrives late to the sunbathing scene, shirtless and attractive, has colon cancer which returned after surgery and mainstream treatment. He opts to try the alternative therapies at the clinic for twenty-four days, he confides to Sofi. He’s determined to follow in the footsteps of a friend who received relief at the clinic.
Sofi graphically shares the type of pain she has that involves her sex organs and has no cure which intrigues Nelson as a weird “come on.” Perhaps it is, but it is also her intriguing and extended cry for help in their scenes toward the play’s end. Likewise, Nelson shares graphic, intimate experiences with his colon blockage that involve tasting his own fecal matter. They share their nightmare world and appear to comfort one another, for a moment in time.
Their scenes together become a high point that intimates the possibility of intimacy but dead ends as far as we see and know. Both characters skirt the edges of hopelessness. Sofi doesn’t think she can make it through what the pain requires of her to sustain, which includes the dissolution of her marriage because of a mistake she made. Nelson implies that if his condition remains static, he will plunge back into radiation treatment and conventional medicine. Both appear hapless, buffeted by the circumstances of their body, beyond which they may or may not ever regain an illusion of control.
Through their journey toward relief, the patients have signed on to be put through their paces. The regimen and therapy that Sofi, Eileen, Elaine (Brenda Pressley), Ginnie (Kristine Nielsen), Yvette (Mia Katigbak) and Nelson have agreed to, require they fast, sleep, rest outdoors, drink concoctions fashioned for their various conditions, do passive activities like read, meditate, pray and, if they wish, rest and commune with each other in the common area, if their will and energy occasion it.
Over the first few days, each woman shares her condition and counsels Sofi, the newest arrival in their midst. For example they discuss that the second and third days are the worst, that after she pukes bile she’ll feel better, and she’ll get past her hunger and grow used to the fasting, etc. Narrating the time passages almost at random, Sofi announces hours or minute differentials before the next conversational scene occurs, as the women continue seamlessly sharing from where they left off hours before. Director James Macdonald’s staging is symbolically passive and static.
The effect is a linear, unceasing continuation as though time is not passing at all, and we are in an ever present present, a side effect of horrific pain. However, Sofi and lighting designer Isabella Byrd’s lighting, which switches from sunlight to darkness, disabuse us that time is standing still for these sufferers. Time marches on and drags them and their pain with it, as Sofi reminds us, though nothing appears to be happening on a material level. On a cellular, spiritual level it may be quite a different story; perhaps there is healing and mitigation though it isn’t readily visible to the naked eye.
As we become more familiar with Baker’s pain managers, we learn they are at various stages of their treatment, and marvel that some, like Yvette, are alive, despite their multiple conditions. Hers are numerous with exotic names along with the medication she lists was given to her during and after her bladder removal, cancers, catheterizations, and chemical poisoning side effects from all the doctors’ interventions.
Interestingly, Yvette is the most stoic and accepting that she will face whatever agony comes her way. The exhaustive list of her illnesses is an affirmation of the human will to “make it through” to the next day, where she will continue to suffer. There is valor in that, as Yvette’s will persists. Sofi is her counterpoint and is desperate and potentially, if things don’t change, suicidal.
The women’s conversation is banal and reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s plays, which find characters waiting opaquely and uncertainly, though here, Baker defines that the treasure they wait for is healing, an absence of the excruciating terror in their physical bodies. Yet, though we watch and listen to what appears to be stasis, sometimes, the characters in spite of themselves, are humorous and ridiculous.
This is especially so when sexual topics arise and go nowhere useful, and some raw sexual language that Sofi uses unwittingly discomforts Eileen, who is a Christian. For example Mia’s Yvette discusses her second cousin who narrates pornography online for the blind, which prompts a discussion of how it is possible for the blind to react to described sexual acts.
In another segment Ginnie initiates a conversation about a pirate who rapes a young girl who commits suicide. The story is part of a philosophical teaching taken from one of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s books. The provocative question Ginnie asks all to think about concerns the Zen Master’s statement that people are the pirate and the rape victim. The thought that are are capable of equal parts of sadism and masochism spirals into absurd and clever responses in a beautifully paced repartee between Nielsen’s Ginnie and Mia’s Yvette.
Following Baker’s “less is more,” undramatic plot where little appears to happen, director James Macdonald’s vision synchronizes with a minimalist, spare, unremarkable set design (dots design studio) befitting a place of transition, a way station after which patients will move back to their homes to continue healing, seeking treatment or dying. The overall shabbiness of the place, coinciding with the external, static situation of pain endurance, indicates the de-emphasis on the material surroundings. Instead, the focus is on the spiritual, deeper consciousness where the inner healing takes place sight unseen and manifests physically when the characters leave, for they’ve achieved some sort of relief. Perhaps some, but not all. Some are still there and in hell.
The minimalist structure is the receptacle for the weighty philosophical, tinged with metaphysical ideas that the characters express between the arduous moments of waiting. Baker has them burst out with pithy statements universal to us all, reminding us that beneath the ordinary, difficult, daily hours each of us sustains, there is the painful construct that we are dying while we’re living. The glorious part is the absence of pain. Eileen says in a difficult moment of agony, “a minute of this is an infinity.” The unfortunate part is if illness and pain comes, there is the bracing life lesson that sickness reminds the sufferer. It is what Beckett’s character said in Endgame, and a statement he repeated. “You’re on earth. There’s no cure for that.”
Baker is fascinating upon reflection, reading the script. With the live production the dialogue was sounded spottily because of the theater’s acoustics, the unequally distributed sound design and low conversational tones of the actors, during various segments. Audience left remained in stark silence while audience right rippled with responses of laughter, throughout during the production I saw in preview. Pulitzer Prize winner Baker is known for her pauses and silences in the dynamic among the characters, which in this play added gravity and profound undercurrents. However, in the performance, the silences were noticeably from audience left as audience right chuckled in delight.
The lack of audience reaction because of sound design difficulties was obvious. Interior pain is more easily expressed on film with close-ups. In an attempt to express their pain’s trembling terror, some actors chose to moderate their projection downward into quietude. Throughout, Mia Katigbak and Kristine Nielsen could be heard. Marylouise Burke managed to get around the conversational tones with a haspy, raspy voice which carried.
Similarly, the other superb actors were present during their important moments that conveyed the play’s themes. However, the audio was not sustained, as it should have been. Ironically, I noted even the young man seated next to me leaned forward on the edge of his seat, and not because the suspense was overwhelming. He was straining to hear. Apparently, this is not a problem for director James Macdonald, though it was for audience members whose experience was less than stellar, unfortunately, for a play which, after its reading, I found to be exceptional, profound and thought-provoking.
Infinite Life runs at Atlantic Theater Company. It is a co-production with the National Theatre. For tickets visit the Box Office at the Linda Gross Theater on 20th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues. Or go to their website https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/34237?sitePreference=normal
CAROLE DI TOSTI 