| The Shows Must Go On... |
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| Written by Kevin Filipski | |
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Page 1 of 2 The 19-day Broadway strike inconvenienced theatergoers–especially out-of-towners planning trips to the city to see their favorite shows–and forced producers and striking stagehands to lose income. Still, the biggest headache was that once an agreement was reached, a cluster of shows opened immediately afterwards, including those on and off-Broadway which weren’t affected by the strike. August: Osage CountyWritten by Tracy Letts  Deanna Dunagan as Violet Weston and Amy Morton as Barbara Fordham in "August: Osage County photo credit: Joan Marcus “August: Osage County” concerns the Weston family: father Beverly, a drunkard, disappears one day, presumably a suicide; his wife, Violet, is a pill-popping monster whose three daughters return home when they hear about their father. What ensues is a well-written and acted tug-of-war among several combatants, with the eldest daughter, Barabara, eventually turning the tables on Violet until she is about to turn into her mom herself. Of course, closet doors are thrown open, revealing skeletons like incest, adultery, pedophilia and drug abuse. Since Letts has such a superb ear, the conversations in this three-hour and 20-minute play are engrossing and often hilarious: a dinner table scene has nine characters embroiled in a fantastically funny, thoroughly beastly trashing of each other that hasn’t been seen—and heard—on Broadway since “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Anna D. Shapiro’s direction may be too broad at times, but she puts her large cast through its paces persuasively. The acting from the entire cast is astonishingly good, from the playwright’s father Dennis Letts in an opening cameo as the soon-missing patriarch to the star-making portrayals of Steppenwolf regulars Deanna Dunagan (Violet) and Amy Morton (Barabara). If Letts’ play bites off more than it can chew, it is–along with Tom Stoppard’s “Rock’n’Roll”–the only true must-see theater on Broadway. CymbelineWritten by William Shakespeare  John Cullum, Michael Cerveris and Martha Plimpton in "Cymbeline" photo credit: Paul Kolnik Lamos enlists the best designers in the business: Jess Goldstein’s colorful costumes, Michael Yeargan’s stupendous sets and Brian MacDevitt’s marvelous lighting work complementarily to achieve the stunning effects Lamos seeks. It’s a bonus that the acting is (mostly) equal to the task. John Cullum is a regally intense King Cymbeline; Martha Plimpton is a revelatory Imogen, the king’s daughter and main protagonist of Shakespeare’s convoluted plot; Michael Cerveris speaks the poetry powerfully as Imogen’s husband, Posthumous; and Jonathan Cake makes Iachimo, the villain who bets Posthumous that Imogen is unfaithful, funny and frightening. Only Phylicia Rashad as the evil queen is deadly to both the drama and Shakespeare’s poetic dialogue. Otherwise, this “Cymbeline” flies on eagle’s wings. Doris to Darlene: A Cautionary ValentineWritten by Jordan Harrison  De'Adre Aziza as Doris in "Doris to Darlene: A Cautionary Valentine" photo credit: Joan Marcus The discovery of Doris by music bigshot Vic Watts, who transforms her into the hit-making Darlene, is intercut with scenes of composer Richard Wagner struggling to create his operas with the help of teenaged King Ludwig, for no reason other than Watts loves Wagner’s music and pretentiously compares his pop ditties to the “Liebestod” in “Tristan and Isolde”; the other subplot concerns a high school student emboldened to confront his own sexuality thanks to Mr. Campani, an gay, opera-loving music teacher. Any of these three couples might have made compelling protagonists, but by shuffling them around the stage for two acts, Harrison doesn’t create any meaty or insightful characterizations. Thanks to his haphazard writing, the Doris/Watts pairing comes off more distant than either Wagner/Ludwig or the music class, which makes us impatient for the main characters to exit so we can watch something slightly more interesting. Director Les Waters handles the shifting stories fluidly, although his actors—some of whom do double duty—are only competent at handling this flimsy material. As Doris/Darlene, de'Adre Aziza never convincingly becomes a radiant pop star, while Michael Crane simply caricatures Spector. The best portrayals are given by Tom Nelis as a touching Mr. Campani and Laura Heisler, who makes the mad Ludwig the sanest, most sympathetic person onstage. The Farnsworth InventionWritten by Aaron Sorkin  Hank Azaria as David Sarnoff in "The Fansworth Invention" photo credit: Joan Marcus Now Sorkin returns to Broadway with The Farnsworth Invention, which asks the question: “Did Philo Farnsworth really create the most important invention of the 20th century?” Up against Farnsworth was Russian immigrant David Sarnoff, founder of NBC and head of RCA, who wanted to ensure that the patent, glory and riches went to him and his company and not a country bumpkin from Utah. Sorkin’s play began as a movie script until he decided that the shifting tone, chronology and narration lent itself to a more abstract stage conception. As it stands, “The Farnsworth Invention” is another dazzling visual achievement by director Des McAnuff (“The Who’s Tommy”), utilizing a multi-tiered stage to “cut” from one scene to another as time and location continually shift. The dueling protagonists who narrate each other’s stories are nicely enacted by Jimmi Simpson (Farnsworth) and Hank Azaria (Sarnoff), whose one unfortunate tic is falling into his Moe the Bartender voice from “The Simpsons.” Ironically, Sorkin’s script is too sitcom-ish to effectively dramatize this fascinating tug-of-war between “David” Farnsworth and “Goliath” Sarnoff; it’s not so much that Sorkin plays hard and fast with the facts (though he does that), but that each character is too self-consciously witty in the manner of current TV shows where everyone is clever beyond belief. In its own way, then, “The Farnsworth Invention” is an indictment of what’s become of that amazing contraption. |