Men, Big and Small

Check out my review of Ma-Yi Theater Company's arresting production of The Romance of Magno Rubio. It's actually a revival of an earlier award-winning production, and it contains some of the most innovative stagecraft and a few of the most haunting moments of any show I've seen this season. And it's all firmly anchored by Jojo Gonzalez (above left), who brings zest, grace, and gravitas to the title role.

Speaking of phenomenal leading performances, I was absolutely blown away by the emotional dexterity and dramatic strengths of Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, currently ruling the stage in the Broadway play Frost/Nixon. Langella plays Richard Nixon who, a few years after Watergate, underwent an intense series of interviews with British talk show host David Frost (the dynamic Sheen). The results make for completely mind-shattering theater, especially as rendered through Peter Morgan's taut storytelling. Rather than create a mere docudrama, Morgan (who also wrote the screenplay for "The Queen," another creative dip into recent history) takes us deeply, and rather uncomfortably, inside Nixon's insecurities, character, humor, and pathos. Langella's performance is so acute, so unflinching, so devastating ... I've never seen anything like it.

Ben Brantley wrote a captivating feature in the New York Times this week about the five Tony Award nominees for Best Leading Actor in a Play--a category which, in his estimation, hasn't been this competitive and teeming with talent for decades. Brantley makes this astute pronouncement on the skills of a truly accomplished actor: "Getting the bright externals of a character is easy for a good craftsman. It's the shadowy contradictions between outer and inner that distinguish craft from art."


I would add that it's within these "shadowy contradictions" that we find humanity in all its fallible glory--shimmering and often painful to behold. For me personally, it's the type of performance that makes me cry without quite knowing why. As much as Christine Ebersole's phenomenal Grey Gardens performance weirded me out (how, after all, are we to relate to this bizarre woman living in squalor with herds of cats?), the force of her performance's magical realism reeled me in and left me gasping for breath. A few years ago, Tonya Pinkins' triumphant turn in Caroline, or Change (in the stifling intimacy of the Public Theater, before it moved to Broadway) firmly gripped something inside me, and I had to sit for a few minutes in the lobby before I could walk to the subway (or talk coherently).

Which brings me back to Langella. Brought up to despise (and at least mistrust) this man who lied to his citizens, I was suddenly face to face with this desperate, pained, and sorrowful man. Feeling sorry for him. Who cries from watching Richard Nixon? It's a mystical, precious thing when theater can elicit these small miracles--paving the way to such revolutionary human understanding. If only we could all be brought that close to the dubious figures in our own lives ...