The Birth of the Boob Tube

Aaron Sorkin strikes again with a talky confection of witty repartee ...

Show Business Weekly review: The Farnsworth Invention

Home for the Holidays

After a Turkey birthday and a blur of bronchitis, it's so nice to be back on the aisle this month. I reviewed five shows in early December--and put together a hefty 2008 theater and film preview--so I'll add links to those as soon as they become available.

I loved the Irish Repertory Theatre's charming retelling of Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales--complete with interpolated Christmas carols. My first mainstage appearance came in a musical adaptation of this piece when I was 12--I played Dylan's "tough and tiny" cousin Glenda; my own father played Uncle Glyn. The Irish Rep's version is a perfect 70-minute shot of holiday cheer.

offoffonline review: A Child's Christmas in Wales

It was also fantastic to see David Henry Hwang's provocative new backstage docudrama (dramedy?) Yellow Face on its feet at the Public Theater. I caught a reading of the play last year and laughed until my stomach hurt. Thankfully, Hwang has managed to retain the unflagging humor; he's also filtered the material with even more poignancy, wit, and controversy.

Show Business Weekly review: Yellow Face

And the award for most promising pre-show that fell flat on its face goes to Charles Mee's ill-conceived new "musical" Queens Boulevard (the musical) (note the parentheses). This was my first outing at the well-appointed Signature Theatre, and the audience was greeted by a raucous wedding reception scene, complimentary Asian candies, and a wise-cracking DJ. Not to mention the eye-candy set and costumes ... Too bad the meandering story and tripped-out scenes didn't match the irresistibly charming opening gimmicks.

Show Business Weekly review: Queens Boulevard (the musical)

But the best thing I've seen this year might very well be the last thing I saw this year: Tracy Letts' so-good-it's-unbelievable new play August: Osage County. In the tradition of Edward Albee's acidic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the ascerbic domestic dramas of Eugene O'Neill, Letts explores toxic topics within the shaky confines of an American family. Review to come in 2008 ... and keep your eyes on this one. I attended on a particularly star-studded evening: Julia Roberts, Paul Rudd, John Stamos, Bernadette Peters, Kevin Spacey, and Mike Nichols were gasping at the family horrors alongside everyone else. Could there be a film in the works?

Below: Family dinner party from hell in August: Osage County

Speechifying Students

A sharp and immensely perceptive look at the lives of three high school students, the Roundabout Underground's inaugural production Speech & Debate threads together the idiosyncratic worlds of these students to create a magnificent appraisal of the politics, possibilities, and limitations of life in an Oregon high school. The tidy plot is deceptively simple: when three students realize they share grievances against the same teacher (a smarmy-sounding male drama teacher), they form a shaky alliance to get revenge.

But look again--playwright Stephen Karam (whose controversial play columbinus--about the Columbine school shootings--was recently produced at the New York Theater Workshop) has created an intricate minefield of secrets for each of these characters, who are brought to life by an extraordinarily gifted young ensemble. Gideon Glick (of Spring Awakening) is gleefully gawky as Howie, the new student who discovers the teacher during an online chat; Jason Fuchs is delightfully motor-mouthed as the passionate journalist-with-a-secret, Solomon; and as the theater-struck, pod-casting Diwata, Sarah Steele is a wise-cracking, insecure revelation. Susan Blackwell ([title of show]) is underused in the dual roles of a teacher and a journalist, but she delivers a precise performance in her trademark deadpan style.

The students' revenge revolves around creating a speech & debate team and using the various forms (group interpretation, cross-examination) to "perform" their points. The play follows suit, and each scene is introduced by a projected title of a different form of speech (poetry reading et al.)--giving us a clue as to the communication patterns that will follow.

Karam is adept at channeling the rhythms of teenage conversation; under Jason Moore's precise direction, Speech & Debate is a riveting, witty, and thought-provoking exercise. Some scenes could be trimmed, but when the material is this good, you really don't mind the excess.

Moore also directed the artfully ribald Avenue Q, and his clever winks are perfect for this material. Before the play begins, writing magically streams across the blackboard at the center of the set, in the manner of a student writing out a punishment: "I will turn of my cell phone," "I will turn off my cell phone" ...

Proof Positive

The Astoria Performing Arts Center has scored again with its excellent production of David Auburn's riveting math-play, Proof. I love having an honest-to-goodness theater just down the block from my apartment. While this production wasn't quite as superb as the other shows I've seen there (A New Brain and Picasso at the Lapin Agile), it has excellent production values (check out the glorious set in the photos) and a lot of obvious (if somewhat misplaced) heart.

offoffonline review: "Doing the Math": Proof

The main problem for me was the melodramatic style implied by the direction and, most gratingly, the lead actress. Auburn's drama is a taut, tense, piece of realism, and our heroine was rolling her eyes and mugging to the audience like a character actress in a 1950s musical. Although I had never before seen the play produced, I read it (and loved it) several years ago and saw the good, not great, film adaptation starring Gwyneth Paltrow. But there was an urgency missing from the APAC production--most likely lost in the over-emoting--that made me wonder, Would I have liked the play itself if this had been my first exposure to it? One of the difficult things about reviewing brand, shiny-new productions is that it's often hard to determine which element--writing or directing--is most clearly contributing to the show's success or demise. The quality of the acting, of course, is always easier to evaluate, since it's more exposed. Writing and directing dance a precarious sort of tango, however; when they're not completely in sync, someone's bound to end up flat on the floor.

Vibrant and (Vain)glorious

I recently became a huge Francine Prose fan after reading her gripping novel Blue Angel and her latest nonfiction work How to Read Like a Writer, so I was excited, and a bit surprised, to learn that the new Ahrens and Flaherty musical is based on her novel The Glorious Ones, a semi-fictional account of a commedia dell'arte troupe in the late sixteenth century.

Show Business Weekly review: The Glorious Ones

It's a fascinating, if uneven, production, but--as I've come to expect from Lincoln Center Theater--it's an extremely well-produced, intelligent, and important work. I encourage you to meet The Glorious Ones for yourself. Get a behind-the-scenes look here.

It's Alive, Sort Of

Apart from my recent fascination with Heroes, I've never been the biggest sci-fi fan, so I truly dreaded reading Frankenstein when I was in graduate school. Dutifully, I bought a copy of Mary Shelley's classic piece of gothic horror, expecting reams of unadulterated green monsters and high-flying melodrama. Instead, I was truly riveted by her lovely writing, her incredible imagination, and the harrowing plot. Frankenstein blurs the line between humans and monsters, and it was a fascinating tool for class discussion and considering the dangers of contemporary scientific research. Cloning, anyone?

I approached the new Off-Broadway musical Frankenstein with hope, since its creators have repeatedly said that they aimed to bring the focus back to the story itself. So I couldn't have been more disappointed when I was greeted by lightning flashes, strobe lights, vapid characters, and a throroughly chilly, and rather brainless, staging of this classic novel.

Show Business Weekly Review: Frankenstein

As any theater person will tell you, Mel Brook's Young Frankenstein promises to be the theatrical event of the season, and so Frankenstein certainly has moxie to go head-to-head with its fellow monster. But if this is supposed to the more "serious" Frankenstein, we're in trouble, because director Bill Fennelly's staging draws involuntary laughter when it tries to take itself seriously (the many cheesy lines and semi-rhyming lyrics don't help much). To me, the first half of the show could have been an anthropological study representing the worst of what producers think that audiences want from theater right now: gratuitous spectacle, over-processed pop music, a bare-chested man, and a lightning-quickness that panders to the short attention spans of veteran TV watchers.

As the doctor's love interest, the extraordinary Christiane Noll brought heart and intelligence to the story, but she also brought an unfortunate reminder of the mega musical Jekyll & Hyde, in which she played a similar supporting role. (Full disclosure: J&H is a guily pleasure of mine, but not one that I want to see replicated and brought back from the dead ad infinitum). Frankenstein clearly wants to seduce those "Jekkies" (the rabid fans who saw the show tens and hundreds of times), and it just might succeed. I wanted to like Frankenstein, but I'm afraid that this monster of a musical might just find its audience--and lure producers away from more intelligent musicals and back into spawning more and more of the same old schlock. For once, can't we just let these decrepit shows rest in peace?