The Film Society in Revival on Theatre Row

By the 1970s, the British Empire had begun to crumble and South Africa was still in the throes of Apartheid - and it is against this backdrop that all of the action in Jon Robin Baitz’s remarkably insightful play, The Film Society, takes place.  Set in Blenheim, a boys’ boarding school in Durban, South Africa in late 1970, the play revolves around the inevitable changing of the guard at Blenheim and the conflicts and contradictions faced by Jonathon Balton (Euan Morton) as he attempts to balance his nascent youthful liberalism and his loyalty to his friends, Terry Sinclair (David Barlow) and Nan Sinclair (Mandy Siegfried) against his love for his school, his devotion to his mother, Mrs. Balton (Roberta Maxwell), and his obligations to the school’s owner and Headmaster, Neville Sutter (Gerry Bamman) - and all within the context of his own personal loneliness and self interest.

Originally produced in Los Angeles in 1987, when Baitz was still only in his mid-20s, and making its New York debut a year later, The Film Society is now enjoying its first New York revival in an excellent off Broadway staging by The Keen Company at The Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row on West 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan.  Directed by Jonathan Silverstein, the play effectively captures the ambivalent spirit of the times and the inevitable conflict between generations.

 

On the one hand, we have Neville Sutter who has sought to navigate a gradualist course, modernizing the school’s philosophy by hiring younger, idealistic teachers like Jonathon, Terry and Nan while not fully abandoning the school’s traditional values.  In his camp is his Assistant Headmaster, Hamish Fox (Richmond Hoxie), a retired military officer, who has clung even more tenaciously to the school’s old values – including cricket, penmanship, and caning, not necessarily in that order.  And finally there is the wealthy Mrs. Balton whose deceased husband provided Neville with the funds he needed to purchase the school in the first place.

  

On the other side are the mildly activist Terry, whose invitation to a black priest/educator to participate in Blenheim’s centenary celebration enraged the parents of the school’s students and threatened the school’s very existence; and his wife, Nan, even less radicalized than her husband but still much more aware than Neville, Hamish or Mrs. Balton that, indeed, ”the times they are a’changing.”

And then there is Jonathon, whose sympathies well may be with Terry and Nan  - it is he, after all, who seeks to expand his students’ horizons by exposing them to classic films, whence the title of the play – but whose ties to his mother, his headmaster, his school, and his own self-interest are what create the tensions that make this play so well worth seeing.

What is seen as betrayal and “selling out” by one man may be interpreted as “becoming an adult,” or “facing reality” by another.  That is the question that confronts us in judging Jonathon.  Depending upon the choices he makes, will he be betraying his friends and “selling out”  - or simply “growing up” and “facing reality”?  Or is there even more (or less?) to Jonathon than meets the eye?  Might his actions simply be a matter of his own self-interest or self-preservation – or even just a reflection of his own insecurities?

All of the actors in this revival of The Film Society have been well cast and all deserve praise for their performances. In particular, Gerry Bamman, in the role of Neville Sutter, perfectly captured the essence of an uptight controlled traditional British Headmaster; Richard Hoxie was absolutely delightful as Hamish Fox - the retired British military officer now serving as Neville’s Assistant Headmaster; and David Barlow portrayed the mildly activist but ultimately submissive Terry Sinclair with beautiful precision.  Most outstanding was Euan Morton who succeeded admirably in pulling off the most challenging role of all, that of the lonely, ambivalent and conflicted Jonathon Balton, 

The symbolism which permeates The Film Society is sometimes quite heavy-handed. Blenheim, itself, a declining boys’ school clinging to the past, may be taken as a proxy for all of South Africa in the days of apartheid.  When Jonathon orders a copy of the film “A Touch of Mink” to show to the students in his “Film Society,” he receives a print of “A Touch of Evil” instead - a harbinger, one might suspect, of the unexpected consequences yet to come.  Neville is going blind - reflecting, perhaps, his refusal to see the changes coming to South Africa - although they are all around him.  And Hamish is suffering from terminal spine cancer – about which no further explanation would seem necessary.

  

The heavy handedness of all that symbolism might best be explained by Baitz’ relative youth when he wrote the play and, had he been a bit more subtle, the play might have been even more effective..  But that is a very minor quibble over what is otherwise a very stimulating production and one well worth seeing.

Bless You All! A Broadway Revue Revived After 60 Years

Ruth Pferdehirt in BLESS YOU ALL! A BROADWAY REVUE.  Photo by Dixie Sherican

Bless You All!, A Broadway Revue with sketches by Arnold Auerbach and music and lyrics by Harold Rome, originally opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on Broadway to positive reviews in 1950 – but that still didn’t prevent it from closing after only 84 performances.  Now, after more than sixty years, UnsungMusicalsCo. (UMC), is staging the show’s first ever revival off off Broadway in a limited three-week engagement at The Connelly Theatre on East 4th Street in downtown New York – including in it some new sketch material by Herman Wouk.

This revival does have  a lot going for it.  Some of its jazzy tunes are quite delightful; the choreography is very impressive; and both the singing and the dancing are memorable.  I was especially impressed by the long-legged, balletic Jennifer Lee Crowl, by Ruth Pferdehirt’s terrific rendition of “Little Things” (which came close to being a show-stopper), and by Billie Wildrick’s powerful and touching “You Never Know What Hit You.”

But it wasn’t quite enough for me.  The show’s material was very uneven to begin with more than a half-century ago and, despite the valiant efforts of Ben West, UMC’s Artistic Director, to re-organize the show’s sketches, eliminating its weakest numbers and tacking on the Wouk skit, it remains a very uneven production to this day.  The comedy sketches, in particular – a send-up of the snooty 21 Club, a vaudevillean slapstick pie-in-the-face routine, a caricaturish mockery of presidential campaigning on television, and Wouk’s comedic depiction of a corrupt judge on the lam, to name just four – were sophomoric at best and failed Borscht Belt routines at worst.

 

So here’s my bottom line: if you’re into nostalgic reminiscence of Broadway revues of the 1940s and 1950s – including some fine song and dance – this revival of Bless You All!, A Broadway Revue might just do it for you.  But if your sights are set somewhat higher than that, you may find yourself more disappointed than delighted by this production.

English Language Premiere of Mr. Bengt's Wife by August Strindberg

Kersti Bryan as Margit and Eric Percival as Mr. Bengt in MR. BENGT'S WIFE.  Photo by Jingxi Zhang.

In Mr. Bengt’s Wife, August Strindberg’s ambivalent attitude toward women, coupled with his view of marriage as an emotional battleground, are in full display.  Sometimes referred to as Strindberg’s response to Ibsen’s The Doll House, this play has only been performed infrequently and never before in English.  Indeed, since 1882, it has been produced just five times – in Stockholm in 1882, Cologne in 1908, Vienna in 1914 (where the Austrian Church demanded that it close after only two performances), Berlin in 1920, and again in Stockholm in 1971.

The current production, very professionally staged off off Broadway by The August Strindberg Repertory Theatre at The Gene Frankel Theatre on Bond Street in lower Manhattan, is based on the play’s first translation into English (by Malin Tybahl and Laurence Carr) and is directed by Craig Baldwin.  Set in Sweden in 1882, it focuses on the life of Margit (Kersti Bryan), a complex character with sado-masochistic tendencies, given to childlike fantasies of being swept off her feet by a dashing knight on a white charger, both victim and seductress, at times submissive while at other moments nothing but a selfish, self-centered bitch.  A prototype of the independent New Woman, perhaps, and a potential feminist icon.  Bryan plays her role brilliantly, practically stealing the show.

Margit was orphaned as a young girl and sent to a convent where she was abused both physically and emotionally by the Abbess (Vicki Blackenship) but befriended by The Confessor (Matt Hurley).  She is rescued from the convent by Mr. Bengt (Eric Percival), a mounted nobleman, just as she had fantasized she would be and he carries her off to be his wife and live happily ever after with him in his castle.

Unfortunately, Margit’s expectations are not fulfilled.  Mr. Bengt’s crops fail.  He goes bankrupt and is plunged into poverty, losing his estate to The Bailiff (Shawn Fagan), the King of Sweden’s unscrupulous representative and Margit’s childhood friend.  Margit’s marriage collapses and she sues for divorce.

After her divorce, Margit not only is pursued by The Confessor and by The Bailiff but also remains the love of Mr. Bengt’s life.  Or at least we are led to believe all that.  It’s also possible that the entire realistic-surrealistic story we’ve just witnessed on stage was nothing more than Margit’s dream.  You’ll have to decide.

While Kersti Bryan may steal the show as Margit, she is ably supported by all of the other five members of the cast, particularly Matt Hurley as The Confessor, Shawn Fagan as The Bailiff and Vicki Blackenship in the dual roles of The Abbess and The Chief Judge’s Wife. 

Freefall by Charles Smith at Drilling Company Theatre

L-R: Omar Evans, Milena Davila, and Rosario Salvador in FREEFALL.  Photo by Lana Davidovich.

Freefall by Charles Smith initially premiered at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago in 1993 and had its off-Broadway debut at Theatre Row the following year.  Now, nearly 20 years later, it is being revived in an outstanding limited run off off Broadway production by Theatre for a New Generation at Drilling Company Theatre on West 78th Street in Manhattan.

The play is set on the south side of Chicago in 1991 but it is far from dated.  Its broadest themes relating to familial and quasi-familial relationships - parents and children, siblings, and the brotherhood of the streets – are as compelling today as they were two decades ago.

Grant (Jason Bond) and Monk (Rosario Salvador) are two brothers whose lives have diverged sharply over the years. Grant is a desk cop in Chicago who, with his wife, Alex (Milena Davila) is attempting to live out a version of the middle-class American suburban dream.   Monk, on the other hand, has just been released from prison after having been incarcerated for five years for burglary and is seeking to establish a new life for himself while searching for the mysterious benefactor who befriended him in prison.  Complicating Monk’s efforts are Spoon (Omar Evans) a Chicago crime lord and drug kingpin who is attempting to lure Monk back into a life of drugs and burglary.

When Monk shows up at Grant’s and Alex’s home, the brothers are forced to confront the meaning of family ties, a confrontation made all the more difficult by the fact that it was Grant who arrested Monk in the first place.  And the issue of family relationships is further underscored by Alex’s own seeming ambivalence toward her own familial responsibilities: is her primary role that of a daughter to her own aging parents or that of a wife to her despondent spouse?

All four actors are absolutely first rate in their portrayals of relatively dysfunctional characters in difficult circumstances but I was especially impressed by Omar Evans as the street-wise gangster Spoon and by Rosario Salvador as the struggling conflicted Monk.  

Playing Sinatra by Bernard Kops at Theater For The New City

L-R: Katharine Cullinson, Austin Pendleton, and Richard McElvain in PLAYING SINATRA at Theater For The New City.  Photo by Jonathan Slaff.

Bernard Kops, an 87 year old immensely talented and prolific playwright, has written more than 40 plays for stage and radio, nine novels and six volumes of poetry.  Despite his well-deserved European recognition, to date few of his plays have been produced in the United States.  Fortunately, that oversight is now in the process of being at least partially corrected: his Playing Sinatra, which originally opened to rave reviews in London in1991, is finally receiving its American premiere at Theatre For The New City on First Avenue and East Tenth Street in downtown Manhattan.  And it is just terrific.  Indeed, it is difficult to understand why it took so long for it to get here.

Theatrical history is rife with plays dealing with dysfunctional siblings, in many instances focusing primarily on sexually repressed spinster sisters.  Think The Glass Menagerie or The Rainmaker.  Playing Sinatra is a play of that genre but one packing even more of a wollop.  It is The Glass Menagerie or The Rainmaker on steroids.  Imagine The Glass Menagerie as it might have been written by Jean Genet or The Rainmaker had it been penned by Harold Pinter and you’ll get some idea of what I’m driving at.Since the death of their parents just a few weeks apart, Sandra Lewis (Katharine Cullison), a middle-aged spinster has lived with her brother Norman (Richard McElvain), a sometimes violent  bookbinder whose agoraphobia may be the least of his mental ailments in their cavernous ancestral home in Streatham, London.

Norman appears to be content with his life as it is.  He seldom leaves the house and busies himself with his bookbinding and with his fancied gourmet cooking (which, if truth be told, amounts to little more than microwaving TV dinners which are transformed in his mind’s eye into haute cuisine).  He remains the boy he once was, albeit now in a man’s body.

Sandra, on the other hand, does leave the house on a daily basis to work at a tedious office job and she, at least, has not given up entirely on life.  Indeed, she even may have been exploring the possibility of selling or moving from their home. .In a way, she is the opposite of Norman, not a girl trapped in a woman’s body, but rather a middle-aged sexually repressed woman who never allowed the young girl she once might have been to emerge.  Today, the only things that bind the siblings together are their shared history, promises they made to their deceased parents, and a mutual passion for the life and music of Frank Sinatra.  It is in Sinatra’s lyrics that they find what others might discover in Ecclesiastes.

When Phillip de Groot (Austin Pendleton), an American and self-described “seeker” arrives on the scene, his disruptive influence on the lives of Sandra and Norman is immediately palpable.  But will Phillip be Sandra’s “platonic lover,” her savior, or her destroyer.  He’s certainly nothing like Laura Wingfield’s “gentleman caller” (a la The Glass Menagerie) and whether or not he’ll turn out to be the likes of Lizzie Curry’s Bill Starbuck (a la The Rainmaker) remains to be seen.

Cullison is absolutely wonderful as Sandra Lewis, at one moment capturing her distraught angst and sexual frustration, in the next portraying her fear of men seeking to get into her knickers, moving on to exhibit her deep devotion to her brother (which almost appears to border the incestuous), only to affirm her dream of finding in Phillip the “platonic lover” she has long sought.  McElvain is equally good as the mentally disturbed Norman, whose delusional quirks run the gamut from a damaging agoraphobia, to a compulsive love of Sinatra, to momentary ourbursts of violence to repressed homosexuality.  And Pendleton is just grand as the enigmatic and manipulative Phillip who, chameleon-like, manages to allow the other characters and the audience to make of him what they will.

This is one hell of a play and deserves a longer run.  Go see it.

NYC Fringe 2013: Waiting for Waiting for Godot

L-R: Dave Hanson and Chris Sullivan in WAITING FOR WAITING FOR GODOT

Waiting for Waiting for Godot (WFWFGodot), now playing at the Kraine Theater on East Fourth Street in Lower Manhattan as part of FringeNYC 2013, is not only a terrific meta-reworking of the original Beckett classic but is also a delicious send-up of the entire Beckett canon.  In this production, set in a dingy backstage dressing room rather than on a country road, Val (Dave Hanson) and Ester (Chris Sullivan), are understudies for the roles of the two hobos, Vladimir and Estragon, in Waiting for Godot, and are themselves awaiting the arrival, not of Godot but of their play’s Director, in the hopes that he will come to tell them that he intends to give them an opportunity to play their roles onstage.

In Beckett’s The Unnamable, the novel’s unidentified protagonist, after a long disjointed monologue, proclaims “…you must go on.  I can’t go on.  I’ll go on” – a sentiment at the core of Beckett’s work but one that is not very different from that hoary theatrical mantra: “The show must go on.”  And, indeed, for the multi-talented Dave Hanson, who wrote WFWFGodot and who also plays the role of Val, the distinction between Beckett’s words and the theatrical mantra would appear to be a distinction without a difference:  the play must go on and so must the two understudies, if not onstage, then at least with their own lives.

Val and Ester are consumed by the same absurdist existential questions that tormented Vladimir and Estragon and fare no better in their struggles than do their alter egos.  In Waiting For Godot, it is an unnamed boy who arrives to tell the two hobos that Godot won’t be showing up that day after all; in WFWFGodot, it is Laura (Amy Weaver), the perky Assistant Stage Manager, who informs them that the Director they had been hoping to see won’t be making an appearance that day either. The consequences are the same: despair  

But WFWFGodot is much more than just a retelling (or even a meta-retelling) of the Waitng for Godot story, simply set in a different venue with Ester’s vest substituting for Estragon’s boot: it is also a delightful parody of Beckett’s signature style.  When Ester gives Val an acting lesson, emphasizing the “miserly” approach to acting wherein an actor does nothing but repeat another actor’s lines, the verbal repetitions and repetitions of repetitions constitute an hysterical send-up of Beckett, culminating in what I took to be a similar send-up of James Joyce as well.

Hanson plays the role of Val with comic genius and Sullivan turns in an equally impressive performance as Ester. In sum, this production is likely to go down as one of the very best of the FringeNYC 2013 and if the show’s not yet sold out and you can still manage to get tickets for one of the few remaining performances, I’d strongly urge you to do so.

Summer Shorts 2013: Series A at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Gia Crovatin and Elizabeth Masucci in GOOD LUCK (IN FARSI) in SUMMER SHORTS 2013 at 59E59 Theaters.  Photo by Carol Rosegg.

For the seventh consecutive year, Thoroughline Artists is presenting a Summer Shorts program of one act plays by established and emerging playwrights at 59E59 Theaters on East 59^th Street in midtown Manhattan.  This year’s program consists of six plays evenly split between two series: Series A includes Good Luck (in Farsi) by Neil LaBute, About a Woman Named Sarah by Lucas Hnath, and Breaking the Spell by Tina Howe; Series B includes Falling Short by Marian Fontana, Change by Paul Weitz, and Pine Cone Moment by Alan Zweibel.  I just saw Series A and I must say I was rather disappointed.

I chose to attend Series A rather than Series B because I am a long time fan of Neil LaBute and I was particularly eager to see his Good Luck (in Farsi), the first play on the Summer Shorts 2013 program.  Sad to say, I found it to be less a fully developed play than the merest idea for a scene or a sketch; it might do as a workshop production of a part of a play in progress but surely not as a full blown play in its own right.

Directed by LaBute himself, the play focuses on Paige (Elizabeth Masucci) and Kate (Gia Crovatin), two narcissistic lame-brained actresses auditioning for the same role in a new television series.  In what is basically a two-hander, they perform as caricatures of what we’ve come to expect of back-stabbing aspiring young actresses in such competitive situations but, other than an amusing line or two, LaBute hasn’t brought anything new to bear on this timeworn theme.

 

Neither Masucci nor Crovatin ought be blamed for this, however.  Indeed, they both are outstanding in their respective roles and provide the audience with just as much entertainment as the script will allow.  It’s just that the script itself is wanting.

L-R: Stephanie Cannon, Mark Elliot Wilson, Marisa Viola, and Ben Vigus in ABOUT A WOMAN NAMED SARAH  in SUMMER SHORTS 2013 at 59E59 Theaters.  Photo by Carol Rosegg.

The program’s second entry, About a Woman Named Sarah, was even less entertaining.  It is a trivializing and somewhat mean-spirited depiction of a fictionalized meeting between John McCain (Mark Elliot Wilson) and Sarah Palin (Marisa Viola) prior to his selecting her to be his Vice Presidential running mate in 2008.  As Hnath would have us believe, the only reason that McCain chose Palin to be his running mate was that nearly everyone whom he really wanted already had turned him down and the only one else who might not have turned him down was Mitt Romney who an insecure McCain was reluctant to choose lest Romney overshadow him during the campaign.
 

The play consists of four sequential conversations between (1) John and Sarah; (2) Sarah and John’s wife, Cindy (Stephanie Cannon); (3) John and Cindy; and (4) Sarah and her husband, Todd (Ben Vigus).  All of the conversations are performed in a choppy staccato fashion, punctuated by a series of off stage clicks, presumably to accentuate some features of those conversations but all of which serves more to distract than to illuminate.  I. Found. It. All. [Click.] To. Be. An. Annoying. [Click.]  Waste. Of. Time. [Click.]

L-R: Michael Countryman, Crystal Finn, Evan Shinners, and Jesse Scheinin in BREAKING THE SPELL in SUMMER SHORTS 2013 at 59E59 Theaters.  Photo by Carol Rosegg.

The program’s third play, Breaking the Spell, was the best of the bunch (though that’s not really saying very much since the bar wasn’t set very high).  Basically a re-telling of the story of Sleeping Beauty, the play revolves around the efforts of The King (Michael Countryman) to break the spell which has put his daughter, Christabel (Crystal Finn) to sleep for 100 years.  When the world’s princes (and princesses) can’t awaken her with their kisses, The King resorts to music, engaging the most talented musicians in the land, to work their magic.  Those musicians include Davey McNab (Jesse Scheinin), an extraordinary saxophonist; Heinrich Hesse Horowitz (Evan Shinners), an amazingly gifted pianist; and Bobby Love (also played by Shinners), a talented accordionist.

The music works, the spell is broken, Christabel awakens and goes off to live happily ever after with her true love, the King’s Poor Wretched Fool (also played by Evan Shinners).  Breaking the Spell might have made it as a short skit on the Sid Caesar Show in the early days of television but it really is overreaching to think of it as a full-fledged theatrical production.  What this play does have going for it, however, are its two enormously talented musicians – Evan Schinners and Jesse Scheinin – and it is they who provide the program with its most entertaining moments.