TREMOR by Brad Birch in Brits Off Broadway Program at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Paul Rattray and Lisa Diveney in TREMOR.  Photo by Mark Douet.

Tremor by Brad Birch, a beautifully written, thought-provoking, and expertly performed two-hander, is one of the best plays currently being staged as part of this year’s Brits Off Broadway program at 59E59 Theaters.  In exploring its primary theme of survivor guilt, it deals with issues as diverse as our tendency to deny our true feelings and rationalize our real motivations; our desire to discover (or create) meanings and teleological explanations for events where none may exist; our search for guilty parties beyond the obvious (and, similarly, for victims who might not immediately come to mind); and our unconscious racist or ethnic biases (or, conversely our need to be so politically correct that we refuse to recognize realities in our dangerous world).

Sophie (Lisa Diveney) and Tom (Paul Rattray) were among a handful of survivors of a bus crash four years ago.  But while they were fortunate to survive the event physically, they weren’t so lucky psychologically or emotionally.  The trauma destroyed their relationship.  Tom went through a period of excessive drinking and his role in testifying against the bus driver (which resulted in the Muslim driver’s incarceration and made Tom a hero to some and a villain to others ) ultimately cost him his job.  Eventually,Tom did manage to move on: he married, fathered a child, started his own business, and convinced himself that he personally had done nothing wrong.

Sophie didn’t do that well: she remained racked with survivor guilt and failed to comprehend why she was alive when so many others, including children, died.  She continued searching for someone other than the bus driver himself (who may or may not have been under the influence of alcohol at the time of the accident) to blame for the crash – the police? the government? the bus company? the economic system? – and she continued to fault Tom for what she perceived as his racist attitude toward the bus driver.

When, four years after the accident, Sophie asks Tom to forgive the bus driver (who is on his death bed) the enormity of the difference in their world views becomes obvious to both of them.  But some differences are so great as to be irreconcilable and all we can do is move on.

Russell Dixon Steals the Show in Alan Ayckbourn's A BRIEF HISTORY OF WOMEN

L-R: Frances Marshall, Antony Eden, and Louise Shuttleworth in A BRIEF HISTORY OF WOMEN.  Photo by Tony Bartholomew.

Even now, in his late seventies, the remarkably prolific Alan Ayckbourn shows no signs of slowing down.  His 81st play, A Brief History of Women, premiered at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, England in late 2017 and is currently being staged at 59E59 Theaters in midtown Manhattan.  (And just for the record, Ayckbourn has already penned his 82nd play, Better Off Dead, which is scheduled to premiere at the Stephen Joseph Theatre in September of this year).

A Brief History of Women relates the rather mundane tale of Anthony “Tony” Spates (Antony Eden), an ordinary man on an ordinary odyssey through life, with some emphasis on his slightly more noteworthy interactions with a small handful of different women.  The play is structured in four parts, set at 20 year intervals in Kirkbridge Manor, a Downton Abbey-ish manor house, in 1925 - or in one of its successor incarnations as the Kirkbridge Preparatory School for Girls (1945), the Kirkbridge Arts Center(1965), and the Kirkbridge Manor Hotel (1985).

When we first encounter Spates he is a 17-year old son of a farmer, serving as a temporary footman at Kirkbridge Manor during an engagement party being thrown by Lady Caroline Kirkbridge (Frances Marshall) to celebrate the engagement of her daughter and Lord Edward Kirkbridge’s (Russell Dixon’s) step-daughter, Lady Cynthia (Laura Matthews) to Captain Fergus Ffluke (Laurence Pears).  In the course of the celebration, Lady Caroline has a bit too much to drink - it is, after all, the roaring ‘twenties and “bees knees” are all the rage – which results in her barging into her husband’s study - which she had been forbidden to enter - and so enraging him (by accusing him of being homosexual) that he verges on physically attacking her.  Spates gallantly comes to her rescue and is rewarded by Lady Caroline’s bestowing on him his first “real” kiss.

Twenty years later, at the end of World War II, Kirkbridge Manor has been converted into a relatively expensive girls’ preparatory school.  Through Lady Caroline’s encouragement, intervention and financial support, Spates succeeded in achieving an education well beyond the expectations of a farmer’s son, and now, at age 37, he has returned to what had once been Kirkbridge Manor and now is the Kirkbridge Preparatory School for Girls as an English and Geography teacher.  The school’s headmaster and classics teacher is Dr. Wynford Williams (Russell Dixon) and the other teachers at the school are Eva Miller (Frances Marshall), Phoebe Long (Louise Shuttleworth), Desmond Kennedy (Laurance Pears) and, of greatest significance, Ursula Brock (Laura Matthews) with whom Spates has been carrying on a not so clandestine affair.  Ursula’s grasp of reality is tenuous at best – while she persists in proclaiming her love for Spates, she also persists in her belief that Jimmy, her former fiancé who was killed during the war, will be returning to her – not in Heaven but right here on Earth! – in a blaze of glory.  Which might make for a rather difficult ménage a trois.  Not that it dissuades Ursula from attempting to have sex with Spates in full view of the entire student body, which results, inevitably in Spates’ dismissal.

A generation later, in 1965, the Kirkbridge Preparatory School for Girls (nee Kirkbridge Manor) has undergone yet another transition: it is now the Kirkbridge Arts Centre and Spates is its 57 year-old Administrative Director.  The Centre is preparing for its annual “panto,” a uniquely British winter musical comedy tradition that that integrates children’s fairy tales with British vaudeville, while adhering to various conventions, including the “principal boy” or male juvenile lead (who is usually played by a girl), the “panto dame” (played by a man in outrageously exaggerated drag), ample audience participation, bawdy jokes, and a comedy animal.  The panto for which the Kirkbridge Arts Centre is rehearsing is based on the story of Jack and the Beanstalk:  Dennis Dunbar (Russell Dixon) has written the play, is directing it, and is its panto dame in the role of Jack’s mother;  his wife, Gillian Dunbar (Louise Shuttleworth) is playing the front end of the family cow that Jack will be selling; Pat Wiggly (Frances Marshall) is Jack, the “principal boy”; and Rory Tudor (Laurence Pears)  is the peddler (or “piddler!”) whom Pat encounters on his way to sell the cow.

Gillian gradually reveals to Spates that she and Dennis have less than an ideal marriage, a fact that is underscored when she and Spates realize that when Dennis and Pat left to rehearse their musical duet, they had something more than that in mind.  It is the final nail in the coffin of Dennis and Gillian’s marriage and Spates, who seems to be making something of a habit of catching women on the rebound, is once again available – even if it means playing the rear end of a cow.

By 1985, Kirkbridge Manor once again has been transformed, this time into the Kirkbridge Manor Hotel, an assisted living residence.  Spates is now 77 years old and has retired from his former position as manager of the hotel but is temporarily filling in for the current manager.  Tilly Seabourne-Watson (Laura Matthews) and her husband, Jim Seabourne-Watson (Laurence Pears) have brought their 98-year-old great-grandmother, Caroline Seabourne (Frances Marshall) to stay.  Of course, Caroline Seabourne is (or once was) Lady Caroline Kirkbridge and both she and Spates recall that first kiss.  The world has come full circle.

I must reluctantly admit that I don’t think that this is one of Ayckbourn’s finest works but it is a wonderful vehicle for allowing six very talented performers to exhibit their talents.  Antony Eden is the only one of the six who does not perform multiple roles:  He is Anthony Spates from beginning to end but he does a terrific job as he evolves from callow youth to mature senior citizen.  Frances Marshall is equally impressive in her portrayals of the 38 year-old Caroline and the 98 year-old Caroline.  But there is even more to her than that: she is fine as the ethnically harassed German-Swiss teacher, Eva Miller, and even better yet as the exuberant “principal boy” Pat Wiggly.

Laura Matthews is delightfully charming as Caroline’s insecure daughter, Cynthia; as her patronizing great-granddaughter,Tilly; and as the irrepressible and delusional Ursula.  And in a complete about-face, she pulls off the role of Jenny Tyler, the relatively incompetent and surly stage manager at the Kirkbridge Arts Centre, with equal aplomb.  Laurence Pears is similarly effective in his roles as the upstanding Captain Fergus Ffluke; as Desmond Kennedy, the sports teacher; as Rory Tudor, the mindless hippie; and as Jim Seabourne-Watson, Caroline’s responsible great-grandson.  Louise Shuttleworth also deserves considerable credit as well for her portrayals of Mrs. Reginald Ffluke, Fergus’ mother; of the bigoted Phoebe Long; of the long-suffering Gillian Dunbar; and of Ruby Jensen, the receptionist at the Kirkbridge Manor Hotel.

But I have saved the very best for last.  Russell Dixon is brilliant as the selfish, misogynist, and brutish Lord Edward Kirkbridge.  He is even better as the stultified headmaster, Wynford Williams.  And he is simply phenomenal as Dennis Dunbar, the panto dame.  (He also has a minor role as Gordon, the hall porter at the Kirkbridge Hotel, that appears to have been thrown in by Ayckbourn as something of an afterthought but there’s no reason to hold that against him.)  Indeed, if anyone truly deserves standing ovations for his performances, it is Russell Dixon.

THE EDGE OF OUR BODIES by Adam Rapp at 59E59 Theaters

Carolyn Molloy in THE EDGE OF OUR BODIES.  Photo by Anthony LaPenn.

Adam Rapp may be a highly successful and acclaimed playwright – he does have two OBIE Awards to his credit and in 2006 was a Pulitzer Prize finalist - but his work is not to everyone’s liking.  Assuredly, it is not to mine.  In general, I have found his plays to have been gratuitously scatological and/or sexually disturbing, with an undue emphasis on bodily functions.  And, to my mind, The Edge of Our Bodies, currently receiving its New York premiere in a TUTA Theatre production at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street in midtown Manhattan is more of the same.

The Edge of Our Bodies is the coming-of-age-story of Bernadette (Carolyn Molloy), a precocious sixteen-year-old girl who is confronting all of the crises that a girl of her age might expect to face - and then some.  Her family is thoroughly dysfunctional: her father is directing a television show in Los Angeles where he is carrying on an affair with a stewardess, while Bernadette resides in Connecticut with her mother (who is hooked on Xanax and anti-depressants and who wouldn’t mind having an affair with her South American massage therapist herself); before play’s end, her parents are on the verge of divorce.  Meanwhile, her sister Ellen, a grad student at Harvard, living with her boyfriend in Cambridge, recently underwent an abortion and, at least to the best of Bernadette’s knowledge, “never seemed to care much about it one way or the other.”

As for Bernadette herself, she recently realized that her Brooklyn-based nineteen-year-old boyfriend’s preferred method of birth control – withdrawal at the last possible moment before ejaculation – wasn’t as effective as they both had expected it to be and so she has taken the train from Connecticut to New York and the subway to Brooklyn to let him know that they really should have used condoms (despite the fact that neither of them liked them) and that since they didn’t – well, she’s pregnant.  Unfortunately, when she arrives unannounced in Brooklyn, her boyfriend, Michael, is nowhere to be found and she spends most of the evening with Michael’s father, Wayne, who is undergoing headache-inducing and nausea-inducing chemotherapy treatments for prostate cancer.  Oh, and lest I forget, Wayne’s wife (Michael’s mother) has abandoned her family and is nowhere to be found, although she may be in Costa Rica.

And it all gets much worse.  When Bernadette is unable to connect with Michael, there really is nothing left for her to do but return to Connecticut, which she does.  Before boarding her train home, however, she stops off at a bar where she’s “lucky” enough not to be carded and where she allows herself to be picked up by Marc, a man more than old enough to be her father, who whisks her off to the China Town Holiday Inn where she distastefully (albeit enthusiastically) participates with him in his pursuit of his masturbatory sexual fantasies. Once he has “relieved” himself and fallen asleep, she has no qualms about further “relieving” his wallet of $20.  Then on to Connecticut.

But wait.  Unfortunately, Bernadette doesn’t have enough money to purchase a ticket that will get her all the way home so she contacts her mother who drives for ninety minutes to pick her up in New Haven.  Eventually Bernadette hears from Michael and learns that his father has committed suicide.  Reluctantly she concludes that her relationship with Michael is over too.  But not to worry.  Bernadette’s best friend, Briel, drives her to an abortion clinic and, while she undergoes a couple of days of subsequent pain and discomfort, it’s nothing that can’t be managed through some combination of pancakes, vanilla wafers, marijuana and sheer willpower.

In sum, it is all a consummate mess requiring a greater suspension of disbelief than I, for one, am capable of mustering.  I find it quite preposterous, for example, that a sixteen-year-old girl could simply leave her Connecticut boarding school with neither her mother’s nor the school’s knowledge, take the train to New York, arrive unannounced at her boyfriend’s home in Brooklyn, and remain out of touch with her family and school for the better part of a day, without setting off alarm bells.  And I find it equally incomprehensible that her mother would be so nonchalant about her daughter’s behavior that she wouldn’t mind driving for ninety minutes in the middle of the night to pick her up and, given the circumstances, subsequently wouldn’t even “ground” her.  Or that her school would let her off with nothing more than a “warning.”

Similarly, it is hardly believable that Bernadette would blithely accept the tawdry request of a stranger old enough to be her father that she participate with him in his sexual fantasies – and that no harm would come to her as a result.  Or that she wouldn’t have insisted on being with the boy she claimed to love so deeply in his greatest moment of need when his father committed suicide.  Or that she could be so cavalier about her parent’s impending divorce or her own abortion.

But all of this presumes, of course, that the story that Bernadette has told – the play is, in effect, an 80 minutes monologue – is fundamentally true and not simply a figment of a young girl’s imagination.  Bernadette is, after all, a prevaricator: we know that she has lied to any number of people about her name, her school, her birthplace, her parents’ occupations, and who knows what else?  She is also an aspiring short story writer and an accomplished actress.   Might she not also be lying or fantasizing about her abortion, Wayne’s death, her boyfriend, or her parents’ divorce?

My speculation is that she is not.  I think that the fundamental premises of the play are meant to be believed (difficult as that may be) but I am much less certain about such peripheral events as her relationship with Marc or her casual encounters with strangers on the train.  And therein lie the rubs: if we really can’t tell how much of what we have been told should be accepted as true and how much ought be perceived as a figment of Bernadette’s imagination, and if even that which we believe we are expected to accept as true strains credulity, how then are we to make sense of her coming-of-age passage?

Ben Caplan Stars in OLD STOCK: A REFUGEE LOVE STORY

Ben Caplan in OLD STOCK: A REFUGEE LOVE STORY.  Photo by Stoo Metz Photography.

When Fiddler on the Roof, adapted from the stories of Sholem Aleichem, was first staged on Broadway in 1964, there were those who carped that it was unduly sanitized and superficial.  They were distressed that a Russian officer was portrayed in the musical as sympathetic, rather than cruel, as Sholem Aleichem had described him.  And they were even more upset that whereas in Aleichem’s stories, Tevya the Milkman ends up alone, his wife dead, and his daughters scattered, in the musical adaptation the entire family is still alive at the end of the show and most are on their way together to a new life in America.

Fortunately, those critics did not prevail and Fiddler, sanitized as it was, went on to become one of the great blockbuster musicals of all time: it won nine Tony Awards, was enormously profitable and highly acclaimed, was the first musical to run for more than 3,000 performances, and is still the sixteenth longest running show in Broadway history.  The creators and producers of Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, written by Hannah Moscovitch and now premiering at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street in midtown Manhattan, would have been well-advised to bear the lessons of Fiddler in mind but unfortunately they did not.  And so, instead of a joyously entertaining yiddishkeit musical, we are being treated instead to a depressing rendition of the Jewish immigrant experience with excessive emphasis on the horrors of Romanian pogroms (even if it is set to klezmer music) – a truth that even Ben Caplan himself, the star of the show, cannot deny: in an aside to the audience he exclaims –

You guys all right out there?

It’s getting dark.

It’s getting a little dark

The laughs are turning into “why the fuck did I come and see this depressing show”

Well said, Ben.  I couldn’t agree more.

Fiddler set a very high bar for success for yiddishkeit musicals and Zero Mostel and Topol, both of whom starred in it at different times as Tevya, will long be remembered in the annals of theatrical history for their outstanding performances.  Ben Caplan is also an immensely talented performer - charming, personable and energetic to a fault – and I think he would prove a worthy successor to Mostel and Topol were he to be given the chance of reprising the role of Tevya in Fiddler.  Unfortunately, however, he is not currently being provided with that opportunity, starring instead in Old Stock – which is a far cry from Fiddler.  In this depressingly tasteless musical, Mr. Caplan’s enormous talents are largely squandered.  (Not that Mr. Caplan doesn’t have himself much to blame for that circumstance: in addition to starring in this production as The Wanderer, he also was responsible, together with Christian Barry, the play’s director, for writing most of the musical’s songs.)

Old Stock is the story of Chaya Yankovitch (Mary Fay Coady) and Chaim Moscovitch (Chris Weatherstone), two young Jewish Romanian emigrants to Canada in the early years of the Twentieth Century.  Chaya is 24 years old and has come to Canada with her extended family of 17.  Her husband, Yoachy, her one true love, died of typhus in Russia on the road they were traveling on their way from Romania to Canada and she lost the unborn child she was carrying on the same road.  Although her brothers may remain in the New World, ultimately she intends to return to Romania because she can’t bear the thought of an ocean separating her both from Yoachy’s and her father’s graves.

Chaim is 19 years old and has arrived in Canada alone, his entire family having been killed in Romania in a brutal pogrom.  He has no desire to ever return to Romania since, unlike Chaya, he got out of Romania “too late” - only after his family was destroyed - and Romania holds no attraction for him.

When Chaim first meets Chaya in 1908, it is love at first sight for him and he is eager for her to marry him.  Chaya eventually agrees, accepting guidance from her father to do so, but for her it is much more a marriage of convenience.  Over time, however, Chaim and Chaya do have four children – and eight grandchildren and sixteen great-grandchildren.  And fourteen great-great-great grandchildren with, hopefully, many more yet to come.

My disappointment with Old Stock, however, is not only that it is unduly depressing and gratuitously gory in its descriptions of Romanian pogroms, but also that it is tasteless, puerile, and misogynistic while paying lip service to political correctness.

For example, in a sophomoric song rife with platitudes, we are told that we should -  

ask for consent before you put your dick in –

Similarly, in another song that might have been composed by the Administration and Faculty of Antioch College, we are told again and again that –

Her pleasure is your obligation, if she gives the invitation

Has the right of course to say she’s not quite in the mood to play

Consent is still always de rigueur, you’ve gotta check with her.

But the truth, as attested to by the lyrics of the musical’s other numbers, is that sexual relations are perceived in the basest, most misogynistic, most puerile, and most anti-feminist manner.  To wit, sexual relations are described as, among other things -

Banana in the fruit salad…

Beard-splitting…

Batter-dipping the corn dog

Bringing an al dente noodle to the spaghetti house

Cattle-prodding the oyster ditch with the lap rocket

Cleaning the cobwebs with the womb broom…

Going crab fishing in the Dead Sea

Parking the Beef Bus in Tuna Town… [and]

Roughing up the suspect

And so, when we’re also gratuitously informed that there –

ain’t nothing wrong with homosexuality –

(even though the play has nothing to do with homosexuality) and when, at play’s end, in a final PC homage to the trans-gender community (which the play also has nothing to do with), Ben thanks us all for our attendance by addressing us as –

…Ladies and Gentlemen and those who identify outside the binary…

my only reaction is “Please, please, spare me the sanctimony.”

EDUCATION by Brian Dykstra at 59E59 Theaters

L-R: Elizabeth Meadows Rouse and Jane West in EDUCATION.  Photo by Carol Rosegg.

Bryan Dykstra has covered all his liberal-progressive bases (or should that be biases) in Education, his two-act play currently premiering at 59E59 Theaters on East 59th Street in midtown Manhattan.  The play’s principal male protagonist, Mick (Wesley T. Jones) is an exceptionally intelligent high school senior with artistic pretensions and youthful rebellious enthusiasms; unsurprisingly, he is is cast as bi-racial, was orphaned as a young child, and was raised by his white uncle, Gordon (Matthew Boston), a highly articulate atheistic law professor.  The play’s principal female protagonist is Mick’s girlfriend, Bekka (Jane West), a high school junior who is white, similarly rebellious, and a singularly outspoken poet whose work is laced with expletives.   Bekka’s mother, Sandy (Elizabeth Meadows Rouse) is a God-fearing woman, much taken to citing the scriptures in support of her narrow-minded right wing religious beliefs while Bekka’s father (who we never actually meet) is a fundamentalist Christian deacon so mired in his primitive theology that it comes as little surprise when it turns out that he beats his daughter.  Rounding out the cast is Mr. Kirks (Bruce Faulk), the (similarly gratuitously bi-racial) principal of the school that Mick and Bekka attend who rues the fact that he has sold out his youthful liberal principles so that he might abide by the rules (arbitrary or not) and maintain some semblance of order at his school.

And there you have it:  Mr. Dykstra has written a play with a number of easily demolished straw men - flag-waving patriots, rule-bound types, and Christian believers – all of whom are presented as two-dimensional caricatures (the “dragons”), while those who are free speech advocates, atheists, academicians, quasi-activists, and young rebels passionately devoted to the expression of their “art,” are, of course, the “dragon slayers.”

Mick’s first art project is a trivial flag burning construct, for which he is summarily suspended from school.  His next project, the creation and burning of an effigy of Jesus made of dollar bills (so that he might attack both religion and capitalism in one fell swoop and for which he engages Bekka’s support), has even direr consequences.  When Bekka’s father beats her, he reveals his true sadistic nature.  When Sandy seeks to convince Gordon to keep Mick away from Bekka, she reveals her underlying racism.  When Gordon rejects Sandy’s entreaties, he exhibits the transcendent superiority of political correctness, academia, and atheism.  And when Mick and Bekka refuse to capitulate to the pressures brought to bear upon them, they establish that they, today’s youth, are, indeed, the true “dragon slayers.”

It is all too neat and predictable by half and this would have been a much better play if Mr. Dykstra had provided Mick and Bekka with more formidable antagonists in the personae of Bekka’s parents and Mr.Kirks.  But be that as it may and surprising as it may seem, Education still turns out to be quite an enjoyable play.  And there are two reasons for that.

 

First, while Mr. Dykstra may have fallen short on plot and character development, there is no denying that he has a wonderful ear for language.  Bekka’s conversation with Mr. Kirks concerning her Fuck Poem and her subsequent recitation of the poem itself are absolutely terrific as is the dialogue between Sandy and Gordon on the topic of separating Mick and Bekka.

Even more important, however, this play’s production has been blessed with a remarkable cast.  All five of the play’s actors are truly first rate but I was especially taken with Jane West as the fetchingly exuberant Bekka; with Elizabeth Meadows Rouse who perfectly expresses the small-mindedness of those on the extreme religious right; and with Matthew Boston who exquisitely succeeds in personifying the intellectual arrogance and self-satisfaction of all too many of today’s lawyers and academicians.

Outstanding Revival of TIME STANDS STILL by Donald Margulies at Theatre for the New City

Timothy Weinert as James Dodd

Maggie Alexander as Sarah Goodwin 

Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies premiered at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles in 2009 and moved to Broadway in 2010 where, despite garnering rave reviews and a Tony Award nomination, it ran for only two months, re-opening on Broadway in late 2010 for another run of less than four months.  It is currently being revived in an excellent off off-Broadway production by Ego Actus and Lung Tree Productions at Theatre for the New City at 155 First Avenue in lower Manhattan that is well worth seeing.

Sarah Goodwin (Maggie Alexander) and James Dodd (Timothy Weinert) have been together for more than eight years, childless and unmarried (which is just the way they want it even if, by the standards of Sarah’s father, they are “living in sin”).  Their relationship works for them because it gives them both the freedom they require to pursue the vocations they love all around the world (she is an acclaimed photo-journalist dedicated to recording war’s atrocities and man’s inhumanity to man on film; he is a free-lance writer and journalist similarly engaged but in words rather than in pictures).

Recently they were both on assignments in war zones in the Middle East and the consequences for both of them were horrendous.  James had a mental breakdown – akin to shell shock – when confronted by atrocities that exceeded the limits of what his mind was prepared to absorb and he returned to their home in Brooklyn to recover.  Sarah did not accompany him then, remaining on assignment in the Middle East.  But what goes around comes around and so when Sarah subsequently was the victim of a devastating roadside bomb explosion which left her in a coma for two weeks, James was not there for her either.

As the play opens, Sarah is returning to their Brooklyn home where James, overwhelmed by guilt that he was not with her and upset by the fact that their legally unmarried status prevented him from assuming greater responsibility for her recovery, has become overly protective of her.  Sarah is eager for their lives to go back to just the way they were before her accident and for her to return to war zone assignments.  But James would prefer to change their lives completely: he would like them to marry, settle down, raise a family, and forego the adrenaline-rush dangerous lives they previously led.

Malcolm Stephenson as Richard Erhlich

Connie Castanzo as Mandy Bloom

Meanwhile Richard Ehrlich (Malcolm Stephenson), their very close friend and Sarah’s photo editor, is in the throes of an even more dramatic upheaval in his own life: his new girlfriend, Mandy Bloom (Connie Castanzo) is almost young enough to be his daughter and is as different from Sarah (with whom Richard had once enjoyed a more intimate relationship) as a woman could possibly be.  While Sarah is a serious-minded, mature, rational and goal-oriented professional photo-journalist, Mandy is a childlike, relatively immature party planner, more into ice cream and balloons than geo-politics.  But Richard is quite taken with her, perhaps because he is in the midst of his own mid-life crisis.  Or maybe because he simply has tired of the high pressure life he led which he has come to see as less meaningful and emptier than he once imagined.  Or he may just have fallen in love for the first time.

Time Stands Still is an insightful and incisive exploration of the changes that occur in people’s lives, of the compromises that must be made when loving partners find themselves in fundamental disagreement over which paths to take together in the future.  Or the consequences that must be accepted when the paths they choose are so mutually exclusive that no compromise is possible.

And it is even more than that.  It is also a thought-provoking commentary on the ethical considerations which might enter into one’s choosing to photograph an an injured or dying child or a keening mother searching through the rubble for the remains of a loved offspring rather than coming to the assistance of the child or the mother in the moment of tragedy.

The four actors are all outstanding, each in his or her own way.  Maggie Alexander exhibits the powerful single-mindedness required of her role as Sarah, the acclaimed photo-journalist who will allow nothing to stand in the way of her art.  Timothy Weinert’s performance as James is more nuanced as he expresses the changes in goals and values that he has experienced as home and family begin to appear even more meaningful than publishing a major expose of the refugee crisis.  Malcolm Stephenson as Richard adroitly balances the multitude of pressures and influences on his life: his dedication to his profession, his loyalty to his friends, and his love for Mandy.  And Connie Castanzo is simply delightful as Mandy as we come to realize that her apparent shallowness and lack of interest in serious matters may simply have obscured her much deeper recognition of home and family really being the most important things in life after all.

Musicals Tonight! Stages Exuberant Revival of Cole Porter's ANYTHING GOES at Lion Theatre

L-R: David Visini (Ensemble); Jessica Moore (Erma); Beth Stafford Laird (Hope); Blake Spellacy (Purser); partially hidden - Cameron Lucas (Ensemble) and Cameron Benda (Ensemble); Nic Thompson (Captain); partially hidden - Kirsten Welsh (Ensemble); Brian Ogilvie (Evelyn Oakley); Jan Leigh Herndon (Evangeline); Daniel Scott Walton (Ensemble); and Spencer S. Lawson (Ensemble).

Musicals Tonight! was founded by Mel Miller in 1999 with the stated purpose of reviving early musicals that otherwise might have been lost to posterity.  Since then it has staged 99 shows – including Meet Me in St. Louis; Me and My Girl; Irma La Douce; Silk Stockings; Lady, be Good!; Paint Your Wagon; Milk and Honey; L’il Abner; Babes in Arms; Little Mary Sunshine; Carnival; Funny Face; Wonderful Town; and The Boys from Syracuse.  Its latest production, Anything Goes, is currently being staged at the Lion Theatre on Theatre Row on West 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan and it is absolutely terrific.

Anything Goes was originally produced in 1934, running for more than a year, and it has been revived on Broadway three times since then.  The original book was by the legendary team of Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse and was updated by the equally renowned Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse.  And what they all came up with was a typical rollicking 1930s musical with a preposterous plot and unbelievable characters which, on its own, might never have stood the test of time.

But that doesn’t allow for the fact that it was Cole Porter who composed the score and lyrics and it is that that has made all the difference.  What would otherwise have amounted to little more than another predictable theatrical entertainment became instead a wonderful musical delight featuring some of Porter’s most memorable works including “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You’d Be So Easy to Love,” “You’re the Top,” “It’s De-Lovely,” “Let’s Misbehave,” “Friendship,” “Blow Gabriel Blow,” “The Gypsy in Me,” and, of course, “Anything Goes.”

The musical is set on board the transatlantic liner S.S American where Reno Sweeney (Meredith Inglesby), an evangelist turned nightclub singer, is en route to London.  Also on board are the English Lord Evelyn Oakleigh (Brian Ogilvie); his fiancée, Hope Harcourt (Beth Stafford Laird); and Hope’s mother, Evangeline Harcourt (Jan Leigh Herndon).  Reno’s pal, Billy Crocker (Nick Walker Jones) has also stowed away, in hopes of breaking up the relationship between Hope (the love of his life) and Evelyn, and spends much of his time on board stalking Hope or attempting to avoid his boss, Elisha Whitney (Mark Coffin) and the ship’s Captain (Nic Thompson). Rounding out the cast of principal characters on board are the gangster, Moonface Martin (Carlos Lopez), disguised as a minister, and his moll, Erma (Jessica Moore).  Plus the ship’s purser (Blake Spellacy); a couple of Chinese sinners, Luke (Jordan de Leon) and John (Albert Hsueh), thrown in for comic relief; and innumerable other sailors and showgirls.  It all makes for great silliness and lots of fun, and serves as a superb backdrop for Cole Porter’s songs.

Not to forget the fantastic choreography!  Indeed, if any one individual may be said to have stolen the show, it is Casey Colgan, the musical’s remarkable director and choreographer.  Colgan has performed a miracle on a small stage with a very talented cast and his dance numbers are as good, or better, than anything you’re likely to be seeing on Broadway or anywhere else.