NON-FICTION – FEATURE STORY: Off-Broadway Critics Approve of Harmon’s Significant Other

OFF-BROADWAY CRITICS APPROVE OF HARMON’S SIGNIFICANT OTHER

((c)2015 David Lefkowitz. This article was first published in Stagebuddy.com, June 20, 2015: https://stagebuddy.com/theater/theater-review/off-bway-critics-approve-harmons-significant)

With scathing dialogue and nasty characters, Joshua Harmon wowed critics three years ago when his Bad Jews opened at the Roundabout Underground space. Months later, the show, which New York Post critic Elisabeth Vincentelli called, “delicious, nasty fun,” moved to the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater, where it racked up three Outer Critics Circle nominations (including New off-Broadway play) and a Lucille Lortel Award for the lead actress.

Buoyed by that prior success, the Roundabout turns to Harmon again, this time for Significant Other, a lighter comedy which opened Thursday night (June 18) at the Laura Pels. Are critics as gung ho for romantic Others as they were for angry Jews?

Variety’s Marilyn Stasio sure is. She notes that here, Harmon writes in “an equally intelligent but more bittersweet vein,” but still comes up with a “frightfully funny relationship comedy” that is “flawlessly cast” and features “the irresistibly lovable Gideon Glick.”

“Entirely delightful,” kvells New York Times scribe Charles Isherwood  about  Significant Other. He adds that “the production directed with nimble grace by Trip Cullman, is as richly funny as it is ultimately heart-stirring.” Like Stasio, he also lauds Glick’s “wonderful emotional elasticity” that “grounds the comedy in emotional truth.”

More on the fence is Vulture.com’s Jesse Green, who reminds readers that Bad Jews was terrific, while Harmon’s script for the recent Radio City Spectacular was “a monumental assault on human decency.” He worries that the “overblown” nature of the Rockette misadventure has infected Harmon’s current writing: “Unfortunately, nice or even exquisite writing doesn’t make a play, as the trumped-up climax in the second act proves.” He also carps, “When a play lacks dramatic tension, a director can only supply so much; you can’t get a grip on gas. But in this case, oddly, the production, by Trip Cullman, seems at pains to emphasize rather than disguise the inertia.”

Entertainment Weekly’s Jessica Shaw also has reservations. In her “B”-rated review, she notes, “the dialogue here is sharp, unapologetic and witty,” but she worries that “Hollywood rom-com” treacle will gunk up the works. It doesn’t, and she expresses gratitude for that

Steven Suskin of HuffPo calls the play “another smart, laugh-a-minute contemporary comedy” from an author “who has a knack for very funny dialogue” (italics his). Suskin also applauds director Trip Cullman for helping the play move “fluidly” and veteran actress Barbara Barrie’s “simply lovely performance.” “Keep `em Coming, Mr. Harmon,” Suskin encourages.

Equally laudatory is The Hollywood Reporter’s Kevin Rooney who appreciates the comedy’s “wit, warmth and the unmistakable pang of personal experience.” It proves that Harmon is “no one-hit wonder,” as the new play becomes “a perceptive gay male variation on female-centric screen comedies about corrosive relationship envy.”

Both Steven Suskin and New York Post critic Elisabeth Vincentelli see hints of the musical Company in Significant Other, keyed by the presence of actress Barrie but also by the single, awkward guy pushed to the side of friendships and romantic entanglements. In her *** (out of four) review, Vincentelli adds that under director Cullman’s direction, “appealing actors mine every drop of comedy and pathos from the script — which, underneath its brashness, is at heart fairly conventional.”

In his **** (out of *****) critique for Time Out, Adam Feldman calls the play “like The Heidi Chronicles minus the feminist history.” He notes that this is, “as funny as Harmon’s breakthrough play, Bad Jews, but less pushy in its message. Significant Other makes you slap your knees until you notice they’re bruised.”

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NON-FICTION – FEATURE STORY: Broadway Critics Mostly Marvel at Machinal

BROADWAY CRITICS MOSTLY MARVEL AT MACHINAL

((c)2014 David Lefkowitz. This article was first published in Stagebuddy.com, Jan. 17, 2014: https://stagebuddy.com/theater/theater-review/bway-critics-mostly-marvel-machinal)

 Rebecca Hall, a Golden Globe nominee for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” made her Broadway debut last night, Jan. 16, in Machinal, a landmark 1928 drama by Sophie Treadwell. The play, based on the true story of a woman given the electric chair for murder, tells of an office worker who follows society’s idea of how women should go through life – that is, until she has an affair and kills the boss she felt obligated to marry.

Machinal was first produced at Broadway’s Plymouth Theater in fall 1928 where it starred Zita Johann and featured a pre-“GWTW” Clark Gable. Roundabout Theater’s production at the American Airlines Theater, staged by Lyndsey Turner and scheduled through March 2, also features Suzanne Bertish, Pearl Theater veteran Arnie Burton and Michael Cumpsty, who, only weeks ago, finished his duties in the Roundabout’s Winslow Boy revival.

In a recent Backstage interview, Hall said of her character, “What the play is really trying to do is basically say the measure of a civilized society is how they treat the weak ones. I had to show her as a weak one you can relate to.”

So did the Broadway theater critics relate to this seminal drama or did they dismantle the workings of Machinal?

Chief New York Times scribe Ben Brantley calls the production “an intensely stylish revival of…Sophie Treadwell’s fascinating play.” He’s a fan of actress Hall and notes that she and Es Devlin’s “scene-stealing set” go head-to-head throughout the evening, with the supporting players becoming the casualties. “The ensemble acting is so diffuse and varied that scenes that should be achingly suspenseful, like the climactic trial, often sag,” Brantley clucks.

In his *** review for the Daily News, Joe Dziemianowicz applauds the Roundabout for doing “this atypical and rather risky show…but kudos don’t equal success.” Dziemianowicz doesn’t think much of the play itself, faulting its “illogical plotting” and unconvincing character twists. He also finds Hall “emotionally empty,” though he does compliment the show’s design: “Purring with sleekly elegant beauty, the physical staging is the star here.”

Newsday’s Linda Winer also lauds the “lavish yet beautiful stark production” on “Es Devlin’s extraordinary set.” For Winer, this is “a dazzling, daring revival that feels especially startling in the doggedly conventional environs of the Roundabout Theater Company’s American Airlines Theater.” Helping matters is Hall, “with a beanpole body like an exclamation point and a face of a thousand worried looks — brings us deep inside the long, virtuosic bursts of halting half-sentences and tangled mazes of internal monologues.”

Variety’s Marilyn Stasio agrees that the production is “stunning” and has “masterful staging… But it’s tough to empathize with someone who lacks a backbone and hasn’t a brain in her head.” She concludes by adding, “this affectless Woman is too passive and dull-witted to become the Everywoman victim of the first industrial age of automation.”

TheaterMania reviewer David Gordon raves that Roundabout’s “extraordinary production” is a “bold choice [that] pays off big time” as a “vibrant rediscovery of an American classic.” He adds that the “magnificent” Rebecca Hall infuse[s] this woman with an intelligence that’s well beyond her 31 years, but she burrows herself so deeply in the character that we lose sight of the fact that she’s an actress playing a role.”

Writing for his New York Theater blog, Jonathan Mandell finds the production stunning, though the play shows its age: “What was avant-garde then is familiar now, requiring of current-day audiences nearly an exercise in anthropology.” Mandell compliments the “spot-on” Michael Cumpsty (as the husband) but admits that the show’s leads “are supporting players to the work of the designers. …This may be the best-staged play of the season, certainly one of the most aptly designed.”

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REVIEW – THEATER: A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (2003 Broadway)

A DAY IN THE DEATH OF JOE EGG
**1/2

(c)2003 David Lefkowitz. reviewed April 2003 on Broadway.

 

The world must have been a more gracious place thirty years ago. How else to explain the cause celebre Peter Nichols’s dark comedy, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, became, all because a tired middle-class couple made jokes about raising a severely retarded and paraplegic daughter. Maybe Joe Egg opened the way for Timmy in “South Park,” but there’s little else to recommend the piece now—especially judging from the long, tedious, low-voltage revival now at the American Airlines Theater.

Giving Nichols’s half-kitchen-sink/half-satirical work the benefit of the doubt, we can pin some blame on Eddie Izzard, who’s giving a fascinating performance to the first two rows of the audience and leaving everyone else in the auditorium yawning and asking, “What’d he say?”

Victoria Hamilton does better as the wife who obsesses over the girl to the detriment of her marriage, with Michael Gaston breathing some life into the second act as a well-to- do socialist prone to moral judgments and halfway solutions. Add 1/2* if the endless sound of Britons bantering makes you feel more intellectual.

*

Staged by Laurence Boswell, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg ran April 3-June 1, 2003 at the Roundabout Thetaer Company’s American Airlines Theater on Broadway.

 

 

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REVIEW – THEATER: Tartuffe (2003 off-Broadway)

TARTUFFE

**3/4

Reviewed January 2003 by David Lefkowitz

 

From director Joe Dowling comes a misfired Moliere that points up Tartuffe’s structural weakness: all of the first half centers on papa Orgon refusing to listen to anyone. If he would just shut up for thirty seconds, there’d be no play. This leads to some labored, even annoying patches, especially with an uneven cast trying to put this Roundabout mounting over.

Brian Bedford’s always a pro but he feels a bit by-the-numbers here; Henry Goodman makes an interestingly earthy, almost Shylockish title character—I’d like to see his Tartuffe in a better production. Good work, too, from Kathryn Meisle’s Elmire and Philip Goodwin’s creepily polite messenger. The hide-under-the-table scene still works, but when doesn’t it?

*

Tartuffe ran Jan. 9-Feb. 23, 2003 in a Roundabout Theater Company production at Broadway’s American Airlines Theater.

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REVIEW – THEATER: The Boys from Syracuse (2002 Broadway)

THE BOYS FROM SYRACUSE

***1/4

Reviewed September 2002 by David Lefkowitz

 

Though forever overshadowed by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Rogers and Hart were as delightful a duo as ever concocted musicals for the Broadway stage. Where the later team dealt in lushness, epic themes, and emotional upheavals, the earlier duo found greatness in zest, cheery wit, and melodies so easy, only a muse could have penned them. If the Roundabout’s revival of The Boys from Syracuse looks a little slapdash, it sounds nifty, thanks to a cast of Broadway pros who can play goofy characters and still sing—formidably—for their supper.

Winning us over almost instantly are Jonathan Dokuchitz’s “get-me-outta-here” Antipholus of Syracuse and Tom Hewitt’s tongue-in-cheek bravado as Antipholus of Ephesus. Typically fine support work, too, from the slaves of Lee Wilkof and Chip Zien, and even the (seemingly) minor role of an imprisoned Aegean gets fine singing from Broadway stalwart Walter Charles.

In the breakout role of loopy, lovestruck Luciana, Erin Dilly (who was almost a Millie) proves deliciously silly. All this, plus statuesque courtesans, great songs that haven’t been overplayed (such as “He and She” and “The Shortest Day of the Year”), a few jarringly anachronistic—but admittedly funny—one-liners by book adaptor Nicky Silver, and the evening floats by on a raft of pleasant sounds and ear-to-ear grins.

*

Directed by Scott Ellis, The Boys from Syracuse ran Aug. 18-Oct. 20, 2002 at the Roundabout Theater Company’s American Airlines Theater on Broadway.

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REVIEW – THEATER: The Man Who had All the Luck (2002 Broadway)

 THE MAN WHO HAD ALL THE LUCK

***

 (c)2002 David Lefkowitz. reviewed May 2002 on Broadway

 

In his very first play, Arthur Miller gave himself a problem he couldn’t quite write his way out of: can you make heavy drama out of something that doesn’t happen, near tragedy out of the mere fear of tragedy? He gave it a game try, though, creating a character who, blessed with constant good luck, develops a neurotic dread of the misfortune that has to be just around the corner. It’s a workable conceit, but David Beeves’s reactions are so extreme, the piece stops being a universal drama and turns into a less convincing, less interesting look at aberrant pathology.

It’s significant that the best scene (at least in Roundabout’s solid revival) concerns David’s baseball-playing brother and the big-league scout who crushes his dreams with the truth. We can already see Willy Loman and his boss in the rear-view mirror of history.

*

Produced by the Roundabout Theater Company, The Man Who had All the Luck ran May 1-June 30, 2002 at Broadway’s American Airlines Theater.

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REVIEW – THEATER: Design for Living (2001 Broadway)

DESIGN FOR LIVING

**1/2

(c)2001 David Lefkowitz. reviewed March 2001 on Broadway.

Joe Mantello’s revival of Noel Coward’s most envelope-pushing work starts as strong drama, meanders into mildly amusing comedy, and ends as sour farce. Alan Cumming’s adorable until he turns into a hammy transvestite freak; Jennifer Ehle’s Gilda would be more at home in a Lillian Hellman potboiler than here. By the time Gilda ditches upright Ernest for her desperate friends, we’re ready to take out the menage a trash.

*

Staged by Joe Mantello, Design for Living ran March 15-May 13, 2001 at the Roundabout Theater Company’s American Airlines Theater on Broadway.

 

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REVIEW – THEATER: Summer and Smoke (1996 Broadway)

SUMMER AND SMOKE

**¾

((c)1996 David Lefkowitz. Reviewed 1996 on Broadway. This review was first published as part of my recurring This Month ON BROADWAY section of This Month ON STAGE.)

For an avowed homosexual, Tennessee Williams had an almost obsessive need to deflower — emotionally, if not physically, as well — a host of frail, prudish Southern ladies. Blanche DuBois’s struggle between flesh and spirit leads to her downfall, lonely Myrtle has to choose between her effete, bloodless husband and his macho brother; virginal Hannah Jelkes steps out of the battleground altogether rather than get mortally wounded. Terrified of sex, Alma Winemiller, of Summer and Smoke, can’t even look at an anatomy chart — especially the one that hangs in the office of John Buchanan, the handsome doctor next door. 

Rakish, dissipated, yet sparked by a kernel of decency, Dr. John pursues Alma, seeing in her the same purity The Night of the Iguana’s Rev. Shannon so desired from Hannah. But Alma and John’s astrological charts never quite mesh, so instead of a romance, they suffer a tragedy and — even worse in Williams’s world — a missed connection. 

With its episodic second act and intrusive minor characters, the two hour and forty-five minute play simply takes too long to reach its ironic finale. Mary McDonnell makes Alma an interesting, even pitiable figure, but not a gripping or majestic one. Other critics have called Harry Hamlin wooden and not up to the play’s demands, but I find his doctor convincing when he broods and irresistible when he woos (he’s tremendously handsome — more so than television has been able to capture). 

Derek McLane’s set, all blue clouds and white sky with a rising and descending angel (every 1990s play must have one — that’s the law) offers a nice change from spending three hours in Williams’s usual seedy milieu. 

*

(Staged by and at the Roundabout Theater by David Warren, Summer and Smoke ran Sept. 5-Oct. 20, 1996 at Broadway’s Criterion Center Stage Right.)

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Mary McDonnell, Harry Hamlin

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REVIEW – THEATER: A Month in the Country (1995 Broadway)

A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY

***

((c)1995 David Lefkowitz. Reviewed on Broadway in May 1995. This review was first published in the Summer 1995 issue of Stages magazine)

Much as Chekhov is the acknowledged master of this kind of playwriting — what with a half-dozen main characters all locked in mutual romantic intrigue and a half-dozen others observing and affected by the entanglements — sometimes it’s nice to get away from the good doctor, where everything is subtext, and find a playwright working similar themes as urtext.

Ivan Turgenev’s idle classnicks in A Month in the Country have the same unfulfilled longings and dashed dreams as Chekhov’s, but their hearts are open books — to us and usually to the characters around them. Thus Natalya Petrovna can fall head over heels for the same young tutor her daughter begins to pine for, and everybody knows it. Thus, it is also accepted in this circle that madame’s friend and confidante, Rakitin (Ron Rifkin), is also her lover. In fact, husband Arkady (Byron Jennings) is more concerned about losing his friend than being cuckolded.

These intimacies take their time unwinding, especially since Roundabout Theater’s production, staged by Scott Ellis, stays resolutely light until the mother-and-stepdaughter rift in the final act, but the piece always holds our interest. Helen Mirren, unforgettable as Prime Suspect’s Inspector Tennyson, strikes me as somewhat actressy here, a little too conscious of her effects and her character’s attitude of gay unconcern. She plays Natalya beautifully, but she doesn’t become her.

Comic relief comes by way of F. Murray Abraham, turning his handkerchief into a classic theater prop and creating a minor character who is obnoxious — yet we happily await his entrances. Standing handsomely in his boots, the stage lights framing his wavy hair, talented Alessandro Nivola, in his Broadway debut, makes a well-formed tutor, indeed. Kathryn Erbe and Byron Jennings do good work, as well, though it’s Ron Rifkin’s Rakitin, the eternally frustrated best friend, who plays most naturally (and whose voice carries most securely in the acoustically problematic Criterion Center space). 

Santo Loquasto’s wooden set has charm, though its steep incline seems an effect not quite worth the actors’ effort.

*

(staged by Scott Ellis for the Roundabout Theater Company at their Criterion Center Broadway venue, Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country ran April 25-June 10, 1995)

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REVIEW – THEATER: Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1994 Broadway)

PHILADELPHIA! HERE I COME

***1/4

(©1994 David Lefkowitz. Reviewed Sept. 1994 on Broadway. This review was first published in the Fall 1994 issue of Stages magazine.)

Someone evicted the Mundy sisters from their rustic Ballybeg kitchen and brought the original tenants back in: 25-year-old Gar O’Donnell, his phlegmatic father S. B. (whom Gar not-so-affectionately nicknames “Screw Balls”), and Madge, the bustling housekeeper. Nearly 30 years before Brian Friel envisioned five Irish sisters dancing like pagans around a kitchen radio to escape their hopelessness, he created the same environment of quiet woe. But in Philadelphia, Here I Come! there is hope. Hope that young Gar can leave his bedraggled, beloved Ireland; his non-communicative father, his lost teen sweetheart, his useless drinking buddies, and move to America to start fresh.

Friel makes nothing easy, though. The very banalities that push Gar out of Ballybeg keep tugging at his heart, and the married couple who promise to raise Gar as their own son are every bit as pathetic as the tenants of the O’Donnell house. Giving the piece comic drive and setting it apart from other dysfunctional family plays is Friel’s conceit of splitting Gar into his public front and private thoughts, the former played with wrenching inner torment by Jim True, the latter with much charm, though slightly overmuch showmanship, by Robert Sean Leonard.

Though this quite capable Roundabout mounting reminds us how beautiful Friel’s text is, it doesn’t quite sink under our skins, maybe because, with two intermissions, the play runs nearly three hours (a seemingly uncut version at the Irish Repertory Theater several years ago came in at just over two). Also, subtler manifestations of drunkenness might make both Aideen O’Kelly, as the American mom, and Jarlath Conroy, as the man who might have been Da, more effective. Priceless, though, is the hurt on Miriam Healy-Louie’s face when she realizes the extent of Gar’s cowardice.

Where (at Irish Rep) W.B. Brydon’s S.B. was gruff and impenetrable, Milo O’Shea seems more the set-in-his-ways, Willy Loman type, which is more watchable but ultimately less moving. This time, S.B. holds out the olive branch a couple of times, and it is the son who swats it away as if to say, too little, too late. Script notwithstanding, this S.B. would cry in front of Gar, so his sobbing over Gar’s suitcase doesn’t shake us to the core.

Still, to crab further at Joe Dowling’s staging would be to underestimate its solid workmanship. No Broadway play this year is likely to have so much to savor unless Friel writes it himself.

*
(Staged by Joe Dowling for the Roundabout Theater Company, Brian Friel’s Philadelphia, Here I Come! ran at the Criterion Center – Stage Right.)

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