Theater Reviews

Susan Granger’s review of “Skeleton Crew” (Westport Country Playhouse)

 

As the completion of her “Detroit Project” trilogy, playwright Dominique Morisseau chronicles the final days of a quartet of hard-working employees at a Detroit auto-stamping factory that is rumored to be about to close.

After spending 29 years on the assembly line and eagerly anticipating her pension, Faye (Perri Gaffney) sits at a table in scenic designer Caite Hevner’s realistically detailed break room. She’s the union leader of UAW 167, so she feels entitled to ignore the prominently posted NO SMOKING signs.

Once again chiding her about breaking company rules, the plant foreman Reggie (Sean Nelson), who happens to be the son of Faye’s longtime friend, confides that management has decided to shut down the premises, making her promise not to tell her co-workers they’re going to be laid off.

Enter ambitious Dez (Leland Fowler), who reveals that he’s planning to open his own repair shop. And Shanita (Toni Martin), a very pregnant single mom who relishes what she perceives as her job security: “I love the way the line needs me. You step away, the whole operation shuts down.” Indeed, Shanita confesses that she’s already passed on a job offer she received at a local print store.

And it turns out that Faye, a resilient breast-cancer survivor, is now homeless, living out of her car, sleeping in the break room on cold wintry nights.

But then a series of robberies hits the plant. Suspicion falls on Dez, who is not only hiding a gun but a mysteriously wrapped pouch in his locker.

Dominique Morisseau, who won the 2018 MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, creates vibrant characters who speak like middle-class African-Americans and, sometimes, their dialect is difficult to decipher. But their tenuous dilemma, set at the height of the economic recession of 2008, is all-too-real. They’re striving for the American dream which now seems out-of-reach.

Director LA Williams has assembled an astute cast of skilled actors who embody their respective frustrations, eliciting compassion in this depressing, albeit authentic social commentary.

Playing in Westport through June 22, tickets are available by calling 203-227-4177 or online at westportplayhouse.org

Susan Granger’s review of “Luzia” (Cirque du Soliel at Citi Field)

 

It must be springtime because Canada’s celebrated Cirque du Soliel has returned to Citi Field with a dazzling new production, “Luzia: A Waking Dream of Mexico,” a veritable fiesta of fantasy.

After entering the Grand Chapiteau, audiences are greeted by the traditional clown traveler (Fool Koller), who parachutes down into a field of marigolds, where he discovers a gigantic key, as a graceful monarch butterfly guides him through different facets of Mexico’s rich culture and traditions.

“Luzia” combines the sound of ‘luz’ (Spanish for ‘light’) with ‘illuvia’ (Spanish for ‘rain’). Technically, it’s amazing, from the immense waterfall that shimmers with images of birds, fish, and flowers, seemingly drenching performers/gymnasts engaged in impressive athletic feats.

Early on, there are two giant treadmills as a running woman-dressed-as-a-butterfly (Shelli Epstein) flits from one to another, followed by a troupe of hoop divers, clad as hummingbirds. Then there’s a tribute to Mexico’s obsession with soccer with Abou Traore and Laura Biondo manipulating a ball.

Cyr wheel performers Rosa Tyyska and Nora Zoller spin through a curtain of rain, while Enya White gracefully twirls above them on a trapeze.

Aerial strap acrobat Stephen Brine twists and turns over a pool of water, representing a sinkhole or cenote; Cylios Pytak dazzles with his juggling act; and Aleksei Goloborodko is an awesome contortionist.

Written and directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca, who co-authored the concept with his late wife Julie Hamelin Finzi, the performance, staged on dual turntables, features 44 artists from 15 countries with live music, elegant set design, sumptuous costumes, and inventive puppetry, including a galloping metallic horse, a hulking cougar, a slithering snake, a lurking cockroach and a wary armadillo.

“Luzia” will remain at Citi Field until Sunday, June 9^th. Tickets start at $54 and can be up-graded to $275.  And it’s wise to purchase the full-color program that identifies the performers and explains the inspiration behind each act.

Susan Granger’s review of “Tootsie” (Marquis Theatre)

 

I had my doubts about anyone filling Dustin Hoffman’s heels as struggling actor Michael Dorsey-turned-Dorothy Michaels but I was wrong. Santino Fontana is sensational in the deceptive dual-rule.

Working from a satirically playful script by Robert Horn, set to David Yazbek’s jazzy score, director Scott Ellis has cleverly re-imagined Larry Gelbart and Murray Shisgal’s subversive 1982 screenplay, updating its farcical concept with razor-sharp timing, energetic pacing and smartass feminist dynamics.

In this version, narcissistic, self-defeating Michael Dorsey (Santino Fontana) is persona-non-grata in New York theater. So when his neurotic, co-dependent ex Sandy (Sarah Stiles) mentions that the Nurse role in an absurd Shakespearean musical called “Juliet’s Curse” has suddenly become available, Michael goes to the audition in drag, introducing himself as Dorothy Michaels.

Persuasive Dorothy not only lands the part but also wins the respect/admiration of millionaire producer Rita Marshall (Julie Halston) and the heart of hunky Max Van Horn (John Behlmann), a sublimely stupid reality-TV “Bachelor” star who plays Romeo’s brother Craig.

Michael’s only friend/confidante is his wannabe playwright roommate Jeff (Andy Grotelueschen), who tartly questions his judgment: “At a time when women are literally clutching their power back from between the legs of men, you have the audacity to take a job away from one by perpetrating one?”

Dealing with egocentric director/choreographer Ron Carlisle (Ron Rogers), who loathes troublesome, outspoken Michael Dorsey, is another matter. And further complications arise when Dorothy/Michael is romantically attracted to unsuspecting Julie Nichols (Lilli Cooper), who plays Juliet.

To prepare for playing two entirely different characters, Santana Fontana, whose biggest previous role was the Prince in “Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella,” had his chest and legs waxed, along with adjusting to Spanx, pantyhose, kitten heels and mastering a flawless falsetto.

Fontana’s meticulous transformation is miraculous, making dowdy Dorothy “assertive, but not bitchy, compassionate, but not emotional.”

All the supporting players are superb: hilarious Sarah Stiles, droll Andy Grotelueschen, irascible Ron Rogers, genial Julie Halston, funny John Behlmann, lilting Lilli Cooper, and acerbic Michael McGrath as Michael’s exasperated agent.

Credit David Rockwell for effective scenic design, Donald Holder for supportive lighting, Denis Jones for choreography, William Ivey Long for costumes and Paul Huntley for hair and wigs.

Treat yourself – “Tootsie” has an open-ended run at Broadway’s Marquis Theater.

 

 

 

 

Susan Granger’s review of “Ink” (Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)

 

Mills College: Journalism 101 – in our first class, Pierre Salinger (night editor of the “San Francisco Chronicle” before he became JFK’s Press Secretary) taught us the five essential questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why?

That same lesson begins James Graham’s irreverent, Olivier Award-winning play which delves into the defining historical moment in 1969, when the British media underwent a bold, brassy populist revolution.

“’Why?’ isn’t worth asking,” insists ambitious, adrenalized Australian entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch (Bertie Carvel). “It’s ‘What’s next?’”

After buying the U.K.’s “Daily Sun,” Murdoch hires Larry Lamb (Jonny Lee Miller) as its editor. Reminding him that he’s the “son of a Yorkshire blacksmith,” brusque Murdoch cleverly plays on Lamb’s inherent class resentment, since he was repeatedly passed over for the top job at “The Mirror,” a rival tabloid.

Within in year, Murdoch’s failing Fleet Street broadsheet (full-sized newspaper) becomes a best-selling, testosterone-driven tabloid. When ethical questions inevitably arise, pandering to the populace’s baser instincts always wins over quality reporting.  

Emphasizing sex, television and celebrity gossip, the “Sun” became synonymous with fun. But Lamb is warned by a member of Fleet Street’s Old Guard: “Pander to and promote the most base instincts of people all you like…create an appetite, but I warn you. You’ll have to keep feeding it.”

As fastidious, yet ferociously fanatic Murdoch, Bertie Carvel is almost reptilian in his diabolical avariciousness, easily manipulating Jonny Lee Miller as intrepid, inspired Larry Lamb, telling him: “Get the readers to become the storytellers…Isn’t that the real point of the revolution? When they’re producing their own content themselves?”

Director Rupert Goold, who helmed London’s West End production, conjures the pre-digital, pre-Internet, pre-PC Fleet Street world, adroitly mixing in music and dance, aided and abetted by choreographer Lynne Page, with production design/projections by Jon Driscoll, lighting by Neil Austin, sets & costumes by Bunny Christie, music & sound by Adam Cork.

“Ink” concludes with Murdoch heading to New York, determined to make TV news more populist, claiming, “Countries reinvent themselves all the time.” Onto Trump and Brexit.

During my lifetime, American journalism has changed radically, and this current season of plays, including “Network” and “Lifespan of a Fact,” reflects that. So – what’s next?

Susan Granger’s review of “Hillary and Clinton” (Golden Theater)

 

Blending fact with fiction, Lucas Hnath’s barbed comedy imagines what might have happened in a parallel universe on an alternate Earth, where a woman named Hillary was in the midst of a hard-fought Democratic primary race in New Hampshire in January, 2008.

Striding on-stage, Hillary (Laurie Metcalf) grasps a microphone stand, only to discover the microphone is missing. Undaunted, she retrieves one from the wings but it’s obvious from the get-go that she’s having a tough time getting her message across.

When her pollster/campaign manager Mark (Zak Orth) informs her that, after the Iowa caucuses, she’s trailing in the polls and they’re quickly running out of money, he begs Hillary not to call her husband Bill, a former POTUS. Of course, she does.

When Bill arrives, verbal fireworks ignite.  Hillary knows how much Bill has been banking for speeches and public appearances, and she wants him to transfer funds into her campaign coffers. He’s not exactly opposed to that – but he’s also determined to stump for her.

“You’re missing an opportunity to take the thing I do well and use it to your advantage,” he says. “When I ran, I won.”

With Bill’s help and her own rare show of emotion at a luncheon, Hillary manages to win New Hampshire. But her victory is short-lived. Soon Barack (Peter Francis James) arrives with an offer to make her his vice-president, but she quickly suggests the reversal, which does not sit well with her opponent.

Lucas Hnath, who wrote the Ibsen sequel “A Doll’s House, Part 2,” for which Laurie Metcalf won a 2017 Tony Award, writes incisive, provocative dialogue, filled with fluid subtext. Hillary calls Bill “a stench she can’t shake,” and Bill bemoans that Barack’s meteoric rise makes him feel “erased, like I never existed.”

Monica Lewinsky’s name is never spoken, although Hillary alludes to how she staunchly stood by the philandering husband who publicly humiliated her,

Directed by Joe Mantello, both Metcalf and Lithgow are at the top of their game here.  She’s steely, straight-forward and steadfast in her ambition. He’s understated except when it comes to his intuitive ability to seduce voters. Chloe Lamford’s box set is bland and sparse, while the costumes by Rita Ryack are deliberately nondescript.

“Hillary and Clinton,” which runs 90 minutes, is performed without an intermission. If you leave your seat during the performance, you are not permitted to return.

 

 

Susan Granger’s review of “Smart Blonde” (59E39 Theaters)

 

My father (S. Sylvan Simon) produced Judy Holliday’s Oscar-winning film “Born Yesterday,” (1950), so I’ve always been intrigued by her unique talent. Unfortunately, Willy Holtzman’s biographical play about this extraordinary actress is too fragmented and episodic.

Judy Holliday originated the role of Billie Dawn onstage, and her competition for the Best Actress Oscar that year included Gloria Swanson in “Sunset Boulevard,” along with Anne Baxter and Bette Davis in “All About Eve.”

But that’s jumping ahead in her story, which somehow parallels that of another young Jewish girl, Fanny Brice, as in “Funny Girl.”

Playwright Willy Holtzman sets his play in 1964 – a year before Judy Holliday (Andrea Burns) succumbed to breast cancer at age 42 – when she was recording an unnamed album (perhaps “Holliday with Mulligan”) with her then-boyfriend, jazz saxophonist Gerry Mulligan (Mark Lotito). Flashbacks abound.

Born Judith Tuvim in New York City, Judy started in cabaret, forming a troupe, the Reveurs, playing at the Village Vanguard with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, accompanied by Leonard Bernstein on the piano.

Known for her genius IQ, Judy cleverly created a “dumb blonde” persona, deliberately fashioning that chirping voice, “Higher is funnier,” Holliday notes. “I do it for comic effect.”

Along the way, she developed close friendships with notable show business cohorts including Garson Kanin & Ruth Gordon (authors of “Born Yesterday”) and Marilyn Monroe.

Seven years after her “Born Yesterday” triumph, Judy won a Tony for the musical “The Bells Are Ringing,” besting Julie Andrews in “My Fair Lady” and Ethel Merman in “Happy Hunting.”

Judy Holliday was married to musician/recording executive David Oppenheim (Mark Lotito), with whom she had a son, and, apparently, she had a lesbian liaison with her best friend Yetta Cohn (Andrea Bianchi). Perhaps Judy’s most harrowing ‘performance’ was in 1952 before Sen. Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, where she refused to name names.

That’s a great deal of territory to cover in 90 minutes, particularly since Holtzman punctuates the narrative with 10 musical numbers, including songs co-written by Holliday and Mulligan, like “What’s the Rush” and “It Must Be Christmas.”`

While Andrea Burns is utterly charming, even endearing, in her mimicry, director Peter Flynn struggles with the book’s lack of connective tissue, utilizing Tony Ferrieri’s realistic set and Alan Edward’s lighting.

Apparently, Willy Holtzman is currently developing this memory play into a film.

 

 

 

 

Susan Granger’s review of “To Kill A Mockingbird” (Shubert Theater on Broadway)

 

While Aaron Sorkin adaptation is basically faithful to Harper Lee’s beloved 1960 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, delving into race, justice, bigotry, compassion and forgiveness, it’s a subtly revisionist version.

In the prologue, the youngsters Scout (Celia Keenan-Bolger), her older brother Jem (Will Pullen) and their friend Dill (Gideon Glick) are in what appears to be a barren, old, dilapidated building, wondering about what really happened on the night Bob Ewell (Frederick Weller) died. Did he really fall on his own knife? To persistent, often petulant Scout, something doesn’t add up.

Suddenly, Miriam Beuther’s stylized set design evolves into a 1934 Maycomb, Alabama, courtroom, complete with an elevated judge’s bench, jury box, and witness stand with adjacent spectator seats.

At the defense table is Tom Robinson (Gbenga Akinnagbe), a black laborer who has been falsely accused of beating and raping 19 year-old Mayella Ewell (Erin Wilhelmi). At his side (with his back to the audience) sits his defense lawyer Atticus Finch (Jeff Daniels), known as the most honest man in town.

Atticus firmly believes you can’t really know someone unless you climb into someone’s skin and inhabit it. He firmly believes in the fundamental goodness in everyone, even hate-filled Ku Klux Klan members. There are good people on both sides, he insists, echoing Donald Trump’s remark.

Atticus excuses Bob Ewell’s virulent racism by saying he recently lost his job and explains a cantankerous neighbor’s prejudice because she’s sick and stopped taking her morphine. During the course of the play, Atticus’s beliefs in the nature of decency are sorely challenged.

Working with director Bartlett Sher (“South Pacific,” “My Fair Lady”), Aaron Sorkin (“The Social Network,” “Moneyball,” “West Wing, “The Newsroom”) not only makes the timely connection between Jim Crowe Maycomb and contemporary Charlottesville but he also amplifies the role of Finch’s outspoken Africa-American maid, Calpurnia (LaTanya Richardson Jackson).

In addition, Sorkin injects Dill’s oddball best-friend character with Truman Capote’s unmistakable characteristics, including memories of being locked in his room while his mother went husband-hunting.

How does the play compare with the iconic 1962 movie, starring Gregory Peck? The most jarring change is casting adults as children; Celia Keenan-Bolger is 41. Although the actors are talented, I found the loss of childhood innocence very disconcerting.

“To Kill A Mockingbird” runs 2 hours and 35 minutes with one intermission, and if you leave your seat for any reason during the performance, you are not allowed to return.

 

 

Susan Granger’s review of “Network” (Belasco Theatre)

 

Uncannily prescient Paddy Chayefsky wrote the screenplay for Sidney Lumet’s Oscar-winning film back in 1976, depicting an angry, frustrated TV news anchorman who urged viewers to open their windows, stick their heads out and scream, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Now – 42 years later – that sentiment is just as timely and relevant – if not more so.

Bryan Cranston (“Breaking Bad”) plays Howard Beale, the veteran broadcaster with Tony Goldwyn (“Scandal”) as his best friend, Max Schumacher, president of the network news division, and Tatiana Maslany (“Orphan Black”) as Diana Christensen, a relentlessly ambitious programming executive. (Peter Finch, William Holden and Faye Dunaway played these respective roles in the movie)

When burnt-out, depressed Beale threatens to blow his brains out on live television, he becomes a populist sensation; his audience grows exponentially bigger the more obviously deranged he becomes.

Thematically, it revolves around the increasing corporatization of news media, algorithmic newsfeeds, and the gradual degradation of truth that has resulted in the proliferations of “fake news.”

Faithfully adapted by Lee Hall (“Billy Elliot”) and meticulously directed by Ivo van Hove (Broadway revivals of “A View From the Bridge,” “The Crucible”) with a highly creative production team, it’s a multi-media presentation with several hand-held cameras simultaneously tracking what’s happening on-stage, projected into a gigantic screen that dominates the set.

“As a teenager when I first saw ‘Network’ on the screen, I thought it was science-fiction. That science-fiction has not become our reality,” notes Ivo van Hove. “All its relationships are scarred. It’s a tragedy about the loss of values.”

“I was in college when it came out, and it was impactful, brazen – shocking in many cases,” adds Bryan Cranston, who is mesmerizing as Beale. “I grew up with Harry Reasoner and Walter Cronkite, people that seemed very authoritative. It never occurred to me that they were packaging information….These days, if you’re not skeptical, you’re naïve. If you believe everything you see on CNN or Fox or MSNBC, you’re gullible. Because the news is a news-entertainment product.”

FYI prescient playwright Paddy Chayefsky died in 1981, long before his ominous predictions came true.

Susan Granger’s review of “The Lifespan of a Fact” (Studio 54)

 

As a journalist, I found this world premiere production of a play by Jeremy Kareken, David Murrel and Gordon Farrell to be one of the most provocative and challenging of the season.

Here’s the set-up: an eagerly conscientious literary magazine employee Jim Fingal (Daniel Radcliffe) is summoned to the office of his boss, Emily Penrose (Cherry Jones), and assigned to fact-check an exceedingly important essay by John D’Agata (Bobby Cannavale) – and they’re on a tight print deadline.

The lengthy essay relates the suicide of teenage Levi Presley in Las Vegas, exploring the wider culture of suicide in that Sin City.

Ambitious, just-out-of-Harvard Fingal soon discovers that egotistical D’Agata doesn’t let incontestable particulars get in the way of a good story so – after trying in vain to phone and e-mail elusive D’Agata – he travels over the weekend from Manhattan to the Nevada desert for a face-to-face confrontation with the evasive author.

Known for taking literary liberties, pompous D’Agata writes that there 34 strip clubs in Las Vegas; diligent Fingal finds there are actually only 31.  Facts are facts, he insists, demanding truth. To which, D’Agata arrogantly counters, “The rhythm of ‘34’ works better than the rhythm of ’31,’ so I changed it.”

But that’s just the first of a deluge of questions that fast-talking Fingal has for the antagonistic essayist. Eventually, exasperated Emily Penrose is summoned to facilitate and mediate.

Essentially, the author insists that total accuracy in names, dates and incidents is less important than the beauty and flow of the language, a concept that dates back from Cicero and Herodotus and up to Didion and Sontag: “I’m not interested in accuracy; I’m interested in truth.”

The meticulous fact-checker asserts that incorrect specifics not only get the way of the story but make its publication open to lawsuits.

Cleverly adapted from the 2012 Essay Book by John D’Agata and Him Fingal, it’s vigorously directed by Leigh Silverman whose efficient production team includes set designer Mimi Lien. Costumer Linda Cho, lighting designer Jennifer Schriever, music/sound designer Palmer Heffernan, and production designer Lucy Mackinnon.

Daniel Radcliffe’s compelling performance propels the drama, demonstrating not only his astonishing versatility but acute comic timing. He’s ably matched by menacing Bobby Cannavale and authoritative Cherry Jones.

“The Lifespan of a Fact” is tantalizing, exciting theater!

 

Susan Granger’s review of “King Kong” (The Broadway Theatre)

 

It’s all about the 20-foot tall gorilla!

In 1930s New York City, wannabe actress Ann Darrow (Christiani Pitts) has endured enough auditions and rejections to accept an offer from cynical filmmaker Carl Denham (Eric William Morris) to be his ‘leading lady’ on an expedition to a remote place called Skull Island, home of King Kong.

Straight off her family’s farm, spunky Ann has no idea what’s in store for her, nor does and the crew, including Denham’s kindhearted lackey known as Lumpy (Erik Lochtefeld), whom she insists on calling Len, his rightful name.

The ship’s scenic departure from New York Harbor with Peter England’s accompanying video projections demonstrate superb stagecraft.

Based on the movie and novelization, book writer Jack Thorne (“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”) is determined to make Ann into a feisty feminist with an unwavering desire to be “Queen of New York,” as opposed to exploring the vulnerability of screen star Fay Wray.

Naturally, this dilutes the impact of her relationship with the sympathetic, sorrowful-eyed simian, particularly since Ms. Pitts’ voice is shrill and she cannot act. Eddie Perfect’s maudlin songs and Marius de Vries’ score are equally unimpressive.

But what the audience comes to see is King Kong. Designed by Sonny Tilders, created by Global Features and voiced by Jon Hoche, the 2,000-pound marionette is Broadway’s new animatronic attraction, its limbs manipulated by 10 technicians while three additional operators work a pulley system and an automation pro controls the off-stage robotics.

“It was a crazy idea that should probably never have been done,” director/choreographer Drew McOnie said.

Inevitably, the memorabilia merchandising includes T-shirts and hats. Plus, Ii you’re so inclined during intermission, you can purchase a cocktail a cocktail called the Kongopolitan (vodka, triple sec, cranberry juice and lime juice).

This $35 million musical is an event, a curiosity that should appeal to tourists and children.