AISLE SAY New York

December 2018 at 59E59

Reviewed by David Spencer

December 19, 2018

The timing of new shows at 59E59 tends to work out as a series of tryptics, and the latest batch are the usual eclectic selection.

First there’s The Net Will Appear by Erin Mallon, which falls somewhere between human comedy and drama lite, taking place on opposite terrace-like areas outside of bedroom windows of two suburban houses. The "terraces" are unfenced, but safe enough if you don’t venture toward the edges (that’s not a portent; there’s a close call or two, but nobody falls; there’d be no play if they did, and besides, the proscenium floor is only about two feet below); and the two characters who regularly crawl out of their windows to take their solace are Bernard (Richard Masur), a curmudgeonly old coot who tends to get quietly drunk, to dull the pain of watching his offstage wife deteriorate from an unspecified illness that certainly involves dementia and is probably Alzheimer’s; and Rory (Eve Johnson) an irrepressibly chatty nine year old girl from what seems to be the only Jewish family in the neighborhood—who, despite her tireless spirit, expresses a certain disenfranchisement from her classmates and a little from her family.

You can see how this one will go: the little girl brings out the hidden heart of the old man, the old man validates the girl’s spunk and imagination, they become unlikely friends, one of them will have to move away, but they will be in touch and always a part of each other, cue music, drive home safe. There’s nothing much surprising here, but under the direction of Mark Cirnigliaro, the performers keep it afloat. Young Ms. Gordon is a little too irrepressible to have complete naturalistic control of her body language and her verbal delivery—but if you’re often aware of watching a child perform, you also have to give her full marks for holding her own opposite the redoubtable old pro Mr. Masur, who has the generosity of spirit to let her.

Next up is Bitter Greens, in which a quartet of twenty-somethings, friends since college, start trying to make their way in their various chosen professions; but one of them, always thought to be the surest bet for quick success, finds herself hitting the wall via circumstance that hits home in a most ironic fashion—and she impulsively decides to react by injecting her own irony, borne of jealousy, into the mix. Though the energy of the play is very active and American, it explores territory that would not be out of place in a male-centric dark comedy by the late British dramatist Simon Gray (say, Butley or Otherwise Engaged)—without quite as much verbal wit, but with more poisonous aggression.

            As this hub character, playwright Clea DeCrane does pretty well balancing ambivalence, conscience and passive-aggressive rage while providing the play’s motor. The others are bit of a mixed bag, the men (Andy Do and Ben Lorenz, the latter playing an interloper from outside the quartet) being more easily naturalistic, and the women (Jessica Darrow and Regan Sims) in that  slightly too-bright “making a character statement” realm, periodically cracking verisimilitude by reminding you of actors at work in a play; what a thespian friend of mine refers to as “schmacting.” But they’re talented enough that this may be at least as much a function of where the otherwise efficient direction (Kevin Kittle), falls short. In any event, Bitter Greens is the kind of play that fits neatly into the interesting-enough-that-I-look-forward-to-what-she-does-next category, and holds stage for all of its 90 intermissionless minutes.

Finally, there’s The Hello Girls, which subtitles itself A New American Musical, the adjective specifically to underscore the subject matter: It’s a docu-drama—with, in the program, an admission of certain fictional liberties—about the corps of female telephone operators who served in the Army, at first behind the lines and later at the Front, in the European arena, specifically France, during WWII.

            At least in the circles in which I travel, there have been two reactions to The Hello Girls. (1) I really love it; and (2) I liked it, I didn’t love it, but I admire it. I can see the credibility in both reactions.

On the first, you have an inspiring story told pretty well and very clearly (book by Peter Mills and Cara Reichel), with a score of solid, well-crafted and appropriate music and lyrics (Mills), that is creatively directed (Reichel) on a unit multi-level set (Liliane Arnold) which nonetheless functions as an open space in which very little, including props, is literal—though the costumes (Whitney Locher) are period-and-locale-specific. Members of the fine ensemble cast play the accompanying instruments (musical direction by cast member Ben Moss, who co-orchestrated with Mills) and the only “production value” as common parlance implies it, is good old-fashioned stagecraft that engages with the audience’s imagination to create the universe.

On the second, and I admittedly fall in that camp, I was a little distanced from it, until deep into Act Two, because I was a little too aware of how it was put together. On the one hand, how can I not be?; it’s my job (as critic, musical dramatist and periodically dramaturg) to observe how and why. But I found myself consciously having my attention drawn to the mechanics of structure. I’m not alone, among group #2 people, in being a little distracted by Mills’ (to my ear) overuse of an ABAB rhyme scheme, which had the unfortunate effect of making exacting and precise craft sometimes seem schematic and predictable. And the narrate-from-within technique, which probably goes back at least as far as the RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby, and arguably to The Fantasticks—which I happily endorse as a great way to cover sweeping and epic storylines without the physical constraints of full, literal sets—also, here, seemed to tacitly announce its beats before we arrived at them; perhaps because as the Hello Girls pursue their goals one step at a time, we start to know that as each step is articulated, the next dramatic segment will be that step realized and the next step articulated and etc. Which may be endemic to the material.

Anyway, no matter which camp you fall into, the verdict is still that the show is very worth seeing.

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