AISLE SAY New York

NEW & REVIVED PLAYS AT SEASON'S END

Reviewed by David Spencer

There has been some wonder at the fact that Bette Midler was denied a Tony nomination for her tour de force performance as ferocious, caustic Hollywood agent Sue Mengers in John Logan’s one-woman play I’ll Eat You Last. But to me it’s not that much of a mystery. Oh, Ms. Midler delivers her lines expertly and taps into the emotional core of Sue Mengers—at least Sue Mengers as written by John Logan—with admirable and affecting sincerity. But Ms. Mengers herself isn’t quite as much fun to spend 90 intermissionless minutes with as she’s cracked up to be.

                        Between her narcissism and her narrow “all show biz all the time” focus, Mengers is something of a wearing presence, and I say that as a fellow who pretty much makes his living in musical theatre and totally understands both the obsession with a world of art and the lack of connectivity to many “civilian” sensibilities. And yet…those who cross the line that separates being a fellow traveler from being unsettlingly myopic can inspire less a sense of fun than a sense of there but for the grace of better sense (or whatever) go I. We love being part of a community. Sharers of a pathology…not so much. Also, I think with the digital information explosion, that kind of tunnel vision isn’t the adorable character trait it may once have been, even in a larger-than-life figure. Even a character profile can have its era, and now Sue Mengers’ kind of absorption comes off as somehow unseemly in one who should know better.

                        This is not to assert that the material and Ms. Midler aren’t hugely entertaining, for they are indeed. And the direction of Joe Mantello, in the tradition of all the best one-person plays, is both deft and invisible. It’s just that, when all is said and done, you understand why her major clients started to trickle way in the end. They must have found her exhausting…

Another glimpse of bygone Hollywood is to be found in the Roundabout revival of Clifford Odets’ 1948 drama The Big Knife. It tells what is now a very familiar tale of how Hollywood is a merciless town dedicated to corrupting nobility. In this case it’s actor Charlie Castle (Bobby annavale) who wants to leave the rat race behind, mollify his agitated wife (Marin Ireland), and return to New York theatre and a far less lucrative but much more sustainably sane life. His dedicated Dutch Uncle of an agent (Chip Zien) isn’t so sure hat this can be pulled off, because the producer who expects Charlie to sign a new contract, Marcus Hoff (the ironically named Richard Kind) can be unscrupulous. It’s no surprise that morality, good intentions and firm resolve don’t stand a chance.

                        Charlie Castle is way too articulate and philosophical for a guy in his straits, which tends to emphasize how overwritten the play is, though there are good roles for everyone to play (except maybe the wife, who mostly exists to badger her husband when he falls from grace, a thankless and cliché role common of the period—remember Elizabeth, tragic hero John Proctor’s wife in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible?—albeit with better-than-usual dialogue) and under the direction of Doug Hughes, they are played extraordinarily well (even the wife), with, wouldn’t you know it, Richard Kind as the bad guy producer stealing the show.

                        But it’s a show that’s about unpleasant things occurring in an unpleasant industry town, and in the end doesn’t have much to say other than Don’t trust Hollywood or you’re fucked, so, you know, what price glory? Like the show about Sue Mengers, The Big Knife isn’t a place where you need to spend a lot of time to get the message.

By contrast, The Nance by Douglas Carter Beane is a swell little drama about showbiz under fire. In it, the redoubtable Nathan Lane plays burlesque comic  Chauncey Miles, whose specialty is playing effeminate characters—more accurately one mincing character in numerous sketch-comedy guises, who has two signature catch-phrases: “Hi, simply hi!” for a greeting, and when identified as homosexual, “Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m a bad person!” It’s a comic archetype that has a category in burlesque, that being the play’s title: nance. But this is 1937 and the mayor and his cronies are suddenly cracking down on burlesque and there are suddenly morality edicts. Bad enough when cops are watching your every move at the automat (a popular pickup locale, where men seeking to hook up employ “code” phrases and tells of gesture and/or appearance to indicate interest), but now the shows are being monitored for “decency.”

                        Though traditionally the nance characters were played by straight males from the chorus, Mr. Beane posits a featured headliner who is, in real life, the very thing he lampoons on stage, painting a classic, near-perfect portrait of a conflicted personality. This is made powerfully manifest in the difference between Chauncey’s onstage life, in which he is a master of comedy timing, and his private life, in which he fundamentally doesn’t believe he deserves the true love that has found him, in the person of a young protégé, Ned (Johnny Orsini).

                        Under the direction of Jack O’Brien, both facets are vivid and memorable, and the supporting cast, which includes familiar Lane compatriots Lewis J. Stadlen (as a fellow comic-slash impresario) and Cady Huffman (as a principal showgirl) is a top drawer class act all the way.

Nikolai and the Others by Richard Nelson isn’t quite as affecting a drama, but it too has its show business authenticity. The setting is a farmhouse outside of Westport, Connecticut, the time is 1948 (same as The Big Knife) and the occasion is a gathering of renowned Russian-born lively-artists of all disciplines—including choreography (George Balanchine played by Michael Ceveris), set design (Sergey Sudeikin played by Alvin Epstein), acting (Vladimir Sokoloff  played by John Procaccino), and composition (Igor Stravinsky played by John Glover). Composition is recognized as well, sort of, by our title character, also a real-life figure, Nikolai “Nicky” Nabokov (Stephen Kunken), though (at least as the play tells it) he hasn’t devoted much time to composition in a long while, having devoted too much of his time and energy to being a kind of "fixer" for the artistic Russian community, running interference between them and governmental red tspe, interference and threat. Little do they know he does this at the behest of the government, who pay him to keep an eye on his compatriots, an increasingly pressured job as the Red Scare in America is escalating. (Most are accompanied bu their wives who take positions that are both subservient and supportive, itself an inextricable socio-political dynamic of the time, though, wisely, Mr. Nelson allows that dynamic to be implicit.)

                        Nelson's play examines the dichotomy between wanting to be simply an artist and yet, due to circumstance and association, indelibly perceived as a political artist, capable of making an unwitting "statement" at any turn.

                        Different states of being within this spotlight are dramatized and Mr. Nelson examines them all with a refreshing lack of conclusion-drawing and moralizing. He keeps the issues provocatively gray while at the same time keeping even his darkest characters worthy of empathy. Ironically, this makes the play and his work very political indeed. Under the direction of David Cromer the cast is sharp and interesting enough to have you believe, for the duration, if you’re willingly complicit, that you’re there in the enclave of those actual folks…

Things political are also a key factor in Colin Quinn: Unconstitutional which, as the title might suggests, has the popular comedian giving the United States Constitution a going over, starting with its preamble and navigating through all its  amendments. As with all Mr. Quinn's previous solo outings, Unconstitutional isn't a theatrical event so much as an extended, thematic stand up set. Imagine Jon Stewart as an Irish-American tough guy and you pretty much have the tenor of the evening.

Alan Cumming’s not-really but sortakinda one-man Macbeth makes a lotta people cheer and go woo-woo by the end, but I think those are the people who decide to endorse the star’s charisma, chutzpah, stamina, intensity and sincerity and fearlessness—all of which are palpable, none of which are negligible—and make peace with his limitations. Which are that, for all the characters he plays, he imbues none of them with full-blooded dimensionality, rather using broad mannerism and vocal attitude to distinguish them; and that he isn’t enough of a voice man, nor indeed a brilliant enough physical actor to make those distinctions more than mild. And of course, as the text is reduced to something that will fit into 90 intermissionless minutes (but less than that; accounting for physical business, it’s likely no more than 75 minutes’ worth of text) he can only really hit key story points. All of which adds up to: if you don’t know Macbeth going in, you’re going to have a rough time.

                        The production concept seems to be compelling to some. The setting is a cavernous observation chamber in a contemporary (though hardly state-of-the-art) sanitarium. Cumming, attended by a mostly-silent doctor (Jenny Sterlin) and burly attendant (Brendan Titley) is implicitly a fellow who has lived through some awful psychological trauma, one perhaps even of his own making (there are several brown paper bags marked “EVIDENCE” used throughout the play) and his pathological ritual is to relive it under observation, with Macbeth as its tacit metaphor. I don’t mean to say, “Oh those one-man Shakespeare evenings set in insane asylums, they’re a dime a dozen,” but I nonetheless found this implicit variation on The Curse of the Flying Dutchman corny and familiar. Mr. Cumming’s solo performance was directed by two: John Tiffany & Andrew Goldberg.

                        Just to have it said, Tom Gualtieri’s differently perpetually recurring That Play (because no matter how often it closes, it keeps coming back for encore engagements), directed by Heather Hill, is a far superior, infinitely clearer and also slyer treatment of Macbeth as a one-hander. Next time it resurfaces (what time is it now?), give it a look.

For another class act, you can’t go wrong with director Michael Wilson’s revival of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful. The latest in a line of classic 20th Century American plays being remounted with a cast comprised completely (or in this case predominantly) of African American actors, it is arguably (but perhaps not very much so) the most effective realization of the——if I may call it this—cultural experiment, because not only needn’t the audience make certain textual allowances to support the hoped-for verisimilitude; but because in many respects, the play works not only as well, but better with a black family at its center. The lower-middle class stature of the family characters in no way contradicts a similar black experience; the personal idiosyncrasies that define the characters take on fascinating new dimension, and because the authenticity of Texas life is ever-present in Foote’s writing, there’s also a concurrent transcendence of ethnicity.

                        As you may know, the story focuses on an old woman who escapes from where she lives—the apartment of her son and daughter in law—to take one last look at the house where she grew up, located in a town that has been abandoned. And everything you’ve heard about Cicely Tyson in the role is true. It’s a cliché to say it, but she truly does make you fall in love with Carrie Watts, and gives one of the most endearing performances I’ve seen in all my years of going to the theatre. She transforms what has always been a sweet little play into something magical.

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