On the Stage: Let Me Down Easy, Wishful Drinking, A Steady Rain, and Hamlet

KEVIN SESSUMS

Kevin Sessums is back in the theatre for Towleroad this season. Kevin is also a contributing editor at Parade and The Daily Beast. His memoir, Mississippi Sissy, won a Lambda Literary Award last year.

There have been an awful lot of openings on Broadway and off-Broadway these past few weeks - and mostly it’s been a rather awful lot. But there have been some surprises as well. The shows I most wanted to see disappointed and the ones I had to drag myself to ended up moving me in unexpected ways. First up for my thoughts this season are the ones I have grouped into the “presentational” category. Each of them to varying degrees is imbued with a proffered theatricality rather than an innate one.

Let’s start with the best of the bunch, Anna Deavere Smith’s Let Me Down Easy at the estimable Second Stage. This was one of the shows I had to drag myself to. I have admired Ms. Smith in the past more than I have been moved or entertained by her. She can seem indulgent and even cloying from time to time when performing in work other than her own - Nurse Jackie on Showtime, for example, or in the film Rachel Getting Married. And yet a kind of astringent stridency - the exact opposite of cloying - has been the hallmark of her two past well-received one-woman shows I have seen - Fires in the Mirror, about the Crown Heights riots, and Twilight: Los Angeles, which concerned the even more infamous riots that erupted after the Rodney King verdict.

In the past I have considered Smith’s singular talent — she received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant in 1996 - to be the one she employs leading up to the performance aspect of her work, which is to interview an array of people regarding a subject and then to edit these interviews with a searing precision into a chorus of voices and characters that are channeled through her in the productions that are subsequently staged. It is her ability to listen and elicit that has always struck me, not that ultimate channeling. It is a kind of heightened form of journalism she practices which is then raised, at its best, to art. Let Me Down Easy is an example of such a raising. It is, to me, her first true work of art. It is a stunning achievement.

The subject she tackles in Let Me Down Easy is the most universal she has ever broached: how we all must face our own mortality. An offshoot of such a subject is the more topical one of the health care system with which many of us must deal before facing our impending deaths. But such topicality does not diminish the depth of Let Me Down Easy. She gracefully weaves both subjects into an evening filled with insight and laughter and, in the truest sense, soul.

Let Me Down Easy had its premiere back in January 2008 at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre. Since then the show has changed directors and its current one, Leonard Foglia, has no doubt aided Smith in streamlining it into its now intermissionless 90 minutes by jettisoning some of the initial people she had interviewed and channeled. Yet even now the evening’s one drawback is that it seems to have several endings until it reaches its final grace note as Smith so simply and profoundly lets the play itself come to rest in the words and actions of Buddhist monk Matthew Ricard. Indeed grace itself seems to have been Smith’s guidepost as she put this production together.

Other standout monologues are culled from the interviews she conducted with Ann Richards, former governor of Texas; Trudy Howell, the director of Chance Orphanage in Johannesburg, South Africa; Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, a physician a Charity Hospital in New Orleans; Susan Youens, a musicologist from the University of Notre Dame; and even Lance Armstrong, the Tour de France victor, and Michael Bentt, Heavyweight Champion boxer. There are 20 monologues in all. The subjects are as diverse as their own takes on death. But it is Anna Deavere Smith herself who remains in the memory, her own brave voice somehow revealed in the humility of subsuming it so that others can speak through her. It is a kind of alchemy that cannot really be described. One must witness it just as she serves as a witness for the men and women who put so much trust in her. And trust me on this: if you see one show this season, see this one. It has already been extended for an extra month until December 6th.

T T T T (out of 4 possible T's)

Let Me Down Easy, Second Stage Theatre, 305 W. 43rd Street, New York. Ticket information here.

***WISHFUL DRINKING

The other one-woman show currently on the boards is Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking, at the Roundabout’s theatrical redoubt at Studio 54. Based on her bestseller of the same name, this evening could not be further from the kind of theatre Anna Deavere Smith is conjuring at Second Stage. Fisher does not so much conjure as con — and yet there is nothing more charming or enjoyable than a really great con when they are on their game and Fisher is certainly on hers. Just don’t go to Wishful Drinking thinking you are doing to be deeply moved. You are, however, going to laugh a lot — which is the way Fisher herself has always deemed to deal with her demons of drug addiction and bipolar disorder. And yet, those are the two issues in her life that get short shift in the evening. The show is much more about the pitfalls of fame and is padded, as she prattles on about it with that keen combination of cynicism and sentimentality honed in the hills and psychiatrist offices of Hollywood, with her special kind of one-liners — the most engaging of zingers that, even as they expertly land and elicit the expected laughter, result in an emotional disengagement that therefore serve as a gauge themselves to the underlying sadness to the evening and her life. I found the whole thing oddly wanting so, by the end, wanted it to.

T T (out of 4 possible T's)

Wishful Drinking, Studio 54, 254 W. 54th Street, New York. Ticket information here.

Reviews of Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig in A Steady Rain, and Jude Law in Hamlet,
AFTER THE JUMP...

Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig Scold Cell Phone User During Show

Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman, starring together in the police drama A Steady Rain on Broadway, interrupted their show on Wednesday twice when a cell phone went off in the audience, asking the audience member to shut it off.

On the other hand, how bout the video camera (with zoom) that caught the whole episode?

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

(via boy culture)

First Look: Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman as Chicago Cops

In May I posted about the upcoming Broadway production A Steady Rain featuring Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman as two Chicago cops. Here's the first publicity shot of the two actors together.

Now we know why Craig has been growing that pornstache. Previews begin September 10!

The plot: "This new American play by Keith Huff tells the story of two Chicago cops who are lifelong friends and whose differing accounts of a few harrowing days change their lives forever. Directing is John Crowley."

And here's some intense-looking art from the show's website:

Here's Your Chance to Suck on Daniel Craig

Del Monte Superfruit Smoothies created a lifelike version of Daniel Craig after polling 1,000 women which celebrity they'd like to see as a frozen treat. They modeled the ice pop after Craig's scene in Casino Royale.

"The Daniel Craig smoothie lollies are blueberry, pomegranate and cranberry flavoured and under 100 calories each. They are to be distributed during the first National Ice Cream Week which starts today and ends on June 7."

Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman Together in 'A Steady Rain'

The New York Post reports that Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman are coming to Broadway, together:

"The drama, 'A Steady Rain' by Keith Huff, is about two Chicago cops whose lifelong friendship is put to the test when they become involved in a domestic dispute in a poor neighborhood...Although 'A Steady Rain' is harsh and harrowing, one Broadway wag predicted that even those theatergoers whose tastes run to splashy musicals will want to see it. Said the wag: 'Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman in police uniforms? All the boys will be there!'"

News: Yellowstone, Jared Polis, Bangkok, Barney Frank, Seattle

Seattle-area couple charged with immigration fraud: "Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Tuesday morning arrested a south King County couple accused of cooking up bogus asylum applications that falsely asserted the immigrant was gay and faced persecution in his or her home country. Steven Mahoney, 41, and his estranged wife, Helen Mahoney, 38, -- who prosecutors say held themselves out for more than a decade as immigration experts -- are accused of charging fees to immigrants for helping them file fraudulent asylum applications."

The New Yorker profiles Barney Frank: "For the first time in more than forty years of public life, Frank has real power, and he is wielding it in a characteristically idiosyncratic manner. He remains a national symbol of outré sexuality as well as a rare wit in generally humor-deficient Washington."

U.S. Rep. Jared Polis secures seat on the House Committee on Education and Labor.

Anderson Cooper: "Get this bitch off the stage!"

Minnesota couple loses appeal in discrimination case: "Another setback for a lesbian couple trying to get a family membership at the Rochester Athletic Club. The Minneapolis Court of Appeals has upheld an Olmsted County judge’s ruling that the club did not discriminate against the women when it denied them a family membership. Amy and Sarah Monson, a same-sex couple raising a daughter together, sued in 2007, claiming the club discriminated against them based on their sexual orientation, a violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act. The club says it simply was following its policy to provide family rates only to married couples."

Mariah Carey joins those who recycle.

Neil Patrick Harris in NYC to host Saturday Night Live.

Simmering: Yellowstone quakes raise fears of massive steam explosion.

Canada's FAB magazine talks to Lady Gaga.

Mesa, Arizona considering domestic partner registry: "Arizona’s most conservative big city may become only the third in the state to offer a domestic-partner registry to unmarried couples. Mesa Councilman Dennis Kavanaugh has been exploring the idea and has asked the city attorney to draft an ordinance that would allow people to register their relationships with the city."

Newsweek on Don't Ask: Obama's Joint Chiefs chair caught between his boss and a conservative military.

Oregon church to stop signing marriage licenses until they are able to do so for any couple, gay or straight: "The Rev. Pam Shepherd came up with the idea after realizing she was inadvertently contributing to discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, she said. 'I've been for civil rights for gay and lesbian people for a long, long time, but I never thought, 'I'm helping the discrimination every time I sign a license,'' she said. 'Every time I sign a license, it's like I'm saying, 'OK,' but it's not OK.'"

Richard Gere and Daniel Craig yacht together

In one of his last acts as President, Bush named former surgeon general nominee James Holsinger to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. Holsinger's nomination to surgeon general languished as controversy erupted around the nominee, who said in a 1991 paper that homosexuality was "intuitively" unnatural.

Britain anoints its most gay-friendly police force.

Gay man among dead as fire sweeps through Bangkok's Chinatown district: "Bangkok's The Nation newspaper reported that the victim – identified by the police as Sanguan Saenkaew - was found by rescue workers on the seventh floor of the building early Monday morning. He is believed to be a patron of GSM Sauna at the time of the fire. Reports say about 60 fire engines fought the blaze which took hours to put out. The blaze was reported to have started at about 8.30pm on Sunday night. Some 100 people were evacuated from the nine-storey building via two firetruck ladders and a helicopter. The sauna - said to be popular among locals and travelers from Hong Kong and Taiwan - also operated a massage parlour on the fourth floor and guesthouse on the sixth floor."