On the Stage: The Understudy, The Royal Family, Brighton Beach Memoirs and Circle Mirror Transformation

KEVIN SESSUMS

Kevin Sessums is back in the theatre for Towleroad this season. He last reviewed Let Me Down Easy, Wishful Drinking, A Steady Rain, and Hamlet for Towleroad. Kevin is also a contributing editor at Parade and The Daily Beast.

I would be remiss if I didn’t lament in this posting the premature closing of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs (to some old news by now) before I go on to tell you about some other plays I’ve seen in the last few weeks. And this is more a kind of reportage, I guess, than a critique since I am writing about something I witnessed that did not have many witnesses.

I’ve never been a fan of Neil Simon; the rat-a-tat-tat-ness of his incessant punchlines has always struck me as rather, well, tatty. Indeed, the revival of his Barefoot in the Park a few seasons back was a woefully misbegotten affair. But this production was different. Those of you who read my reviews know how much I admired director David Cromer’s transcendent reimagining of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town so I was curious to witness what he could accomplish with a decidedly lesser playwright when he was hired to take on not only Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs, but also his Broadway Bound, which was to have played in repertory with the former. Alas, we’ll never know what he had planned for Broadway Bound since it was canceled altogether. But I can report that he again worked a kind of incongruent miracle with his ability to elicit through his work with actors a heightened form of naturalism.

By focusing on the tattiness of the lives that Simon so skillfully delineated in this autobiographical play - which, in its original production, harkened a comeback for the then coasting playwright — he silenced the rat-a-tat-tat of the funnybone which has always replaced the structural backbone in any Simon play and wakened the beating heart embedded even deeper in it. (A tip of the hat also to Brian McDevitt whose lighting design contributed to the play’s warmth as well. It was a palette that seemed to pulse right along with that wakened heart.) My own heart breaks a little for Noah Robbins who was plucked from obscurity to play Simon’s stand-in, the young Eugene Jerome. He was so skilled and touching in the part and even had put off a semester of college to make his Broadway debut. As his older brother, Santino Fontana broke one’s heart in other ways by delving so deeply into the character of Stanley, Eugene’s older brother, that he made Simon himself appear to be a better playwright. I have been a huge fan of Fontana’s work in the past and this performance heralded a great young actor in our midst. I am sorry not more people got to see how good he can be though I am certain there will be many other chances in this talented actor's burgeoning career. In fact, I read only yesterday in The New York Times that he will be in the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge.

Cromer focused not only on these two young male siblings in the script but also the elder female ones in the form of Eugenes’s mother and her younger sister who had moved in with the Jeromes once she was unexpectedly widowed. Jessica Hecht as the sister (she has also been hired to be in A View from the Bridge) and Laurie Metcalfe as the mother formed a fugue of regret and recrimination and resolve. Hecht’s performance was the quieter and surprisingly tougher. But Metcalfe anchored the play with her performance as Kate Jerome, Eugene’s mother. She demolished the jokey stereotype of the Jewish mother, displaying a juggernaut of emotions that showed us how such a maternal presence could be injured and injurious all at once. I long to see her when she is older play those other maternal monsters, Amanda Wingfield in A Glass Menagerie and Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey into Night. And I pray David Cromer helps her create those characters as well.

I would have given the production a T T T 1/2 rating (out of 4 possible T's).

If you’ve read this far about a production that is no longer playing then you really are a theatre lover so let me tell you about a few other productions that are for and about those theatre lovers among us. First a personal note: check out the website lower case letter written by playwrght Alejandro Morales. He is a theatre lover of the first order and a wonderful writer whose comment at the end of my last posting here alerted Towleroad readers to The Brother Sister Plays by Tarrell Alvin McCraney down at The Public, which I hope to write about soon, as well as the theatrical event of the season, Taylor Mac’s five-hour phantasmagoria, The Lily’s Revenge, which sadly closed the past weekend. I tried three times to get Rush tix to the latter but failed each time. I am praying that the Mac event has an afterlife and some enterprising producer has the producing balls to move it somewhere or reopen it at Here, where it was playing. It was all any theatre lover could talk about for the last few weeks and I am heartbroken I was unable to get in to see it. To read more about it check out Morales’ exemplary website.

Mac is like a Mach 2 Neil Simon - gay and goy and absurdly grand — or grandly absurd. I first became aware of him as the result of two diverse and early works — The Young Ladies Of, based on the thousands of letters his father received in Vietnam when he was a soldier there and placed an ad asking young ladies to write to him, and The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac, directed by David Drake of The Night I Kissed Larry Kramer fame. For all you theatre lovers out there, I heard from Larry last week that Scott Rudin is trying to get an early play of his produced. Larry has even given it to Tom Ford to read in case he wants to follow up his screen directorial debut with a stage one. (He’s also given him his latest screenplay for The Normal Heart in case Ford wants to up his cinematic game to encompass a story of more epic proportions than his expertly emotionally interiorized A Single Man.) Can you imagine Rudin, Ford, and Kramer — those three absurdly grand gays in a rehearsal room together? I hope there’s a role for a drag queen whose specialty is a stunningly effective pastiche of performance styles so Taylor Mac can join them in the rehearsal process. Rudin, Kramer, Ford and Mac — now that’s a theatrical phantasmagoria of my own fevered dreams.

***CIRCLE MIRROR TRANSFORMATION

Another wonderful show that has closed prematurely — after being extended a couple of times — was Circle Mirror Transformation at Playwrights Horizons. I am hopeful that some enterprising producer also reopens it somewhere. Set in a Vermont town, it evolves around the theatre games concocted by an ex-hippie-like woman for a small group of attendees to her drama class in the town’s community center. At first the set-up was a bit twee for my tastes, but as the intermissionless evening went on I became entranced by the lives of the characters illuminated by the games. And the performances — all eerily quiet yet also quite moving, the director Sam Gold having elicited a kind of tamped-down temerity from the cast — were astoundingly good. I was especially taken by the sardonic teenager of Tracee Chimo. It really did seem as if we were eavesdropping on life itself. It all reminded me of television’s The Office raised to the level of theatrical art. Jeff Whitty, who won a Tony for writing the book for Avenue Q and is writing the book for the upcoming musical version of Tales of the City, which was workshopped this summer at the The Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in Connecticut, was a great champion of the play having taken to Facebook to sing its praises and get all of his friends to see it.

I followed his advice and would have given it T T T 1/2 also.

I’m sure some of you out there are tempted to post a snarky comment about now about my writing about shows that have closed so here are two suggestions for and about theatre lovers that are thankfully still running.

Continued (The Understudy and The Royal Family), AFTER THE JUMP...

News: London Cloud, Rock Hudson, United Airlines, Annise Parker

Signorile on Congress and Obama's LGBT agenda: Why is the "low-hanging fruit" still hanging? And here's the checklist.

Architectural "cloud" proposed in London.

America's Next Top Model's Miss J is the father of a 7-year-old boy: "A French lesbian had asked if we would be sperm donors. "So we thought, 'OK, you want me to do you?' And she was like, 'Ooooh, I'm not that talented.' So I said, 'Okay fine.' So we did a little test tube."

D.C. Council committee advances marriage equality bill: "A DC Council Committee voted 4 to 1 this afternoon to send a bill legalizing same-sex marriage to the full council for debate. Council member Phil Mendelson, chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and Judiciary, said the legislation was 'both simple and monumental.' With the committee vote, the full council will take up the bill in early December. It is expected to easily pass."

Virginia lawmaker to introduce legislation extending protections to state workers who are gay or lesbian.

Celine Dion "no longer pregnant".

Opposition party in Australia drafts bill to keep single mothers and gay couples from accessing surrogacy: "Under the laws...introduced, only married and defacto heterosexual couples who have been together for at least two years would legally be able to have a child by surrogate."

First look at The Addams Family Musical.

American researchers "rebuild" sexual organs on rabbits, believe procedure could work on men: "Male rabbits given the implants attempted to mate within one minute of being introduced to a female partner, and 83 per cent succeeded."

REPORT: Rock Hudson's lover Marc Christian has died.

Goran Visnjic to star as Christopher Plummer's boyfriend in the Mike Mills film Beginners: "It’s a Gay-December romance for the ages!"

Houston mayoral candidate Annise Parker gets endorsement from opponent: “One candidate stands out with a 12-year proven track record of public service, particularly in terms of efficient, transparent government, the quality of life in our neighborhoods, and fiscal responsibility, especially important in these difficult economic times."

Ashleigh and Jakob were definitely the best part of So You Think You Can Dance last night.

Lady Gaga gossips about Gossip Girl.

Some photos by Dav.d Daniels from the Mormon testimony at the Salt Lake City LGBT ordinance hearings.

United Airlines pilot arrested for intoxication before boarding a flight full of passengers at Heathrow.

FireDogLake blogger Jane Hamsher talks about the DNC donor boycott: "If you're suppressing your base, and the other side is revving up theirs, and midterm elections are all about turning out the base, I sort of question what their strategy is here."

Ontario gym owner in transgender bathroom legal battle: "A fitness club owner in southwestern Ontario said Tuesday he has wasted tens of thousands of dollars fighting a legal battle with a transgender woman over which washrooms she should use, only to have the case thrown out by the Ontario Human Rights Commission."

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...

Terri White's Journey from Benches to Broadway

A year ago actress Terri White was homeless, alone, and living in Washington Square Park. Now she's on Broadway in Finian's Rainbow and preparing to have a commitment ceremony with her partner Donna Barnett. The NYT has her amazing story:

"Most of her fellow cast members in 'Finian’s Rainbow' know enough about Ms. White’s trials that when she sings, 'There ought to be a law against necessity,' they sing back, with particular feeling, 'Sister, you’re so right.'"

Jonathan Groff and Gavin Creel: Broadway's New Gay Power Couple?

If you believe what you read in Page Six:

"Jonathan Groff, who was nominated for a Tony for his work in 'Spring Awakening,' has been dating 'Hair' star Gavin Creel, a source tells Page Six. Incidentally, Creel, who plays Claude in the musical, took over the role from Groff, who initially starred in the revival when it opened last year. Groff will also soon appear in a guest run on Fox's 'Glee.' Reps for the actors didn't get back to us."

Groff also appeared in Hair (above) in Central Park before it made its way to Broadway. Here's our interview with Creel at the National Equality March, if you missed it.

News: Germany, Belmont Rocks, Rent, Dot Gay, Uganda, Polar Bears

Website devoted to raid on Atlanta Eagle bar launches.

Health care: Pelosi publicly whipping on robust public option?

SPACE: A giant hole found in the Moon, the youngest and most distant galaxy cluster ever recorded, and a stunning map of exploration of our solar system.

News anchor finds himself in a remake of The Birds.

Boston gays to protest Obama this weekend.

PFOX urges libraries to carry books about the "ex-gay" movement.

Jack Mackenroth slams Oprah over HIV show.

Utah Catholic high school defends production of Rent: "Sister Catherine Kamphaus, superintendent of schools in the Salt Lake City diocese, said she read the script at the request of Bishop John Wester, and she watched a dress rehearsal Tuesday. 'There is absolutely nothing that would be offensive,' Kamphaus said Thursday. 'It wasn't condoning the gay and lesbian lifestyle.' Rather, she said, the play shows friends forming a loving and caring community while facing AIDS and other challenges."

Homophobic Daily Mail writer Jan Moir was thrilled to be in spotlight over Gately death.

San Diego gay man says attack in Hillcrest area was hate crime.

Producers shaft the hot dude on Melrose Place.

Time capsule: Chicago's Belmont Rocks.

Tom Cruise: American Psycho.

Report: International transgender community at higher risk in counterterrorism operations. "The report, by noted International Law Professor Martin Sheinin, concludes that because security personnel regularly seek out men 'dressed as women' as potential terrorists, soldiers often target all men in female clothing — including those who do so as part of their gender identity. This is particularly the case in Middle Eastern/Islamic nations — or against Middle Eastern/Islamic people.' Enhanced immigration controls that focus attention on male bombers who may be dressing as females to avoid scrutiny make transgender persons susceptible to increased harassment and suspicion,' the report says."

Coalition releases statement condemning anti-gay bill in Uganda.

UK's first gay tourism office opens in London's Soho district.

Obama administration sets aside 200,000 acres in Alaska for Polar Bears.

Model Paul Sculfor shoots gay scene in Madrid.

The Dot Gay Alliance has competition from a straight German man in Riga, Latvia: "While both groups have left open the possibility of cooperating, they haven’t yet joined forces. Both groups say they plan on starting the application process with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or Icann, to create top-level domains, akin to .com, .edu, .org and .net."

German high court backs pensions for gay married couples: "A failure to give gay partners the same benefits infringes the basic right to equal treatment, the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe said. The decision nullified an earlier ruling from the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) regarding a Hamburg man who has been a public servant since 1991 with a supplementary pension. The public-sector pension company VBL – the largest such company in the nation – refused to give the man married status, despite the fact that he’d been living in a registered civil union for eight years. This meant that his retirement benefits would be €74 less each month, and his partner would receive no surviving dependants’ pension in the event of his death."