MINUTES FROM
THE BLUE ROUTE
R E V I E W E D B Y
ERIC GRODE
Like David Mamet, playwright Tom Donaghy has an uncanny ear for the words that land unheard in day-to-day life. And like Mamet, his plays require a sort of stylized naturalism that can either soar or fall flat.
Unfortunately, "Minutes From the Blue Route," his new play at the Atlantic, all too often meets the latter fate. His scenes often hit the right notes, but this production lacks the proper calibration as directed by David Warren. Despite some impressive Act II work from the cast of four, "Blue Route" represents a stilted step backward from Donaghy's 1995 work "Northeast Local."
The plot is relatively straightforward. A young man with HIV (Matt McGrath) visits his suburban Philadelphia family to grapple with various issues, but the family members each have their own problems. Most of these involve displacement and anxiety about what is to come, in addition to the unspoken but ever-present specter of AIDS.
Most scenes lurch along with the abrupt cadences and halts that should ring true to any audience member with a family. Unfortunately, they never quite mesh here. In fact, they sound more like the patterns of an awkward script than of an awkward family.
Donaghy also loads the play with more metaphors than it can bear. Mention is made of a traumatizing plane accident far too many times with no discernable payoff, and several other motifs meet the same fate.
McGrath does the same fragile-gay-son bit he used in "A Fair Country," complete with imploring inflections at the end of most sentences. He is given a great monologue on the importance of waking up in one's own bed, but he also gets a painfully protracted drunk scene. As the mother and daughter, Elizabeth Franz and Catherine Kellner lurch in and out of synch, although Franz has two great scenes in Act II. Only Stephen Mendillo consistently nails Donaghy's beats and repetitions; he manages to be ludicrous and touching at the same time.
Derek McLane contributes a typically clever and effective set design, and Donald Holder's lighting also deserves mention.
Presented by and at Atlantic Theater Company, 336 W. 20 St., NYC, Jan. 15-Feb. 22.
MOCK TRIAL
R E V I E W E D B Y
ERIC GRODE
Romulus Linney's "Mock Trial," at Theater for the New City, is far from perfect, but it has energy and a probing, restless intelligence. This urgency carries the play over the occasional rough patch and awkward performance.
The structure is as simple as the bare-bones production. Law students stage what they call "a trial set in the future based on the past." About 40 years after the Vietnam War, a failed raid on the capital of Montana leaves several dead. The two ringleaders of the coup, an embittered Vietnam veteran (John-Martin Green) and charismatic theorist John Adams Jones (Christopher Roberts), are charged with treason. Along the way, each student steps forward and gives his or her "real-life" thoughts on the trial, an interesting idea that gets in the way.
Staging it in a people's court is a bit of a cop-out--defendants and lawyers get away with all kinds of antics that would never be allowed in a real trial--but it allows Linney to pose intelligent questions about guilt, patriotism, complicity and the role of a democratic government. The facts of the case may occasionally strain credulity, but the author has the last laugh. The play ends in a revelation that may not surprise everyone but chills nevertheless.
Unfortunately, the play doesn't get the production it deserves. Of the seven actors, only Roberts, Christopher Cappiello and Dave Johnson give commendable performances. Roberts captures the combination of silky charm and steely resolve that makes Jones so appealing and truly frightening. The rest range from adequate to awful. And the playwright's direction is not as surefooted as his script; several of the more impassioned passages feel forced.
Yet despite these flaws, the message of "Mock Trial" is one that should be heard. If only it were presented at a more consistent level of quality.
Presented by Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave., NYC, Jan. 16-Feb. 9.
NETA PULVERMACHER
& DANCERS
R E V I E W E D B Y
PHYLLIS GOLDMAN
Neta Pulvermacher is altogether different. Her choreography is neat, incisive, and stylish, and her program presented at The Joyce Theater's Altogether Different series was extremely engrossing.
"Zaz," a world premiere to John Zorn's score "Masada," overcomes the opening phrases of harshly dissonant sounds with a spectacular tableau: dancers silhouetted against a soft-lemon-lit backdrop and looking like stark caligraphy figures. The visuals were enticing enough to compel this viewer to remain seated in hopes that the music would calm down. Which it did, quickly settling into haunting Hebraic-like melodies that support the ebullient choreography, allowing the work to develop without being overcome by the score. Pulvermacher often choreographs for the hands, and it is fascinating. She separates fingers, flattens the palms, and wags the index finger, to make this appendage a galvanizing image.
Her dancers (a beautiful company) move into various modes with ease--punchy disco, strong ballet, or warily staged folk idioms. Nothing is stationary--often at a given moment each of the six dancers is doing his own thing--yet Pulvermacher's wise oversight creates a connected whole. She runs her dancers through dozens of entrances and exits, using sharp mincing steps, little hip-hops, and razor-sharp jtƒs. Maile Okamura excels with lightning-swift legs and feet.
The intriguing title "To Bite an Orange With Its Peel" and the luscious slide projections of orange slices instill a golden feeling in this diverting work. The choreography does run through too many endings and could use some pruning. Still, Pulvermacher handles dancers very well, especially in a nice section where each dancer enters to take the position of the dancer before him, repeating the variation and structuring a cascading effect. The Israeli-born choreographer, clearly motivated by her Kibbutznik childhood, puts new wrinkles in all her ethnic themes.
The duet, "A Song," performed by a smallish Pulvermacher and a willowy Stephanie Tooman, was inspired by the time the performer spent as a teacher-choreographer in Alaska. Performing in silence, the two dancers mirror each other with great skill--but perhaps with accompaniment coming from the Alaskan folk infuence, the piece would rise to a more intriguing level.
Presented by and at The Joyce Theater as part of its Altogether Different series, 175 Eighth Ave., NYC, Jan. 7-26.
THE STEWARD
OF CHRISTENDOM
R E V I E W E D B Y
DAVID SHEWARD
Donal McCann majestically rides a wave of poetic ramblings in "The Steward of Christendom," an imported production from London's Out of Joint theatre company, now at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)'s Majestic Theater. But the rest of the cast and the dramatic throughline drown in playwright Sebastian Barry's ocean of words.
McCann is Thomas Dunne, the author's great-great-grandfather, a former Dublin police chief consigned to a madhouse at the time of the play (1932). Through flashbacks and a few painfully obvious expositional scenes, we learn that Dunne prided himself on serving the occupying British forces and fell apart when the provisional Irish self-government came to power in the '20s. While under the sway of Victoria and her descendents, the world was ordered. As the Irish battled to govern themselves, Dunne's cosy little existence was changed forever.
However, Barry fails to make a strong case for the causes of Dunne's madness. There are long, tender elegies to a simple society lost for good, but we don't see the growing personal effects of the Dublin street violence. One minute Dunne is sane, the next he's crackers. There's no transition between the two states of mind.
Director Max Stafford-Clark puts all his eggs in one basket by focusing on McCann. The actor weaves a hypnotic spell with his gravelly brogue and sad eyes, spinning tale after absorbing tale. The other characters--his three daughters, a son-in-law, the ghost of a dead child, his keepers--are played like musical-hall parodies of O'Casey and Synge.
There are consolations in Johanna Town's poetic lighting and Julian McGowan's stark setting.
In a program note, Barry states that this is only one of five plays about his family and the Irish "troubles." Perhaps a reading of the entire cycle would flesh out this sketchy history.
An Out of Joint and Royal Court Theatre co-production presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music at BAM's Majestic Theater, 651 Fulton St., B'klyn, Jan. 18-Feb. 23.
SLEEP
R E V I E W E D B Y
ROBERT SIMONSON
Director Ted Lambert's slipshod staging of Jack Gelber's 1972 play "Sleep," recently as La MaMa, was the first New York production of that work (and, to my memory, any Gelber play) in 25 years. Gelber's reputation was first made by the 1959 Living Theatre production of "The Connection," and was unmade by the playwright's subsequent string of formless dramatic scribblings. Unfortunately, this new production of "Sleep" doesn't reveal that Gelber's been unfairly overlooked this quarter century.
The play concerns Gil (Jordan Lund), a middle-aged everyman who, having lost his way on the road of life, submits himself for a series of sleep deprivation tests conducted by a pair of establishment punching bags disguised as scientists (Charles Stransky and Gerry Sheridan). When not jostled awake by the doctors, Gil lapses into a dream state, sometimes reliving scenes from his life, other times fantasizing. His visions--real and imagined--are replete with '60s-era figures and issues. Gil frets over his divorce; Gil participates in an underground political movement; Gil's work as a social worker is parodied as a scripted sitcom.
Spiritual gurus, Black Power, the sexual revolution--it's hard to perform this sort of stuff these days without irony, and, indeed, one of the actresses here (Susan Carragher) is either unwilling or unable to do so. The other supporting characters play their many roles mainly for kitsch value, and Lambert, whose work here is as lax as Gelber's, does little to discipline or inspire his cast.
Gelber's dramatic point seems to be that the nation is technically asleep, a point as facile as his everything-but-the-kitchen-sink dramatic structure. Too undeveloped to be anything else, "Sleep" is little more than a random, indulgent, and ever so slightly condescending assault on American culture.
The set by Dawn Petrlik was vaguely abstract but basically bare bones.
Presented by and at La MaMa, 74A E. 4th St., NYC, J