“Next to Normal”, the 2009 Broadway musical about a damaged woman suffering from what was once called manic-depressive mental illness, defies classification just as it (almost) defies description. In its defiantly through-composed form it is undeniably operatic, but its story is intimate and immediate. Its music (deservedly honored with Tony awards for both score and orchestration) is modern but not really rock, powerful and memorable. Yet, even with some three dozen musical numbers, it yields not a single stand-alone standard. While it has moments of humor, mostly in the form of irony, it is decidedly not a musical comedy; rather, it’s the theater’s first truly bipolar musical, in more ways than two.
It is also one of the few musicals ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, a feat matched only three times in the last three decades, the others being “Rent” and “Sunday in the Park with George”, and only eight times in the entire history of the Pulitzer. Nominated for eleven Tony Awards, it won only three, including Best Actress Alice Ripley, in a performance that was truly legendary. It was the year of “Billy Elliot” (which shared the award for orchestration with “Next to Normal”) which had fifteen Tony nominations and won ten of them. Nonetheless, “Next to Normal” was a bona fide hit, both critically and commercially. Thus the news that it would be part of SpeakEasy’s season this year was met with high expectations.
As in other aspects of life, nothing succeeds like exceeding expectations. This current version is all a serious theatergoer could reasonably hope for in a regional production, and then some. Not only is it among the finest in a long history of unforgettable SpeakEasy performances, but in at least one significant aspect, it actually betters the original. Director Paul Daigneault outdoes himself (and with musicals this is no small feat), managing to broaden the focus from an individual crisis to a shared family one, which is a truer depiction of the communal influence of the disease than was conveyed on Broadway. Kerry A. Dowling as Diana, the bipolar wife and mother, is better than we’ve ever seen her (also no small feat), but generously shares the stage with an incredibly talented ensemble. In this version, we truly feel the pain shared by the whole family as they deal with her inability to cope, to think, to feel. Above all, “Next to Normal” is about being there for one another. Michael Tacconi as her treasured son Gabe, whom she insists must be there for her, Sarah Drake as Natalie, her almost invisible daughter, craving the attention that her mother completely sucks out of the atmosphere, and Michael Levesque as Henry, Natalie’s unflaggingly sweet boyfriend, are amazing, especially given that they are all current or recent college graduates. Chris Caron ably fills the roles of two of Diana’s practitioners. Then there is Christopher Chew as Dan, the faithful husband and father, whose survival depends on repression, what he calls a “slower suicide”; as he also sings, “who’s crazy, the one who can’t cope or maybe the one who’ll still hope?”. Chew’s acting here is a revelation.
It’s truly gratifying to see such a wonderful work presented in this astonishing production. The music by Tom Kitt and book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey are perfectly served by Music Director Nicholas James Connell, Lighting Designer Jeff Adelberg and Sound Designer Aaron Mack. The Scenic Design by Eric Levenson, as well as the Projection Design by Seaghan McKay are brilliant, even if occasionally distracting (as they were on Broadway, so perhaps this is part of the care plan).
This is no romanticized view of mental illness and the stigma with which society often views it, but a balanced presentation of the complexity of treatments (including what used to be referred to as electric shock therapy) for bipolar disease, ironically most often experienced by women and treated by men. Medications are a trade-off, what with their frequent side effects, requiring intelligent choices. As Diana puts it when she is medicated to the point of not feeling anything, she misses the mountains, the magic of the manic days, as well as the pain. (Her therapist’s response to her lack of feeling: “patient stable”). She wonders “what happens if the cut, the burn, the break was never in my brain or in my blood but in my soul?”
Toward the end of the play, Diana, still wounded but hopeful, comes to a decision that rather than have chance take her, she’ll take a chance. Earlier she had said that she had “seen this movie, and I walked out”. As she carries out her decision, she sings that “the price of love is loss, but still we pay…the darkest sky will someday see the sun”. As Natalie put it, one doesn’t “need a life that’s normal, but something next to normal would be okay”. Though some hurt never heals, and some ghosts are never gone, in the end “there will be light”. In this production, the precise term would be incandescence.
1/10/2012
SpeakEasy's "Red": The Gripes of Rothko
“Red”, Speakeasy Stage Company’s latest offering about painter Mark Rothko, was the winner of six 2010 Tonys including best play, by John Logan. This author is no stranger to “sacred monsters”, having dealt in the past with the likes of Leopold and Loeb, Howard Hughes and Sweeney Todd. This play, like Rothko’s work, requires that an audience meet and be part of the creation. There are tragedy and drama in both. It is the story of a self-destructive, self-taught genius who in 1958, at the age of 55 (the same age at which his father died), was commissioned by former bootlegger Samuel Bronfman to provide a series of paintings for the proposed Four Seasons Restaurant in his Seagram’s Building, for the then-considerable sum of $35,000. Rothko was ambivalent from the beginning, preferring his panels to be experienced in a sort of wayside chapel, (as some of his panels would eventually be, in a spectacular installation in Houston); he hoped at least to “ruin the appetites of every SOB who ever eats in that room”, putting rich patrons in his created place, the viewers trapped.
The play, in a taut one hundred minutes, portrays this ambivalence as the painter and his newly-hired assistant begin the process, all the while commenting on the nature of art and bemoaning the approaches to painting by his contemporaries. While he hated and rejected labels, Rothko was a part of the Abstract Expressionist movement that supplanted cubism. Part of his anger lies in the knowledge that he too will eventually be supplanted. Given his self-confessed obsessive preoccupation with death (“the first ingredient in my art”) and the fact that he was to commit suicide a decade later, this could have been heavy slogging. The genius of the playwright lies in how he manages to make this reenactment of the creative process so full of caustic wit, memorable dialogue (much of it directly quoted) and mesmerizing detail, all of which Director David R. Gammons captures on his theatrical canvas. The audience is presented with a genuine train wreck of an artist, and we simply can’t take our eyes off him.
It helps that the role of the artist is in the capable hands of an actor like Thomas Derrah. His Rothko is pompous, controlling, manipulative, and opinionated in the extreme, bombastic one moment, in the next breath declaring that, in art, “silence is so accurate”. He declaims to his new assistant (played by Karl Baker Olson) that he intends to be neither his father or mentor, but before long becomes exactly that. It also helps that Olson, in the much more challenging role, is equal to the task of evolving (over a two year period) from a starstruck novice to a more assured combatant. Together these actors stretch canvases, speedily apply glaze, and paint while verbally sparring about the nature of art and the value of their contemporaries in the art world. It’s sheer joy for a theatergoer to listen to the pacing of the speech of these theatrical artists and watch them inhabit the former Bowery YMCA gym that has been transformed into Rothko’s studio (superbly rendered by Scenic Designer Cristina Todesco). The lighting by Jeff Adelberg and sound by Bill Barclay are also perfect for the piece.
This production is every bit as moving and unforgettable as the original import from London, perhaps even more so in the more intimate venue of the Wimberly Theater. The miracle of the play and its presentation here is that it never seems pedantic or pedestrian, as it might easily have become, like watching paint dry. Instead, it’s amazingly dynamic. It’s poetic justice that this work confronts, challenges and involves the audience just as Rothko’s art does.
The play, in a taut one hundred minutes, portrays this ambivalence as the painter and his newly-hired assistant begin the process, all the while commenting on the nature of art and bemoaning the approaches to painting by his contemporaries. While he hated and rejected labels, Rothko was a part of the Abstract Expressionist movement that supplanted cubism. Part of his anger lies in the knowledge that he too will eventually be supplanted. Given his self-confessed obsessive preoccupation with death (“the first ingredient in my art”) and the fact that he was to commit suicide a decade later, this could have been heavy slogging. The genius of the playwright lies in how he manages to make this reenactment of the creative process so full of caustic wit, memorable dialogue (much of it directly quoted) and mesmerizing detail, all of which Director David R. Gammons captures on his theatrical canvas. The audience is presented with a genuine train wreck of an artist, and we simply can’t take our eyes off him.
It helps that the role of the artist is in the capable hands of an actor like Thomas Derrah. His Rothko is pompous, controlling, manipulative, and opinionated in the extreme, bombastic one moment, in the next breath declaring that, in art, “silence is so accurate”. He declaims to his new assistant (played by Karl Baker Olson) that he intends to be neither his father or mentor, but before long becomes exactly that. It also helps that Olson, in the much more challenging role, is equal to the task of evolving (over a two year period) from a starstruck novice to a more assured combatant. Together these actors stretch canvases, speedily apply glaze, and paint while verbally sparring about the nature of art and the value of their contemporaries in the art world. It’s sheer joy for a theatergoer to listen to the pacing of the speech of these theatrical artists and watch them inhabit the former Bowery YMCA gym that has been transformed into Rothko’s studio (superbly rendered by Scenic Designer Cristina Todesco). The lighting by Jeff Adelberg and sound by Bill Barclay are also perfect for the piece.
This production is every bit as moving and unforgettable as the original import from London, perhaps even more so in the more intimate venue of the Wimberly Theater. The miracle of the play and its presentation here is that it never seems pedantic or pedestrian, as it might easily have become, like watching paint dry. Instead, it’s amazingly dynamic. It’s poetic justice that this work confronts, challenges and involves the audience just as Rothko’s art does.
10/23/2011
SpeakEasy's "The Divine Sister": And Then There Were None
It is a dark and stormy night. It is Pittsburgh in 1966, and the venerable Convent of Saint Veronica is in imminent danger of crumbling into ruins. If this were Ibsen, this might be perceived as a metaphorical tiger at the gates, but this is Charles Busch, and his “The Divine Sister” has no such pretensions of satirizing any religious icons but instead the long harrowed, if not hallowed, history of Hollywood stereotypes. One by one, in inevitable Agatha Christie mode, Busch manages to roast a goodly, if not godly, number of these memorable madams, from Julie Andrews to Ingrid Bergman, and, more darkly, the whole coven of “Black Narcissus”, until there‘s not a single nun left unskewered. It’s not the author’s theological baggage that’s on display here, as he freely admits to no such upbringing, but an obvious affection for these historical and hysterical ladies.
That’s not to say that Mother Superior (and she is unmistakably that) is some clueless cardboard creation. While she’s hilariously funny in the quite capable hands of Jeffery Roberson (aka Varla Jean Merman, for those of you in the habit of keeping score), she’s no dope and not easily duped. As she explains it all for you at the beginning of the play, the good sisters are “living in a time of great social change; we must do everything in our power to stop it”.
How Mother Superior, aka Susan (don’t ask) manages to triumph over the course of a fast-paced uninterrupted one hundred minutes is best left to a theatergoer to discover entirely on her or his own. The fun of the work is in the multitude of backstories, with enough subplots and sub-subplots to fill several evenings at the theater. Suffice it to say that “The Divine Sister” is like Gilbert and Sullivan on speed.
In lesser earthly hands, this could be over-the-top camp, and it comes perilously close at times, but the writing, the direction (by Larry Coen) and especially the fang-in-cheek acting by the aforementioned Jeffery/Varla Jean and the entire cast (six in all, most performing more than one role) save us from such a penance. In the nunnery, there are Sasha Castroverde’s Agnes (of God?) who is no stranger to the sound of music, Kathy St. George’s Sister Walburga, seemingly living out some code other than DiVinci, and Paula Plum’s Sister Acacius, whose street-wise sister is an amalgam of so many allusions and illusions that she encapsulates generations of the celluloid-ly saintly. Add to the mix Ellen Colton’s atheistic Mrs. Levinson (yes, no religious faiths were omitted in the making of this “movie”) and Christopher Michael Brophy’s Brother Venerius, not to mention the other roles they play which will go unmentioned here lest what plot threads there are be prematurely unraveled. There’s not a clinker in the bunch. The same can be said for the set (by Christina Todesco), lighting (by Daniel H. Jentzen), costumes (by Charles Schoonmaker) and sound (by Arshan Gailus), none of which would be out of place in your basic B movie. It’s all so perfectly pitched.
To mistake this for just another drag show or an exercise in low comedy could be sinful for any mortal. For any serious theatergoer, there can be but one exhortation. Get thee to a funnery.
That’s not to say that Mother Superior (and she is unmistakably that) is some clueless cardboard creation. While she’s hilariously funny in the quite capable hands of Jeffery Roberson (aka Varla Jean Merman, for those of you in the habit of keeping score), she’s no dope and not easily duped. As she explains it all for you at the beginning of the play, the good sisters are “living in a time of great social change; we must do everything in our power to stop it”.
How Mother Superior, aka Susan (don’t ask) manages to triumph over the course of a fast-paced uninterrupted one hundred minutes is best left to a theatergoer to discover entirely on her or his own. The fun of the work is in the multitude of backstories, with enough subplots and sub-subplots to fill several evenings at the theater. Suffice it to say that “The Divine Sister” is like Gilbert and Sullivan on speed.
In lesser earthly hands, this could be over-the-top camp, and it comes perilously close at times, but the writing, the direction (by Larry Coen) and especially the fang-in-cheek acting by the aforementioned Jeffery/Varla Jean and the entire cast (six in all, most performing more than one role) save us from such a penance. In the nunnery, there are Sasha Castroverde’s Agnes (of God?) who is no stranger to the sound of music, Kathy St. George’s Sister Walburga, seemingly living out some code other than DiVinci, and Paula Plum’s Sister Acacius, whose street-wise sister is an amalgam of so many allusions and illusions that she encapsulates generations of the celluloid-ly saintly. Add to the mix Ellen Colton’s atheistic Mrs. Levinson (yes, no religious faiths were omitted in the making of this “movie”) and Christopher Michael Brophy’s Brother Venerius, not to mention the other roles they play which will go unmentioned here lest what plot threads there are be prematurely unraveled. There’s not a clinker in the bunch. The same can be said for the set (by Christina Todesco), lighting (by Daniel H. Jentzen), costumes (by Charles Schoonmaker) and sound (by Arshan Gailus), none of which would be out of place in your basic B movie. It’s all so perfectly pitched.
To mistake this for just another drag show or an exercise in low comedy could be sinful for any mortal. For any serious theatergoer, there can be but one exhortation. Get thee to a funnery.
9/18/2011
SpeakEasy's "Next Fall": Full of Grace
SpeakEasy Stage Company’s production of “Next Fall”, the Tony-nominated play by Goeffrey Nauffts, is a truly manipulative piece of theater; what starts out as a comedy gradually transforms into a serious examination of some significant contemporary issues. It manages to navigate a very tricky balance among a cast of six characters who one minute crack wise and the next minute find themselves facing what first seems like an unbreachable divide as the play explores current expressions of faith and disbelief. On one level, it can be seen as yet another tale, full of wit and fury, of coming out of the closet. On its more profound level, it’s really about accepting the beliefs of others rather than demonizing them. The challenge for an audience is to accept the fact that faith, rather than being discarded like the proverbial baby with the bath water, is dealt with and dueled with, in a fundamentally personal manner. One has to believe that Luke (Dan Roach), one of the two main characters, has somehow managed to keep his deeply felt evangelical Christian beliefs while living with his older atheist lover, intensely hypochondriacal Adam (Will McGarrahan). Theirs is a truly odd coupling indeed, separated by age as well as value systems. What’s harder to accept, in 2011, is that, not only has a grown man like Luke been unable to come out to his parents, but that he is conflicted about the incongruity of his faith and his lifestyle and unable to reach a mature resolution.
When first encountered by this reviewer in its Broadway form, with the exact same text, this leap of faith was not entirely successful, though extremely moving. This time, in the hands of director Scott Edmiston and a very believable cast, it feels more natural. Among its many surprises is just how much funnier it seems. After the cutest of meetings, where Luke, an actor working as a waiter, gives Adam the Heimlich maneuver rather than a pickup line, it’s no time before the two have moved in together despite some immediate danger signals. Adam has no problem being completely out; Luke declaims that “we’re all sinners, it’s human nature; but as long as you’ve accepted Christ”, everything will be alright in the end. Enter Adam’s boss and friend Holly (Deb Martin) who notes that Adam is guilty of “self-loathing by association”, and Luke’s former buddy Brandon (Kevin Kaine), also an evangelical Christian and also attracted to men, who can live with same-gender attraction but draws the line at love. Then we meet Luke’s parents from Florida, divorced for twenty years, Arlene (Amelia Broome) and Butch (Robert Walsh), who finally meet Adam as a result of a tragic event in Luke’s life. It’s significant that Nauffts chose not AIDS but a traffic accident as a crisis, thus emphasizing the universality of random tragedy. Now the larger dilemmas are, whose place is it to tell the parents about Luke’s lifestyle, and who gets to make life or death decisions on his behalf.
In such a small ensemble of extraordinary actors, it’s difficult to single anyone out, but it should be noted that Will McGarrahan and Amelia Broome have never been better, and their communication proves the most memorable moments. They’re aided by the clever lighting shifts by Karen Perlow and simple but effective scenery by Janie E. Howland. As the character Arlene puts it when remembering Luke’s performance in “Our Town”, “there wasn’t much in the way of scenery”, but somehow they made it effective, even if she’d forgotten the point of it. As Holly responds, it was about “how precious life is even while they’re living it”. Both could equally be said of “Next Fall”, especially in Edmiston’s capable hands.
By the end of the play, Luke’s opening line (“we shall all be changed”) proves quite prophetic, as all of the characters have changed, in varying degrees. Adam says to Butch: “Luke wasn’t afraid”, he had certainty. “He looked at me…..finally, I believed”. In what, the audience is left to debate. In the very last line, Adam’s deceptively simple response to a call from Luke’s half brother Ben is profoundly simple: “This is…..My name is Adam”. The brilliance of the work is that the audience can anticipate what the balance of their conversation will be like. Nauffts has stated that his play is about everyone grasping for grace. This production is life-affirmingly, unquestionably, full of grace.
When first encountered by this reviewer in its Broadway form, with the exact same text, this leap of faith was not entirely successful, though extremely moving. This time, in the hands of director Scott Edmiston and a very believable cast, it feels more natural. Among its many surprises is just how much funnier it seems. After the cutest of meetings, where Luke, an actor working as a waiter, gives Adam the Heimlich maneuver rather than a pickup line, it’s no time before the two have moved in together despite some immediate danger signals. Adam has no problem being completely out; Luke declaims that “we’re all sinners, it’s human nature; but as long as you’ve accepted Christ”, everything will be alright in the end. Enter Adam’s boss and friend Holly (Deb Martin) who notes that Adam is guilty of “self-loathing by association”, and Luke’s former buddy Brandon (Kevin Kaine), also an evangelical Christian and also attracted to men, who can live with same-gender attraction but draws the line at love. Then we meet Luke’s parents from Florida, divorced for twenty years, Arlene (Amelia Broome) and Butch (Robert Walsh), who finally meet Adam as a result of a tragic event in Luke’s life. It’s significant that Nauffts chose not AIDS but a traffic accident as a crisis, thus emphasizing the universality of random tragedy. Now the larger dilemmas are, whose place is it to tell the parents about Luke’s lifestyle, and who gets to make life or death decisions on his behalf.
In such a small ensemble of extraordinary actors, it’s difficult to single anyone out, but it should be noted that Will McGarrahan and Amelia Broome have never been better, and their communication proves the most memorable moments. They’re aided by the clever lighting shifts by Karen Perlow and simple but effective scenery by Janie E. Howland. As the character Arlene puts it when remembering Luke’s performance in “Our Town”, “there wasn’t much in the way of scenery”, but somehow they made it effective, even if she’d forgotten the point of it. As Holly responds, it was about “how precious life is even while they’re living it”. Both could equally be said of “Next Fall”, especially in Edmiston’s capable hands.
By the end of the play, Luke’s opening line (“we shall all be changed”) proves quite prophetic, as all of the characters have changed, in varying degrees. Adam says to Butch: “Luke wasn’t afraid”, he had certainty. “He looked at me…..finally, I believed”. In what, the audience is left to debate. In the very last line, Adam’s deceptively simple response to a call from Luke’s half brother Ben is profoundly simple: “This is…..My name is Adam”. The brilliance of the work is that the audience can anticipate what the balance of their conversation will be like. Nauffts has stated that his play is about everyone grasping for grace. This production is life-affirmingly, unquestionably, full of grace.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)