Red Speedo

After a tremendously impactful showing at Playwrights Horizons this fall with Christians, Lucas Hnath bring another of his works to the New York Theatre Workshop stage with less than impressive results, Red Speedo.  

Mr. Hnath used a different writing style in this show.  In Christians, it was long preacher-like paragraphs.  Here, he has imbued this play from cover to cover with staccato, interrupted dialogue between two characters - as if each of them is talking a mile a minute but getting only one or two words out before being interrupted by the other - over and over and over.  The result is unfortunately that the actors would have had to rehearse for weeks and weeks to get this style to feel like it was naturally occurring.  On paper it likely looks like a frantic, energetic, heightened dialogue.  On stage, it merely appeared like a machine gun mis-firing.

In terms of casting, whomever was responsible for this NYTW production cast a beautifully tall and lean muscle boy as Ray (Alex Breaux) - not so much a swimmer tho.  It was distracting.  He wasn't beefy and V shaped enough (believe-you-me he was drop-dead gorgeous nonetheless).  In another interesting casting decision, his brother Peter (Lucas Caleb Rooney) looked nothing like him.  I know we all don't look alike but it just seemed odd and lacked authenticity.  Coach (Peter Jay Fernandez) was a bit too serious and stoic.  I didn't sense a reason for him to be so rigid, except that the machine-gun dialogue almost required it.  Ray's complicated girlfriend, Lydia (Zoe Winters), turned in a fine performance but Mr. Hnath might want to stop referring to her as a sports therapist, as I initially thought she was a shrink (she was a physical therapist).

The moral question of the play was unexpectedly complicated.  I expected the performance enhancing drug topic. What I didn't expect, and very much appreciated, was that Ray, the gorgeous Olympic-qualifying swimmer, was dumber than a box of rocks.  It added the dimension of a lack of a choice - that he needed to do this and it was much more instinct than calculated, intelligent decision.  It really made me think about education and emotional development.  Ray was clearly a hunk of meat who could swim but do absolutely nothing else.  Peter was clearly the sleaze bag from beginning to end and it was artful to watch how the coach transformed right before our eyes.  Three very different personalities and how they all interact is a fascinating study.

Now, the white elephant in the room - Hello?  Drug Testing??  Olympic athletes are tested to the moon and back.  Mr. Hnath should have done a better job at explaining this away rather than just hinting at how the testing focuses on levels from test to test rather than a substance itself.

Overall, Mr. Hnath's work presents an universally present problem in all sports and culturally relevant decision making process.  Like everything that is a bad idea, things don't usually end well going down this path.  And Mr. Hnath clearly agrees.

The Real Thing

Tom Stoppard is certainly on a roll.  He, like his compadre Terrence McNally, has two plays running concurrently, in this case, both at the Roundabout Theatre Company.  His latest installment at American Airlines Theatre, on Broadway, is The Real Thing.

This one is heady.  Make no mistake.  Mr. Stoppard is a linguist and writes very, very smart dialogue.  In my brief reading before the show I discovered that this particular show may be a bit autobiographical too.

Henry (Ewan McGregor) an erudite playwright (some might call a snob although his wife uses another similar British slang word), as is Mr. Stoppard.  This play is quite the intellectual study of love, marriage, commitment, and relationships.  He's first married to Charlotte (Cynthia Nixon), but quickly changes gears and falls in love and marries Annie (Maggie Gyllenhaal).  Josh Hamilton plays Max, an actor and first husband of Annie. A tangled web indeed.

We get tangled up in Henry's relationship, views on commitment and love and how those may differ from both Charlotte (his first wife) and Annie (his second wife).  What is jealousy?  Does one person's commitment equate to how the other person sees it?   Can we really just love one person in life?  These and dozens of other lofty questions are batted around during the play - which by the way features the "play within a play" format at the opening with quite a satisfying effect.

I'm pretty sure Mr. Stoppard didn't originally write in the music to the original script and likely (although I can''t really be sure) it was the creation of the brilliant director, Sam Gold.   I understand there may be some additional gimmicks with the music, the cast, and a digital display in the theatre.  There's always a gimmick these days.

Smart, heady, intelligent - this play aims high and delivers on it's promises with a remarkably competent and dazzling cast along with the choices of music both during the show and between the scene change breaks.

An interesting trivia note, Ms Nixon was featured in the original production when she was a mere teenager (as the daughter) and now returns triumphantly as her mother.  The small world of theatre just got even more so.