Man From Nebraska

Powerhouse Tracy Letts penned a killer show several years ago - August Osage County - family drama - intense - drug fueled.  Wowza.  His latest installment off-Broadway, Man From Nebraska, is far from that prior mark. Intentional, I'm pretty sure.  This show is brooding, show, vacuous, empty, hopeless, and depressing.  This is not all necessarily bad, it just leaves you quite a different taste in your mouth than the prior installment. Sometimes life throws you curve balls.  Some people swerve to avoid them, others get beamed directly in the head.  Such is life.

Probably the hardest working actor on and off Broadway, Reed Birney, (Ken) helms this production and is basically whom the entire show revolves around Ken and his mid-life religious crisis.  Kathleen Peirce (Cammie Carpenter) is his devoutly religious wife who is left to deal with the fallout.  It was not lost on me that Ken was from dead-center America where religion is much more central to the lives of people.  Ken meets Harry Brown , the brilliant Max Gordon Moore and Tamyra, the lovely Nana Mensah.  It also did not get lost on me that in his mid-life crisis he flew the coop to London - a city that could not be more different than Nebraska.  Mr. Letts seemed to be hinting at these disparities in quite a bit of the dialogue - (Ken: "I lost my faith", Tamyra: "They throw you Yanks out for that these days?").

Part blistering critique of religion and America, part human condition, Mr. Letts shows us what happens when man questions long held beliefs as provincial and narrow as they might seem.  He may or may not find something more satisfying out there.  He may come back. Or maybe he won't.  Despite the rather hum-drum and depressing Nebraska life that Ken leads, we do find that he is able to expand his horizons if even for a brief period.

Frankly Mr. Letts' play doesn't really answer the question it merely scratches the surface and explores the topic.  If you are looking for definitive answers you won't find them here.

Prodigal Son

In likely his most personal work, John Patrick Shanley bring us his own coming of age tale in a touching, moving story of his years in attendance at a small private school in New Hampshire. "Do you remember 15?",  he innocently asks at the beginning of the play - only to circle back to that same line at the very end to emphasize the quality and clarity of his own memories. Indeed Mr. Shanley does remember quite well.


Sharing the stage are both veteran stage actors as well as a new, fresh face who himself might be destined for greatness.  Robert Sean Leonard (Alan Hoffman) and Chris McGarry (Carl Schmitt) deliver solid performances but it is Timothee Chalamet, a 20 year old, fresh-faced talent who has the run of the stage the entirety of the performance.  Aptly cast at his delicate age, Mr. Chalamet seems to have already mastered the art of dialogue, humor, and on-stage charm that only a young boy can.

One has to presume that most of what is told on stage indeed occurred in some form in Mr. Shanley's life.  In true form, the entire story was not laid bare.  Hints of story lines not explored only added to the mystery.  Much of the play is exposition - as it likely should be.  But for a play without much of a twist or gotcha moment, it tended to drag at points.  Regardless of whether it did occur or not, was it really necessary to include the Catholic-isms of the New Hampshire schoolmaster?  Did we need to explore the professor's attraction?  Couldn't that be left to his likely abusive family in the Bronx?  We really never did find out what was so anathema about the prospect of going back to the Bronx but one can assume.  Might a rational person assume an overlap with Doubt here?

Overall, learning about a living, breathing person is a bit awkward.  He could be sitting right next to you during the performance.  Awkwardness aside, this top notch cast turns out an excellent story which will linger with you - just like it has for the real life author.  And for the author and director to be watching his life story told back to him - that must just be mind-blowing.