A Life

A powerful, humbling new play, A Life,  by Adam Bock is now playing over at Playwrights Horizons.  Mr. Bock explores life through a lonely, gay, introverted, quirky, and obsessive character, Nate Martin (David Hyde Pierce).  Not only does he explore his literal life, he explores the fleeting nature of life through his death.

Nate Martin is a complicated man yet at the same time, he's every man.  Frustrations, disappointments, plans, hopes, loves, dreams fill his life.  In the blink of an eye, things could change - and do.  About half of the play is spent watching Nate's body prepared for a funeral.  Life goes on around him, we hear his thoughts, and realize that it is all fleeting.

Nate is into astrology - the stars and planets and what they say about you and how they might explain your life.  To be honest, I'm not sure if that theme was meant to represent religion and its role in the human experience or possibly something more specific to Nate's belief system.  I do know there were no planetary realignments when he died so perhaps it just represents something that in the end, like everything else, is meaningless.

A touching, honest, and sad first scene; A shocking next turn of events with a dash of today's culture of inappropriateness thrown in just to make you shrug your shoulders; and a touching and brutally honest eulogy seen at the funeral capped most specifically by the thoughts from his mostly estranged sister (he was gay and from Minnesota and her comments were dripping with mid-western values and a complete lack of understanding, disappointment, and ultimately and ironically the same loneliness).

There's a funeral joke told by his best friend Curtis (Brad Heberlee) that you can't help but laugh at and at the same time makes you cringe.  Perfectly placed and such great acting around the uncomfortable nature of the whole affair.

These Paper Bullets

Now rockin' the stage over at the Linda Gross Theater of The Atlantic Theater Company is a play with music that has more effervescence than some musicals.  The title and origins of the show are a bit stuffy being from Yale Reparatory Theater and all.... but that doesn't stop director Jackson Gay from dazzling the audience with his spinning disk stage and scenery (i get it, just like a record, right?) upon which the boys and their fans strut their stuff.


What have we got going on here, you ask?  It's Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing updated to London 1964 and involves a boy band that very closely (*wink wink*) resembles the Beatles.    The Quartos - which in my opinion should be the name of the play - are cute, rebellious, young and horny. (what boy bands aren't?).  Music by Billie Joe Armstrong and orchestrations by Tom Kitt are sure to please.

Don't get me wrong - it's super-smart - although I will admit I have never read Much Ado About Nothing - so much of it was lost on me.  Meanwhile the music has an all-too-familiar sound to it and kept the toes-a-tapping'.   The uber adorable and sexy boys of The Quartos - Ben (Justin Kirk), Claude (Bryan Fenkart), Balth (Lucas Papaelias), and Pedro (James Barry) - croon the night away and take you back a few decades to a more innocent time.

Sub plots develop around the love and revenge story - one might say a few too many however.  Scotland Yard detectives investigating "What is wrong with the youth of our Country" provide some entertaining interludes following the boys - including the incredibly adorable multi-character actor Christopher Geary.  The women who are the object of affection and scorn include Bea (Nicole Parker), Higgie (Arianna Venturi), and Ulcie (Keira Naughton).

Yes, I believe the characters have similar names to the play by the Bard and it's all wrapped in a hip backbeat that will make you smile despite the unnecessarily long tun time (please trim this up, Rolin Jones).  A two hour runtime will likely be the sweetest spot you can find.