Oslo

It's official - I just saw the Tony award winning play of the year.  Oslo, a new docu-play by J.T. Rogers being presented at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre at Lincoln Center is a bold, crackling, and humorous new play about the back-channel peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis in the early 1990's told with humor, charm, heart, and brutal honesty.

Jefferson Mays (Terje Rod-Larsen) and Jennifer Ehle (Mona Juul) headline the cast as the brains behind the entire idea and operation - an effort in secret to get the two parties to a secret negotiating table Norway where they could exchange real ideas, thoughts, and feelings - not the tried and failed methods of public posturing sponsored by the Americans and others for years.

The cast of characters is broad - heads of state, secretaries of state, foreign ministers, and negotiators - and even a housekeeper and butler.  Top notch performances were turned in by Michael Arnov (Uri Savir - Israeli) and Anthony Azizi (Ahmed Qurie - Palestinian).  Even a worthy Shimon Peres (Daniel Orestes) graced the stage.

The play sweeps through 3 hours before you know it.  Act I is a clever flashback to the origins of the talks that ends where it started - and sets up Act II - the actual peace negotiations.  At times tense, at others humorous, the play effortlessly glides between the two states often and sometimes unexpectedly.  The play sweeps past the accords, reveals video of the actual signing and hand shaking at the White House among all the parties and goes on to provide you with an abbreviated version of events that occurred post-accord all the way up to today.  Jefferson Mays ends the play on an uncertain yet positive and hopeful note.

Award winning performances, direction, and dialogue all combine to make this sleeper that moved upstairs from the Mitzi Newhouse Theater (off-Broadway) a hit that will inform, entertain, and remind us all just how far we've come and how much work is yet ahead.

The Invisible Hand

A force to be reckoned with, Ayad Akhtar has penned yet another powerful drama now playing out on the stage at New York Theatre Workshop.  He's currently on Broadway representing his Pulitzer prize winning work, Disgraced.

This time around he has infused cultural anger and religion in a new way - a kidnapping of an American banker in Pakistan who has to literally trade his way out of captivity.   Potent, riveting, intelligent, and well explained, (I felt like i needed to short a stock after I left the theatre!) the show succinctly laid out our different religious and societal beliefs between the west and east and proved through plot twists and revelations throughout the show how money and power corrupts and just how absolutely it does so.

Photo from Seattle Production

Justin Kirk (Nick Bright) must have taken a crash course in the stock market and its various economic theories in order to master this role - and master it he did.  He was quite literally like the play's namesake - an Invisible Hand - guiding us through the technicalities of the market. Part sheepish boy, part super-intelligent banker, his character seemed at ease with this tough role.  Dariush Kashani (Imam Salem) walked a tough line between religion, beliefs, and corruption with his tragic character.  Usman Ally (Bashir) portrayed his character with zeal, zest, and power.  Young, eager, and possibly the most corrupt and most compassionate at the same time.  His word, in the end, was his most honest trait.

The brutal honesty of this play told through the lens of a kidnapping and the captors lends new credence to the idea that we really don't know the power of our respective cultures and when they meet the consequences can be explosive.

The Happiest Song Plays Last

The 3rd in a trilogy of plays by Quiara Alegria Hudes, this one just might need a bit more work.  There's nothing wrong with the story - unless you think the disjointed, unconnected characters and plot lines are too much to handle and too long and painful to endure.

Armando Riesco has been Elliott in all of the trilogies and once again does a remarkable job at showing the pain and anguish buried deep in his soul.  This time around,  we meet him back in the middle east (he is a war veteran of the middle east).  We also meet his cousin Yaz (Lauren Velez) her May to December romantic interest Augusin (Tony Plana, of Ugly Betty), a homeless man Lefty (Anthony Chisholm), his Jordanian/Iraqi guide (Duriush Kashani), his movie co-star Shar (Annapurna Sriram).  Follow all that?

Although this is being presented at Second Stage, one would assume this show had a first showing somewhere else.  With that, I would assume that the editor was sound asleep at the switch.  This play was so disorganized and so rambling that it just kept going and going and going... What exactly is then happiest song and why does it play last?  I have no idea.   The on-stage Puerto Rican 3-man band was unnecessary and often played for no reason.  It wasn't a musical at all and there were so many stories going on it was distracting.

This is one that should have gone straight to DVD without a stop in the theaters!