Significant Other

Joshua Harmon has penned yet another "summer play" for all to enjoy.  It is being presented off-Broadway at the Laura Pels Theater at Roundabout and the venue and timing couldn't be more perfect.  It's like those summer beach books - not to complex, not too long, and a touch of serious but not too much that you're talking about the issues for days.  It's the perfect summer indulgence.

Trip Cullman has finally made his rounds complete at all the non-for-profit theaters in NYC and Roundabout is now finally the recipient of his fine directorial skills.  The show centers on the millennial, Jordan Berman, who is played with pitch perfect looks and tone by the adorable Gideon Glick.  He's cute, shy, and gay.  In this case it seems to mean he doesn't have any male gay friends.  This is a bit annoyingly unrealistic for the setting of NYC, but we'll go with it.  His BFF girlfriends are all growing up and one by one getting married.  Poor Jordan is being left in the proverbial dust because he just can't find anyone (again, in NYC I find this and odd premise).

Exposition reveals that each girl is herself quite a different character and Jordan gets something different from each of them.  Laura (Lindsay Mendez) is perhaps his closest and most sincere soul-mate from his youth.  Kiki (Sas Goldberg) and Vanessa (Carra Patterson) both play slightly more wild BFFs.  Together all 4 make up quite a bunch of fun loving friends.  As a foil to his youth, Jordan also has a close relationship with his grandmother (Barbara Barrie) who we are lead to believe is old, spry, perceptive, OK with him being gay, and slowly losing her memory but holding on to life itself. (i thought it odd that his parents are never really mentioned from what i recall).


Act I was long and contained perhaps a bit too much exposition than needed to get the basic point across.  Act II was much more confrontational and emotional which culminated in a scene in which Jordan basically unleashes a lifetime of pent up anger, frustration, and angst (about being gay, being a gay BFF and a lot of other baggage) on Laura in a very long and emotionally played rant that in itself deserved a round of applause when he was done.  

The play, like life itself, just moves forward and ends.  It's up to you to decide if it is hopeful, sad, inspiring, or depressing.  I suppose everyone can see a lot of character traits of both themselves and various friends in many of the characters - so everyone will take bits and pieces that suit their experiences away and it will be up to them to decide how they feel about the whole thing in the end.  I happen to see it with a bunch of single folks and I am left wondering if some of my married straight friends might take something different away from it than me.  I bet they do.

Wild Animals You Should Know

If there's an off-Broadway play you should see this season, add Thomas Higgins' thought provoking, contemporary new work, Wild Animals You Should Know, to your list.  The play is not an "answer" play, but rather a play that presents characters and situations and leaves you to assemble your own judgments.   Mr. Higgins, along with the young and talented director Trip Cullman, certainly have their own points of view, but this is one of those plays that suggests, pokes, and prods you in a direction, but never comes out and tells you what you should walk away thinking.  In this light - my review may be one of many you read - and you may find someone else with an entirely different take on what they saw.   And I'm pretty sure that's just what Mr's Cullman and Higgins intend.

Jacob (Gideon Glick), an awkward, skinny, affable yet shy, dorky, friendly, openly-gay middle school kid in the suburbs (think Curt from Glee, if you must) is in love with Matthew (Jay Armstrong Johnson) a virtually perfect human specimen - to-die-for looks, blond hair, chiseled body, talented, smart, athletic, outgoing, engaging and fun to be around (think... well fill in your own fantasy with that one).   Right from the very beginning both Jacob (and the audience) is teased by pretty-boy Matthew stripping his clothes off for Jacob over Skype.   Is Matthew gay?  Or is he just an attention-craving teenage boy with a bestie who's gay?  That happens today, right?  Not sure yet.  He claims he's not.  Things heat up when Matthew gazes out his window and catches a glimpse of two men in a window across the street kissing.  He's fascinated (or is it more?). The man happens to be his handsome 20-something Boy Scout Troop Leader (shocker!), Rodney (John Behlmann).  He goes on later to make a passing reference to Jacob's great blow jobs which he enjoys but of course for which he never reciprocates.  Did he just say that? Maybe?  Still not sure.

When the two teen-boys end up going on a camping trip with the Scout Leader, Matthew sets the wheels in motion to "out" the scout leader by coming onto him and then threatening to tell everyone he was molested by the leader if he didn't resign.   The sexual tension and anger in this scene is palpable back to the last row of the theatre.  Unfortunately, his plot works and not only does the scout leader end up resigning, he's outed to the entire town and now everyone is speculating as to why he was involved with the scouts in the first place.

Matthew's father, Walter, (Patrick Breen) is involved in the camping trip too and he has his own set of issues - some suggested and others admitted - husband-wife (Alice Ripley) issues, father-son issues, inferiority, assertiveness.  Matthew is clearly the proverbial gun in this single act play.  And this gun is not only fired directly at Rodney, it's fired repeatedly at his best friend Jacob and indirectly at his father (and mother).

The entire 100 minutes are spent speculating who and what Matthew really is is deep down inside.  I made up my mind early on, mostly taking my cues from the periodic spot-lighting of characters in certain scenes, the purposeful looks, and the general repetition of the proposition and theme itself - plus, of course, my own personal experiences growing up gay.  I'm pretty sure that we're supposed to leave the theatre feeling sorry for Matthew, even after all he's done to destroy others' lives.  The only way I can see you could feel that way after all he's done is to logically conclude that for all his outward popularity, perfection, and all-American good-looks and talents is that he's really gay and frightened to death someone will find out and it will ruin his life.  His only mechanism to deal with it is to wield his power  (i.e. his ego, talents, and beauty) to dominate others and prove he's superior when all the while he's hurting on the inside yearning to break free.

I'm pretty sure either Mr. Cullman or Mr Higgins himself made sure that the very last scene of the play clinched the deal for those that hadn't already made up their minds.  You'll just have to sit through all 99 minutes to see what I mean.   The last minute is well worth the other 98.

Spiderman Turn off the Dark

Let's be clear right up front.  This is not a review.  It's a preview.  I had the unique opportunity to see Spidey roar to life on it's fourth-ever performance.  I went because I wanted to see what a show looked like as they were in the final stages of putting it together.  My fascination with this show is the unique process by which it is being brought to Broadway, not with the show itself.  I don't think I knew anything about the Spidey story growing up.  I stuck to Bugs and Fred and Barney mostly.

Normally, a big new show starts out of town - say in Los Angels, Chicago, or Seattle.  The creative team has never built sets before, never seen how one scene flows into the next from beginning to end, and maybe has only seen the show in a workshop room - never staged at all. They build it all and perform it all in a city away from the eyes of the critical New York press, perfect it, and then, when ready, move it to Broadway for a magical debut.  Makes sense, right?  Sometimes when you are cooking a meal for the first time, you do a "dry run", right?  I know people who get a new job and they drive there 2 or 3 times just to make sure they don't get lost along the way and show up late on the first day!

Well, that's how it all used to work, anyway.  What one of the producers told us on stage just before the preview performance was just this - with one caveat - this show was too big, too complex to do that. There was only one theatre in the world that could handle the massive undertaking - and we were sitting in it.   I'm not so sure I really believe that - but that's the producers' story and they are sticking to it.  And this is where my problem begins.

The house was a sell-out.  By way of history - Spidey's opening has been delayed several times.  So the theatre was filled with people who may have bought tickets month's ago and this particular performance would have been well into the initial weeks of the run - not the 4th preview.  By the sounds of the French, British, German and mid-western and southern US accents all around me - many were tourists.  After all, this is a "big deal" on Broadway, what tourist wouldn't want to get a piece of this action?  The problem is - some of these people paid upwards of $140-$200 per ticket.  (full disclosure, my ticket in the center orchestra, Row O cost me $77).  When you're paying that much to see a show, you may come in with expectations of perfection.  Clearly that was not going to be the case.  I found myself thinking, what's going to happen when these people who paid that much see a show stop, see the lights come up and the actors reset a scene, the stagehands actually on the stage at times?  Will a rope fall on our heads like it did during the first preview? Can I sue them if Spidey falls on my lap and breaks my neck? (OK, i digress...).  Will the people who just expect to be dazzled want to see all that?  Will they walk out in disgust and spread bad news about the show?  Well, here is what I think happened and it's based on, of all things, an interview on Larry King with Al Pacino that recently aired.

Larry was asking Pacino about his performance as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice on the summer stage in Central Park.  Pacino described how it was a unique stage in a unique environment - tree branches fall on stage, an unexpected wind blows your robe above your head, and occasionally it rains - which of course stops the show.  He described how every time it rained and the stage manager announced that the show would pause, the audience seemed to love this.   Larry grimaced and Pacino went on to describe that he could only speculate that people just love to be a part of something unique - and when rain stopped the show - they got to experience something unique - witness how the actors handled it, how the show re-grouped and moved on.  "Always applause", he said.  As if they were cheering us on for being able to handle the interruption.  They were now part of a performance that nobody up to this point had experienced.  People are people.  They all look at the car accident on the side of the road, and apparently they all love when rain stops a show in central park too.

So I apply this principle to the Spidey phenomenon.  My preview performance did stop.  Spidey got stuck. Randall, the production stage manager sitting up in the first box in a little booth who was introduced to us by the producer prior to the show, indeed, had a moment with us.  House lights went up, he fired off some instructions to the actors and stage hands and in a few minutes, we were back on track. During the pause, of course many people decided it was appropriate to clap, cheer on the stuck spidey up on the mezzanine landing spot.  People felt obliged to blurt out comments, others got up and went to the bathroom (and came back in the dark because we were back on in less than 5 minutes).

My point here is that people seem to be publicly condemning the imperfect product, but actually enjoying it at the same time.  Do I have a laundry list of notes for director, Julie Taymor?  Yes.  Do I think she'll ever read this blog post and call me up to discuss them?  Not a chance.  So I'm going to wait until the show opens to see it again and see just how many of those things are gone from my list.  I'll even promise to post the entire list and cross off the ones that were resolved.  But I do have one idea that maybe if everyone was starting this mess all over again would have considered  - - and here it is - -   Everyone must have known this show was going to be mammoth and expensive and technically complex from the get-go.  The producers have sunk an estimated $65M into bringing this show to life - and it will cost them over $1M in running costs each week to keep it running - above and beyond the $65M investment.

Since they were doing something never done before - why didn't they do something in the ticketing world they've never done before - sell tickets to the early performances as dress and technical rehearsals for a fraction of their costs?   The producers are trying to have it both ways - bring a show to Broadway in one of the most unique ways - but all the while stick to the old fashioned model of pricing and selling tickets and they get angry when reviewers prematurely make negative comments - all the while selling full price tickets to the performances.  If every ticket in the house was $40 and the entire preview period was deemed a "dress rehearsal" from the outset - I believe the concept would have generated unique interest - above and beyond the hype for the show itself.  Sell out the preview period with cheap tickets intended to showcase the initial weeks as a work in progress.  Remember, people like to be part of something unique.  Why not sell your strong point - SpiderMan is unique and every aspect of the production, including the ticket pricing and preview performance model should have been be ground breaking and a novel way to publicly birth the show.  Maybe my idea is flawed, maybe someone already thought of it and poo-poo'd it.  Or maybe it was a missed opportunity.

You'll just have to wait for my review which I'll reserve for when the show is officially ready to be reviewed.  I certainly hope some of the items on my list get addressed.

Speach & Debate

A new "cutting edge" oriented space opened this month at the Roundabout. Speech and Debate, a new play by Stephen karam, christened the space. The new space is a new initiative by Roundabout to cultivate new works by emerging playwrights by giving them the opportunity to present their works as "full scale" productions with all the resources that the Roundabout organisation can bring to the table.
Speech and Debate stars 3 up-and-coming actors - Gideon Glick, Jason Fuchs, and Sarah Steele. They portray 3 not-so-average teens in school who are all linked indirectly to a sex scandal. They bond together for various reasons to form a Speech and Debate club to express their ideas. The play is actually presented in the various segments that align to the categories of classic speech and debate. Gideon plays a gay teen who is out, but doesn't want to bring the story to light to cause himself any embarrassment. Jason plays a high school newspaper reporter digging for the story - and making deals along the way. Sarah plays the eclectic student, blogger, and debate club leader.
The play, performed without intermission, provides an insight into the troubles of youth today and the issues that plague society overall. You'll leave the theater thinking. That's how you know it's a good show.

Spring Awakening

Brace yourselves - This one is gonna be a hit! Broadway finally has a new, edgy Rock n' Roll musical that will stick. Grammy award winning Duncan Sheik wrote all the music - a fact that many a theater-goer might even pick up on even without reading the Playbill. And let's not forget this story must have been a true shocker when written in 1891 by Frank Wedekind who is considered one of the founders of modern drama and a real pioneer of the concept of expressionism in the theatre.

The musical today so cleverly juxtaposes the Wedekind dialogue of teenage coming of age in the 1890's with Sheik's biting and angst filled Rock n' Roll lyrics. The resulting message is clear and ageless - kids through all ages have the same problems - - suicide, abuse, growing up gay, sex, abortion, not fitting in, and of course, parental influence. All that really changes is the calendar and the costume.

The actors in this production have a deep connection to the subject matter. Most all of them are actually between 16 and 21 and have grown up with this production over the past 6 years as it made its way to Broadway from the Atlantic Theater Company off-Broadway. The talent is raw, true, and natural. It's not a bunch of 30 year old actors on stage pretending to be kids. It makes all the difference. You feel for these kids and connect with their emotions.

For many of the actors, this is their Broadway debut. While there is a true lead actor and actress (Jonathan Groff as Melchoir and Lea Michele as Wendla) - it's the ensemble that makes this one pop! We get to see the boys belt out their talents right from the beginning in "The Bitch of Living" and the entire ensemble rock the house in "Totally Fucked". It would really be a treat to see John Gallagher, Jr. (Moritz) walk up on stage next July at Radio City Music Hall to collect his Tony for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical.

With an "open" stage and steps down to the first row in the audience the actors seem to flow right into your world on several occasions. There's also 4 rows of bleacher style seating on stage on each side. Be prepared if you sit there. The cast sits among you when they are not performing; they burst into song and jump to their feet and stand on the chairs when you least expect your neighbor to be doing so! The Band is also placed upstage and in a rare move joins the cast and takes a formal bow with the cast - emphasizing their importance to the show's delivery. Each of them also has an individual mention in the playbill. Just as the show is about juxtaposition - so must the lighting be. Kevin Adams, lighting designer, takes the stage from monologue to dialogue to solo and melancholy ballads to foot stomping rock and roll and back all over again flawlessly.

These kids earned the standing ovation they got... and then some! Run, don't walk.