The Humans

The wonderfully talented writer, Stephen Karam, has penned yet another potent work now on stage at Roundabout's Laura Pels Theater.  The Humans is a bare bones expose of the titular condition translated to us via the Blake Family.

Erik Burke (Reed Birney) and Deidre Blake (Jane Houdyshell) are the staunchly middle class parents who raised their kids and go to church.  They seem to be finding the dream slipping away day by day.  Aimee Blake (Cassie Beck) and Brigid Blake (Sara Steele) are their two daughters who seemingly have done better than their parents' generation - college for both and Aimee being a lawyer in Philadelphia.  Brigid is, however, a struggling composer just out of school with a mountain of student loan debt.  Brigid is hosting Thanksgiving in her newly obtained apartment in Chinatown - a byproduct of her and her boyfriend Richard Saad (Arian Moayed) deciding to move in together to save money on the way to seeing if they can make it as a couple.  Mother Blake is, of course, not happy about this arrangement.  You're supposed to get married first.  Accompanying them is Erik's Mother (Lauren Klein) who is completely taken by Alzheimer's.  She's in a wheelchair and is really much out of it.  We learn they really can't afford to put her anywhere for care which makes the disease even more sad for all involved.

As Brigid over-compensates and leads the conversation and tour of her city and neighborhood, we learn more and more about each family member.  Aimee has ulcerative colitis and may be losing her job as a lawyer.  Mom and Dad have worked for the same places with little wage increases over the past few decades.  Brigid is still learning how to "live" with her new boyfriend - what they share, what they say, and what they don't.  It's really a slice-of-life type of a play with the family's dirty laundry being exposed here and there.  Funny, poignant, and sad.  Mr. Birney and Ms. Houdyshell might just be the finest actors on the stage today.  Neither one seems to be able to utter an insincere or unintentional word.  Ms. Steele is annoying and endearing all at the same time.  It's a family,  warts and all.  It's a dumpy New York City apartment Chinatown, warts and all.   It's Thanksgiving, warts and all.

We do learn that Dad has something to tell everyone.  I assumed it was the big C. But it's a twist that you will not expect.  Like many families who don't really talk to each other and ignore most of the not-so-nice things - the Burke's are no different.  The play progresses with light bulbs burning out until we end is total darkness.  A darkness I liken to the lost nature of the entire family and families in general - all bubbly and sparkly on the outside, not so much on the inside.

Dead Accounts

Roma was right.  This play stinks.  And when I say "this play", I mean the actual script itself.  Theresa Rebeck got thrown off SMASH after the first season and someone should now officially throw her off Broadway too.  Dead Accounts amounts to nothing more than a bad sit-com that doesn't come close to cutting it on stage.  Most of the characters are way overly-exaggerated to be believed.  While perhaps a common trait in 30 minute situation comedy writing, it's not at all a good idea for a 2 hour stage play charging upwards of $100 per seat.

What about the acting, you might ask?  Well, that was mixed but decent.  Norbert Leo Butz, plays his sweet spot to the nines - a hyperactive, neurotic, mess.  Katie Holmes turns in a decent performance despite the trite material which has her vacillating between dumb and kind to just plain dumb. Jane Houdyshell shines in the role of dowdy and typical aging mid-western mother with limited brain capacity for independent thought and therefore fixated on God.  Josh Hamilton (Phil) had nothing more than a cameo-type role (think guest star on a SNL skit) and Judy Greer turns in what I would consider the worst performance of the evening.  The buildup to her character's arrival was substantial and the meek, baby-talking, inappropriately innocent girl that showed up was disappointing to say the least.

The New Yorker "observations" penned by Ms. Rebeck were marginally entertaining but like everything else, unnecessarily over-the-top.  The out-of-towners seemed to get most (but not all) of the jabs. And when it came to Ms. Holmes' scene stealing melt-down about the greed of banks, the audience clearly showed their mid-western ignorance.  (And by 'audience' I mean the gaggle of noisy out-of-town tourists straight off the big white bus who filled the last two rows of the mezzanine (read, cheapest seats) just because Katie Holmes was on the marquis while there were over 12 empty rows of seats  in front of them).  

Roma was right - and the word is out.  Dead Accounts is indeed dead.   Dead on Arrival.

The Language Archive

Asian American Julia Cho's new play, The Language Archive, is a surprisingly entertaining and satisfying piece of theatre with a simple message currently playing at the Roundabout Theatre Company's Laura Pels Theatre on West 46th Street.  I've seen the play up on the "paper the house" ticket sites that I belong to and assumed it was one of those, you know, marginal plays with a subscription base that wasn't quite pulling its seat filling weight.  Well, I was wrong.

George (Matt Letscher) and Mary (Heidi Schreck) are married but something is just not right.  George is a brilliant linguist, a scientist of sorts - a preserver and documentarian of languages no longer spoken.  Mary is simply unhappy - with life, herself, and being married to George - yet George, the brilliant linguist is at a loss for words when it comes to Mary.  Into his laboratory, or library as it were, comes Alta (Jayne Houdyshell) and Resten (John Horton), an elderly couple from a distant land (Uzbekistan-like, by the looks of their humorous frocks) who are the last two speakers of another dying language.  He expects to record their conversations and preserve their tongue, but what he gets instead is a lesson in life and love.  George's wife leaves him to find herself, Emma (Betty Gilpin), George's assistant goes on a journey to summon the courage to reveal her unrequited love for him, and Alta and Resten fight (in English) like you'd expect an old married couple to do.  

Cho has brilliantly woven the fabric of the characters together, an overlapping pattern of sorts.  Each of them experiences something unexpected in their life and each of them learns from the others both through direct dialogue and indirectly through circumstance and observation.  In the end, Cho's message is not about language at all, it's about love - the many different types of love and how not everyone may end up loving the way they expect. 

Mark Brokaw's direction was smart and the grand moving bookcase sets by Neil Patel set the perfect mood and atmosphere for the story.  Overall, this play was quietly powerful.  No guns, no strobe lights, no 3D effects - just an enjoyable evening in the theatre with an honest message about life.  Thank you Julia Cho.

Love, Loss, and What I Wore

Nora and Delia Ephron have penned a delightful work that focuses on the memories of our lives as seen through the clothes the 5 women on stage have worn at various points in their lives.  It's a reading of sorts - coordinated and choreographed vignettes - not really a play.  It's funny, poignant, and at times may elicit a gasp or a tear.  Taken for what it is - you'll leave with a satisfying smile on your face.

I saw the cast of Jayne Houdyshell, Adriane Lenox, Allison Mack, Kate Mulgrew, and Kristine Nielsen.  Each of them had moments to shine and they all came thru with flying colors - and they really looked like they were having fun on stage.  I presume that each cast plays the characters differently - bringing the subtleties of the individuals to the reading they are performing - so no two casts will produce the same show.  The character on stage right (that's to the left for the audience) who's name is Ginger (Jayne, in this cast) is the main character whose story is woven throughout the other 4 characters' stories - most of which are not connected.  This is an interesting theatrical device used to create a feeling of continuity and story amongst all the other unrelated passages.  A special shout out to Kristine Neilsen - who seemingly had (and nailed) the show stealing reading about the purse).

I love Jayne and Kate - and they were the reason I chose this cast.  But I am going to guess that the underlying stories and memories that Nora and Delia elicit in their words would make just about any talented actress shine.  If this were a move - we'd say "chic-flik".  But I didn't mind.  A smile on your face is just that - a smile.

The Receptionist

Occasionally, it happens. I see a play and walk out with a totally different perspective than Ben Brantly, Charles Isherwood, and the other critics. They loved it.

Don't get me wrong - Jane Houdyshell is pitch-perfect in her portrayal of every one's favorite admin in the office - she comes and goes like the Swiss railroad, she guards her pens, chitty-chats with the staff and her friends and family all day on the phone while allowing occasional work task to creep in, throws the un-wanted callers into voicemail for the boss, and keeps a watchful eye over the comings and goings in the entire office.

Other than the bright spot of Jane - this play was a disaster. The first scene took 10 minutes to unfold - and went nowhere. You had no idea what Robert Foxworth is talking about.

Then the next 50 minutes were spend watching meaningless and pointless conversations take place and leave you asking after over an hour - - "Where is this thing going"? You are supposed to infer after a while that some form of futuristic torture is in play.

Not even in the final 15 minutes to they even get to the point. And then - after you finally convince yourself that you were right in your vague assumption thus far, the play ends!! What becomes of our favorite admin? You can only assume her dark fate.

You never saw the boss again. You find out the other co-worker ran away. And you come to learn that that the "Northeast Office" and the "Central Office" are nothing more than a proxy for the CIA... or the FBI... of some vague combination of Abu-Garave in Iraq.

I'm sorry Ben, Charles, and all the others who loved it. I think you may have dozed off and got the funny lines in the beginning and the "dramatic" ending. I couldn't even bring myself to clap at the end. Mostly because the person next to me asked two or three times in the dark "is that it"?

Well

A mere 4 shows ago - i warned you - beware when the person who WROTE the show actually STARS IN the show too... Here we go again! "Well" is not your standard Broadway play. I'm really not sure what Lisa Korn is trying to convey either. Some mish-mash about how some people are perpetually "sick" and others get "well". (get it? - well, as in healthy).

The play meanders in and out of her "real life" and "stage life". She's one minute putting on a play (scene by scene) and the next chatting with her mother (yes, this is the woman who was asleep in her chair on stage while you are arriving into the theater). I really did like the mother's character - she was the funny one (Jayne Houdyshell). Periodically she applies a theatrical "trick" of switching the stage lights off and speaking to the audience under a focused spot light to confess to us something she doesn't want her monther to hear. (my friend Dennis Larkin will tell me what the name of that theatrical trick is, i'm sure). Low and behold, she then pulls the joke of having her mother tell her - "I can hear you, you know"! Oh brother - how trite!!

She seems to focus on "sick" people - and all i could tell is that she is trying to say the some people need attention, need to create "drama" about something - and in this case it's the "allergies" excuse. "Everything wrong with your health is due to allergies" seems to be what her mother subscribes to - Aches, Pains, Fatigue, and everything else. That was somehow juxtaposed against her mother's desire to live in a racially integrated neighborhood in Detroit in the 1960's. Her mother was somehow able to lead the neighborhood and make it "well" (healing racial devides), but yet she was otherwise a "sick" older lady. (Huh?!! What's the connection?!!)

What's the point? I mean really - we all walked out of the theater wondering what she was really trying to tell us. (remember, she really was speaking to us - breaking the 4th wall and all)....

I have a better perscription for you - stay home in bed and eat some chicken soup - it's only $3.99 at Fairway. Far cheaper than a ticket to "Well".