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.

Damn Yankees

Another summer gem in the Summer Stars Encores! series.   Ironically, it's not really about the Yankees at all.  It's about the Washington Senators (go figure!).   George Abbott wrote the now stale and awkward book and Richard Adler and Jerry Ross wrote, for the most part, non-memorable numbers.  It wasn't much of a hit on Broadway, comparatively, but it has its moments.

Taking the helm this time around at the City Center are Sean Hayes (Will and Grace) as Applegate (the devil) making his New York theater debut; Jane Krakowski (Nine, Ally McBeal) making a sublime appearance as the seductive Lola; and Cheyenne Jackson (Xanadu) demonstrating his powerful voice and gorgeous looks as Joe Hardy.   One of my all time favorites was also in the cast as Sister - the ever-hysterical, Veanne Cox (Company, A Mother A Daughter and a Gun).

The show to me was an awkward pastiche of scenes that sometimes did not appear to even connect with each other.  One minute boys on the baseball team are talking, the next they are doing a dance ballet (good, but why?).   One minute Lola and Joe are sad and the next they are dancing like Bob Fosse in a Hernando's Hide-a-way type club (good, but why?).  Other times the scene changes were so dramatic that it felt like you were flipping thru the channels on the TV trying to watch 3 different shows.   And what was that silly fan club talent show number (erp!) for??

The show does have a few memorable numbers - Whatever Lola Wants and my favorite A Little Brains, A Little Heart (with an emphasis on the latter!).  Jane Krakowski knocked them both out of the ballpark!  Sean Hayes scored big with his performance and showcased his talents playing the piano, singing, dancing, and hamming it up in Those Were the Good Old Days.

I doubt this one will transfer to Broadway - but like they say - you can't win 'em all.  In the meantime, steal third and check it out.  The stars of the show salvage what the show lacks.  You won't go home disappointed.

A Touch of the Poet

Gabriel Byrne and his cast members gave us an outstanding evening of theater at Studio 54. A classic straight play with a talented supporting cast aptly directed by Doug Hughs brilliantly entertained us for the entire 2 hours and 40 minutes. (Kudos cousin Cindy!)

The story is set in colonial Boston - July 1828 - and focuses on the Maloy family, lead with great pride by Gabriel Byrne (MAJOR Cornelious Maloy). It becomes aparant that he used to be a gentleman of great stature living on an estate in Ireland in days gone by. However, since his transplantation to America - we learn that he seems to have slipped a few notches down to the status of inn-keeper. What keeps him going is the memory of his days in the army - fighting in Spain for England. Seemingly unaware that he is not a "real" gentleman any longer - he fights his family and his inner self as they all struggle with what love and honor really means to each of them.

Irish Family and Booze - all classic O'Neill - but not at all one of his trademark durges - The play, however, does close with a familiar note of "in the end, nobody really wins".