The Layover

In its summer installment (delayed no doubt due to Second Stage's introduction of Dear Evan Hansen) we are presented a delicious yet bizarre  "3-Act" play.   I say 3 acts as opposed to the 90 minute no-intermission presentation it actually was because Leslye Headland's drama was played in 3 parts - the 1st 30 minutes was engaging, absorbing, and mysterious, the 2nd 30 minutes were dull, directionless, and meandering.  The last 30 minutes were flat out bizarre - culminating in a most unexpected and incongruent ending.

For a summer installment it was the equivalent of reading a Mary Higgins Clark mystery on the beach.  Staring the always engaging Annie Parisse (Shellie) and the dashing Adam Rothenberg (Dex), this show started out with much promise but devolved into a bizarre ending.  In the middle we took a ride through two seemingly normal people's lives and find out that nothing is what we first believe. Kudos and a shout out to John Procaccino who played a cantankerous dying parent (Fred) with aplomb.  If the fantasy of meeting your prince or princess in an airport is something that interests you, perhaps this play if for you.   If you would be disappointed to find out that much of what transpires at the airport is a lie, then you may be sadly disappointed.

And finally, and fittingly, a bizarre note to the producers - when the play's script goes to the trouble of naming a hotel room # in the dialogue, why would you put a hotel room key with a different number on the playbill??  I'm baffled.  I'm really just glad this layover experience was a brief 90 minutes, and we were dumped out on West 43rd to find out way home on schedule.

Our Mother's Brief Affair

Hot off the press, Richard Greenberg's tender relatively new work hits Broadway's nail square on the head.  An almost perfect fit for the subscription theater crowd.  An old Jewish mother losing her memories and her two distant, yet loving children tango back and forth seamlessly through the present and past memories and try to bring meaning and definition to their lives, each in their own way.

Linda Lavin (Anna) is the matriarch.  Staunch, ignored, marginalized, Jewish, and mildly bitter.  Greg Keller (Seth) is an obituary writer - lonely, preppy yet schleppy, nebbish, and gay. Kate Arrington (Abby) is the less than happy, hippie, gentle, and lesbian.  Ms. Lavin is the perfect choice to play a Jewish mother lording over her children in a loving yet authoritative and sarcastic sort of way.  Mr.  Greenberg seems well skilled at constructing the damaged, delicate, off-balance, and less than perfect family.   His language is rich and often the choice of words is argued over and debated in the dialogue.  It's smart and swift.  His ability to effortlessly sail through the story-telling is large.  Sometimes it's too large and we get bogged down - such as the latter half of Act II.

It turns out that Anna has indeed had what the title suggests - a brief affair.  Her children may or may not have been aware of it but they are grappling with it now. Her son is having the most difficulty coming to grips with the reality of the beans his mother is spilling.  The affair is quite a shocker.  Well, it's a shocker only after they employ a theatrical device to turn up the lights break the 4th wall and have the two children explain to the audience what their mother just admitted to.  I doubt many people would simply recognize the name David Greenglass.  The use of this abrupt device - is used to a lesser extent throughout the show - as this is really a memory play, a story told by the two children intermixed with flashback scenes from their life.

Tender, tough, heartbreaking, funny, and warm all at the same time.  In the end, the message is summed up by Anna to her son by explaining all she ever wanted was to be remembered.

The Qualms

From a master of dialogue and interesting, quirky, provocative topics, Bruce Norris has shared a slightly uncomfortable, marvelously funny, and touching story that delves into the lives of swingers!  Yes, you read that correctly - Swingers!

The cast of couples is superbly unique, extremely diverse, and wonderfully talented.  The story centers around newcomers to the swingers group - upscale couple Jeremy Shamos (Chris) and Sarah Goldberg (Kristy).  The group starts out with the host couple - the mature John Procaccino (Gary) and younger and ditzy Kate Arrington (Teri) and grows more eclectic with each completely different couple that arrives - heavyset firecracker Donna Lynne Champlin (Deb) and hunky handsome, likely gay Andy Lucien (Ken) and exotic Chinasa Ogbuagu (Regine) and white bread American-as-can-be Noah Emmerrich (Roger).   What a wild mix and what a wild ride they are in for.

Ruminating on faith, love, commitment, religion, and everything related to the meaning of life itself, this group of swingers go on one wild ride this evening.  The audience is along for the ride the entire time - but I must say that the play slowed to an unbearable crawl about 2/3rd of the way through as if Mr. Norris just couldn't wrap it up cleanly enough.  The penultimate scene pertaining to statistics in a large metropolitan city should really have ended the play so cleverly but he needed a comforting reconciliation scene around the gun they brought out in Act I - the banana pudding.

And finally, I love a play that features what is likely to be a new actor - in this case he doesn't even have any lines - but the expression on his face was worth 1000!  Kudos to Julian Leong (Delivery Boy). And Kudos to writing such roles into plays to let everyone get their start!

Love and Information

This play is very unique and another thoroughly enjoyable installment of the New York Theatre Workshop.  Actually, less of a play more a series of thematic vignettes - long and short.  Broken down into 8 chapters, Caryl Churchill imbues each chapter with a theme that is then explored in several usually quick slices of life she presents.  Funny, sad, poignant, smart, coy, cunning, deceptive - you name it - she's got it.

The cast of 15 is usually, but not exclusively, paired in twos and is always introduced by a sound effect that relates to the scene.  Part of the formula for success is the bare white stage box and lighting effect at the scene changes that completely blacks out the view.  Very binary, very data-oriented, very sparse.  It focuses you on the topic of the scene.  There's a fair amount of thinking or processing that has to go on - that is - if you are trying to decode each scene and chapter.

By the time chapter 4 came along I started to figure out a pattern.  I just wish they would have displayed that theme when they flashed the chapter number up on the scrim.  It really would have made a quicker and stronger association to the content as it unfolded.  They could have at least printed it in the Playbill so we could have all reflected upon it afterwards.  And believe me, this one generated a lot of conversation afterwards.

With 57 individual vignettes over 2 hours, there was quite a bit to recall fondly.