Spain

I have to say that Spain was the most abstract play that I have seen in a while. I have even read a few reviews after seeing it and I wonder if they give the same performance each night at the Lucille Lortell Theater! Hallucination? Dreams? Desires? Simmering emotions below the surface? What exactly was this play about?

Annabella Sciorra did hold command of the stage in this rather bizarre tale. and the fine support of Veanne Cox and Lisa Kron (in yet another bizarre role) certainly helped to keep us from walking out.

You start off in a living room. A virile Spanish conquistador appears (why, we don't know), her friend and her boss keep calling and asking her to come back to work, she kills her cheating husband with the warrior's sword (or was it a kitchen knife?), the police arrest her. End of Act I (OK, I'm lost). But it only gets worse! Act II we start off in jail with her lawyer, then we are transported to Spain and the conquistador it turns out was a fake. He's a tender loving (virgin) farmer! (why, we don't know). She deflowers him. She phases in and out of jail and Spain - and when back in Spain her friend appears again- -in Spain her husband, who has come back to life kills the farmer (conquistador previously!).

What is all this supposed to mean? Don't ask me - or anyone else in the already sparcely filled theater seen leaving shaking their heads in bewilderment! Check out the Peruvian restaurant across the street - it made it all better again!

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".