Too Much Sun

 Fresh off her last off-Broadway turned Broadway run, The Lyons, Linda Lavin joins up once again with playwright Nicky Silver once again at the Vineyard Theatre for Too Much Sun, a full length family drama filled with humor and wit.

Linda Lavin (Audry Langham), a once successful, aging actress who is fed up with her diminished roles walks off stage of her seemingly silly engagement as Medea in Chicago and retreats to her daughter's beach house to regroup.  What unfolds is a family drama tangled up with the neighbors in more ways than one.  Mr. Silver's pen is sharp and witty, but his plot is unnecessarily complicated for the story being told and feels a bit like he wrapped it all up in the last 5 minutes.  It's not only the sun that's too much in this production.

All these rabbit holes aside, the show was extremely well acted and directed.  Jennifer Westfeldt (Kitty) and Ken Barnett (Dennis) are Lavin's daughter and son-in-law who are dragged unwittingly into her lair.  Richard Bekins (Winston) and devilishly handsome Matt Dickson (Lucas) are their beach house neighbors also both separately drawn into the family drama and have a drama of their own going on.  Audry's agent's assistant, Matt Dellapina (Gil), was hysterically entertaining and neurotic but involvement overall seemed contrived - especially at the end.

As I write this, I wonder if the character of Lucas even needed to have a storyline with Dennis or if the neighbors storyline needed to be so developed.  I guess we needed parts of it.  The play may have been shorter and punchier if it focused solely on Ms. Lavin's unfortunate yet comical situation.  But alas, perhaps that may have seemed too much like a simple 30 minute sit-com if it were.

From a construction perspective, the play had a prologue which seemed to work, but then there was an Entr'acte after the intermission that seemed a bit awkward.  All told it was a bit choppy overall, but the purposes were served.  A little lighting glitch was dealt with professionally and expeditiously and frankly was a reminder that theatre is live and shit happens.

As with all she seems to do, Ms. Lavin shines and her comedic timing is impeccable, but alas, I doubt this one will transfer to Broadway like the last one did.  In any case, she's one of those people who could read me the phone book and I'm positive I'd be mesmerized.

Outside People

Maybe Naked Angels has the idea first?  But in a Broadway season that already contains a very funny Chinese-culture play, I'm not sure why the Vineyard chose this time to mount Outside People exactly now.   Logistics aside, which may have just been mere coincidence, it is now inevitable that comparisons to Chinglish, on Broadway, will be made.  Unfortunately for the Vineyard, hands down, Chinglish is a better play - technically, stylistically, and comically.

While the two plays are clearly different stories, they both deal at a high level with the cultural differences between Westerners and Chinese.  In this case Zayd Dohrn's new work it's a biting commentary on the Westernization of China and the dirty underworld that exists as capitalism suddenly slams into the vastly unprepared empire.  It's about friendship and the many ways that can be interpreted, used, and misused by both parties to a friendship.  It's about love, labor, and economic freedom.

All those heady topics that failed to impress me aside, the playwright shrouded the friendship and plot in so much mystery, it was frustrating and confounding at times.  Where was he going?  Is he going where I think he is?  What does David Wang really do?  Is she?  or Isn't she?   Not all of this is bad - i like the approach, but the execution seemed to be lacking, unfocused, and misleading.  Maybe a Chinese director would have helped matters?  I'm not sure.

Matt Dellapina (Malcolm) and Nelson Lee turn in top-notch performances - clearly grasping and owning their respective characters, flaw and all with Mr. Dellapina deftly owning his nebbish insecurity and borderline neuroticism and Mr. Lee owning his power as a young, American educated, good looking, Chinese businessman.

T'was a serious topic, some great acting, and a pace to the work that propelled it forward, but in the end, it missed making some connections, lacked a compelling reason for the entire circumstance of Malcolm's being in China, and somehow left most of the audience wondering (and I don't think this was intended at all) whether Xiao Mei was or wasn't who she was accused of being.

Dream of the Burning Boy

Roundabout Underground has done it again. Another outstanding production down in the black box theatre in the bowels of the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre. This production is also #2 at the RU for one of the most in-demand off-Broadway actors this season, Reed Birney.

Set in a small high school in Suburban America, the play deals with the issue of the death of one of the students – from both the perspective of the young students as well as Larry (Birney) one of the teachers. Young playwright, David West Read, has composed razor sharp dialogue in a tinder box situation for the characters. Without revealing the twists and turns of the plot, I’ll just say that Read takes the audience on a wild ride, never leaving the audience with a dull moment and always turns the expected into the truly unexpected.

Alexandra Socha (Rachel) turns in an outstanding performance, constantly churning out the sarcasm, intelligence, and wit of a young sister stricken by grief and at the same time eagerly seeking answers to her questions. Birney (Larry) turns in an emotionally complex performance, proving once again that he is a top-notch stage actor.

Don’t worry, there won’t be any flames on stage, the there will certainly be plenty of heat.