Lips Together, Teeth Apart

What a magical time on and off Broadway for Terrence McNally.  Three of his shows - two now running concurrently (Lips, It's Only a Play) and one that just closed (Mothers & Sons) are/were on stage entertaining audience to various degrees of success.  Unfortunately, Lips Together, Teeth Apart is likely on the bottom of the success scale.  Unlike his other two plays which evoke opposite but equally powerful emotions - a visceral reaction (Mothers and Sons) and hysterical laughter (It's Only a Play) - this play is neither rousingly happy nor sad.  It just is. And it wasn't that good.

As a matter of fact, it has the triple-whammy of being slightly boring, all over the map in terms of storytelling, and slightly mis-cast.   Boring?  The story is what it is - two couples on Fire Island at one of the women's dead gay brother's house.  Why are they here?  What keeps these couples together?  Why do we care?  Those questions are barely answered although asked repeatedly on stage.  All over the map?  Yes they talk endlessly about lots of issues - many of which are tangential to the plot, some of which make you wonder why they are telling you this. We never see the gay neighbors to contrast the straight (and out of place) couple at the house.  It's 1990 and AIDS is still an unknown but we really only learn why they are afraid to swim in the pool at the end of Act 3!  Miscast?  Trace Chimo (Chloe) ruled the stage with her overbearing and hysterically funny character.  She hit it out of the park.  America Ferrera (Sally) underwhelmed significantly.  She seemed lost of the stage and generally flat.  Austin Lysy (John) seemed too young and although quite handsome, not as cock-sure as the dialogue might suggest.  Michael Chernus (Sam) just didn't seem to fit with Sally and left you wondering why they were even together in the first place.

Casting aside - A 3-Act play is unique.  This play was way too long for it's own good and it felt like we just wasted time in between for both intermissions and ultimately didn't end up resolving much and left you wondering just what the point was after the 2H:30M is up.

I'm left wondering just what the first incarnation of this play would have been like a while back when Roundabout was going to do it but star Megan Mullally (Chloe, i presume) stormed off the set and quit.  For Roundabout that just may have been a blessing in disguise.  

Close Up Space

Molly Smith Metzler is an award winning playwright from Brooklyn and she's written a charmer that is now being presented at Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) on the small stage at NY City Center.

The play, Close Up Space, revolves around Paul (David Hyde Pierce), an intelligent literary editor and his estranged and odd daughter, Harper (Colby Minifie).  The title cleverly refers to an editing/proof-reading symbol - as in "shorten this up and remove some words (the verb to close, pronounced with a 'z').  You learn fairly early that something is amiss with his family and his daughter is quite upset with his actions.  Throw in a Saturday Night Live-like office manager, Steve (Michael Chernus), a well-published spit-fire (albeit mis-cast) author, Vanessa Finn Adams (Rosie Perez), and an innocent and smartly cast office intern, Bailey (Jessica DiGiovanni) and you have the makings of a sweet treat.

However in making that sweet treat, if you use the wrong ingredients or switch the salt for sugar you're in for a disaster.  Such is the case under the reign of Barry Grove at MTC.  Ms. Perez, while entertaining, is an over-used, mis-cast character actress in the role.  Mr. Chernus, while very funny and his character's arc cleverly designed, was overly so - to a point beyond satire to that of absurdity and farce.  Ms. Minifie's defects were perhaps one of the few that can be associated with the author  - taking the "I've been exiled to Siberia" analogy way too far.   David Hyde Pierce worked his magical reactions, facial expressions, and character acting the entire time and essentially rescued this one from falling into the abyss.

Mr. Grove - your audience is somewhere between 40 and death... much closer to the latter, i estimate (maybe because your subscriptions are relatively cheap) and your play selection, while admirable, just haven't seem to cut it in the past few cycles.  David Hyde Pierce may just have prevented this one from becoming the next one to fall off the cliff, but you've got to to a little better or once the purple haired audience ends up in those coffins, you're going to have a lot of empty seats in those wonderful theaters you manage.

Hunting and Gathering

The funny and quirky show at Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters about 4 interconnected New Yorkers - A college professor recently divorced, his brother, a perennial couch surfer, a neurotic apartment hopper searching for the elusive "it" place, and a slightly dizzy college student not afraid to try it all out - all tied together with the common bond of dive bars and dating, apartment hunting and Craig'sList, the search for peace of mind, and a place to call home.

Are you a Hunter? Aggressive, on-the-prowl, know what you want, go out and get it?

Are you a Gatherer? Caregiver, cleaner-upper, emotion sharer, the move-in type?

Mr. Marmalade

Possibly the strangest, yet entertaining play I've ever seen! The story is the wild fantasy of a 4 year old and her immaginary friends. And what a cast of "characters" they all are! Let's cut to the chase - - the playright obviously want to tell us that children absorb almost everything around them - mood, demeanor, class, status, emotion and yes, even neglect. They watch too much TV and as entertainment in their own "imaginary world" re-construct these things with often "damaging" consequences.

The headliner here was Michael C. Hall - aka David Fisher from "Six Feet Under". But the real star of the show is Mamie Gunner. As 4 year old Lucy, she never left the stage and gave a supurb "adult" performance.

Leave it to Roundabout to construct the best sets in the business. This one - a curved 1960's-esque living room - had the most ingeneous "secret" doors - which often revealed small doses of "glitz" to enhance your viewing experience. The Laura Pells Theater is a perfect size for this type of production.

PSA: Spend more quality time with your kids.