Marvin's Room

This revival of Marvin's Room may leave you wondering why people revive plays at all - especially when there have been a very successful movie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and had well received original off-Broadway and regional productions.  It would seem that you either have to do as well as the previous two or take your toys from the sandbox and just go home.  This revival is unfortunately the latter case.

Don't get me wrong - Lili Taylor (Bessie) and Janeane Garofalo (Lee) and Celia Weston (Ruth) form a magnificent trio of family lost and floundering with life at large.  But in their efforts - they are flat.  Completely flat.  Other than a few laughs and a few serious moments - I never even felt these 3 women were family.  Neighbors maybe, but family no.  Bring in young Hank (Jack DiFalco) and Charlie (Luca Padovan) and it seems like they all just met at the day care.  No connections whatsoever.

The set is lackluster at best - not a typical Roundabout production at all.  Like everything about this revival - lackluster and bare.  It seems the trend these days - strip away the costumes, the set, the makeup and glamor and lay bare the script for all.  Well, it hasn't always worked in the past, and employing the gimmick this time hasn't either.

It's a touching play (Scott McPherson) but this incarnation left me feeling empty and un-touched. I wanted the subject to move me but a juggernaut this time around this play is not.

Important Hats of the Twentieth Century

My reaction after about 10-15 minutes of bewilderment in Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage II at NY City Center was one of utter confoundment (if that's a word).  What on earth possessed MTC to choose this play to produce?  It appears to have been written by someone with the mind of a 13 year  old.  Why was I being forced to pay to watch this crap?

Let me be clear here - the actors were magnificent at the character acting contained throughout- not the least of which was the uber adorable and talented Carson Elrod (Sam Greedy) as an over the top fashion designer.  The other actors all played multiple characters - including a single woman who played all the female parts.

The trouble here isn't the lighting (it was great), sound (it was great)  or fairly good direction and blocking (very creative use of the stage) on a small stage with limited scenery (Moritz von Steulpnagel).  It's that the play itself by Nick Jones is a poor rip off of Back to the Future.  Its humor is immature, dare I say childish.  And the story goes on and on like a Saturday cartoon and really ends up nowhere.  It's a silly premise that contains a hairy gorilla and never really gets much resolution - what ever happened to the sweatshirts/track pants that got introduced before their time?  Finally, both the show's marketing and hype about the play gets you to believe it is about actual HATS.  While it is about ONE HAT (that's not really a hat in the way you would think), it's really more about fashion and still time travel in general than hats.

Don't waste your time on this silly play that never should have made it to a stage - unless of course you want to travel back in time to one of your high school productions.  Better the glowing orbs that nobody seems to mind blow it up in the river.

A Free Man of Color

Quite an epic on stage at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center!  Three hours - and chock full of action, education, and quite a few laughs along the way.  John Guare's new opus is an ambitious work - as evidenced by the size cast - 26 listed in on the billboard alone and most play multiple characters on top of that!

Guare takes us on a journey to New Orleans in 1801 - which, in case you didn't know, was not part of America at this point in time.  It was filled with Spaniards, French, and Caribbeans of all types.   New Orleans was a land where men of all shades of color - from white to dark filled the city and shared a grand life.  It was a city where a slave could buy his freedom and become the toast of the town - especially among the women (of all colors) of the town.  Not only does Guare's play give us a sense of life in this vaudevillian city - he goes further to educate us on the global politics of the (1801) day - teaching us how Spain, France, England and Sante Dominigue (Haiti) all were part of the story of how America came to own this vast new land that spanned westward from the Appalachians to the Mississippi River, from the Gulf of Mexico northward to Canada - and how it changed New Orleans forever.

Jeffrey Wright helms the cast as the main character, Jacques Cornet and gets tremendous support from dozens of actors playing multiple characters in at least 4 different countries.  Stand-out performances to be noted:  Mos Def (the rapper) as Cornet's slave, John McMartin as Thomas Jefferson, Veanne Cox as Dona Polissena, a scientist, a young Paul Dano as Meriweather Lewis (of Lewis and Clark), and Triney Sandoval as Napoleon Bonaparte - - just to name a few.

Three hours may seem like an eternity - but director, George C. Wolfe, crams enough witty and quick tempo dialogue, colorful costumes, lively action and an abundance of information in to the fast paced, multi-country story that before you know it, 11:00 is here and you're dumped out on the plaza at Lincoln center with all the hoity-toity opera snobs in their tuxedos and gowns.  I highly recommend you attend this epic tale before it sells out for the season.

A Man for All Seasons

Frank Langella holds court at the American Airlines Theatre in Roundabout's revival of A Man for All Seasons.  A history lesson of the best kind  - powerful, enlightening, and educational.   A top notch supporting cast and crew make this a tour de force evening in the theatre.

Doug Hughes provides impeccable direction in the interpretation of Robert Bolt's 1961 Tony Award winning play regarding the historical significance of  Sir Thomas More - a well respected Lord Chancellor of England.   At its core, the story deals with personal faith, moral authority, and the meaning of silence in the course of public affairs.  

Sir Thomas More simply refused to join the Church of England after it's break from the Catholic Church in Rome and refused to speak and provide his opinion on the King's (Henry VIII) actions regarding his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and remarriage to Anne Boleyn.  His actions of silence were deemed a capital offense as he appeared to challenge the King's conduct in "the great matter" of the divorce and remarriage.   For not speaking, he was executed.  

Langella is likely to pick up a Tony nod, if not his 4th actual one for this near flawless performance.  Scenes intensely dramatic are peppered with humor.  Monologues of great importance roll effortlessly off his tongue.  Very human.  Almost real.  Totally Mesmerizing.   

Frost/Nixon

In 2007, you're bound to find more than few people alive that have no or very little knowledge of Richard Nixon, his presidency, and Watergate. I was only 3 at the time, myself. This play focuses on the story of the David Frost/Richard Nixon interviews - the first ones granted by Nixon after his infamous resignation. The Nixon camp assumed that the almost washed up Australian talk show host David Frost would be a pushover and Nixon would use the interviews as a way to get back into the public favor. The Frost camp, as you would imagine, thought the same thing but with respect to David Frost.

Frank Langella portrays Richard Nixon so well that you would think he rose from the grave to play the part himself. Not being as familiar with David Frost, I do think Michael Sheen played him well based on what other people tell me he was like.

As far as the play itself goes - too long! You do not keep an audience in the seats for 2 hours without intermission! Aside from that insult and injury - the play also had far too many filler and back story elements. Yes, we needed to know that back story to both sides, but possibly not as much as we were given.

Maybe this was just my expectation, but I thought we would see more of "the interview". I mean the play is billed as "The Face Off of the Century - Live on Stage" I think if they flipped the balance, the play would naturally build up to this important interview and you would be absorbed in it's progression and the drama could have unfolded within it. Instead, by the time the interview rolled around after 1 Hour and 30 minutes - you were anxious and trying to figure out how much longer this thing was going!

The rest of the cast was marginal - partially because some of the parts were written as marginal characters, but the the other ones were just played by marginal actors i suppose. I felt a vast crevasse between the talent of Frank Langella and everyone else. Or perhaps that was done on purpose? Isn't that how Richard Nixon was in real life - larger than everyone else?

In summary, a superb performance by Frank Langella that was neither matched by the rest of the characters in the play or the actors cast in those roles.