B'way/Off-B'way Reviews: The Fear of 13; Becky Shaw; You Got Older; My Joy Is Heavy

Adrian Brody and Tessa Thompson in
The Fear of 13.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

The fear of the number 13 is triskaidekaphobia. But you wouldn’t learn that from Lindsey Ferrentino’s play The Fear of 13 now at the James Earl Jones after a London run. That’s because the definition is brought up in the documentary film directed by David Sington but not in the play which is based on the doc. Both works focus on Nick Yarris, wrongfully accused of murder. While awaiting execution in a Pennsylvania prison, Yarris labored to improve his vocabulary. The rare fear of the unlucky number was one of the many new definitions he acquired. In her otherwise moving and proficient adaptation, the playwright omits this detail leaving playgoers who have not seen the doc, now airing on Netflix, scratching their heads as to the title’s meaning. Perhaps the irrational phobia has to do with hero’s fear of being fated to wind up on Death Row with no hope of reprieve?

Apart from this annoying omission, some overlong speeches and sequences, Fear is a powerful indictment of our justice system and a chilling examination of one prisoner caught up in it. Ferrentino adapted another documentary earlier this season, the musical The Queen of Versailles. In that misguided effort, it wasn’t clear how we were supposed to feel about the protagonist, Jackie Siegel. Did Ferrentino want us to admire Jackie for her determination to rise from her middle-class origins and attempt to build the largest private home in the USA or should we have disdained her for her materialistic values? 

Adrian Brody in The Fear of 13.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Yarris (a multileveled, appealing Adrian Brody) is a stronger, clearer central figure. The playwright reveals his character and backstory slowly through his jailhouse romance with prisoner-rights advocate Jacki Miles (compassionate Tessa Thompson). At first Nick comes across as a fabulist spinning incredible tales of petty crimes and outwitting the law. But we gradually learn his complete story though flashbacks, fluidly staged by David Cromer, aided by Arnulfo Maldonado’s ingenious set and Heather Gilbert’s scene-shifting lighting.

A few words on Moldanado’s versatile set: At first it appears to be just a dark, forbidding, multi-storied prison, but other environments magically emerge as in a pop-up book. Suddenly we’re in a Florida pawnshop or a cozy suburban living room with Cheers on the TV. The setting facilitates the flow of the narrative.

Oscar winner Brody makes an auspicious Broadway debut. He presents Nick as a charmer who could be a lying con man or an incredibly unlucky schlub. As his layers of cockiness are peeled away, he reveals the suffering, wounded child at Nick’s core. It’s entirely believable that the empathetic Jacki (played with warmth and tenderness and just the slightest bit of neurotic self-doubt by Thompson) would fall in love with him. A large, mostly male supporting cast ably fills in the remainder of the roles, with Ephriam Sykes standing out as a lovesick gay inmate and Nick’s crafty accomplice in a series of teen heists. 

B'way Update: Billy Crystal in 860

Billy Crystal

Tony and Emmy winner Billy Crystal will return to Broadway in 860, a new solo show which he also wrote. Olivier Award winner Scott Ellis directs. Performance begin in the fall at a Shubert theater to be announced. 

"I am thrilled to return to Broadway this fall with this challenging new show," says Crystal in a statement. "860 was the address of the home we lost in the Palisades fires. We lived there for 46 years. I invite you to come inside 860 and I’ll tell you all the funny and touching things that happened there, not only in my career but to our family. It’s a joyous and heartfelt visit, about how with the love of family and friends and your inner strength, you can get through tough times. I look forward to returning to Broadway and welcoming audiences to 860."

Crystal previously appeared on Broadway in 700 Sundays in which he recounted stories of his childhood and his relationship with his father. He won a Tony Award for the show for Best Special Theatrical Event as well as the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards for Outstanding Solo Performance. In 2022, he starred in a musical version of Mr. Saturday Night, based on the 1992 film in which he starred. Crystal also co-authored the book with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel.

B'way Review: Titanique; Cats: The Jellicle Ball

The cast of Titanique.
Credit: Evan Zimmerman for
MurphyMade.

“This is where the story gets kooky crazy,” announces Marla Mindelle as a kooky crazy version of Canadian songstress and power-ballad queen Celine Dion halfway through Titanique, the zany and wildly entertaining parody musical now at the St. James after long runs Off-Broadway and around the world. The show has been pretty nuts up to the point when Mindelle, who also collaborated on the book with co-star Constantine Rousouli and director Tye Blue, issues that warning and it gets even nuttier from then on. It’s a fun, wacky ride stuffed with enough pop-culture references to keep a crowd full of Broadway, TV and movie fans howling. The question is can this niche show fill a large Main Stem house for a profitable run? Well, it kept me guffawing for most of its 100 minutes. There were only a few lulls (indicated later in the review) amid a tidal wave of hilarity. 

The premise is Cuckoo-for-Coco-Coco-Puffs and ingenious. It’s like an extended SNL sketch. Fortunately, just when you think Mindelle, Rousouli and Blue have run out of ideas, they tap another vein of goofiness and comic gold pours out. The terrifically inventive authors imagine what would happen if Dion actually were on the Titanic just because she sang the theme song from James Cameron’s 1997 Oscar-winning film about the fatal shipwreck. Mindelle as a mindlessly manic version of the singer inserts herself into the story which also includes meta allusions to Broadway musicals, reality TV and pop music. Even the purposely tacky set by Gabriel Hainer Evansohn and Grace Launcher for Iron Bloom Creative Production is a tribute to flashy game shows and TV specials.

Constantine Rousouli and Melissa Barrera
in Titanique.
Credit: Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

Employing Dion’s top hits as the score (Nicholas James Connell expertly provides music supervision, orchestrations and arrangements), this satiric looney tune retells Cameron’s screenplay through a show-biz-queer-angle lens. Rose and Jack (delightfully dopey Melissa Barrera and Rousoluli, parodying Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) are still star-crossed lovers from radically different social strata, but there are significant alterations elsewhere. Rose’s domineering mother is played in drag by an outrageously outraged Jim Parsons who appears to be having the time of his life stepping out of the Sheldon Cooper persona from The Big Bang Theory. (Watch him go to town in a diva fit, threatening the orchestra and kicking cut-outs of Patti LuPone and Carol Channing.) 

Book Review: The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir; The Way We Lived Then: Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper

(Borrowed from a friend): Griffin Dunne's memoir of his storied family is a fast, fascinating read. Everyone from Sean Connery to Buddy Hackett makes an appearance. Dunne's father Dominick was a TV and movie producer who reveled in friendships with big Hollywood names, throwing parties and dropping names. But it all came crashing down when his alcoholism, drug abuse, and closeted homosexuality caught up with him and destroyed his marriage and his career. The family was further devastated when Griffin's sister Dominique was strangled by her boyfriend. This launched Dominick's second career as a novelist and crime reporter for Vanity Fair. Griffin grew up amid movie stars and studio execs. HIs aunt and uncle were the screenwriting team John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion who also became one of the country's foremost essayists and cultural observers. Griffin recounts his roller-coaster ride as actor and producer with wit and compassionate. The anecdotes of his friendship with Carrie Fisher are riotous and his recount of the ordeal of Dominique's murder are gut-wrenching. I had a hard time reading that section because I knew the unjust outcome.

After reading Griffin's memoir, I dug out Dunne's earlier book The Way We Lived Then. I had bought it several years ago for the pictures of movie stars enjoying themselves at Dunne family gatherings and soirees but never read the text. The son's work is more revealing. Dominick's subtitle Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper is accurate. The emphasis is on Dunne Sr.'s acquittances with the rich and famous and his Hollywood days before he was booted out of the industry. He does not even mention his gay connections. Dominique's death is included in an afterword. Perhaps it was too painful for him to fully recount. The pictures are fun to look at.

B'way Review: Death of a Salesman

Laurie Metcalf and Nathan Lane in
Death of a Salesman.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

The most fascinating element of Joe Mantello’s innovative and powerful production of Death of a Salesman, is the deceptively simple set by Chloe Lamford. When the show was first announced, it seemed the cavernous Winter Garden Theater was all wrong for the intimate drama of Willy Loman’s descent into disillusion yet Bamford’s stark set works perfectly. When the audience first files in, Lamford’s environment appears to be nothing but a bare stage with only a card table and some metal chairs for furnishings. But once Jack Knowles’ evocative lighting illuminates the stage and Nathan Lane drives Willy’s 1940s Studebaker onto the stage, we see that we’re in an abandoned factory or warehouse. The onstage automobile becomes a symbol of Willy’s lost dreams and his impending death. A bare brick wall is interrupted by a sliding garage gate and a metallic door. Piles of dust spread across the floor. Light barely shines through a wall of dirty windows. Huge industrial-looking columns reach to the flies. The set is a metaphor for Miller’s vision of the blighted American Dream. Willy and his family have nothing left after investing their energy and passion in a false promise of prosperity. It’s a perfect visual means of expressing Miller’s critique of rampant, thoughtless capitalism and the essential platform for Mantello’s brilliant staging.

This is the sixth version of Miller’s classic I’ve seen—the previous viewed iterations starred Lee J. Cobb and Dustin Hoffman on TV, Brian Dennehy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Wendell Pierce on Broadway. There is always something new to be found in this timeless drama of fractured family and crushing economic reality. Mantello’s vision is a bleak one set in this industrial wasteland, but it blazingly highlights the fraught relationships within the Loman family.

B'way Update: Rosamund Pike in Inter Alia

Rosamund Pike in Inter Alia.
Credit: Manuel Harlan

Emmy and Golden Globe winner Rosamund Pike (I Care a Lot, State of the Union) will repeat her Olivier-nominated performance in Suzie Miller's play Inter Alia on Broadway this fall. The one-character play will begin previews at the Music Box Theater on Nov. 10 prior to a Dec. 1 opening. This will be her Broadway debut. Like Miller's previous play Prima Facie, Inter Alia is a solo show abut the British legal system. Pike plays Jessica Parker, a London Crown Court judge determined to reform a system that isn't always just.

Playwright Suzie Miller said in a statement, "I am so excited to be returning to Broadway alongside my Prima Facie director, the brilliant Justin Martin, with my new play Inter Alia. This National Theatre production is currently playing on London's West End, featuring Rosamund Pike who is nothing short of magnificent in the lead role. Inter Alia was commissioned, supported and produced at the National Theatre, who alongside our extraordinary producing partners are bringing the show across the pond. We are all thrilled to have this opportunity to engage in a contemporary conversation with NYC audiences."

Ms. Pike added, "What surprises me night after night performing this play is how audience members tell me they recognise themselves on stage. Men find themselves moved and confronted, women declare themselves seen, and parents and children tell me the story has led them to vital conversations. People recount how they laugh and cry with us, and that's all I can hope for. Suzie Miller has an indelible way of putting women's experiences on stage in a way that touches, excites, moves, and blindsides. Justin Martin's direction fuels my imagination constantly. I am thrilled and humbled to make my Broadway Debut with this role, in a theatre that is beyond my wildest dreams"

Ecuadorean Adventure: Part 2

At the hot springs spa in
the Andes Mountain
while NYC is blanketed with snow.

The day after I got back from the Galapagos, I got a bad case of traveller's stomach. Fortunately, I did not allow it to ruin the rest of the trip. Our hosts arranged for a friend of theirs to drive us to a hot-water spa in the Andes Mountains. For $25, you can bathe in many different hot-water spring pools. They had a nice restaurant where I had a ceviche for lunch. A few days later, we spent a day at the Botanical Gardens which were lovely. 

After I returned, we decided to move to a hotel. I was still suffering from bathroom issues and we asked the hotel reception staff if there were a doctor we could contact. They called a Guest Medical service and a doctor, with a nurse, actually came to our hotel and prescribed a shelfful of medications. He also hooked me up to an IV and gave me fluids because he said I was dehydrated. In the US, the hotel probably would have told me to go wait in an emergency room and no one would have even looked at me for hours.

We had several nice meals in excellent restaurants. Our final days we went shopping at a mall and a market. At the latter while trying on belts, we were standing next to a group of Australian young people who were debating the proper use of the "c**t" word. Over all, I liked Quito more than Mexico City which is too big and crowded. The Ecuadorians were very friendly. One our last morning the news announced Trump was sending the US military to Ecuador to route out drug trafficking. "We're getting out of here just in time," I said.

On the flight back, we had a layover in Bogota, Colombia. The plane from Quito landed so far away from the terminal, we had to take a bus to get there. Then we had go through customs (AGAIN) and race to the gate for our flight to NYC. The Avianca flight was five hours. No movies or entertainment unless you could figure out how to get the Avianca app on your phone (which I could not). One tiny sandwich. If you wanted more, you had to pay for it.