Off-Broadway Reviews: Antigone (This Play I Read in High School); Marcel on the Train

Celia Keenan-Bolger and Susannah Perkins
in Antigone (This Play I Read in High School).
Credit: Joan Marcus

There have been numerous attempts at updating Greek tragedy. This season alone the tale of Oedipus has seen a new modern version from Robert Icke and a revival of the gospel musical adaptation. Anna Ziegler has taken on the shattering narrative of Oedipus’ equally benighted daughter Antigone in a searing retelling through a modern lens. Subtitled (This Play I Read in High School), this Antigone is still a devastating portrait of female defiance of male oppression but goes several steps further. 

In Sophocles’ original, Antigone is condemned to death for giving her brother a decent burial in defiance of the king, her uncle Creon who wants the body to be left to the vultures for political reasons. In Ziegler’s skillful melding of myth and modern issues, the heroine is to be killed by the state for having an abortion. This is a chillingly relevant adjustment since so many states have made such an operation illegal since the overturning of Roe V. Wade and some have gone so far as to equate abortion with homicide, punishable by lengthy prison sentences. (The state of Tennessee just unsuccessfully attempted to make execution the penalty.) How many Antigones are there in America today?

Ziegler answers that query by combining a contemporary woman’s story with a version of the original that takes place simultaneously in the past and the present. Celia Keenan-Bolger compassionately plays the Chorus who interweaves her 2026 story of an unwanted pregnancy with Antigone’s tale after meeting a punky, self-possessed teenager (the magnificently spiky Susannah Perkins) who happens to reading the play across the aisle from her on an airplane. We then travel to a Thebes not unlike our contemporary society where the new king Creon (a searingly self-doubting Tony Shalhoub) strives to bring rigid order to the moral chaos left behind by his predecessor Oedipus, who had unwittingly married his own mother. 

Book Review: Holy Fire

(Read on my phone on the Libby app): I heard about this Bruce Sterling sci-fi favorite on a series of lectures on Prime: How Great Science Fiction Works (Prof. Wolfe). It sounded interesting. In the year 2092, a 92-year-old woman undergoes experimental life extension treatments which cause her personality to go somewhat haywire. She escapes from the San Francisco government medical facility where she is recooperating and launches onto a Candide-like trek across Europe. She hits Stuttgart, Prague, Rome as a model and photographer, falling in with a gang of radical anti-agist rebels. There's something important about a digital cache of memories called a "palace" she has inherited from a former lover, but I couldn't figure out why everybody is after her for its secrets. There was a talking dog in the palace and it escapes to menace our heroine, Mia or Maya depending on if we are referring to her old or new self. There's also something called holy fire, a kind of divine inspiration which apparently has affected the new pope and maybe Mia/Maya.

Mia/Maya's adventures seemed rather random and arbitrary. She just bounces from incident to incident with no strong objective or goal. We do get a fascinating picture of late 21st century life with analyses of public life, fashion, art, and intergenerational conflict. Older people called geronticrats stack the deck in their favor and keep younger people impoverished. 

There were individual sequences I found compelling such as a talking dog called Aquinas (not the other talking dog) with his own intellectual TV chat show and a touching scene where Mia visits an actress who has transformed into a Neanderthal version of herself to get away from the stresses of modern life. A mixed bag.

Ecuadorean Adventure--Galapagos

Ready to snorkel in the Galapogos.

For two weeks in frigid February, we escaped a major snowstorm to visit friends who have an apartment in Quito, Ecuador. This is my first time in South America. The city is surrounded by mountains and it is so highly elevated I feel out of breath after only a few minutes of walking. The first day we took a tour of the old town with its colonial-style churches and then drove out to the Equator monument where you can stand in the exact center of the Earth. The location was originally designated by French scientists in the 18th century but advanced technology has determined the exact location about 20 meters away. There are gimmicky attractions like standing with one foot in the Eastern hemisphere and another in the Western. 

The highlight of the trip has been a four-day travel package to the Galapagos Islands which I found on line. The $700 package included transfers from the airport (which involved a bus, a ferry boat and a long cab ride), meals, and four excursions. I was excited about going by myself but a little nervous. I managed to find a direct flight from Quito to Baltra, the one airport on the island chain, but there were several hoops to be jumped through at the Quito airport. First you have to buy a travel permit to visit the islands ($20, Ecuadorean currency is the same as US), which you must download to your phone. Then you have to have to bags inspected to make you're not carried anything that will disturb the ecosystem, fill out a declaration form and that has to be downloaded to your phone too. Once in Galapagos airport, who have show both docs as well as your passport and a $200 visitor's fee in cash. 

B'way Update: Much Ado About Nothing

Hayley Atwell, Tom Hiddleston, and company
in Jamie Lloyd's staging of
Much Ado About Nothing.
Credit: Marc Brenner

Tony nominee Tom Hiddleston and Olivier nominee Hayley Atwell will recreate their starring roles in Jamie Lloyd's staging of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing transfers from London's West End to Broadway this coming fall for a limited-ten week engagement at a Shubert theater to be announced. Hiddleston collaborated with Lloyd previously on Harold Pinter's Betrayal which played Broadway and London. Atwell is making her Broadway debut. She appeared in Lloyd's staging of The Pride and received an Olivier nomination. 

Both stars are probably best known for their recurring roles in the Marvel Comics Universe film and TV franchise. Hiddleston has played Loki, the evil brother of Thor and Atwell portrayed Agent Peggy Carter in Captain America: The First Avenger and the Agent Carter TV series.

This will be the 16th Broadway production of the Bard's comedy of clashing wills between combatants Beatrice and Benedick. Previous stagings have starred John Gielgud and Margaret Leighton (1959), Sam Waterston and Kathleen Widdoes (1972) and Derek Jacobi (Tony Award) and Sinead Cusack (1985). Memorable Central Park version were headlined by Kevin Kline and Blythe Danner in 1988 and by Danielle Brooks and Grantham Coleman in 2019. Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in a film version in 1993 opposite his then-wife Emma Thompson.

Off-B'way Review: The Dinosaurs

April Matthis, Mallory Portnoy,
Maria Elena Ramirez, and Elizabeth Marvel
in The Dinosaurs.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

Jacob Perkins’ The Dinosaurs at Playwrights Horizons starts out like a straightforward depiction of a weekly support group modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous. (The play’s Sisters in Sobriety has some significant differences. Only women are allowed to participate and time rules for sharing individual stories and reflections are strictly enforced.) While the structure at first seems linear, gradually time shifts back and forwards as the members suddenly appear at different points in their struggle to deal with their demons. The sterling performances, Les Waters’ precise direction and Yuki Link’s sensitive lighting help us to clearly navigate the tides of Perkins’ constantly changing river of time. (The design team of dots created the realistic meeting space and Oana Botez’s costumes subtly tell us much about each character.) What emerges is a fluid portrait of women in crisis and how they support each other.

April Matthis, Kathleen Chalfant, and
Elizabeth Marvel in The Dinosaurs.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

It’s a compassionate profile of the recovery process. The title probably refers to the veterans in the program who pass on their coping mechanisms and wisdom. All but one of the characters have similar names—Jolly, Joan, Jane, Janet, Joane—suggesting they may be aspects of the same personality or that their stories are similar and they are all following paths towards sobriety. Rayna, the only one with a different monicker, enters at the beginning as a potential new member, chatting about cupcakes with early arrival Jane. But she leaves in a panic before the others arrive and then comes in and out as a visitor from the future but never completely joins in. It’s significant that she also goes by the nickname Buddy, indicating she can stand in for a variety of identities within the group. 

The time and character shifts can be a trifle confusing at first, but once the rhythm is established, we get to know the women’s stories, feelingly relayed by six brilliant actresses. April Matthis conveys unspoken depths as Jane who doesn’t get to tell her complete narrative but feels a connection to Rayna, played with similar reams of subtext by Keilly McQuail.  

Keilly McQuail in The Dinosuars.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

Elizabeth Marvel is spiky and jagged as the tightly wound Joan, meticulously managing coffee and pastries while clinging desperately to sanity. Kathleen Chalfant as the aptly named Jolly is bubbly and full of compassion. Mallory Portnoy as Janet and Maria Elena Ramirez as Joane deliver shattering monologues on harrowing experiences which test their sobriety. Janet’s is a surrealistic dream and Joane’s reveals an uncomfortable family secret. Both are beautifully written and performed as is the whole of this sensitive play. 

Feb. 16—March 1. Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St., NYC. Running time: one hour and 15 mins. with no intermission. playwrightshorizons.org. 

Book Review: Anagrams

(Read on my phone on the Libby app.) At about 100 pages into Lorrie Moore's first novel, I said to myself, "What the hell is going on here?" There are four sections and the first three are short vignettes with three main characters, recurring in each section but with different relationships and circumstances. Then the final long, novella-length section is the "reality" of their shared situation (I guess). Then I remembered the title and realized what Moore was doing--rearranging the plots and characters like anagrams in a puzzle. I won't reveal too much of the multiple, shifting storylines, except they revolve around Benna, who is either an amateur nightclub singer or a community college professor of art history or poetry. Musician-singer Gerard may or may not be in love with her. Benna's friend Eleanor is the third point of a triangle or maybe she's not. 

I've enjoyed Moore's short stories and her other novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? Here, the characters may like wordplay a bit too much. They are always making clever puns. But I did feel the emotions for which the jokes act as a shield. Benna, Gerard, Eleanor, and other characters Darrel and Louis are all desperately lonely with tragedies impacting them. Their aches comes across in their eccentric actions and Moore depicts them with compassion.

Off-B'way Review: The Monsters; High Spirits

Aigner Mizzelle and Okieriete Onaodowan
in The Monsters.
Credit: T. Charles Erickson

The two-actor cast of Ngozi Anyanwu’s The Monsters at the intimate Stage II at City Center in a Manhattan Theater Club production, go through quite a workout in its 90-minute running time, both physically and emotionally. So does the audience. Anyanwu’s tight and devastating script rings some familiar bells in the estranged-family division, but her script is honest and heartfelt. Her direction is well-paced and, with the aide of Cha See’s lighting, creatively transforms Andrew Boyce’s simple gym setting into a myriad of locales.

As the play opens, Big and Lil (short for Little) are disconnected African-American siblings, survivors of an abusive father. Big, whose real name is not revealed until the end of the play, is a champion mixed-martial arts fighter. His half-sister Lil (actual name: Josephine) attempts to resume their once close relationship after 15 years of silence. Gradually, their severed bond is knit back together as Big trains Lil in MMA. As she raises in the ring ranks, long buried resentments and secrets are revealed and their conflict erupts in a grueling grudge match. (Gerry Rodriguez is the masterful fight director.)