B'way Review: Other Desert Cities

Allison Janney and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in
Other Desert Cities.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

When Jon Robin Baitz’s incisively-written Other Desert Cities opened at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway Mitzi Newhouse Theater in 2011 and then transferred to Broadway later the same year in Joe Mantello’s sensitive production, it was praised as an even-handed yet scathing examination of the state of our polarized nation. Each of the members of the politically and emotionally divided Wyeth family, a powerful clan with influential government, show business and literary connections, was seen as a fully-drawn, three-dimensional human being, not a representative of a particular point of view along the ideological spectrum.

The current Broadway revival at the Hudson is just as indicative of a fraught nation, even more so as the battle lines between left and right are more deeply and seemingly permanently drawn in Trump’s America. John Benjamin Hickey’s polished staging lands the laughs and heartbreaking moments solidly, but the acting choices made by the all-star cast have thrown the balance slightly off. It’s still an entertaining and moving evening (it better be at those astronomical prices, with top seats going for four figures). Unfortunately not all the parties are rendered equally relatable and sympathetic.

Baitz’s story remains compelling. Over Christmas week 2004, the Wyeths reunite at the palatial Palm Springs home of parents Lyman and Polly (Scott Pask designed the gorgeous set.) Mom and Dad are a power couple in elite GOP circles. Lyman’s an ex-movie star and ambassador (possibly based on John Gavin) and Polly had a run as a Hollywood screenwriter of fluffy comedies with her liberal sister Silda, now a broke, recovering alcoholic living with her sister and brother-in-law. Daughter Brooke, a writer recently emerging from a devastating depression, and son Trip, a producer of a hit TV reality show, are visiting. The catalyst for the drama is Brooke’s about-to-be-published memoir in which she focuses on the family’s deepest wound. At the height of the Vietnam War, eldest son Henry was involved in a radical underground group which set off a bomb at a recruiting station, resulting in the death of a janitor and Henry’s subsequent suicide.

Lily Rabe, Joe Keery, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus
in Other Desert Cities.
Credit: Emilio Madrid

B'way/Off-B'way Update: Warriors Cast and Tilda Swinton

Amber Gray, Jasmine Cephas Jones and
Casey Likes will star in Warriors.

Warriors, the new musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis based on the 1979 cult film has announced its main cast and dates. Previews begin on March 9 at the Lunt-Fontanne prior to an April 8 opening. In this adaptation, the film's all-male Warriors street gang will be all-female. The cast will include Jaci Calderon, Aneesa Folds, Amber Gray (The Rocky Horror Show, Hadestown), Julia Harriman, Gizel Jiminez, Jasmine Cephas Jones (Hamilton), Kenita R. Miller (for colored girls), Sasha Allen (Hair), Casey Likes (Back to the Future, Heathers) and Donald Webber, Jr. many are repeating their roles from the concept album.

In Off-Broadway news, Oscar winner Tilda Swinton will make her NYC stage debut in Man to Man at the Lucille Lortel with previews beginning Feb. 21 and opening Feb. 28. Swinton is currently starring in Man to Man at London's Royal Court Theater in a sold-out run. She originated the role of Ella/Max, a woman who dons her late husband's trousers in 1930s Germany, in the show's UK premiere in 1987. Man to Man will play Scotland and Germany at the Berliner Ensemble before opening in NYC.

Tilda Swinton in Man to Man in London
Credit: Rudiger Glatz

B'way Update: Rhino, Three Days

Tatiana Maslany and John Turturro in
Rhinoceros at ART.
Credit: Hawver and Hall

The rumors were true. As reported in our last Broadway update, Diane Paulus' revival of Eugene Ionesco's Rhinoceros will be coming to the Main Stem. There were rumors that the production, previously seen at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., would be replacing Roundabout Theater Company's revival of The Full Monty on its spring schedule. Roundabout has confirmed that Rhinoceros will stampede into the Todd Haimes Theater for preview performances on April 7 in advance of an April 25 opening. (The Full Monty will be rescheduled.) John Turturro and Tatiana Maslany will repeat their ART performances. Tony winner Tony Shalhoub will take over the role of Jean, played by Paul Giamatti in Cambridge. Jean is the bravura role calling for the actor to transform into the titular horned behemoth for which Zero Mostel won a Tony in the 1960 Broadway production. Ionesco's political allegory concerns a society where conformism demands everyone change into rhinos.

In other Broadway news, the revival of Richard Greenberg's Three Days of Rain has announced dates and a theater. Previews will begin Jan. 20, 2027 at the Longacre Theater with an opening set for March 1 for a limited 16-week run. Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro directs a three person cast consisting of Francois Arnaud (Heated Rivalry), David Corenswet (Superman) and Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid's Tale).

Off-B'way Review: Good Time Charlie; Fish; Anon

Ryan Haddad and Jonathan Raviv in
Good Time Charlie.
Credit: Joan Marcus

“There is no plot, but there is a narrative,” exclaims Ryan J. Haddad in his autobiographical play Good Time Charlie, at the Public Theater. Despite the lack of a cohesive storyline, this is a heartwarming, tender love letter to a cherished relative and a celebration of theatre fandom and participation. Haddad is playing a version of himself, and when speaking this line about the plotnessess of his work, he is explaining to the character enacting the title figure, his beloved uncle Charlie, that they are not in a conventional “well-made” play. Instead they are in a tender evocation of Ryan’s childhood, his relationship with Charlie, their mutual love of theater and their contrasting experiences as gay men of different generations. Several playwrights have offered similar strolls down memory lane, most recently Joshua Harmon with We Had a World in which Broadway-loving, gay narrator-protagonist similarly declared “There is no straight line in this play.” Like Harmon’s evocation of his past, Charlie is a combination love letter and excorism of family secrets and buried resentments told in meta-theatrical terms, often directly to the audience.

Haddad has previously explored his background and development as a gay, handicapped Lebanese-American theater artist in solo or semi-solo shows such as Hold Me in the Water and Dark Disabled Stories. Here he expands his canvas to include his whole family, focusing on his uncle (actually a cousin) who introduced him to theater and encouraged him to fully explore his sexual identity. Haddad and Jonathan Raviv as Charlie have a believable bond as the relatives seeking strength and comfort from each other and sharing a joy of the stage.

Ryan Haddad, Tim Bagley, Beth Malone,
Jonathan Raviv, and Michael Cristofer in
Good Time Charlie.
Credit: Joan Marcus

We also meet Charlie’s empathic partner Lou (warm and loving Tim Bagley from Will and Grace), their longtime friend Sheldon (acerbic and tender Michael Cristofer) who runs a revival cinema, Ryan’s supportive lesbian aunt Janice (sturdy Beth Malone), and the parents of both Ryan and Charlie who deal with their offspring’s coming out in vastly different ways. Nael Nacer and Artemis Pebdani double as both sets of elders, differentiating between the two with subtle variations and with the aide of Robert Pickens’ hair and wig design.

Book Review: Liberation Day

(Borrowed from the Jackson Heights library): After not enjoying George Saunders' previous collection, Civilwarland in Bad Decline, I decided to give him another chance. After all, reviewers were praising him to the skies and calling him the best short-story wrier alive today. My local library had Liberation Day and it was only a little over 200 pages, so I took it out. My main objection to Civilwarland was all the stories followed the same pattern: dystopian future, usually in a nightmare version of a theme park, some poor schmuck is oppressed, winds up dead or in jail. Not all the stories in Liberation Day were based on the same template--some took inventive departures--but a few were in the same old Saunders rut.

The title story opens the collection and though it was yet another nightmare-future story, it was ingeniously different. In this fantasy, the poor snooks get their memories wiped and are imprisoned as vocal performers recreating historical events by means of computers flooding their brains with information so they become the participants. Ironically, the mind-slaves are reenacting Custer's Last Stand as a group of protesters invade the performance and violence ensues. The historic details are fascinating and offer parallels with the sci-fi elements.

Ghoul and Elliott Spencer are more schleimel-in-nighmare-world stories. The former is set in an abandoned amusement park (again???) and the latter features memory-wiped poor people (again!!!) being used as protestors. Well written, but the same old thing.

The Mom of Bold Action, Mother's Day and A Thing at Work at least offer totally new story arcs. I liked Mom best--well-constructed and full of believable, flawed characters. A children's author finds herself full of unreasoning rage when her son is pushed in the street by a derelict. Her reactions take her and the reader to uncomfortable places. Sparrow is the biggest surprise of all since it has a happy ending and no one winds up dead or in prison. Love Letter and My House are only a few pages each, but are probably the most powerful works in the collection.

I will probably read more of Saunders' work. He is a skilled storyteller and his tales are compelling, even if they're repetitive and the themes are almost always the same.

Book Review: The Rent Collector

(Bought on Amazon for $10): The second book for my Zoom book group. A moving, but weepy melodrama which pushes all the right emotional buttons a little too neatly. The setting is a mammoth garbage dump in Phnom Phen, Cambodia where the poverty-stricken characters live, ferreting through refuse to eke out a meager existence. Sang Ly discovers her miserly, nasty rent collector is a former teacher and begs her for reading lessons. Of course an unlikely friendship develops and the title character's mysterious past is finally revealed towards the end as the Hallmark TV movie music plays in the background.

The author explains in an afterword the novel was inspired by the real people his son encountered when making a documentary in Cambodia. I think the documentary would have been more realistic and interesting than the novel. 

Off-B'way Reviews: Slam Frank; creation stories and all the important importants; How Shakespeare Saved My Life

Rocky Paterra, Jaz Zepatos, Olivia Bernabe,
Alex Lewis, and Austen Horne in
Slam Frank.
Credit: Shawn Salley Photography

Are there certain topics which should be strictly off-limits when it comes to parody and satire? That’s the difficult question that the explosive new musical Slam Frank, at the Orpheum after a run last season at Asylum NYC, is not afraid to tackle. This bizarre, uproariously funny and sharp-edged cartoon of a show was inspired by a 2022 Twitter debate which started with the horrifying premise, “Did Anne Frank have white privilege?” The initial comments were widely condemned by Jewish groups. They also served as inspiration for Joel Sinensky (book) and Andrew Fox (music and lyrics) to use the teen Jewish diarist’s tragic story of hiding from the Nazis with her family in an Amsterdam attic as a springboard for a merciless attack on a myriad of political stances, both right and left. The authors skewer everything from extreme woke attitudes to unfettered capitalism to a host of musicals such as Hamilton, Rent, In the Heights, and The Producers. Sinensky’s snarky, smart book and Fox’s intricate and hilarious songs hit their targets with stunningly witty accuracy and take us to dangerous comic territory. No spoilers, but the final 20 minutes are satiric dynamite and will probably be more controversial than any piece of theater in the last 28 years (since Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi which imagined a gay Jesus.)

Sinensky imagines Frank’s story as a play-within-a-play presented by a pretentiously

Olivia Bernabe, John Anker Bow, Rocky Paterra,
Austen Horne, Jaz Zepatos and Alex Lewis
in Slam Frank. Credit: Shawn Salley Photography

progressive theater company, determined to be inclusive even if it doesn’t make historical or dramatic sense. In this bizarre, fun-house mirror version, the Frank and Van Daan families become representatives of every minority and political viewpoint. Anne herself (comically daring Olivia Bernabe) is a pansexual Latina hiding her true Hispanic identity in order to sell more copies of her diary. Her mother Edith (hysterically fierce Austen Horne) is a black American woman clad in traditional African garb (Sarah Lockwood designed the humorous costumes.) Horne delivers a riotous rap poem mixing feminist rage with declamations against misogynist playwrights like David Mamet. 

Anne’s father Otto (delightfully goofy Rocky Paterra) bursts out of the closet as a gay man and tells everyone he is neurodivergent every few minutes. Sister Margo (surprisingly passionate Amelia Louise Barr) remains quiet until those last volcanic scenes. Barr also doubles as Anne’s abuela, serving as a ghostly symbol of the family’s abandoned Hispanic heritage (the story gets weirder and weirder.) 

The Van Daan clan is led by the blustering bullyish father (appropriately despicable John Anker Bow), who dominates his flibbertigibbet of a wife (jazzy Jaz Zepatos) and his son Peter (funny, flighty Alex Lewis). Peter enjoys dancing (much to his dad’s displeasure) and comes out as non-binary. The entire cast handles the difficult task of enacting broad caricatures while pursuing truthful objectives. Like the characters in a Christopher Durang play, they are sane to themselves but they are in an insane universe.