Off-B'way Update: All-Star View from the Bridge; Irish Rep

Sam Rockwell, Marin Ireland, and 
Alfred Molina will star in an Off'B'way
production of A View from the Bridge
at LaMaMa.

An unusually starry production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge will play the legendary Off-Broadway La MaMa Theater this fall with preview performances beginning Nov. 27 before a Dec. 13 opening. Oscar winner Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards) stars as Eddie Carbone, Obie winner and Tony nominee Marin Ireland (Queens) plays his wife Beatrice and Tony winner Alfred Molina (Art) will be Alfieri the narrator and Greek chorus. Neil Pepe of Atlantic Theater Company will direct. (Side note: Ireland's play Pre-Existing Condition will return for a run at the Greenwich House Theater opening Sept. 14.)

“Some of my earliest theatre memories are of coming to La MaMa as a kid and hanging out backstage while my mom was doing experimental theatre of the day. To now return to the Ellen Stewart Theatre with Arthur Miller's masterpiece with these remarkable collaborators feels like coming full circle," says Rockwell in a statement. "I started my own career downtown, and institutions like La MaMa have always inspired me—as an artist and as an audience member. They're the lifeblood of our culture, championing bold new voices and reminding us why the theatre matters. I've always considered myself incredibly lucky, and this opportunity feels like kismet.”

View concerns the longshoreman Eddie Carbone who comes to tragedy because of his unspoken passion for his teenaged niece. The play began life on Broadway as a one-act play on a double bill with Miller's A Memory of Two Mondays in 1955. He later expanded it to full length and an Off-Broadway revival starring Robert Duvall and Jon Voight ran for 780 performances. Subsequent Broadway productions starred Tony LoBianco (1983), Anthony LaPaglia (1997), Liev Schreiber (2010), and Mark Strong (2015). 

Off-B'way Review: Queens

 “I did the best I could,” cries the intense Marin Ireland as Renia, a Polish immigrant struggling to justify her questionable actions in abandoning her daughter while pursuing the American Dream in Queens, Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok (Cost of Living)’s affecting but overcrowded new play presented by Manhattan Theater Club. The anguished declaration comes at the end of the play as multiple storylines involving eight different women leaving their native land and scrapping by to build a remarkable legacy in the US come together. Majok creates indelible characters and heart-tugging plots, but there’s so much going on, the proceedings can get more than a bit confusing. 

Marin Ireland, Nicole Villamil, Brooke Bloom,
and Nadine Malouf in Queens.
Credit: Valerie Terranova

Nevertheless, she makes you feel for these resilient, flawed women by the end of the tumultuous, event-filled evening. Director Trip Cullman’s straightforward, clear-eyed staging, with a big assist from set designer Marsha Ginsberg (more on her amazing environment anon), allows us into this complex world and helps us keep all the stories straight.

The main setting is a crowded basement apartment in the Masbeth section of the titular New York City borough, with a side trip to Ukraine. Ginsberg’s detailed set perfectly evokes the desperate, makeshift life of the characters from the cluttered kitchen to the tiny sleeping areas to the flickering overhead lighting fixtures. Majok trips back and forth in time as well as locale. Initially we are in 2017 Queens as Renia is violently confronted by Inna (heartbreaking Julia Lester), a Ukrainian emigre, who is searching for her mother. (No spoilers, it may or may not be Renia.) From this starting point, we flashback to 2001 when Renia first arrives at the apartment which she shares with Aamani from Afghanistan (Nadine Malouf), Isabela from Honduras (Nicole Villamil) and Pelagiya from Belarus (Brooke Bloom). Eventually we also meet Agata (Anna Chlumsky), also Polish; Lera (Andrea Syglowski) who never makes it out of Ukraine, and Glenys, Isabela’s daughter (Sharlene Cruz). 

B'way Update: Job Transfers; Marin Ireland's Pre-Existing Condition

Peter Friedman and Sydney Lemmon
in Job
Credit: Emilio Madrid

Job, the hit Off-Broadway two-character play by Max Wolf Friedlich, will make the leap to Broadway this summer. Performances begin July 15 at the Hayes Theater in advance of a July 30 opening for a limited run through Sept. 29. Sydney Lemmon and Peter Friedman will repeat their performances as a recently-fired big tech company employee and her crisis management therapist. 

According to the press release, the plot is described as follows: “Jane (Lemmon), an employee at a big tech company (you know the one), has been placed on leave after becoming the subject of a viral video. She arrives in the office of a crisis therapist – Loyd (Friedman) – determined to be reinstated to the job that gives her life meaning. Job zooms in on two careerists of different generations, genders, and political paradigms to examine what it means to be a citizen of the internet and our obligation to help the people who need it most.”

The 5th Annual David Desk Awards

Audra McDonald adds a David Desk to her numerous awards for
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill

Yes, I know it's July already and the season's been over for a month, but here they are--the David Desk Awards. For the fifth time, here are my choices for the top performances in New York theater during the past season. The classifications are my own. The Tonys and the Drama Desks decided Audra McDonald in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill was best suited for Actress in a Play while the Outer Critics put her in the musical category. I know the play choice would be in keeping with Jane Lapotaire in Piaf and Tracey Bennett as Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow, with the musical numbers being part of the main character's performance in concert. But even the Drama Desk has not been consistent with this. Sian Philips was in the running for Best Actress in a Musical in Marlene even though her performance was largely dramatic. That year (1999) there were very few available nominees for the category--Bernadette Peters in Annie Get Your Gun and Carolee Carmello in Parade where the only other ones vying for the top award and they tied. I think that McDonald's performance was so dependent on the musical element, she should have been in that category and that's why I placed her there. (Plus when Lonette McKee played the original production in 1987, she was nominated as Outstanding Actress in a Musical). I also felt Marin Ireland in Marie Antoniette was ignored.

So here are my picks for the tops of 2013-14:

Play

All the Way (Robert Schenkkan)

Domesticated (Bruce Norris)

The Night Alive (Conor McPherson)

Nikolai and the Others (Richard Nelson)

Outside Mullingar (John Patrick Shanley)