The End of Longing

The End of Longing

MCC Theater

Lucille Lortel Theater

May 27, 2017

Photo courtesy of MCC Theater

Matthew Perry is starring in The End of Longing, a play he also wrote, at the Lucille Lortel Theater.  He portrays an alcoholic character lost in fear and anxiety who struggles to face the truth and build a life of happiness.  As dark as the subject matter sounds, the play is written with the kind of witty banter expected from Mr. Perry.  His role is very different from his television characters.  His physical characterizations and vocal intonations are well crafted and genuine.  The audience cares for his character and roots for his success.

Jack (played by Matthew Perry) meets Stephanie (played by Jennifer Morrison) and Stevie (played by Sue Jean Kim) in a bar while waiting for his friend Jeffrey (played by Quincy Dunn-Baker).  Stevie has been neurotically texting a man she hooked up with, who, coincidentally, turns out to be Jeffery.  This gives Jack the perfect opportunity to connect with Stephanie, who is totally turned off by his brassy charm.  They end up spending the night and subsequently develop a close relationship.  This leads them both to face the uncertainty of their emotional ineptitudes.

Photo courtesy of MCC Theater

All four actors are great in their roles.  They create multidimensional characters who stumble and struggle to achieve their goals.  It is the relationships that make it possible for these characters to see their way through, yet, as good as these actors are, the chemistry between them is lacking.  There are a few bold turn of events in Mr. Perry’s play that lead the characters to self-realization.   The reasons for these events are not always justified in dramatic action.  The journey of the characters is clearly mapped out.  This play is about human connection and how it can transform lives.  Although engaging, the story is not viscerally experienced.

Derek McLane’s scenic design is spectacular.  The walls are decorated with empty bottles that serve numerous representations.  The turntable spins the set quickly to keep the action flowing at the pace the play requires.

Photo courtesy of MCC Theater

MCC Theater’s production of The End of Longing runs at the Lucille Lortel Theater through July 1.  If you are a Matthew Perry and Jennifer Morrison fan (from TV’s Once Upon a Time and House), go see this show.  You will definitely enjoy their performances.

Domenick Danza

Sweat

Sweat

Studio 54

May 21, 2017

Photo courtesy of Sweat

Sweat is a truthful telling of the social and economic events that took place in this country during the years 2000 through 2008 that allows us to clearly reflect on how America has become the divided nation it is today.  Through interviews and research, Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright Lynn Nottage has written authentic characters who struggle with challenges and face consequences that cause their lives to spiral out of control.  Her characters blindingly face their fears and frustrations head on. 

Tracey (played by Johanna Day), Cynthia (played by Michelle Wilson), and Jessie (played by Alison Wright) are close friends who have worked together on the factory floor in Reading, Pennsylvania for decades.  They are proud that they come from a long line of factory workers.  The year is 2000, and economic disruption is about to crumble the world they have come to know.  Cynthia accepts a promotion into a management position at the factory at the same time that the union contract is being challenged and factory jobs are being relocated to Mexico.  Non-English speaking residents are recruited as scabs during a union walk-out.  Fear, frustration, and betrayal build to heated anger and acts of violence from which there is no return.

Michelle Wilson & Johanna Day
Photos courtesy of Sweat

Johanna Day and Michelle Wilson shine in these brilliantly written, juxtaposed characters.  They build a relationship based on years of trust and reliability that brutally flips during the course of events.  They are the driving force that propels the action of the play.  Their portrayals are riveting, true, and genuine.  James Colby plays Stan, the bartender at the local watering hole.  His character is the neutral, rational negotiator throughout the play.  His portrayal is strong and warm-hearted.  Khris Davis and Will Pullen play younger workers at the factory who face a future with more choices than their parents.  These two actors complement one another amazingly well.  They create characters who face their challenges with opposite points of view.  They are viscerally connected and deliver powerful performances.  

Photo courtesy of Sweat

Kate Whoriskey masterfully directed this superb ensemble cast.  She skillfully builds tensions that explode with powerful human emotions.  The scenic design by John Lee Beatty is brilliant.  The set spins into place, keeping the pace moving quickly.  Lighting Design by Peter Kaczorowski sets a realistic tone, and Projection Design by Jeff Sugg keeps the audience grounded in the time period.

Will Pullen, James Colby, & Khris Davis
Photos courtesy of Sweat

What makes Sweat so powerful is that it is personal.  The emotional upheaval that takes place in the lives of the characters over the eight year span is understood and shared by every member of the audience.  Each character is clearly developed to present a different perspective of the effect of the economic changes in the working class during the years 2000 through 20008.  Ms. Nottage offers a glimpse of hope in the final moment of the play that empowers us to move forward with unity.

Domenick Danza

The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie

Belasco Theatre

May 20, 2017

Photo courtesy of The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams’ words ring powerfully clear and vigorous in Director Sam Gold’s stark and poignant interpretations of The Glass Menagerie.  It is truly breathtaking.  The bare stage magically lends itself to the illusion of memory that Mr. Williams poetically inspires.  The phenomenal cast draws you in and engages you on a profoundly emitonal level.

The stage is empty, except for a table and four orange chairs.  Tom (played by Joe Mantello) enters and tells us, “I have tricks in my pocket.  I have tricks up my sleeve.  But I am the opposite of a stage magician.  I give you truth in the peasant disguise of illusion.”  The truthful moments abound as Tom brings us deep into his intimate memory of the relationships and struggles between him and his mother, Amanda (played by Sally Field), and his sister, Laura (played by Madison Ferris).  He takes us back to the 1930’s “when the huge middles class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind.”  Amanda worries about Laura’s future.  She pays for her to go to business school, but due to Laura’s shy nature and social disability, she drops out.  Amanda convinces Tom to invite a friend from his factory job to dinner as a “Gentleman Caller” for Laura.  When Tom brings home Jim (played by Finn Wittrock), Laura is paralyzed with fear.  Jim charms her in a candle-lit scene that allows her to see herself truthfully.

Madison Ferris, Sally Field, & Joe Mantello
Photo courtesy of The Glass Menagerie

Joe Mantello’s portrayal of Tom is tender and troubled.  The love he feels for his sister and his mother is genuine, yet his need to escape the stagnation of his life in St. Louis is crushing.  The relationship between him and Sally Field’s Amanda is realistic in its fire and sensitivity.  These two actors are phenomenal in these roles.  The moment when Amada asks Tom to bring home a gentleman caller for his sister is heart stopping.  The scene between them when Tom explains how Laura is different than other girls is emotionally gripping.  Joe Mantello’s Tom is clearly his mother’s son, complete with a flair for the dramatics.  It is Tom’s need to break the intimate bond between these two characters that creates the main conflict of the play.  This is clearly defined and powerfully interpreted by these two stellar actors.  

Photo courtesy of The Glass Menagerie

Madison Ferris’ Laura is strong and stoic.  She uses her withdrawal as a means to find inner strength.  She is calm and resilient in the face of her mother’s disapproval and outlook.  Due to her physical disability, the care and patience she receives from her mother and brother become a driving force in the main conflict.  The continual provision of this care is of utmost importance to the both of them, yet their ability to maintain it is constantly in question.  The image used in the poster for this production, which is distinctly atypical, is perfectly chosen for Mr. Gold’s version of this play.  Instead of the usual representation of the fragility of Laura’s character, it symbolizes her strength and perseverance.

Photo courtesy of The Glass Menagerie

The description Tom gives of Jim as “the most realistic character in the play, being an emissary for a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from” is impeccably portrayed by Finn Wittrock.  He is energetic and optimistic, and turns the world of the play upside down.

Sam Gold made profound choices in his direction of this American classic that create a visceral experience beyond expectation.  The closing scene is hauntingly insightful.  Unfortunately, this astounding production ends its limited Broadway run on May 21. 

Domenick Danza

Happy Days

Happy Days

Theatre for a New Audience

May 13, 2017

Photo courtesy of
Theatre for A New Audience

Diane Wiest is captivating in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, now playing Downtown Brooklyn at Theatre for a New Audience.  She wins the audience over with perky optimism in face of her character’s overwhelming dilemma.  We pull for her as despair builds over time and everything seems bleak.  Her energy stays with us long after the curtain comes down; allowing us to ponder Beckett’s provocative writing and apply it to our own circumstances.

Act I opens with Winnie (played by Diane Wiest) stuck, up to her waist, in a hole in the ground.  She starts her morning routine as usual: brushing her teeth, putting on her lipstick, fixing her hat.  Every small observation she makes is a reason to proclaim that a happy day is ahead.  Her husband Willie (played by Jarlath Conroy) is within earshot, but is also concealed in a hole in the ground.  Next to her is her trusted black bag, providing not only everything she needs, but the routine to get her through the day from the horn sound that signals it’s time to wake up, to the one that signals it’s time to sleep.

Diane Wiest
Photo courtesy of Theatre for a New Audience

Act II finds Winne buried deeper in the baron earth.  She reveals some of the tragic details of her predicament.  Her optimism is fading, yet her persistence is as strong as ever.

Beckett explores how complacency sets an overpowering trap that can easily consume.  Ms. Wiest creates moments that are full of poignancy and humor.  She instantaneously transforms the mood as the thoughts of her character transgress.  Her character works every angle in order not to face her dilemma head on.  Ms. Wiest pulls out all the stops to find innumerable tactics to keep Winnie focused on surviving.  She is truly spectacular.

Happy Days is running at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center through May 28.  The play is a thoughtful encounter that leads to meaningful introspection.

Domenick Danza

Indecent

Indecent

Cort Theater

April 28, 2017

Photo courtesy of Indecent

In Indecent collaborators Paula Vogel and Rebecca Taichman explore the power of the creative voice to change lives.  It tells the story of The God of Vengeance, a Yiddish play written by Sholem Asch in 1907.  The play traveled to major cities in Europe and then came to the United States.  New York was the only city where the play was censored.  It opened on Broadway in 1923.  The production was shut down due to its offensive subject matter.  Indecent is a tender, passionate, revealing, and inspirational telling of the journey of that production and the people involved.

Sholem Asch’s wife is most excited about her husband’s provocative new play The God of Vengeance.  She is particularly enthusiastic about the superbly written love scene between two female characters.  When Asch reads the play with the leaders of the Polish Yiddish theatre, they are appalled.  In their mind, not only is the lesbian scene highly inappropriate, but the fact that the main character, a Jewish family man, runs a brothel and disrespects the Torah is blasphemous.  Only one man in attendance, Lemml, finds the play life-affirming.  Together Asch and Lemml take the play to Berlin, where it is highly received.  Lemml stage manages successful productions of The God of Vengeance across Europe and then to New York City, where the lives of everyone involved change forever.

Photo courtesy of Indecent

The choice by playwright Paula Vogel to tell the story through the eyes of the stage manager is brilliant.  This character has the objective reminiscence of events as well as a deep personal connection to the progression of the story.  Richard Topol portrays Lemml, the Stage Manager, with multiple layers.  He grows with the advancement and acceptance of the production of The God of Vengeance, and never lets go of his belief in its value.

Photo courtesy of Indecent

The cast is an amazing ensemble.  They all play numerous roles, at times transforming in a moment in front of our eyes.  Some of Paula Vogel’s scenes are written in both English and Yiddish.  The brilliance of the collaboration between her and Director Rebecca Taichman is how the scenes shift from one language to the other.  The characters go from speaking fluent English to struggling with their words as non-English speaking Polish immigrants.  This illustrates the challenge the characters face when they arrive in the United States.  Their desire to succeed in a country where they cannot easily communicate is not hindered by this obstacle.  When their production moves to Broadway, the cast is arrested and the show is shut down, even after the lesbian scene is cut out of the play.  The disclosure of the specific indecency in the theme of the production is thought provoking and relevant to our present day moral identity.

Photo courtesy of Indecent

What remains beyond success and failure?  What lives on after a work of art is viewed, experienced, and then discarded.  This is what Indecent asks us to think about.  The creative impulse that motivates art to reflect the truth is what keeps the action of this play moving forward and the audience completely engaged.  Go see it.

Domenick Danza

How to Transcend a Happy Marriage

How to Transcend a Happy Marriage

The Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater

April 15, 2017

Photo courtesy of Lincoln Center Theater

Transcend: to go beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge; being beyond comprehension.

In How to Transcend a Happy Marriage playwright Sarah Ruhl explores what lies beyond the boundaries of societal definitions of relationship, marriage, and family to find a quality of love, acceptance, and happiness that is greater than the expected.  Through magical realism, she skillfully transports the audience into the experiences of the characters and induces an intense level of reflection on their journey.

Jane (played by Robin Weigert) tells her husband, Michael (played by Brian Hutchison), and her best friends George and Paul (played by Marisa Tomei and Omar Metwally) about Pip, a temp at her office who hunts and slaughters her own food and is living with two men in a polyamorous relationship.  The curiosity of the two couples is aroused, so they decide to invite Pip (played by Lena Hall) and her two male companions (played by David McElwee and Austin Smith) to a dinner party on New Year’s Eve.  This encounter sets these two happily married couples on a journey of no return.

Photo courtesy of Lincoln Center Theater

In Act I you get a visceral sense of the characters’ discomfort with themselves when the movement, costumes, and dialogue seem stiff and choppy.  This sense is heightened when juxtaposed against the flow, smoothness, and ease of their invited guests.  Act II delves deeply into the psyche of George (Marissa Tomei’s character) as she struggles to transcend the defined boundaries she has accepted for herself.  The bond Ms. Tomei creates with her fellow actors (Robin Weigert, Brian Hutchison, and Omar Metwally) is strong and genuine.  They all resist and grapple with the truth as they allow their characters to look at their lives from a new perspective.  Ms. Ruhl finds the poetry and music in these characters tumultuous experiences that brings intellectual and emotional understanding of their growth and change.

Marissa Tomei & Lena Hall
Photo courtesy of Lincoln Center Theater

The parallels between the character of Pip and Roman mythology’s Diana, goddess of the hunt, moon, and birthing, and associated with wild animals and woodland, is superbly constructed.  The triad Diana made between the water nymph Egeria, and the woodland god Virbius is reflected in Pip’s polyamorous relationship.  Through these mythical images and the psychological and carnal impulses they arouse, the characters unearth deep-seeded realizations about the lives they have settled into.  In an emotional moment at the end of Act II, Jane blurts out that in order to bring children into the world you have to release your inner animal, and you then spend the rest of your life hiding that animal side from them.  This is one of the many profound insights the characters are propelled to face.

If you are a fan of Sarah Ruhl’s work, you will definitely find this play worth seeing.  The cast is excellent, the directing (by Rebecca Taichman) is unified, and the writing is authentic.  How to Transcend a Happy Marriage is playing at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater through May 7.

Domenick Danza

Oslo

Oslo

The Vivian Beaumont Theatre

April 8, 2017

Photo courtesy of Lincoln Center Theatre

Oslo is the untold story of the painstaking journey toward the 1993 Middle East peace agreement.  The play masterfully reveals the process by which representatives from Israel and the PLO  were able to see past their differences in order to stay in the present and change the future.  Playwright J.T. Rogers states in the program notes that “Oslo is the story of a hidden history that lies behind a public history.  But to be clear, it is my version of this story.  The events in the play all happened, but locations have been condensed and the chronology of events has been compressed… Though every character in this play is named for a real person, the words they say are mine.” 

Photo courtesy of Lincoln Center Theatre

As the United States led peace conferences between the PLO and Israel moved along unsuccessfully, Norwegian sociologist Terje Rod-Larsen (played by Jefferson May) holds a strong belief that if his negotiation strategies could be applied, they would succeed.  He works closely with his wife, Mona Juul (played by Jennifer Ehle) to arrange an “unofficial” meeting between representatives from the rival entities in their home city of Oslo, Norway.  When the men come together, they admit that they have never spoken to their enemy face to face.  The initial meeting is highly successful, and leads to a second and third.  Through Terje Rod-Larsen’s negotiation strategies, they build trust.  As the stakes get higher, their trust is tested, yet their mutual and desperate desire for peace keeps them dedicated to moving forward. 

Photo courtesy of Lincoln Center Theatre

Even though the ending of the play is historic fact, J.T. Rogers script keeps you riveted as to how the characters are going to achieve their goal.  His scenes are full of heated debate driven by deep-seated emotion.  His characters are a blend of truth and stereotype, full of charm, determination, and passion.  Director Bartlett Sher molds this masterwork by building tension and suspense, then turning it into playful banter that explodes into serious discourse and eventual agreement.

Photo courtesy of Lincoln Center Theatre

The tight collaboration between playwright and director allows the multitude of detail in this complex historic struggle to unfold clearly and concisely.  The true genius of the piece is how the dramatic thread pulling the action together and moving it forward are the characters of Terje Rod-Larsen and his wife, Mona Juul.  While all the characters are unified in their striving for a peace and a future for their families, the determination of these two characters goes unaddressed.  Their belief in the power of negotiation process and how it must be unobstructed by favoritism and special interest is verified by the outcome.  The ending of the play offers hope for those who choose to see it, believe in it, and utilize it.

Seeing Oslo is a MUST!  It is playing at the Vivien Beaumont Theatre in Lincoln Center.  The cast is superb.  The production is stupendous. 

Domenick Danza