Melissa Rose Bernardo

Theater review by Melissa Rose Bernardo In the 1925 court case United States v. Cartozian, the U.S. government sued to revoke the citizenship of a man named Tatos Cartozian, on the grounds that Armenians like him weren’t white. The Armenian-American playwright Talene Monahon has now worked that story into Meet the Cartozians, a sprawling, fascinating work of historical fiction that examines ethnicity, history and family legacy.  Monahon’s century-jumping play begins in 1923—not long after the Armenian genocide during World War I—in a stately Oregon home where the Cartozians’ high-priced lawyer, Wallace McCamant (Will Brill), is meeting with the family: Tatos (Nael Nacer, wonderfully reserved), his proper daughter (Tamara Sevunts, excellent), his boisterous son (Raffi Barsoumian) and his judgmental mother (the incomparable Andrea Martin, whose first line, “Mmhmm,” nearly brings down the house). McCamant has found anthropologists who will trace the Armenians’ origins to the Caucasus mountains (“the origins of the white race”) and praise “to the terrific tendency of Armenians to intermingle and procreate with white populations all over the world.” McCamant also plans to bring in “excellent Armenians” from the East Coast, who have light blue eyes and speak perfect English: “These folks have married into society. They belong to golf clubs, their children attend good schools.” That strategy may seem ludicrous today—not to mention troubling—but with citizenship at stake, does it mat

Theater review by Melissa Rose Bernardo Three generations of women navigate intense, complex mother-daughter bonds in Caroline, an alternately quiet and explosive drama by Preston Max Allen. At the center is doting, determined single mom Maddie (Chloë Grace Moretz, marvelous), who’s taking her 9-year-old daughter, Caroline (River Lipe-Smith), out of a clearly dangerous domestic situation; Caroline’s broken arm is our clue. Their destination: Maddie’s parents’ home in Illinois. “You have parents?” Caroline asks. “I thought they were dead.” Grandma Rhea (Transparent’s Amy Landecker) welcomes the pair, but with extreme caution. Her last glimpse of Maddie was about 10 years and $70,000 ago—long before Maddie got sober, or became a mom herself. Caroline | Photograph: Courtesy Emilio Madrid Maddie swallows her pride because she needs her parents’ assistance: Caroline is trans, and day-to-day life has been getting complicated—and dangerous—back home in West Virginia; she needs to find a school, doctors, therapy. “I just need help. I need help, with this. I need you to help me,” Maddie pleads. Rhea’s reaction is surprisingly nonchalant: “Sylvia Defret’s grandson is transgender. He’s in college now, he’s doing very well. We don’t have any sort of problem with this.” One wonderful thing about Allen’s play is that Caroline’s transness isn’t a source of rancor or debate—only of practical questions, mostly from Caroline, who’s in a question-everything phase: “Where am I gonna go to the b

Theater review by Melissa Rose Bernardo  Your ears are not deceiving you: That is indeed the voice of Liza Minnelli, the patron saint of pizzazz, narrating the pop art–inspired opening of the bubbly, bedazzled Drag: The Musical. After all, the showbiz icon is one of the producers, so what better way to kick off this sequin-studded song-and-dance story? Drag, which arrives at Off Broadway’s New World Stages with a studio album and a Los Angeles run under its garter belt, is exactly what you’d expect: high heels, big hair, sassy one-liners and enough RuPaul’s Drag Race contestants to fill their own season.   The fishnet-thin plot centers on two rival drag clubs, each facing its own set of troubles. At the Cat House—where Savannah St. James (Jan Sport), The Tigress (Jujubee) and Puss Puss DuBois (Nick Laughlin) hold court—girl boss Kitty Galloway (Alaska Thunderf*ck) is dealing with imminent eviction. Across the street at the Fish Tank, house mother Alexis Gillmore (Nick Adams, of Broadway’s Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) is deep in the red with the IRS; fellow queens Tuna Turner (Lagoona Bloo), Popcorn (Luxx Noir London) and Dixie Coxworth (Liisi LaFontaine) strongarm her—no easy feat, considering the size of Adams’s arms—into seeking help from her estranged accountant brother, Tom (played by Joey McIntyre of New Kids on the Block). Did we mention that Alexis and Kitty used to be lovers?  Drag: The Musical | Photograph: Courtesy Matthew Murphy In the script by Tomas Costanza,

Theater review by Melissa Rose Bernardo  Jonathan Marc Sherman and Jason Robert Brown’s The Connector is clearly inspired by real events: This new musical, about a hotshot young writer who falsifies sources and plot points in his features and brings shame upon a respected magazine, bears many resemblances to the story of Stephen Glass and The New Republic in the late 1990s. Unlike Glass, however, Sherman, Brown and director Daisy Prince (who also conceived the show) do not pretend to be telling the truth, which frees them to shape their story any way they please. One of the show’s smartest choices is to shift the spotlight from the overconfident, fresh-outta-Princeton fabulist, Ethan; played by Ben Levi Ross—an erstwhile Evan Hansen, appropriately enough—he never explains himself or reveals his motivations. But even if he did, could we even trust him? As his editor-in-chief, Conrad (Scott Bakula, perfectly cast as an old-school, scotch-at-noon guy’s guy), sings in the very first scene: “The facts can always be manipulated.” Narration duties fall to the far more likable copy editor and would-be writer Robin (a fantastic Hannah Cruz), who chronicles Ethan’s rise and fall at a New Yorker–esque magazine called The Connector.  The Connector | Photograph: Joan Marcus Sherman and Brown set the show in the peak magazine years of the last century, when college grads were fighting for internships at places like Time and Newsweek. Beowulf Boritt’s spectacular set—with its piles of manu

Theater review by Melissa Rose Bernardo  All the Natalie Portmans has a good gimmick at its core. Whenever the play’s heroine, 16-year-old Keyonna (Kara Young), is lonely or distressed, her imaginary best friend, Natalie Portman (Elise Kibler)—actress, activist, Harvard alum—magically appears in costumes from her most famous films: the feathered tutu from Black Swan, the intergalactic warrior gear from the Star Wars prequels. “She the best in the game right now,” Keyonna tells her older brother (Joshua Boone) as she tapes Cosmopolitan pics of Portman to her dream board alongside photos of Julia Roberts and some token shots of Gwyneth Paltrow. “Hollywood is full of beautiful, talented women, Sam. And I see that. I honor it. And someday I’mma make mad money exploiting the hell out of it. Natalie is my ticket.” The rest of C.A. Johnson’s play, unfortunately, is awash in Hollywood-style clichés. Keyonna is smart as hell but skips AP calculus “ ’cause it’s easy.” (Between this play, Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven and The New Englanders, Young is quickly cornering the market on brash, brainy teenagers.) Sam is trying to be both brother and father to her since their dad died; their alcoholic mom (an excellent Montego Glover) disappears for days at a time, leaving her kids to scrounge for food and rent money. And when she is there, she’s by turns disinterested and demeaning, referring to the lesbian Keyonna as her “ass-backwards daughter.” Johnson puts a twist on the love-tria

Theater review by Melissa Rose Bernardo Even the most fervent Horton Foote fan might be hard-pressed to explain the appeal, much less the Pulitzer Prize, of The Young Man From Atlanta. The playwright was renowned for his delicate, layered storytelling, but this 1995 drama lays it on thick. Within the first few minutes, proud Houstonian Will Kidder (Aidan Quinn) mentions his “slight heart condition.” Soon he blurts out the entire tragic tale of his 37-year-old son Bill’s recent death, the newfound religious fanaticism consuming his wife, Lily Dale (Kristine Nielsen, kooky but relatively reserved), and the suspicious appearance of Bill’s, ahem, roommate, the much-discussed but never-seen title character. And then Will, who has just plunked down $200,000 (in 1950!) for a new house, gets canned from his grocery-wholesaling gig: “We need younger men in charge here,” says the tactless Ted Cleveland Jr. (Foote veteran Devon Abner). That’s a lot for even someone with a good heart to take in a single scene. The steely-eyed Aidan Quinn, back on stage after seven seasons on CBS’s Elementary, proves an ideal red-blooded Texas businessman, and the perfect anchor in an often shaky piece. (As Lily Dale’s stepfather, the family peacemaker, Stephen Payne looks uncomfortable in even his best moments.) And go-to Foote director Michael Wilson, who helmed 2007’s superb Dividing the Estate and 2009’s nine-play masterwork the Orphans’ Home Cycle, at least gives this head-scratcher of a play a hands