Sandy MacDonald

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald  Eliza Bent’s twee new play Bonnie's Last Flight is set on a plane, but the comedy doesn’t achieve liftoff. The production’s designers do their best, with middling success, to replicate the signifiers of a standard airplane cabin. But the name of the airline, Smelta, is an early clue as to the sophistication level of this 80-minute journey to nowhere. After 31 years on the job, senior flight attendant Jan (Barbara Walsh) looks forward to retiring and embarking on what she’s convinced is her true métier as best-selling “auteur.” Walsh’s accent is part mid-Atlantic, part Brooklyn: It’s as though Barbara Stanwyck had been summoned from the grave to pass out snacks while rattling off would-be-snappy rejoinders. Abetting Jan in her stewarding duties are her longtime colleague Greig (Greig Sargeant, laxly inhabiting the stock role of haughty gay bestie) and a gung-ho newbie, LeeAnne (Ceci Fernandez, who alone summons sufficient brio to pep up the proceedings). Jan’s backstory is as ridden with clichés as her career-reboot scheme, which may be intentional. It’s kindest to assume that the Bonnie’s Last Flight’s generous dollops of sentimentalism—an infant given up at birth, a beloved corgi who lends the play its title—are meant to read as sob-story camp. But it’s a thin line between tongue-in-cheek and just plain dumb. Playwright Bent has a cameo as a time-traveling Mark Twain, who appears to have taken comic-delivery tips from Groucho Marx. Seersuck

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald If a trilogy of solo one-act musicals sounds like a threat of art-song preciousness, rest assured: The minidramas in this year's edition of Inner Voices, the biennial showcase mounted by Premieres, tell compelling stories—or at least, two of them do. The disappointment is the collection's third piece, despite the marquee names attached to it. In Scaffolding, Victoria Clark directs fellow Broadway star Rebecca Luker, who has specialized in playing nurturing motherly types. The mom she plays here, however, is of the annoying and judgmental variety, subgenus braggart. Actually growling as she enters her cramped New York apartment—she is angry at the negligent parents who didn’t remove their bawling child from her bus—she praises her teenage son as her “masterpiece” and extols his childhood aptitude for memorizing subway stops. This serves as a heavy-handed augur that the boy has what the DSM calls Autism Spectrum Disorder. (“Do you even know what the DSM is?” she sneers.) She then attempts to excuse her many maternal missteps, which include torpedoing her son’s college interview with her helicoptering. But it's never clear whom she is singing to. As this off-putting character unloads her angst, via facile rhymes and unimaginative music by Jeff Blumenkrantz, are we meant to imagine we’re her psychiatrist? In the anthology's opening musical, Window Treatment, vocal powerhouse Farah Alvin has a much clearer "you” to address. She plays the unhappily

Theater review by Sandy McDonald Thanks to the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, we’re suddenly steeped in prepster culture, and the late A. R. Gurney’s mission to chronicle the waning WASP ethos now seems perversely topical. Final Follies, the fittingly titled title play in Primary Stages’ triptych of Gurney one-acts at the Cherry Lane Theatre, was completed shortly before his death last year. Yielding to his more whimsical side (cf. Sylvia), Gurney attempts to whitewash the porn industry with an ostensibly charming meet-cute romance. Colin Hanlon plays Tom, a cash-strapped, sockless-Weejuned, 40-ish neer-do-well who decides to try his hand (and other body parts) at cranking out cinematic marital aids in the interest of sex therapy—or so the cover story goes, as related dispassionately by a receptionist named Tanisha (a polished Rachel Nicks, overriding the rather racist stereotype assigned her). This is a clean business, she explains:  “I got rid of the street kids and runaways.” (Enhancing the antiseptic atmosphere is James Youman’s fashionably minimalist set, in defiance of Gurney’s stage directions.) Hunky-dory, then, but not in the eyes of Tom’s prudish elder brother, Walter (Mark Junek, a perfect Blifil to Hanlon’s Tom Jones). He snitches to Tom’s old-guard grandfather (Greg Mullavey), only to have the strategy backfire—as does this minor play, whose appeal is limited to those who enjoy watching male establishment types engage in vigorous back-slapping about questionable beha

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald Scratch any family history, and you’re bound to draw some blood. Abigail Bengson’s childhood experience has more than most. Her husband, Shaun—with whom she forms the electrofolk band the Bengsons—announces at the outset that the heaven-to-hell-and-back scenario they describe in The Lucky Ones is “a true story, even the parts that never happened.” It is a harrowing one. Depicted in flashback, Abigail’s extended family is dedicated to providing a “happy magic hippy tolerant” Maine-woods childhood for their offspring. They run a Summerhill-like school, where most of the adults work, including Abigail’s messianic father (Tom Nelis),  who stirs up his adolescent (and already naturally self-obsessed) charges with the rallying cry “You are the whole world!” Abigail recalls herself at age 15 as a bundle of social anxiety, but her shyness seems to have sharpened her observational skills. She looks on as her brash older sister Emily (vocal powerhouse Ashley Pérez Flanagan) befriends a new girl, Emma (Adina Verson, poignant of voice and persona), who falls in love with wild cousin Kai (Damon Daunno, outshrieking Steven Tyler). A teen bacchanal, thrillingly choreographed by Sonya Tayeh, culminates in a cozy romance—but not for long. Looking back years later, Kai’s mother (Maryann Plunkett, reliably down-to-earth) manages, in classic maternal fashion, to assume the blame for the tragedy that ensues, but nothing in this story is that simple. The lucky one

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald  Aficionados of Adrienne Kennedy’s work, which now spans six decades, know better than to expect a conventional narrative. Her seemingly free-form scripts are carefully constructed collages of personal reminiscences and cultural references, assembled with an eye toward illuminating African-American experiences. Her first new play in 10 years, the 50-minute He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, starts on a murky note but resonates powerfully in director Evan Yionoulis’s artful production. The initial setting, a supertitle informs us, is 1941 Georgia at a “Boarding School for Colored,” which designer Christopher Barreca evokes through a cascading metal stairway flanked by massive brick pillars. Two teenagers, a black girl and a white boy, catch up and feel each other out. Chris (Tom Pecinka) seems preoccupied with his three black half-siblings, students at the school, who were conceived with a series of women by his father, a town grandee. Kay (a lovely, delicate Juliana Canfield) appears traumatized by the fate of her mother, who abandoned her when she was a baby (“She was ashamed of me”) and came to a bad end up north. Exactly how and why is a story that keeps shifting: Kay’s white father seems a likely culprit, but as Chris observes, “She will never know.” Having been raised in the same small community, albeit on opposite sides of the color line, they’re clearly acquainted—and more, as evidenced by a kiss that seems inevitable. Confusingly, ho

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald In this topsy-turvy age, as clowns run amok around the world, two professional ones are on hand at Theatre for a New Audience to lend some comic relief: Belgium’s Jos Houben and Italy’s Marcello Magni, original members of London’s famed Théâtre de Complicité. In Marcel, the mostly nonverbal first part of their double bill, Magni—a small, shy, middle-aged man in the Charlie Chaplin mode (minus the antic streak)—is applying for a job of some sort: life, perhaps, or maybe just a clown contract renewal. As Magni strives to surmount inane barriers to success, his taskmaster, played by a tall and sneering Houben, seems determined to keep raising the bar. While this business is not always funny, Magni’s charm keeps it from being tiresome. The show perks up, especially for those of us who enjoy the intricacies of text, when Houben takes the stage in his The Art of Laughter. Alone onstage with just a table and two chairs, Houben promises a “master class” in physical comedy. But instead of a dry lecture, he embarks on a practicum of fumbles and pratfalls; his minutely calibrated body language is brilliant, especially in a bit resurrected from his Belgian childhood. (When was the last time you saw someone imitate cheese?) Houben’s thesis is that verticality equals dignity, evolutionarily speaking, and thus any threats to the former jeopardize the latter. “Laughter,” he argues, “enjoys pulling down that which elevates itself too much.” Theatre for a New

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald  Into the fearfully well-ordered life of map seller Jody (Arnie Burton) blows his old friend Carl (Matt McGrath), a fantastical fellow with a penchant for shifting personae. We first see him in the guise of a Continental boulevardier—off-shoulder overcoat, silk scarf, the works—and that’s just one of the identities he playfully assumes. Carl also serves as a kind of furniture fairy: Over the course of Steven Dietz’s amusing, elegiac Lonely Planet, he sneaks more and more chairs (of every imaginable style and condition) into Jody’s shop, insisting that they be accorded places of honor. There’s method to Carl’s madcap behavior: The chairs are meaningful relics, and their import sneaks up on you to devastating effect. Lonely Planet debuted in 1994, at the height of the AIDS crisis; its depiction of the plague years still hits hard. And it’s hard to imagine a better cast than the stars of this revival, directed by Jonathan Silverstein for Keen Company. As the two characters spar with each other, mostly through inspired put-downs and bon mots, McGrath expertly parries Burton’s superlative sardonic takes. They duel as though their lives depended on it—which they ultimately might. Clurman Theatre at Theatre Row (Off Broadway). By Steven Dietz. Directed by Jonathan Silverstein. With Arnie Burton, Matt McGrath. Running time: 1hr 40mins. One intermission. Through Nov 18. Follow Sandy MacDonald on Twitter: @SandyMacDonaldFollow Time Out Theater on Twitt

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald In the opening scene of María Irene Fornés’s Mud, set in a bare-bones rural cabin, near-feral young Lloyd (Julian Elijah Martinez) brags to slovenly Mae (Nicole Villamil) about the impressive trajectory of his semen, and points to a spot where it hit the barn-board wall. Then, having forced Mae’s hand into his pants, Lloyd brags about a recent tryst with a sow. That’s where Mae – his housemate, lover, possibly sibling?—draws the line: “You don’t fuck pigs.” Perhaps as a result of his interspecies sexual experiment, Lloyd has a venereal problem. To decipher a brochure handed out at the local clinic, Mae—who’s only just learning to read—solicits help from a neighbor, Henry (Nelson Avidon), a middle-aged know-it-all. The law of the jungle applies here, and the root-cellar closeness of the cramped Teatro Círculo promises a gritty, lower-depths cage match. Once Henry agrees to stay for dinner, throwing hygienic caution to the wind, it seems a safe bet that he’s a goner. But is he? Fornés seems to have conceived Mae as a counterpart to a familiar variety of male protagonist with dreams of a better life. (“She’s not a brilliant person, but the mind is opening,” she told an interviewer for Bomb magazine in 1984.) Mae’s quest to rise above the squalor that surrounds her might indeed seem touching, if handled well. But director Elena Araoz’s revival feels more like an exhumation. Henry, sporting cowboy boots below an incongruous sports jacket, skews T

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald William Donnelly leaks out the details of his play in tantalizing microdoses. At first glance, we’re watching just another tedious drunk natter at a bar. Padgett (Tim Ransom), British to the point of caricature, is prattling on about his lonely country childhood in the company of frogs, who bore the brunt of his boredom. Nolan (Stef Tovar) doesn’t even attempt to feign interest. He’s dead-eyed, and for good reason: The two men have just come from the funeral of Nolan’s estranged adult daughter, whose suicide was her ultimate fuck-you gesture. We can’t piece the back story together until Rebecca (Tricia Small) turns up and the relationships gradually come into focus: Nolan is her ex-husband, and Padgett is her shiny new spouse, a third wheel who copes with tragedy by blabbering homilies and guzzling to the point of incapacity. It’s not until the two exes are alone in Nolan’s room, at Rebecca’s instigation, that the gloves come off. Director Veronica Brady and designer Tom Buderwitz, perhaps constrained by the dimensions of 59E59’s minuscule Theater C, short-shrift the atmosphere by suggesting a generic motel in lieu of the country inn specified in the script. Still, the tight quarters make for a thrilling and ultimately hilarious physical tussle (choreographed by Ned Mochel) the morning after. Astutely threaded throughout No Wake is the intentionally sketchy tragedy of the lost child. The mystery of her hostility lingers, along with the depth

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald Fledging playwrights often appear to approach the stage as a stepping stone to careers in film or TV, and the writing in Somebody’s Daughter is certainly snappy enough to make that leap. But Chisa Hutchinson’s smart and insightful play deftly skirts the pitfalls of slickness. In this engaging group portrait of women navigating different stages of life, briskly staged by May Adrales on Lee Savage’s tight multifunctional set, Hutchinson explores the perspectives of three women: Alex, a shy, unhappy Chinese-American teenager (a touching Michelle Heera Kim); Kate, her outspoken guidance counselor (Jeena Yi, a firecracker); and Millie, Alex's controlling mother (Vanessa Kai, appropriately scary). Confronted with a glum and taciturn A-student cipher, Kate does her best to uncover a spark that Alex could use to impress college admissions officers. (“There are an awful lot of Chans in the applicant pool, if you catch my drift.”) Does suicidal ideation count? Glimpses of Alex’s home life provide all the backstory we need. In a household led by tradition-bound, first-generation immigrants, Alex is viewed as a placeholder; for 15 years, her parents have been hoping for a son, and going to extreme, disruptive lengths to ensure that outcome. Until Kate intercedes, Alex is too introverted to even contemplate romance. When a promising prospect comes along (played by the charmingly natural Collin Kelly-Sordelet), she goes somewhat overboard. Hutchinson is eq

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald The only domestic situation as crazy-making as being cooped up with a fussy infant is looking after a senile invalid—or so playwright Clare Lizzimore seems to suggest in Animal. No wonder Rachel (Rebecca Hall) is at her wits’ end, fantasizing a phantom prowler/lover (David Pegram, cheerfully game) when she isn’t snapping at her concerned husband (Morgan Spector, Hall’s real-life spouse), spoon-feeding her mother-in-law (Kristin Griffith, scarily slack when not throwing a fit), or sassing her way through sessions with a seemingly ineffectual therapist (Greg Keller). Rachel is apparently overwhelmed by the stress of serving as a “carer” (British for caregiver). Might you guess early on, though, that she isn’t exactly compos mentis, and that everything seen through her perspective is just a bit skewed? Unfortunately, yes. As Rachel unravels—thrillingly, in Hall’s hands—we’re always at least a few steps ahead, right up to the supposed shocker of a final twist. It’s easy to see why Hall was drawn to this material: She gets to span the emotional gamut, from brittle to ferocious. And although Rachel’s off-the-wall digressions outshine the central narrative, this intimate production presents an exceptional opportunity to witness, up close, an actress of Hall’s force probing the limits of custodial rage. Rachel is clearly thrashing in the deep end of psychosis. But perhaps, Hall’s unsettling performance demonstrates, the grueling quotidian tasks of at

Theater review by Sandy MacDonald Religion can be curiously accommodating when it comes to the predilections of the ruling class. In Afghanistan, the tradition of bacha bazi (“boy play”)—sponsorship or outright enslavement of prepubescent dancers—allows for an aboveboard form of man-boy love. “Men have needs,” the wealthy Jahandar (a stern Jonathan Raviv) explains to his latest acquisition, Paiman (the touchingly reedlike Troy Iwata). “Boys who we train to dance…tend to our desires. It is a sacred role.” In the unusual, profoundly affecting chamber musical The Boy Who Danced on Air, inspired by a 2010 Frontline documentary, we first see boy and master in silhouette, projected onto a homespun scrim to accentuate the disparity in their sizes. An Unknown Man (Deven Kolluri, his singing subdued but spellbinding) narrates that initial encounter, and resurfaces from time to time to observe Paiman’s turmoil as he adapts to a new dual function: show pony in competitive dance-offs and petted intimate of the man who owns him. At least Jahandar, professing a particular fondness, promises to forgo the common practice of renting out his prize property. A rival dancer, Feda (the sensual Nikhil Saboo), helps the boy make sense of his new circumstances; their relationship is adversarial at first, but Paiman is so innocent and forthright that Feda can’t help softening. An intense, forbidden alliance grows between them, conveyed in soaring duets. Creators Tim Rosser and Charlie Sohne amp up th

★★★★☆Don’t expect prissy circumlocutions from this four-decade (1899-1937) saga of a real-life “Boston Marriage.” Right off the bat, fledgling playwright Bryna Turner has her protagonists—Holyoke president Mary Woolley (Enid Graham) and English professor Jeannette Marks (Ruibo Qian)—spouting distinctly contemporary expletives. The “fucks” fly long before corsets start coming undone.With a light hand and welcome irreverence, Turner neatly dispenses with two hoary shibboleths: that history is perforce dry, and feminists unfunny. In swift, fluid scenes—artfully accommodated by Arnulfo Maldonado’s set, which conceals an amber-lit boudoir behind a presidential office overpowered by a pattern of red cabbage roses (surely an echo of “The Yellow Wallpaper”)—Turner limns the power issues that can persist, heteronormatively, in a relationship of presumed equals.When Woolley awaits the right political moment to take up the Suffragist banner, Marks has good reason to label her erstwhile mentor an opportunist. Whether she’s wise to retaliate with a protégée of her own is dicier; but it does afford worshipful acolyte Pearl (Michele Selene Ang) a chance to spew the breakup breakdown rant of all time, at once heartbreaking and hilarious.Also delectable is a flashback scene in which Woolley (she adamantly shuns “Miss,” though she might have appreciated “Ms.”) recounts for Marks her romantic history, including a memorable first time, and the follow-up. Not only does Turner prove she has the re

In 1933, when Miles Malleson published his unproduced play Yours Unfaithfully, polyamory was a practice without a label: The term wouldn’t emerge for another half-century. But smart London was atingle with notions of free love, and Malleson—whom you might recall as the recessive-chinned Reverend Chasuble in the 1952 film The Importance of Being Earnest—was an avid proselytizer, graciously sharing his spouse with Bertrand Russell, who happened to have a wife of his own. Malleson’s bio, synopsized in the production’s program, suggests a life story considerably more colorful than the tidy marital drama that unfolds onstage. In Yours Unfaithfully, whose belated stage premiere is helmed by Mint artistic director Jonathan Bank, Anne and Stephen Meredith (Elisabeth Gray and Max von Essen) are a young, attractive couple at loose ends. As new parents unhappy with the religious orthodoxy espoused by local educators, they’ve started their own school (as the real-life Russells did). The project has sidetracked Stephen, an iconoclastic novelist, and Anne determines that he needs a diversion. What better pick-me-up than their recently widowed friend, Diana (Mikaela Izquierdo)? First, of course, the trio and their physician confidant (played with bemused restraint by Todd Cerveris) must talk—and talk and talk—the whole thing over. It takes two months of importuning on Stephen’s part, plus a written permission slip from Anne, to get the ball rolling toward their arrangement’s “climax” in Vie

      No one hits all the emotional touchpoints quite like Aurora Greenway, feisty midlife heroine of Larry McMurtry’s 1975 novel, James L Brooks’s Oscar-winning 1983 movie and now Dan Gordon’s stage adaptation—which debuted in London in 2007 starring Dallas’s Linda Grey. Aurora is an irresistible conundrum: by turns haughty, caustic, tender and raw. The role, firmly embedded in popular memory by Shirley MacLaine’s film turn, is an actor’s dream…except that yet another iteration, even a live one, raises the question: Why try to improve on perfection?Molly Ringwald does not succeed in doing so. Limited in affect (even in that iconic, wait-for-it hospital scene, which she tries to put over with sheer volume), she is also not well served by Gordon’s Cliff’s Notes script, which has reduced the screenplay to brief, talky, faux-cinematic scenes. Such choppiness is underscored by David Arsenault’s unimaginative scenic design, which tries to shoehorn multiple settings—Aurora’s presumably elegant living room, daughter Emma’s middle-class abode, and an all-purpose bedroom in between—onto 59E59’s tiny stage. Even this tripartite arrangement calls for much shifting of furniture and props. Oddly (and annoyingly) in the performance I saw, Aurora’s prize Renoir—whose origin story remains a mystery—hung crookedly. And when, as a gesture of rare generosity, Aurora moves it to Emma’s hospital room, she hangs it behind the bed, where it’s unlikely to provide “color, and light, and beauty to lif

      Though distinct parallels emerge between Shakespeare’s late-period tragedy about electoral politics in 493 B.C.E. Rome and our current situation—starting with the fickleness of the masses—you’re not required to draw any. Given that this complex text has been condensed to suit a small cast and a slightly shorter running time, you’ll be busy just tracking the action.There’s plenty of it in this visceral production. Banners, balloons, blood; red is the favored accent in Brett J. Banakis’s bare, white forum of a set. Dion Johnstone, rippling with vigor, plays the conflicted title character, an elite warrior turned reluctant pol whose self-image as a “servant” of the people fails to camouflage his fundamental elitism. Hounded by a pair of scheming tribunes (played by Stephen Spinella and Merritt Janson), the hero, prodded to unleash his contempt, finds himself reciprocally scorned. Opting for exile over execution, he signs on with his former battleground nemesis (coke-eyed Matthew Amendt) and mounts an attack on his own city-state.It’s easy to foresee how this tactic might end badly. Meanwhile, we get to savor the oily machinations of Coriolanus’ avuncular handler (Patrick Page, his trademark sonority here Texas-tinged), as well as the tirades of a tiger mother (the ferocious Lisa Harrow) whose claws tear all.Barrow Street Theatre (Off Broadway). By William Shakespeare. Directed by Michael Sexton. With Dion Johnstone. Running time: 2hrs 30mins. One intermission. Through Nov

      Purists may squawk, but many a time-pressed theatergoer can appreciate a smartly condensed Shakespeare play—as do audiences who, for reasons of income or mobility, have little opportunity to view full-fledged productions. Formed in 1957, the Public Theater’s Mobile Unit continues to carry out Joe Papp’s core vision, delivering bare-bones productions to underserved communities (prisons, shelters, community centers) throughout the five boroughs. Fresh from its latest rounds, the Unit has now settled into the mothership on Lafayette Street for a brief, tour-capping run. In starting out, the performers, who shoulder multiple roles, must be ready for anything. By the time they reach the Public’s bare and intimate black-box in the round, they tend to be a tight, game ensemble, sparking off one another like fast-firing synapses.This is certainly true in the current half-Hamlet (the abridged text runs 16,000 words, versus the usual 32,000), even if it suffers at times from a disparity in skill levels. Certain performers, such as Royal Shakespeare Company vet Chukwudi Iwuji in the title role, are highly effective; others appear randomly recruited and out of their depth. But at $20 a ticket (which will help pay for next season’s free touring shows), who’s complaining?Iwuji is worth many times the price of admission, even if he’s set apart from the rest of the cast by his orotund British elocution: The social isolation works in context. Iwuji starts off hesitant and blinky, head b

      It’s a mystery why Shelagh Delaney's funny, touching and extraordinarily prescient 1958 play has sat on the shelf for so long: there hasn’t been a significant New York revival for 35 years. Director Austin Pendleton, who remembers being “unmoored” by the 1960 Broadway premiere, has done audiences a favor in dusting off the stage play, which compares favorably with the familiar 1961 film version. Steeped in period details (including an onstage jazz trio, suitably unflappable), this story of an oddball adolescent surviving the neglect of her self-centered “semi-whore” of a mother (Delaney’s descriptor) feels surprisingly contemporary. After a weirdly peppy misjudged beginning—raising the suspicion that Pendleton might intend to jack up the RPM to offset the running time—the central duo really hit their stride. Although Rachel Botchan, as hard-partying Helen, comes across as just a bit too chipper (she could use a dash more slattern), Rebekah Brockman is a revelation in the role of quirky, outspoken Jo. Brockman’s splay-legged stance in the first act is the essence of schoolgirl truculence. Her eyes are like security cameras: Jo (Delaney, actually: a phenom at age 19) takes absolutely everything in. Jo fixates in particular on the beauty of a young black sailor (Ade Otukoya) who surfaces long enough to participate in her first dip into love, a realm she has already learned, through her mother, to associate with strife. After intermission we find Jo knocked up: either carel