It isn't everyday the Pope visits New York. And in 1965, when Pope Paul came to speak to the UN and, "end the war in Viet Nam," it was a very exciting time in the Shaughnessy home in Sunnyside, Queens as portrayed in "House of Blue Leaves," now in revival at The Walter Kerr Theater.
Artie Shaughnessey, zookeeper by day, songwriter by night, is having an open affair with his downstairs neighbor Bunny. You can't really blame him. His wife, Ronnie...aka Bananas...isn't all there. Bunny is constantly pestering him to check Bananas into the nearest looney boon, and run off together to Hollywood, where Artie's childhood best friend Billy is a big-time Director. This all unfolds between 5 and 6AM the day the Pope is flying into Idlewild.
By the time Pope does his Sunnyside drive by, Artie's grown son has returned home, AWOL from the army, a gaggle of nuns is perched in his living room, Billy's girlfriend has dropped by and lost the transistors to her hearing aid, and a plot to kill the Pontiff has gone awry.
Reality? Theater of the absurd? Period piece? All of the above, and as directed by David Cromer, this creaky revival by John Guare originally staged in 1986, has a tired, dated feeling. Its only the superb performances of Ben Stiller, Edie Falco and Jennifer Jason Leigh that saves this mediocre play from obscurity.
Ben Stiller played the son in the original production, and one gets the feeling he called in all his celebrity buddies to have some fun on Broadway. With Alison Pill, Thomas Sadoski, and Mary Beth Hurt thrown into the affair in small roles, the play gets more star power than the weak writing deserves. Act I is all explanatory and the timing seems off. A running gag about Bunny's previous jobs gets tired really fast, and Bananas' psychological problems seem cliched. It would be comical, if not for the stunning performance of Edie Falco.
The play picks up steam, pace and timing in Act II, and there are some great surprising plot twists, but this is never Guare at his best. With the exception of Artie, the characters aren't real enough for you to care about, and the plot isn't absurd enough not to take literally.
Ben Stiller is formidable as Artie. His layered performance as the loser who knows deep down he's never going to be anything more than he is, the conflict he feels over committing Bunny, the exhilaration he experiences when Bunny props him up, makes this play worth seeing. Edie Falco is haunting as Bananas, with every movement and nuance deliberate and precise. Any drama in the piece comes from her fear of being incarcerated, but her knowing that's probably where she belongs. Jennifer Jason Leigh, making her Broadway debut, puts on a great Queens accent and energetically does her best with a cliched role.
The title refers to a tree Artie saw outside the hospital where he plans on committing Bananas. It was a tree full of blue leaves, and when he stood under it, the blue leaves all blew away together in a burst of wind. They were actually birds, migrating to places unknown. There is poetry in this imagery, and glimpses of genius in this play. If only it could match the acting talent on display.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures
Tony Kushner, he who gave us the modern classic Angels in America, has authored a long title and a very long play -- clocking in at 3 hours, 50 minutes with two intermissions.
The plot goes something like this -- Gus Marcantonio, former longshoreman, union organizer, union boss and dedicated Communist, has called his three children, their assorted partners, and sister to the family townhouse in Brooklyn with the intention of committing suicide. He can only go through with it if the immediate family reaches a consensus -- not a majority, a consensus -- on his decision. No one wants dad to die, and the drama unfolds as they attempt to argue, cajole and humor dad back into gaining a will to live.
But Gus is very depressed. He is convinced he has Alzheimer’s, although we see little proof of that. He is haunted by an agreement he negotiated years ago that guaranteed income for longshoreman with seniority, but cost the jobs of many younger workers who never recovered. He feels his world has deserted him, when true liberals are forced to vote for John Kerry. Still, he keeps busy translating the epistles into Latin.
To fill approximately 250 minutes of stage time, we need lots of subplots, and Kushner provides plenty.
Empty, Gus's daughter, is expecting a child with her wife Sooze. V is the father. While it was assumed that V impregnated Sooze through artificial insemination, we learn that he did it the old fashioned way. Empty isn't digging that.
Meanwhile, Pill, Gus's oldest son and a high school teacher, had an ongoing affair with a Eli, a Yale-graduate hustler, and borrowed $30,000 from Sooze to pay for it. Now Sooze needs the money to support her newborn but he doesn't have it. Pill and Eli desperately want to continue the affair as a sort-of threesome with Paul, Pill's partner, but Paul isn't digging that.
Adam, Empty's ex-husband and Gus's basement tenant, has purchased the townhouse without the children's knowledge and everyone feels betrayed.
Gus's sister Clio (the formidable Brenda Wehle) has been staying in Brooklyn with her brother for the last year since returning from Peru where she might, or might not, have fought with the Shining Path.
Oh the drama. Or lack of believability thereof.
Like his more robust piece Angels in America, there are lots of themes running through The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide...societal change through incrementalism vs nihilism, the failure of the American industrial economy and the human toll it has taken, the nature of relationships, fluidity of sexuality, the right to euthanasia.
But for the intelligent theater-goer, I suggest The Pretentious Gay Playwright's Guide to My Inability to Edit Myself is a more descriptive title. This is Kushner self-absorbed to the extreme.
Still, the play has its moments. The end of Act II is a stunner, where all the various subplots come together and 12-odd characters are fighting and talking over each other. This is how family dynamics work and is deftly directed by Michael Grief. We somehow are able to follow the story and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. If the play had ended there, you might leave feeling you got your money's worth but the it nosedives in Act Three with three more long scenes that lead neither plot nor motivation forward.
Steven Pasquale, from the TV drama Rescue Me, as V is the most real and intriguing of the characters. An aside informs us that his mother died in childbirth, and of all Gus's children he is the one who stayed closest to home. The betrayal we see in him when Gus announces his intention to leave -- for the second time -- is moving and real. Pasquale appeared in last season's Reasons to Be Pretty and is building a nice reputation for himself as a solid New York stage actor. Michael Cristoffer, as Gus, does the best he can with what he has been given. We all get depressed, but his depression doesn't seem to be more than a healthy dose of Zoloft couldn't fix.
The plot goes something like this -- Gus Marcantonio, former longshoreman, union organizer, union boss and dedicated Communist, has called his three children, their assorted partners, and sister to the family townhouse in Brooklyn with the intention of committing suicide. He can only go through with it if the immediate family reaches a consensus -- not a majority, a consensus -- on his decision. No one wants dad to die, and the drama unfolds as they attempt to argue, cajole and humor dad back into gaining a will to live.
But Gus is very depressed. He is convinced he has Alzheimer’s, although we see little proof of that. He is haunted by an agreement he negotiated years ago that guaranteed income for longshoreman with seniority, but cost the jobs of many younger workers who never recovered. He feels his world has deserted him, when true liberals are forced to vote for John Kerry. Still, he keeps busy translating the epistles into Latin.
To fill approximately 250 minutes of stage time, we need lots of subplots, and Kushner provides plenty.
Empty, Gus's daughter, is expecting a child with her wife Sooze. V is the father. While it was assumed that V impregnated Sooze through artificial insemination, we learn that he did it the old fashioned way. Empty isn't digging that.
Meanwhile, Pill, Gus's oldest son and a high school teacher, had an ongoing affair with a Eli, a Yale-graduate hustler, and borrowed $30,000 from Sooze to pay for it. Now Sooze needs the money to support her newborn but he doesn't have it. Pill and Eli desperately want to continue the affair as a sort-of threesome with Paul, Pill's partner, but Paul isn't digging that.
Adam, Empty's ex-husband and Gus's basement tenant, has purchased the townhouse without the children's knowledge and everyone feels betrayed.
Gus's sister Clio (the formidable Brenda Wehle) has been staying in Brooklyn with her brother for the last year since returning from Peru where she might, or might not, have fought with the Shining Path.
Oh the drama. Or lack of believability thereof.
Like his more robust piece Angels in America, there are lots of themes running through The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide...societal change through incrementalism vs nihilism, the failure of the American industrial economy and the human toll it has taken, the nature of relationships, fluidity of sexuality, the right to euthanasia.
But for the intelligent theater-goer, I suggest The Pretentious Gay Playwright's Guide to My Inability to Edit Myself is a more descriptive title. This is Kushner self-absorbed to the extreme.
Still, the play has its moments. The end of Act II is a stunner, where all the various subplots come together and 12-odd characters are fighting and talking over each other. This is how family dynamics work and is deftly directed by Michael Grief. We somehow are able to follow the story and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. If the play had ended there, you might leave feeling you got your money's worth but the it nosedives in Act Three with three more long scenes that lead neither plot nor motivation forward.
Steven Pasquale, from the TV drama Rescue Me, as V is the most real and intriguing of the characters. An aside informs us that his mother died in childbirth, and of all Gus's children he is the one who stayed closest to home. The betrayal we see in him when Gus announces his intention to leave -- for the second time -- is moving and real. Pasquale appeared in last season's Reasons to Be Pretty and is building a nice reputation for himself as a solid New York stage actor. Michael Cristoffer, as Gus, does the best he can with what he has been given. We all get depressed, but his depression doesn't seem to be more than a healthy dose of Zoloft couldn't fix.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The Motherf**ker With The Hat
I recently met a Dutch psychiatrist who runs a $800 a day addiction rehabilitation clinic/spa in the Carribbean. The psychiatrist has a theory that addicts are filled with too many emotions and use them in the wrong ways. In his program he teaches addicts how subdue their emotions, which in his theory is as important will have the greatest effect on getting them to stop drinking drink.
I thought of my Dutch friend while watching Stephen Adly Guigus's (Jesus Takes the A Train) The Motherf**ker With the Hat at the Schoenfeld Theater.
Jackie has just been released from prison. He is doing well. He's found a job, an AA sponsor, works a serious AA program, has a girlfriend he loves, and seems to be on a path to rehabilitation and joining the lower middle class. All this goes awry in scene one, when he discovers that his girlfriend has been cheating on with... the Motherf**ker With The Hat.
For the rest of the 135 minutes, intermission-less play we meet Jackie's cousin, his AA sponsor and his AA sponsor's wife. We learn a lot about the AA program, gather that its not a hot bed of mental health, and watch
But more than anything else, the play is a masterclass in watching magnificent actors hone their craft.
In his second Broadway performance, Bobby Cannavale (he garnered a Tony Nomination for playing another down and out toughguy in Theresa Rhebeck's Mauritius) is a powerhouse as Jackie. He goes from calm to calamity in a nano-second, and every emotion is raw and true. With a vein in his neck pulsating, he violently confronts his addict girlfriend and it takes every once of control this control-less man can muster not to physically strike her.
Later, in scenes with his Ralph D (Chris Rock), his AA Sponsor, and his cousin Julio, Yul Vazgquez, we see Jackie's softer side as he is forced to reconcile some painful truths about himself. This is a man who desperately wants to change, and Ralph D. and Julio will help him, but it will cost. For Julio, its payback for years of slight, and Mr Vazquez gives a layered, tender performance of the gay man in ghetto. For Ralph D., well, I don't want to give it away. Jackie takes it with a universal bitterness and acceptance.
Annabella Sciorra and Elizabeth Rodriguez round out the cast as Victoria, Ralph D.'s wife and Veronica, Jackie's girlfriend. Both are miserable, trapped in lives they did not ask for and do not want, with only the vaguest idea of how to get out.
Victoria's refuses to see how her own addiction is a spiral downward, and in the final moments the lights go down as she prepares to take her mother to a rehab. There is a motel with a pool across the street where she will stay. What Ms. Rodriguez, all bluster in the beginning, can say with only a look at the end is heartbreaking.
Ms. Sciorra vainly tries to seduce Jackie in a desperate plea for escape and its testament to this beautiful actress how Jackie can resist.
That leaves comedy icon Chris Rock as Ralph D. Miscast, with a high squeeky voice and lithe, thin body that seems out of place in this world, we never truly believe he is inhabiting his character. This is most evident when Jackie and Ralph get into fist-a-cuffs. I've seen high school productions that seemed more real.
Which brings me back to my friend the Dutch psychiatrist. Ralph has significant years of abstinence and shows very little emotion even when he is doing horribly wrong things. Is that one definition of true sobriety?
This is playwright Adly Guigus Broadway premier after a string of off-Broadway successes. The characters might not sit right or relevant to a traditional Broadway audience, but as tightly directed by veteran Anna D. Shapiro, they belong uptown and given the wide stage they deserve.
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