In 'Last Call' the bartender steals the show

 

The show’s description sounded engaging: American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein and Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, the world’s most celebrated figures in classical music for half a century and fierce rivals, unexpectedly cross paths for the last time at the Sacher Hotel in Vienna in 1988.  Peter Danish’s play brings them together, drawing on accounts of the meeting told to him by the bartender who served them.

Based on that I looked forward to lots of beautiful music and sharp dialogue that would inform and entertain.  Unfortunately Last Call, which opened last night at New World Stages, was short on music (recorded, of course, because an orchestra wasn’t feasible) and the dialogue just sounded like two egotistical old men talk, talk talking so that I was bored halfway through the 90-minute, intermission-less show.

Before the play began director Gil Mehmert took the stage to explain his vision for the production.  Rather than risk audiences getting sidetracked by the appearances of the actors in relationship to the real men he chose to cast women in the parts.  He was more interested in the Maestros’ inner lives, “the sensitive nature of their souls.”

That sounded intriguing to me and when I saw the two actresses, Lucca Buchner as von Karajan (left) and Helen Schneider as Bernstein, with their short hair and men’s clothes (costumes by Rene Neumann), I liked the concept.  Until, that is, Schneider’s wild gesturing and mannerisms turned Bernstein into a caricature. 

Chris Barreca’s set and Michael Grundner’s lighting create a relaxing but sophisticated Blue Bar with its small cocktail tables and a sparkling chandelier.  In a nice surprise the bar at the left side of the stage, when turned around, displays a urinal and sink to be the men’s room where one or the other conductor goes and we here his thoughts about his rival, in German from von Karajan, with English translation on the black wall of the main room.

I won’t reveal an even nicer surprise that involves the bartender, Michael, (Victor Petersen).  I would have loved more of what he brought to the show.

After back and forth with insults, jealousies, Bernstein’s scorn of von Karajan for not standing up to or at least leaving Nazi Germany and von Karajan’s ridicule of Bernstein for sinking to compose for Broadway musicals, the two part in agreement.  Lifting their glasses, they toast what matters to them the most:

Bernstein: “Here’s to the splendid madmen who for reasons unknown, will give their entire lives just to make sure that one note follows another in perfect harmony.”

Von Karajan: “And here’s to the harmony which, in the end, is the only thing that truly leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.”

 

Arthur Miller's 'The Price' makes its Off-Broadway debut

 

I have always liked and loved most of Arthur Miller’s plays since I encounter my first, Death of a Salesman, at Baltimore’s Center Stage when I was in high school. The exception has always been, and remains, his 1968 play The Price, which director Noelle McGrath has revived at Theatre at St. Clement’s.  To my surprise, this is its first Off-Broadway production.

Last revived on Broadway in 2017, the story features, as so many of Miller’s plays do, the relationship between brothers.  In The Price, set in the late 1950s, they are Victor Franz, a 50-year-old downtrodden New York police sergeant ready to retire after 28 years on the force, and his successful older brother, Walter, a rich surgeon.  They haven’t seen each other or spoken in 16 years.  They are brought together in the attic of their once prosperous family’s condemned brownstone on the West Side of Manhattan to clear out decades of their stored possessions.  The Village Theater Group’s set, with props and effects by BB Props, is chuck-full of living and dining room furniture and all that goes with it, lamps, bric-a-brac, an old radio and Victrola, with an annoying Laughing Record.  On the surface the price is about how much the men will get for all of it but as the play unfolds we learn that the deeper price revolves around the choices each has made.

In no other Miller play involving brothers are the two so opposite.  Walter is aggressive and conniving, Victor is loyal and unambitious, having given up his opportunities for success to take care of their professionally and financially defeated father.  

In the talky first act Victor (Bill Barry) and his wife, Esther (Janelle Farias Sando) look over the clutter of possessions that trigger memories of long ago, the hovering weight of the past being another Miller theme.  Humor, a third element of most of Miller’s work, interjects in both acts in the form of an 89-year-old used furniture dealer, Gregory Solomon (Mike Durkin), who also offers some of the wisdom associated with his biblical name.

“People don’t live like this no more.  This stuff is from another world.  So I’m trying to give you a modern viewpoint, and if you won’t understand the viewpoint is impossible to understand the price.”

 

At the close of Act One, Walter (Cullen Wheeler) appears, an imposing man in his mid-50s sporting an expensive camel’s-hair coat and an air of superiority.  Victor, in his policeman’s uniform, is surprised and flustered.  He had left messages with Walter’s nurse all week saying that the property had to be vacated but his calls were never returned.  

In the second act, resentments and anger, long buried, are hurled back and forth until they are nothing more than tedious to me. I am sick of both men.  Walter hits the mark when he sums it up with another Miller theme, people’s need for illusion.

“We invent ourselves, Vic, to wipe out what we know.  You invent a life of self-sacrifice, life of duty; but what never existed here cannot be upheld.  You were not upholding something, you were denying what you knew they (their parents) were.  And destroying yourself.and that’s all that is standing between us now, an illusion, Vic.”

This relationship is far more engaging in Death of a Salesman in which Willy, the washed-up younger brother, worships the memory of his older brother, Ben, who walked into the jungle in Africa when he was 17 “and when I was 21 I walked out.  And by God I was rich.”  He appears to Willy as his mind becomes increasingly unstable, always the figure to be looked up to.  

In Salesman my heart goes out Willy, as exasperating as he is, at the end but in The Price I’m always just happy to see the two-and-a-half-hour play end.  Miller leaves it up to us which brother, if either, deserves our compassion.  Perhaps though, through the characters’ names, he’s letting us know who he thinks is the victor.  

The last laugh goes to Solomon as he sits alone in the room playing the Laughing Record, heartily adding his own. 

All of the performances were strong.  A lot of seats were empty at yesterday’s matinee but the audience members there were enthusiastic, giving a standing ovation, something that is almost automatic on Broadway but not so much Off-Broadway.

Dakar 2000

 

You know your brain is going to be in for a serious workout when the first line, addressed to the audience by a young actor on a blackened stage with a spotlight focused on him, is: “This is a story within a story, about a person within a person, in a time within a time.”  For the next hour and 20 minutes you will feel you’re in Nietzsche world where truth is an illusion and illusion is truth as Rajiv Joseph’s Dakar 2000 unfold’s in a world premiere at NY City Center Stage !.

Commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club and directed with precision by May Adrales, the two-hander stars Abubakr Ali and Mia Barron in award nomination worthy performances playing people who delight in telling dramatic stories only to then laugh and say they are just kidding.  But as the fast-moving plot unfolds we wonder, Are they kidding or did that happen?”

What we know (or think we know) is that a 25-year-old American Peace Corp volunteer named Boub, pronounced like the slang word for breasts and short for Boubacar, becomes forced into a sinister public service mission to poison a suspected terrorist by Dina, a crisp 46-year-old State Department operative in Senegal on the eve of Y2K.  Dina believes, or says she believes, he is the man behind the 1998 bombing of the United States embassy in Tanzania that may or may not have killed “the love of my life.”  

Tim Mackabee’s turntable, minimalist set and Alan C. Edwards’ broodingly dark lighting create an atmosphere perfect for a political thriller.  As I was walking away from the theatre I heard audience members trying to figure it all out — “Did he . . .”  “Was she . . .” as we walked along West 55th Street.   

Joseph’s play Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, which I hated, was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist for drama.  He served in the Peace Corp in Senegal for three years, which gives his current play authenticity.