George Clooney makes a powerful Broadway debut in 'Good Night, and Good Luck

 

At the end of Good Night, and Good Luck, after all the well-deserved applause had finally died down in the Winter Garden Theatre I was filled with gratitude and turned to my friend Michele and said, “Weren’t we lucky to get to see this?”  My feeling wasn’t just for the opportunity to see the show’s star, George Clooney, up close, although that certainly was nice.  It was primarily for the portrayal of my beloved profession, journalism, at its bravest best.

When I was walking home, however, my mood shifted to one of fear, deep fear.  Our times are frightfully like those portrayed when another elected official, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, was using his power to intimidate and strip people of their Constitutional rights just as our president is doing now.  The Wisconsin senator stirred up fears of Communist infiltration in our government just as DT (I don’t use his name) is stirring up hatred of those in the LGBTQ+ community, all immigrants, legal and non, and everyone not white.  And, as in McCarthy’s time, his tactics are working. 

That’s what made me so afraid, and still does, after my initial appreciation because I want to know where are our Edward R. Murrows, the broadcast journalist Clooney portrays who bravely spoke out about McCarthy’s abuses, leading to his eventual fall from power?  We have Rachel Maddow, the smartest and bravest of today’s broadcast journalists, but she is watched by a liberal audience that needs no convincing.  Murrow in the 1950s, before cable and the internet, had the eyes and ears of the public with his popular show “See It Now” in the days when we had only three networks, his own CBS and NBC and ABC.  That was how Americans, liberal and conservative, got their TV news. 

In addition to making his Broadway debut at 63, Clooney co-wrote the play with Grant Heslov, adapting it from their 2005 movie in which he played producer Fred Friendly, now played by Glenn Fleshler, because he felt, at 42, he was too young to represent the gravitas of Murrow. David Cromer directs the play, which is 100 minutes with no intermission.  I was bored by the first two thirds of the movie but the play is involving from start to finish.

Murrow earned his stature through his eyewitness radio accounts amid the blitz in London during World War II.  Because of that, and his fact-based commentaries, he was able to expose McCarthy for the fear-monger he was.

The build-up to this involves intense newsroom discussions, especially between CBS’s chairman, William S. Paley (Paul Gross), and Murrow over the bedrock of journalism.

“I think the other side’s been represented rather well for the last couple of years,” Murrow says.

“So, you want to forego the standards that you’ve stuck to for 15 years – both sides – no commentary,” Paley asks.

“We all editorialize, Bill,” Murrow replies.  “It’s just to what degree.”

After further newsroom discussion, Murrow stands his ground.

“If none of us ever read a book that was ‘dangerous,’ had a friend who was ‘different,’ or joined an organization that advanced ‘change,’ we would all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants.”  He pauses, then pushes forward.  “We’re gonna go with the story because the terror is right here in the room.”

Following this exchange Ella (Georgia Heers), a jazz singer who performs sporadically throughout just as the great Dianne Reeves did in the movie, appropriately sings “Trouble Ahead.”

Seemingly unafraid, Murrow delivers an indictment against McCarthy that holds nothing back.

“Earlier the Senator asked, ‘Upon what meat does this our Caesar feed?’ Had he looked three lines earlier in Shakespeare’s Caesar he would have found this line which is not altogether inappropriate, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.’

“No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful.  It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly.  We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.

“We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.  We will not walk in fear of one another.  We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and our doctrine to remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend the causes that were for the moment unpopular.

“We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.  The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay and given considerable comfort to our enemies.

“And whose fault is that?  Not really his.  He didn’t create this situation of fear, he merely exploited it, and rather successfully.  Cassius was right.  ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.’  Good night.  And good luck.”

Clooney had every bit of the gravitas needed to give Murrow’s reproach the punch it deserved.

Everyone involved is working to perfection.  Set designer Scott Pask has recreated a 1954 cigarette smoke-filled TV studio newsroom.  When delivering his broadcast, Murrow sits at a desk toward the back of the stage facing sideways, looking directly into a large television camera while his black and white image is shown on TV screens, one on top of the other going up the sides of the stage.  McCarthy appears in archival clips that often are hard to understand.  When Murrow delivers a particularly strong commentary Clooney appears on a large screen in the center of the stage (projections by David Bengali).  Heather Gilbert’s lighting creates an effective grey atmosphere.

Never in my lifetime have crusading journalists been more needed.  With Republicans controlling the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government the Fourth Estate, as we are known, must fill the void left by the spineless Republicans and powerless Democrats.  Good journalists have never been afraid to speak truth to power.  More of them should start practicing that responsibility now and stop letting DT silence them the way he has law firms with his threats to sue.

Besides bringing this important show to Broadway at this time I also would like to thank Clooney for his courage in writing his New York Times op-ed last summer stating what was perfectly clear to most of us, that Joe Biden was not capable of governing for a second term and should be replaced.  Nobody else of his stature was willing to be so bold. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah Snook is Dorian Gray -- and everyone else

 

Sarah Snook is the Cory Booker of theatre, stamina personified.  Not only does she portray all 26 characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray, writer and director Kip Williams’ adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 gothic novel, but she must also position herself in the exact right spot throughout the two-hour intermission-less production at the Music Box Theatre.  Williams’ elaborate concept involves live and video presentations of each character Snook must transform into with the help of five onstage camera operators, numerous costumers and wig providers.  It is the most imaginative show currently on Broadway and possibly ever on Broadway.

I had never seen the Australian actress but she is known to many from her starring role in the HBO drama “Succession” in which played Shiv Roy, a role that won her two Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy.  She won an Olivier Award last year for the London production of Dorian Gray and she will likely be adding a Tony for Best Actress this June

The story, written in Victorian England, is just as timely today with our obsession with youth and appearances.  Artist Basil Hallward paints a full-length portrait of Dorian Gray, a pretty 20-year-old man who looks more like a young boy with his full head of golden curls, apple cheeks and plump red lips.  Gray is so mesmerized by his image that he becomes despondent at the thought of not always being so appealing.  He says he would give his soul to remain looking just like that and having the painting age instead. 

 He gets his wish but in time is haunted by his eternal youth and hides the portrait in a closet.  As the years go on and he falls ever deeper under the spell of the dissolute aristocrat Lord Henry Wotton he is driven to madness and murder.  And the painting becomes grotesque.  Wilde was never known for subtlety.

Snook is a marvel as she switches voices, sports Marg Horwell’s luscious period costumes and maneuvers many props.  I thought she was overdoing Gray’s hysteria toward the end but for most of the play she becomes those characters through her commitment and that of David Bergman’s videos, Horwell’s sets, Nick Schlieper’s lighting and Clemence Williams’ composition and sound design.

In a program note director Williams describes his intentions.  First, to show that humans lead myriad lives and are complex creatures.  “Second, that life itself is one grand act of theatre, one where we are all engaged in perpetual acts of performance in order that we might reveal or conceal our truth.”

He said he also wanted to root the play in the ancient theatre tradition of a single storyteller talking to the audience, which called for it to be written with “a singular narratorial voice, which led to the task of largely seeking to maintain Wilde’s linguistic style, tone and rhythm throughout my writing, despite the many departures from the original text.”

The show has been extended beyond its original 14-week run and now plays through June 29.

 

 

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. 

Idina Menzel returns to Broadway in 'Redwood'

 

Redwood, the new musical at the Nederlander Theatre that marks the return of Idina Menzel to Broadway after nearly a decade, has her legions of fans buzzing with excitement that she is back but for me, not a fan, the real star of the show is the spectacular staging that creates a magical forest filled with the mighty trees and a starry night sky. 

Leaving a bitterly cold winter night I was transported thanks to Jason Ardizzone-West’s giant tree that dominates the stage and Hana S. Kim’s video designs that lift us above the forest floor high into the sky.  The story is clichéd — a depressed middle-aged woman unable to recover after the death of her only child the year before, possibly by suicide at 23, and whose grief is straining her marriage, gets in her car and drives from New York City to California where she finds sanctuary and healing in the forest.  But even a strong story would likely take second notice to this technically ambitious staging of more than 1,000 LED panels that create gorgeous panoramic vistas. 

Redwood has been a passion project for Menzel for about 15 years.  Her inspiration was the story of Julia Butterfly Hill, an environmental activist who spent 738 days living in a 1,000-year-old redwood in the 1990s to fight a timber company’s intention of chopping it down for logging.  Menzel became obsessed with the story and called director Tina Landau to suggest they collaborate and then contributed to the script and songs.    

Menzel, a Tony Award-winner for her origination of Elphaba in Wicked, chose to make the story (book by Landau) one of a personal journey rather than about the environment.  Jesse is a New York gallery owner who married Mel (De’Adre Aziza), a photojournalist, when her son, Spencer (Zachery Noah Piser), was 3 and Mel loved him as her own.  Piser as Spencer appears in the forest in Jesse’s mind and also plays several other characters. 

Shortly after her arrival, while standing and walking in awe of the redwoods, she meets two canopy arborists, Finn (Michael Park) and Becca (Khaila Wilcoxon, right in photo) who teach her to climb, after she pesters them unrelentingly, and finally allow her to spend the night on a platform high up in the tree.  It is there, thanks to the videos surrounding her, we experience the majesty and immensity of the forest and, through Scott Zielinski’s consistently perfect lighting, the immense black sky lit by hundreds of tiny white stars.

Menzel’s commitment to Redwood goes beyond her writing, acting and singing.  She’s also required to dance on the side of the tree, suspended hundreds of feet in the air swirling in a harness and singing while upside down.  Jesse looks euphoric.  I hope Menzel is too.  It looks fun.

A final contribution Medzel made was finding a songwriter for the contemporary pop sound she envisioned.  Landau wanted someone outside the musical theatre world so they searched the Internet and found then 23-year-old Kate Diaz.  They made a wise choice.  Her 17 songs, for which Laudau shares credit for the lyrics, are beautifully targeted for the moment — “Drive,” “Climb,” “The Stars” —and simply affecting, unlike the usual big Broadway show stoppers.  This show is big enough in its size.  It would suffer if the songs were big as well.

'Liberation' is weak to one who lived it

 

A 30-something woman travels back in time to 1970 to get to know her mother better in the world premiere of Bess Wohl’s uneven new play, Liberation, which opened last night at the Laura Pels Theatre.  The exploration, under the direction of Whitney White, lacks the charm and fun of a similar, accidental, journey in the movie “Back to the Future.”  And there’s no cool DeLorean.

 I was in high school and college in the 1970s and my development was deeply affected by the women’s movement.  It still informs my life as I approach 70 next month.  Wolf wasn’t born until 1975, which is why I didn’t feel the spirit of that time.  She hadn’t lived the energy and optimism that was so exciting.

 The five women Lizzie (Susannah Flood, left in photo) attracts to her CR group (consciousness raising) seem to have little commitment to any ideology but they do talk — a lot.  The two hours and 30 minutes running time should be cut considerably.  Wohl seems to be going for humor but I didn’t find their comments funny, just boring.

 Part of the problem could be David Zinn’s set, a basketball court in a subterranean gym in Ohio.  With banners proclaiming the victories of boys’ sports teams plastered on the back wall, the testosterone vibe overwhelms the women, at least in the first act.

 Act Two opens three years later and was the only time I felt the women had the potential to be engaged in the Movement.  Buck naked under Cha See’s softened lighting and following a trend they’ve heard other groups are doing, they reveal themselves while sitting on metal folding chairs and walking around the stage.  Out of respect for the actors our phones were locked in Yondr pouches, which we took to our seats.

One by one the women share one thing they hate and one they love about their bodies. Being liberated from their clothes (costumes by Queen Jean), they liberate their spirits for the first time.

Margie (Betsy Aidem, second from right), my favorite character because she seems the most real, begins.  A traditional wife and mother in her late 50s or early 60s, she skips over what she loves and gets right to what she hates, her scar from the C-sections she had for her two sons.

“I know it shouldn’t bother me but it’s ugly.  It just is.  And I hate it the way my, my skin sort of pooches out over it and then makes this kind of disgusting fat shelf.  I hate it so much and it’s bumpy and long and I hate that, that it feels unfair somehow?  Like, my children, my sons, they got life and my husband got the family he wanted and I ended up this husk with this hideous scar.  I mean I love my sons, don’t get me wrong.  It’s a worth it, blah, blah, blah, but you know.”

She tries to pass on saying what she loves but Dora (Audrey Corsa, far right), in her mid-20s, won’t take no for an answer.

“It’s part of the work, self-love.  It’s, it’s an act of liberation.”

Saying she doesn’t feel liberated and that the others are too young to understand, Margie gives her thoughtful answer.

“I like that my body still works.  I like that my knees bend.  I like that my heart beats.”  She pauses to put her hand over her heart.  “Yeah, it’s still going.  When you get older, if you love long enough, you start to watch as your body slowly descends.  No, really.  It’s like, it’s like watching something on the shore slowly get pulled out to sea.  And I like, I love that I’m not lost in the ocean.  Well, not yet anyway.  That’s it.”

Isidora (Irene Sofia Lucio, second from left), in her early 40s, jumps in readily to say she loves her “tits,” in a tank top or sexy blouse, “and you know you can get anything you want.” 

An obnoxious talker, she was my least favorite.

“Okay, so yeah, fuck off.  I’m a radical, sure, but this tits thing, it works.”

What she hates is her crooked toe, a result of her father stomping on it – intentionally -- when she was a child.

Next up is Celeste (Kristolyn Lloyd), the lone Black woman in the group, in her late 30s, who says they shouldn’t be focusing on appearances at all.

“I think this is the exact trap they want us in, objectifying ourselves, talking about our bodies when we should be having a more, a more elevated, intellectual kind of discourse.”

Having made her point, she readily acknowledges that her entire body “is something the world has been at war with for a very long time.  I can’t really isolate out one body part more than another.  It’s the fact of being in a body that is often unwelcome.”

What she loves is her brain. “And you can tell me that doesn’t count, but I’m counting it because it’s a body part.  I do love my brain.”

Susan (Adina Version, third from left), in her early 20s, is brief.  “Ass good, tits feh,” and she declines to elaborate.

Lizzie likes her eyes and hates lots of her body parts but none as much as her nostrils, which her first boyfriend in high school told her were flared and made her look like an angry horse.  Even since when she’s met someone new she’s looked down so they won’t see her big nostrils.

Dora is astonished.

“So you’ve spent you whole life with your head bowed because of something some little prick said about your nostrils?”

But when it’s her turn, Dora confesses that being pretty means she’s treated like a doll and she thinks that’s why she’s never had an orgasm “because I can’t actually feel anything.”

This was the CR session the women were most engaged with each other and with themselves and when I became most interested in them. Liberation takes time.  In real life and in plays.

Produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, Liberation plays through March 30.