The Other Place and the blessing of theatrical synergy

Two-show days/three-show weekends can be utterly exhausting. They're trying physically because I get fidgety and my knees start to protest after so much sitting still in a cramped space, mentally because it requires so much attention, and sometimes emotionally. That makes it hard to give each show the reflection it deserves. (I have become so grateful for the ninety-minute shows, which let me actually think between performances!) But I live outside New York, so there's just no way to see even half of the productions I want to unless I just cram them all in on the weekends. (A huge thank you to Chris, Seth, and Becca for letting me crash at their place--all the time.)

The flip side of this is that seeing shows back-to-back can create wonderful serendipitous experiences. Most recently, I saw Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney at the Irish Rep on a Saturday and Sharr White's The Other Place at the MCC the following day. Both are impressive performances in their own right, but the combined experience is far greater than the sum of its parts. In fact, if I had seen them months apart, I'm not sure my puny, forgetful brain would have made a connection. The plays tell the stories of women dealing with their own physical deterioration and its mental effects, how their husbands struggle to help them, and whether that help is more or less useful than how they struggle to help themselves.

Molly Sweeney has closed, but The Other Place is currently running through May 1 at the MCC and, although the script is flawed and devolves a bit into cliche, Laurie Metcalf's performance is mesmerizing throughout, even when she's just sitting on stage in character waiting for the show to begin. I don't want to give away her ailment, as it might be considered a spoiler, but for me the reveal was less interesting than the path to get there. Aya Cash is definitely better as the daughter than as the doctor, and John Schiappa is wasted in what amounts to a bit part. Dennis Boutsikaris is effective as the put-upon husband doing his best to deal with both the illness and his increasingly erratic and belligerent wife, who, to his dismay, keeps insisting that he's filed for divorce and is having an affair with her doctor. The technical jargon and its accompanying visuals are arresting, sometimes assaulting, but I'm a nerd so I enjoyed it. Tthe power of this piece, though is Metcalf's performance, one not to be missed.

Another recent pairing is immersive musicals Prometheus Bound and Hello Again, which I've already posted about. And although I don't think either production is great, I enjoyed being able to compare the big, loud Prometheus Bound (performed in the A.R.T.'s new club space) with the quiet, unamplified Hello Again (performed in a SoHo building the Transport Group temporarily converted for this show).

The most stunning example of theatrical synergy (surely there's a better term for this?) is seeing Adam Rapp's Metal Children at the Vineyard followed by John Logan's Red, the Donmar Warehouse production that transferred to Broadway. I was so surprised at how much the second show changed my feelings about the first.

Red, about painter Mark Rothko and his (fictional?) assistant Ken, is just a phenomenal play. Eddie Redmayne and Alfred Molina (I will not think of him as Doc Ock!) gave career performances infusing the talk-heavy script with irresistible energy. But the play itself is perfect, never feeling dull or preachy even during long monologues about, well, art. The whole production was flawless, especially the canvas priming--probably the most visually stunning scene I've ever seen on stage--though the opening to the National Theatre's current production of Frankenstein is right up there. (I'm so excited that the SpeakEasy Stage Company is doing Red in Boston next season!)

Metal Children, on the other hand, is good but not great, and I might have written it off as an interesting idea gone a bit wonky if I'd seen it in isolation. (I feel that way about a lot of Rapp's work, which is compellingly dark--and odd.) You can never go too wrong with Billy Crudup on stage, of course. Mostly, I loved how their meditations on the purpose of art and the dangers of being misunderstood but yet commercial artists play against each other and make me reconsider Metal Children, a play I enjoy more as I think about it afterward than I did while watching it.

These pairings are unintentional but delightful, and I would like to create more of these experiences but, as I said, I mostly just cram in as many shows as I can whenever I can. Tonight I'm in Cambridge to see Central Square Theater's production of Hugh Whitemore's Breaking the Code (about famous mathematician Alan Turing, who cracked the Nazi's Enigma code--perhaps you've heard of the Turing Test in relation to artificial intelligence). I would love to follow it up with Samara Weiss's Lines in Code in New York at Columbia Stage's New Plays Now (about the imagined--perhaps kinky--relationship between Charles Babbage, father of the computer, and Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer), but it's playing only April 14 at 2, April 16 at 7, and April 17 at 2. Alas. I do hope I get to read it, though!

ETA: Yes, I get to read it! Thanks, Samara! Also, I just found out that one of the characters in Arcadia--which I'm seeing tomorrow--is loosely based on Lovelace. Isn't that awesome? Yay, serendipity! (Sorry for the sudden burst of exclamation marks.)

Hello Again: A Musical

http://www.transportgroup.org/cms/HelloAgain.php



Oh, the joy of an unamplified musical! And even better with one of the voices belonging to Blake Daniel (a favorite of mine from Spring Awakening)! It's been too long since I've sat in a room with live musicians and voices reaching my ears without electronic intercession. And that aspect was the greatest benefit of this production of Hello Again by the Transport Group, which they advertise as "staged non-traditionally in a raw space in SoHo." Words and music are by John LaChiusa with direction by Jack Cummings III.

After venting my spleen about how much I hate Diane Paulus's transformation of the A.R.T.'s smaller theater into Club Oberon, I'm glad to have a similar surround-sound show for comparison. As I mentioned in that earlier post, "It's one thing for a scrappy theater company to turn a run-down club into a low-budget, makeshift theater space. It's another entirely for a high-profile, well-funded company to turn a perfectly good theater with decent sound and sightlines into a crappy club performance space." Indeed, I love the set/atmospheric design of the large, non-theater room where Hello Again is staged. The use of mirrors and various kinds of lighting as the primary set decoration is visually interesting and thematically appropriate, and also just cool to look at. (The A.R.T. was using Oberon to perform both Prometheus Bound and The Donkey Show, so neither had any decorations to the space.)

Hello Again is the second Transport Group musical I've seen, both performed partially among the audience and directed by Cummings. (They call it "environmental," but when tables are being used as anything but tables, and when very little about the performance space resembles the piece's setting, I don't consider that environmental.) I definitely think the staging worked better with Adam Mathias and Brad Alexander's See Rock City & Other Destinations, with the audience on two sides of the space and very little action taking place from behind (and nothing particularly in-your-face).

I still don't love this particular kind of alternative setup. No doubt, it's thrilling to be up close to actors you admire--to see the minutiae of their performances and to hear their beautiful singing so close to your ears (one of the best things about stage seating for Spring Awakening). But for both Hello Again and Prometheus Bound, this could be (better) accomplished in a small performance space that uses a more traditional configuration. Plus, with a traditional setup, there's no annoying chair sounds or cricks in the neck as the audience strains to see action taking place out of the line of sight.

I've heard Hello Again called racy and daring, but I don't find it so. Rather than making the sex scenes more exciting, having them performed a foot away from your face just highlights how faked they are. (That is not to say I particularly wanted more nudity in my face, but why make the experience immersive only to highlight how theatrical it is instead of real and raw?)

I don't mean to harp on the staging and ignore the material itself, but I honestly don't have much to say about the book. It has some funny lines, and the performers act--and sing!--the heck out of it. But I was kind of bored, and by the end I was more than glad to escape my very uncomfortable chair. The orchestrations are gorgeous, and the voices are so, so lovely, but there are no actual, cohesive, distinct songs in this musical. And I can't remember any of the "songs," just two days later. The show is like listening just to the sung-through parts of Rent or Bare but skipping all the memorable songs. (And, really, when you're skipping through the cast recording, do you want to listen to Voice Mail #1 or to Seasons of Love?) I'm not a fan of sung dialogue to begin with, and when it's the entire script ... ugh.

I find it difficult to determine whether I would like the show any better if were a more traditional musical, with the dialogue spoken and the songs sung. I must also admit to being unfamiliar with the source material, Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, which was clearly much more provocative in its time than Hello Again is today. None of the sexual pairings surprised me, and none of the characters' stories seemed fresh or enlightening. Having the stories span decades didn't really seem to add much, either--are we really surprised by the idea that people were sexually confused and/or promiscuous in earlier times? Even the framework of two people pairing off and then one of them going off to have sex with someone else and then that someone else pairing off with yet another until it comes full circle seemed too familiar to prop up the well-worn individual tales.

I also found the show to lack emotional resonance, other than the pairing of Tony nominee Alan Campbell as The Senator and Rachel Bay Jones as The Actress. Oh, how trite that storyline is! But Jones acts it for all it's worth, and I feel her pain even as I want to laugh at her for thinking it will ever work out. A scene that should have been infuriating and heartbreaking (and was also about the only surprise in the script, so I won't spoil it other than to say it involves a famous historical event) because of one character's insensitivity to the needs of another--and it's horrible classism--is just glossed over, sapping it of all impact.

Yes, I think that is the problem I have with this show: it lacks impact. It's in your face without being intimate, full of singing without having any songs, and packed with great performances but playing no characters worth caring about (either to pity or to despise). Completely forgettable.