August: Osage County - New York

Imperial Theatre
November 3, 2007

Preview Performance

Dazzling and unforgettable. A 2008 Pulitzer candidate? Quite possibly. Three plus hours of mortal combat in a baroque Oklahoma family story to curl your hair, crack the mirror, and raise the dead. Drugs, drink, and child molesting don’t even begin to cover it. It all works brilliantly, and unfolds effortlessly, instantly. Once started, it is one of those stories you MUST hear the end of. Not a dull moment anywhere.

Tracy Letts may wield one of the most dangerous dramatic pens in the land. It’s certainly one of the busiest. He has been steadily cranking out plays for more than a decade now. And he is also an actor, all the while continuing in between writing his own plays to take the stage at Steppenwolf in those of others (including an amazing performance as good cop Tuploski in PILLOWMAN in 2006).

Letts has created an enviable niche for himself, and it feels like he is hitting his stride with all cylinders firing, threatening to become one of the most important figures in the American theatre today. Maybe he’s already there. What a pleasure it is to watch this guy work. He’s original, fiery, hungry. He is an undeniable creative force.

Letts is prolific, but he’s not repetitive. AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is completely unlike any of his other plays. In fact, if you knew nothing about him and were put in a room and given BUG, MAN FROM NEBRASKA, and AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY to read, it would probably come as a surprise that they were all written by the same man. Just to show he is going to keep us guessing, his next play is about a donut shop in Chicago.

In hindsight, maybe Letts has been zeroing in all these years on what is really his chief subject matter – the family. From the early blood-soaked violence of KILLER JOE through the later deranged paranoia of BUG, to the gentler MAN FROM NEBRASKA, Letts has moved beyond the physical manifestations of violence to the psychological and emotional battlegrounds where violence begins. He’s using a lighter touch now. In place of the big gun, he’s got the small word. But the result is every bit as disturbing.

And thankfully this is not yet another visit to that great dead end street of American drama – the family living room. It’s too real, too ugly, too archetypal for that.

When it comes to a war using only words to hurt (though the characters here are by no means above getting down and dirty Sumo wrestler style when needed), Letts is unstoppable. The prolonged dinner table fight in Act II (yes, there are three acts – back to the old days!), featuring no fewer than 11 combatants, must be seen to be believed. As it progresses the savagery is so intense and scary it turns the stomach. Clearly Letts can’t be making ALL of this up.

Unlike LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, to which this play must inevitably be compared, this is a story about sisters – two different sets actually. At the center of this pulsating, festering sink hole of unhappiness is a poisoned matriarch destined to take her place in the pantheon of great female roles – Violet (add one more letter and you get…) Weston. Played here with satanic intensity by Deanna Dunagan, this is a part you would kill for. And then kill more when you get it. Let’s just say Violet’s got issues.

And yet in the midst of all this pain – probably because of it – are nestled some comedic moments that reduce the house to rubble. Letts is funny. Oh my god is this man funny. He is too funny for his own or our good. He knows how to turn that knife back and forth between comedy and tragedy, line by line. Back and forth again. And his timing is perfect. He’s a master.

There is something beautiful and refreshingly audacious about a playwright expecting an audience to sit still for three hours today. And yet your first reaction to this play is likely to be “Oh – it’s already over? I want to see it again.” Mine was. It goes by in an instant. How different from those less compelling shows where even 10 minutes can seem like an eternity! And he probably had to cut, cut, cut to get it down to 3:25. If he had three more installments on the Weston clan of equal length, I dare say people would be coming back the next night to find out what happens next. And then what…

If there is a criticism to be made here, it is that Letts does not visibly aspire to more than the immediate story for resonance, either historical, societal or metaphysical. He’s not using weighty symbols or trying to dramatize philosophical principles. He’s telling a story. A story he clearly HAS to tell. And that’s really about the length of it. But what a story it is.

The result may be hell for his characters. But it’s pure – joy?! – for the rest of us.

The Seafarer - New York

Booth Theater
November 3, 2007

Preview Performance

A surprise disappointment from Irish phenom Conor McPherson.

Though awash in thick atmosphere, mood, and subject matter, what we don’t have enough of here is actual drama. Despite several first rate actors, particularly Jim Norton as the alcohol-crazed Richard and Ciaran Hinds as steely Lockhart the devil, this ship never seems to fully set sail and embark for points known.

The marketing graphic reinforced my feeling that no one is quite sure exactly what this show is or what to do with it. For example, the “E” in “Sea” in the title is done up like Neptune’s proverbial three-pronged spear, though the play really does not have that much to do with the sea. This title is then superimposed on a playing card, one corner of which is aflame, though the game of cards in the second act is not really the center of the play. But I’d be hard pressed to say what IS the center of the play.

The ghost story vehicle has a few pitfalls. One is slowness. There are a lot of slow moments. Silences and pauses here are not so much pregnant with meaning as they are long moments for the audience to wait for something to happen. The other is otherworldly weirdness. As an example, in this case, the devil who visits is able to double up one of the characters in pain merely by looking at him. When this occurs the lights also flicker. In the midst of an otherwise straight realistic setting, such a gimmick seems weird.

Overall, my feeling was there is really not enough here for a full play. There are many promising McPherson elements, but they have not been formed into a complete, satisfying whole. Lots of things felt off, and nothing really felt on.

At intermission Mr. McPherson, who also directs, could be spotted along the back wall. I would have given a lot to know his thoughts. It’s still in previews so quite possibly some things will be ironed out before opening on November 15.

1001 - New York

Page 73 Productions

November 1, 2007

Collection of ideas, characters, and settings that partially adhere to a dramatic through story. Volume of opening sound design endangers introduction of key environmental information. Use of famous names, whether Borges or Alan Dershowitz, threatens to distract from the journey at hand. Perhaps trying to fit too much in here.

Black Watch - New York

St. Ann's Warehouse
November 2, 2007

By sheer chance, I happened upon Ben Brantley’s positive review moments after it published online, which was late night New York time but still evening in Portland. I remembered reading something about it before at Edinburgh and so got tickets right then. The show sold out soon afterwards. Such is the almighty power of the NYT.

St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn is a wonderful space with many impressive past shows judging by the posters on the walls. They’ve been around for something like 27 years. Little did the mob know way back then that they were 86-ing guys in what would become the up and coming DUMBO neighborhood. If they held on to their warehouse properties and pizza place fronts, they’re doing pretty well these days!

I cannot recommend this venue enough. The “lobby” is large with plenty of room to gather and talk before a show. Superb food at the bar! In fact, everything about St. Ann’s feels like something that could/should be done in Portland. They have really nailed it. It’s not a traditional theatre space, and that’s part of the appeal. Kind of like the Lucky Lab’s Beer Hall in Northwest, but half performance space, half bar. Brilliant.

Black Watch is primarily a visual spectacle, a series of striking images and movements that are compelling on their own, but do not necessarily serve a larger story. Interestingly, the play is not really an in depth dramatization of either the big picture story of the Iraq war or the small picture story of Scotland’s oldest regiment serving there. It’s a collage in documentary style of moments, snapshots, texture.

We cut back and forth from interviews with the soldiers after the deployment back in Scotland (in a pub of course) to the actual battlefield scenes they relate. It feels like Burke made a conscious decision here not to get into the whole “what is this war about” thing and instead simply go with what the soldiers said about their time there. This works to a degree, but for a group whose animating principle is basically to “watch out for your mates”, and whose chief interests are alcohol, pinups, and football, we are not going to get a lot of world historical insights. And maybe that’s ok.

And yet even staying with just the close-up focus on a group of 10 or so soldiers, I found myself hankering for more human dynamics and conflict. There is not a lot of dramatic material here, i.e., everyone goes off to war mates, and they all come back mates. Not much changes in between, except there are fewer of them. In fact, many had served before together in spots like Kosovo, so life in the war zone was not a new thing – it’s their job. The experience of this show is very much what it feels like to be involved on the receiving end of an international fiasco at ground level, without a lot of analysis of what is actually happening or why.

Still, this is powerful stuff and feels like inhabited cinema – you are in the movie with them. The guns are loud, the action is fast, the car bombs are in your face, and the physical movement and presence of these soldiers is entrancing. An opening segment with talking heads arguing over the involvement of Scotland’s hallowed Black Watch (the name of a 266 year old regiment) via video screens was particularly effective and deeply theatrical.

Gem of the Ocean - Ashland

Oregon Shakespeare Festival
October 20, 2007

Beautifully lit, flawlessly composed, packed with acting talent. Yet the question remains: Does this work as a play? Parts do, yet it often feels more like a muted still life. Not as dramatically compelling as other plays in the cycle. Was reminded of Wilson’s professed inspiration by painter Romain Bearden.

Distracted - Ashland

Oregon Shakespeare Festival
October 18, 2007

Well executed within the distinctive New Theatre confines. Fast-moving, ever-changing show comes at you from all sides. Loomer takes deeply disturbing large scale societal health issues and skillfully makes them funny and entertaining. Offstage youngster particularly effective. A show that truly feels like what it is about. Relevant and sharp.

Such Moments - Ashland New Plays Festival

ANPF
October 20, 2007

By Drew Katzman
Studio City, CA

Astonishing effort that is near epic in ambition and mostly succeeds. A journey through the complicated lifelong relationship between two women, starting now and going backward to then, that feels original and authentic. Caution - reverse direction means we must dearly hold onto details gleaned in opening moments of play.