Theatre Review: Hello, Again

The Nurse (Elizabeth Stanley) and The Soldier (Max von Essen)

Well, Hello, Again, Michael John LaChiusa. Welcome back.

Tucked away in SoHo  – far below the razzle dazzle of 42nd Street  with its falling Spideys and dancing drag queens — you’ll happen upon a dark underbelly of musical theatre. In a nondescript loft on Mercer Street, a Whore cooly gets it on with a Sailor, a sardonic Nurse plays nurse to an injured College Boy, a philandering Husband and an aloof Young Thing have a tangled tryst aboard a sinking ship.

Michael John LaChiusa’s 1994 chamber musical inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s 1900 play La Ronde, doesn’t wink-wink, nudge-nudge its way through the carnalities of couplings. This is about sex at its seediest level — the emptiness in every anonymous lusty encounter — and you hear the desolation in every atonal chord. Schnitzler’s play scandalously showcased sexual desire as the sole class equalizer, but not such a shocking concept in 20th century “classless” America, MJL pulls focus a bit. Keeping his couples in power struggles, he does so while jumping back and forth in time, allowing for a lusty, dreamlike score that incorporates genres from Viennese opera to jazz, boogie-woogie to the blues. While this convolutes the daisy chain of carnal encounters (wait — how were those two connected again??), it’s a small price to pay for all the puckish wordplay and sophisticated score.

The Young Thing (Blake Daniel) and The Writer (Jonathan Hammond) become acquainted.

In the Transport Group‘s revival, Sandra Goldmark’s arrangement of the long, open space has the audience sitting at ten round tables that surround the central set piece — a bed perched upon a platform. Director Jack Cummings and choreographer Scott Rink’s intimate staging around these ten mini-stages ensure that no matter where you sit, you’re sure to get a bare buttock thrust in your face at some point in the evening. Sex is shameless, and with the help of the dozens of merciless mirrors hanging from the walls, the remarkably unselfconscious cast offers you an up, close and very personal view of it. Standouts include comic natural Elizabeth Stanley (Company, Million Dollar Quartet) whose Nurse naively succumbs to the indifference of the Soldier’s (Max von Essen) crass advances in one vignette only to smartly seduce a College Boy patient (Robert Lenzi) in the next, and Jonathan Hammond (Ragtime, Light in the Piazza) as the Writer is both the larger-than-life braggadocio  and the quietly longing romantic in his fully rounded portrayal.

As in-your-face as the sex is, it’s never lewd or gratuitous. Our ability to see these erotic encounters in detail from every conceivable angle — and to see their effects in the stoic/smirking/shocked/satisfied faces of our fellow audience members — serves to show that no one is immune to this most base of desires. If  you prefer your sex coated in sugary showtunes and happy endings (of the sentimental variety), grab the N/Q/R uptown and catch a matinee of La Cage Aux Folles or Mama Mia! But for a brazen downtown and deeply honest perspective, visit the Mercer loft and say Hello, Again to Michael John LaChiusa. You’ll be glad you did.

*
Hello, Again runs through April 10 at 52 Mercer Street

Film Review: Jane Eyre

A Different Jane

Jane and I first became acquainted in 1997. Similarly willful and independent spirits, we became fast, dear friends. In the years to follow, we were inseparable: I visited her often and with loving anticipation, and she never failed to comfort me with her empathy and strength.

There were times that she baffled me with her idiosyncrasies, and it felt as though we may have  lost our mutual understanding of one another. Once, I remember, she bored me dreadfully with uncharacteristic melodrama. But whenever, with much sadness, I felt the distance widening between us, she would swiftly return and delight me with the beautiful comfort of her steadfast friendship. Jane and I, we were one. She was my second self.

Director Cary Fukunaga’s cinematic adaptation of the beloved Brontë masterpiece possessed an abundant promise. The trailer showcases far-reaching foggy moors; wind-swept, rain-soaked, corseted dresses; and dark, creeping shadows, promising a (literally) haunting, mysterious, and suspenseful melt-your-heart romance. Indeed, cinematographer Adriano Goldman creates a misty, water-colored palette, softening the typically austere Victorian setting to gorgeous effect. These moody, stunning views of English countryside are starkly contrasted by Fukunaga’s infatuation with the hand-held camera: we shakily follow Jane step by step as she walks Thornfield’s lush grounds in contemplation; we interrupt her private thoughts with intrusive close-up after close-up (if I didn’t know any better, I’d think Danny Cohen was out to ruin another film with his manipulative camera work). This Jane Eyre is visually stunning, with a dreamy, romantic quality that tenderly suits the “unearthly” Jane that bewitches Rochester with her impish charms.

If Fukunaga’s film is your first encounter with Jane, and you were swept away with the lushness of the tender visuals and the swoon-worthy simplicity of the plain-governess-who-impossibly-falls-in-love-with-her-master tale, I hope it has also moved you enough to read Brontë’s beautiful words firsthand. But if Brontë’s gorgeous, feminist prose forever shaped your literary consciousness; if your care-worn copy of the novel is lovingly dog-eared and underlined throughout; if you have, in fact, viewed Jane Eyre as a sympathetic soul since you were a young girl; this review, Dear Reader, is for you.

Having poured over Jane Eyre innumerable times, seen most all of the cinematic adaptations, collected the musical and opera recordings — I admittedly cannot separate the novel from the adaptation, the adaptation from the novel. This either makes me the most ideal of critics, or the most impossible to please, though I like to believe the former. That being said, Fukunaga’s adaptation is not revisionist, nor is it worshipful. From the initial screenshot, he and screenwriter Moira Buffini openly demonstrate this is not going to be the Franco Zeffirelli Jane Eyre (more about that later); instead, we are introduced to Jane’s love-meet with Edward Rochester via flashback from the point of her desertion of him: heartbroken and weary, she wanders the moors in search of shelter and salvation. While not entirely sustained throughout the film, this conceit brings an original angle to the tale, drawing immediate focus to what readers and filmgoers assuredly find the most essential and gripping part of Jane’s life: her tortured love for one Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester.

To this effect, Mia Wasikowska is perfection as the plain Jane who longs for a man she believes to be out of reach. But as the resolved, moralistic, impossibly strong Jane, Wasikowska falls a bit short; her eyes too easily spill over with tears when informed Rochester has left Thornfield for an indeterminate time, or when observing his easy flirtation with gold-digging socialite Blanche Ingram. Jane, on the outside, is largely stoic and unyielding; Wasikowska brings Jane’s vulnerability and youthful naiveté to the surface, where it rarely should be.

If Wasikowska’s Jane is properly plain, Michael Fassbender’s Rochester is inordinately attractive. When he arrogantly implores of Jane if she “thinks him handsome,” her answer to the negative rings falsely, though it shouldn’t. Rochester, if not entirely unattractive, should at the very least be a physically unappealing figure to Jane, who is attracted to his intellect, not his looks. More significantly, where Rochester should be more than twice Jane’s age, Fassbender barely registers as her elder, exuding a charming boyishness where Rochester should be brooding and gruff, even when employing his dark wit.

It’s the vital danger of Jane and Rochester’s relationship that is most missing here: this is, after all, Victorian England where class and station matter above all else, and their love is a strictly verboten one. Buffini’s slim script cuts the fat from the novel (my apologies, dear Charlotte, but all that God-talk is unnecessary), but in the process it also slims and quickens the development of the characters and their blossoming relationship. Here, it feels as though Jane bewitches Rochester’s horse one moment, and in the very next, they are exchanging fervent, forbidden kisses. When Rochester reveals his spiritual connection to Jane (“It is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame…”), it is one of the most gut-wrenchingly romantic passages of the novel; but here, it feels shallow. Fukunaga’s adaptation has not earned those words in all their weight and significance, and they come off as too-flowery poetry.

This could be too demanding of Mr. Fukunaga and his talented cast — grumbling over missing passages (why does no adaptation ever include the fascinating gypsy scene?), fussing over the tone and delivery of dialogue. Considering the film’s extremely warm critical reception, it should be heartening to know that so many more will now be introduced to this remarkable soul and that her romantic tale continues to move audiences.

Instead, however, I’ll close with these, my favorite adaptations of Jane Eyre:

If you are a Jane Eyre enthusiast, Franco Zeffirelli’s 1996 adaptation is the film for you. Doing what he does best, Zeffirelli takes pains to stay true to the text from moment to moment, to the point that Jane’s well-known appeals to her “Dear Reader” are utilized as expository voice overs as well to maintain some of Brontë’s most beautiful and thematically significant passages. Such authenticity could be dreadfully laborious, but not here: the always brilliant Charlotte Gainsbourg remarkably encapsulates Jane’s moral and intellectual fortitude while shaping her resolve with hints of longing and despair. William Hurt’s Rochester is the moody, bear of a man whose shortness of temper cuts like a knife one moment and softens to a calculating jocularity the next. The disparity in the couple’s age and looks is spot-on, and their chemistry is alarmingly palpable. This is the dark, sweeping, gothic romance as you imagine it to be.

For those hopeless romantics out there, Paul Gordon and John Caird’s 2000 Broadway musical sets Brontë’s lyrical prose (much of it word-for-word) to swelling chords and dark undertones, heightening both the light and despair of its characters’ longings and revelations. This is, after all, what a musical does best: allows its characters to sing what they could never say, and Jane has a tremendous amount of inner monologues that are amazingly suited to the form. It also doesn’t hurt that Rochester is gloriously voiced by brooding baritone, James Barbour.

Theatre Review: Compulsion

Patinkin & Puppets, oh my.

To watch Mandy Patinkin is to become exhausted, almost immediately. On the stage, he engulfs it, as though compelled by an insatiable hunger. Every gesture is hyperbolic, every syllable softened by that strange, lilting falsetto until, when agitated, it becomes a kind of sing-songy gutteral growl. His methods aren’t subtle, but they are always compelling. One might even say they’re compulsive.

In the case of Rinne Groff‘s new play Compulsion at the Public Theater, Patinkin’s, shall we say, unique expressiveness aptly fits Sid Silver’s equally exhausting emotional extremes. Based on the Jewish-American author Meyer Levin’s fanatical desire  to bring Anne Frank’s story to the world’s attention, Compulsion is the perfect showcase for a performer of Patinkin’s natural intensity. From the pushy, but good-intentioned advocate of a young girl’s personal story of horror, fear, and hope; to the possessive, purveyor of her words, Patinkin manages to balance distasteful monomania with excusable ambition and resentment. Groff’s work, at its best, insightfully traces how astute passion can easily turn to frightening, life-consuming obsession (at its worst, Compulsion is just another Holocaust story). Sid Silver’s journey of overeager ardor to extreme over-the-top fanaticism slowly bleeds into every aspect of his life, distancing him not only from his wife and children, but from reality as well.

This break from reality — and the fact that in Sid’s past he was a marionette-maker — is how we account for Sid’s frequent chats with the puppet Anne Frank. Upon entering the theatre, a half dozen of  Matt Acheson‘s beautifully anthropomorphic creations are seen dangling from the rafters, but unfortunately, this is the most stage time these charming puppets receive under Oskar Eustis‘s direction. Sid speaks candidly with Anne — and only Anne — regarding his efforts in publishing her diary and the strong opposition to his penning its stage adaptation (including from her father, Otto, who was once his biggest supporter). He also touchingly confides his inability to let go of her and her story, to move on with his life and save his marriage; and though her face is hard and frozen, Anne’s fingers flutter, lightly touching his arm, or his leg, in sympathy. Voiced by Hannah Cabell (who also plays the junior editor who champions Silver only to turn her back on him as his obsession veers out of control), Anne is kittenish and quick-witted, putting Silver smartly in his place with her sage commentary.

While one of Compulsion‘s final scenes skillfully incorporates a moving dialogue between Anne and her brother (as voiced by Cabell and Patinkin), the play closes leaving us to wonder if the puppets weren’t entirely necessary theatrics — or from another perspective, an immensely under-utilized storytelling tool. Patinkin ferociously  chews the scenery and the puppets delight — but neither succeeds in fully distracting from the otherwise run-o-the-mill script.

The Hallway Trilogy, or The Three Levels of Adam Rapp

I hope we get to spend a hundred diseases together.
- Joan, Nursing

When you walk through a hallway, it’s with the knowledge, or the hope, that you’re walking towards something — a room, a person, an ideal. There’s a sense of optimism, purpose, or, at the very least, relief — relief that you’re almost there, wherever “there” may be. Adam Rapp‘s vision of the hallway offers no such easy relief. In his The Hallway Trilogy at Rattlestick Palywrights Theater, the typically transitional space offers only closed doors, one after another. Locked, closed doors. Rundown, grimy, locked closed doors in a Lower East Side tenement (thanks to Beowulf Boritt‘s über-realistic design) .

The trilogy spans a century in this one decrepit hallway, beginning with Rose in 1953. A young, troubled actress (sensitively portrayed by the always stellar Katherine Waterston) searches for the recently deceased Eugene O’Neill who once kindly offered her a bit of professional encouragement. What she finds instead is a slovenly super (Guy Boyd) bearing the famed playwright’s moniker, and a ragtag group of tenants: the overly-patriotic Russian coronet player (an endearing William Apps); the resigned, widowed teacher (Sarah Lemp) who suffers from unrequited love for him; her sister, a vixenish redhead who shamelessly pays the rent in the only way she can (Julianne Nicholson); the earnest Italian-American Commie enamored of her (Louis Cancelmi); the smooth-sleazy meatballs salesman who strangely, ominously knows and takes care of each of them (Danny Mastrogiorgio); Marbles, the creepy, nearly-mute clown who entertains with his clever physicality (Nick Lawson); and finally, Rose’s husband (Logan Marshall-Green), desperate to find her, love her, support her (of course, he’s too late with all that).

Guy Boyd, Jeremy Strong, and Julianne Nicholson in PARAFFIN.

Rapp directs this, the lightest and most contrived of his three plays (Rose is able to encounter all these colorful characters to such an intimate degree because the super has the convenient penchant of changing the locks on late-paying tenants), as broad, naturalistic comedy. Actors inexplicably stand with the backs solidly to the audience for minutes at a time, exchanges that should be ominous are only mildly disconcerting, and each moment is drawn out unnecessarily, trying the audience’s patience. While the Rappian dark underbelly is present (despite the atypical lack of violence, nudity, or any kind of strong language), as a director, the playwright fails to highlight it, and only the most intuitive of his talented cast — Mastrogiorgio – is able to cast any kind of dark shadow.

Paraffin takes place in the same hallway, only slightly more dilapidated, during the famous 2003 blackout.  Directed by Daniel Aukin, this is the Rapp we’ve become accustomed to over the past decade: brooding, discontent, and almost violently ambivalent about society’s ebbs and flows. Darker than Rose, both in tone and design, but nowhere near as foreboding as the  evening’s third piece, Rapp’s second play of the evening more sharply focuses on the ties that bind its alternately charming and despicable cast of characters. Preggers Margo and junkie Denny (Nicholson and Apps) are the unhappy husband and wife, and the play opens with Denny passed out on the floor after having, quite literally, shat his his pants (unsurprisingly, Rapp leaves little of the grotesque to our imaginations — the audience is offered a nice, unobstructed view of Denny’s soiled ass). Just down the hall(way), Denny’s brother, Lucas, a caustic, wheelchair-bound vet (a tremendous Jeremy Strong), who is damaged in more ways than one, is spending a sweat-soaked New York summer under the sweet care of one lonely gay man (Boyd). Things get even messier than Denny’s rear end when Lucas offers cash to a married Israeli neighbor (Maria Dizzia) to keep him “company,” a Polish gangster (Lawson) with a keen sense of humor comes to collect his due from Denny, and the Northeastern seaboard goes dark for days during an insufferable heat wave.

Aukin possesses a clear love for his actors — and for the characters they portray. The blackout, in particular, is beautifully intimate. Thanks are largely owed to Tyler Micoleau who, lighting a play set largely in the dark, embraced the shadows and the freedom they offer its painfully isolated occupants, provides a very minimal moonlight trickling through the only window and a handful of candles when necessary to add a warm glow. Only in the dark do the troubled tenants find the courage to express their love, fears, and dreams to each other, and it is in these moments that the characters find peace in the confusing, chaotic world they live in. Until, of course, the crazy Polish gangster bursts in wielding a machete.

The trilogy’s final offering is Rapp at his most Rappian. That is to say: if you appreciate the dark, troubling, downtown nature of Rapp’s work, not only won’t you be surprised by the gross-out apocalyptic world he imagines in Nursing, you’ll be thrilled and even strongly affected by it. (If you’ve never understood the playwright’s appeal, you might want to pass on this one. Or sit near the exit.) In 2053, the apartment building is now a museum in which spectators (ie. the audience) can watch, through a one-way glass wall, a volunteer named Lloyd (an intense Marshall-Green) be injected with the world’s deadliest diseases by an anonymous hospital staff. As he writhes in pain, gurgles incoherently to himself, suffers his boils being lanced, and finally, begins the road to recovery, he is subjected to another and another plague in what can only be described as a horror play hosted by an overly perky museum guide (Sue Jean Kim) who insists Lloyd’s suffering is for our benefit. After all, disease no longer exist in the outside, and children can’t even comprehend what it is to be “sick.” No one feels any pain at all. The point being, of course, that no one can really feel anything — without suffering, how does one truly know what it is to feel joy or pleasure?

Trip Cullman gleefully revels in the horror of the piece: blood, vomit, piss, pus, semen — all are splattered, spurted, and ejected in graphic abundance.  But as much as the piece shocks and jolts us, it’s balanced with softer moments such as that between Lloyd and nurse Andy, when the two gingerly seek comfort in each other, sharing an infectious youthful excitement for the poetry of one Dr. Seuss. For all the unrelenting visual brutality, Cullman ensures that an underlying humanity always hovers just beneath the surface.

Sue Jean Kim, Louis Cancelmi, Logan Marshall-Green, and Maria Dizzia in NURSING

So why The Hallway Trilogy? As the years pass, the hallway transforms, becoming more dilapidated and unseemly, reflecting the same  unwanted changes in the outside world. Rose, not unlike its delicate titular character, reflects a desire, if not success, for an openness and the comforting custom of social mores: one knocks on a door and waits politely for an answer; strangers acknowledge, and even happily engage with one another. Paraffin is a sealant, a protective covering, and in Rapp’s play by that name, doors close more often than they open, apartments are entered without permission, conversation is strained, and violence mounts. People are hardened in 2003, and in 2053, they aren’t simply emotionally segregated, they are literally caged in isolation, with little interaction with others, let alone the outside world. In Nursing, all but one door is sealed shut, and the sole entryway is reserved for a select few.

We are offered an evolution from open and hopeful, to resistant and suspicious, to, finally, brutal and detached. This a nightmare-vision of our future, but one which also includes an aching, acute desire for human connection and empathy. Fragile Rose desperately longs to meet the one person who truly believes in and understands her; Lucas, unspeakably repulsive in his treatment of  naively kind Rahel, becomes vulnerable  and even tender in a heartbreaking confession to Margo; nurse Joan reintroduces disease into the world, with the full knowledge that as it brings death and suffering, it more vitally brings people together: to feel together, to feel for each other.

Underneath all the dark pessimism and visceral violence lies one great big, beating heart.