Jason Southerland's new gig

I hadn't heard this around town ( I'm always the last to know), but it seems our own Jason Southerland (left), a founder of Boston Theatre Works, will be moving to Chicago very soon to become the Artistic Director of the Next Theatre Company, "Chicago’s destination for socially provocative, artistically adventurous work." Full announcement is here. As local theatre buffs know, Boston Theatre Works was a casualty of the declining funding environment in these parts, despite a universally-hailed production of Angels in America last winter; only weeks after that success, it was announced the company would be going "on hiatus." Looks like the hiatus will be a long one. The loss of Jason is, of course, a blow to the Boston theatre scene - let's hope it doesn't represent the start of a trend. In the meantime, best wishes to Mr. Southerland on his new gig.

Return flight

The Bethesda Fountain in Central Park.

It's been almost fifteen years since Tony Kushner's Angels in America opened in New York, and nearly two decades since it was first workshopped in L.A.; and yet, as the current revival by Boston Theatreworks proves, much of it sounds as if it could have been written yesterday - even if the ravages of AIDS are now (mostly) behind us. Perhaps this is because while the medical landscape has changed, the political one hasn't, which I note with a heavy heart. It would be nice to say that Angels is "timeless" or "prophetic," as some recent writers have claimed, but I fear Angels seems timeless simply because the times haven't changed that much; we're still stuck in Kushner's brilliantly-evoked polarizations, and the play itself reflects this strange gridlock. Indeed, while the first half, Millennium Approaches, all but longs for some new vision that could truly transform the culture, its companion piece, Perestroika, contents itself with the thought that any such revelation would somehow be a step back.

It's an odd, contrarian position for a work of art to take (Angels is one of a rare breed - the self-refuting classic), and it's hard for me to pretend that I've ever been deeply satisfied with Kushner's masterpiece. But one can be dissatisfied and still dazzled, and Angels remains, even in its current stripped-down staging, amazing. In the breadth and salience of his analysis of millennial America, Kushner has very few peers - as in no peers - and his scenes are studded (particularly in Millennium) with speeches which are, in and of themselves, indeed timeless in their mix of electrically accurate attack and rueful wisdom.

And with all due respect to the superb Mike Nichols film, these speeches should be heard live, on stage, rather than on your widescreen. They demand to be heard in an agora, a public space, as they operate as rhetoric as well as character, in much the same way that Angels is more dialectic than drama. Kushner conjures the most disparate samples of America imaginable (gay New Yorkers and Mormon Republicans), and then smashes them together - often ignoring the exigencies of time and space - to consider and re-consider them as theses and antitheses (a technique far more successful onstage than onscreen). The resulting mix of "magic realism" puts us, as more than one character puts it, at "the threshold of revelation," as it's Kushner's special genius to perceive the parallels between his opposed worlds: the Reagan administration is crawling with gays, the Mormon hero is closeted, and of course, an angel appears to the AIDS-ridden hero, Prior Walter, in a parody of Joseph Smith's famous vision. The opposite poles of the 80s - AIDS and its corresponding political plague, Reagan (one invading the immune system of the body, the other the body politic) thread through and into each other throughout Millennium Approaches in ways that still stagger us with their insight, imagination and sympathy.


Elizabeth Aspenlieder drops in on Tyler Reilly as Millennium Approaches.

But alas, in Perestroika, the dialectic ends not with synthesis but refutation. From the opening moments - in which "the world's oldest Bolshevik" derides us for our lack of a guiding cultural vision - we can sense that Kushner is backing away from the closing challenge of Millennium ("The Great Work begins!"), and though he toys with "restructuring" his Mormon hero and his consort, the "logorrheic" Louis (an obvious self-portrait), by his finale little of the promised "great work" seems to have been accomplished. The gay Mormon has been told off and banished from the play, and his wife has vanished into the ozone, literally - only his mother has been integrated (for reasons never quite made clear) into the circle of politically chatty Cathys Kushner assembles around the Bethesda fountain (at top) in his final tableau. But then perhaps that's the only real angel in the play - since AZT, which couldn't save Roy Cohn but preserves Prior Walter, also came from Bethesda (headquarters of the National Institute of Health).

So it seemed, as I sat down to the new Boston Theatreworks version, that I'd never actually left Angels - everybody sounded just the same as they did in the 90s. But then I had to admit - the Clintons, like political AZT, managed to control Reaganism, but couldn't cure it. Gay men are still marginalized, the Mormons are deeper in denial than ever, the country is still riven by a falsely wholesome "conservatism" - and as a result, directors Jason Southerland and Nancy Curran Willis have been spared the task of revising or updating this play. This is, essentially, the original production - writ a bit smaller, with a slightly grittier edge, but with no surprising new insights or angles. Still, a quite solid cast generally keeps it afloat; even if, as the text loses focus in Perestroika, the production meanders more obviously than the New York original years ago, it's still a highly accomplished, and often deeply moving, version.

It also features, alas, a slightly uneven ensemble; the production essentially depends on three central, sterling performances: Bree Elrod's darkly haunted Harper, Tyler Reilly's wry Prior Walter, and especially Maurice Parent's bitchily regal Belize (at left, with Richard McElvain). This trio is ably abetted by Christopher Webb, who's perhaps a shade too dark as Louis (but who nails Kushner's politically-correct conversational convolutions) and Richard McElvain, who makes a sad serpent of Roy Cohn, but lacks the old dragon's requisite fire. Meanwhile Susanne Nitter brings an intriguing air of acidic bemusement to Ethel Rosenberg, but doesn't really find a center to the (underwritten) role of Mother Pitt, while Sean Hopkins is too often an attractive blank as her (overwritten, but underdeveloped) gay son. Still, as a whole the cast can claim to have successfully wrestled Angels to the boards - as can Boston Theatreworks.

A fairly funny thing happens on the way to this Forum

Bill Gardiner convinces Neil A. Casey that he's "Lovely" in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Who says there's nothing new under the sun? I've never known of anyone who didn't harbor a soft spot in their heart for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Stephen Sondheim's (and Burt Shevelove's and Larry Gelbart's) valentine to Roman farce, but now I do: the Globe's Louise Kennedy, who informs us in her review that "it's not so funny anymore . . . Clearly, the attitudes and assumptions of the musical's book . . .needed some dusting off to play to a contemporary audience." Said datedness apparently derives from the show's sexist attitudes: "Its women have two choices - bimbo or shrew - and its men are either henpecked, clueless, or unsexed." In short, the show is now, according to the headline, "a little too ancient."

Ahem. First off, since when is 2,200 years so very old??? The plays of Plautus - one of which, Pseudolus, is the source of A Funny Thing - are merely plays of a certain age, Louise. Two millennia is the new thirty, dontchaknow. Second - somehow I doubt a rewrite by the cast of The View would make A Funny Thing much funnier. Indeed, not much could make it much funnier.

But Louise humorlessly soldiers on: "the problem here is that the production sometimes camps up these attitudes and sometimes plays them straight." Uh - that's not "the problem," that's the idea. Director Erick Devine and his cast get the tone just about right - jazzily self-aware, with nods to both the 60s and 70s (beneath their tunics, these Romans sport sneakers and platform shoes), but also aware the show's 'sexist' stereotypes aren't going anywhere soon; indeed, they're part and parcel of the human condition. (Why is it that gay men crack up at the ditzy drag jokes in Forum but feminists see red at its bimbos and shrews?) So please, Louise, just deal. The glory of Forum is its hilarious book (although it's the first show for which Sondheim provided both words and music, the score lacks the master's later recondite depth), and if you really can't see that, then I just feel sorry for you.

Still, it must also be said that this is hardly the funniest Forum one could wish for (and its piano/flute/trombone combo sounds pretty thin). It's the first Broadway musical for Boston Theatreworks, and they simply don't yet have the casting depth of, say, The Lyric, New Rep or SpeakEasy - or perhaps, with Zanna Don't and Gypsy both up and running, we have finally exhausted the resources of Boston Conservatory. Still, Theatreworks has bagged at least two local stars, Jennifer Ellis and Neil A. Casey, who both deliver near-perfect performances. The rest of the cast, however, although they definitely break a sweat, often lack that perfect alignment between performer and role that makes a finely-tuned contraption like Forum really fly. In the central role of Pseudolus, for instance, Bill Gardiner deploys a solid singing voice and a wittily thought-through performance - but he's simply a good actor rather than a natural stand-up, the way such famous Pseudolii as Zero Mostel, Nathan Lane, and Whoopi Goldberg were, and so the show never channels that zing that comes from the conspiratorial bond between audience and star. There are bright spots elsewhere - Richard McElvain seemed exhausted the night I saw him, but I liked his almost winsome reading of Senex - but in general, the show has the familiar fun-but-sometimes-fumbled vibe of many a smart, game college production.

To be fair, many in the audience the night I saw it were doubled over at its big numbers; your fun will be doubled, too, if you're a Forum virgin rather than a veteran. Aficionados, however, will still enjoy Jenna McFarland Lord's candy-colored set, which distills the show's farcical needs to just three slamming doors - though they never really slam (one actually spins) - and Kimmerie H.O. Jones's clever costumes, which include such inside jokes as a pair of Phil-Silvers-specs on Hysterium (Silvers appeared in both the film version and the first Broadway revival). Director Erick Devine likewise has more than a few inspired gags up his toga. Over all, there are enough funny things in this Forum to make it worth a trip.

Well-met by moonlight

Paula Plum puts the moves on Timothy John Smith in A Midsummer Night's Dream (photos by Nosaj T. Herland.)

Production concepts often make a nightmare of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, what with all the cruelty (and bestiality!) beneath its gossamer surface waiting to be excavated by ham-handed academics. The new staging from Boston Theatreworks, however, doesn’t just survive its concept, it almost defies it. Director Daniel Elihu Kramer has given the play a twist that, believe it or not, Midsummer may never have endured before: he’s cross-gender-cast Oberon and Titania, and then double-cast them as Theseus and Hippolyta. That’s right – Theseus (Timothy John Smith) gets in touch with his inner fairy as Titania, while his captive bride Hippolyta (Paula Plum) spreads her wings as Oberon.

But oddly, Smith and Plum don’t pick up the sexual/conceptual glove Kramer throws down (perhaps because they sense how easily this "concept" could slide into burlesque) – instead, they both give amusing but unassuming performances, which operate safely within the traditional parameters of the play (which was, after all, designed to be independent of its performers' genders). Thus, despite its director’s intents, this Dream doesn’t share its pillow with sexual politics. Indeed, its sex quotient seems the victim of shrinkage – Shakespeare’s dimwitted lovers dominate, rather than the glittering fairy folk, but the results are still an appealing, knockabout comedy, powered by a truly impressive sensitivity to the (streamlined) text from a very solid ensemble.

That’s worth repeating, I think, because it’s such a contrast to recent BTW Shakespeare productions, which have been most memorable for Jonathan Epstein’s scenery-chewing. This time around, however, the whole cast is strikingly tight; in fact, this is probably the strongest Shakespeare ensemble I’ve seen in many a watery Boston moon (the Huntington only matched it in Love's Labour's Lost, while the ART and Actors’ Shakespeare Project have never done nearly so well). Everyone speaks their verse trippingly on the tongue, and if the fairies miss the poetry of some of Shakespeare’s lyrics, the lovers make up for it with smart, funny bickering.

But then I’m talking about the same people, for this Midsummer makes do with just eight dreamers, who do double and triple duty to populate court, town and wood (they’ve already been bettered, however, by a New York production that gets the job done with only six, some of whom are blind and one of whom is in a wheelchair!). Of course doubling is always a sound Shakespearean strategy, but this is especially true for Midsummer, where the Bard developed his first multifoliate plot (and theme). Shakespeare’s mechanicals and fairies and lovers all do reflect – and refract - each other, and if this cast were as strong at forest magic as they are at forest farce, the production might have been one for the history books.

But to be fair, it’s hard to conjure up much atmosphere when you’re in a bathrobe, and your bower is a bathtub - and the June moon is a wall clock, as here. (Even the production’s one hint of fantasy – a bright field of poppies – nods more to Oz than fairyland.) Still, Timothy John Smith does his best as a husky Titania who might be a paunchy cousin of Blanche DuBois, and he and Robert Pemberton (as, yes, Bottom) do manage to dodge any dumb bi-curious vibe in that tub (above). Elsewhere Pemberton is skillful and ingenious, but I’m not mad about his Bottom-as-Brando; I like my Bottoms (I know, har de har) rather more innocent. The rest of the mechanicals – particularly Risher Reddick - definitely know their way around a dumb show (in both senses of the term), although Shelley Bolman is memorable as both Quince and Lysander (his treatment of the “true love never did run smooth” speech is the one rush of mature poetry in the evening). I was also particularly enamored of Elizabeth Hayes’s smart, snappy Helena, and more than amused (at times even moved) by Angie Jepson’s unusually sensitive Hermia.

I was slightly disappointed, I confess, with Paula Plum in both her genders; Plum never explores Oberon’s florid masculinity (much less his vengefulness), and even her Hippolyta is a pretty calm customer. And she had little chemistry with Ben Lambert’s Puck, who was likewise none too engaging (Puck can be cold, but he’s got to be fun); to be fair, Lambert made up for this somewhat with fey, snippy turns as Starveling and Philostrate.

So can Midsummer survive a half-baked concept and half-hearted turns from its stars? Frankly, this play can survive anything, as long as its text comes through – the pleasant surprise here is how confident and intelligent that delivery turns out to be.