Okay, okay, here are my thoughts on Clybourne Park (Part 2 of a series)

Work of art or house of mirrors?  The SpeakEasy version of Clybourne Park.  Photo(s): Craig Bailey.

Every single theatre acquaintance I've bumped into over the past month has asked me the same question:

"When are you going to write about Clybourne Park???"

Sometimes people said,  "You are going to write about Clybourne Park, aren't you?" or "You didn't already write about Clybourne Park, did you?" or "I didn't miss it, did I?"

A few emails simply cut to the chase: "Clybourne Park?" was all they said.

But no, you haven't missed it - even though I did already write in depth about Clybourne, in a widely noted review of Trinity Rep's savage production last year.  But I understood that I had to write about it again - people were actually yearning for it.  For one thing, everyone knows I'm the only writer in Boston who dares to write honestly about questions of race in the theatre - plus I'm one of only a few local critics with any insight into dramatic mechanics. Those points were particularly salient because the vast majority of my friends, it seemed, were hesitantly trying to vocalize a common feeling they were hoping I would validate. As one put it:

"It seems like a really good play.  But it really isn't, is it."

And what can I say?  You're all quite right.  Clybourne Park seems like a really good play - but it isn't, not really.  Instead, it is an "important" play - and there's a big difference between an important play and a good play.

Still, the SpeakEasy Stage production (which recently closed) was undeniably a strong one - it honored the work's "importance" in an astutely dignified way, and often - but not always - disguised its flaws. That is what it was designed to do, and it clearly succeeded in its objective.  (It certainly snookered almost all the Boston critics.)  The Trinity Rep production was in a way more intriguing - it cast the play as polemic - in effect a sardonic riposte to Hansberry's text, or at least its comfortable, classic status; and thus it sank its teeth into the dark snark at the core of Bruce Norris's authorial tone.  The trouble was, this led to a dead end, because Norris doesn't really complete any kind of artistic or politic arc in his action, and the buried "secret" driving his plot feels like a complete non sequitur to his racial themes.  Thus after a roaring act-and-a-half, the Trinity Rep version abruptly ran out of steam, and sputtered to a frustrating stop - which led me to wonder whether the mainstream "race play" was already "written out."

But at SpeakEasy Stage, director Bevin O'Gara was - well, cannier in manner and method, although it has crossed my mind that she may have actually been simply disinterested in the script's political particulars.  To her, you felt, Clybourne Park operated as kind of figurehead, like one of those bare-busted ladies on the prow of a ship, for a certain theatrical movement of which she sees herself as avatar; its individual features or flaws were of secondary concern.  Indeed, it was mounted as an indirect companion piece to the simultaneous revival of A Raisin in the Sun (from which its plot is derived) at the Huntington (where O'Gara works as an associate producer). And given that production's rather sentimentalized tone, clearly what counted was that Clybourne convey a vaguely progressive posture despite itself (indeed even though it often feels like a sarcastic shrug of despair).

Thus O'Gara's was a kinder, gentler Clybourne Park -  a transformation which she effected by making it an actor's Clybourne Park, focused on sympathetic, naturalistic detail rather than debate (after all, O'Gara, and SpeakEasy Stage, just don't do debate). This approach was somewhat compromised by the fact that a key role in the production was miscast; but the actor in question, Thomas Derrah, is so technically skillful that this issue, like so many in the script itself, was successfully disguised.

Of course O'Gara's version inevitably stalled, too, like Trinity's - although so much more slowly and subtly that I think many observers never even felt themselves drifting to a stop. Perhaps more importantly, it was pushed into rough alignment with Raisin, its source material  - indeed (in a move that made you wonder about some level of meta-collusion between the two directors) the Huntington's Liesl Tommy brought onstage the ghost of the deceased patriarch whose death kick-starts the plot of Raisin - as if to openly reference the dead son who haunts Clybourne.

But do those particular reflections really make sense (even if they're what Bruce Norris had in mind)? Probably not - indeed, I'd argue Tommy's gentle but forced gesture violated Hansberry's intents, and the suggested parallels with Clybourne were just fuzzy anyway.  Thus inevitably, more discerning theatre-goers left both productions with the troubling sense that they'd been  - well, slightly hoodwinked.  And in a way they had; Raisin and Clybourne are opposed, not parallel, works.  One (Raisin) is far greater than the other, but oddly, the weaker play attempts to undo the optimism of the stronger; and any attempt to suggest that they orbit each other in the way that Norris's two time frames do in Clybourne is (I think) an inherently misguided strategy.

What's past is prologue in Clybourne Park.

Of course perhaps all this is simple coincidence. And to be fair, O'Gara's approach had one great virtue: it drew out the incredible detail that Norris has worked into his mirrored diptych of two eras, and the modes in which racism was and is secretly honored, but officially denied, in each (the approach is neatly summed up in the photoshopped "mirror" of two sets of characters, at left).

Still, this mirroring should really only be a means toward an end - and it's that end, that climax, that's missing from Clybourne Park.  Yes, racism has survived A Raisin in the Sun, and even the Civil Rights Act - but in what form, really, has it done so? That, you feel, is the question that would have pre-occupied Lorraine Hansberry, had she not been taken from us at such an early age - and while Norris nods toward it, he seems unwilling to answer it.  Instead, the playwright lets his many reflections take over, and Clybourne Park becomes a house of mirrors rather than a work of art.

But if Clybourne Park isn't actually a work of art, is it at least an interesting cultural artifact, a kind of unconscious aesthetic symptom? This is an intriguing argument, and one that the rapturous critical reception to O'Gara's production seems to validate.  And which I'll consider more deeply in the third part of this series.

Shining new light on A Raisin in the Sun (Part I of a series)

LeRoy McClain and Ashley Everage in A Raisin in the Sun.  Photo: T. Charles Erickson.

I'm not sure whether the theatre is more obsessed with race these days, or real estate.  But the two topics have certainly been entwined on our stages, in production after production pondering the question of black families moving into white neighborhoods.  Last year saw The Luck of the Irish premiere at the Huntington, after Clybourne Park took its regional bow at Trinity; and right now Clybourne is enjoying a return engagement at SpeakEasy, while the grandmother of the whole genre (and yes, by now it's a genre), Lorraine Hansberry's classic A Raisin in the Sun, has just been revived at the Huntington (through April 7) under the direction of Liesl Tommy.

I'm not really complaining about the sudden intensity of this focus (in fact I think I'm the only local critic to ever call for somebody, anybody, to treat Boston's de facto policy of racial apartheid).  But I'll admit that by now I've become a little concerned about the limits of these texts - I'd like to see more plays like Invisible Man, that treat race without recourse to a realtor.  Still, I'm aware that the theatre is responding in its usual half-baked way to the deep realization that rocked Fox News on election day, i.e. white people don't own the country anymore (they just own Wall Street!).

Of course of these works, Raisin is by far the greatest - and now I'd argue it's the most poignant, too. For seeing it again - particularly after taking in Clybourne Park for the second time - means facing the touching quaintness of its essential optimism.  It's not that the hopes of Hansberry's family (tellingly named the Youngers) are doomed - not exactly.  It's more that they don't quite guess what's ahead, much less how their dreams will be co-opted.

The critical response to the current juxtaposition of Raisin and its derivative satellite, Clybourne, has been enthusiastic but, alas, rather vapid.  Everyone agrees, for instance, that the two works 'have a lot to say to each other,' but precisely what that might be remains unspoken; meanwhile Raisin is lauded (as always) for being "searingly human," "achingly true," etc., etc.

Which it is - but the Huntington revival also reminded me of the play's many flaws.  A Raisin in the Sun was completed by Hansberry at the ripe old age of 28, and it's a young person's play - overlong and overstuffed with thematic tangents.  It's also unevenly structured, as the author juggles a mosaic of rambling scenes that cluster around its central trio (or is it a quartet?) of protagonists.  Indeed, what many recall as the spine of the play - Mrs. Younger's purchase of a home in the all-white neighborhood of (yes) Clybourne Park - is only one of several thematic threads (the debate between assimilation vs. isolation, the tension between the sexes in African-American culture) that bind the play together.

Keona Welch and Kimberly Scott; photo: T Charles Erickson

What also binds the play together, of course, is Hansberry's sheer passion, and her desire to pack into her script everything she knows about being "young, gifted and black" - even if the history of the Younger clan doesn't quite match her own (her family was the first to fight - and win - a battle against race-restrictive covenants, but the Hansberries were far more moneyed and middle-class than their fictional counterparts).

And luckily for us, the author's passion is matched by that of the cast at the Huntington, whose production is sustained by remarkable performances, despite a few odd flourishes from its director.  Tommy has chosen to incorporate the ghost of the family's dead patriarch - whose insurance money is funding their new dreams - directly into the action of the play (Corey Allen stalks the set in age make-up), which alas, feels a bit cinematic and Disney-fied. The set, by Clint Ramos, is likewise slightly problematic; it's a turntable that we can feel is meant to spin with the family as it whirls in indecision; but like the appearances of Ghost-Dad, this sometimes feels forced, and various lighting effects and Tommy's trademarked bursts of extraneous rap are similarly distracting.

But if the director hasn't solved the structural issues in Hansberry's text, and has perhaps even exacerbated some of them here and there, I have to admit that she has also drawn memorable performances from her cast pretty much across the board; so the uplifting, traditional core of Raisin survives the odd accoutrements of this revival.  Perhaps first among equals is LeRoy McClain, whose performance as Walter Lee Younger (the son who squanders much of the family inheritance on a liquor store scheme) is a fluid, fevered marvel of anger, ambition, immaturity, and wounded sensitivity.  He's pretty much matched, however, by the luminous Keona Welch as his very Lorraine-Hansberry-like sister, whose brilliant idealism is tempered by a winningly bemused self-awareness. Meanwhile the formidable Kimberly Scott, as matriarch Lena Younger, was beset by a few memory lapses on opening night, but as these settle down the understated strength of her heart-breaking performance will only become more apparent.  Even subtler than Scott was Ashley Everage, who brought a disappointed (but unbroken) strength to the role of Walter Lee's wife Ruth.  The supporting cast - Jason Bowen, Corey Allen, Maurice E. Parent, and Will McGarrahan - was likewise strong (while the youngest role, of Walter Lee's son Travis, is charmingly handled by either Cory Janvier or Zaire White).  Indeed, the acting alone at the Huntington was enough to give you hope for the future - or at least until you see Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park.  But more about that in the second part of this series.

High and dry with the far right

Home for the holidays in Palm Springs.

Okay, I have to ask this right up front:

Do you really care about aging Republicans in Palm Springs?

Because I don't.

And that's one reason I struggled with Jon Robin Baitz's Other Desert Cities, which SpeakEasy Stage is presenting in a superficially strong, but slightly anemic production through February 9 at the BCA.

Now I know I should love all God's creatures: spiders, snakes, smallpox - even Republicans.  Because of, you know . . . Jesus and Buddha and stuff. So I suppose I should be willing to grant these types my . . . aesthetic attention, for lack of a better phrase.  At least for the length of a play.

But honestly, Jon Robin Baitz has made it tough.  Partly because he thinks he has made it easy. The playwright seems to imagine he has somehow tied the emotional undertow of the classic American melodrama to the red/blue battle-line dividing our politics. All I can say is - if only.  If Baitz had, indeed, pulled off that particular trick, then Other Desert Cities would be of high interest.  But he has actually dodged the hard part of the job entirely.

To be fair, the playwright has penned a solidly entertaining long-form cable TV episode.  And to some in the theatre-going audience, that's probably enough.  Baitz was famously dumped from his own TV series, Brothers and Sisters, over the political themes he wanted to pull into its opening season; and that imbroglio clearly hangs over Other Desert Cities, which follows one Brooke Wyeth (Anne Gottlieb), a liberal writer who long ago retreated to a redoubt on Long Island (just as Baitz did), who is now spending a Jewish Christmas with her Palm-Springs-Republican parents, Polly and Lyman (Karen MacDonald and Munson Hicks).  Her apolitical bro-dude (Chistopher Smith) is also along for the ride in the holiday golf cart, while blowsy, broken alcoholic Aunt Silda (Nancy E. Carroll) livens things up with predictable speak-truth-now antics.

For Brooke has it in mind to lance a secret boil that has long plagued the family's psychological underbelly: one troubled brother, perhaps in reaction to his parents, swung further to the left than they did to the right, got involved with domestic terrorism in the 70's - and then vanished (and is now presumed dead). Polly and Lyman continue to live in denial of same, of course, while depressive Brooke has almost begun to feed on it emotionally - hence this Christmas she's gifting her parents with a tell-all memoir, spiked with secrets leaked by Aunt Silda.  

Now this is a solid melodramatic set-up, and at first Baitz competently cues us to wait for a slow drip of revelation to accelerate into confrontation.  But when that showdown finally comes, it's a bit of a let-down, because what Baitz seemed to promise as the distinctive twist of his plot, i.e., a battle royale between the mental stances shaping our two leading political styles (the denial of the right vs. the narcissism of the left), never actually materializes.   Indeed, Baitz never engages with what it means to be a Republican today; racism, homophobia, torture, the subjugation of women, the denial of science - none of the truly toxic aspects of the far right are aired here (probably because they would make the play's melodramatic frame collapse).  And at any rate, nobody's politics shift even an iota over the course of the drama, and the climax pivots entirely on familiar cliches of family loyalty. At the finish we really feel someone should pass through saying, "Nothing new to see here, move along now, move along."

Photos: Craig Bailey

I guess you could argue Brooke mellows a bit in her aggressive  New Age defenses - but is that enough to justify two and a half hours of complicated exposition and dramatic construction?  I'd argue no.  But clearly SpeakEasy feels otherwise - indeed, they even claim in their program notes that Jon Robin Baitz is "the Arthur Miller of our time."

Uh-huh.  I guess time will tell.  In the meantime, there are mild pleasures to be had from Other Desert Cities, thanks to a crack cast and director Scott Edmiston's customary skill. The stand-out is local light Anne Gottlieb (at left, with memoir), who manages to make the sensitive, self-obsessed Brooke not nearly as obnoxious as she might be in less skillful hands.  If anything, newcomer Christopher M. Smith is even a bit better in the lesser role of her politically-neutral brother; precisely cast and precisely directed, Smith makes superficiality seem like so much more than it is.  Just as skillful is the reliable Nancy E. Carroll as Aunt Silda, but you know, she could probably play this part (basically a set of snappy one-liners) in her sleep; and sadly, the moment Silda opens out into a conflicted character, Baitz drops her like a hot patio tile.

Front and center are the mysterious Republican parents, who are supposed to intrigue us with their curious mix of nasty clubhouse politics and easy-going, good-natured fun.  This combination isn't such a mystery, of course; nor does the portrayal of Jews celebrating Christmas at the country club with the Reagan crowd exactly knock us for a loop.  If Baitz had scratched the surface of these characters, he might have revealed a truly disturbing portrait of a certain kind of nervous, amoral ambition on the make.  But he doesn't seem able to see that far dramatically; I think narcissism has shaped his drama more than he realizes.  At any rate, the reliable Karen MacDonald and Munson Hicks both hold us, but they're both subtly mis-cast (neither is quite old enough, and the hearty MacDonald has trouble conveying brittle ruthlessness - while Hicks offers little sense of hidden depth).

A few other aspects of the production don't feel quite right - set designer Janie E. Howland seems to be aiming for David Hockney, for instance, but misses (although costumer Charles Schoonmaker pretty much nails Palm Springs chic).  Still, in general the surface is strong - Edmiston knows how to direct the well-made-play polish of Baitz's banter, and the cast is more than up to his culture-lite demands. Indeed, if you squinted, you might even mistake all this for Arthur Miller, I suppose.  

If you'd never seen Arthur Miller, that is.

The slick and the raw at SpeakEasy Stage

Can you hear me now?  Trying to communicate in The Motherfucker with the Hat. Photos by Craig Bailey.

A kind of identity crisis has been creeping up on SpeakEasy Stage for some time now.  For years their brand as Boston's stylish, de-politicized gay theatre worked for them like a charm; indeed, SpeakEasy's smooth mix of "urban" New York hits and the occasional gay-ish musical gradually made them perhaps our most popular mid-size company.  SpeakEasy's goal was clearly to be the theatre you could take a date to (gay or straight) - and they met that goal reliably; you knew you'd never be embarrassed by a SpeakEasy show.

Now that's no small feat, and maybe it's identity enough; but slowly local politics caught up with the company's okay-we're-gay-we-go-to-Starbucks-too stance, and then seemed to pass it by - SpeakEasy looks conservative now, so the slight "edge" the theatre once had has crumbled.  Sure, the print critics kept swooning (for them, when it comes to edge, less is more), but the smarter theatre folks in town began to talk of SpeakEasy as not just smooth but slick; and a strange sense of datedness seemed to cling to their AIDS dramas and tongue-in-cheek revues.


But then I get the impression the company's brain trust must have begun to think the very same thing; for this season they have clearly attempted to swap the slick for the raw - or at least the Hollywood idea of "raw."  The first experiment in this new positioning is Stephen Adly Guirgis's The Motherfucker with the Hat, which didn't quite succeed on Broadway last year, but is now making the regional rounds as if it had.  Okay, it hardly failed - it squeezed out a little over 100 performances, and the girls at the Times were indulgent; but most other critics decided that "it signifies not fucking much" (as the Village Voice bluntly put it), and the weakness of Chris Rock's central performance was widely seen as somewhat compromising the box office his stunt casting had been calculated to bring in.

Still, judging from its current incarnation at the Roberts Studio, Motherfucker was carefully, and successfully, constructed to please a crowd - at least the crowd that still reads the Phoenix (if that still exists, that is), so you could argue that with it SpeakEasy will successfully extend their brand a bit.  And even if the script is obviously thin, there are some scathingly funny monologues, and several flashes of hot naked flesh, so what's not to like?

Don't look now, dude, but some motherfucker left his hat!

And to be fair, I did kind of like it - kind of; or rather I found it - I don't know, intermittently diverting, I suppose?  Still, as the Voice put it, it doesn't amount to much, and its Tinseltown "rawness" grows cloying (not for nothing was it backed by gay Hollywood honcho Scott Rudin - who no doubt recognized it as un-filmed Ty Burr bait).  The script does have one truly great idea - the plot briefly coalesces around an intriguing twist in the addiction/recovery racket. If only Stephen Adly Guirgis had realized what he had in this and developed it!  But he didn't, so he drops the meme (and the dramatic ball), and the script grinds on in a more predictable, episodic groove (watching it is a bit like watching a full DVD of some "gritty" cable series).

Not that the script wasn't heavily developed - it was, and how; as I mentioned in an earlier post, Guirgis has said that he worked on this text with a team of actors for some three years.  Thus it's almost a case study in what development can do, and what it can't.  And what development can do is produce a top-notch actors' showcase  - most everybody in Motherfucker gets a big, show-boating rant, and a deep, soul-searching moment, too (sometimes you almost feel there should be a spotlight moving from actor to actor as they launch their respective numbers).

But what development can't do is, well, develop anything; so it's no surprise that in Motherfucker we watch helplessly as the playwright's best ideas drift off into a welter of sitcommish structures and laugh-track rhythms.  But then the bottom line is that the whole play hangs on a relationship we simply don't buy - we're supposed to believe that the doomed romance between the addicted Veronica (Evelyn Howe) and the recovering Jackie (Jaime Carrillo)  is not only hot, but viable - and it patently isn't.  In fact Guirgis doesn't even bother to give it any individual color or texture; he knows it's a generic set-up, a "love" that exists only to be destroyed by Jackie's jealousy once he notices the eponymous hat left in Veronica's flat by that unknown motherfucker.

From then on, we're supposed to pity them as we would star-crossed lovers in a pop song, I suppose, even as we marvel at the harsh, amoral world they inhabit (nobody has a moral compass, you see!) - that is when we're not howling at their effing  outrageousness! (I know, it's corny as hell, but hey, that's showbiz.)  As I said, Guirgis does unveil one fresh insight amid all this recycled guff - it turns out his slumming addicts are on a higher moral plane than the twelve-step gurus who guilt or guide them into sobriety; those going cold turkey, Guirgis points out, often turn to mind games and worse for their jollies - like Jackie's life coach "Ralph D." (Maurice Emmanuel Parent), whose idea of the straight and narrow proves twisted, and shockingly two-faced.  And of course, Guirgis reminds us, even if you've beaten your addictions, you can still be a loser! This clear-eyed cynicism is bracing - and we begin to hope the playwright will tease it into a conflict between Jaime and Veronica (which by rights should be the core of the play).   But Guirgis seems unable to hang onto his own originality; indeed, he can't even really keep a bead on any sense of rising action, and so by the finale things aren't so much raw as maudlin.

Another go-for-broke face-off in Motherfucker, just like the marketing guy wanted.

Still, there is some fine acting to be found in this showcase.  Certainly Maurice Parent and Melinda Lopez (as Ralph D.'s long-suffering wife) turn in galvanizing performances that are sure to be remembered come awards-time.  Meanwhile Evelyn Howe's Veronica, though generic, is still heartfelt, and Alejandro Simoes almost puts over the artificially-constructed gay-bi-straight sidekick schtick of "Cousin Julio."  But alas, at the center of the production there's something of a void - word has it that on Broadway, Bobby Cannavale brought a deepening despair to the lead role that pulled Guirgis's disconnected scenes into some sense of downward spiral; but the likable Jaime Carrillo finds no such plunging arc; he's simply over his head, both as character and actor.

Part of this, however, may be the fault of director David R. Gammons.  You can count on two things in a Gammons production - the visuals will be striking, and the lead performance will be misdirected.  The Motherfucker with the Hat carries on this storied tradition: Eric Levenson's scenic design is intriguingly conceptual (we seem to be in some sort of rehearsal space, with "MOTHERFUCKER" scrawled across it - an apt enough comment on the play's genesis!), but once again Gammons' star, like the stars of his Medea, Red, and Blackbird, has clearly been misdirected - or just not directed.  Oh, well!  The formula seems to work for Mr. Gammons - he gets no end of work, so I'm sure we can look for another iteration of his production model shortly.  In the meantime, my hat is off to Lopez and especially Parent for the memorable mojo they bring to this mofo.

SpeakEasy rolls out Xanadu

At its best, Xanadu is highly a-musing; Photos: Craig Bailey

Once upon a time - perhaps as late as, say, 1980 - every English major in the Western world (and most college graduates) knew that "In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree."  But today, for most 'liberal arts' majors (and we use that term advisedly), not only that line, but its entire, famously-unfinished source (not to mention its author!) is unknown; in the popular consciousness,  Xanadu refers not to a pleasure-dome, but to the notorious roller-disco-musical which Joel Silver and a slew of other producers unleashed on the world in 1980, in the process knocking Olivia Newton-John's booming film career right off its skates.

Xanadu - which I half-watched on cable many moons ago - actually has several dubious claims to fame beyond its nearly nonsensical plot (something about the Greek muses coming to earth to help open said roller rink).  The movie also derailed the renewed interest in big-budget musicals that tracked the success of Grease and Saturday Night Fever (which is kind of a musical); it also, rather sadly, showcased Gene Kelly's last turn on the silver screen.

And anyone who has seen it can tell you the movie deserves its rap as one of the worst musicals EVAH - not because it's so dumb (Grease is almost as dumb), nor because its songs are particularly bad (in fact its soundtrack, powered by the synth bombast of Electric Light Orchestra, was a big hit).  No, Xanadu was just made badly.  The script is klutzy, the cinematography indifferent, and the choreography almost bizarrely clueless (below).  It's a shining testament to the the sheer craft of more competent moviemakers, who can position and sculpt similarly weak material so deftly that it's palatable, even entertaining.


The cluelessly choreographed climax of Xanadu - don't miss the tightrope walkers!

Now - are you thinking what I'm thinking?  Cheesy but campy concept, a roster of pre-made hits: can you say gay juke-box musical?  Well, Douglas Carter Beane, the mastermind of The Little Dog Laughed and other Hollywood-Babylon baubles, certainly could.  In 2007 Beane repositioned the script for Broadway as an elaborate in-joke, with its central trope being its self-awareness of its status as the movie moment when pop culture jumped the shark, as the 70's pleasure-dome collapsed of its own weight before the Reagan revolution.  For what it's worth, Beane also pulled another 80's clunker, Clash of the Titans, into the mix - on which he actually relies for more plot points, it seems to me, than he does Xanadu.  (Although the distinction is really neither here nor there; both movies targeted the pleasure centers of the reptilian brain coiled within the human one, and both pretty much blew it.)

Beane's re-tooled Xanadu proved a solid hit in New York - but does impressing Ben Brantley or Charles Isherwood really count for much anymore?  Sorry, I don't think so.  I mean isn't the whole gay-theatre-for-straights thang itself a little campily dreadful at this point, and just waiting for its own meta-Douglas-Carter-Beane treatment by some wicked-smart hetero?

Which one's actually channeling Olivia?

Well, be that as it may - let's not push the self-conscious cultural meter any further along than we have to; but there's still an obvious problem rolling around in Xanadu - and that's Xanadu itself.  Beane does dodge its trudging storyline much of the time, but he can't skate past it entirely; it's still there, and you have to find a way to make it fun.

And the current SpeakEasy Stage production is some testament to just how hard that really is to do.  The company has pulled out all the stops this time around; they've reconfigured the Roberts Studio to accommodate a roller rink, and blown the budget on glamorously tacky costumes that look just right - they even hand out glow-sticks to everybody.  And the results are amusing, but never quite transporting.  It's hard to put your finger on precisely why this is so, but surely director Paul Daigneault's artistic signature has something to do with it; there's a kind of gently knowing control strategy, an unspoken commitment to deferred gratification, about his style that simply short-circuits the sexy stupidity of Xanadu.

Star McCaela Donovan almost personifies the problem.  This talented and lovely lady is a mainstay of the local scene, and for good reason - she nails every aspect of this tricky part, singing her heart out, roller-skating like a pro, and even pulling off a wicked Australian accent.  But she doesn't seem to be having all that much fun; with every entrance she lobs a chunk of glitter into the air, but somehow the gesture seems too ironically off-hand; you can always see her mind turning, and frankly, she shouldn't have a mind at all.  As her numbskull boyfriend, "Sonny Malone," the hunky Ryan Overberg (at right, with Donovan) has more the right idea (he channels Newton-John's dumb sparkle better than Donovan does), but there's only so much he can do in a role that's essentially reactive.  And surprisingly, for once the usually-reliable Robert Saoud doesn't get much loft in the Gene Kelly part, either.

Clash of the comic titans: Shana Dirik and Kathy St. George

Luckily, the supporting cast makes hilarious hay of the Clash of the Titans half of the show, where adaptor Beane has squirreled away the best of his bitchy quips.  The great Shana Dirik and Kathy St. George are probably the two funniest ladies in the city, and they go for broke here (at one point St. George literally locks her molars on the set), and whenever they're onstage, Xanadu suddenly does glitter with campy malice. And this dastardly duo gets strong back-up from castmates Kami Rushell Smith, Val Sullivan, Patrick Connolly, and Cheo Bourne, who have lots to do - and do it all well - but only occasionally get to bask in the spotlight.

David Connolly's choreography, meanwhile, is better than the movie's (it had to be), but perhaps - as was the case in last year's Drowsy Chaperone - it lacked its own distinctive profile.  As for the familiar songs - well, they lose something essential, I'm afraid, when stripped of the overdubbed churn of Jeff Lynne's original production; and you can't help but notice that the chorus of some of them ("I'm Alive," "Evil Woman," "Xanadu")  is really just the title repeated over and over.  Still, they're better than most of what you hear on Broadway these days, and the onstage band proved tight and punchy, effortlessly supporting Dirik and St. George's groove with "Evil Woman," and Donovan's sweet warble in "Have You Never Been Mellow?" And at such moments, the Roberts Studio suddenly did feel like a pleasure-dome - okay maybe not a stately one, but then could you really wave a glow stick in the air with Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

Next to Normal at SpeakEasy Stage

Diana (Kerry A. Dowling) ponders her private cast of characters.

While I was watching Next to Normal (at Speakeasy Stage through April 15), I unexpectedly found myself reminded over and over again of the essay On Bullshit, by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt (below), that was published during the Bush administration.  Remember it?  If you didn't read it then, you definitely should now.  Wikipedia sums up the little black book's argument thus:

Frankfurt defines a theory of bullshit, defining the concept and analyzing its applications . . . Bullshit can either be true or false but bullshitters aim primarily to impress and persuade their audiences, and in general are unconcerned with the truth or falsehood of their statements (it is because of this that Frankfurt concedes that "the bullshitter is faking things", but that "this does not necessarily mean he gets them wrong"). 


While liars need to know the truth to better conceal it, bullshitters, interested solely in advancing their own agendas, have no use for the truth. Thus, Frankfurt claims, "...bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

And you know, I can't help it - that paragraph just seems to sum up for me the apparent attitudes of the makers of Next to Normal.  You can tell they have no real interest in their putative themes (mental illness and psychopharmacology) because they relentlessly distort and twist the salient facts about the topic to suit their need for cheap sentimental effects.   And they have no real interest in creating music to match  the rawness of the pain they pretend they're illuminating, either - the score of Next to Normal is another mediocre entry (rippling, vulnerable arpeggios and all) in the growing genre of gay-pop/rock-musical-whatever-the-hell-this-stuff is.  Seriously, what can we call this weird hybrid?  "Show 'rock'"? "Broadway 'pop'"?  I have no idea - all I know is, while posing as the kind of music that used to pride itself on authenticity, it is entirely inauthentic.  Yup, I'd say there's no argument; the perpetrators of Next to Normal just want to impress an audience, and persuade it that their ersatz musical is fabulous.  In a word, they're bullshitters.

I know, I know; by now everybody at SpeakEasy, and all the people who have listened to the Next to Normal CD long enough to convince themselves it's great, are jumping up and down and calling for my blood.  So rest assured, I don't mean that this production is a piece of you-know-what; far from it!  Minute to minute, Next to Normal is almost too carefully considered and crafted, and SpeakEasy Stage, as usual, has done the show up to the nines; everything about it has been buffed to a high sheen - which, I admit, has its own kind of entertainment value, like the glossy vacuum of Glee.  This show is hardly a piece of you-know-what; it is instead a dazzling, top-of-the-line piece of - well, what Dr. Frankfurt said!

And I admit this makes it unremarkable; indeed, there has for years been a rising tide of bullshit in the American theatre.  When Frankfurt wrote his book, people took his diatribe as a veiled jab at George W. Bush, and his administration's reckless disregard for the truth [the essay was far older, just btw].  But something about Bush's mendacity and general moral turpitude somehow seeped into the cultural groundwater anyhow; bullshit became our new baseline, even for people who hated the Republicans and everything they stood for.  It has slowly come clear that if you're not at least partly bullshitting your audience, the culture just can't take you seriously anymore.

Needless to say, theatrical artists have complied with this new cultural directive (some have done so kicking and screaming, but just about everyone has gone along).  Indeed, directors like Diane Paulus now sniff openly at integrity and moral value in the theatre; plays shouldn't be seen as "good for you, like vitamins," Ms. P. recently snorted to an interviewer.   (She may have been briefly slowed down by Stephen Sondheim over Porgy and Bess, but she knows full well that in a few years Sondheim will be history, and no one else has the power to stop her.) But then I can't pretend Paulus is an outlier; she's our most consummate bullshit artist, certainly, but then the vast majority of new plays I've seen in the past few years have been bullshit to varying degrees; Red, Bakersfield Mist, anything recent by Paula Vogel, and everything by Sarah Ruhl or Jordan Harrison, Captors, Before I Leave You, Three Pianos, Next Fall - they've all been bullshit, more or less.  They're not crafted to reflect the way we live now, or to hold the mirror up to nature, much less challenge us with some brave new vision or a call to arms (this is what makes Mike Daisey a liar, btw, but not actually a bullshitter).  In fact they generally tiptoe around the actual controversies of our day, and are designed to fill a certain cultural space, to triangulate between an audience's prejudices and received attitudes, and then simulate a theatrical experience in a canned, controlled fashion, with a callous disregard for integrity, honesty, or even any connection to actual life.  This is what we see more often than not at the "theatre" today.  We see bullshit. It's the new normal.

So back to Next to Normal, which as you've gleaned by now I feel is artistically dishonest in just about every way it is possible for a musical to be artistically dishonest.  (Indeed, I can almost admire its purity.) Take, for instance, its portrayal of mental illness - a topical theme, you'd think, if ever there was one!  Librettist Brian Yorkey posits a tormented heroine, unhappy suburban mom Diana (Kerry A. Dowling) whom he first presents as bipolar - we see some manic episodes, but at the same time Diana claims to be severely depressed.  Is she experiencing one of those occasionally-observed "mixed episodes"?  Perhaps.  But wait - the symptom merry-go-round is only just gearing up.   (SPOILER ALERT.)  We eventually discover that Diana is not only bipolar, but also delusional (she believes a child that died in infancy is still alive, sixteen years later) and even is experiencing constant hallucinations (she sees and hears the kid, too - only not as a baby but as the teen-ager she imagines he would have become - we've been seeing him too, btw, and at first imagined he was a character, rather than one of those imaginary friends from thirtysomething).

For Diana, life is a tango with her psychopharmacologist. Photo(s) Craig Bailey/Perspective Photos.

Okay.  You can make an excuse for each separate part of this diagnosis, but as an operative disorder it makes little sense - and the idea that Diana could be depending on Prozac and Wellbutrin, with apparently no talk therapy or seeming support, when she has been enduring something like a full-bore psychotic break for some sixteen years is, well, kind of ridiculous.  What's even more ridiculous is the way her horrifying family is portrayed - they know full well that Mom is hallucinating as she careens around the bipolar roller coaster, yet they whine if she doesn't make lunch or pick them up after school, and hubby couldn't be happier as long as he gets his daily roll in the hay.

But wait, it gets better.  Diana endures shock treatment (which is, actually, once more an accepted treatment for severe depression that is unresponsive to medication), and for a while Yorkey is on somewhat more solid ground, as his plot begins to revolve around whether or not Diana will remember her earlier delusions (there's controversy over how often memory loss results from electro-convulsive therapy).  But once her symptoms have returned (oh no!) Yorkey has his heroine decide that she is damaged in her "soul," not her "mind," and so she quits treatment entirely - and even walks out on her family.

And in a word - WRONG (or rather: Bullshit!!).  This is absolutely the worst thing a person with mixed bipolar disorder (much less Diana's laundry list of symptoms) could ever do.  To be blunt, if someone like Diana dropped out of her treatment program, and abandoned all forms of social support, she would most likely be babbling on the street, or even dead, within weeks.  Yet Next to Normal presents this virtual suicide as a brave new day for Diana, even as Yorkey's book guides her husband toward (you guessed it!) psychopharmacology.  Right.  I guess he saw how well it worked for his wife. Seriously, this musical makes no sense whatsoever, and in its moronic rock-anthem romance, it's creepy and kind of dangerous.  I mean, there is certainly a valid satire to be made (by someone else!) of the claims of psychopharmacology; but please, people with any kind of emotional disorder - do not see this musical, much less ponder its message!

And just btw, on a purely artistic level, Next to Normal is rather obviously (and cynically) stitched together from various known quantities - it's one part Ordinary People to two parts The Who's Tommy.  The lyrics are sometimes clever, I admit - but they're not actually great lyrics, that is to say they lack that inner poetry that sparks melodic response. And Tom Kitt's score is, if anything, even more derivative than the book.  People have been claiming this music counts as a break-through - but how, I wonder?  (Because it shifts from derivative keyboard arpeggios to derivate guitar hooks?)  There have already been plenty of solid rock musicals - a short list would include Jesus Christ Superstar, Joseph and his Amazing Etc., Grease, The Who's Tommy, and maybe American Idiot (I haven't seen it, but I remember the album was good).  It's worth noting that most of these are actually staged cantatas (or even oratorios) rather than organic musicals; rock seems to sit mostly easily in the album format, around which dramatic structures can be contrived (hence that other, even more popular genre, the "jukebox musical").  Working the other way, from the stage to the rock score, seems to be problematic - but frankly, Next to Normal is no milestone in that ongoing endeavor.  And can just a few of our middle-aged (or older) critics finally admit that rock is no longer culturally ascendant, and so is essentially a nostalgic musical mode, just like the best of Tin Pan Alley?  I'd appreciate it.

Anyway, when I said earlier that this production was a strong one - well, maybe I was bullshitting a little bit there myself; I actually don't think this represents SpeakEasy at its best.  The physical production is striking, thanks to Seághan McKay's slick projections, Jeff Adelberg's smoothly shifting lighting, and Eric Levenson's sleek set - and the band sounds tight under Nicholas James Connell's direction.  But some cast members, such as Michael Tacconi (who plays the ghostly son) are often pushed to the edge of their range (and Tacconi doesn't really have the requisite charisma to operate as a deadly psychological siren, either).  Likewise Christopher Chew is a bit bland as Diana's clueless hubby, as is Michael Levesque as her daughter's stoner boyfriend.  Elsewhere the news is better: as said daughter, newcomer Sarah Drake is probably the stand-out of the cast (and she gets one of the best of the so-so songs), while Chris Caron does have fun as the comically sinister psychopharmacologist.   Meanwhile, as the tormented Diana, Kerry A. Dowling offers a subtle and sympathetic characterization (and she's certainly up to the role's vocal challenges) - but Dowling is basically miscast, as she's naturally a hearty, healthy presence, and so can't summon much in the way of tortured mojo to cover the script's contrivances (as Alice Ripley reportedly did on Broadway).  Still, Dowling's the real thing, and without her, I sometimes felt this production would have amounted to next to nothing.

Painting, but not priming, the town Red

See this?  Mark Rothko rarely did this.

Local reviewers have called John Logan's Red (at SpeakEasy Stage through Feb. 4) "a great work of art," "a masterpiece," and "a play of ideas" that's "intellectually and emotionally riveting."

What's usually meant by such phrases, of course, is that the show in question is either a vehicle or a lecture. So it's no surprise that Red is a little of both - but at least  Logan's two-hander about Mark Rothko is a pretty solid vehicle, and a fairly diverting lecture - the playwright has compiled a (somewhat inaccurate) set of Art History notes for people who didn't take that course in college but like to pretend they did - and then transliterated it into a smoothly convincing facsimile of dialogue between Rothko and an assistant who's basically an amalgam of everybody else in the artist's life.

In other words, Logan has done a great service to cocktail party hostesses everywhere.

Still, the play is hardly a masterpiece or a great work of art.  Please, don't be ridiculous.  It is, instead, a simulation of same for people who can't tell the difference between craft and art.

But does that difference matter anymore?  Probably not.  Certainly a lot of people these days think it doesn't; sometimes it seems I'm the only person left alive who does.  (But then it's my blog, isn't it.)  I am intrigued, however, by the SpeakEasy production in a certain meta-cultural way.

Let me explain.  The play itself is clearly a commercial construct with pretensions to discuss Big Ideas; which is fair enough; move over, A Man for All Seasons! Broadway has always trafficked in this kind of thing.  Still, a funny conceptual wrinkle arises when you apply tried-and-true Broadway formulae to the central topic in Red, which I take to be the rejection of the commodification of art.

That's right; this is a commodity that attacks other commodities.  And that's interesting, isn't it.  I mean it's one thing to make a boulevard hit out of the six wives of Henry VIII; it's something else again to make commercial hay out of non-commercialism. For if you were to do that, shouldn't you of necessity find yourself staring into a vortex of mirrors reflecting nothing but themselves, kind of like Charles Isherwood and Ben Brantley in conversation?

For make no mistake: Red is thoroughly a commercial commodity, and a good one; you can feel in its cadences a certain pride in how carefully a machine-tooled product it really is (Logan is a highly-paid Hollywood screenwriter for a reason).  It works, it holds you; its beats all land with a crisp little snap.  If you're utterly ignorant of Rothko, you may find yourself saying "Wow, I never thought of that!," or something along those lines, and then, yes, remembering to talk about Rothko at your next cocktail party.

But somehow Logan never gets around to pointing out that this kind of thing, and those kinds of goals, are precisely the kind of thing its subject, Mark Rothko, would have despised - and in fact does despise, repeatedly and at length, over the course of Red.  In short, this play is its own target. It's one long sneer at itself. The script's climax even revolves around Rothko's rejection of commercialism (when he refuses a commission from creepy old Philip Johnson to supply some fabulous décor for the Four Seasons).  And most of the dialogue (it's highbrow banter, really) revolves around splenetic denunciations of the marketable, the sellable, the bankable, the populist and the popular.

And yet Logan tossed all this off between screenplays for Rango and Star Trek: Nemesis.

You see the problem?  In what possible cultural frame can something like Red exist?

We're in such a frame, of course (obviously), which makes the question kind of piquant, I suppose.
And I have to admit that a theatre production - even one of Shakespeare or Beckett - has to be marketed somehow.  You gotta have a gimmick.  You gotta get those butts in seats, which means explaining arty stuff in a way that the critics can understand it.

Yet in the case of Red, the age-old conflict between moral luster and filthy lucre extends right down into the script itself, into questions of form vs. content, and the juxtaposition seems particularly jarring and bald.  Perhaps as a result, the original production, from the Donmar Warehouse (which I caught in New York) seemed almost over-concerned with tip-toeing around the internal contradiction at the heart of the text.  Most of its theatrical effects were subdued, even muted, in an attempt to conceal the basic hamminess of the set-up - and lead actor Alfred Molina insinuated a kind of magisterial mystery into his impersonation of Rothko.  You got the impression the production's conceit was that a deep experience, with its own integrity, could be accessible through the play without being necessarily compromised by the play. Red itself didn't aspire to the depth of Rothko's work - it was simply pointing you toward that work.

Okay.  This didn't completely convince me, but it was okay.  The SpeakEasy production, however, is solid ham through and through, and ups the commercial ante on the script in every possible way - only in a mode of innocent superficiality, I have to admit; you almost wonder if director David R. Gammons and his team realize that they're doing Red: The Musical!, only without any songs. Star Thomas Derrah turns Rothko into a bitchy diva, and as his assistant "Ken," Karl Baker Olson only seems to exist to lob his many star serves back over the conversational net.  Meanwhile director Gammons studs the show with grandiose, "great-man" lighting effects and moments of amusingly solemn stillness (below), even as a doom-y soundtrack cranks up repeatedly with multiplex-style emotional cues. Thus, even as Rothko rants about Nietzche, and the birth of tragedy, and death, we feel we're constantly being massaged by attendants; it's kind of like having a catharsis at a spa.

Hmmm . . . maybe it needs more . . . red . . .

Of course insofar as Red gets a few people to ponder question of recent artistic history, I suppose it ain't all bad.  Although playwright Logan certainly plays fast and loose with certain salient facts.  As I recall the Nietzche-Birth-of-Tragedy theory was first applied to the phase of Rothko's art before the famous "multiforms" (you know, the less successful, less famous stuff). And a central sequence showing Rothko and his assistant "priming" a canvas (at top) is a little sketchy as biography, for as is rather well known, Rothko often didn't do that, which is why so many of his canvases are in such poor shape today.  (And well before Warhol, there were suspicions that Rothko was sometimes using latex paint bought at the hardware store - you know, where Dionysos and Apollo like to shop.)  Of course maybe, as my partner joked, Logan was just being "discreet" about all that - for after all, sloppy craftsmen don't make good tragic heroes.

But Logan is "discreet" about other things, too.  As I mentioned, the climax of the play revolves around Rothko's famous Four Seasons commission from architect Philip Johnson.  But Logan deletes any reference to Johnson's notorious anti-Semitism and fascist sympathies. For make no mistake, the Harvard GSD grad was the genuine article: Johnson used his family money to organize a fascist party in the U.S., thrilled in person to Hitler's Nuremberg rallies, penned a rave for Mein Kampf, and even traipsed after the Nazi army into Poland, writing that watching Warsaw burn was "a stirring spectacle." Always as practical as he had to be, Johnson later sublimated his fascist sympathies into the strict regimentation of German modern architecture - but he remained notorious for anti-Semitic remarks and jokes for much of his life.

Over to Rothko, the Jewish abstract expressionist!  But Rothko's relationship to his Jewishness is a little complicated; born in Russia (as Marcus Rothkowitz), his family dodged the pogroms while he was a child - so perhaps it's no surprise that later, alarmed by the rise of fascism in the U.S. (thanks in part to Philip Johnson!) he shortened his name, at his own admission, to elide his Jewish heritage. Logan nods to this episode, but effectively distorts it, which is a little odd. And the very idea of the Jewish Rothko working for a crypto-Nazi like Johnson is ripe with dramatic irony - the relationship must have been seething, and surely Johnson's reputation played a part in Rothko's ultimate rejection of the Four Seasons offer; but Logan daintily pirouettes around the whole topic.

And why?  Perhaps because Johnson was gay (like this playwright)?  I'm not going to speculate about that, but I think it's worth noting that the rift between Rothko and the artists who "killed off" Abstract Expressionism - which Logan likewise treats at length - also roughly aligned with sexual preference, and once again Logan doesn't mention it; Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg were all gay or bisexual, as were other leading lights in the rising pop and conceptual New York scene.  The doomed, phallo-centric nobility of Rothko, the macho Pollock, and their expressionist ilk was losing cultural traction, and Rothko knew it.  The attitudes that would eventually lead to organizations like, well, SpeakEasy Stage, were already in the ascendant.

Which makes it all the weirder that the SpeakEasy production is so gay - I mean, not only are most of the guys associated with the show gay, but the whole production (perhaps inevitably?) feels vaguely operatic and slightly camp.  Karl Baker Olson's assistant arrives seemingly dressed for a SpeakEasy audition in art-nerd attire, and Derrah's Rothko lounges with a smoking cigarette when he isn't prowling the stage like Margo Channing, hungry for Eve Harrington's blood.  There's a deep irony here, I think, that SpeakEasy may not even be aware of; for the company itself is hardly focused on tragedy (please, don't mention Next Fall); The Divine Sister and Xanadu are more its metier. If Rothko's positions became popular again, to put it bluntly, SpeakEasy would be sunk.

So, what can I say except - the irony is really piling up around this show!  We have a Hollywood hack writing a valentine to a doomed Abstract Expressionist - only notice he feels the story is more appropriate to the stage than the screen, because . . . well because the stage still has some tattered intellectual prestige, some artsy je ne sais quoi - at least as seen from L.A., I guess.  (And what better way to boost your profile with Martin Scorsese - for whom Logan wrote Hugo - than to dabble with the stage?)  Yet it lands in the lap of . . . SpeakEasy.  Hmmm.

So when Logan lambastes the "younger generation" (I guess that means you, millennials!) for not aspiring to the heights of genuine art, you have to wonder what he thinks of his own career.  (Or what his ideas of the theatre are really worth.)  Or is Red meant as a kind of melancholy shrug rather than a faux call to arms, an almost-fond farewell not only to heterosexual hegemony, but also to a dead mode of integrity that everybody hopes stays dead?  Is that why the critics love it - because it is so obviously not what it claims to be?  Oh, I don't know, and I don't care.  The whole thing is really just too silly.  For God's sake bring on Xanadu.

O come, all ye faithful

Dan Roach and Will McGarrahan shoot first and pray later in Next Fall.

There has long been a certain gap in intellectual ambition at SpeakEasy Stage, as I've lamented before, but their production smarts often made that easy to forgive. Now my recent falling-out with them may have made me less forgiving, or their programming may indeed have become more under-achieving, I'm really not sure;  but their current show, Next Fall,  only seems to up the ante on their trend line; it's an exquisitely produced gay weepie, and jeez, is it dumb.

To be fair, you can generally count on some intellectual edge from SpeakEasy founder Paul Daigneault, or longtime director Paul Melone.  But Next Fall is a Scott Edmiston show.  Which means every edge in it has been sanded down to a soft curve; as it grinds on, you realize every failing will be understood, every shortcoming will be sympathized with - and every falling tear will glisten like a sweet trickle of sap.

I'm not sure when, exactly, Edmiston became our sultan of sap.  He used to throw the occasional marvelous party, but now he prefers pity parties (his last production was of a play about a Jewish boy who wanted to paint his mother on the cross; I'm not kidding).   Which is too bad, it seems to me. Edmiston has a light, secure touch, particularly with comedy; why can't he stick to light, funny shows?  Actually, he has stuck with the "light" part this time; though it pretends to various depths, Next Fall is obviously superficial - not the tragic love story it styles itself as, but instead another narcissistic coming-out story in disguise, this time played out at death's door.

For yes, playwright Geoffrey Nauffts has dragged out of the closet the central melodramatic convention of the AIDS era - the hottie dying young - and dusted it off just as if nothing had really changed about being gay in America.  This time said hottie - "Luke," played by Dan Roach - has been struck down by a passing cab rather than a virus, but just about everything else about Next Fall is comfortingly familiar: the bigoted, clueless parents, the relationship Luke kept in the closet, the quirky girlfriend, even the candle shop - they're all there.  We often feel we're in a Movie of the Week from 2005. Or maybe 1995.  Or even 1985.

The "twist" this time around, though, is that Luke is a Christian.  He actually prays after he ejaculates, in fact.  He's expecting the Rapture.  In short, he deserves to die!  I mean - praying after sex is understandable in a nineteen-year-old at Bible camp, but in a thirty-something hottie in Chelsea?  Please.  And as for the "critique" of Christianity that SpeakEasy seems to think this play is mounting - again, puh-leeeze.  Critiquing Christian prejudice against gays is like shooting loaves and fishes in a lavender barrel.  In the past, SpeakEasy has made hilarious theatrical hay with actual faiths like Catholicism - which for all its horrors and flaws is still a genuine moral and intellectual edifice.  You can critique it - there's a hypocrisy there to get angry about.  But post-Protestant "Christianity" is only a handshake and a haircut; there's just nothing there; you can't satirize it, it's already self-satire.

But the politics of Next Fall are really just feints from the main event, anyhow, which is the extended coming-out party of Adam (Will McGarrahan), Luke's lover.  For once poor, closeted Luke has landed in the ER, there is suddenly a lot of 'splainin' to do in the waiting room!  Especially to bigoted, macho dad Butch (Robert Walsh).  (I know, I know . . . "Luke," "Adam," "Butch"!  Don't get me started.)

Now there probably is a solid play to be drawn from this set-up; but it would have to be drawn from the real world, in which the terrible choices of life-and-death situations were given their full force.  But even as Luke approaches brain death, and his eyes are about to be harvested, Nauffts keeps the focus on Adam and how no one will really accept him as he is, as if life were one long encounter group at some high school's Gay-Straight Alliance.  It doesn't even seem to occur to Adam that maybe it's not about him anymore, or that he and Luke painted themselves into this particular corner, and that maybe it's time to shed a tear for his dying lover rather than himself.  And while Nauffts indicates here and there that he's aware Adam's fabulous gay lifestyle isn't much help with the great beyond, he seems unable to allow his Christians - who do, after all, have a kind of angle on "end-times" - any real spiritual credit; he can't complicate his caricatures enough to allow them a true dialogue.  Instead he takes cheap shots to punch things up, like saddling Butch with the n-word, as if he were frying up squirrel in some broken trailer in backwoods Alabama.

Given the limits of the play, I suppose it's a credit to Edmiston and the expert cast he has drawn together (as he always does) that a few tears are, indeed, expertly teased from Next Fall.  The stand-outs are the reliable Amelia Broome, who makes light work of Luke's chatty, wounded mom, and Robert Walsh, who brings more sympathetic skill to the role of Butch than perhaps it deserves.  Meanwhile Will McGarrahan is his usual poised, ruefully witty self as Adam, but I simply didn't believe in his love for Luke - who was made a pretty, but also a pretty empty, vessel by Dan Roach.  To be fair, however, McGarrahan does pull off a moving coming-out duet with Broome, and Roach actually gets through Nauffts's Guiding-Light-level finale.  And around the edges of the production there were intriguing turns by Deb Martin and Kevin Kaine, who simply didn't have enough to do.  The detailed design work is by Janie E. Howland; the predictable but appropriate score by Dewey Dellay.  I wish all these people were working on something more ambitious, but hey, at least they've got work, right?  And no doubt they'll be working again soon, frankly; because all things being equal, something tells me we'll be seeing a play much like this one from SpeakEasy Stage - perhaps as early as next fall.

Boys and girls together in Reasons to Be Pretty.

Fans of gender parity should be thrilled about Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Pretty (at SpeakEasy Stage through April 2). The famously misanthropic playwright has written female monsters before, I suppose, but none that matches up with popular modes of femininity in quite the same way his long gallery of male assholes has mapped the culture's idea of masculinity.  Indeed,  here LaBute pulls off something like the hat trick he managed in Fat Pig - where he dared the audience to honestly disagree with the cruel standards of beauty his handsome hero's world espoused. In Reasons, his female lead - named "Steph" - throws tantrums so severe, and so comically cruel, that when a character describes her with the c-word, my guess is every guy in the audience silently agreed; and yet you could sense the women in the crowd - well, they didn't think she was so bad.  Not even when she hollered like a five-year-old and broke things; not even when she struck the supposed love of her life in the face.  And yet ten to one, the boyfriends who watched it all in horror went home and told their girlfriends that yeah, they could kind of sympathize with her. You have to hand it to him - when it comes to audience-baiting, with Reasons to Be Pretty, LaBute has penned another beaut.

Meanwhile, as a gay friend of mine put it, why not call this play Reasons to Be Gay?  (Or as another quipped, "Or how about a Ryan Landry version called Reasons to Be Pussy?") To those of us with little interest in women as sex objects, the play certainly operates as a kind of SOS from the edge of a gender war we've only observed from the sidelines (if with mounting horror).  Not that there's any way we could help; and not that the emergence of this kind of harridan has gone unremarked in pop culture; late-night comedy, slapstick frat movies, and, yes, the Gold Dust Orphan shows are filled to bursting with similar gorgons.  Yet these characters are almost inevitably caricatures - cartoons undercut with irony, a form of cultural venting with no real weight behind it.  LaBute is different; he serves his female trouble up straight, no chaser.

Gisele Bündchen: the problem

Of course you could argue that "Steph" (who's a hairdresser) has been driven to violence, emotional and otherwise, by our culture's obsession with body image - like so many LaBute characters before her.  Indeed, what sets off her first tirade is a phone call from BFF "Carly," who has overhead Steph's boyfriend Greg describe her face to his buds as "regular" - although in the following context: "Okay, Steph's face may just be regular, but I love her more than anything," or something like that.  In short, Greg's a nice guy who cares for his girl, but who also knows he hasn't bedded Gisele Bündchen (at right).  And he's okay with that.  (After all, Gisele is taken.)

Not for Steph the mature comforts of romantic realism, however. Indeed, no bull ever reacted to a red flag as she does to the word "regular." Soon poor Greg is out in the cold, clutching copies of Nathaniel Hawthorne to his chest (though a college drop-out, he's still a reader) as he shuffles back and forth to his dead-end job, which seems to consist of stacking big crates in even bigger cages.

Prowling those cages with him, however, is more female trouble - "Carly" is Greg's co-worker (she holds court in the lunchroom in a guard's uniform, just so we know which gender has policing authority these days). And with the arrival of lovely Carly and her horndog husband, "Kent" on the scene - both of them quite pretty, btw - Reasons to Be Pretty begins to move beyond the horizons of Fat Pig and The Shape of Things, and get a little deeper and more ambitious than the average LaBute play.

One reason to be pretty. Photos by Craig Bailey.

For this time around, the playwright has in mind the construction of a set of interlocking variations on his usual themes. In the past, LaBute has been content to reveal how our culture of beauty victimizes those who lack it - a woman is spurned, or a man is humiliated; then he rings down the curtain. But Carly and Greg struggle just as Greg and Steph did with the "problem" of beauty - even though both of them are, indeed, beautiful (and know it). But beauty, it turns out, isn't pretty - and what's more, it's a double-edged sword. For Kent has been cheating relentlessly on Carly, with a woman even more attractive - in fact, he has finagled a move to a different work shift to give him more time to pursue his extra-curricular activities.

So even as Steph has thrown aside a worthy man who can see through the blandishments of beauty, so Carly is clinging to a cad precisely because she, too, is in its thrall. The question for Greg is: as his buddy-buddy intimacy with Kent has given him the inside scoop on his affair, should he violate the norms of gender loyalty, and give Carly the same wake-up call she gave Steph - only this time with a dose of truth far more crushing?

It's actually a rather interesting moral quandary - and a common one, too; who among us hasn't struggled with some minor variation of it? And LaBute skillfully teases it out to a satisfying climax (complete with fist-fight, here staged, ironically enough, by Angie Jepson, who plays Steph, and is also a fight choreographer). At the same time, the playwright seems unsure what to do with Steph once she's served her purpose as catalyst; he keeps bringing her back on, in scenes that linger but basically go nowhere, because for some reason he's unwilling to allow the scales to fall from her eyes (even when she hears the truth about Carly).

As Steph, Angie Jepson can't quite triumph over this lack of arc - nor does she suggest the depths of insecurity (and thwarted love for Greg) that might inspire a twinge of sympathy even among the boyfriends in the audience.  But Jepson has always given great spitfire, and she certainly crackles on here.  Meanwhile, as Greg, Andy Macdonald looks and sounds just right, but likewise doesn't really suggest the torch for Steph that he claims to be carrying; once caught up in conflict with Kent, however, Macdonald grows quite compelling.  Danielle Muehlen's Carly likewise grows in stature as the play progresses, even though its slightly schematic natures forces her into some hairpin emotional turns.  Meanwhile, as Kent, Burt Grinstead struts and preens with show-stopping confidence - but even he, I think, could tend a bit more to subtext; the cocky Kent is at heart a rather cowardly weasel, and I think he'd rather die than let anyone know that.

Paul Melone's direction was (as usual) strong and slick - although as noted, there are deeper notes to be sounded here and there than the cast seems to realize.  Meanwhile Eric Levenson's set design cleverly blended together work, home and play (just as they're all blended together for the characters), and Jeff Adelberg's lighting was appropriately industrial; the entire physical production, in fact, held to SpeakEasy's usual high standard.  That and the solid acting on offer are more than enough reasons to see Pretty.

Nein!

Timothy John Smith and the women of Nine.

I've only seen Nine once before, in a mediocre community production many years ago; I didn't care for it much back then.  But after seeing SpeakEasy Stage's sleek new version (at the BCA through Feb. 20), I have to admit I've changed my mind. Now I hate it.

Perhaps it takes a great production to confirm one's suspicions that a particular play or musical is mediocre (in talented hands there's no place for the material to hide).  But I really should have been sure of the truth about Nine long ago - and anyone who admires its inspiration, Frederico Fellini's psychological fantasy 8½, should be warned to keep a safe distance.  For the musical is transparently designed for people who either haven't seen, or haven't understood, that iconic Italian director's seminal 1963 masterpiece.

If that's the case for you, then you may enjoy the show, for it's a standard-issue set of late-Broadway gay-Jewish conventions: serviceable songs and predictable "adult" jokes arrayed in something like a revue.  That's right - it's a gay, Jewish revue about a straight Italian Catholic.  Go figure. But at least it showcases a bevy of Boston's loveliest and most talented female performers, each of whom gets one of those serviceable songs (or two), and knows how to sell it.

Therefore it's easy on the eyes, and the ears - unless, of course, you can feel the shadow of its source looming over it.  Because then the whole thing seems like a travesty.  I'll admit Nine does hold some interest for me, but only in a single way - as was the case with The Blue Flower before it, you can tell its creators (Arthur Kopit, Maury Yeston, and director Tommy Tune) labored under the delusion they were creating an homage.  Yes - they "loved" 8½, too - and that's what's a little scary, frankly; for how could they "love" something they seem to want to destroy?  (Although the old saw that love is blind may apply doubly to the world of art, I suppose.)

Aimee Doherty in Nine.

To those behind the pointlessly-retitled Nine, it seems 8½ may have been a grand meta-cinematic experiment (it's a film about its own making, or rather un-making), an investigation of one director's creative block, and a stunning visual fantasy (see clip below if you doubt me).  And it may have even featured a ravishing score by the great Nino Rota. But somehow it still demanded improvement.  Its creator, Fellini - or his alter ego, "Guido" - may, at the end of his psychological carnival, have told the many women in his life (and beyond them, the vast, needy audience they represented) that they must "take me as I am, if you want me."  But Kopit and Weston have other ideas - in their eyes, what Guido needs is to grow up.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to them that if Fellini grew up, then there'd be no more Fellini.  And therefore no more movies like Nights of Cabiria or La Dolce Vita.  Perhaps that's why their advice is precisely the prescription the director didn't take in the original film.  But then Kopit and Weston don't really have that much interest in the original film. They drop almost everything they can't approximate with an all-female cast (their concept is basically a replay of the notorious "Guido's Harem" scene, below); thus the death of Guido's father, his relationship to the Church, and even the wild climax at the set of the movie he's "supposed" to make (tellingly, it's a launching pad for a spaceship that hasn't been built) never make an appearance in Nine.  And more's the pity, because without them, the musical has no depth or texture.

It doesn't even have any really good songs.  From Nino Rota to Maury Weston - ah, what a falling off was there!  I still remember Rota's melodies, from years ago - but while Weston quotes a few of them here and there, strangely, it does him little good; I can' remember his score even though I only heard it about a week ago.


The director who wouldn't grow up takes a whip to the women who want him to in 8½.

Oh, well, the good news is that at least Nine means a lot of Boston's best actresses have work, and it was great to see local stars Aimee Doherty (above left), Cheryl McMahon, and Kerry A. Dowling carry on at their usual high level, even with lesser material.  Meanwhile comedienne Maureen Keiller got to shine in the kind of number we haven't seen her in for ages ("Folies Bergere," seemingly borrowed from La Cage, which I think premiered the same year).  It was also great to welcome back the gorgeous Jennifer Ellis - where has she been? - as well as watch newcomer Shana Dirik dazzle the  SpeakEasy crowd the way she's been dazzling the Metro Stage crowd for years.  There was also a very poised turn by Erik March as the younger Guido, and nice moments around the edges by Santina Umbach, Amy Jackson, and McCaela Donovan.

Alas, Donovan sort of typified what was wrong with the production's vision of Fellini's women, though - she was far too svelte, and not nearly zaftig enough (and zaftigity is important to Fellini). And for once, I was a bit disappointed in the reliable Timothy John Smith's Guido - he channeled little of the suave urbanity the part should have. But then the role had been shorn of its real reason for being - Guido's writer's block (in Nine you can barely tell he's desperately trying to find inspiration for a film).  And while the production's design was sumptuous, its visual cues seemed slightly wrong - the dark set suggested not at all the glamorously arid modernity of the film, and Seághan McKay's projections - amazing as they were - likewise only rarely quoted the director's visual language. Meanwhile Charles Schoonmaker's striking costumes didn't really conjure the fashion atmosphere of the early 60's (which Fellini's movies helped define). But maybe all these talented designers had simply picked up earlier than I did on the fact that Nine ain't 8½. Not by half.