#240526 ~ May in Review, Part 2.
Brian Eugenio Herrera's #TheatreClique Newsletter for May 26, 2024
WELCOME to #TheatreClique — my irregular newsletter dedicated to encouraging you to click out to some of the most interesting, intriguing & noteworthy writing about drama, theatre & performance (at least, so says me)…
This Week's #TheatreCliquery:
This installment of #TheatreClique brings the latest round of missives from my theatregoing diary but, first, I lift this extraordinary “OffScript” roundtable conversation (convened by The Hollywood Reporter) that gathers a half dozen of the most formidable forces in contemporary TV comedy. I don’t know when I’ve last been party to such a frank, vulnerable, and generous conversation about the risks (and rewards) of the creative path. Watch a few minutes. Or the whole hour. Every moment is worth your attention…
In Review : May 15-26, 2024.
Capturing brief “capsule” commentaries on my recent theatregoing, with click-worthy links to others writing about the same shows or the theatremakers involved.
THREE HOUSES
Music, Lyrics, and Book by Dave Malloy • Directed and Choreographed by.Annie Tippe • Off Broadway • Signature Theatre: The Linney • May 2024.
An eerie musical rumination on loneliness, obsession, mental health, our propensity to isolate, and — most fundamentally — hitting bottom. The scenario draws in the most simple of ways upon “The Three Little Pigs" with three stories activated by the story's teller experiencing a devastating breakup that leaves them unmoored in an unfamiliar house right as the pandemic begins. Each of the three mini-musicals begin different as a different protagonist — somehow compelled to take the open-mic in a mysterious bar, the wolfish bartender and two seasoned servers standing by — describes how they went “a little bit crazy living alone in the pandemic.” The first (Susan) flees to her grandmother's estate in Latvia; the second (Sadie) decamps to her aunt's home outside Santa Fe; and the third (Beckett) lands in a basement apartment in Brooklyn. Each is consumed by a compulsion — Susan with arranging her grandmother's books, Sadie with a video game, Beckett with online shopping — that at first seems to insulate them but actually isolates them deeper within their own thoughts, fears, and memories. A non-human entity visits (a dragon, a badger, and a spider respectively — each vividly enlivened as a puppet) as they also summon nearly lost memories of their grandparents. It's a loopy, ruminative structure — thick with the uncanny beauty and ineffable dread of dreams — and the singers are extraordinary. (Margo Seibert and Mia Pak in particular inhabit Malloy's elliptical lyric melodies with a thrilling ease.) For me the anchor of each story arrived not through the frenzy of OCD routine, or the arrival of the non-human familiar, but rather through the conjuration of grandparental presence, which allowed each character's vulnerability to edge toward the precipice of childhood/childlike discovery. This helped me recognize the bad decisions of these devastated lonely adults as folks hitting bottom, reckoning with how their addictive/compulsive tendencies flared amidst the simultaneous traumas of their breakup and the pandemic. In this register, Three Houses therefore offers a poignant warning: there's only so much we alone can do to keep the wolf at bay when we insist on doing it by ourselves. By telling their own stories in this eerie storybar, while listening to the stories of others, is how their healing — and their futures — might commence. The production seems intent on getting under your skin more than it seems interested in offering a gratifying story. (And it departs from "The Three Little Pigs" simple conclusion, by reminding us that the wolf will always be out there no matter the kind of house you build.) I can imagine that this piece will frustrate more audiences than it gratifies. Even so, especially as it steeps in my memory, I'm struck by the ways Malloy's work returns to questions of compulsion, loneliness, and isolation, reaching beyond simple scenarios of addiction and toward the bigger (perhaps more spiritual) questions of why and how we can get so lost inside our own pain… and whether community (and music) might chart one path out of the particular terrors of isolation.
see also…
in a thoughtfully thorough (but emphatically mixed) review at The Forward, independent critic/dramaturg Miranda Jackel emphasizes that Three Houses “is a must-see simply for the opportunity to marvel at the vastness of its creator’s byzantine brain”;
at New York Theatre Guide, writer/editor Caroline Cao exhorts everyone “run, don’t walk, to dive into” Three Houses.
THE WHO’S TOMMY
Music and Lyrics by Pete Townshend. Book by Pete Townshend and Des McAnuff. Choreography by Loren Latarro. Directed by Des McAnuff. • Broadway • Nederlander Theatre • May 2024.
A peculiar musical, truly. Being passingly familiar with the original cast recording, and having seen the movie several times, I fully expected that an encounter with the full stage production would give me a richer, clearer, fuller sense of the source material's narrative/emotional architecture. And yet. I remain perplexed. In many ways, it's a dazzling production, beautifully sung, and skillfully executed. But I definitely found myself stuck at an emotional remove from the entire proceedings. I’m also not sure I actually followed the story. Even reliable favorites like Bobby Conte (as Cousin Kevin) and Christina Sajous (as Acid Queen) didn't hook me in. All three Tommys (Celia Ann-Popp, Quinten Kusheba, Ali Louis Bourzgui) were utterly engaging though; I emerged utterly resolute that Ali Louis Bourzgui and his lushly dimensional rock baritone deserves to be a star. But, in truth, the star of this production for me was Lorin Latarro's choreography. Anytime I felt myself looped into the world of the piece, or to the emotional dimensions of a moment, it was because of Latarro's choreography. I especially delighted in the ensemble’s occasional transformation into Bunraku-style puppeteers (with silver oval face coverings), as they hoisted, lifted, or manipulated the bodies of particular characters. Such moments swept me into the emotional swim of the scene and I found myself most attentive when tracking the movement vocabulary shared so vividly among the ensemble. (Between her work on this and Heart and Rock and Roll, the absence of Lorin Latarro's name from this year's Tony nominees for Best Choreography might be this year's biggest oversight.) But, all told, The Who’s Tommy is not an unpleasant or uninteresting experience — the notably “mature” audience on all sides of me totally loved the whole shebang— but it’s just not the show for me, I guess.
see also…
at American Theatre, writer/editor Alexandra Pierson digs into why it matters that the revival of The Who’s Tommy “misses opportunities to engage with, and subvert, harmful tropes around Deafness and disability”;
at Forbes, freelance writer/columist Jeryl Brunner talks to choreographer Lorin Latarro about her work on the revival of The Who’s Tommy;
SCARLETT DREAMS
Written by S. Asher Gelman • Directed by S. Asher Gelman. • Off Broadway • Midnight Theatricals: Greenwich House Theater • My 2024.
An unexpectedly engaging and thought-provoking satiric drama about some of the defining anxieties of our contemporary moment. The scenario is at once very simple and crazily complicated. Kevin (a charming Andrew Keenan-Bolger) is a playwright stuck in the depressive doldrums of writer's block, even as his husband Milo (the appealing Borris Anthony York) is in the midst of career upswing, thanks to the success of his boutique fitness studio and his contributions to a soon-to-be-launched fitness app, designed by his tech genius sister Liza (the charismatic Brittany Bellezaire). Liza cajoles Kevin to be the beta-tester for their app's "virtual reality coach" and Kevin's encounter with "Scarlett" (the utterly convincing Caroline Lellouche, in a pitch-perfect performance) soon changes his life in all kinds of ways. Things get complicated, first, as Kevin learns more about Scarlett and, then, as the app becomes a breakout culture-shifting success. Revelations unfurl. Allegiances shift. Some things get mind-bendingly better. Other things get devastatingly worse. It's a doozy of a ride, all stuffed into a vivid ninety minutes. As I've thought about Scarlett Dreams, I've struggled to name its genre. Is it sci-fi allegory ala The Twilight Zone? Comedy horror ala M3GAN? Dystopian satire ala Network or Death Race 2000? Of course, Scarlett Dreams is a little bit of all of these — hence both the strengths and liabilities of the piece. But the pleasures of this production are many. I delighted in Brian Pacelli's vivid projection designs and Caroline Lellouche's stealthily dimensional performance as Scarlett. And though the script doesn't always manage its many escalating tensions with motivated clarity, the ricochet of big ideas kept me engaged, quite possibly because I was so hooked by the early showstopping sequence when the app drops and first Scarlett appears to Kevin in VR. In this gobsmacking sequence — a neo-cinematic montage of sorts — Kevin becomes completely obsessed with the app, with working out, and with Scarlett. Through deftly executed costume changes, movement vocabulary, and projections in this dazzingly sustained scene, Keenan-Bolger's Kevin convincingly transforms from a shlub who can barely do a pushup to a completely jacked muscle hunk who can answer a question with a flex of his (very impressive) pecs. I continue to marvel at Andrew Keenan-Bolger's execution of what is effectively an unrelenting 12-15 minute dance number. (Indeed, I would consider buying another ticket just to see the first twenty minutes or so again.) Scarlett Dreams stands as a fascinating "idea play" that vividly captures some of the most dynamic fears, palpable anxieties, and evolving realities of our contemporary moment.
see also…
People Magazine’s Nigel Smith talks to actor/writer/director Andrew Keenan-Bolger about the “blessing” of “playing a character who happens to be gay” in Scarlett Dreams;
at Hollywood Soapbox, writer/editor John Soltes talks to playwright S. Asher Gelman about how Scarlett Dreams aims to “explore our relationship with technology, how it affects our relationships with ourselves, with each other and ultimately with reality itself.”
NOCTURNAL OMISSIONS
Written by John Coons and Jonah Wheeler • Musical Direction by Jonah Wheeler, with with staging contributions by Travis Geisler • Cabaret • Green Room 42 via Recorded Stream • May 2024.
A "shiny blast of a show" from collaborators (and life partners) John Coons and Jonah Wheeler, who promise that this show is "dumber & hornier" than their most recent offering show, Bleak. John is the duo’s glitterier and draggier host/chanteuse/raconteur, while Jonah "presses the buttons on this big box" (aka piano). Both sing — together and apart — a mix of originals and remixed mashups of standards, pop ditties, and show tunes. Along the way, the pair frankly note the fact that Jonah is a sex worker and that John's amidst ongoing mental health journey, currently addressed by prescription medication and an annual foray to join the Radical Faeries at Short Mountain in Tennessee. Highlights for me included John's retooling of Toni Collette's rage monologue from Hereditary as a lieder-style art song; Jonah's "porn daddy energy" take on Jonathan Coulton's "Shop Vac"; and the pair's jauntily charismatic renditions of catchy originals (?) "Beautiful People Are Everywhere" and "L'FOUVCEK."... Nocturnal Omissions also includes the duo's signature song/sketch, "Love Songs for F*gg*ts" — which conjures a late-night advertisement for an imagined Columbia House compilation LP blooming with filthy old-timey songs witty"light-loafered lyrics." We are also treated to an ample display of John's skill with a well-turned comedic one-liner and Jonah's reflections on why it's important to "be the f•ckable pizzaman you want to see in the world." At a brisk 75minutes, Nocturnal Omissions offers a bright, audience-pleasing mix of silliness, sweetness, and sexiness that also a clearly demonstrates why Coons and Wheeler are breaking a distinctive path for themselves on the contemporary cabaret circuit. (NOTE: due to some scheduling conflicts, I opted to convert my "in person" ticket to streaming access, so my comments here are based on my experience engaging GreenRoom42's impressive recording of the prior evening's live performance.)
see also…
at Instinct Magazine (and on YouTube), arts/culture writer Denny Patterson talks to Coons and Wheeler about their creative (and personal) partnership in anticipation of the debut of Nocturnal Omissions;
on his TikTok page, Jonah Wheeler stages a mini-music-video for “Shop Vac”…
ALL OF ME
Written by Laura Winters • Directed by. Ashley Brooke Monroe • Off Broadway • New Group : Alice Griffin Jewel Box, Signature Center • May 2024.
An engaging romantic comedy about two unlikely lovers who happen to both use wheelchairs to get around and AAC devices to speak. All of Me begins with a "meet-cute" as Lucy and Danny both wait for their rides on the loading dock behind a hospital where they just suffered the humiliations of routine appointments. As Lucy and Alfonso, Madison Ferris and Danny J. Gomez — both wheelchair users themselves — stir an immediate investment in the possibility of their relationship, with Ferris capturing Lucy's irreverant humor and Gomez conveying the steadiness of Danny's hard won confidence. The rom-com's requisite wrinkle is soon revealed, with the working class struggles of Lucy's homelife contrasting starkly with the many privileges afforded by Danny's wealth and professional success. It helps not at all that their mothers — Kyra Sedgwick's Connie and Florencia Lozano's Elena, respectively — take an immediate dislike to each other, in no small part because of their very different experiences of their child's disability. (Elena's wealth, privilege and access have been tools for her attentive advocacy since Danny's disabling incident in early childhood, while Connie's paycheck-to-paycheck stresses increased exponentially when Lucy's muscular dystrophy became symptomatic at age sixteen.) Playwright Laura Winters integrates these (and many other) expository details in dramaturgically sound ways, allowing audiences to possibly learn a bit (or a lot) more about the many mundane details of living with a disability, while always keeping such details rooted in the narrative particulars of each character's story. Likewise, Ferris, Gomez, and director Ashley Brooke Monroe deftly integrate the AAC technologies as additional tools to amplify the balance of humor, vulnerability, tension, and drama that keeps All of Me moving. Sedgwick and Lozano are (unsurprisingly) great and, as Lucy's sister and brother-in-law-to-be, Lily Mae Harrington and Brian Furey Morabito also contribute winning performances. But really — as in any good rom-com (which this one is) — the success of All of Me relies upon the charisma, chemistry, and comedic empathy activated by its leads. Madison Ferris and Danny J. Gomez anchor both the formulaic pleasures and narrative specificities of Lucy and Alfonso's "will-they-or-won't-they" arc with truly stirring effect. (The final sequence made me weepy and giddy and breathless, all at the same time.) While not the most formally innovative piece of theatre you'll see in New York this year but, All of Me stands as an expertly executed piece of realist drama that lifts stories and characters not often encountered in US popular performance, marking an important milestone in the way/s disability might be generatively engaged on the American stage.
see also…
CBS Sunday Morning’s Mo Rocca talks to the cast of All of Me about how the play confronts “often-low expectations placed on disabled people” through what Kyra Sedgwick describes as “incredible container of a rom-com and, like, a family dysfunction story”;
at American Theatre, in a feature on the 2022 Barrington Stage production of All of Me, writer/editor Rob Weinert-Kendt digs into the imperative (and impact) of including disabled theatre artists on and off stage.
USUS
Written by T. Adamson • Directed by Emma Miller. • Off Off Broadway • Clubbed Thumb: Wild Project • May 2024.
Usus is peak ClubbedThumb1 in the best of ways, with a scenario as wackadoodle as it is utterly sensible: “it’s 1318 and six Franciscan friars are caught between the purity of their beliefs and a Pope who likes stuff.” Playwright T. Adamson unfurls this scenario by introducing an intergenerational commune of Fransciscan friars deeply stuck ina collective crisis of faith. If the Pope is infallible, yet if the Pope is wrong, who is the heretic? The Pope? Or those questioning his infallibility? It's a weedy snarl of questions — animated by the vividly distinct personalities and perspectives of the friars (expertly characterized by the production's stacked cast of NYC troupers) —and explored in an ever-shifting collection of distinct linguistic registers (ranging from contemporary slang to pig latin to early modern English). But even as we're orienting to this dizzying swim of context, character, and language, the scenario's dramatic thrust becomes clear: these bros (the friars refer to each other as "Bro Ambrose" etcetera) are sincere true believers confronting an evident, imminent collapse in the human political structures that had heretofore governed their sense of how things should be. And thus the play's ruminations on the personal, spiritual, economic, and communal consequences of a suddenly plausible societal collapse becomes as contemporary as the GenZ speak of Bro JP (an excellent Annie Fang). And, even amidst the non-stop heady language, the friars varied bickerings and tendernesses also underscore the sustaining force of relationship and community in times of crisis. Director Emma Miller executes play's many quick change transitions with a impressive precision, allowing the threaded emotional and metaphorical resonances to gather force. (The scene in silhouette where Fang's BroJP and David Greenspan's Bro Giles contemplate the not-yet-reliquaried finger of Giles's long dead mentor? I can't get it out of my mind/heart.) I was particularly taken by the thread within Usus that ponders the impulse to keep "stuff" — whether a pair of spectacles, or a mole rat, or a mummified finger — even by those dedicated to a vow of communal poverty in which the whole point is that no one owns anything. I was also delighted by the late arrival of the pope's ambassador, Latin X (embodied with exhilarating impatient verve by the peerless Yonatan Gebeyehu). The richness of Usus flows from this assemblage of deeply felt moments within and through the deeply philosophical questions that guide these Bros on their path to, within, and possibly beyond their church, their god, and the crises confronting the world beyond their cloistered order.
see also…
at the Clubbed Thumb website, Usus playwright T. Adamson offers “A Note from the Author”;
in a 2023 feature at Buffalo Spree Magazine, freelance magazine writer and playwright Donna Hoke asks T. Adamson “Ten Questions”;
EGG Album Release Show
Written and Performed by César Alvarez (and friends) • Cabaret • The Public Theater: Joe's Pub • May 2024.
A rousing, raucous, and deeply moving celebratory concert featuring the music of “composer, saxophonist, parent and inter-dimensionalist” César Alvarez on the occasion of the launch of their latest album, egg. The 80-minute concert features Alvarez's newly formed band (fresh from their debut in a gay grocery store in Vermont), some of Alvarez's kids, and a handful of noteworthy guests. In addition to sampling songs from egg, the concert also featured selections from Alvarez's astonishing catalog of musicals-in-process. Dante Green knocked it out with a song from NOISE (a musical ritual that elaborates the act of music's creation in radically collaborative ways so as to rehearse, reinvent and reimagine a more humane history of humanity – all in the context of an interactive jam session the likes of which defy simple description). El Beh brought down the house with a song from Elementary Spacetime Show, Alvarez's mind-blowing and heart-opening pop-punk musical about teen suicide. Anthony Alfaro joined Alvarez in a duet of a solo song by the character "César" in The Potluck — Alvarez's deeply personal and para-biographical meta-musical that confronts the knowability of history in an age of alternative facts, even (or especially) when a history is one’s own. For me, hearing these songs from Alvarez's music theater catalog rocked out by such knockout voices marked the some of the many highlights of the evening. Another was Alvarez's impromptu jam session with bandmate Katie McCabe (as McCabe sang through the digits of pi); still another was unexpected tutorial in the power of listening that came when Alvarez handed the mic to their partner/collaborator Emily Orling to introduce a song elaborated from one of Orling's poems. But what twisted my head and heart every which way was Alvarez's rendition of The Potluck’s "Mandela" — in which a longtime activist sings to his long-assassinated friend about the improbabilities of the history of the last fifty years... I was holding by breath even as I was holding back tears so as not to miss a thing. The entire evening was a beautifully rousing capsule celebration of the catalog of César Alvarez — who I consider to be possibly the most dynamic, startling, adventurous, and rigorously transdisciplinary (or interdimensionalist) artist writing music theater of and for our historical moment.
see also…
on the Dartmouth homepage, César Alvarez talks about being an “interdimensionalist”…
Listen to egg via Spotify, AppleMusic, YouTube, etcetera…
THE DESIRE OF THE ASTRONAUT
Book and Lyrics by Alvan Colón Lespier. Original Music by Desmar Guevara. Directed by Leyma López • Off Broadway • Pregones/PRTT: Puerto Rican Traveling Theater • May 2024.
Alvan Colón Lespier's ruminative musical play is set in a near future in which the US space program has been nearly decommissioned, leaving its one "last astronaut" Esteban (Jesús E. Martínez) on its one remaining space station to orbit Mars with only occasional communications with earth. Esteban's ethnicity and history as a nuyorican invites us consider his status as the last astronaut on the last space station as a metaphor for US imperialism, for US carceral cruelty, and for US administrative abandonment of its "colonies." Punctuated by a collection of presentational songs (written by Pregones/PRTT resident composer Desmar Guevara and sung bracingly by the ensemble), The Desire of the Astronaut oscillates in style between presentational didacticism, ruminative poesy, and realist empathy. The witty and powerful song that both begins and ends the show forcefully amplifies the arrogance of humanity's tendency to put itself at the center of everything. The deftly compelling projections and live video (beautifully designed by Eamonn Farrell) reliably activate the peculiar vulnerabilities stirred by imperfect virtual communication. And Veraalba Santa's choreography and movement vocabulary create a vivid sense of connectivity among the ensemble while also underscoring Esteban's isolation. The most compelling sequence — when an equipment failure causes the accidental death of Esteban's only fellow astronaut (a death for which Esteban is held responsible and subject to court martial) — brings the potency of the music, critique, tech, and choreography together with compelling emotional force and demonstrates the potential still lurking inside this piece of music theater. (Bryan J. Cortes's wordless performance in the accident scene is especially effective.) Unfortunately, while clearly evocative of the weightless cognitive fugue state experienced by space travelers, the many effective components of The Desire of the Astronaut mostly orbit the compelling ideas of the piece and, like Esteban, remain ungrounded and untethered from the force of narrative urgency. All told, a consistently intriguing work of original music theatre, supported by an appealing, able, and formidably talented cast.
see also…
at TokenTheatreFriends, writer/critic Jose Solís talks to actor Diana Pou about her work in The Desire of the Astronaut;
THE LONELY FEW
Music and Lyrics by Zoe Sarnak • Book by Rachel Bonds • Directed by. Trip Cullman & Ellenore Scott • Off Broadway • MCC Theater : Robert W. Wilson Space • May 2024.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of The Lonely Few is how the music "lives" in the story. This isn't a play about musicians where songs are intermittently sung; nor is it a concert with dramatic narrative patter interspersed between songs. Not infrequently, a Lonely Few song begins diegetically, often as an improvisatory refrain as one or another character tests or teases a new song (every character in the show is a musician to some degree) but, then, typically with a simple lighting shift, the song opens out to become a more fully felt (and belted) character song before (usually with another shift in light and movement vocabulary) it becomes a concert-version of the now completed and refined song. These r/evolving musical realities allow The Lonely Few to stand on solid footing as, by turns, a character-driven musical drama and a full-on rock concert. Indeed, the more I think about The Lonely Few the more I wonder whether composer/lyricist Zoe Sarnak and bookwriter Rachel Bonds might be experimenting (ambitiously) within the "rock musical" as a genre, with "rock" not simply referencing a musical style but also a tradition of singer-songwriters living the drama their songs sing about. And in this production, especially as led by the incredible voices of Lauren Patten and Taylor Iman Jones, the experiment kinda totally works. The narrative scenario isn't especially complex: a somewhat established musician (Jones's Amy) is just passing through her ex-stepfather's bar when that night's lead singer (Patton's Lila) catches both her ear and her eye from across the proverbial room. The mutual excitement (both creative and intimate) jolts each out of their respective ruts and, when Lila joins Amy on the road, it's clear that a potentially life-changing partnership has begun. And, because this is a play, the tethers of the past soon erupt to pull hard and to threaten everything, begging the essential (romantic) dramatic question of whether these two can find their way back to each other before it's too late. But this perhaps too familiar story still provides sturdy enough frame to hang the nineteen songs that actually plot The Lonely Few’s emotional and dramatic arc. In sum, The Lonely Few offers a rocking collection of songs, performed by a brilliant company, staged in a smart, crowd-pleasing way. (If I were AD of a major regional theatre, I'd be making my inquiries now.) Here's hoping a cast recording is soon forthcoming...
see also…
in a 2021 profile at Harvard Magazine, writer/editor Lydialyle Gibson talks to songwriter Zoe Sarnak about how her “work addresses grief and loss… or people surviving on the edges of society”;
at the Los Angeles Times, in response to the 2023 Los Angeles production of The Lonely Few, former indie band member (and current arts/culture writer) Jessica Gelt considers The Lonely Few’s “startlingly accurate depiction of the kind of talented, earnest band that should make it big.”
In the spirit of transparency, I should mention that, since 2020, I have served on Clubbed Thumb’s Executive Board.