The Flick
by Annie Baker
directed by Sam Gold
Barrow Street Theatre
June 18, 2015 Production websiteย ย ย ๐๐๐๐๐ out of 5.
I will never leave my too-buttered popcorn and giant soda in my movie theatre seat again!ย Set in a movie theatre in New England The Flick focuses on 3 barely paid workers trying to keep the movies playing (although no one seems to be attending) and the floor free from trash.ย They interact and collide with each other and basically get to know each other.ย BUT what makes this experience so rare is that they are getting to know each other at the very same speed that we are!ย This doesnโt happen quickly.
The Taj Mahal is a truly beautiful wonder of the world – – but you will NEVER be able to look at that serene building the same! Based on a popular myth regarding the Taj, director Amy Morton tells the story of the ugly cruelty that is behind so many of the beautiful things that man is able to create.
Two low level guards are set to protect the construction of the Taj Mahal. They are to insure that no one, including themselves, are able to view the Taj before it is fully complete and ready for viewing. So they stand, and they stand. Slowly we explore the Godot-like relationship of the two men: one strictly following the rules without question, the other, a bit of a radical open to questioning authority! What fun to watch this couple banter away and debate theย obvious impossibility of preventing passerby from viewing the enormous Taj. ย How crazy is this job? ย But to what extent must authority be obeyed? ย What would be so wrong to take just the slightest of peeks to see what in the world they have been guarding for sometime. Continue reading Guards at the Taj→
Fun Home
music by Jeanine Tesori
book and lyrics by Lisa Kuhn
based on the graphic novel by Alision Bechdel
produced by Circle In the Square
June 16, 2015
Although I am not a musical theatre person, I was in the audience for the first week of the run of Rent and knew that musical theatre was going to change forever. I felt the same way sitting in the audience for Fun Home. Never have I felt the songs so connected to the story. When the show was over, it never occurred to me that the characters sang – – it was just that beautiful and that invisible! The story is about family and those crazy often toxic people that we will never be able to truly escape. They truly shape ever decision and turn that our life takes. Continue reading Fun Home→
Significant Other
by Joshua Harmon
directed by Trip Cullman
Roundabout Theatre
July 17, 2015 Production website.
๐ out of 5.
I am really not so sure what makes this significant.ย Significant Others is a play that sets out to explore how hard it is for a twenty-something gay man to find the โone.โย For all of his consternating with his grandmother, employing of all social media options and championing of his best girl buddies he simply canโt โget any.โย I guess we are supposed to care.
The play does have its funny moments as wedding parties always create a drunken free-for-all.ย And protagonist Jordan Berkan certainly does fly across the stage in a caffeinated craze – – but I simply didnโt care for him.ย He seemed so whiny and shallow as he pursued the elusive Abacrombie-like model that did little but stand on a raised platform for admiration.
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He did talk to his grandmother, played by the talented Barbara Barrie.ย She either ask him โhowโs your love life? (which she does more then a dozen times) or she is oddly and comfortably planning her suicide.ย What??
The set was massive – – a series of rooms and levels but none of them got used.ย Most was played on the apron in front.ย Why build such a big set and never inhabit it.
Significant Other would undoubtable make good TV.ย But to get all dressed up, catch 3 trains, pay over $75 and not to have your dog on your lap – – it simply wasnโt worth the trip.ย It might have even different for the twenty-sowing in the audience but for this fifty-something no.
Skylight
written by David Hare and Mathew Beard
starring Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy
Golden Theatre – June 14, 2015
๏ฟผ Production website
๐๐๐๐ out of 5.
This is going to sound a bit crude but watching this show seemed to me a very literate and brilliantly played out feasting on the Animal Channel. ย Crude I know – – but the constant clashing of horns for both the materialist, Bill Nighy, and the newly drafted idealist, Carey Mulligan was a scary thing.
Early in the evening Kyra (Carey Mulligan) puts a pot of Bolognese on the stove (literally food on the stove) and literally heats it for all of the audience to watch and smell. ย This meal cooks and cooks and when finally served we can only guess how hot it gets and how severely it burns the tongue.
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At its simplest, Skylight is the story of an old rich married man with a sickly wife who befriends and later woos a much younger woman. ย The secret plays out for a long time until the death of the wife andย conscious of the youngerย woman kicks in. ย Now, separated, they join on this rainy night to rekindle (?) what could have been, or might be, or hasn’t a chance of being.
It was very scary to watch the match up here. ย The language was so brilliantly sharpย and you couldn’t find twoย better actors/swords to wield against each other.
On a funny note, one of my teenage students with me found it totally unbelievable that a man as OLD as he was could ever have a relationship with someone as YOUNG as she was. ย “What could possibly drive them together?”
Patience young teenager – life will reveal stranger things then this.
Guards at the Taj
Fun Home
