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.
Disenchanted
book, music and lyrics by Dennis T. Giacino
directed by Fiely A. Matias
produced by Westside Theatre
June 14, 2015
๐๐๐ out of 5.
Six women play dozenโs of Disney Princesses in this adult comedy and send-up of all that is Disney and much of what is female in countless bedtime stories.
The result is super sweet, a bit naughty and truly captivating. My imagination was kept for the entire short 90 minutes of the play – grateful of course that they didnโt overwork the bit for another hour.
As the musical asks, I found myself wondering why almost every happily-ever-after – – involves finding that certain someone, Canโt a hard won happily-ever-after be just as sweet and rewarding on your own. I am NOT a Disney person and certainly not a Princess fan – but now I understand their appeal and danger to a young audience.
Not to sound too jaded, I have grown a bit tired of Neil Labute. His plays seem to relentlessly focus on broken people making poor choices and stepping on a lot of feelings in the process. But this play was different for me. This play was sexy. You have that delicious human drama of waking up the morning after the night you canโt really remember doing the thing that you are oh, so unsure of. Who hasnโt been there? Continue reading The Way We Get By→
Fun Home
senchanted