Whither MISS WITHERSPOON?

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 11:39am

Has anyone seen Chris Durang's new comedy Miss Witherspoon at Playwrights Horizons?

The NY Times article "Christopher Durang Explores the Afterlife, Including His Own"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/26/theater/newsandfeatures/26dura.html

describes this new play as farce, but he generally writes brilliant, light-hearted and whimsical satire. He's one of my favorite writers, and I've enjoyed his Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All For You, Beyond Therapy, The Actor's Nightmare, and Betty's Summer Vacation, the latter of which, like this new play, starred the hilarious and very talented Kristine Nielsen who is a master of the "over the top" style so pungent throughout Durang's work...

Any buzz on this new Durang?



Updated On: 1/1/06 at 11:39 AM

[iluvtheatertrash]

Posted: 11/26/05 at 1:26pm

Saw the first preview and absolutely loved every second of it. Seemed more satirical to me than a farce, but to each his own.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 11/27/05 at 7:48pm

Thanks, iluvtheatertrash.

I suspected it was really satire...

Satire's my weapon, but I'm too discreet
To run amuck, and tilt at all I meet.
--Alexander Pope

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/27/05 at 8:11pm

It's really just Durang it his most absurd (or "absurdist" if one prefers), very much in line with some of his more recent works with a definite cynical streak. The play seems to be a reaction to the angst so many feel in contemporary society towards the pervasiveness of cruelty, abuse, terror, neglect and fear in our daily lives. If Durang's metaphors here end up being a bit muddled and unclear (and his conclusions incoherent), he certainly paints entertaining scenarios.

Durang's everywoman here is played by Kristine Nielsen in, perhaps, the performance of her career and (along with Judy Kaye in "Souvenir") the comedic performance of the year. She's utterly remarkable as a woman who's been beaten about and mistreated by life and faces the after-life with a strong willful stubbornness that she won't be mistreated again and demands a say in her reincarnation. If the play doesn't always quite know what it's trying to say about our uncertain present and future, Nielsen is nevertheless worth the price of admission.

Updated On: 11/27/05 at 08:11 PM

[alterego]

Posted: 11/27/05 at 9:22pm

I'm surprised that Sigorney Weaver isn't in it as she seems to be a Durang favourite.

I have a very soft spot for Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You (no I'm not Roman Catholic).

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/27/05 at 9:38pm

Well, while Weaver and Durang went to Yale together 30 years ago, Weaver hasn't been in one of his plays in a decade, since his "Sex and Longing" flopped on Broadway in the mid-90s. Nielsen won an Obie for Durang's last hit play "Betty's Summer Vacation" and they've worked together several times included co-starring in "Ubu" back in the 80s.

[alterego]

Posted: 11/27/05 at 9:56pm

Ah thank you Margo!

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 11/27/05 at 9:58pm

Yes, yes, Margo, hooray for you!

You have solved my earlier dilemma as to satire, because when I looked up satire it was really too hard and biting by definition for Durang, who is more deliciously, deliriously whimsical.

His writing is ABSURDIST! Yes! And I might call it absurdist satire, do you think that would hold?

Oh, Nielsen is a dream actress to have (oh what she pulled off in Betty's Summer Vacation, both questioning herself and being on the witness stand simultaneously in one scene) and so is Judy Kaye incroyable in Souvenir--what a fun, charming role for her!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/27/05 at 10:09pm

Labels are never perfect, but I think "Miss Witherspoon" is best described simply as an "absurdist comedy." It's not really a satire of anything and it's certainly not a farce. Durang has long been one of the primary exponents of the contemporary absurdist school and is fond of using extreme or ridiculous scenes and characters in furtherance of a certain dramatic or metaphorical point.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 11/27/05 at 10:15pm

But don't you think he is satirical of the foolishness of taking rigid positions and views when it comes to religion? And Betty's Summer Vacation was really turning the foolishness of voyeur television-watching and laugh-tracks on their heads...

To expose foolishness (including points of view) by ridicule is part of the definition of satire...

Would appreciate dialogue on this...

Genre-crossing?
Updated On: 11/27/05 at 10:15 PM

[QMAN03]

Posted: 11/27/05 at 10:38pm

What do you guys think it better: this, Orson's Shadow or Rope?

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 11/27/05 at 10:43pm

QMAN03 I think you've got another thread there.

I think we've got our hands full just with Durang, the slippery beast!

[QMAN03]

Posted: 11/28/05 at 2:48pm

Sorry. I just thought you guys could help because whenever I post a thread like that, someone always stops it by saying make up your own mind. But they don't see that I am completely equal on all of them and I just want to know which one is the best.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 1:04pm

Ben Brantley's review is in, and fairly positive...

http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/theater/reviews/30with.html

"She has willed herself to be a tough, brittle cookie, this Miss Witherspoon. But every so often she registers the real terror and pity of the way of the world, and her irony turns into agony. Ms. Nielsen's eyes go wide at such moments and her voice becomes a wounded bleat. That the same genuine pain underlines Mr. Durang's habitual archness is what makes him, even when he's not in top form, such an essential and affecting presence in the American theater."

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 1:09pm

The reviews are all raves for Nielsen and mixed for the play itself.

[QMAN03]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 1:21pm

This or The Other Side...decisions decisions.

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 1:31pm

If you have other sites for reviews, please post, Margo.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 2:01pm

"Miss Witherspoon," directed in full cartoonish mode by Emily Mann, plays like an extended and ultimately tiresome sketch. But there's no shortage of genuinely hilarious moments, supplied both by the text and by Nielsen's riotous turn.

Whether playing an affection-starved canine or a newborn baby fed up with having to learn language all over again, this superb, Obie-winning actress demonstrates that she's perfectly in tune with the playwright's distinctive comic take on matters of the universe.

http://www.nypost.com/entertainment/58276.htm
_______________________________________________________________


In 1999, Durang pulled off another coup when Kristine Nielsen portrayed the appropriately named Mrs. Siezmagraff in Betty's Summer Vacation. Now, these singular talents have re-teamed with equally felicitous results in Miss Witherspoon, the amiable trifle that has wandered into Playwrights Horizons after a month-long run at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton. And it doesn't take long to realize that this clever-enough but overlong (at just 90 minutes) sketch about a dead woman who tries to defy reincarnation might itself be D.O.A. if not for Nielsen's consummate comic timing.

Miss Witherspoon is Nielsen's showcase, and no one can accuse her of not making the most of the opportunity. Her outrage every time she mentions Rex Harrison (who may or may not have been Veronica's ex-husband) is nothing short of hysterical, and her exchanges with a certain religious figure who shows up toward the play's end are priceless. But Nielsen's true gift is that she makes us care about the ultimate fate of Veronica, who finally learns that going forward is the only direction available. Durang may not always hit his targets, but Nielsen scores bull's-eye after bull's-eye.

http://www.theatermania.com/content/news.cfm/story/7189
________________________________________________________________



It takes less than 90 minutes. Its scenic effects are not what Broadway might consider special. And yet Christopher Durang's "Miss Witherspoon," which opened last night at Playwrights Horizons, tackles the Big Picture and asks the Big Questions with more courage, ambition and unrelenting thoughtfulness than almost anything onstage here in a long time.

Besides, the thing is thoroughly lovable. And funny. And shameless in its faith in the ability of a cartoon style to sustain serious - heck, cosmic - purpose without sacrificing a gleeful moment of trust in the transcendent pleasures of the wicked and silly.

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/stage/ny-ledesing4531677nov30,0,836108.story?coll=ny-theater-headlines
________________________________________________________________


Durang's impulses here feel humane and beautiful. I just wish he'd written a play that's less muddled and more potently convincing. It's easy to nod empathetically when a character purporting to be Christ worries that her teachings aren't being followed nowadays, but it would be better if the play had actually seemed to be about that problem during the preceding hour. But it doesn't seem to be about that at all: for most of its running time, Miss Witherspoon seems to be a game, in which Veronica—who inexplicably remains Veronica even though she keeps getting reincarnated as different humans (and, according to Maryamma, is supposed to go through the Lake of Forgetfulness before she returns to Earth in each new incarnation)—engages in a battle of wills with representatives of various religions that she purports not to believe in. (Maybe I'm being too literal here, but I was confused by what I took to be a playwright hedging his bets, putting what appears to be a Hindu woman with Jesus inside a Buddhist construct.)

The play is fitfully funny, but the jokes feel scattershot; there's a running gag about Rex Harrison and My Fair Lady that I never really "got." Kristine Nielsen seems utterly at sea here, always indicating rather than inhabiting her character, gesturing and grimacing wildly, the way that Dame Edna does to stretch a laugh in her one-woman show. (I have seen Nielsen do fine work elsewhere: is this her decision, or has director Emily Mann asked for this?)

Ultimately, Miss Witherspoon, well-intended though it may be, is a bit of a mess; I kept wishing it would get its act together as I watched it, but it never did.

http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/miss1769.htm
____________________________________________________________

It's those adventures that form the core of his episodic, often delightful 80-minute excursion. Whether they constitute a plot or not is open to question but the evening, which has the sketchy feel of a revue, is stuffed with laughs and a smidgen of seriousness, too.

Both are provided by Kristine Nielsen, who portrays Durang's beleaguered heroine, a distraught creature longing for peace in the netherworld. Nielsen is an accomplished actress, who also manages to be a superb comic. She artfully balances the play's considerable humor with the underlying poignancy of a woman who has given up.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/13287311.htm (The AP)
_____________________________________________________________

Perennial bad-boy Christopher Durang has mellowed to a fault in this uncharacteristically benign comic fable about spiritual redemption in an age of anxiety and despair. Durang delivers the anxiety and despair with his customary caustic wit in "Miss Witherspoon," a surreal yarn about a "gloomy dead person" who stubbornly resists having her depressive aura cleansed through reincarnation. But the scribe makes such a dull case for spiritual redemption that the poor soul seems better off dead.

http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117928975?categoryid=1265&cs=1
_______________________________________________________________

Sister Mary Ignatius would not be amused by Christopher Durang's "Miss Witherspoon," an undisciplined but very funny shaggy-god story about one woman's reluctant road to nirvana. That makes one of us.

This time Kristine Nielsen, a frequent Durang muse, is the lucky recipient of his fractured theological rantings. Her wild-eyed, irresistibly imbalanced Miss Witherspoon is a performance for the ages.

Since realism is in short supply, Mr. Durang is able to indulge his habit of throwing reams of material on the stage and seeing what at least sort of works.

Harnessing that bizarre energy into the metaphysical inquiries that litter "Miss Witherspoon" takes work, and a little of Sister Mary's certainty could have come in handy during Mr. Durang's more rambling moments. The upbeat resolution is also a bit cozy, given everything that precedes it. But Ms. Mann and the nonpareil Ms. Nielsen turn this sad, somewhat ridiculous woman's odyssey into a surprisingly rich and affecting experience. Who would have guessed that crippling theological ambivalence could be this much fun?

http://www.nysun.com/article/23751
________________________________________________________________

Christopher Durang's new dark comedy, about a woman who desperately tries not to be reincarnated, contains elements of his previous plays: religion (Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You), inept child rearing (Baby With the Bathwater) and sardonic monologues (Laughing Wild), to name a few. In addition, Miss Witherspoon stars Kristine Nielsen, who won an Obie Award for Durang's Betty's Summer Vacation, also at Playwrights Horizons. While Miss Witherspoon boasts witty observations and a riotous performance by Nielsen, it doesn't always hold together as a play. But fans of Durang and Nielsen may want to check it out anyway.

http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Story.aspx?ci=522013

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 11/30/05 at 2:09pm

Thanks so much, Margo.

Egads, I have got to see this now. I want to see if I can pick up the references a critic might find oblique.

The absurd, the satirical, the sardonic...

My cup of tea...especially with Nielson in the steeping!

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 12/1/05 at 10:21pm

Tonight's show got canceled...

I suppose someone was sick...

[nomdeplume]

Posted: 1/1/06 at 11:16am

I finally got to see Durang's latest and it was hilarious!

Expect to see Kristine Nielsen up for Obie and Drama Desk nominations. That lady can play over the top and she not only gets it, she lives it in the role. It's so fun to see an actor so thoroughly understand the playwright's work and then add her own layer of delirium to it.

I expect this play to have a much bigger life outside NYC. I saw Betty's Summer Vacation in Playwright's Horizons old 99-seat space on 42nd Street and then saw it jump in size to a 600-seat production in Honolulu. The transformation from having seen the work in such intimacy seemed gigantic. Especially having people drop out of the ceiling in a huge theatre! They were flying down on ropes like Winston from In My Life.

Onward, Chris Durang!