Broadway Blogs - The Singing Forest: Postscript To A Kiss and More...

"Sometimes life just is preposterous, you know," screams a frustrated character trying to get another to believe his corner of the jigsaw puzzle of interlocking plots in Craig Lucas' eclectically styled comedy/drama, The Singing Forest; a play that takes us from 21^st Century New York to 1930s Vienna to 1940s London via urban romantic comedy, Holocaust drama, dysfunctional family angst, mistaken identity farce and a dash of that Lucas theatrical fantasy.  Far funnier and more happily enjoyable than you'd expect, especially considering the horrifying imagine the play's title represents, The Singing Forest manages to examine issues of self-deceit and the limits of both forgiveness and accepting blame for one's actions.

Opening in the year 2000, octogenarian Loë Rieman (Olympia Dukakis) gets us started by lying her way into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting (while sipping red wine from a Starbucks coffee cup) in order to give her own abrasive opinions on the day's topic, "Making Amends."  To Loë, feeling shame prevents wrongdoing far more effectively than giving up your guilt to a higher power.  ("'God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.'  Imagine if that had been the motto of the Allied Forces in World War Two.")  Before the three act play is done we learn the extraordinary, and eventually preposterous, details of how Loë escaped the Nazis, became a noted psychiatrist, lost her practice and found a rather non-traditional way to keep using her analytical skills; all the while never feeling able to make amends for her past actions (and inactions) involving her older brother and two estranged children.

But first the mood gets lighter and funnier as we land in the office of Dr. Shar Ungar (Rob Campbell) who is explaining to a potentially new patient, Gray (Jonathan Groff), that a gay man seeking therapy is best served by a gay psychiatrist.  The only trouble is that Gray, despite his girlfriend's suspicions, is really straight and even though he is seeking therapy, it's not for himself.  He's really an actor who has taken on an unusual gig and sees the opportunity to parlay it into a get-rich-quick scheme.  Lucas uses the lengthy play (about two hours and fifty minutes including the two intermissions) to gradually reveal the convoluted connected between Gray and Loë that somehow in the end all makes (reasonably) perfect sense in a world where there are, indeed, no coincidences.

To explain much more about the plot and the characters played by director MarK Wing-Davey's nine member cast (all but Dukakis play two roles as the story jumps decades) would rob readers of enjoying the care the author takes in letting details out in his own sweet time.  But I'll tell you that Mark Blum dollops out fun eccentricities as an analyst plotting an unusual revenge, Susan Pourfar nicely shows a younger Loë growing from a rambunctious adolescent to an educated socialite, and Pierre Epstein, given the unenviable task of making an underwritten Sigmund Freud believable, scores beautifully as Loë's elderly coffee-shop buddy, the only truly content character in the piece.

Dukakis, the only actor with a fully-developed character to play, solidly strides through the evening with the confident gait and the sardonic humor of a woman who experienced too much too quickly and intends to live the rest of her life on her own terms.  Groff makes Gray amusing with earnest charm and innocence and does very well in a more solemn turn as a young gay man living in dangerous times.

Wing-Davey impressively keeps the transitions between the play's assortment of styles (there's a quietly done rape scene and door-slamming farce) smooth and unnoticeable.  John McDermott's sliding panel set, the urban flashiness of Japhy Weideman's lights and the cacophony of John Gromada's original music and sound design during scene changes serve as reminders of another kind of singing forest; the clamor of a city filled with preposterous possibilities.

Photos by Carol Rosegg:  Top: Louis Cancelmi, Olympia Dukakis, and Pierre Epstein; Bottom:  Rob Campbell and Jonathan Groff

David Hyde Pierce heads the cast in this rollicking salute to love's possibilities, both on stage and off. Successful playwright Stephen Gaye (Pierce) is about to abandon his latest script, when his young secretary offers him new inspiration. With her as his muse, he stages the show on Broadway, only to learn, to his dismay, that the show's young leading man is being inspired by her too. In this fresh look at Samson Raphaelson's brilliantly clever comedy, the Tony Award-winning actor of Curtains and Monty Python's Spamalot returns to MTC under the direction of Tony Award winner Daniel Sullivan (MTC's Proof and Rabbit Hole).

David Rooney, Variety: "I'm 50," explained Jack Donaghy on a recent "30 Rock." "To put it in perspective, that's like 32 for ladies." The mating game has changed considerably since 1934, and silver foxes with trophy wives half their age have become almost commonplace. That makes the dilemma of Samson Raphaelson's "Accent on Youth" -- a sophisticated 53-year-old playwright dithering over romance with his 26-year-old secretary -- somewhat obsolete. Daniel Sullivan's spiffy production and David Hyde Pierce's effortless timing make the antiquated comedy tick by painlessly enough, but there's not much substance beneath its mild charms.

Charles Isherwood, New York Times: ""I thought either it would be a smash hit, like a EuGene O'Neill play," he observes, "or a dreadful failure, like - like a EuGene O'Neill play. But who would have predicted that it would turn out just a show." Plus ça change. The current Broadway revival of O'Neill's mythic potboiler "Desire Under the Elms" has provoked strongly divergent reactions. "Accent on Youth," by contrast, is not going to fuel too many arguments. While perfectly amiable, it too is "just a show.""

Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press: "Older man. Younger woman. Boy, have playwrights been here before. Yet it's amazing how much mileage playwright Samson Raphaelson got out of this well-worn plot device in "Accent on Youth," a mild comedy of manners initially seen on Broadway in 1934. Not that Raphaelson's play is a lost masterpiece, but the revival that Manhattan Theatre Club opened Thursday at Broadway's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre is an amiable, minor-league diversion."

Erik Haagensen, Backstage: "Samuel Raphaelson's Accent on Youth is the kind of play for which the word chestnut was appropriated. No doubt titillating and somewhat sophisticated in its day, in 2009 it just creaks, groans, and lumbers its way across the stage of the former Biltmore Theatre despite the best efforts of a talented company. "

Robert Feldberg, Bergen Record: "The play is imperfect - the characters' motivations don't always make sense, and the plot takes a dubious turn - but it's amusing and charming, and effortlessly pushes our nostalgia buttons."

Frank Scheck, Hollywood Reporter: ""Accent on Youth" is a 75-year-old play, and with its new Broadway revival it looks every bit its age. This mild drawing-room comedy by Samson Raphaelson -- better known for such efforts as "The Jazz Singer" (it was a play before it was the 1927 movie) and the screenplays for "Trouble in Paradise" and "The Shop Around the Corner" -- feels like a bottle of champagne that's long lost its fizz. "

Jeff Labrecque, Entertainment Weekly: "Samson Raphaelson's dusty yarn about a middle-aged playwright juggling his new show and the adoration of his much younger secretary may have been a ripe screwball comedy when it debuted on Christmas Day in 1934, but 75 years later, Accent on Youth looks every bit its age. Tony-winning director Daniel Sullivan (Proof) opts for the original's 1930s sensibility, challenging a contemporary audience with feeble attempts at provocation and an antiquated representation of love."

Matt Windman, AM New York: "What's it like attending "Accent on Youth"? Well, the posh Manhattan apartment set design and Depression-era costumes are pretty. The cast is pretty charming. Some witty dialogue occasionally pops up. But it's hard to not feel underwhelmed and bored by the Manhattan Theater Club's well-meant but unnecessary and uninspired revival of what feels like a third-rate Noel Coward play."

More Reviews to Come in the AM!