Review - Idiot Savant and After Miss Julie

Ladies and gentlemen. In the course of this evening's performance, the following physical objects will appear onstage: a boxing bag, four golf clubs, a newspaper, two small targets, an oversized golf ball plus snake, a bloody towel, a duck mask, a white spider with spots, a watering can, three boulders wrapped in twine, a yellow suit, two imitation row boats, one tray of fruit, one rolling table, six highball glasses, two white pillows, one large roll of plastic tape, a jeweled wristwatch, one package, gift-wrapped, one jeweled container, plus one blank container, three mirrors with numbers painted on the reverse side, two bows and arrows, one duck in a small cage, one stuffed small mouth plug.

 

Whatever you do, don't ask, "Why?"

Those who are familiar with the theatre pieces of Richard Foreman know exactly what I mean.

Don't ask why Willem Dafoe, playing the title role in The Public Theater's premiere production of Foreman's new work, Idiot Savant, makes his first entrance dressed like some kid's idea of a Japanese Samurai Halloween costume, carrying a caged duck and with his speech impeded by said mouth plug. Don't ask why those guys in fez hats come on with bows and arrows. And for the love of Joe Papp, don't even think of asking why that giant duck is playing golf.

As with the rest of the 50+ plays written, directed and designed by Foreman since he founded the Ontological-Hysteric Theater back in '68, Idiot Savant is more concerned with providing a tapestry of mood and wild theatrics than presenting coherent drama.

Oh sure, some will delve into interpretive depths to comment on the play's themes of life and language and who's to say they're wrong. But personally, I regard the work of Richard Foreman the same way I regard any abstract work of art. Just feel the rhythms, the visuals, the bursts of energy and see what sticks with you. That may seem a little simplistic but your brain will hurt less.

So what happens in Idiot Savant? Well, after a mysterious voice commands to the actors, "Do not try to carry this play forward. Let it slowly creep over the stage with no help, with no end in view," and the title character informs us that he is interested in confusion, we get a verbal three-way between our hero and the ethereally philosophical Marie (Alenka Kraigher) and the cynical alcoholic Olga (Elina Löwensohn). The three lead players, along with Joel Israel, Eric Magnus and Daniel Allen Nelson in various supporting functions, admirably dive into the often unfathomable text and are shamelessly appealing while buzzers buzz, lights glare out into the audience and we're treated to a chorus of "Japanese Sandman."

The set is a majestic hodgepodge of numbers, mattresses, portraits and lamps that disperse alcohol with lovely chandeliers hanging above. Gabriel Berry's costumes are an eye-catching parade of styles, colors and species.

I'm not going to say Idiot Savant is for everyone, but if you have any interest in experiencing all that American theatre has to offer, a visit to at least one of this prolific surrealist's works is certainly in order.

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Willem Dafoe; Bottom: Alenka Kraigher and Elina Löwensohn.

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While watching Tartuffe played by 1950s television characters or seeing Love's Labour's Loss set "in da hood" might make for an interesting evening (yes, I've seen both), credit Patrick Marber for allowing August Strindberg's 1988 Miss Julie to remain in its Swedish time and place while he writes an entirely new play, After Miss Julie; subtitled "A Version of August Strindberg's Miss Julie."

Lust, power and class are still on the menu, but Marber sharpens focus on the latter by setting the ninety minute piece in Britain on the evening of the 1945 election; when Clement Attlee's Labour Party won a landslide victory over Churchill's Conservative majority.

But the play remains largely as Strindberg wrote it. Set in the enormous basement kitchen of the country estate of an English lord (Allen Moyer's handsome set is full of wooden stately authority), Julie is the spoiled, bored and just a tad self-destructive daughter of the unseen master of the house who sets out to shock and seduce the chauffer John, a military veteran now living a life where nervous panics are in order if the master's shoes aren't perfectly polished.

As the lines betwixt the classes are melting, Julie's hypnotic way with a glance and a cigarette puff match John's physical ability to take what he wants from her. Plus she has daddy on her side. The temptress and her willing victim trade psychological mind games and share a rough tumble, all while John's supposed fiancée, the devoutly religious and fatalistic cook Christine ("I have lower expectations so I am seldom disappointed.") goes about her business.

This was pretty scandalous stuff in the late 1800s and Marber, along with director Mark Brokaw, seems to be attempting to make it just as shocking for modern audiences with a bit more vulgarity and sexual violence. But Sienna Miller, as Miss Julie, never seems to be up to the task of creating a dangerous sexual atmosphere; going through the standard seductive motions with an overdone upper-crust manner. Likewise, the rich complexities of the character's weaknesses -- her feeling of being caged in the restrictions of her class, the dichotomy of being privileged by birth but confined by gender -- are apparent from the surface but never seem organic.

Jonny Lee Miller makes for an effective John, believably conveying the character's ambition to make a better life for himself conflicting with his fear of breaking away from the simple comfort of what he has.

But it's Marin Ireland, one of New York's most interesting stage actors, who supplies the most attention-grabbing performance as Christine; first in quiet glances that recite emotional monologues, then in a critical detachment that defends against her character's sorrow. Perhaps I'm not the only one wondering if the production would have fared better with her in the title role.

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Sienna Miller; Bottom: Jonny Lee Miller and Marin Ireland.

"Actors work and slave and it is the color of your hair that can determiNe Your fate in the end."
-- Helen Hayes

 

The grosses are out for the week ending 11/8/2009 and we've got them all right here in BroadwayWorld.com's grosses section.

Up for the week was: SHREK THE MUSICAL (21.1%), MEMPHIS (19.9%), THE ROYAL FAMILY (13.2%), MARY POPPINS (12.9%), Wishful Drinking (11.4%), OLEANNA (10.7%), SOUTH PACIFIC (10.5%), IN THE HEIGHTS (10.5%), HAMLET (9.9%), BURN THE FLOOR (9.6%), RAGTIME (9.4%), THE 39 STEPS (6.5%), HAIR (6.4%), CHICAGO (6.2%), ROCK OF AGES (5.6%), BYE BYE BIRDIE (4.1%), WEST SIDE STORY (4.0%), THE LION KING (3.9%), NEXT TO NORMAL (3.8%), IN THE NEXT ROOM OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY (3.2%), FINIAN'S RAINBOW (1.6%), SUPERIOR DONUTS (1.4%), JERSEY BOYS (1.1%), AFTER MISS JULIE (1.0%), FELA! (0.6%), GOD OF CARNAGE (0.6%),

Down for the week was: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (-3.5%), WICKED (-1.8%), MAMMA MIA! (-1.0%), BILLY ELLIOT: THE MUSICAL (-0.2%), A STEADY RAIN (-0.1%),

While riding home on the subway last night I overheard a fellow say to his companion, "Well, it's her show. He just wrote the book but she wrote the music and lyrics."

Someone needs to read some Lehman Engel.

My favorite title of a play currently running in New York is Are You There, Zeus? It's Me, Electra.

Written and directed by Aliza Shane, it's now playing at The Looking Glass Theatre.

When it comes to hit musical comedies that don't stand a chance of ever being revived on Broadway, I'd have to rank Silk Stockings as one of my favorites. Based on Melchoir Lengyel's novel Ninotchka, which was turned into a Greta Garbo's first comedy film ("Garbo Laughs!, " screamed the advertisements.), this 1955 cold war tuner was the last Broadway entry for both Cole Porter and George S. Kaufman. And while it isn't exactly top tier material for either of these masters, it's still a dandy collection of clever, hummable songs and boffo gags from an era when professionally done fluff could send audiences off into the Times Square night with a big smile.

Now in their 12th season, Silk Stockings is the 54th small scale concert staging by that remarkable Obie-winning company Musicals Tonight!, specialists in presenting affordable revivals of lesser-known musicals that have rarely been seen since their original Broadway productions. Staged by resident director Thomas Sabella-Mills (who also supplies the simple, but show-bizy choreography), with music direction by David Caldwell, a winning cast delivers this time capsule of a show with great energy and panache.

Like so many Cole Porter shows, Silk Stockings is set in Paris, where a Russian classical composer/conductor on tour disobeys orders to return home when the opportunity arises to have themes from his masterwork, Ode to a Tractor, used as the underscoring for a Hollywood drama based on War and Peace. Three bumbling officials are sent to bring him back with a minimal amount of adverse publicity ("We must force him of his own free will to come back."), but when the boys are seduced by the Paris nightlife, Moscow sends a no-nonsense, humorless female comrade to finish the job. The main love story is how the composer's American agent steps in to try and seduce her into succumbing to both his charms and to the lights of Paris. Meanwhile, the Hollywood blonde set to star in the flick ("My first dramatic non-swimming role.") is dissatisfied with the screenplay and has the movie changed into a musical about Napoleon's Josephine, hiring her own lyricist to turn the Tractor themes into pop songs.

Originally Kaufman teamed up with his wife, Leueen MacGrath, an unsuccessful playwright (more popular as an actress) whose main contribution was to help write the leading lady's role. But during rocky out-of-town tryouts the two were fired... or quit... and replaced by producers Cy Feuer and Ernie Martin with the era's premiere script doctor, Abe Burrows. The three share equal billing for the very funny book that makes communism the butt of every joke that isn't aimed at Hollywood. When a Soviet official is asked if he knew that the great Russian composer Prokofiev was dead, he innocently answers, "I didn't even know he was arrested." Another Soviet, trying to locate a higher-up, asks for a copy of Who's Still Who.

While the love song, "All Of You, " was the popular hit, the higher points of Cole Porter's score are his comedy and character numbers. "Stereophonic Sound" is a rousing tribute to the technological advances that overshadowed content in 1950s Hollywood films ("The customer's don't like to see the groom embrace the bride / Unless her lips are scarlet and her bosom five feet wide.") and "Siberia", seemingly an attempt to repeat the success of Kiss Me, Kate's "Brush Up Your Shakespeare," is a humorous soft-shoe about the homeland's frostiest assignment. ("When it's cocktail time, t'will be so nice / Just to know you won't have to phone for ice.") The comical anti-love song, "It's A Chemical Reaction, That's All," argues that coupling is merely a case of, "When the electromagnetic of the female meets the electromagnetic of the he-male."

Kate Marrily's deadpan delivery as Comrade Ninotchka nails every laugh and she makes a smooth transformation from by-the-book official to a love-happy, degenerate pleasure-seeker. As the agent who woos her, Kevin Kraft has a rather thankless leading man role that consists mainly of feeding straight lines to the more colorful characters and singing the score's least inspired material, but he delivers understated charm and sings with an attractive light baritone.

The trio of Jody Cook, Carl Danielson and Jason Simon are great fun and in fine voice playing their low comedy roles as the trio of Soviet officials. Aside from their amusing silliness in "Siberia" and the rousing "Hail Bibinski," the boys also team up for a Cole Porter list song, "Why Should I Trust You?," which was cut from the score before the Broadway opening. Also cut before Broadway was the lightly satirical, "Art"; here sung with power and gusto by T.J. Mannix as the soon to be outgoing Commissar of Art. Neither is vintage Porter but they do make for interesting curiosities.

Oakley Boycott fizzes with old-school musical comedy moxie and a spot-on comic sense as the Hollywood starlet who wants to be taken seriously but not at the risk of losing her sexpot appeal. Tall, lean and sporting wavy blond locks, she seems a campy cross between Marilyn and Marlene, selling her songs with satirical seductiveness.

Silk Stockings may not be a classic, but it represents a classic type of knockabout musical comedy we, regretfully, don't see around much these days.

 

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