Ben Peltz - Page 14

In its opening moments, it would be completely understandable to assume that Assistance, Leslye Headland's viciously fun satire of the cutthroat dealings among entry-level twenty-somethings, might be mimicking David Mamet's dark comedy of film executives, Speed-the-Plow. 

It's not your garden variety playwright who can draw you into a two-person drama with an extended dialogue comparing the healing effectiveness and fragrance of competing brands of foot salts.  But the comfortable comic exchanges that sweeten the early moments of Athol Fugard's Blood Knot cleverly turn horrific by the final blackout, thanks to an excellent pair of performances created under the playwright's own direction.

Though Eugene O'Neill was a grownup thirty-one years of age when Beyond The Horizon, his first full length play, opened on Broadway in 1920, the landmark domestic drama is boiling over with so much youthful angst you might expect its trio of lovers to start whipping out microphones to belt out emo rock numbers.

Shortly into Bertolt Brecht's Galileo, the 17th Century Italian scientist shows his young companion a model of the Ptolemaic system of the universe, a gyroscope-looking creation depicting the sun and planets and other celestial bodies revolving on golden bands of orbits around the earth.  And if you choose that moment to take a look around you at Classic Stage Company's inviting new production, you'll notice how cleverly the environment created by set designer Adrianne Lobel replicates the look of the model, with large celestial globes suspended above the Earthlike playing area and hints of their golden orbits.

The controversy remains fresh as a Daisey down at The Public Theater, where extemporaneous monologist Mike Daisy returns for a new engagement of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

Oddly enough, the most interesting personal observation to be pondered in Shatner's World: We Just Live In It is spoken, not by the titular William Shatner, but by Patrick Stewart.  In a television clip, a conversation between the two captains of the Starship Enterprise, Stewart explains how, despite his acclaim as a classical actor of the stage, he's quite certain that his role of Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation, is what he will ultimately be remembered for.  And he's fine with that.

Given its pedigree as a Pulitzer winner that swept every playwriting award an Off-Broadway entry could win during its premiere run in 1997, you would think that Paula Vogel's How I Learned To Drive would follow the lead of other Off-Broadway successes like Driving Miss Daisy, Steel Magnolias and, most recently, Wit, and return to New York in a Broadway production.

The original Broadway cast album of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth's Merrily We Roll Along is one of those handful of recordings - like Mack and Mabel and Candide - that a musical theatre lover can listen to hundreds of times without hearing a clue as to why the show flopped.  The quick answer, and usually the most unfair one, is 'the book.'  More often, though, the more complete answer is ambition.

When The Public Theater premiered Adam Guettel's Myths and Hymns in 1998 - under the title Saturn Returns - it was presented as a simple song cycle using chamber arrangements of pop, gospel and classical styles in a loose theme of exploring the human relationship to faith, utilizing traditional hymns and ancient myths.  In the new production presented by Prospect Theater Company, director Elizabeth Lucas, through snippets of connecting dialogue and short, silent scenes, gives the evening a bit of a narrative.  The result is too thin to add any dramatic heft, but not so intrusive as to distract from the poetry of the material and the tender and touching performances of her beautifully singing cast.

'If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be called research,' explains a pharmaceutical professional in Rx, Kate Fodor's comic romance set around the big business of health care.

Let's face it, nobody produces a song and sketch revue based on the plays of Ionesco in a theatre on the western outskirts of 55th Street expecting a commercial smash.  During the ten days in 1974 when the original production of Ionescopade ran Off-Broadway, lovers of musical theatre were lining up at box offices to see stars like Carol Channing in Lorelei, Debbie Reynolds in Irene, and Patty and Maxene Andrews in Over Here!  Younger playgoers were discovering themselves with Pippin and rocking out to Grease, while those who go for intellectual snob hits had their choice of the revival of Candide or the new Sondheim/Prince romance A Little Night Music.  Those venturing to Off-Broadway were still flocking to that fresh new musical, The Fantasticks, then in only its fifteenth year.

Despite its title, it's easy to forget what a funny play Margaret Edson's Wit is.  But then, this Pulitzer winner is as much about humor - the dry, detached kind - and its power to attack and defend as it is about a woman's slow and painful death from late stage ovarian cancer.

'It's not fair,' the 14-year-old girl complains to her mom.

Is it possible to recreate someone else's authenticity seven times a week doing the same Off-Broadway show?  If last Saturday night's performance of Gob Squad's Kitchen (You've Never Had It So Good) is any indication, the answer is a resounding... I'm not sure.  But in any case, the lighthearted madness inhabiting The Public Theater's Newman space, devised by the German/British theatrical squad named in the title, makes for a rollicking good time.

There's a beautiful softness that bathes every artistic aspect of director Gordon Edelstein's graceful and endearing production of Athol Fugard's meditation on independence through creativity, The Road To Mecca.

In these days of ever-shrinking Broadway orchestras, it's rather refreshing to walk into a cabaret room and find that seats have been removed from an otherwise sold-out house in order to fit a nine-piece musical ensemble.

I've heard it said that there was this Australian fellow playing the Broadhurst recently who regularly had his audiences whipped up into quite a frenzy.  I've also heard of a Liverpool quartet that could pack screaming fans into a sold out Shea Stadium.  Now, I couldn't tell you if the decibel level was just as high at The Metropolitan Room last week when an American gal named Marilyn Maye was frequently honored with roaring ovations on the final night of her quickie engagement called Marilyn By Request, but I bet Messrs. Jackman, McCartney and Starr would be quite delighted to be still inspiring such boisterous affection as they were approaching their 84th birthdays.

By my count, Outside People is the third theatre piece about a white American in contemporary China to hit town this season.  On the tails of Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs and David Henry Hwang's Chinglish, Zayd Dohrn's dark comedy deals with Yankee naiveté regarding cultural differences when it comes to sex and business overseas.

Hang around the theatre long enough and you grow accustomed to hearing the word 'problematic' applied primarily to two things: a Shakespeare play that's not one of his better efforts or the book of a musical that's rarely revived, despite an excellent score.