From Harlem to the Bronx: Don't be a Menace

In 1968, Israel Horovitz wrote a shocking play, The Indian Wants the Bronx, which won an Obie award for him as well as for the two young guys in the play- Al Pacino and John Cazale- it launched all their careers and was a powerful piece about juvenile delinquency, xenophobia, and the terror of being lost in New York at night.  Four decades later, the play seems nearly tame- the hoodlums are jerks, but about as frightening to today's audiences as the Jets in West Side Story pirouetting down the street. 

The plot is this: Gupta, a lost East Indian man in traditional dress, is waiting near a bus stop, late at night.  Gupta speaks no English.  Two kids, Joey and Murph, come along, waiting for the bus; they begin teasing the Indian out of boredom, then trying to one-up each other, harass him more and more.

This production is nominally set in period, though that was a little unclear.  Furthermore, the director, Doug Schneider (who also plays Murph), has cast Josh Farhadi, an actor who also appears to be of Indian descent, as Joey- this strange bit of color-blind casting might have been intended to illuminate the piece, but it only raises questions for the audience.  The two actors never seem to summon up the amount of casual menace that the play needs (even the Jets can be menacing at times), nor the subtextual homoeroticism in the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf-style games between the two.  A strange moment occurs when Murph, who has left the stage, re-enters unseen and overhears Joey talking about him to the Indian, then exits again without speaking- this entrance is not in my copy of the script, and since there's no real payoff later, it was a subplot left dangling that only distracted from Joey's monologue. Farhadi plays the underlying tenderness of Joey well, though he doesn't have a grip on the semi-psychotic front he puts up.  Schneider is all façade, rarely showing the abused kid underneath (possibly because he seems a little too old for the role).  Himad Beg, as Gupta, has been cast a lot younger than the role demands, but is nevertheless a charming and naïve presence. His final moments are wonderful.

The curtain-raiser was Rats, also by Horovitz from the same year.  This piece, being allegorical, fares the ravages of time better.  Jebbie (Roy DeVito) is the King Rat of a swanky (for rats) Harlem apartment.  Bobby (Delanie Shawn Murray), a younger down-on-his luck rat from the poverty (for rats) of Greenwich, Connecticut, enters, hoping to get a piece of Jebbie's luxurious existence.  He tries to bribe Jebbie with cheeses his mother left him before she committed suicide (by eating rat poison).  Eventually Jebbie is won over by their shared sense of ratdom and paranoia, but then Baby (Monisha Shiva) wakes up.  Baby is the human child who lives there, and Bobby immediately wants to eat her.

The actors are good.  DeVito mainly channels Robert DeNiro, though sadly for the play it's mostly funny DeNiro, not badass DeNiro.  Murray is good as Bobby, though he doesn't always seem to understand his character's motivations.  Shiva does fine work as Baby, though similarly with the color-blind casting in Bronx, she's not black, as the other characters continually say she is.

Schneider also directs this piece.  The fight choreography of both pieces (by Michael G. Chin) is impressive, though in Rats, an actor nearly landed in an audience member's lap.  The sets (by Stanley Czarnecki & Diane Corrado) are impressive and very detailed.  Lighting by Kevin B. Ploth is great, though the actors occasionally don't seem able to actually find their light.

On the whole, although the evening is adequate productions of some really good plays, the message of twisted hope and tolerance still shines through.

From Harlem to the Bronx: Two Plays by Israel Horovitz
Manhattan Theatre Source, 177 McDougal Street.
Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8pm, Fridays and Saturdays at both 7pm and 9:30pm, through March 29^th.
Tickets $20, available at smarttix.com or by calling 212-868-4444

Photos by Scott Singer
1. Himad Beg, Josh Farhadi, and Doug Schnider
2. Roy DeVito, Monisha Shiva, and Delanie Shawn Murray