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Theater Roundup: “Vanya” and “Ann” on Broadway; “The Flick” and “Talley’s Folly” Off Broadway
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Sunday, 17 March 2013 05:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Written by Christopher Durang; directed by Nicholas Martin
Performances through June 9, 2013
Ann
Written and performed by Holland Taylor; directed by Benjamin Endsley Klein
Performances through June 9, 2013
The Flick
Written by Annie Baker; directed by Sam Gold
Performances through April 7, 2013
Talley’s Folly
Written by Lanford Wilson; directed by Michael Wilson
Performances through May 12, 2013
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| Magnussen, Weaver and Hyde Pierce in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (photo: T. Charles Erickson) |
Christopher Durang’s absurdist plays work best when couched in some kind of reality, even if—as in his latest, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike—it’s theatrical reality. For, as its unwieldy title shows, V&S&M&S begins as a riff on Chekhov, but Durang smartly (and tartly) keeps the Chekhovian references to easily digestible ones that won’t overtax the majority of the audience.
Durang’s play is a melancholy comedy of manners, set not in Mother Russia but Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Sonia and Vanya, middle-aged brother and his adopted sister, are living in their parents’ palatial house nestled in the woods, with a pond and even a cherry orchard of sorts (10 or 11 trees, we are told). While they cared for their parents as they succumbed to Alzheimer’s, sister Masha went on to fame and fortune as a movie and stage star; she returns home with her latest boy toy, a blonde Adonis named Spike, in tow, and skeletons—among other things—come tumbling out of the family closet.
Durang’s humor hasn’t been this zestily on-target in years—he even introduces Cassandra, a black housekeeper whose portents are given delirious spin by the playwright (and an incredibly disciplined performance by Shalite Grant) as she gleefully practices voodoo on Masha, who wants to sell the house she pays for. Sentiment, absurdist humor and family drama are dealt with hilariously but humanely, and Nicholas Martin’s pitch-perfect direction effortlessly juggles Durang’s many balls in the air.
David Korins’ spacious set is a playground for its cast. Billy Magnussen’s Spike is an empty-headed muscle god incarnate, the always mugging Kristine Nielsen overplays outrageously but hilariously as spinster Sonia, while Sigourney Weaver gives Masha a triumphant physical workout, proving she hasn’t lost her agility for broad physical comedy she showed in Ghostbusters. And David Hyde Pierce—who spends most of the play slyly understated as a middle-aged gay man accepting his lot in life—finally lets loose with a marvel of a rant that tweaks 60 years of popular culture in one fell swoop. Only Durang could reference Twitter and Howdy Doody with the same raised eyebrow.
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| Taylor as Ann Richards in Ann (photo: Joan Marcus) |
In Ann, Holland Taylor transforms into the endlessly quotable, bighearted, enormously appealing Texas governor Ann Richards, who not only broke the glass ceiling in a state known for its good old boy politics but literally put her fist through it, as a female Democrat in a state bleeding red.
For two hours, actress-playwright Taylor presents a distinctive portrait of a woman who became what she always wanted—even if, while her father was always supportive, her mother seemed more sanguine, at least to a daughter craving her praise—and soon took the American political world by storm with her barnstorming 1988 Democratic National Convention appearance.
The one-woman show gives Taylor many chances to shine, and she runs with them, from that distinctive Texas drawl to tales told out of school to her chumminess with President Clinton (“Bill”). Shaped with endearing clunkiness by director Benjamin Endsley Klein, Ann begins as a speech to a graduating class then morphs into Richards running the statehouse, fielding requests and papers to sign while battling an unseen assistant (voiced by Julie White) and her hard-to-reach children.
If parts of the play sag—how many phone calls do we need to see, or how many anecdotes, however pointed, do we need to hear?—there’s always Taylor, doing her damnedest to bring out the indomitable spirit of a true American original.
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| The Flick (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Despite its stultifying three-hour running time, Annie Baker’s The Flick—set in a rundown second-run movie theater, a bygone relic of the digital age—is anything but epic in its desultory look at workers who clean the theater after screenings: their conversations, which drop the word “like” more often than any human possibly could, are sub-literate arguments about movies or who likes whom (or “who,” as they would say), along with the occasional foray into the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.”
It’s hard to believe a veteran playwright (and multi-award winner) wrote such an unholy mess. It seems more the work of a rank amateur: the dramatic reversals, if one might call them that, are so leaden and glib that they never seem plausible or amusing. If Avery says he’s allergic to feces (less felicitously than that, of course), then you know he will later encounter a feces-strewn restroom; if Sam mocks Avery’s middle name “Newton,” then of course Sam admits his middle name is “Gruber”; and if Sam explains that he hates moviegoers leaving behind their own food—not even purchased at the concession stand!—then it’s a given he will admit to leaving his bag of tamales at another theater.
Baker has done her filmic research, for what it’s worth: we hear about celluloid vs. digital while she name-drops everything from Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained to The Tree of Life, Avatar and even—most gratuitously and dubiously—Robert Bresson’s Four Nights of a Dreamer.
But it’s all for naught: despite David Zinn’s gorgeously dilapidated set of a 113-seat theater, director Sam Gold does little with the endless pauses and silences Baker has, like, crammed into her script. A game cast doesn’t have a chance playing people who disappear before our eyes faster than the fleeting images on the screen.
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| Burstein and Paulson in Talley's Folly (photo: Joan Marcus) |
The loveliness of Talley’s Folly stems from Lanford Wilson’s willingness to allow his characters to discover themselves in an unlikely love story. Wilson’s 1979 Pulitzer Prize winner, beautifully revived by director Michael Wilson, is anything but a standard-issue romantic comedy: there are one-liners and funny asides galore, but it’s as far from Neil Simon as you can get.
This clash of opposites might sound obvious—Jewish ham Matt Friedman woos small-town WASP Sally Talley in her family’s charming but derelict boathouse, the folly of the title—but Wilson’s probing dialogue and oddish but always believable characters make this anything but a dance of clichés. Rather, this waltz, as Matt calls it, is perfectly timed and performed by Danny Burstein, whose ebullience is cloaked in a tougher, harder shell, and Sarah Paulson, never better as the brittle but tough woman determined to follow her heart wherever it may lead.
Set on the Fourth of July, Talley’s Folly is a prequel to Fifth of July, another Wilson drama that the Roundabout handsomely revived recently. These plays, which count themselves amused and bemused by their idiosyncratic characters, are witty and wise about these utterly human relationships.
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
Golden Theatre, 252 West 45th Street, New York, NY
Ann
Vivian Beaumont Theatre, 150 West 65th Street, New York, NY
The Flick
Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
Talley’s Folly
Laura Pels Theatre, 111 West 46th Street, New York, NY
New Directors New Films Festival Showcases Cutting Edge Work
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Thursday, 14 March 2013 03:52
- Written by Jack Angstreich
This year's New Directors New Films Festival (March 20 - 31, 2013), co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center (70 Lincoln Square #4, New York, NY) and the Museum of Modern Art (11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY), opens with Blue Caprice, the assured feature debut of Alexandre Moors, a thoughtful reconstruction of the relationship between John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, the joint perpetrators of the notorious Beltway sniper attacks in 2002.
Moors adopts a free-associational, impressionistic style that successfully eschews any explanation for the crimes, but he nonetheless assembles a highly insightful portrait of the killers, creating a plausible account of how it all came to pass, especially by means of significant, occasionally moving, details. Although Blue Caprice is a very promising film, it doesn't evidence the intense formal rigor — and, consequently, doesn't demand the same quality of attention — that the most enduring cinema does. However, the directors is aided in telling his story by some expert performances, notably those by Isaiah Washington (as Muhammad), Joey Lauren Adams, and, perhaps above all, Tim Blake Nelson.
Shane Carruth's brilliant Primer from 2004 was a puzzle film where one of the foremost pleasures was not fully understanding what was happening onscreen and taking enjoyment in trying to reconstruct a coherent narrative out of the fragments that one encountered. His next film has been long anticipated — an eight-year interval — and it, Upstream Color, also induces a state of generalized bewilderment — although, after one viewing, by the end I remained more at sea than I did after the first time that I saw Primer, but I hope that subsequent screenings will be more satisfying. I won't even attempt to summarize this bizarre film, a science-fiction romance involving induced amnesia, theft, parasitic worms, and anomie.
Upstream Color has a more fluid visual style than Primer does, more dream-like in its use of camera-movement and more collage-like in its editing —indeed it has something of the character of an assemblage. Despite the transition to a digital format, it is also a more handsome film than its predecessor and Carruth, who acts as his own cinematographer, appears to understand the limitations of digital very well, successfully adopting a cool, muted palette that does much to establish the work's peculiar mood. The polymathic director also contributed a memorable, evocative, synthesizer score and sensitively plays the male lead; his female protagonist is realized in an extraordinary performance by Amy Seimetz.
For more info, go to: newdirectors.org
New Directors New Films
March 20 - 31, 2013
Film Society of Lincoln Center
70 Lincoln Square, #4
New York, NY
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY
March '13 Digital Week II
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 13 March 2013 05:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Ariane et Barbe-bleue
(Opus Arte)
In this 1907 operatic masterpiece by French composer Paul Dukas, the Bluebeard legend is given a thorough going-over, and in this 2012 Barcelona staging, the psychological penetrancy of Dukas’ powerful music is retained despite the Claus Guth’s overdone visualization.
Jeanne-Michele Charbonnet is in tremendous voice as Ariane, the infamous wife killer’s final spouse; legendary Belgian bass-baritone Jose van Dam plays Bluebeard. The Blu-ray image and surround sound are superb.
(Anchor Bay)
Lee Hirsch’s impassioned documentary ran into trouble with the MPAA ratings board when it got an R rating—now rated PG-13, the film still packs a literal and figurative wallop. As with many of today’s strong breed of advocacy documentaries, the film takes its message one step further, virtually demanding audience intervention.
The Blu-ray image looks very good; extras include a shorter version suitable for younger children, deleted scenes and featurettes.
(Kino)
One of Buster Keaton’s lesser features is still pretty funny, with inspired sight gags—no surprise—wedded to a paper-thin scenario. This 1927 comedy contains priceless moments as Buster tries to woo his co-ed love by trying his hand at several sports on campus, which more than compensates for its flimsy structure.
The Blu-ray image, as with all Kino Keatons, looks as good as could be expected for an 86-year-old silent; extras include a commentary by historian Rob Farr and a real curio: The Scribe, a 30-minute Canadian safety short from 1966 that was Keaton’s last filmed appearance.
(Sony)
Based on a true story, this sentimental comedy follows the unlikely relationship between a wealthy white aristocrat and the black ex-con who becomes his caretaker and—of course—teaches him the real meaning of life.
Writer-directors Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s risible portrait, which traffics in stereotypes throughout, is saved by energetic performances by Francois Cluzet and Omar Sy. The Blu-ray image is immaculate; extras are deleted scenes.
(Anchor Bay)
In Stephen Frears’ tasty comedy, Rebecca Hall makes a splendid bimbo with a mathematical mind who finds a lucrative job in shady Vegas betting. Hall transforms a character that on paper could have been a cardboard piece of white trash into a beautifully shaded protagonist who guides us through this fast-paced biopic, based on Beth Raymer’s memoir.
There are nicely shaded portrayals by, of all people, Bruce Willis and Catherine Zeta-Jones, with Vince Vaughan on hand with his usual lunacy. The hi-def image is first-rate; extras comprise deleted scenes.
(Warner)
Director Catherine Hardwicke’s studiously pageant-like nativity contains a few original touches that bring to mind, however fleetingly, better biblical films like Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Ermanno Olmi’s Genesis.
Since it never sustains that high level, we must be satisfied with subtle performances by Ciaran Hinds as King Herod and Keisha Castle-Hughes as a luminous Mary. The hi-def transfer is glorious; lone extra is a making-of featurette.
(Euroarts)
Hans Pfitzner’s sole operatic success, this slow-moving biography of the famous Renaissance composer sounds more like Richard Wagner’s music in its ponderousness than Palestrina’s own contrapuntal 16th century works.
Would that Christian Stuckl’s 2009 Munich staging wasn’t so crudely color-coded: despite an heroic Christopher Ventris in the unyielding title role, Pfitzner’s stately pageant is reduced to a garishness that goes against the dramatic and musical logic of an epic opera. The Blu-ray visuals and sound are excellent; the lone extra is a making-of featurette.
(Fox)
This is one of the most unnecessary remakes in awhile—at least John Milius’s dopey 1984 original took place during the Cold War, so a Russian invasion seemed plausible. But in our post-Sept. 11 century, North Koreans invading the U.S. until a ragtag group of redneck teens stem the tide is drama of a most ridiculous kind.
It appears that director Dan Bradley believes it too, for his action vehicle runs out of steam after 87 minutes, with little energy or thought put into it The hi-def transfer looks fine; no extras.
(Sony)
Centered by a fearless Mary Elizabeth Winstead, this look at an alcoholic young schoolteacher is a scathing portrait of self-destruction and possible redemption. The good supporting cast—Megan Mullally, Octavia Spencer, Nick Offerman and Aaron Paul as a confused husband—gives Winstead the room she needs for an indelible characterization.
The Blu-ray image is quite good; extras include Winstead and director James Ponsoldt’s commentary, deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.
Tristana
(Cohen)
Luis Bunuel’s brittle 1970 black comedy of a woman who slowly turns the tables on her seducer stars Catherine Deneuve and urbane Fernando Rey: though parts show the master surrealist sleepwalking, at least he doesn’t fall prey to the arbitrary surrealism infesting his final trio of overrated French films.
The hi-def transfer gives Buñuel’s compositions a lovely filmic look, but the soundtrack situation is less good: Spanish and English audio is included but not French, meaning we don’t hear Deneuve’s own voice. Deneuve discusses this and other matters in an informative commentary; there’s also an interview with Bunuel scholar Peter William Evans and an alternate ending.
Collaborator
(IFC)
In his first film as writer-director, Martin Donovan penned juicy parts for himself as a creatively blocked writer and David Morse as a wingnut neighbor who takes him hostage while they reminisce over booze.
Although the story goes nowhere, the scenes between the men are immaculately performed glimpses of diametrically opposite lives. Extras are interviews with Donovan and Olivia Williams, who plays the writer’s old flame.
(Sony)
The honest truth is that this earnest drama about an international corporation’s ties to the military wing of the Ecuardoran government wastes good actors like Forrest Whittaker, Eva Longoria, Kim Coates and even Andy Garcia.
As drama, there’s little urgency in Damian Lee’s film, and as propaganda there’s little of real substance. The lone extra is a behind-the-scenes featurette.
(Sundance Selects)
Memory and forgetting are the powerful weapons in Arnon Goldfinger’s documentary, in which he discovers, while cleaning out his deceased grandmother’s apartment, the extremely tortured history behind their survival as German-born Jews.
As wartime secrets and lies go, this is as devastating as it gets, as the link between a Nazi official and his grandparents becomes disturbingly clear—and just as disturbingly murky.
(Icarus)
Nobel-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel’s eventful life illuminates Petra Seeger’s documentary. Raised in Austria, his parents were murdered by the Nazis while he escaped to New York to become a scientist and start a family.
The link between his groundbreaking brain research and his own difficult history converges as he revisits Vienna with his family to bring everything full circle.
(Arthaus Musik)
German composer Wolfgang Rihm’s opera from Sophocles’ play, which premiered in 1987, was broadcast on German TV. As always with Rihm, this is inaccessible but sometimes powerful drama; it helps immensely that Andreas Schmidt in the title role and Emily Golden as Jokasta are so fiercely committed.
Equally interesting is the response at the end, when many audible boos are heard, particularly when Rihm takes his bows.
(Acorn)
Although Maggie Smith got raves and a 1969 Oscar for her portrayal of the irrepressible girls’ teacher in 1930s Scotland in the film based on Muriel Spark’s novel and Jay Presson Allen’s play, this 1978 British mini-series is more satisfying.
The main reason, in addition to its six hours fleshing out characters and their colorful era, is the presence of Geraldine McEwan, whose titanic performance as Miss Brodie will be the standard all others are measured by (and that includes Cynthia’s Nixon onstage in New York in 2006).
(Opus Arte)
Two towering actress-singers center this pair of classic operas which deal with beheading and infanticide. First, a 2007 staging of Richard Strauss’s Salome in Milan is given a real jolt by the high-voltage presence of German soprano Nadja Michael as the teenaged temptress who is served John the Baptist’s severed head on a platter.
Then there’s a 2012 Swedish production of Leos Janacek’s tragic romance Jenufa, as Swedish-American soprano Erika Sunnegardh cuts an imposing yet sympathetic figure in the title role.
Alice Sara Ott—Pictures
(DG)
Pianist Alice Sara Ott gave herself an imposing mountain to climb for this concert at the Mariinsky Concert Hall in St. Petersburg: but she dispatches Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition with finesse, giving the lie to complaints that it’s an overplayed warhorse.
And she doesn’t skimp on the recital’s second piece: Schubert’s D-major sonata, while not up to the trio of masterpieces he crowned his solo piano writing with in the last year of his short life, is a work of virtuosity made easy by Ott’s fleet playing.
(Halle)
Saint-Saens—Le Deluge
(Ars)
These coincidental releases of rarely-heard biblical oratorios pair vocal works by England’s Edward Elgar and France’s Camille Saint-Saens. Elgar’s The Apostles has shining moments of great beauty, and the Halle ensemble’s performance, led by Mark Elder, has terrific soloists (Rebecca Evans, Alice Coote, Paul Groves) and choirs.
Saint-Saens’ The Deluge dramatizes Noah’s flood with admirable musical leanness; Alexander Burda’s conducting showcases the fine orchestra and chorus, and the superior soloists are Isabelle Muller-Cant, Carolin Strecker and Daniel Schreiber and Philip Niederberger.
(Pierian)
To Argentine master Alberto Ginastera, pianist Barbara Nissman was one of his best interpreters: he even dedicated his final work, the Piano Sonata No. 3, to her.
She returns the favor with scintillating performances of his three major piano concertos: the early Conceierto Argentino, never recorded before; and his two piano concertos, among the most inventive and original of any in the 20th century. Nissman’s playing leads the way, occasionally leaving conductor Kenneth Kiesler and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra in the dust.
Spanish Songs
(Harmonia Mundi)
Several of Richard Strauss’s lesser-known songs—including the lovely cycle Kramerspiegel—are grouped together on this enticing disc by creamy-voiced soprano Elizabeth Watts; her superb accompanist is pianist Roger Vignoles.
And on a disc doubling as a tasty Spanish sampler, shimmering soprano Sylvia Schwartz and accomplished pianist Malcolm Martineau give memorable readings of songs by Enrique Granados, including an aria from his opera Goyescas; and Catalan master, Xavier Montsalvatge, whose Five Canciones Negras is justifiably considered a masterpiece.
Off-Broadway Roundup: "The Revisionist"; "The Madrid"; "Clive"; "Belleville"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 08 March 2013 05:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Revisionist
Written by Jesse Eisenberg; directed by Kip Fagan
Performances through April 21, 2013
The Madrid
Written by Liz Flahive; directed by Leigh Silverman
Performances through April 21, 2013
Clive
Written by Jonathan Marc Sherman; directed by Ethan Hawke
Performances through March 9, 2013
The New Group, 410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
thenewgroup.org
Belleville
Written by Amy Herzog; directed by Anne Kaufmann
Performances through April 14, 2013
NY Theater Workshop, 79 East 4th Street, New York, NY
nytw.org
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| Redgrave and Eisenberg in The Revisionist (photo: Sandra Coudert)
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The Revisionist, actor Jesse Eisenberg’s meager play about a Holocaust secret, has nothing on Sophie’s Choice or a more recent play about the Armenian genocide, Red Dog Howls for shock value.
David, a struggling author desperate to finish a new book, travels to the Polish port of Szczecin where his distant cousin Maria lives alone. Why this New Yorker finds it necessary to spend thousands of dollars and travel thousands of miles when he could just hunker down somewhere closer isn’t explained, but then we wouldn’t have a play.
David and the 70-ish Maria’s interaction is rendered in broad strokes: she hopes to take David sightseeing; he wants to remain in her bedroom—she sleeps on the couch while he’s there—with his laptop. His narcissistic personality notwithstanding, the two call a truce over a bottle of vodka and bad tofu: he loosens up by reciting the “Who’s on first?” routine, and she admits her wartime secret, which puts a new light on their relationship.
This wouldn’t be much from a veteran playwright: from a moonlighting Oscar nominated actor, it’s attitudinizing and unfeeling. Under Kip Fagan’s direction, Eisenberg trots out his nervous tics as David; Daniel Orestes plays Maria’s friend Zenon (who speaks Polish exclusively) with good humor; and Maria, enacted by a theatrical grand dame, Vanessa Redgrave, would be a worthy protagonist in a better play. The lone authenticity comes from set designer John McDermott’s spot-on rendering of Maria’s apartment interior.
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| Falco in The Madrid (photo: Joan Marcus) |
In The Madrid, the endlessly resourceful Edie Falco hits a wall in this shallow comic drama by Liz Flahive, a producer on Falco’s show Nurse Jackie, proving the actress is nothing if not loyal. Falco plays Martha, a middle-aged kindergarten teacher who leaves her classroom and disappears one day; after that, we follow Martha’s college-graduated daughter Sarah in the fallout of Mom leaving without a word.
Flahive’s play might have been onto something by showing Sarah and her father John coming to terms with Martha’s disappearance, rebuilding their own lives and dealing with Martha’s cranky mother Rose, a stubborn grandmother who can’t accept that she can no longer get behind the wheel of her own car.
Instead, Flahive is too busy avoiding the elephant in the room: why Martha leaves to set up housekeeping in a rundown downtown apartment complex, the Madrid, near where she, her husband and daughter lived in the suburbs. Martha never gives a straight answer when she starts meeting her daughter surreptitiously: we also discover that she’s run away before, including after Sarah was born, but nothing rings true to these characters; it’s a lazy conceit to avoid the deeper, darker themes her history suggests.
Despite director Leigh Silverman’s sensitive hand, an excellent cast is hamstrung by their writer. In addition to Falco, John Ellison Conlee (John), Frances Sternhagen (Rose), Phoebe Strole (Sarah) and, as concerned neighbors, Heidi Schreck, Seth Clayton and Christopher Evan Welch deserve far better material than they’ve been given.
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| Hawke in Clive (photo: Monique Carboni)
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Bertolt Brecht’s plays still resonate, but Jonathan Marc Sherman’s updating of Brecht’s early effort Baal is an uninspired 1990s’ hipster comedy that evaporates while you watch. Clive is named after its rock star protagonist, whose downfall is shown through a series of scenes that wallow in his partying, screwing and eventual demise after he kills his one true love—and it’s not one of the many women he seduces.
Brecht’s anti-hero has been transformed by Sherman into a clichéd grunge rocker; and, as Ethan Hawke plays him—his peroxide-drenched hair making him look like Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong—Clive is gleefully amoral, and the actor chews Derek McLane’s imaginative post-industrial scenery in a role that obviously appealed to him because he could sing, strum a guitar, snort coke, scream and screw nearly everyone onstage.
The other problem is that director Ethan Hawke allows everyone else to ham it up, mitigating his own unsubtle star turn. Vincent d’Onofrio gives an epically lunatic performance as Doc, Clive’s closest friend, barking, howling, and braying, all in a Southern accent. Brooks Ashmanskas wanders around in wide-eyed bluster, Zoe Kazan pretty much disappears every time she walks on as one of several interchangeable women whom Clive discards, and the playwright himself plays a few roles without distinction.
In keeping with the Brechtian spirit, the performers’ dialogue includes their stage directions, and the songs warbled include Brecht and Kurt Weill’s classic “Alabama Song,” which in this context sounds as forgettable as everything else onstage.
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| Dizzia and Keller in Belleville (photo: Joan Marcus)
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Amy Herzog’s inflated rep as a bright young playwright far outpaces her achievements. 4000 Miles, The Great God Pan, and now Belleville are weightless concoctions posing as something deeper, with uncompelling characters battling one another’s psyches and the playwright’s contrivances.
Belleville might be her worst offender since Herzog’s promising setup is completely undermined by her tacked-on “thriller” plot. Abby and Zack are a young American couple living in the unexotic Parisian neighborhood of the title (Herzog surely “discovered” it through the animated French whimsy The Triplets of Belleville). Abby is a failed actress turned failed yoga teacher—how, when she doesn’t speak French?—while Zack works for Doctors Without Borders. Or does he?
Herzog soon exposes small tears in what seems a fabric of happiness. At the beginning, Abby returns home and catches Zack jerking off while—he says—he’s playing hooky from his job. And Zack, who’s behind four months on the rent (which Abby doesn’t know), likes smoking weed with their Senegalese landlord Alioune. Abby is still reeling from her mom’s death years before, can’t handle not taking her medication, gets drunk easily and worries about her sister in New Jersey, about to deliver a baby at any minute.
When these dramatic shortcuts crash into one another, Belleville accelerates its descent into oblivion; when a large knife is ominously brought onstage to slice a baguette, there’s no doubt it will be used for bloodier ends later on. Far too much remains unexplained and unexplored: would Abby be so clueless about Zack that she wouldn’t catch on to his months-long ruse? Could a pothead like Zack function normally? Would a responsible mother—Alioune’s wife Amina—leave her baby monitor in the Americans’ apartment? And why that an inscrutable final scene, even for French speakers?
Maria Dizzia and Greg Keller enact Herzog’s couple persuasively, but are defeated by Herzog’s flat dramatics, which also hamper director Anne Kaufmann’s desperate attempts to ramp up thrills and suspense with a glacial pace. Paris is worth returning to, but avoid Belleville.
The Revisionist
Rattlestick @ the Cherry Lane Theatre, 38 Commerce Street, New York, NY
The Madrid
Manhattan Theatre Club, 131 West 55th Street, New York, NY
Clive
The New Group, 410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
Belleville
NY Theater Workshop, 79 East 4th Street, New York, NY
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