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NYC Theater Reviews—‘The Gin Game’ on Broadway; ‘Perfect Arrangement’ and ‘Clever Little Lies’ off-Broadway

The Gin Game
Written by D.L. Coburn; directed by Leonard Foglia
Performances through January 10, 2016

Perfect Arrangement
Written by Topher Payne; directed by Michael Barakiva
Performances through November 6, 2015

Clever Little Lies
Written by Joe DiPietro; directed by David Saint
Performances through January 3, 2016

James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson in The Gin Game (photo: Joan Marcus)


That D.L. Coburn's The Gin Game won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for Drama says less about its quality and more about those who chose it. This slight two-hander about two lovably cranky oldsters in a senior citizens' home who bond and bicker while playing cards might be a sure-fire crowd-pleaser, but it's little more than an enjoyable way to pass two hours in the theater with two living legends.
 
Its premiere starred real-life couple Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, followed by E.G. Marshall and Maureen Stapleton, as Weller and Fonsia. For this first Broadway staging since 1997 (when Charles Durning and Julie Harris starred), two of our biggest—and oldest—stage stars are headlining: James Earl Jones and Cecily Tyson. And they are superb together, making the play's gimmicky surface—the constant repetition of the games, or of Weller's counting the cards while dealing, or of their cantankerous back-and-forth, which shows their growing (if grudging) affection—seem natural and organic.
 
There are moments—their tender dance, their final spewing of a certain F-word—when Jones and Tyson transcend the script's built-in limitations, while Leonard Foglia's direction spotlights what's amusing more than what's dramatic. The Gin Game is nowhere near top-drawer, except when pros like the 84-year-old Jones and 90-year-old Tyson play it at the top of their game.
 
The cast of Perfect Arrangement (photo: James Leynse)
 
Two off-Broadway plays, Perfect Arrangement and Clever Little Lies, both nod to TV and stage sitcoms to construct their comic tales. Topher Payne's Perfect Arrangement, which explores the closeted lives of homosexuals in Washington, D.C., circa 1950, has a surface resemblance to '50s "family" comedies like Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It To Beaver, I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners. 
 
But such wink-winks and nudge-nudges allow Payne to slyly tell his story of two gay couples posing as straight husbands and wives. Bob Martindale, a Department of State employee, and Jim Baxter, his schoolteacher lover, pretend to be married to, respectively, the stay-at-home Millie and her girlfriend Norma, who works with Bob to ferret out Communists during the height of the Red Scare; in fact, they are so good at their job that their unctuous boss Theodore Sunderson wants them weeding out other undesirables and perverts, straight and (it goes without saying) gay. Theodore's ditsy wife Kitty and Barbara Grant, an unapologetically loose straight woman who works with Bob and Norma, round out the septet.
 
Although Payne wittily lampoons the era's rigid homosexual and straight ideology, at times he's too facile: the men literally go into and out of a closet to reach their apartment adjoining the women's. The laughs are there, and if they don't go too deeply, they do provide food for thought. Michael Barakiva's adroit directing balances sitcom tropes with Payne's more serious provocations, and the cast has great fun with the just-this-side-of-cartoon characters, especially Mikaela Feely-Lehmann, whose Millie is intelligent, forthright and shrewdly funny.
 
Marlo Thomas in Clever Little Lies (photo: Matthew Murphy)
 
In Clever Little Lies, Joe DiPietro takes his cue from Neil Simon's one-liner-filled '60s and '70s comedies; that it stars Marlo Thomas also nods to her That Girl sitcom. Unlike Living on Love, a farce that was DOA on Broadway last spring, Lies shows that DiPietro can make his jokes hit their marks, even if too many are vulgar and crass, and, unlike the lazy stereotypes of Love, here there are characters worth spending time with.
 
When Billy tells his father, Bill, Sr., that he's cheating on his beloved wife Jane—who just had a baby—with a gorgeous 23-year-old personal trainer named Jasmine, dad inadvertently spills the beans to his wife Alice, who invites her son and daughter-in-law to the house to talk. As things are hashed out among the foursome, arguments ensue, drinks are downed, and dad eventually walks out in a huff. But this is no Virginia Woolf: DiPietro simply wants laughs, and he gets them, even throwing a late curveball that sheds new light on mom and dad's marriage, along with Billy's own infidelity.
 
David Saint's snappy staging smartly builds the conversations toward their humorous payoffs, while his acting quartet—Marlo Thomas (Alice), Greg Mullavey (Bill, Sr.), George Merrick (Billy), Kate Wetherhead (Jane)—perfectly hits the beats of most of the jokes.


The Gin Game
Golden Theatre, 252 West 45th Street, New York, NY
thegingamebroadway.com

Perfect Arrangement
Primary Stages, The Duke on 42nd Street, 229 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
primarystages.org

Clever Little Lies
Westside Theatre Upstairs, 407 West 43rd Street, New York, NY
cleverlittlelies.com

October '15 Digital Week II

Blu-rays of the Week
The Gallows
(Warner Bros)
There's little originality left in the old found-footage filmmaking bandwagon, although some keep trying: case in point, Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff's movie follows teens through their darkened school one night as they encounter ghosts with a penchant for hanging.
 
 
 
There is a certain cleverness in the telling, even if the shocks are both predictable and cheap, but the found-footage gimmick makes scant sense even by the low standards of the genre. If that doesn't bother you, this may well be up your alley. The film looks OK in hi-def; extras include alternate version of the film, featurettes, deleted scenes and a gag reel.
 
In the Courtyard
(Cohen Media)
Catherine Deneuve and Gustave Kervern give nicely restrained performances as unlikely allies in director Pierre Salvadori's contrived but touching melodrama about a new apartment complex caretaker and how he slowly becomes the close friend of an eccentric retiree.
 
 
 
There are sitcom situations galore in Salvadori's storytelling, but his heart's in the right place; even the manipulative denouement is made far more watchable by Deneuve and Kervern than it should be. The hi-def transfer looks fine; lone extra is director interview.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Matchstick Men
(Warner Bros)
Ridley Scott's offbeat 2003 comedy, which stars Sam Rockwell and Nicolas Cage as hucksters whose lives are changed irreversibly when Alison Lohman shows up as Cage's estranged daughter, has problems in Ted and Nicholas Griffin's clever but bumpy script, but it also gives three actors a golden chance to show what they can do.
 
Cage's weird persona works for him for once, Rockwell is always first-rate and Lohman (a brilliant actress who disappeared far too soon) gives another in her extraordinary series of flawless performances as confused young women. Helpful, too, is Scott's surprisingly restrained directing. The film looks good on Blu; extras are  a commentary and hour-long making-of documentary.
 
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
(Fox)
There's a lot wrong with Alfonso Gomez-Rejun's movie, whose simultaneous mawkishness and smart-ass hipness in depicting the friendship between a high school movie buff and a terminally ill teenager, so much so that I was unmoved by the dying girl's plight and left cold by the self-indulgent movie parodies, which are far less clever than they think they are.
 
There are a few amusing observations about high school life, and Olivia Cooke shines as the girl, but too much is derivative and self-congratulatory. The movie's hi-def transfer is sharp; extras are an audio commentary, featurettes, interviews and deleted scenes.
 
 
 
 
 
San Andreas
(Warner Bros)
These days, even though special effects dominate movies like never before, watching Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge get destroyed in an earthquake—as they both do in Brad Peyton's wooden disaster movie—isn't very impressive, since it all still looks fake.
 
Still, despite phoned-in acting, cheap flag-waving and ridiculous coincidences that ruins what little plot there is, San Andreas remains entertaining in a rubbernecking sort of way. The hi-def transfer is first-rate; extras include featurettes, director commentary, deleted scenes and gag reel.
 
Tomorrowland
(Disney)
Stuffed to the gills with elaborate sets and special effects and endless avenues that its plot travels (sometimes several at once), Brad Bird's sci-fi fantasy-mystery takes 130 minutes to tell its convoluted tale about invention, imagination and, ultimately, prevention of our own Armageddon.
 
A noble virtue, that, but Bird's own script (with two others) is insufficient to explore it all coherently and cleanly; instead, Bird's limitless visual imagination conjures amazing images, which only underscore what a dazzling but frustrating mess this is. On Blu-ray, the movie looks stupendous; extras include featurettes and deleted scenes.
 
 
 
 
 
VikingsComplete 3rd Season
(Fox)
In the latest season of this grandly entertaining guilty pleasure of a series, the army of Norse warriors follows its king's war-like mentality into a bloody and violent invasion of France, showing off the first-rate recreations of an entirely forgotten era in history.
 
While fictional and often overdramatized, this can still be watched as history shown as it happens, down and dirty and muddy. There's a great Blu-ray transfer; extras are extended episodes, interactive guide, deleted scenes, commentaries and featurettes.
 
DVDs of the Week
CPO SharkeyComplete 2nd Season
The Don Rickles TV Specials, Volume 1
(Time Life)
Everybody's favorite insult comic, who helped define a politically incorrect era, parlayed that notoriety into a TV career on the sitcom CPO Sharkey, whose humor is often dated, sexist and racist but just as often funny, as several episodes from the second (and final) season show.
 
Along with Sharkey and his regular Tonight Show appearances, Rickles also hosted several specials during this time, and Volume 1 presents two of those, as Rickles spars with guests Johnny Carson, Harvey Korman, Carroll O'Connor and Anne Meara, and even acts, sings and dances (!). Lone Sharkey extra is a 2015 cast reunion; TV Specials extras are new Rickles intros.
 
Deutschland '83
(Kino Lorber)
In this absorbing eight-part German TV drama, a young East German soldier is recruited to become a spy in the West in return for his sick mother getting a needed operation: the historical details are unerringly right, as the lifestyles of both East and West during a crucial cold war era are displayed to great effect.
 
The superlative cast is led by Jonas Nay as the spy and Sonja Gerhardt, giving a nuanced portrayal of his confused girlfriend. My lone quibble is an over-reliance on then-current songs: in addition to Phil Collins, David Bowie and the Police, there's Duran Duran, whose lyrics become an amusing quandary for flummoxed East German officials. The series' theme song is Peter Schilling's "Major Tom (Coming Home)."
 
Driving Miss Daisy
(PBS)
In this 2014 performance of Alfred Urhy's award-winning play about the long relationship of an elderly Southern matron and her loyal chauffeur, Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones give commanding portrayals full of grit, humor and sadness, with Boyd Gaines equaling them in the thankless role of her son.
 
I saw director David Esbjornson's 2011 revival on Broadway with Vanessa Redgrave and Jones; Lansbury's performance is warmer, less fussy than Redgrave's. This PBS broadcast superlatively records an involving staging of a wonderfully humane play.

NYC Theater Reviews—‘Fool for Love’ on Broadway; ‘The Christians’ off-Broadway

Fool for Love
Written by Sam Shepard; directed by Daniel Aukin
Performances through December 6, 2015

The Christians
Written by Lucas Hnath; directed by Les Waters
Performances through October 25, 2015

Sam Rockwell and Nina Arianda in Fool for Love (photo: Joan Marcus)


Among Sam Shepard's most concentrated plays, Fool for Love keeps erupting into violence: mainly the verbal kind between its antagonists/lovers/possible half-siblings Eddie and May, but also the physical confrontations as they argue and make up (rinse-repeat) in an endless—and endlessly vicious—cycle.
 
It all plays out in the confines of a slum of a motel room in the Mojave Desert, which is where May is staying after finally leaving Eddie for the (supposed) last time; he's tracked her down, driving some 2480 miles, he says, to drag her back with him. 
 
As they go at it again and again, an old man sits off to the side, occasionally interrupting with his own commentary: he may (or may not) be their father, depending on his (or their) version of the couple's long and tortured tale. Also on hand is an innocent party, Martin, at the motel to take May on a date: he gets caught in their fracas against his will.
 
For 75 tightly-wound minutes in Daniel Aukin's taut staging, Shepard's characters do a dance—not of death, exactly, but of the complicated emotions his title suggests. And although May and Eddie aren't really fools, their ongoing battles have formed permanent scars on their hearts which they carry around proudly, exhausted but unbowed.
 
Nina Arianda's trenchant May is primarily an expressively physical performance, her subtle body language speaking volumes about the unbearable tension built up over this long-gestating relationship. 
 
Even better is Sam Rockwell's would-be cowboy Eddie: he looks and plays the part—ten-gallon hat, spurs, gun-cleaning, fancy lassoing—and displays the crushing loneliness populating his soul with or without May. 
 
Rockwell's physical comedy, whether a split after he downs a drink or his playful lying on the floor near May's bed when Martin arrives, is impressive and funny, but sharpest are his recitations of Shepard's exquisitely jagged, poetic language, particularly Eddie's monologue of remembering when he met his father's other family, including a lovely teenage girl whom he would fall in love with. 
 
Shepard, whose more recent plays have become more irritatingly irrational in their broken-down narratives and characters, was at his artistic peak when he wrote Fool for Love, which was surrounded by the equally hard-hitting True West, Buried Child and A Lie of the Mind: his fractured style perfectly embodies these fractured people, if only for a few bruising, but beautifully rendered, moments.
 
The cast of The Christians (photo: Joan Marcus)
 
In The Christians, Lucas Hnath tackles the issue of faith: specifically how a shift in one congregation's tenet leads to an unbridgeable rift and near-collapse of the church itself, which grew steadily from a small storefront to the large, imposing building the people now worship in. 
 
The play dramatizes the fallout after pastor Paul preaches that God told him there is no hell, which causes hell to pay among his parishioners, including his associate pastor, dynamic young Joshua, who leaves to start his own successful church. 
 
Paul must deal with his choice's ethics: is it just a coincidence he brought up this "new" tenet after his church's debt was paid off, since he knew it would be a deal-breaker for some, as bemused parishioner Jenny says? He also must deal with wife Elizabeth's decision not to follow him, and with church elder Jay bemoaning the practical (i.e., business) fallout of such a momentous moral decision.
 
Hnath has written a serious play about a serious subject—and Les Waters directs snappily on Dane Waffrey's sparkling church interior set—but unfortunately Hnath's ideas and plotting are too pat, his arguments neither forceful nor penetrating enough. 
 
Still, there is his intelligent dialogue, which partially makes up for such gimmickry as the pastor haphazardly introducing other characters' dialogue and the truly annoying use of microphone cords, which makes the actors—mostly the excellent Andrew Garman as Paul—keep trying to avoid tripping. Wouldn't such a wealthy church use wireless mikes instead? 
 
And the 90-minute play is also padded by hymns sung by a first-rate choir, which is another gimmick recently deployed by A.R. Gurney when Cole Porter tunes dominated his slight, and short, comedy Love and Money. Even though less illuminating than it purports to be, The Christians remains an interesting sermon.


Fool for Love
Friedman Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, 261 West 47th Street, New York, NY
foolforlovebroadway.com

The Christians
Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
playwrightshorizons.org

October '15 Digital Week I

Blu-rays of the Week

Beat the Devil

Salt of the Earth 
(The Film Detective)
Two B&W classics have gotten the hi-def treatment, starting with John Huston's Beat the Devil, the great 1953 caper starring Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida, Jennifer Jones and Robert Morley: Huston's sly directing and the top-notch cast give this black-comic adventure the extra push it needs to stay in the memory.
 
1954's Salt of the Earth, made by blacklisted members of the original "Hollywood Ten," is a crudely effective propagandistic drama about a miners’ strike against a heartless New Mexico company. Subtle it ain't, but its glimpse at workers' travails fifty years ago still resonates today. Both movies look decent if unspectacular on Blu-ray.
 
Magic Mike XXL 
(Warner Brothers)
Though markedly inferior to the surprise 2012 original hit, that won't matter to anyone who just wants to watch this sequel to see Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, et al (excepting Matthew McConaughey), doing their patented stripper-dance moves. Steven Soderbergh's fingerprints are all over this, even if he's only listed as cinematographer and editor and his associate Gregory Jacobs is director.
 
For those who want cheesecake to go with their beefcake, there are too-short appearances by Amber Heard, Elizabeth Banks and Jada Pinkett Smith. The film looks sharp on Blu; extras comprise two featurettes and an extended dance scene. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Manglehorn 
(IFC)
Al Pacino gives what for him is an understated performance as a locksmith whose business and personal lives are fading in his twilight years as he juggles a distant Wall Street son, an aging and sickly cat, the memory of his dead wife and a budding relationship with a charming bank teller, played by the also usually flamboyant (but here low-key) Holly Hunter.
 
Director David Gordon Green directs with empathy, and his reining in both of his stars keeps this offbeat character study from becoming too off-key. The movie looks excellent on Blu.
 
Nowitzki—The Perfect Shot 
(Magnolia)
This okay documentary about Dallas Mavericks' MVP Dirk Nowitzki—the first German-born player to make it truly big in the NBA—shows his life in Germany and eventual move to the United States and big league superstardom.
 
Director Sebastian Bernhardt not only talks to Dirk, his parents and mentor (who all speak German for those for whom reading subtitles may be an issue) but also his teammates, coach, GM, owner and even rivals like Kobe Bryant. The movie has a superior hi-def transfer; extras are deleted scenes and a Nowitzki interview. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Poltergeist 
(Fox)
When the young daughter of bemused dad and mom, after staring at the big-screen TV in their new house, says "They're here," why don’t her parents realize they’re in a remake of Tobe Hooper and Steven Spielberg’s 1982 ghostly smash?
 
Although it follows the original fairly closely—except for making the poltergeist-busting psychic male and including a lame fake ending—there’s nothing particularly interesting going on; the usually reliable Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt are wasted as the parents. Watch (or re-watch) the original instead. There’s a first-rate hi-def transfer; extras are an extended cut and alternate ending.
 
The Rocky Horror Picture Show40th Anniversary 
(Fox)
It's been 40 years since the ultimate camp/cult movie was released, and if you're watching it for the first time, you might ask what all the fuss is about: the humor is sophomoric, the songs forgettable and the acting over the top.
 
But that's not the point: the movie has taken on a life of its own for millions of fans, and this new edition will make it even easier for them to party like it's 1975 whenever they want. The hi-def transfer is first-rate; extras include U.S. and U.K. versions of the film, audio commentary, deleted scenes, alternate opening and ending.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
When Marnie Was There 
(Universal)
The latest animated masterpiece from the legendary Studio Ghibli is this moving adaptation of Joan G. Robinson's young adult novel about the memories of a young orphaned girl, who discovers her own family history while staying at a remote seaside village to recover from an illness. Unlike many Ghibli films, director Hiromasa Yonebayashi keeps the fantastical stuff to a minimum, but there remains the usual astonishing animation that explores the inner lives of its beautifully rendered characters.
 
The film (whose vibrant colors are vividly retained on Blu-ray) can be watched in the original Japanese or in English with familiar voices like Hailee Steinfeld, Vanessa Williams and Catherine O'Hara. Extras include featurettes.
 
Zipper 
(Alchemy)
A hot-shot lawyer’s fast-track to the district attorney's office is complicated by his obsession with paid escorts: once the escort service is busted by the feds, he finds his whole world—personal and professional—starts to crash around him.
 
For its first half, Mora Stephens' drama follows its protagonist’s double life with knowing plausibility: when it all becomes unhinged and turns risible, an accomplished cast—led by Patrick Wilson's lawyer, Lena Headey as his loyal wife and Dianna Agron as the escort he falls for—can’t overcome a script as obsessively one-track minded as its hero. The film looks decent on Blu; extras include deleted scenes with director's commentary.
 
DVDs of the Week
Darling Lili
Oh! What a Lovely War 
(Warner Archive)
Two massive 1969 box-office flops are back on DVD, starting with Darling Lili, Blake Edwards' overblown paean to wife Julie Andrews, who stars as the singer/spy: despite her charm, the entire enterprise is swamped by its large scale at the expense of the smaller, more interesting story that's been buried.
 
Likewise, Richard Attenborough's musical-comic look at World War I, Oh! What a Lovely War, favors big-name cameos from many British movie stars—John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson and Susannah York, for starters—and ends up with an incoherent, scattershot approach to its subject. Both films are, sadly, not restored; Lili extras comprise 19 deleted scenes, while War includes Attenborough's audio commentary and a three-part retrospective documentary.
 
Famous Nathan 
(Film Movement)
The long, eventful life of Nathan Handwerker—who founded the Nathan's Famous hot-dog chain—is recounted by his grandson Lloyd Handwerker in this charming documentary portrait that presents the career and business sense (and, at times, lack of it) of the founder and his family.
 
Interviews with family members—including some who've since passed away—are interwoven with an audio interview with Nathan before he died for a warts and all glimpse at a successful family business buffeted by the winds of change. Extras comprise a director's commentary, deleted scenes and extra footage.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Fresh Off the Boat—Complete 1st Season 
(Fox)
Reign—Complete 2nd Season 
(Warner Brothers)
Fresh Off the Boat, from chef Eddie Huang's memoir, shows great promise in its 13-episode first season with its diverting premise of cultural clashes seen through the eyes of a precociously funny 12-year-old whose family has moved from Washington D.C.'s Chinatown to bustling Orlando in the 1990s.
 
In the second season of the entertaining historical drama Reign, young Mary Queen of Scots discovers, along with her new husband King Francis, that there are tough times ahead for France—where she lived before returning to the Scottish throne—starting with the Black Death and famine. Lone Fresh extra is a gag reel; Reign extras comprise deleted scenes and a featurette.
 
The Human Experiment 
(Kino)
The proliferation of chemicals in our lives—from the products we use to the foods we eat and even the furniture we sit on—causes innumerable dangers to women's and children’s health and well-being, as Dana Nachman and Don Hardy's documentary shows.
 
This well thought out road map for how, against insurmountable odds like lobbyists and “bought” politicians, we can fix things contains damning circumstantial evidence and touching personal stories from several individuals. Extras are deleted scenes.

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