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Theater Roundup: Shanley in the Bronx, Shakespeare in the Park
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 22 June 2012 10:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Storefront Church
Starring Bob Dishy, Giancarlo Esposito, Zach Grenier, Ron Cephas Jones, Jordan Lage, Tonya Pinkins
Written and directed by John Patrick Shanley
As You Like It
Starring Andre Braugher, Donna Lynne Champlin, Jon DeVries, Susannah Flood, David Furr, Renee Elise Goldsberry, Robert Joy, Oliver Platt, Lily Rabe, Will Rogers, Stephen Spinella
Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Daniel Sullivan
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Storefront Church (photo: Kevin Thomas Garcia) |
The final play in his “Church and State” trilogy which began with the masterly Doubt and brittle Defiance, John Patrick Shanley’s Storefront Church displays his virtues and vices in abundance. Notably, there’s Shanley’s uncanny ability to not only believably differentiate his characters from one another but allow them their dignity, whether it’s Bronx Borough President Donaldo Calderon or middle-aged neighborhood resident Jessie Cortez, losing her house to foreclosure.
They are just two of a half-dozen characters, all shot through with Shanley’s characteristic humanity. But that’s also where Shanley stumbles. He crams so many of their individual idiosyncrasies into a two-hour running time—along with other interests related to “Church and State” (both institutions interconnect more here than in the other plays)—that the drama is shortchanged.
Donaldo is asked by the intensely religious Jessie to help her and “secular Jew” husband Ethan Goldklang—whose opening-scene heart attack in the office of the local bank’s uncaring loan officer Reed Van Druyten greases the play’s creaky dramatic wheels—in their battle with the bank, but since Donaldo is also teaming with the bank’s slick CEO Tom Raidenberg on a brand new mall that will bring lots of minimum-wage jobs to a borough desperate for them following the 2008 financial meltdown, he feels there might be a conflict of interest to intervene on Jessie’s behalf.
Also as a favor to Jessie, Donaldo confronts Chester Kimmich, a Pentecostal minister from New Orleans living rent-free in a storefront that Jessie has a second mortgage on; spiritually paralyzed by Hurricane Katrina, Charles cannot bring himself to sermonize, so he hasn’t opened the storefront church whose collection money would help him pay his back rent to Jessie.
Eventually, all six characters come together in the title place one Sunday morning, and many of their secrets come out in characteristically revealing ways. Shanley (who also directs) is helped by an immaculate cast led by Giancarlo Esposito’s wounded, weary portrait of a believer and politician realizing that politics and community service may be impossible to reconcile.
If Storefront Church ends with a forced but wearily jubilant finale, there’s much to chew on from our most consistently intelligent playwright.
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| As You Like It (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Right before intermission of Daniel Sullivan’s otherwise lackluster As You Like It are five of the most memorable minutes I’ve encountered in 25 years of attending free Shakespeare in Central Park performances. Although Stephen Spinella’s sing-song recitation of the great “Seven Ages of Man” speech is awkwardly spoken, Sullivan stages the physical action with a welcome awareness of the text and an understanding of Shakespeare’s awesome humanity.
We are in a world of genius for a few fleeting moments, but such gracefulness is missing from the rest of the production, whose Forest of Arden—despite the surrounding foliage of the Delacorte Theater’s environs—is supplemented by a massive wooden fort at stage center whose lone function is to obscure the trees making up the rest of set designer John Lee Beatty’s forest.
Despite the play being nonsensically set in the Wild West (which accommodates Steve Martin’s appealing bluegrass music performed by a group of musicians including the talented Tony Trischka on banjo and vocals), the big problem is that Sullivan misses the big picture to concentrate on individual scenes.
The many comic interludes, led by a jolly Oliver Platt as the clown Touchstone and the invaluable Jon DeVries as the old shepherd Corin, receive the evening’s biggest applause—especially when supplemented by hijinks not written by Shakespeare, always a touchstone for Central Park audiences—but the main plot’s cross-dressing and comic romance featuring our heroine Rosalind, her cousin Celia and paramour Orlando are treated lackadaisically.
David Furr makes an appealing Orlando and Renee Elise Goldsberry is a decent Celia, but the show’s biggest disappointment is the Rosalind of Lily Rabe, an actress whose strident, piercing voice and bulldozing manner are all wrong for Shakespeare’s greatest female creation. Compare the one-note Rabe to Rebecca Hall at BAM in 2005, whose Rosalind I still remember for an affecting, slightly gawky quality that beautifully brought out her vulnerability while in disguise as the boy Ganymede.
At BAM, Rosalind’s audience-pleasing epilogue was spoken by Hall with a winning combination of humility and good humor, while in the Park, Rabe hammily underlines every word to ensure all “get it.” Audiences may eat it up, but the sublime As You Like It should not be treated as a mere rewrite of the crude Comedy of Errors.
Storefront Church
Performances began May 16, 2012; opened June 11; closes June 24
Atlantic Theater Company, 336 West 20th Street, New York, NY
As You Like It
Previews began June 5, 2012; opened June 21; closes June 30
Delacorte Theatre, Central Park, New York, NY
The Songwriters Hall of Fame 2012 Induction Ceremony
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Tuesday, 19 June 2012 13:41
- Written by Lloyd Carroll
Although it was created 17 years before the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame has never gotten the attention from the entertainment media and the public that it deserves.
Part of the problem is that the Songwriters Foundation has never gotten the funding to build a permanent home in a city (it’s currently a wing in LA’s Grammy Museum) the way Cleveland stepped up for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation.
It’s a shame because New York, with its rich music publishing and theatrical history would be a natural fit to pay tribute to the greatest tunesmiths in history.
One advantage that the Songwriters Hall of Fame has over its Rock & Roll counterpart is that it can honor composers from various musical genres. At the 43rd annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, held June 14, 2012, at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan, nearly every form of popular music was represented.
The evening opened with Bob Seger, already a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, commemorating being honored by the SHOF with a performance of a relatively minor hit for him, “Turn The Page.” It would have been easy for him to sing any of his big hits such as “Night Moves,” “We’ve Got Tonight,” “Hollywood Nights” and the like, but “Turn The Page,” with its lyrics that strip away the perceived glamor of the road life of a rock musician on the road, was clearly autobiographical and downright personal for him.
Canadian troubadour Gordon Lightfoot still tours around the world at age 73 and although his voice, has frayed a bit from his 1970s hit-making days, he still sounds great. It’s not shocking that the snooty and arbitrary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has ignored Lightfoot.
But it is also surprising however that it has taken this long for the Songwriters Hall executive committee to honor this great storyteller whose works include: “The Early Morning Rain,” “Rainy Day People,” “Beautiful,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “Carefree Highway,” and “Sundown” -- which was performed on this night by blues rocker Steve Miller.
Although it wasn’t his biggest hit, “If You Could Read My Mind,” with its irresistible string section and acoustic guitar interludes -- punctuated by Gordon’s ruminations over the regrets of a failed relationship -- was the record that put him on the map. Lightfoot performed the song that night with all of the freshness and enthusiasm that he did back in 1971.
Don Schlitz is not a household name for most pop music fans, and no, he is not related to the family that made Schlitz Beer. He is, however, highly respected in Nashville and understandably so.
Among the songs in his portfolio are hit songs for Randy Travis (“Forever and Ever, Amen” and “On The Other Hand”), the late Keith Whitley (“When You Say Nothing At All”) and Alabama (“Forty Hour Week”).
In terms of recognition, those aforementioned songs pale in comparison to “The Gambler,” a gigantic 1978 hit for Kenny Rogers who sang it again on this night.
Interestingly when I met Schlitz on a Manhattan street years ago he told me that he knew nothing about poker or any kind of card games. Indeed, a close lis
ten to the lyrics show that the poker terminology is merely a metaphor for the vicissitudes of life.
Just as Kenny Rogers came to show appreciation to the composer who gave him one of his signature hits, so did Marvin Lee Aday, better known to most as Meat Loaf, who came to honor Jim Steinman, the man behind his multi-platinum 1977 Bat Out Of Hell album. In his speech for Steinman, Meat Loaf talked about how his songs were all mini-plays and the lyrics were often tongue-in-cheek. “Fortunately our fans were in on the joke,” he said.
The late Yankees broadcaster Phil Rizzuto always claimed that he wasn’t in on the humor when he recorded a bit for that album that had a player trying to steal bases including home as a metaphor for a passionate evening. “He could go all the way!” said the Scooter in the song.I have a feeling that Rizzuto was protesting with a wink of the eye.
Steinman grew up in Hewlett and his over-the-top bombastic production made him rock’s answer to the German classical composer Richard Wagner. While he is most identified with Meat Loaf, Steinman composed hits for Celine Dion (“It’s All Coming Back To Me”), Barry Manilow (“Read ‘Em And Weep”), Bonnie Tyler (“Total Eclipse Of The Heart”), and Air Supply (“Making Love Out Of Nothing At All”).
Broadway was not forgotten as the composing tandem of Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones (not the Welsh singer) were honored for their contributions to musical theater. They are responsible for the longest running play in showbiz history -- The Fantasticks.
Cheyenne Jackson, one of the hottest actors working in New York today sang “Try To Remember” whose lyric of “without the hurt, the heart is hollow,” is, for my money, one of the best one-line philosophical observations ever put into a song. Jackson did not put the passion that the late Jerry Orbach or the Brothers Four, who had a pop hit with it did, but he got the job done.
But that's what made this evening, and the annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony such an important event -- because it gives all of us a chance to remember who were the core creators of some of the greatest songs we've ever heard.
The 43rd annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony
June 14, 2012
the Marriott Marquis
Manhattan
June '12 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 18 June 2012 01:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
Demoted
(Anchor Bay)
Since the guys behind American Pie are behind Demoted, it’s no surprise that the new movie fails to reach that film’s gross-out heights of humor. Not coincidentally, it also fails to find any cleverness in its work situations as did Office Space. Do we really need to see a naked Robert Klein cavorting with strippers?
The cast is definitely able, but the material is just not there, and comedic desperation sets in early and never leaves. At least there’s a decent hi-def transfer; no extras.
(Sony)
Since Nicolas Cage has pretty much surrendered his career to bizarre script choices, this sequel actually seems less crazy than it should be. The pluses of this ludicrously plotted movie are that directors Neveldine/ Taylor throw caution to the wind and concentrate on superb set pieces that make one forget—at least momentarily—the lunacy of what’s happening onscreen.
Unfortunately, the ending promises another sequel, which is definitely unnecessary. The overly digitized action has a less-than-warm look on Blu-ray; extras include featurettes and interviews.
The Gold Rush 
(Criterion)
One of Charlie Chaplin’s immortal comedies is as humane and affecting as his other classics The Circus, Modern Times and City Lights. The set pieces—the dance of the rolls, the Tramp eating his shoe—are as ingenious as ever; the only quibble is that Chaplin’s inferior, re-edited 1942 talkie version is now considered definite.
Luckily, The Criterion Collection includes both versions on this invaluable release, which are quite stupendous-looking on Blu-ray; extras include Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance commentary, interviews with Vance and historian Kevin Brownlow about restoring the 1925 version; and a 2002 featurette about the film’s importance and legacy.
In Darkness
(Sony)
Director Agnieszka Holland pulls few punches in her real-life account of WWII Jewish refugees hiding in sewers under the Polish town of Lvov and a sewer worker keeping them from the Nazis. The film unflinchingly shows the awful conditions under which these desperate people survived; laced with bitter humor—especially its depiction of an unsaintly hero (a marvelous Robert Więckiewicz)—it also allows characters their humanity.
The film is splendidly monochromatic (thanks to Joanta Dylewska’s photography, Michael Czarcecki’s editing and Erwin Prib’s production design); on Blu-ray, this brilliantly muted color scheme remains illuminated. Extras include a Holland interview and discussion between Holland and one of the real-life survivors.
Lina Wertmuller Collection: The Seduction of Mimi, Love and Anarchy, All Screwed Up
(Kino Classics)
It’s hard to believe, but in the mid-‘70s, Italian director Lina Wertmuller was considered among the world’s great filmmakers, culminating in her being the first woman nominated for a Best Director Oscar for her 1976 masterpiece, Seven Beauties. Too bad that brilliant, one-of-a-kind classic isn’t in this set (neither is her intelligent battle of the sexes comedy, 1975’s Swept Away…), but these three films give a good overview of this gifted artist’s singularly feminist point of view.
The Seduction of Mimi (1972) and Love and Anarchy (1973)—starring her favorite screen couple, the extraordinary versatile Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato—are superior, blackly comic dramas; 1974’s All Screwed Up is much less interesting but still a worthy comedy. All three movies, despite less-than-optimal materials, have authentically film-like grain; unfortunately, no extras.
(Fox)
Gerard Butler’s committed portrayal of Sam Childers, a biker and criminal who becomes a preacher selflessly helping children in the dangerous areas of Sudan is reason enough to see Marc Forster’s compelling if preachy melodrama based on a true story. Accomplished turns by Michelle Monaghan (wife) and Michael Shannon (friend) back up Butler’s first-rate star turn.
On Blu-ray, the movie looks stunning, particularly the African sequences; extras include a Forster interview, making-of featurette and video of Chris Cornell’s closing-credits song, “The Seeker.”
(Lionsgate)
Bill Murray’s film debut, this cornball 1979 comedy was shot as he was making it big on Saturday Night Live. Ivan Reitman’s sketchy humor shows throughout the goofy summer camp story, while Murray does what he can: but even he hadn’t fully formed his onscreen persona, so the movie is heavy-going even for his biggest fans.
The Blu-ray transfer, while soft, has a decent amount of grain; the lone extra is Reitman and writer Dan Goldberg’s commentary.
A Game of Shadows
(Warners)
Guy Ritchie’s redundant sequel to his unnecessary—but profitable—reboot of the British detective franchise consolidates Holmes as a superhero, moving so far from whom Arthur Conan Doyle created and the rest of us envisioned that it’s no use getting upset over such a cynical film series this is becoming.
Robert Downey and Jude Law keep their dignity, and it’s fun to see Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams, however ill-used; but Ritchie’s routine action sequences kill his stars’ momentum. The Blu-ray image is excellent; extras are Downey’s video commentary and on-set featurettes.
(Unitel Classica)
Leos Janacek’s masterly opera is a weird sci-fi tale about 300-year-old Emilia Marty—one of opera’s great soprano roles, here superbly enacted and sung by German soprano Angela Denoke—nearing the end of what should have been immortality. The knotty but affecting music is dramatically played by the Vienna Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen’s graceful baton.
But Christoph Marthaler’s 2011 Salzburg staging pointlessly adds to Janacek’s terse libretto, bloating its taut structure. Still, Denoke, Salonen and Janacek ultimately triumph. The hi-def transfer gives added visual definition, while surround sound gives Janacek’s extraordinary music the breathing space it deserves.
Desire
(Strand)
This French soft-core feature has naked bodies and body parts galore: but when it comes to relationships, the clinical filmmaking is anything but triumphant. Laurent Bouhnik’s film attempts to explore the active sexuality of young men and—especially—women, but since he’s a trite psychological director, there’s lots of nudity and simulated sex but little else.
Of course, the cast is terrifically attractive—particularly leads Déborah Révy and Helene Zimmer—but they don’t get to do much other than shed their clothes and inhibitions: the characters themselves remain wooden.
(Tribeca)
What might have been a clever slasher movie parody instead is, in novice director Vincent D’Onofrio’s hands, lumbering and obvious. A rock band goes to the woods to write new material—we hear their new songs in between being terrorized by a killer—and that’s about it. At 83 minutes, the movie is barely credulous, and Sam Bisbee’s songs are derivative and humorless, the opposite of what’s needed to make this a memorable parody.
The young cast seems camera-shy, and D’Onofrio doesn’t distinguish himself behind the camera. Extras include a D’Onofrio interview and making-of featurette.
(Film Movement)
This relentlessly cutesy rom-com-cum-musical is the brainchild of writer-director-star Julie Donzelli, a capable actress but less than thrilling filmmaker. She also cast her-then boyfriend, the lumpish actor Jeremie Elkaim—playing not one but four of the heroine’s boyfriends—and none of the performers is able to carry off this subtle feat very well, and the film soon turns leaden instead of whimsical, and fey rather than charming.
The bonus short, Luis and Marta Work Together, made in the United Kingdom, is in Portuguese.
Alfredo Casella:
Orchestral Works
Orchestral Works
(Chandos)
Another unsung 20th century Italian composer (alongside Lidebrando Pizzetti and Luigi Dellapiccola), Alfredo Casella was a master at atmospheric, colorful orchestral works, as this superlative disc—wonderfully performed by the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda—shows.
The premiere recording of the solidly tuneful Concerto for Orchestra leads things off, followed by a piano concerto in all but name, A note alta, with scintillating soloist Martin Rosoce. Rounding out this satisfying foray into Casella’s music are two series of Symphonic Fragments from 'La donna serpent,' a Casella opera.
(Virgin Classics)
Jake Heggie’s first opera, which premiered in San Francisco in 2000, receives an emotional recording by Houston Grand Opera from 2011. Based on Sister Helen Prejean’s book (adapted by Tim Robbins for his 1995 Oscar-winning film), Heggie’s opera adroitly uses spirituals, gospel numbers and other American musical genres.
With a formidable cast led by Joyce DiDonato as Prejean and Philip Cutlip as death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher, the tragic work—ably conducted by Patrick Summers—makes its case as a top American opera of the past 20 years.
Off-Broadway Roundup: Kahane's "February House"; Lonergan's "Medieval Play"; Gionfriddo's "Rapture"
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 13 June 2012 20:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
February House
Starring Stanley Bahorek, Ken Barnett, Ken Clark, Julian Fleisher, Stephanie Hayes, Erik Lochtefeld, Kacie Sheik, A.J. Shively, Kristen Sieh
Music and lyrics by Gabriel Kahane; book by Seth Bockley
Directed by Davis McCallum
Performances began May 8, 2012; opened May 22; closes June 17
Directed by Davis McCallum
Performances began May 8, 2012; opened May 22; closes June 17
Medieval Play
Starring Anthony Arkin, Heather Burns, Tate Donovan, Kevin Geer, Josh Hamilton, Halley Feiffer, John Pankow, C.J. Wilson
Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan
Previews began May 15, 2012; opened June 7; closes June 24
Rapture, Blister, Burn
Starring Amy Brenneman, Beth Dixon, Virginia Kull, Kellie Overbey, Lee Tergesen
Written by Gina Gionfriddo; directed by Peter Dubois
Previews began May 18, 2012; opened June 12; closes June 24
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| February House (photo: Joan Marcus) |
The ingredients are in place for a mature, serious musical: a fascinating story of colorful (and real) celebrities living in a Brooklyn boarding house during World War II. But February House, despite its pedigree, meanders when it should be tautly focused.
The frustrating result has a culprit: Seth Bockley’s book, which strains for significance, but is a cut and paste job that brings together the house’s inhabitants—editor George Davis, authors Carson McCullers and W. H. Auden, composer Benjamin Britten and his lover, tenor Peter Pears—and reduces them to uninteresting caricatures, none of whom get enough stage time to be anything more than cartoon versions of the actual people.
It’s a shame that two other famous occupants of the house, author/composer Paul Bowles and his wife, writer Jane Bowles, have been erased from the show: they’re as worthy as the others. If the objection is that the Bowleses would have made the onstage population too crowded: since the characterizations are superficial anyway, what’s another two?
Gabriel Kahane’s music, while accomplished, only occasionally lives up to the drama’s and characters’ demands. That Kahane isn’t in Britten’s league—even the “young” Britten (or Benjy, as he’s called)—is obvious; perhaps that’s another reason why Bowles was omitted: two superior composers onstage are too much for Kahane to go up against.
The performers don’t get a chance to create real characters, although Kristen Sieh’s McCullers and Erik Lochtefeld’s Auden come closest. And too bad that Britten and Pears are reduced to a Laurel and Hardy tag team by Stanley Bahorek and Ken Barnett, including a badly misconceived Act II curtain raiser, the unfunny “A Certain Itch,” concerning an infestation of bedbugs.
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| Medieval Play (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Kenneth Lonergan’s messy but affecting character-driven explorations of contemporary individuals—which have populated his plays (This Is Our Youth, Lobby Hero, The Starry Messenger) and movies (You Can Count on Me, Margaret)—are jettisoned for his latest stage work, Medieval Play.
This amusing but overlong farce has some good moments, but there are too many stretches where Lonergan simply treads water. It opens as two knights discuss their part in the ongoing Hundred Years War, with profanity and modern observations butting heads with a farcical attitude, and the rest of the play follows suit.
Zany, sometimes funny horseplay, even zanier and sometimes very funny dialogue, and enough wall-to-wall anachronisms to make one think that Lonergan overdosed on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Love and Death and real old Saturday Night Live sketches.
Lonergan overplays his hand by too often having his characters talk about the absurdity and insanity of war, obviously mirroring our own era: even if he allows the delightful Heather Burns to narrate with winks to the audience about how hugely inconsequential the whole thing is, it starts to wear thin long before the curtain comes down.
As director, Lonergan (who stages the physical comedy quite effectively) has smartly cast real actors as his lead knights: Josh Hamilton and Tate Donovan never ham it up as, say, Nathan Kane or David Hyde Pierce would, all the better for the comedy to percolate. Walt Spangler’s cartoonish sets, Michael Krass’ cute costumes and Jason Lyons’ clever lighting keep Medieval Play on the right path when its author wanders far afield.
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| Rapture, Blister, Burn (photo: Carol Rosegg) |
Gina Gionfriddo—whose last play was the unwieldy dark comedy Becky Shaw—returns with Rapture, Blister, Burn, which has the same strengths and weaknesses, although its characters’ motivations are somewhat more believable.
Catherine and Gwen, now in their mid-40s, had gone their separate ways after grad school: Gwen married Catherine’s boyfriend Don and is raising two sons; Catherine became a feminist writer and theorist famous enough to appear on Bill Maher.
Catherine has returned home to care for her mother, who had a heart attack, and when she, Gwen and Don start catching up, it’s obvious nobody’s happy: homemaker Gwen finds her porn-watching husband—dean of a local high school—insufferably lazy, while Catherine feels that maybe she wrongly let Don go to Gwen many years ago.
Gionfriddo definitely has the pulse of her female characters’ shattered hopes and dreams, demonstratively shown in the Act I scene where Catherine, Gwen, Avery—Gwen and Don’s 21-year-old fired babysitter—and Alice, Catherine’s mom, talk about feminist and anti-feminist writings of the past few decades. But what begins as a shrewdly written and bitingly intelligent scene of women pointedly discussing intellectual matters soon degenerates into academic speechifying.
So it’s worrying that Gionfriddo actually lets her polar-opposite women switch places in Act II: Gwen goes to New York with her theater-loving teenage son and lives in Catherine’s apartment, while Catherine and Don start carrying on as if the two decades since their breakup never happened.
It’s not that these people wouldn’t behave like that—although they probably wouldn’t—but that Gionfriddo never makes it believable that they would. Similar to her haphazard plotting and characterization in Becky Shaw, the people in Rapture, Blister, Burn are mere author’s pawns, lessening their dramatic—and comedic—impact.
Glaringly obvious too is Lee Tergesen’s turgid Don: sure, he’s supposed to be anything but a catch now, but there must be something in this unambitious and plainly exhausted man that causes a spark in his old girlfriend. But Tergesen plays Don so flatly it’s impossible to see what either Gwen or Catherine ever saw in him.
Happily compensating are Amy Brenneman’s Catherine, a shrewdly expert mix of heady intellect and emotional messiness; Kellie Overbey’s Gwen, a level-headed, extraordinarily ordinary woman; and Virginia Kull’s Avery, the playwright’s hilariously catty mouthpiece.
Peter DuBois efficiently directs on Alexander Dodge’s sharply defined set, but Rapture, Blister, Burn—a discordant title that paraphrases a Courtney Love lyric—ends tepidly rather than searingly.
February House
Performances began May 8, 2012; opened May 22; closes June 17
Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, New York, NY
Medieval Play
Previews began May 15, 2012; opened June 7; closes June 24
Signature Theatre, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
Rapture, Blister, Burn
Previews began May 18, 2012; opened June 12; closes June 24
Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
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