Liza at 'Salesman' and Other March Adventures

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID Philip Seymour Hoffman in Mike Nichols's revival of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman."

THEATRICALLY, March came in like a sad play about doomed alcoholics in love and went out like "Jesus Christ Superstar." (Which does not mean, as this might suggest, that it's coming back.) Not sure what to do about the lion-lamb metaphor in this case either. Herewith, most of a month of theater in and around New York.


BROADWAY

DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Barrymore Theater, 243 West 47th Street, NYC
Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Not every New York critic was in love with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Arthur Miller's aging, not-so-well-liked Willy Loman, but a lot of them were. (See Thom Geier's brief review from EW.) And that sort of thing brings the big names into the audience. Liza Minnelli was there the night my friend A and I saw it. (Liza did not join us in the ladies' room line at intermission.) Alan Alda was sitting across the aisle from us. And this was one night when sitting in Row C was a privilege, so close to such an amazing performance and performer. Andrew Garfield as Biff wasn't bad either. Must pay more attention to him in the future.


ONCE
Jacobs, 242 West 45th Street, NYC
Thursday, March 22, 2012

So apparently there was this movie, "Once," that everyone who saw either adored or despired. About a discouraged young musician and a young Eastern European woman who turns his life around. Now it's a Broadway musical, and I might have enjoyed it, but I was in a sullen mood because my friend B had canceled at the last minute. And only because his boyfriend had had open-heart surgery. Where are some people's priorities, really? Anyway, some of the music seemed nice.


JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR
Neil Simon, 250 West 52nd Street, NYC
Wednesday, March 28, 2012

They loved this production at Stratford (the one in Canada, not Britain or Connecticut), but it hasn't gotten the unanimous raves we all expected. But my friend D and I thought it was fabulous. He was working with a youthful love for the original British album in the early 1970s. I was working with memories of having seen the first Broadway production around the same time. Twice. I was very taken with Tom Hewitt as Pilate, although D, raised in some Christian denomination or other, claimed not to know exactly who Pilate was. (Answer: Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, who was pretty sure Jesus was getting a raw deal but succumbed to pressure and ordered his crucifixion anyway.) And I'd forgotten how much I loved the lyrics of "The Last Supper." "Always hoped that I'd be an apostle/Knew that I would make it if I tried/And when we retire, we can write the gospels/So they'll still talk about us when we've died."


OFF BROADWAY

RUSSIAN TRANSPORT
Acorn Theater, 410 West 42nd Street, NYC
Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Janeane Garofalo is playing the mom. Of teenagers. Wasn't it just yesterday she was playing Jerry Seinfeld's young, marriageable soul mate on "Seinfeld"? Both my friend L and I agreed that she did an outstanding Russian accent. We also found the villain (Morgan Spector) -- I'm pretty sure he was importing young girls as sex slaves -- frighteningly convincing. It's always a relative, isn't it? Charles Isherwood of The New York Times ("A Family Reunion, With a Chaser") wasn't madly in love with it but liked the performances.


THIRDS
Lion, 410 West 42nd Street. NYC
Thursday, March 8, 2012

Went to this because a friend of a friend was in it. Cute story about three sisters who inherit their childhood home and differ in what to do with/to it.


A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN
City Center, 131 West 55th Street, NYC
Thursday, March 15, 2012

My guest, N, left after Act I. (And this production is in three acts, so that was quite a vote of no confidence.) I don't think she likes Eugene O'Neill. Or at least not Eugene O'Neill with country accents. Eric Grode, writing in The Times ("Boozy Nights of a Ravaged Dreamer"), was much kinder, concluding that the production "illuminates O'Neill's unlikely lovers with a bruising and yet benevolent glow." I saw Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards in these roles a hundred or so years ago, so I'm spoiled but was still fine with the performances and direction. Far more important, of course, I ran into someone I knew, so I wasn't lonely at intermission(s).


THE LADY FROM DUBUQUE
Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, NYC
Friday, March 16, 2012

A revival of one of Edward Albee's flops that this time around got a very favorable Times review ("Who Am I? Why Are We Here? Oh, Hello, Death."). Ben Brantley called it a "scintillating revival." It starts with two couples at a dinner party, at which the hostess is battling cancer. Then Death shows up. Jane Alexander plays Death and is quite elegant in the role.



REGIONAL

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
Schoolhouse Theater, Croton Falls, NY
Sunday, March 4, 2012

I loved the 1962 movie, so I was thrilled to have a chance to review this for the Westchester pages of The Times ("Losing It All for Another Drink"). The most important thing I learned was that in the original television play (the basis for the movie), the Lee Remick character, a beautiful young secretary, was already an experienced social drinker when she met the Jack Lemmon character, a PR man with limited scruples. I liked the story so much more when she went from a chocolate addiction to brandy Alexanders. Also, who knew that Cliff Robertson had originated the Jack Lemmon role?


DAMN YANKEES
Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, NJ
Sunday, March 11, 2012

Reviewed this one for The Times too ("The High Price of a Baseball Winning Streak"). I loved everything about the production but the actress who played Lola. And I liked her a lot in another show (the concert version of "Company," with Neil Patrick Harris as Bobby, which was filmed). She just seemed miscast here.


TRAVESTIES
McCarter Theater Center, Princeton, NJ
Saturday, March 17, 2012

Also an assignment for The Times. Here's my review ("Nimble Wordplay and Wink at History"). In the actual paper, I repeated a line of dialogue as "My heart belongs to Dada." Turns out the script actually says "My art belongs to Dada." (Luckily, on the Internet, no one can see your original error.) The really pathetic part is that this is the third time I've seen "Travesties," starting with the original Broadway production. So I'd been misunderstanding this line for more than 35 years. Dear Tom Stoppard: I am so sorry. Of course your correct version is twice as funny.


WANT MORE THEATERGOSSIP.COM? Scroll or search to find more theatergoing reminiscences, quizzes and celebrity items. You'll find scores of theater notables, including Theresa Rebeck (in the news because of NBC's "Smash"), Christian Borle (in the news because of "Smash") and Jeremy Jordan (in the news because of the Broadway opening of "Newsies").

The Rich Downsize in 'Painting Churches'

LEAVING HOME Kate Turnbull, left, as an artist who wants to paint her parents' portrait while they're busy moving, and Kathleen Chalfant as her mother in "Painting Churches."

THIS is not a review site, but sometimes we do speak up to agree (enthusiastically) with somebody else's review.

WHAT THE TIMES SAID

If you read David Rooney's review of Tina Howe's "Painting Churches" ("Blue-Blooded and Tone-Deaf on Beacon Hill") in The New York Times last week, then you know this site's opinion too. To illustrate, we'll borrow some quotes.

THE BOSTONIANS
Kathleen Chalfant and John Cunningham are "transfixing as Boston blue bloods," combining a "composed elegance with a candid reality slowly revealed." Kate Turnbull, as their daughter, gives a "strained, actressy performance, which strikes a note of shrill desperation." Since this is a three-character play, that's a life-threatening flaw.

'MOMMY, LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!'

Howe's play was first produced in 1983. I saw it for the first time during the 1985-86 academic year in Boston, on the edge of the upper-crust neighborhood where the story is set. At that point in my life, I identified with the daughter, an artist who has spent her life desperately wanting Mom and Dad's approval. Somehow she thinks painting their portrait will turn around a lifetime of emotional distance.

IT'S ALL ABOUT LETTING GO
This time around, I didn't exactly identify with the parents, only with their plight. (My friend A, who grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, said they reminded her of her parents at times.) But the party days are over. After decades of the good life, the Churches can no longer afford their Boston home, so they're packing up, selling and moving full time to their beach cottage. At the same time, Mr. Cunningham's character feels parts of his brain slipping away, while Ms. Chalfant realizes her future will have to be devoted to taking care of him.

PLAYS ABOUT DISEASES
The star attraction is Ms. Chalfant, of course, best known for her Tony Award-nominated role in the original Broadway production of "Angels in America" (Tony Kushner's AIDS masterpiece) and her Drama Desk Award-winning tour de force in "Wit" (in which she played a professor battling brain cancer).

"Painting Churches," by Tina Howe, directed by Carl Forsman, Clurman Theater, 410 West 42nd Street, (212) 239-6200, telecharge.com.

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COMING SOON

"A Moon for the Misbegotten," "The Lady From Dubuque," "Death of a Salesman," "Once" and "Jesus Christ Superstar"

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'Tribes' at Barrow Street: Abusing the Deaf

GOOD LISTENERS The cast of "Tribes," from left, Mare Winningham, Jeff Perry, Susan Pourfar, Gayle Rankin, Russell Harvard and Will Brill.

In which a hearing family is deaf to their son's needs . . .

FIRST of all, they've got to do something about the sauvignon blanc at the Barrow Street Theater. Whoever does the buying for the bar should know that my friends J & C and I are proud of our superhuman tolerance for cheap house wines, but this almost did us in. On the other hand, it's a generous pour and they let you take your drinks back to your seats. (Which is a variation, I guess, on "The food there is just terrible. And such small portions.")

Nina Raine's "Tribes," the current production at Barrow Street, was another story. Ben Brantley's review in The New York Times ("World of Silence and Not Listening") calls it "a smart, lively and beautifully acted new play that asks us to hear how we hear, in silence as well as in speech." Agreed.

Oversimplified plot summary: There's this nice but seriously dysfunctional intellectual family. Parents and three grown children. One of those children is deaf. The parents deliberately did not teach the boy sign language for sort of passive-aggressive reasons. Things go as smoothly as possible, from their point of view anyway, until the deaf son (Russell Harvard) meets a woman (Susan Pourfar) who was brought up by deaf parents and is now losing her own hearing. As he falls in love, he begins to see having been forced to "hear" only by lip-reading as a betrayal.

Is being part of the deaf community privilege or marginalization? What makes someone a full, functioning member of a family or any other kind of tribe -- or sets that person apart?

I was drawn to "Tribes" not because of all the award nominations its original London production earned, but because of its director, David Cromer, who did a perspective-changing production of "Our Town" at this very same theater in 2009.

Oh, and the Arizona-born Mare Winningham, who plays the mom, does a swell British accent.

"Tribes," by Nina Raine, directed by David Cromer, Barrow Street Theater, 27 Barrow Street, (212) 868-4444, smarttix.com.

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COMING SOON

"Painting Churches," "A Moon for the Misbegotten," "Death of a Salesman,"

"Once" and "Jesus Christ Superstar"

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Seeing 'Carrie,' the Flop We Missed in 1988

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION Marin Mazzie, left, and Molly Ranson as crazy mother and bullied daughter in the Off Broadway revival of "Carrie."

In Which the Mean Kids Don't Die Nearly Gruesomely Enough . . .

Dear Long-Lost D:

REMEMBER 1988, when Reagan was in the White House, Melanie Griffith had big Staten Island hair in "Working Girl," and we were just kids (relatively)?

Remember when you first heard that "Carrie" was being made into a musical and you thought it was the greatest idea since the casting of Divine as the mom in "Hairspray"? You immediately invited me and ordered tickets. And then the reviews were so colossally awful that the show closed after four days. Before the date we were supposed to see it.

That's why it breaks my heart to tell you this, D. It's back. And because you're not on the planet anymore, you're missing it again.

The reviews are in ("Prom Night, Bloody Prom Night"; "Carrie: Blood Lite & Boring"; " 'Carrie' Is Back, Shock-Challenged and Bloodless"), and no one seems to think this is a production worth reincarnating for. They're doing it at the Lucille Lortel in the Village instead of in a big Broadway theater this time, which seems like a good idea. Apparently the last one ("The Telekinetic 'Carrie,' With Music," Frank Rich's review) was pretty splashy and big on special effects.

O.K., this is the only part of the show I'm going to comment on critically.

As you'll recall, the end of the story is that the mean teenagers who have tormented poor Carrie, the most biologically naive teenager in the world, go for uber-revenge at the prom by arranging to have her doused with blood. But she ends up triumphant by using her newly discovered telekinetic powers and giving them all horrible, much deserved deaths.

But there's no blood in this "Carrie," not even fake blood. It's all done with lighting and projection design. (I'll have to explain about projection design later. It's all the rage in the 21st century.) The evil kids die, but they do it in a stylized way that a modern ballet company or a performance artist at the Whitney Biennial might use, and it looks annoyingly painless. What fun is this story if we don't see the arrogant cool kids suffer?

John Simon was there the night my friend B and I saw it. Simon is not at New York Magazine anymore. He's at bloomberg.com. (I'll explain .com to you later too.) And you know how old you'd be by now, so imagine how mature he is. It was good to see that the great man takes the subway.

But then everybody does these days. Oh yeah, you missed the Great Recession too.

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COMING SOON

More of last week's theater adventures: "Tribes" and "Painting Churches"

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"Carrie," by Lawrence D. Cohen, Michael Gore and Dean Pitchford, directed by Stafford Arima, Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, (212) 352-3101, mcctheater.org.