Monthly Archives: May 2023

Primary Trust

Off-Broadway, Play May 30, 2023 Leave a comment

I usually don’t make my reviews personal, but my experience while watching Primary Trust and the themes within this gorgeously crafted play are inexorably intertwined.  With gentle brushstrokes, Eboni Booth introduces us to 38 year old Kenneth, one of the few Black people living in Cranberry, a suburb of Rochester, New York.  His ethnicity is only a minor contributor to Kenneth’s isolation.  Having lived an extremely restricted life since the death of his mother when he was only ten, Kenneth’s coping mechanisms are intricate and ritualized.  But somehow his idiosyncrasy has left him uniquely suited to meeting people at their own level.

There is a deliberate “let’s pretend” quality to the entire production.  From the opening moments, Kenneth speaks directly to us in his halting and self-reflecting style.  Long thoughtful pauses rest between effervescent bursts of storytelling.  All the activity comes with musical accompaniment composed by Luke Wygodny, punctuated by the ding of an “order up” bell.  Marsha Ginsberg’s whimsical scenic design takes the phrase “small town” and makes it literal, including a miniature church, bank, and big box store alongside Wally’s, the tiki bar that serves as Kenneth’s sanctuary.  Lighting by designer Isabella Byrd leaves long shadows on the ground well before winter sets in.  Costume designer Qween Jean employs a more muted color palate than her signature style until an essential jacket makes its appearance at a pivotal moment. Two actors play multiple roles, sometimes barely turning around before switching.  Yet the play is never anything less than genuine and heartfelt.  The entire audience was sufficiently swept up to respond emotionally to every turn.

William Jackson Harper is utterly perfect as Kenneth, balancing warmth, vulnerability, fear and heart.  It’s Harper’s first stage appearance since 2017 and it was my first live theater attendance since March of 2020.  Previously, theater played a major role in my life.  Many of my friends come from that world and it was often the way I entertained others.  Vacations have been planned around seeing a specific work or actor. The temporary loss of that pursuit was profound.  But Primary Trust is all about bringing people in.  At its core is the celebration of coming out of seclusion.  To have Kenneth welcome me as a member of the audience into his life could not have been more impactful. And though I don’t have much more in common with the character, I do share his deep belief in the power of one good friend.

Jay O. Sanders, William Jackson Harper, and Eric Berryman; photo by Joan Marcus

Director Knud Adams, who often works with new material, delicately mines Booth’s script, uncovering the layers of joy, sorrow and hope. Providing support and stability for Kenneth is his best friend Bert, played with sweet good nature by Eric Berryman.  Jay O. Sanders seems to be having the time of his life portraying (among other characters) Kenneth’s two very different bosses.  The first — the owner of a bookstore— has the difficult task of laying Kenneth off after twenty years of a comfortable relationship.  The loss of his job shatters the comfortable if confining structure of Kenneth’s life, and the chink of light shining through the holes is both frightening and filled with possibility.  Helping Kenneth step through the gap is April Matthis’s Corinna, the only one of a multitude of Wally Waiters who wants to see Kenneth as more than an eccentric customer.  Completing the ensemble is a Musician played by understudy Paul Lincoln in the performance I attended.  So essential is he in setting the beat and tone, that Mr. Lincoln received his own loud round of applause.

Roundabout has obviously worked to make this production inclusive.  The company offers clear and sensible guidelines to audience members and the staff makes themselves very available to help.  To get you in the mood for what is to come, the lobby has been decorated to resemble a tiki bar, complete with projected fish tank and artificial grass.  The ticket confirmation warns audience members not to arrive late.  I can only reemphasize their strong recommendation.  Missing any of the first few minutes of the show will leave you with quite the wrong impression of what is transpiring.

Primary Trust is a work of true beauty.  It was nurtured at the 2021 Ojai Playwrights Conference and is a recipient of an Edgerton Foundation New Play Award.  Running time is an absorbing 95 minutes with a realistic denouement.  It is playing at the Laura Pels Theater in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre (111 West 46th Street) through Sunday, July 2.  (Note that Harper is out the weekend of June 9.)  Tickets start at $56.  $4.95 COVID cancelation insurance is available.  Visit www.roundabouttheatre.org for additional information including special performances.

College Fun

Comedy, Fund-raiser, Off Off Broadway May 22, 2023 Leave a comment

When I heard there was a theater troupe called the Frog & Peach, I simply had to see what they were up to.  Though they were founded in large part to make Shakespeare more accessible to a broad audience, their most recent production, College Fun, is a 35 minute long sharp-edged satire written by founding company member Ted Zurkowski.  With its setting at an elite university in Southern California and its relentless puncturing of a certain brand of authority figure, it reflects many of the qualities of Beyond the Fringe, the innovators of the routine about the world’s most revolting restaurant.

A lifetime member of The Actors Studio, Mr. Zurkowski has recently been focused on the musical portion of his career.  It would appear that for the creation of College Fun, he drew on his past experience as a teacher of theater history. The objects of his ire are those in the education community who employ the language of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion without embracing or even understanding the movement.  Buzz words like “unpack,” “curate,” and “thought leader” are tossed around as if their mere use can take the place of their intended, beneficial goals.  

The cast features DazMann Still as the Everyman Teacher appropriately named Professor Jones, a black member of the theater department who who has somehow triggered one of his rich white students.  Alyssa Diamond’s wildly inappropriate Dr. Ram is the first to confront him, though she won’t even tell him the nature of the offense or who filed the complaint.  Filling in some of the blanks is Jonathan Reed Wexler as the over-the-top flamboyant Dr. Queeg.  It falls to the questionable power figure Dr. Pane, portrayed by Anuj Parikh, to complete the increasingly ridiculous picture. 

DazMann Still, Anuj Parikh, Alyssa Diamond and Jonathan Reed Wexler in College Fun

The one-night performance of College Fun was made possible in part by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. It was staged at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theatre, a 145 seat house in the West Side YMCA near Lincoln Center.  As explained on the Frog & Peach Theatre’s website, the charming co-founder Lynnea Benson was chosen as the director because she’s the “least hammy and most wily” among them.  She made use of the physicality of her actors and a well-chosen wardrobe to give color to the simple set of a few wooden chairs, two tables, and a sad potted plant as background.  Diamond, Wexler, and Parikh previously worked together in the company’s production of As You Like It, giving them a familiarity that is useful to Still as his character navigates a progressively surreal landscape.  At key points, Professor Jones speaks directly to the audience as if to acknowledge that any discussion with his idiotic interrogators is pointless.

Zurkowski and Benson are now developing a new work, Verbatim, with Estelle Parsons and Austin Pendleton, so stay tuned.

Peter Pan Goes Wrong

Comedy, On Demand May 15, 2023 1 Comment

Conceived in 2008 by students at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and nourished during an Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Olivier Award winning Mischief Theatre has made being silly into a sincere mission.  Their Goes Wrong… series has won dedicated fans around the English-speaking world.  Fortunately for those who don’t have one of their creations nearby, several of their plays are available for streaming.  Just added to the line-up is Peter Pan Goes Wrong, the kind of crowd pleaser that gets nominated for three Broadway.com Audience Choice Awards.  

The performance on BroadwayHD originally aired on BBC1 on New Years Eve of 2016. It features David Suchet as the narrator, a role currently portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris in the Broadway production that was inspired by this special.  Using five cameras, the show was filmed in front of a very enthusiastic and in-the-know live audience. Director Dewi Humphreys made use of the television studio setting to add comedic elements. Close-ups that reinforce the physical gags are the trade-off for not being able to take in the entire stage.  The colorful staging earned a lighting award for designer Martin Kempton.  

A zesty example of Mischief’s body of work, Pan stars David Hearn, Henry Lewis, Charlie Russell, Jonathan Sayer, Henry Shield, and Nancy Zamit who are still with the company.  Current members in smaller roles are Harry Kershaw, Bryony Corrigan and Mike Brodie.  The ensemble is rounded out by Chris Leask, Ellie Morris, Adam Meegido (who directed the original stage version), Greg Tannahill.  It is hard to single out any one performer since they are so interdependent.  But my admiration is boundless for Zamit who flies through more than just Tinkerbell with the aid of break-away costumes by Roberto Surace.  Songs by Mischief’s Rob Falconer and Richard Baker remind us of the shear talent of this troupe.

Nancy Zamit, Greg Tannahill, and Dave Hearn in Peter Pan Goes Wrong

Mischief members Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields liberally adapted J.M. Barrie’s story of the boy who wouldn’t grow up.  Their loose interpretation opens backstage where Suchet introduces us to the fictional Cornley Drama Society mockumentary style, providing background for jokes that will unfold over the course of the show.  Some of the well-known story elements remain: Peter Pan comes to the Darlings’ home to retrieve his shadow.  The children fly away with him to Neverland where the nasty Captain Hook seeks revenge for the loss of his hand to a crocodile.  But as the piece’s title would suggest, the production is plagued by issues from actors who forget their lines to designer Harry Banks’s fanciful sets that don’t work as intended.  It is quite a feat to pretend to be so terrible while being genuinely funny.  Even when you sense a set-up, the pay-off is always somewhere to the left of what you expected.  Several bits have their origins in “panto,” a comedic British theatrical form that uses well-known fairytales and encourages the audience to shout out to the players.  Some reactions were practiced, but one particularly witty off-the-cuff heckle was left in the final cut.

With a run-time of just over an hour and an emphasis on physical humor, Peter Pan Goes Wrong is a true family entertainment.  Also available on BroadwayHD are The Goes Wrong Show —12 half hour episodes — and A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong co-starring the magnificent Diana Rigg and Derek Jacobi.  You can learn more at https://www.broadwayhd.com/categories/recently-added.

Chicken & Biscuits

Comedy, Off Off Broadway, Play, streaming May 8, 2023 Leave a comment

Theatre Squared continues to make their season available to a nationwide audience with a lively recording of their opening night of Douglas Lyons’ family dramedy Chicken & Biscuits.   It’s another cohesive and enjoyable ensemble production from the Fayetteville, AK based non-profit and winner of a special 2022 Obie Award. 

I saw a Zoom reading of the work in March of 2021.  As was typical of that time and medium, it was messy, but I enjoyed the interrelationships and the realistic tension between characters.  In its final form, the story unfolds almost entirely in one-on-one conversations, so it doesn’t flow so much as interconnect.  Many of the rough edges have been sanded down so that the understandable conflicts are aired and settled at an almost unnatural pace.   But the comedic exchanges and not-so-gentle ribbing remain in place.  Whether you will find this satisfying or frustrating depends on how much you value resolution over the journey to get there.

Baneatta and Beverly are two dramatically different sisters brought together by the death of their much-loved father.  It is clear from Baneatta’s opening prayer that the siblings are poles apart in style, attitude, and social position.  Quite simply, they drive each other crazy.  They even compete over who can feel more grief over the loss of a parent.  A gap between expectation and reality divide the other family members as well: mothers and children, sister and brother, partners and parents.  But the snipes stem more often from wanting the target to have the best life possible rather than deliberate viciousness.  As one character observes, “miscommunication ruins a lot of love.” 

Director Denise Chapman digs as deeply as she can to find the heart and humanity of each personality.  The vivacious cast brings a warm energy to the entire proceeding.  Robert Denzel Edwards is a stand out as Kenny, in part because his character is given the most vivid speech about his inner life.  With his sincere ability to listen, Edwards helps Justin Mackey as his white Jewish boyfriend Logan and Candace Jandel Thomas as Ken’s wounded sister Simone shine in their scenes togethers.  In another sequence, Maura Gale as Brianna covers 40 years of emotional history, providing a strong core to the plot and perhaps the toughest role.  She plays well against Kathy Tyree and Tameka Bob, respectively keeping Baneatta and Beverly in their defined lanes.  Michael A Jones lends solemnity as Baneatta’s husband Reggie, while Jordan Taylor sits on the other end of the spirit seesaw as Beverly’s Tik Tokking daughter La’Trice.

Photography at Theatre2 of Kathy Tyree and Tameka Bob in Chicken & Biscuits, Fayetteville, Arkansas on April 4, 2023.

As usual for T2, the artistic team supports the overall vision while keeping budget in mind.  Working almost entirely in black, costumer designer Devario D. Simmons gives us terrific textural queues about each character’s dominant qualities.  Marie Laster’s airy church set dominated by a rose window, illuminated cross and arched doorways creates a flexible space that is defined and refined by Athziri Morales’s soft lighting.  

According to American Theatre Magazine, Chicken & Biscuits was the 2nd most performed play across the USA in the 2022-23 season (right behind Clyde’s by Lynn Nottage).  The banter and relatability make for a pleasant viewing experience and sometimes that’s just what’s needed in these psychically exhausting times.  It runs though May 14 at TheatreSquared (477 W. Spring St., Fayetteville).  Live performances are at 7:30pm Tuesday through Saturday with 2pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday.  Digital streamers are available for 24 hours beginning at noon Central Time on the selected date.  Customer service is first rate.  Tickets run from $20-$54 and can be purchased by calling (479) 777-7477 or by visiting theatre2.org.