Glenn M. Loney

A Letter To Arts Colleagues:

Some Notes on Theatre Criticism, Reviewing, & Journalism

From Glenn Loney, Senior Correspondent: NYTheatre-wire.com, Contributing Editor: Western European Stages

 Recently, a request was made that I outline what I believe to be some basic points essential to writing about the Performing Arts for colleagues in the Middle East. It has since been pointed out to me that others might be interested as well, so I have reworked the original document in hopes that it may prove to be useful.

 Analyzing Plays & Productions:

 There are some Basics I used to discussed with my City University of New York graduate students that I would also like to share with friends & colleagues. It may help to itemize them, following which I will append segments of my own reports & reviews which may be of interest.

 1] The simplest and most useful formula for reviewing or critiquing a play or a production is often credited to the great German poet/philosopher/playwright, Johann Wolfgang Goethe. But this will work equally well for reviewing works of fiction & non-fiction, works of Art, Architecture, & Music, as well other forms of Theatre, such as Dance, Performance-Art, & Opera.

 First: What was the author attempting to achieve? This can be comparatively easy, if one is only discussing the play on the page, the printed-text. But the task becomes more complicated when one is reviewing both the play itself and an actual production of the play. These are two different aspects of the work that should be addressed in a review, as will be discussed below.

 Second: How well did he or she succeed? This is also much more complex than it seems. Of course it involves the critic’s personal response—or reaction—to both the play and the production, positive or negative, or in-between. But it should also be conditioned by the critic’s understanding of what is possible to achieve in writing and in producing a drama or comedy or musical. Having seen other productions of the play in question—or stagings of other plays by the same director & designers, as well as other performances of the actors & actresses—should inform the reviewer/critic’s judgments.

 Third: Was it worth doing? Finally, this is the critic/reviewer’s personal-decision—and responsibility.

 Notes on 1] For some novice-reviewers, summarizing the plot of the play may seem sufficient to explain what the author was trying to achieve: “It’s a story about a boy & a girl who fall out of love and…”

 But this may well miss the point of the drama or comedy entirely. Possibly the point may be that many young people are so spoiled, or immature, that they cannot hope to have good relationships until they mature. And, of course, there are plays involving human-relationships that are more largely Anti-War, or Pro-British-Imperialism, or even Anti-Global-Warming. This needs to be noted.

 It’s also possible that the playwright has essentially written his drama for  a specific actor or actress he admires—or who has commissioned it. If that is known—or can be deduced from the play & the performance—it should be discussed, evaluated. Did the play work for her? Is he losing his formerly commanding stage-presence? [Or, reviewing an opera-performance, for instance, how is the tenor’s voice, now that he is 66 years old? Is it fading…]

 As for plot-summaries, they do not take the place of real critiques, but they can be useful to include, both for new & unfamiliar plays, as well as for inexperienced audiences, who want to know something about the content & “look” of what they are going to see. Or not see, if the review is negative…

 All this has to do, in essence, with discussing the play-text, not the actual performances, nor the director’s Interpretation or Concept—which, increasingly in Europe & North America, may deliberately or accidentally work against the author’s intentions. This needs to be explored.

 Set, costume, & lighting-designers should be aiding the director in his Concept, but they could even be sabotaging it! Once again, deliberately or accidentally… This also requires critical comment.

 Unfortunately, there are reviewers—especially those who know nothing about Design or Tech Theatre—who avoid such important aspects of play-production, preferring to concentrate of the playwright, the director, & the performers.

 This can also be a problem in reviewing a Musical Comedy, Operetta, or Opera. For instance, how can a critic evaluate fairly & effectively the contributions of the dancers & the choreographer if he or she has seen few Music-Theatre productions, cannot read music, & knows nothing about Ballet, Folk-dance, Popular Dance, & Modern Dance?

 Oddly enough, in the United States, there are some well-known theatre-reviewer/critics who have no problem in praising or condemning a new Broadway Musical, but who would refuse the assignment of reviewing, not only a new opera, but also a “War-Horse” opera-classic!

 What all the above suggests is that the more you know—and have experienced—about all these aspects of Theatre, the more effective you will be as a reviewer/critic. But even a novice is always learning!

 Notes on 2] This can be a good point to discuss the plot—not as a simple summary—but in terms of how it works, how it is developed, how it achieves Closure, if indeed it does. This is also the place to discuss the characters: are they believable, metaphoric, stereotypes, or totally fantastical?

 To those who know their Aristotle—his Poetics, in particular—Plot, Character, & Thought are essential components. Thought, of course, concerns the Point of the Play, and this is the point at which the reviewer ought to discuss how effectively the plot & characters support & develop the playwright’s Point.

 Ethos is also a good element in the dramatic-mix. Is this writer, this director, this performer, the proper person to be advancing the Ideas he or she clearly is trying to promote? Would you praise the casting of a known libertine to play the role of a much-admired religious figure? [Or how about Paris Hilton as Mother Teresa?]

 In addition to these elements, the Production-Values on view need at least some comment, in terms of how well they assist the author’s & producer’s intentions.

 Once again, as in #1, the degree of your theoretical knowledge & your practical experience involving all these elements will necessarily condition your final evaluations, which, of course, are essentially your personal judgments. But do make an effort to be informed, fair, even helpful—you may catch some things that need correcting: the director & cast should thank you!

 That doesn’t mean you should, in effect, be writing ad-copy for a production. On the other hand—if you have ever been in a play, or tried to direct a play-scene, or paint some scenery, or even hang & set some heavy spotlights, you will understand all the hard-work, energy, sweat, & hope that goes into almost any kind of theatre-production. It doesn’t hurt to honor this in some way…

 Notes on 3] Once again, was it worth doing is Your Call. Even experienced critics may differ in evaluating various aspects of plays & productions. What finally lends such judgments credibility is the critic’s ability to back up his or her comments with specific examples from the text or the production.

 Novices might imagine that nothing needs to be said—under either #2 or #3—about the plot, characters, or thought of such historic-classics as The Trojan Women or Hamlet. Or about modern-classics like Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler or George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara. Not so: Famed critics have long argued about What [really] Happens in Hamlet. Is Shaw’s drama an Anti-War play, or an argument for Good Socialist Industrial-Management?

 Another point about “was it worth doing” is the possibly quite different-reactions of most—or all—of the audience around you. If you hated every minute of the production, while people all around you were falling out of their seats with hilarious laughter, you really ought to mention that fact. Producers, directors, and actors will love you for it!

 Indeed, it is only fair to do so. You may have eaten something beforehand that disagreed with you. Or it was just not your night? Even if you believe your are right in your evaluation, then, perhaps, you can also Review the Audience! “Dolts! Idiots! How could you not see what trash this production was?”

 Reviewers or Critics/Shopping-Guides or Thoughtful-Essayists/Cruel or Kind?

 For those reviewer/critics who write regularly for daily-newspapers—which often means a review written in extreme haste and occasionally repented at leisure—there has long been a nagging Question: Am I really only a Consumer-Guide? Is my real function to tell readers that this show is worth the ticket-prices, while warning them that that production is a waste of their time & money?

 Or do newspaper-buyers instead really want to read an intelligent, interesting, balanced evaluation of a new drama or musical-production?

 In North America, the answer to that seems to be the continual erosion of space for reviews, or their complete elimination, coupled with the gradual demise of print-journalism and the ever-increasing loss of readers, who now get their news & culture from TV or the Internet…

 There has long been some confusion about the use of the terms Critic & Reviewer. In practice, filing a report on a single play & production is effectively Reviewing the play. If, however, you are surveying a month or a season of plays & productions, drawing conclusions about various over-arching aspects of the works and their stage-realizations, that is surely a Critique: you are functioning as a Theatre-Critic. The same would apply if you are, for instance, analyzing & comparing “Bernard Shaw’s Women on Stage in his Plays Pleasant & Unpleasant.”

 That would also be a correct description of  your work if you are surveying the Classic Dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, & Euripides. Or the Characters of Shakespeare vs. those of Marlowe: Shylock vs. the Jew of Malta…

 As for the Tone & Language of your reviews and/or critiques, it is much easier to parody, to mock, or to make fun of the playwright, his or her play, the director, the designers, the choreographer, the scenery, the theatre-seats, the ushers, and even the intermission-refreshments. Much easier—and also much more fun to read—than writing a thoughtful, intelligent, informed, sympathetic, balanced account of the production you have just seen.

 But, if you are working for wages or fees as a reviewer—and other would-be writers are eager, or even intriguing, to take your place—you really need to win & hold your readers, as well as your editor & publisher. This can be even more important if you are writing for an academic or professional journal, in which case your colleagues and peers will often insist that they could do a much better job than you.

 Thus, the Temptation to be mildly-amusing, mordantly-witty, sharply-satiric, or even devastatingly-dismissive may very well encourage you into the Attack-Mode. Watch Out! You can still write interesting reviews & compelling critiques without being either vicious or destructive!

 Some reviewer/critics have made very visible efforts to develop distinctive writing-styles & superior-attitudes. George Bernard Shaw was one of the first, notably with his Music Criticism. In more recent times, the late British critic, Kenneth Tynan, and the Manhattan critic, John Simon, have certainly achieved this status.

 Both Simon & Tynan often deliberately included one or more unfamiliar words in their reviews, sending readers searching for their dictionaries. It was also often clear that these words were not necessarily the most resoundingly effective non-redundant adjectives or nouns that could have been deployed in the immutable service of scintillatingly communicating the critics’ ineffable judgments: Verbal Showing-off!

 But Ken Tynan—who became Sir Laurence Olivier’s Dramaturg, with the founding of Britain’s National Theatre—could be very funny when in the Devastation-Mode or Take-No-Prisoners School of Criticism.

 Here’s what he had to say of a new Rodgers & Hammerstein Broadway Musical, Flower Drum Song:

 “The authors’ attitude toward exotic peoples in general seems to have changed hardly at all since they wrote South Pacific and The King and I. If friendly, the natives have a simple, primitive, childlike sweetness. If girls, they do not know how to kiss, but once they have been taught, they are just wild about it. They also beg to inquire, please, just what it is that is said with flowers. In their conversation, as you may have gleaned, there is more than a smidgen of pidgin…

 “It seems to have worried neither Mr. Rodgers nor Mr. Hammerstein very much that the behavior of war-torn Pacific islanders and nineteenth-century Siamese might be slightly different from that of Chinese residents of present-day California, where Flower Drum Song is fictionally sung.

 “…what I saw before me was simply a stale Broadway confection wrapped up in spurious Chinese trimmings. Perhaps as a riposte to Joshua Logan’s The World of Suzie Wong, Rodgers and Hammerstein have given us what, if I had any self-control at all, I would refrain from describing as a world of woozy song.”

 Many readers—even those who, in fact, liked this show—found Tynan’s review hilarious, even Required Reading. It is taken  from Curtains, a collection of his reviews.

 All-Purpose Arts-Reviewing:

 When I began holding seminars on Theatre Reviewing & Criticism, I was also writing & reviewing for Dance Magazine, Opera News, & American Artist. Although I was, in fact, a Professor of Theatre-History & Dramatic Literature in the City University of New York, I had also studied music, and I had taken Art-History from famed actress Uta Hagen’s father, Professor Oscar Hagen. So I did have some background for working as a critic, reviewer, & journalist in the Arts in general.

 What I discovered is that the three critical-categories derived from Goethe worked quite well in various arts & performance-forms. So I encouraged all my students to learn more about the other arts and to try their talents at more than reviewing plays.

 This has proved good advice for several reasons. First, most students would never find positions as Major Broadway Critics for the New York Times or Time Magazine. In fact, America’s major weekly news-magazines now run very little coverage of any kind on legitimate-theatre, opera, or dance.

 Unfortunately, that is now also true of most newspapers—both metropolitan & regional—as well as of weekly, monthly, & quarterly magazines & journals. Nonetheless, the writer who can function as an Arts Journalist, Interviewer, or Photographer—as well as a reviewer & critic—is more apt to find work and keep his or her job.

 It was always true that newspapers & magazines in smaller centers tended to have only one or two journalist/critics who could cover high-school pageants, garden-shows, antique-fairs, choral performances of Handel’s Messiah, as well as touring Broadway shows and distinguished lecturers with National Reputations.

 Now, as many regional newspapers—and even local “alternative” papers—are shrinking, or dying, arts-reviewing/reporting jobs are being slashed. What may be wanted by the editor is only a large color-photo of the star of the forthcoming touring-attraction, with a caption of a few sentences. As an editor recently said: “Who wants to read a review of a one-time-only concert of Renaissance Music that’s already over?”

 Fear about this state of affairs, at least in North America, has become central to annual conferences of Theatre Critics, Dance Critics, & Music/Opera Critics. Thus, it seems questionable—and even counter-productive—for senior & still-employed critics to be funding Seminars for Young Critics: Do you want to prepare them to snatch away your Two-Seats-on-the-Aisle before you are anywhere near Retirement?

 What such organizations as the American Theatre Critics Association—ATCA—and the International Association of Theatre Critics—IATC—could direct their collective-attentions to would be some timely seminars exploring the potentials of the Worldwide Internet!

 In fact, a number of ATCA members, who have lost their print-venues in the past few years, have already developed their own “blogs” & websites. Even major national magazines & newspapers are now putting movie & theatre-reviews, arts-journalism, & even fast-breaking news on their websites, instead of in print!

 Print-media may be soon replaced by web-reports you can read—or even hear out-loud—on your mobile-phone!

 There is something else the Internet can make possible: something that was inconceivable when the Nazis seized power in Germany, in 1933, and took over all film-production, all radio-broadcasting, all newspapers & magazines, all publication of books and school-texts.

 It was virtually impossible for ordinary Germans to find out what was really happening beyond their borders. Nor could they tell friends & family living abroad what they saw happening around them.

 Even today, there are lands where repressive governments control the print & broadcast media, flooding it with their propaganda, and they also censor letters & monitor phone-calls. But the Internet provides a possibility to communicate with others worldwide, relatively free of interference.

 Halfway round the world, theatre-fans & colleagues can read your reviews—without editorial or state censorship! No one can shut you up! In print, you may still have difficulty being heard.

 Where money talks, as they say—even in celebrated democracies—it is possible for a really wealthy theatre or film-producer to have an influence on what gets published or omitted.

 One ferocious—but very amusing—newspaper film-critic was curbed when cinema-studios began pulling their very expensive ads from the paper. At one point, ad-lines were down 45 per cent because of her reviews. Of the major Hollywood-musical, Camelot, she wrote only this: “Came a little.” So the ads were pulled!

This is, of course, another form of censorship. But you do not have to worry about it on the Internet. Or will someone figure out a way to do just that?

 Although—at age 78—I still write for some print-publications, there is no payment: “You got two free tickets, didn’t you?” And print-space is always limited. So the opportunity to write about both performing-arts and the other arts for the NYTheater-wire.com & NYMuseums.com offers a wonderful Outlet! No one tells me what—or how—to write…

 Collegial-Critique-Sharing:

 To the above Print-Rant, I here append several samples of my writing as an Arts-Journalist, Interviewer, Reviewer, & Critic. A number of my colleagues insist on “keeping themselves pure” by refusing to do interviews or write advance-reports on performances or exhibitions.

 That may be all right if your position is secure, unassailable. But I have found, over the years, that talking with an author about his new drama, sitting-in on a rehearsal for a new Off-Broadway musical or an opera-production at the Met, or even studying Jo Mielziner’s designs for an Arthur Miller opus, greatly enhanced my understanding & appreciation of the finished productions. And I was pleased that I could share that with my readers. Not to mention my editors…

 Of course, it can be argued that such personal contact with the talents creating a new stage-production will corrupt your judgment: that you will tend to favor or forgive more easily. That has never been a problem for me, for I always tend to “tell it like it is!”

 In practice, what this may mean is that, for instance, a famous Broadway composer stopped speaking to me & regretted that he had ever come to talk to my Music Theatre Seminar students.

 The late stage-director Alan Schneider—who let me sit-in on some play-rehearsals on occasion—frequently would stop talking to me for six months or so.

 Then I’d get a call: “You were right, after all. But I was so angry that no one seemed to like it. I couldn’t believe that you—someone I thought really understood what I was doing—also didn’t get it. Let’s have lunch!” 

There are two other minor observations I’d like to add: In the beginning, I studiously tried to take notes during performances. Unfortunately, it often was too dark, so I couldn’t see what I was scribbling. Even in a bright light, I frequently cannot decipher my handwriting, so note-taking was a problem.

 I soon gave up trying, however, after I began filing quarterly Broadway/Off-Broadway review-roundups for the Educational Theatre Journal. I had temporarily replaced John Gassner, Sterling Professor of Drama at Yale—and my last Mentor. He’d had a heart-attack.

 But when he returned to share his column with me, it was running twice as long. He told me: “Stop putting in so much detail. You remember too much—even when you don’t take notes.”

 “When you get ready to write your reviews at the end of each three-month period, just write what you can remember, without looking at notes. You’ll find you remember the Best & the Worst. That’s enough,” Gassner said.

 “Forgetting is also a form of Criticism,” he reminded me.

 Nonetheless, if you don’t trust your memory—especially if you are a beginner—don’t take chances. Do jot down the points you think will be really important when you write your review or critique: the Best & the Worst.

 Another experience also made me wonder about my pre-conceptions regarding reviewing. John Beaufort—then the Arts Editor of the Christian Science Monitor—asked me to join him for the New York premiere of Germany’s famed Gustav Gründgens, in his Hamburg production of Faust.

 Gründgens was the model for Klaus Mann’s Mephisto and a major talent. I had already seen this production in Hamburg and I understood German. Beaufort did not, so he asked for my opinion of the production afterward. I had some serious reservations.

 But when his review appeared in the Monitor, it was generous, almost rapturous. I was puzzled, even astounded. “John, you really didn’t like it much. And I’m sure you didn’t understand what they were saying. So why the rave-review?”

 He explained the niceties of maintaining good-relations with arts-embassies from foreign-lands. Of the decency of being courteous, especially if one didn’t quite know what was happening on stage.

 “What’s more,” he said, “if we all told it like it is, they’d begin to close down the theatres. We have an obligation to support live-theatre by not attacking it too strongly—or too often.”

 The Critic as Cheer-leader? No, that was not what he meant, he said. But the reviewer shouldn’t behave as if each new production was some kind of Major Crime…

 Something to think about. But how can theatre-productions strive for improvement & innovation, for Higher Standards, if the critics are not demanding that they do so? You, as a reviewer/critic, need to urge theatre-artists & professionals to do their best work—and make it even better next time!

 Some Samples, but Only Extracts of Much Longer Reports:

 Actually, many of my Performing-Arts & Museum/Gallery reports are archived on the two websites: NYTheater-wire.com & NYMuseums.com. If you have access to the Internet, you can check some of these out. The monthly summaries—really more like mini-reviews or reports than full-fledged critiques—began in 1996, but the archiving may not stretch back that far.

 From Western European Stages/1994:

 In its beginnings, the Edinburgh Festival was primarily musical, and music still plays an important part—notably Music-Theatre—though not as great as under the festival’s founder, Sir Rudolf Bing. Brian McMaster is the current director, and his expertise in dance guarantees that it will always be strongly represented. But various forms of drama were the major attractions this year. One of them, Peter Stein’s production of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, was alone worth the trip to Edinburgh.

Arianne Mnouchkine's avant-gardist Asiatic vision of this classic Greek trilogy has already been seen in New York at BAM, so why should it import yet another version? Because Stein's is so different, so basic, and so powerful. Especially with the remarkable actors of Moscow's Russian Army Theatre, for whom this ageless tale of betrayal and vengeance—finally vanquished by the rule of law in a new democracy—now has special resonance. Super-titles were used, but the cadences of spoken Russian, like those of Greek at Epidaurus, gave the dramas added majesty and terror.

Stein strove for essentials, paring the production down to a few major set-pieces and props, as well as dynamically evocative costumes. His choruses, for instance, bridged the gap between the archaic and the modern. In Agamemnon, the chorus of Old Men were dressed like shabby members of the Politburo.

In Choephoroe, the wailing women's chorus wore the timeless black widow's garb of Mediterranean lands. But, for the chorus of Athenian citizens in The Eumenides, terrified of the avenging Furies who are pursuing the matricide, Orestes, business-suits were the topical choice. Stein didn't spare the blood and gore, showing the murdered corpses—as did the ancient Greeks—on a rolling platform.

            The first two parts of the trilogy were passionate and riveting, but Stein curiously decided to give the final tragedy a satiric treatment, perhaps because he knows the three plays originally would have been followed by a bawdy satyr play, now lost. So Apollo appeared, strumming his lyre Elvis-like. Athena coming to Orestes' rescue, zoomed in overhead on an aerial track and descended—in glittering silver lamé—to plead for Orestes like a TV game-show hostess. It was great fun, but it did detract from the impact of what preceded.

Some critics, sitting in the hard rented-seats of the ice-rink venue, insisted they hardly noticed it was 7-plus hours long. If so, why did they make such a point of writing about its length? Actually, two hours was taken up with intermissions, so audiences could eat and actors rest.

A definite Must for New York and points west is the Luc Bondy staging—for Berlin’s celebrated Schaubühne—of Peter Handke's The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other. Those familiar with Handke's philosophical-dramatical interest in the problems of language as a medium of communication need not fear super-titles. There are none. For 100 minutes, none of the 40 actors—representing scores of characters—speaks a word! Bondy has ingeniously translated to a stage, which looks like the southern coast of Spain, 64 pages of stage-directions.

There is no story-line; just people scurrying, scuffling, scampering, sneaking, and striding across the stage. You can often guess who they are and what they're up to, but when you can't, it's even more fascinating. And, amusing as much of it is, it’s also not without mysterious menace: perhaps an atomic accident in the distance?

The Abbey Theatre's Patrick Mason offered an elemental but alarming production of J. M. Synge's virtually forgotten play, The Well of the Saints. Samuel Beckett greatly admired this play, and you can easily see why. Not only in the magic of Irished English, so rich in images and curses, but also in the two central-figures: an old blind couple, waiting endlessly at a crossroads, begging for coins.

Unfortunately for them, Godot actually comes—in the form of a fanatical priest who temporarily heals their sightless eyes with water from the saintly well. They have borne their miseries before this in the saving belief that they were both attractive. They certainly are not. The discovery drives them apart and encourages the spitefulness of the bitter, repressed villagers, who drive them away after they go blind again and refuse a second dose of the Holy Water. The Abbey players are in top form, under Mason's direction, giving both pleasure and pain in this strange drama of hope and hypocrisy.

 

From London’s New Theatre Quarterly/1996:

 Despite the hoopla over the Tony Awards, only 12 of the 1995-96 season’s 38 new Broadway productions were still open in summer. The biggest excitement involving the annual awards was Julie Andrews’ rejection of the nomination for Best Actress in a Musical. She and her producer-director-husband Blake Edwards were miffed that their show—Victor/Victoria— had not been nominated for Best Musical. Instead, they consoled themselves with signs outside the Mariott-Marquis Theatre proclaiming it as the Outer Critics Circle choice for “Best Musical.”

The reason 22 shows did not live on wasn’t that they were all terrible. Some were, but many were limited-runs—either commercial or institutional-theatre productions. The latter are largely seen by subscription audiences, unless they make a commercial transfer.

Curiously, each recent Broadway season has proved more profitable than the last, even though there has been a distinct diminution in quality and quantity. This is a result of the weak dollar, which encourages hordes of European visitors—notably Germans—to pack the theatres even in winter. True, Germany now has large purpose-built theatres—in such uninspiring locales as Bochum and Duisberg—for the musical-masterpieces of Andrew Lloyd Webber and his Les Mis Saigon continental clones. But it is often cheaper to come to New York to see them in really historic playhouses.

Although Mayor Rudolf Giuliani insists that New York City does indeed understand how very important theatre is to tourism—now virtually the major surviving industry—little or nothing is done to encourage experimental fringe and alternative theatres, which eventually or sometimes immediately re-invigorate mainstream theatre. In fact, the two major modern musical hits of the season—Rent and Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk—originated in subsidized Off-off Broadway institutional-theatres: The Public and the NY Theatre Workshop!

On Broadway, there were only two new American plays which seemed to impress: August Wilson’s Seven Guitars and Terrence McNally’s Master Class, which owed much to Zoe Caldwell’s Maria Callas. Ken Ludwig’s Moon Over Buffalo—a heavy-handed, would-be farce—limped through the season, thanks to Carol Burnett’s mugging. Trish Vradenburg’s semi-autobiographical The Apple Doesn’t Fall… vanished rapidly, as did Diane Shaffer’s Sacrilege, with an outspoken nun wanting to be a priest. The biggest, costliest flop was a sad surprise. Stephen Sondheim—the master of puzzles and riddles—and his Company collaborator, George Furth, briefly baffled and bored audiences with Getting Away with Murder. In comparison, it made the O. J. Simpson Trial seem a masterpiece.

Except for Nicholas Wright’s Off-Broadway Mrs. Klein, with a magisterial Uta Hagen, all the “new” plays from across the Atlantic were produced by institutional-theatres in limited runs. The Roundabout presented Jason Robards in Harold Pinter’s Moonlight and Brian Friel’s Molly Sweeney, in which he was as affecting as Catherine Byrne and Alfred Molina. Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont recreated the London production of David Hare’s Racing Demon.

Howard Davies staged Richard Nelson’s New England for the Manhattan Theatre Club, while Mark Wing-Davey gave Caryl Churchill’s The Skriker a shrill, bizarre production at the Public—but then it is a shrill, bizarre script.

The New Group presented Stephen Bill’s Curtains to almost universal critical acclaim. The Potomac Theatre Project brought a bare-bones but powerful staging of Howard Barker’s Scenes From an Execution from Maryland. Geraldine Aron’s Irish memoir, Same Old Moon, was an evocative opening for the Irish Repertory Theatre’s handsome new theatre.

There is no space even to list—let alone describe—the more than 60 new plays I saw Off and Off-off Broadway. And even I didn’t manage to see all that were produced. It is this kind of production-frenzy, in the face of rising costs and declining subsidies, which gives hope of even better things to come. Playwrights, directors, actors, designers, and producers clearly are still determined to have a New York showcase.

Attention must be paid, however, to some interesting new works. Film-star Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile, imagining Picasso, Einstein, and Elvis together proved a great success. His quartet of one-acts at the Public—Wasp, Guillotine, Zig-zag Woman, and Patter for the Floating Lady—depended almost entirely for their effects on magicians’ illusions. John Robin Baitz’s A Fair Country—demonstrating the perils of growing up in a diplomat’s family, Nicky Silver’s The Food Chain—an hilarious saga of a fat boy’s formidable hunger for food and love, and Eric Overmyer’s Dark Rapture—an exciting and fascinating three-dimensional film noire—will all surely have more productions.

As will such plays as Jon Marans’ Old Wicked Songs—exploring anti-semitism in Vienna, as an old Austrian musician and a young American pianist thrust and parry, Tim Blake Nelson’s The Gray Zone-a harrowing revelation of the grisly work of Jewish Sonderkommandos in Auschwitz, Russell Lees’ wickedly amusing Nixon’s Nixon—revealing Henry Kissinger on his knees, joining the dubious President in prayer only hours before his resignation, Willy Holtzman’s intriguing Sabina—whose cure launched the career of Carl Jung and amazed Sigmund Freud, and Richard Dresser’s Below the Belt—a black comedy, probably inspired by Havel, Beckett, and Ionesco, of exploitive Americans trapped in a Heart of Darkness they cannot comprehend.                                                                                         --GLENN LONEY

 

From New York Theatre Week:

Berkeley Rep’s The Woman Warrior

 The Woman Warrior is a fascinating dramatic-adaptation of Maxine Hong Kingston's visions of her family—in China and in America, in her books, China Men and The Woman Warrior. It  is so compelling a stage-work, it would be New York's loss if it does not come to Broadway from far-off Berkeley.

Today, few Americans have any idea of the hostility and discrimination which were so long the lot of Chinese who came to America—the “Gold Mountain”—to help build the Transcontinental Railroad and do other menial work, such as toil in laundries.

At one point, fear of what was then called the “Yellow Peril”—a phrase popularized by both Jack London and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany—led to the infamous “Alien Exclusion Act,” aimed directly at Asians. Now that California’s Governor, Pete Wilson, and Senator Diane Feinstein are again playing the “immigration card,” The Woman Warrior seems an even more relevant antidote to racial prejudice.

The very fact that the Berkeley Repertory Theatre—with a lot of help from its friends, such as AT&T—has spent $800,000 on this production indicates how much it values this work and what it has to say.

 Bryan Wyatt, Berkeley  Rep's General Manager, notes that this sum is the largest ever spent on a single production by a regional theatre. After the extended run in the Bay Area, the handsome show moves to Boston's Huntington Theatre, with a later transfer planned for the Kennedy Center.

The Woman Warrior—although it also includes elements of the Beijing Opera in its magical evocation of ancient myths, ardent fiction, and often poignant fact—is quite a different dramatic experience from David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly. It takes its name from Kingston's semi-autobiographical work, and, like the book, its poetic inspiration is an old Chinese tale of a girl chosen by the gods for a remarkable role as a warrior in a world of often brutal men and oppressed women.

Trying to discover her roots in China, while growing up in Stockton, California, Kingston evoked the image of this brave woman as a parallel to her mother, who became a doctor in China, only to find herself slaving in the family laundry in the so-called Golden West.

With workshops at Los Angeles’ Center Theatre complex and at Berkeley Rep, adaptor Deborah Rogin has skillfully integrated Kingston’s memories and imaginings about her childhood and those of her parents from her books. Each work emphasizes different aspects of life in China and in the land of the Gold Mountain, where Chinese immigrants were sure they would strike it rich.

But because so much of what Kingston’s mother told her was fable mixed with fact, she had to imagine what the realities might have been. This was especially true of her father, a poet and scholar in China, but an angry, hard-working, disappointed laundryman in California.

With a wonderfully elemental setting of white panels by Ming Cho Lee, the production moves back and forth in fragmented time between the old country and the new, as well as between fact and fiction, myth and memory. The exotic beauty of an entire evening of Chinese Opera—too much for theatre-goers long conditioned to Andrew Lloyd Webber—is here condensed to vignettes which dazzle with the fantastic traditional costumes and acrobatic skills. Myth is interwoven with hard realities and tender fantasies. Susan Hilferty's evocative costumes and Peter Maradudin's lighting work well against Lee's white walls and abruptly appearing apertures.

Highlighting the original cast was Lisa Lu—featured in the film, The Joy Luck Club—but the rest of the players, old and young, seasoned and novice, were excellent as well. A Girlhood Among Ghosts is the subtitle of this epic of family exploration, and Liu Qi-Chao's haunting music has certainly been important in integrating plot-elements and emphasizing atmosphere.

Director Sharon Ott has been especially successful in fusing the many strands, so that Kingston's own effort to come to terms with herself is even more an understanding of her parents’ hard lives and their strategies for dealing with them.

With the success of such recent films as The Wedding Banquet and The Joy Luck Club, Americans of Chinese birth or descent are at last able to share with others something of their experiences in a country which has all too often in the past been openly hostile to them.

The Berkeley Reps' valuable play-program in fact documents in detail the terrible discrimination Chinese immigrants have had to suffer, especially on the West Coast. Kingston, of course, is telling her own imaginative story. It is not a generic experience, but this stage-vision should surely inspire further dramatic and cinematic explorations of the past and the present in this land for Chinese-Americans.

                                                                                                                 --GLENN LONEY

 

From Glenn Loney’s Show-Notes/2003:

John Lee Beatty's DINNER AT EIGHT  [*****]

 The Lincoln Center Vivian Beaumont revival of Kaufman & Ferber's Dinner at Eight is a brilliant achievement. And it is in no way a dismissal of the star-studded casting and powerful performances to begin by saluting stage-designer John Lee Beatty for his equally brilliant settings.

 There are eight of these splendid interiors—some of them handsomely Art Deco, with others more elegantly traditional. This wonderful production is worth seeing for the sets—and Catherine Zuber's costumes—alone.

 Fortunately, the excellent cast is so strong and vibrant that they are only momentarily upstaged as yet another glittering—or nobly fusty—interior glides into view.

 Beaumont audiences who are used to seeing plays spread out for them on the semi-circular thrust-stage—backed by an appropriate architectural wall, as in The Little Foxes—may well be astonished, wondering where all these sets are coming from.

 The Beaumont is the odd result of Theatre-Design by Committee. It was conceived at a time when the common belief was that every major American City—New York included—should have a subsidized repertory theatre, as in Europe. With the play-bill changing every night, as at the Met or the City Opera…

 That meant the new theatre had to have an immense backstage-area. So all the sets for all the plays currently in rep could be in-house and not have to be trucked in from storage in the Bronx or New Jersey.

 And, as the beloved designer Jo Mielziner once pointed out to me—when I was preparing a feature on the new Beaumont—the Committee was divided in its visions of the proper stage for a New Age.

 Some wanted a Neo-Greek Amphitheatre. Some wanted a Thrust-Stage. Some preferred the conventional Proscenium Arch conformation. Some thought a revolving-stage should be permanently incorporated in the design. As is the custom in Europe…

 In fact, the Beaumont has not one revolve, but TWO. One inside the other, and they can rotate in opposite directions…

 The visual problem with these revolves—and, indeed, with any proscenium-style staging in this theatre—is that the auditorium-seating is like a Greek amphitheatre. That means that spectators in the pie-wedges of seats at either side cannot see the full-stage settings those in the center can enjoy. The side sight-lines resemble a squat triangle whose apex doesn't go very far upstage in a full-stage proscenium-production.

 Amy Irving's dad, the late Jules Irving, did try repertory in the Beaumont. But theatre-audiences—unlike Met regulars just next door—could not get used to the idea of different shows on different nights. And different curtain-times as well…

 The result was an ongoing recipe for difficulty and disaster. At one point, a group tried to take over the complex and turn its vast spaces into six Cinemathèque theatres. This was fortunately foiled, but with a lot of ill-will on both sides.

 John Lee Beatty is a genius, no question. [Yes, I have also interviewed him and written about his many productions.] And he very well understands the strengths and problems of the Beaumont, both with its stage[s] and its auditorium.

 So he has designed his often magnificent settings to be relatively shallow and planar. Thus they can be rolled onto the thrust as scenic-backings, with most of the action downstage where everyone can see it. Nothing is hidden behind the proscenium.

 As for Kaufman & Ferber's Despression Era drama of Upstairs/Downstairs, it is an engaging but sobering bit of Time-Travel to an age when Broadway and London plays focused on the lives and loves of the wealthy and well-bred.

 Frankly, it is refreshing to return to a time when good-manners and Maintaining Appearances were almost Civic Virtues. Of course, the situations, characters, and values are not Politically Correct.

 That was Then, and this is now. But the characters & situations are still thoroughly understandable. Were Kaufman & Ferber to return, they would surely pillory our current concerns and morés far more insightfully than any of our contemporary TV-brainwashed playwrights.

 What is especially intriguing about Dinner at Eight is that—while it is often very amusing, at the cost of the characters, who deserve it—its tragic denouement is not shown. The final curtain falls before the drama is fully played-out. But most of the audience will have strong suspicions of how things must end. Something to talk about on the way home. As well as the sets!

 The power & viability of this drama is enhanced and enforced by an amazing cast. All are very good: some are outstanding. Rather than list all 27, here are some you will surely want to see on stage in action—before the dinner-party which you will never see: Christine Ebersole, Kevin Conway, Emily Skinner, Sloane Shelton, James Reborn, Deborah Mayo, Joanne Camp, Mark Lotito Joe Grifasi, Byron Jennings, Brian Reddy, Anne Lange, Enid Graham, etc., etc.

 Marion Seldes stands out as the flamboyant but fading star, Carlotta Vance. Each entrance is made more impressive by yet another astounding Fashion Statement. I hope she gets to keep all the costumes! Only Marion can wear them so well. [We are of an age—I was just 75—so I salute a great actress and trouper who can still act rings around her juniors. Many of whom she trained at the Juilliard School!]

 Gerry Gutierrez has directed with both subtlety and boldness. It could not have been easy integrating so many stars with so many plot-lines and costumes and sets!                                             --GLENN LONEY