A Canine Mystery, Solved with Flair

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Barrymore Theatre

Ian Barford (L) and Alex Sharp in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

            It is the especial and sacred responsibility of a critic, particularly this early in the season, to report with great honesty and accuracy of vision after having seen a show so promising and beautiful in its conception that it stands a good chance of becoming a classic.  Now I am faced with just such a situation in that marvelous British transfer, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, based on the equally excellent book by Mark Haddon and a production of the inexhaustibly virtuosic National Theater (and, significantly, their golden girl directress, Marianne Elliot—but more on her later).  This production of the new and noteworthy play (which originally opened on the West End in 2012 and is still going strong there) is something near perfect, a work of art that reminds us that the world, loud and confusing though it may be for some, is full of beautiful, wonderful things.

            In the play, as in the book, young Christopher Francis Boone, a brilliant fifteen-year-old whose unique symptoms fall somewhere on the autism spectrum, discovers his neighbor’s dog dead in her garden and resolves to find the beast’s killer, just as the heroes of his favorite murder mysteries might.  Along the way, we are introduced to the perspective of an infinitely relatable character who makes the rest of the world look like a pack of cruel, coarse fools.  His hopes, dreams, and disillusionments are spilled out across the gorgeous stage (designed by the Olivier Award winner Bunny Christie) by virtue of the magnificent stagecraft of Ms. Elliot, who, as anyone who has seen this production or her equally innovative War Horse can attest, is a genius in her own time.

            Great theatrical minds stand behind Ms. Elliot, including Ms. Christie, lighting designer Paule Constable, video designer Finn Ross, and spectacular choreographers Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett.  Thanks in part to these minds, who have in this point in their careers left in their wake resumes formidable enough to stop the hardiest theater veteran in his tracks, Ms. Elliot achieves perhaps the most important work of theatrical dream-weaving of the past quarter-century.  Her moments of inspiration are innumerable, and are not to be described here for fear of ruining the glimpse of pure stage Nirvana accorded to anyone who visits the Barrymore this season.  Suffice it to say that the world she has created for Christopher is unlike anything I have ever seen, a dream-world where the laws of physics and society do not apply, a world that cements the audience firmly in the surprisingly welcoming environment of Christopher’s inner mind.  It is a world guided by logic that collapses when confronted with the confusing or the unknowable, and populated by eternally mystical characters whose constant shouting and overly emotional doings we see through Christopher’s eyes.  Why are they so loud?  What is the purpose of all the sound and fury?  The audience understands only Christopher, and so grows to love him.

            And I am convinced only now, after having first read Mr. Haddon’s book and reading about Luke Treadaway playing the part in London, that there is only one man who was definitively born to play Christopher Boone, and will find no match in the long and fruitful life this play is sure to enjoy.  His name is Alex Sharp, he is in his fourth year at Julliard, and his is one of the greatest performances I have yet had the deep, redefining pleasure of coming across.  He is Christopher.  His blood is Boone blood; his face and his mind pulsate with the energy of that unstoppable boy genius.  In this still-young season he is a shoo-in for the Best Actor in a Play Tony—I cannot imagine a performance that might surpass his—and for this among many other reasons I will be following his surely-long career with great interest.  If you might see its conception, be aware of the enormity and importance of this play in the history of acting.

            The script, by Simon Stephens, is wisely mostly composed of wide swaths of Mr. Haddon’s captivating prose, but veers occasionally into the absurd or the cruelly disappointing, as in the second act when it becomes painfully self-referential.  When Christopher recounts his story to his refined schoolteacher Siobhan (the adequate Francesca Faridany), and she replies, “I know.  We made it into a play,” it almost made me physically ill.  And, rather than end with the joyfully optimistic and uplifting concluding words of Mr. Haddon’s book, “…and that means I can do anything,” which brought Christopher’s arc to a satisfactory end, Mr. Stephens’ play ends with Christopher asking Siobhan, “I can do anything… Right?” and receiving no response.  This left a bit of an unnecessary pit in my stomach, especially given that the storyline of both the book and the play had led the audience to expect a slightly happier ending.

            Luckily a stellar post-curtain call scene reinvigorates and ends the show right.  I won’t give this away, either, but it involves—no surprise—Mr. Sharp, alone onstage, and some more wonderful work by Ms. Elliot and her team.  When it works, it works.

Snakes, Kittens, and Fireworks—What’s a Couple to Do?

You Can’t Take it With You at the Longacre Theatre

(L-R): James Earl Jones, Kristine Nielsen, Fran Kranz, Will Brill, Annaleigh Ashford, Patrick Kerr, and Mark Linn-Baker in You Can't Take it With You.

            In a season that is to be filled with revivals of all shapes and sizes, it’s nice to have one traditional, reassuring one of a kind you don’t see on Broadway very often anymore.  You Can’t Take it With You, at the Longacre Theatre, is fun, funny, and true to its material.  Director Scott Ellis (also represented this season by the upcoming The Elephant Man) has created a world that defiantly rests in 1936 New York, the original setting of the play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, then six years into a successful partnership.  The comedy is raucous and joyous, the romance sappy, and the values progressive yet comforting.  In short, it’s a great farce of the old school, and since no one could improve one of those anyway, Mr. Ellis wisely doesn’t go about trying.

            The play stars an energetic and captivating James Earl Jones as Martin Vanderhof, the patriarch of the eccentric and happy-go-lucky Sycamore family, which is, unexplainedly, otherwise entirely white.  But it’s an ensemble piece, rounded out by too many talented actors to mention.  Kristine Nielsen (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) as Penny Sycamore, Martin’s playwright daughter, is loopy and sweet.  Annaleigh Ashford of Kinky Boots, as Penelope’s daughter Essie, a candymaker and aspiring dancer, is surprisingly hilarious and light on her feet, fulfilling what is clearly a tightly defined comic language for the play for which Mr. Ellis is to be congratulated.  Will Brill, as her husband Ed, is a delightful counterbalance with a comic style reminiscent of Peewee Herman.  And Rose Byrne, as Penny’s other, saner, love-struck daughter Alice, makes excellent, if occasionally weepy, familial glue.  The cast is a well-oiled machine.  Not a mark is missed, nor is the timing of Kaufman and Hart’s brilliant lines ever off by a second.  It’s one of the better comedic ensembles I’ve yet seen, all doing its work in a beautiful world created by prolific set designer David Rockwell.

            The story of the two families that just don’t mix — in this case the wacky, odd-job-holding Sycamores and the Kirbys, the brethren of Alice’s paramour, Tony (Fran Kranz) — has been seen before and will be again.  What makes You Can’t Take it With You unique, and always has, are its ideals, as expounded upon repeatedly — but never preachily — by Martin over the course of the play.  Do only what you truly want to, explains the jolly grandfather, and don’t waste your life on things that will make you unhappy.  It’s this anarchic spirit that fuels the comedy of the play — Martin refusing to pay his income taxes, Penny becoming a playwright because a typewriter is delivered to the house by mistake, Penny’s husband Paul (Mark Linn-Baker) making fireworks without a license in the cellar.  And it’s the comedy that makes the Sycamores so much fun.

            All in all, the performance of You Can’t Take it With You I attended was some of the greatest fun I’ve had at the theater in recent memory.  And in post-Depression, pre-war America, just when things were beginning to brighten a little, I can imagine audiences felt much the same way.  I felt I was walking in their shoes when, as I left the theater, I imagined Kaufman and Hart pacing anxiously at the back of the orchestra, like a scene out of Act One.  That’s because Mr. Ellis and this delicious group of actors have succeeded in transplanting the audience back to when this play was a new sensation—and, in doing so, have made it one of the hottest and best plays of the fall of 2014.  I’ve never been happier to live in the past.

It's Barely a Play

It’s Only a Play at the Schoenfeld Theater

Nathan Lane in It's Only a Play.

            After sitting through the revival of Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play, directed by Jack O’Brien, at the Schoenfeld Theater, the primary question in my mind was whether I was having a horrible dream.  The play’s preview performances so far have been entirely sold out.  The names of Mr. McNally (Lips Together, Teeth Apart) and Mr. O’Brien (Hairspray) carry distinct weight.  And most important — certainly for the audiences who have been buying advance tickets in droves — is the star-studded cast, including F. Murray Abraham, Stockard Channing, Rupert Grint, Megan Mullally, Matthew Broderick, and Nathan Lane.  But what a play for the stage reunion of those two celebrated stars of Mel Brooks’ The Producers!  I can’t avoid it — It’s Only a Play is one of the most atrociously written, obscenely uninteresting, and just plain unprofessional Broadway shows I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing.

            Set at a Manhattan townhouse where playwright Peter Austin (Broderick) is being feted for the opening of his new play by his producer, Julia Budder (Mullally), It’s Only a Play takes place over two and a half live hours as the party guests wait uncomfortably for the reviews, knowing they could make or break the precarious production.  Drug-addicted star Virginia Noyes (Channing) wants to regain her old acclaim, over-praised director Sir Frank Finger (Grint) wants to be grounded with criticism, and Austin’s best friend, washed-up TV star Jimmy Wicker (Lane) and eviscerating critic Ira Drew (F. Murray Abraham) are along for the ride.  A naïve coat boy, Gus (the newcomer Micah Stock), is also there, for some reason.  Sad to say, this promising premise does not deliver on its promise.  Instead, this 1982 play has been drastically rewritten to become a nearly three-hour bout of name-dropping.  Cited by name are the casts and creative teams, respectively, of Matilda, A Delicate Balance, The Elephant Man, The Book of Mormon, The Lion King, The Phantom of the Opera, Mamma Mia, and Wicked (at one point Gus sings a portion of “Defying Gravity,” naturally to deafening applause from the audience but for no apparent narrative purpose).  At one point Nathan Lane, as Wicker, even drops his own name, shocked at the praise for his character’s replacement in a play in his early career.  A critic has noted Harvey Fierstein’s improving of the role.  “Nathan Lane I could have accepted,” notes Wicker wistfully, “but Harvey Fierstein?”  Cue more deafening applause.  Blech.

            But most shocking of all is what seems like a personal attack on the Times’ chief drama critic, Ben Brantley, who is not only mentioned by name but becomes the villain of the piece, subject to destructive name-calling and finger-wagging from the pen of a playwright he’s evidently criticized once too often.  At one point Austin refers to Brantley as a “British ass-kissing twat,” referring to the critic’s fondness for London imports.  The whole thing plays like a decidedly bad edition of Forbidden Broadway.

            Naturally for this sort of play, all the dumb jokes are dutifully told.  Critics are wannabe actors or playwrights, Nathan Lane is effeminate, Rupert Grint is British, actresses do drugs, television is awful, as is Mamma Mia and all jukebox musicals and/or revivals.  (I’ve got to say, after seeing this show I could do with a good revival to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.)  But don’t limit this play just to stupid humor, it goes for stupid pathos, too, invoking the holy spirit of traditional Broadway in ways that come across as both high-minded and ham-handed.  Give us a break.

            The only person involved with this turkey who comes out with his integrity squeaky-clean is that consummate actor, Nathan Lane.  He is so bright, ebullient, and gloriously talented that he can fight through any dreck he’s forced to deliver.  The only tolerable parts of this play come when Mr. Lane is hamming it up.  The rest of the cast is either so quiet they’re indecipherable (Mr. Broderick, Ms. Mullally, Ms. Channing) or trying so hard to seem versatile they come off as over-rehearsed (Mr. Abraham, Mr. Grint, Mr. Stock).

            But the more I think about Nathan Lane, the more I become convinced of something.  At the end of It’s Only a Play, Austin’s show is switched out of its Broadway theater in one night to be replaced by a new one with the same actors, sets, and cast.  Might one do the same with It's Only a Play? Let’s think about our ingredients.  We’ve got Mr. Lane and Mr. Broderick in tuxedos, a leggy blonde (Ms. Mullally), a funnily foreign character actor (Mr. Grint), and a familiarity with the idiosyncrasies of Broadway.  One can’t help but wonder — can’t this crew jettison Mr. McNally’s awful script, and just do The Producers instead?