"The Brig" at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble on March 19th in Los Angeles, CA

"The Brig" is unlike anything I can remember ever having seen on stage. Set in a Marines jail, there is little plot, character development, or dialogue in this fascinating play. There is, however, intense theatrical poetry.

The first act, which is probably nearly an hour long, is a carefully choreographed acting out of the prisoner's day. We see them change their clothes, make their beds, march off to the bathroom, and read their marines manuals. The prisoners are sometimes barked at by the wardens but the soundtrack of this play is provided by the heavy panting of the actors as they march/stomp and run across the stage and as they scream their request for permission to cross the various white lines laid out across the brig. Once the ten prisoners are awakened by the wardens, the play is a flurry of activity, all highly coordinated, all intensely physical, and all terribly impersonal. It's like a fucked up version of watching a marching band up close. The sense of the lives of the men in the marines is conveyed through a highly intense bodily experience and the drama of the play is the acting out of the demands and difficulty of these lives.

I was fascinated to watch a play without dialogue communicate a deep sense of the experience of being a soldier. Still, at the end of act one, I was praying for some dialogue and a plot in the second act. I didn't get any such thing but what I got was masterful. Having set the scene of the ordinary day for these soldiers in act one, act two provides scenes that act as relief against the first act. For example, there's a scene in which the men clean the brig. If they clean it well enough, they are told, they will get a half hour to write letters. As an audience member, you pray that they receive this half hour because you sense they desperately need the break from this awful physical routine to survive with their sanity intact and because you need a break from the choreography of loud sound and repetitive action. This is where the drama lies in the show. A very different kind than we typically experience in theater. Its story is boiled down to emotion and conveyed in a unique way. As the men frantically wash the brig, things become frantic, almost slapstick, and one gets the sense of the chaos that lives just beneath the surface of this military routine. At any moment, it seems, these men could fall out of marching step and pandemonium could ensue. Or, perhaps more accurately, just beneath of the surface of the gloss and physical order of military life each soldier experiences a personal chaos and is part of a larger one.

Set against the order witnessed in the first act, the second act is remarkable. Among the things we witness is a prisoner leaving and a prisoner arriving. The prisoner leaving, we learn, is getting out five days early for good behavior. This is a serious disruption of the audience's assumptions. It means that in a world where one has no choice about how to behave, one can actually be deemed to have behaved well. Furthermore, and more to the point, it means that the wardens recognize the difficulty of these mens' lives and feel sympathy for them. This is jarring because it seriously disrupts our understanding of them as cold, mean, machines. Finally, we witness a prisoner's arrival, seeing how he learns all of these seemingly arbitrary rules (one can't ever have one's bare feet touch the ground, for example). After about five minutes of the soldier learning by making mistakes and being punished, a warden tells the new prisoner that another prisoner will explain the rules to him. This is the only time he will ever be engaged in a conversation, he is told. Once the explanation of the rules is complete, he will never speak to another human being, he will only receive and ask for orders. Having just witnessed two hours of this kind of life, this short bit of relief, or counterpoint, leaves us devastated. We feel what they have missed largely being seeing it happen for 30 seconds.

I have given away a lot about this play but there's so much more. And it's something to see. After the show, an actor friend of mine said he can't imagine why any actor would want to be in that show. He pointed out how hard they work in the production, both physically and emotionally, and guessed that they were all backstage feeling isolated and angry with each other. I replied that this was Los Angeles and that maybe they're willing to be in any play to get noticed. He pointed out that it's impossible to get noticed in that play -- everyone does everything the same way at the same time and emotion isn't conveyed in such a way that one recognizes the work of an individual actor. As in the world of the marines that this play reflects, there is no individuality and the bits of humanity present are rarely witnessed.

"Carousel" at the Court Theatre on March 16th in Chicago, IL.

"Carousel," by Rogers and Hammerstein, has among its songs one called "A Real Nice Clambake" and another called "What's the Use of Wond'rin?" The first is about what a nice clambake the characters have just had, how many dozens of clams they've just eaten, and how full and jovial they are. The other asks what's the use of wondering if your man is good or bad when he's bound to hurt you in either case and you're bound to stay with him even then. The first is a frivolous and silly song and the second a dark and painful song. This production could have chosen the path of either song for its tone but chose to go with the clambake.

About a dozen years or so ago, Gary Griffin began to direct musicals on a small scale at Pegasus Theater. By necessity, they didn't have large orchestras or fancy sets. As a director, Griffin focused on wringing the meaning out of the songs and coached his singers into fine emotional performances. I guess Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and the Court Theatre caught wind of this and invited Griffin to direct musicals at both theaters. About six years ago, Griffin directed "My Fair Lady" at the Court, a musical I'd had no interest in at first. Griffin produced it with two pianos as the only instruments and great direction. The extremely talented Kate Fry played the lead with deep emotional intelligence and the show was a sensation. Ever since, the Court has been "exploring the American musical."

If one is going to conduct such an exploration, then doing Rogers and Hammerstein seems essential. As one sits through this production and wonders why the hell they did this show, one might remember that Rogers and Hammerstein were important pioneers of the American musical and instead ask yourself why the hell did they decided to do this show this way. The story, about a couple who loved each other but would never say "I love you," seems stunted and flat and much of the action seem to make no sense.

This show tries to have more integrity than a typical splashy musical but in the end doesn't. The young actors are all very fine singers but none of them are good actors -- of the caliber of Kate Fry. They act and move like actors in splashy musicals act and move. Whereas Griffin seemed to carefully consider each and every decision about what happened on stage, mining the script for meaning, this production seemed to take all of its cues from one's memories of musicals. There's a scene in which a wife finds her husband of just a few months dead -- he's killed himself rather than land himself in jail. In that moment, she says "I love you" to him for the first time. This scene could have been nicely done, especially since this thread of not saying "I love you" but wanting desperately to hear it is sewn throughout the play. Instead of dealing with the meaning of that scene, the director stages it so that all the actors turn their heads away from the mourning wife -- gestures that are hackneyed. Had "What's the Use of Wond'rin?" been treated intelligently, we would have felt the bitterness of the divorced woman who opens the number. One gets the sense, however, that the director never studied the scene with his actors.

The Court Theatre is one of the most consistently good theaters in town. Charlie Newell, the artistic director, always puts together an intelligent and unexpected season. I can see why he would choose this show but I'm sorry about this production.

As an aside, I will mention the race blind casting. This is something that the Court has done for some time. The theater has also consistently chosen plays that call for a majority of black actors. A few years ago it did a mixed cast production of "Desire Under the Elms" that was fantastic and made the story even more complicated. The mixed cast in this show is more straightforward. A number of actors of color, and not just black, have work on this production and that is a good thing. One choice seems unfortunate to me, though, and that is of Nettie, the matriarch among the young women. She is a surrogate mother to what appear to be motherless young women. Played by an African American woman, Nettie seems like a mammey character in this production, the selfless black woman who historically has cared for the white children of her owners/employers. In American history, mammies mothered the children of white women, even breast feeding them, until they grew into adolescence and were then torn away from the children. The southerner Lillian Smith has written about what a painful separation this is for the black woman and for the child. In popular culture, the mammey is usually depicted as jovial and selfless when the truth of the matter was that she had no choice. On the one hand, the fact that a talented African American has a well-paying role at one of Chicago's best theaters is great. On the other hand, they might have tried to play her differently to avoid this stereotype.

"The Trip to Bountiful" at the Goodman Theatre on March 10th. Chicago, IL.

I was interested in seeing this show largely because it was written by a Southerner and because Lois Smith is in it. As a student of southern literature, I couldn't pass up the chance to see a Horton Foote play and the only scene in "Minority Report" worth seeing was the scene with Lois Smith in the greenhouse. At the same time, I was prepared to be somewhat bored. This was to be a straightforward production of a play written in 1953, about three or four years after Ionesco's far more experimental "The Bald Soprano."

This terrific production totally won me over. The direction focused on the script and the acting. In Goodman productions, the art direction, especially the sets, can be a bit much. In this case, the set took back seat and for that I'm grateful. Lois Smith's performance was as wonderful as I'd expected. Meghan Andrews, who plays Thelma, a young woman whose husband has left to fight in WWII and who shows great kindness to Carrie, is also especially great to watch.

The story is about an old woman who has left her family farm in the dying town, Bountiful, and lives with her son and daughter-in-law in Houston. She longs to go home but she is old and her son insists she stay in Houston with him. As time goes on, Carrie recalls her memories of Bountiful while her son blocks them out. We are never told what happened in their past but one assumes that something painful did because the son has suffered a nervous breakdown. His wife is afraid for him and refuses to consider entertaining the notion of the mother going back to Bountiful. One day, Carrie sneaks out and takes a bus back to Bountiful with no food, a few coins, and pension check no one will cash. On the way, she encounters a series of people who could easily be indifferent to her but her humanness and will win them over. There's an especially wonderful scene set on the bus in which Carrie and Thelma talk about their situations and we witness their care and kindness for each other. Things in Bountiful don't turn out quite the way Carrie had hoped but they turn out ok. She gets to see the homestead one more time and decides that has to be good enough. The son, in chasing after his mother, comes to the farm and invites the memories of his boyhood for the first time, something that seems to offer a kind of freedom to him.

"The Trip to Bountiful" is concerned with two things, the lost of the agrarian past to the isolation of modernity and the importance of reckoning with the past. This production brings nothing new fangled to the play and is all the better for it. What it does bring is deep emotion to a lovely story and some of the best acting I've seen recently on a Chicago stage.

"The Addding Machine" at the Minetta Lane Theater on Feb. 25. NY, NY.

"The Adding Machine" is a musical for people who love theater that pushes the boundaries of its form and that examine life seriously. It's a wonderful musical but not for folks who think "Rent" or "Wicked" are great, which is to say it's serious, both in its form and theme. It strives to examine life rather than simply entertain but if you like to smart theater, it's terribly entertaining. After I finished seeing it I wanted to buy a ticket to see it again in 15 minutes.

"The Adding Machine" received its world premier in Chicago at the Next Theatre. It's a musical adaptation of the 1920's play by Elmer Rice. It about a man, Mr. Zero, who gets fired from his job adding numbers on his 25th anniversary with the company. Thinking he's going to get a raise, he's let go and replaced by an adding machine. Worried about his ability to make ends meet and angry for this betrayal, he kills his boss. He's put to death and once dead he finds himself not in hell but in the Elysian Fields, an afterlife where you can still live in passion. Mr. Zero is offended that the wicked, as he sees them, are not punished in hell and he hides flees beauty and pleasure, working on an adding machine for the rest of his time in the afterworld. In a way, this is a play about how capitalism's obsession with productivity dehumanizes us but even more, I think, it's about our personal impulse to be used as machines rather than seeking out beauty and pleasure. The tragedy of the play is not just that he's replaced by the adding machine but that he becomes one willingly.

This show is pretty darn close to perfect. The music reflects the 1920's but it's also fresh and new. The story is interesting. And the performances are superb. There's a moment in the play when Mr. Zero and a woman he works with remember a moment when they might have touched each other and chosen to be together, and thus be happy. The script, singing, and acting are superb, a combination than one sees too rarely in theater. I can't recommend this enough.

"Conversations in Tesculem" at the Public Theater on Feb. 24th. NY, NY.

I don’t know how many plays about George Bush I’ve seen but I’m tired of them. Of course, the only one I can think of ever having seen, Theater Oobleck’s “The Strangerer,” I loved. Maybe what I’m tired of are the same old complaints about America under Bush. I pretty much agree with all the criticism but it’s all so obvious that I want to cover my ears when someone starts.

Enter the world premier of Richard Nelson's “Conversation in Tusculum,” set in the countryside outside of Rome at the height of Juluis Caesar’s reign. Against the advice of the smartest men in Rome, some of them who had been very close to him, Caesar continuously takes the country to war with little provocation. He believes in preemptive strikes. Being at war constantly, Caesar is able to manipulate the Romans to relinquish their civil freedoms and the country no longer operates as a republic. This stifling atmosphere is loathed by enough citizens and embraced by enough that the country is bitterly divided. Surrounded by a small group of advisors, no one can get to Caesar to give him what they think of as sane advice. These men and women who have been living in the countryside get drunk and recount their betrayal by Caesar and wax philosophical about the country going to hell. They worry that the nature of the republic has changed so much that it may be beyond the point of repair. Yet, they want to see the humanity restored to their great nation.

This is the kind of play that is very short on plot. Rather, its concern is to analyze the condition of America and it does so through allegory. I found it fascinating and spot on. In a way, as a bit of analysis, it doesn’t say that much that we don’t already know. But because it is an allegory, it is more interesting because it reflects who we are rathen than being didactic. Plus, it focuses not on Bush, but on the thoughts and feelings of those of us who have tried to oppose him. At one point, Brutus goes to Rome to meet Caesar, hoping that Caesar is tired from all the wars and lonely as the result of his isolation. Brutus believes that Caesar might once again consider him a friend and that he will then have power as an insider and can help save the republic. It becomes clear, though, that Caesar won’t allow that to happen and he tells Brutus that while he and others are having conversations in Tusculum, Caesar is at least being decisive. He may be wrong, he tells Brutus, but at least he’s acting. Sound familiar? Horribly defeated, Brutus goes back to the countryside and writes a short play. He asks an actor to put on the play, explaining that through theater we can safely say things that we cannot say directly. The actor, speaking Brutus’ words, recounts Caesar’s horrible deeds and announces that for those reasons, he will assassinate Caesar. This ending is fascinating, partly because it serves as a kind of wish fulfillment for many Americans (and perhaps as catharsis of a kind) and because it’s a moment when the play, which has been serving as a metaphor, becomes history again.

The cast features some of our finest American theater actors, including Brian Denehy and Adrian Quinn. The set is sparse, without being minimalist. Everything in this production drives forward the ideas in the play rather than being elaborate.

"Sunday In the Park With George" at Roundabout Theater on Feb. 24, NY, NY

People like to say that they hate musicals. Sometimes it’s because the music is too stylized or lacks any vigor or because it’s silly to think of people talking and then suddenly breaking into song. I myself usually dislike musicals – mostly because the music tends to be dull and repetitive, the acting overdone and lacking any emotion or subtlety, and the stories silly, flat, and sentimental. One of the reasons I love Sondheim is because his music is complicated and fresh, even decades after hearing it for the first time. Now that opera houses are doing “Sweeney Todd,” people who at first didn’t, for whatever reason, hear the innovative and complex emotion in those songs are giving him another look and we’re seeing a wave of revivals. As for those who can’t get past the fact that people are singing dialogue, well, I just can’t make sense of that. Music is just one way of conveying emotion. It’s a stylistic device, like any in a number of such devices used in good theater or film. (Of course, people who LOVE!!! musicals can seem to lack any judgment and perhaps the force of their enthusiasm annoys the rest of us.)

The plot of “Sunday in the Park with George” revolved aroun the relationship between the late 19th century painter George Seurat and his fictional model, Dot, who appears in his famous painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Jatte.” Seurat loves Dot but his compulsion to paint leads him to ignore her constantly. Plus, while he loves Dot, he cannot bring himself to tell her how musch he does. During an argument, Seurat tells Dot that she knows exactly how he feels and that he shouldn’t have to say it. Dot responds that he might be feeling many things and that she cannot know exactly what he feels if he doesn’t tell her. Pregnant with his child but knowing that she cannot get what wants from Seurat, she marries a baker and moves with him to the United States. Dot has a child named Marie and Marie’s son gives birth to another artist named George. Like Seurat, this George is also interested in blazing forth new directions in art, especially in the study of color and light, and unable to speak of his feelings. We see him at a museum reception for donors, where his ex-wife is keeping Marie company, and we know that he has lost her for the same reason.

The music in “Sunday in the Park with George” is particularly difficult to sing plus requires excellent acting to properly convey the emotion of the songs. The leads in this new production handle both excellently. They are both deft with Sondheim’s music, which often call for very fast singing. There are three songs in this play that I find especially moving. One is “Finishing the Hat,” in which Seurat realizes he’s going to lose Dot because he’s decided to stay in and finish painting the hat that she wears in the painting. In it, he sings about what he sacrifices in order to paint, aware that he’s looking at the thing he loves as he’s losing it. Another is Dot’s song, “We Do Not Belong Together,” in which she realizes that although she loves George it is better for her to leave him and go to America. And, finally, a song that George’s mother sings lamenting the loss of the tress on the island and the changes that modernity brings. Upset about the loss of the natural landscape and complaining about the construction of the Eifel Tower, which she considers a poor substitute for a tree, George tries to reassure her that everything is beautiful because someone has made it and that she only needs to look at them in a new way. Unconvinced, she ends the song by saying wistfully, “Oh Georgie, how I long for the old days.”

The direction in this production is careful and smart. The music is as wonderful and moving as ever. The illustrations of Seurat’s painting are made through computer graphics. The walls in the production are all white and as Seurat speaks instructions, we see his brush strokes materialize on the white walls. Seurat, of course, loves these white walls because he sees in them the possibilities of what he will create. A special challenge for a director comes in the second act, which has always seemed disjointed. The action taking place in the 1980’s can seem underdeveloped and less moving than those taking place in the 1880’s. This production connects the two acts by showing what making art is and means to the two Georges and by giving the contemporary George a moment of recognition and catharsis that seems to be cut off by Seurat. In the first act, after witnessing George not being able to tell Dot that he loves her and failing to take care of her, we see the attention he pays to her in his painting. He messes endlessly with the hat, with her bustle, with the monkey she has on a leash. He takes great care, in fact, in how he places everyone and everything in the painting. As we see his care for composition, we see how George experiences and conveys his love for those around him. Later, we see the 1980’s George at a donor reception as he schmoozes the individual donors, the people who might commission a piece, the curator who might give him a museum show, the critic who has the power to shape opinions about his work and future, and the artistic collaborators without whom he can’t make his pieces. This is how art is made in the 1980’s, a kind of composition that is very different than what Seurat had to deal with. Finally, the show ends when the 1980’s George goes to the island where Seurat’s painting was created and sees how the landscape has changed. It’s almost unrecognizable, except for the curving lines of the river, which we recognize from the painting, and one tree that still remains. George sits on a park bench and breaks into tears, recognizing how much he misses Marie, conflating Marie with his mother in the first act. This emotional outpouring is something that Seurat would not have done and we take a little hope that this George might change the direction of his emotional life.

I could go on and on but I won’t, except to say that this is as good a production as I’ve ever seen and perhaps even more carefully directed, or at least somehow more intimate, than the original production. And while I can’t help hearing Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patikin when I hear these songs in my head, I did largely forgot them as I watched this production.