A Certain Mrs. Warren in Princeton

No spring in the air but lots of Shaw along with snow, frost, sleet. All appropriate weather motifs for classic theatre's favorite curmudgeon. On 42nd Street's Clurman Theatre, Caesar and Cleopatra offers one of that street's few non-Disney options. Downtown, The Players Club hosts Project Shaw's comedy of no manners, Bouyant Billions, on Feb. 16. And down the Jersey turnpike, Mrs. Warren and her career choice holds court among the Princeton Tigers.  I tip my split of good champagne to Mr. Shaw and hold confident that today's split will be tomorrow's magnum. After all, it is Hope Day #7.

Here is director Emily Mann's introduction to the complicated Mrs. Warren. She tells a delightful story about riots in New Haven over Shaw's play and an unfortunate football loss by Princeton to Yale.

Don't Misunderestimate Me.

I am firm in my belief that today, the day that George Bush leaves office, is one of the greatest days in U.S. history.  Joe Biden has just taken his oath of office. Dick Cheney is no longer Vice-President. The smirk has ended.

The Pan Pan theatre came back to NYC last week-end as part of COIL theatre festival, supporting new theatre and its artists. Three of the actors, so spectacular in Oedipus Loves You, reappeared in The Crumb Trail, Gina Moxley, the imaginative writer of this piece and pictured to the left; the elven Aoife Duffin, and Bush Moukarzel. Also appearing and reinforcing just what a small world Irish theatre can be, was Arthur Riordan, whose musical Improbably Frequency just ended a very successful run at the 59 East 59. Also returning to PS. 122 were Aedin Cosgrove (Design) and Gavin Quinn (Director).

The Crumb Trail is a quixotic take on the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale with tangents drawn to the modern European family.  There are scathing statements on contemporary society, but they are interposed with moments of joy. These are when the cast picks up their instruments and become the band Gordon is a Mime.

Or they were Gordon is a Mime. Now I believe they are Forever Young Boys and Girls whose myspace describe themselves as acousmatic or emotronic. Whichever. Whatever. They make great music and theatre. And now I leave you with a quote The Crumb Trail: "If you see just one play this year, make it The Crumb Trail."

Our Lady of Dalkey

No that's not Our Lady of Dalkey although he might enjoy that. 

January is proving an embarrassment of riches. Not Eddie Izzard's riches. That's not embarrassing at all.  I loved The Riches and wish it would come back. No, there is just so much Irish Theatre that I have now to make choices. See one play. Forgo another.

I've had to opt for The Crumb Trail over Samuel Beckett's First Love at the Public Theatre, part of the Under the Radar Festival. Both are closing this week-end. I would have liked to have seen  First Love: the review has it as funny! How I yearn to see that alluded to yet elusive humor in Beckett. However it's been there, done that with this particular Beckett one-act. It was part of the Gate/Beckett Marathon last summer with Mr. Ralph Fiennes.  Earnest and important, but not too much humor in Mr. Fiennes' performance.  The 2009 (so far) First Love's NYT review can be found at the end of this post. 

In the meantime, Our Lady of  Dalkey, Sinead Cusack, is bridge and tunneling it in BAM's heady theatrical showcase: The Cherry Orchard. Adapted by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Sam Mendes. Swoon.

Info here

FIRST LOVE
Public Theater
Through Sunday

Every year actors try to convince audiences that Samuel Beckett, despite his gloomy reputation, is actually a hilarious guy — and it almost never works. Fiona Shaw came close in her brilliant performance in “Happy Days” last year, and Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin, who are starring in a coming Broadway production of “Waiting for Godot,” will surely make their case. What usually happens is that the talented performers do a better job proving their own comic chops riffing on the script, adding physical humor and verbal accents.

Conor Lovett’s supremely funny performance in “First Love,” a solo stage adaptation of an early postwar Beckett novella, is such a pleasing triumph because its gallows humor emerges so organically, the result of a prepared actor with a deep understanding of the text.

To be sure, this muscularly written tale (presented by the Gare St. Lazare Players Ireland) in which the narrator impregnates a prostitute and abandons the child may not sound like the plot of a comedy, especially since the narrator, a misanthrope who prefers his own company to that of anyone else, has been expelled from his home after the death of his father. Scatological, vulgar and occasionally shocking, the levity here is of the “laughing wild amid severest woe” variety. Call it a love story for loners.

Mr. Lovett begins with a firm belief that there is a laugh (or a tear) in almost every other sentence. And with the able help of his wife and director, Judy Hegarty Lovett, the interpretation of the precisely formed language has the rhythm of a Bob Newhart routine. A shrugging Irish actor with floppy ears, Mr. Lovett begins quickly with aggressive, attention-getting force, discussing the virtues of a graveyard.

“The smell of corpses,” he says, as if he were a singer belting out a note before gradually reducing the volume, “distinctly perceptible under those of grass and humus mingled. I do not find it unpleasant, a trifle on the sweet side perhaps, a trifle heady, but how infinitely preferable to what,” he stops abruptly, his stammer working like a setup to the punch line: “the living emit.”

But even worse than the smelly living is the cry of his child, loudly echoing in his ears no matter how hard he tries to forget it. It’s a credit to the commanding actor that you feel for this haunted misanthrope without his sinking into sentimentality. “I could have done with other loves perhaps,” Mr. Lovett says at the end with no remorse. “But there it is, either you love or you don’t.” JASON ZINOMAN

Joyfully January!

"I have lived in the theatre like a Trappist monk lives in his faith. I have no other world. No other life." - Addison DeWitt

And the problem is?




January is proving to be a kinder month than I had anticipated. Usually it's the cruelest one despite what Eliot says about April. January has all those post-holiday blues and pounds gained and bills, bills, bills. But the lineup for this month in Irish theatre is so encouraging! We can make it to spring!

That most innovative of companies, the Pan Pan Theatre, is back as part of the COIL Festival 2009. The festival features some of the best up & coming underground performances in NYC and, by extension, Ireland. 

Last year, Pan Pan brought Oedipus Loves You, and I really should have put that theatrical extravaganza at #3 or even #2 on my top ten list of 2008 if I actually did that sort of thing rather than just talk about listmaking all the time. 

I loved OLY and can't wait for the Crumb Trail. Here is a rave review in yesterday's Times:

The Crumb Trail

And here is the theatre company's YouTube promotion:

Other rays of January sunshine are the Irish Rep's Aristocrats, starting next week and the rave reviews for the Atlantic's Cripple of Inishmaan. Long winter nights made shorter with excellent Irish theatre.

Improbable Sunday

New York was full of grief for the nine Broadway shows that closed on Sunday. Big names like Hairspray and Spamalot. Cash cows put out to pasture. Smaller shows, not quite so bovine, came to the end of their run. Others closed because of the economy.  All are looking at this unusually  large number as a harbinger of doom. 

One show that closed on Sunday stayed off the harbinger for those few happy hours. Rough Magic's Improbable Frequency was  a silly, wonderful musical that would have made my top ten list of 2008 if I had made such a list and if I had seen it last week.

As I write this by my bookcase, I look over at the mess, and I see a work by one of the major characters of Improbably Frequency - At Swim-Two-Birds by  Flann O'Brien otherwise known as Brian O'Nolan otherwise known as Myles Na gCopaleen, the Irish Times columnist and possible covert operator in author Arthur Riordan's fictional take on 1941 Dublin. Questions are raised in a Dr. Who/Rocky Horror motif as to whether the Irish might have an atom bomb or whether their scientist can really control the weather. And who can benefit - the British or Germany or the IRA?

In the above photo, Peter Hanley (beloved Ambrose in Ballykissangel) is Tristam Faraday, a British cruciverbalist turned spy, sent to Dublin to crack codes. He meets Philomena O'Shea, Sarah-Jane Drummey, who just may be Molly Mayham, the future leader of the IRA. Investigations and song and dance numbers ensue. Directed by Lynne Parker with music by the duo Bell Helicopter, it was a fantastic show in all meanings of the word. The rest of the cast included: Louis Lovett as John Betjeman, Marty Rea as Erwin Schrodinger, and Cathy White as Agent Green. NYC will miss you all.

I leave you with an interesting interview with Stephen Gabis on coaching the accents in Conor McPherson's The Seafarer here, that story about a bunch of old drunks. Wasn't that the top of my list for 2007? Should have been!

New Year's Resolutions and the best drink recipe of the year.

To have more bloody marys like the one I had this morning at Julian's in the Federal Hill section of Providence. Hopefully that's a resolution I can keep past Valentine's Day. Because, you know, if you keep a resolution past Valentine's Day, it's yours forever.

I was going to put a top ten Irish plays of 2008 list out today, but why bother with #10-#2. Who's got time for lists anyway? What are we, the BBC?

So, on to the top play of 2008. That would go to Port Authority by Conor McPherson. And there's nothing more to say about it. McPherson said it all in his play: the frustrations of youth, the disappointments of middle-age, and the resignations of old age. It's all there. 

Now as I go back to my other resolutions besides bloody marys and succinctness, I leave you with this drink recipe from Glenn Eichler:

Recipe: “The Blurry Zeitgeist”

3 parts Champagne

1 part vodka

1 part strawberry brandy

1 part smugness over past year’s accomplishments

1 part regret over realizing past year’s accomplishments were actually failures

1 part momentary burst of resolve followed immediately by 1 part deflating inertia

1 part nagging fear over possibility of … what was it again?

1 part self-congratulation over successfully keeping pre-New Year’s resolution to avoid marketing exec neighbor at current party

1 part cautious optimism over Obama cabinet picks

1 part bitter disappointment over Obama cabinet picks

1 part utter disbelief at Caroline Kennedy

1 part inexplicable anxiety over not remembering what earlier nagging was about

1 part dawning awareness that marketing exec neighbor is approaching

1 part fleeting concern over possibly forgetting to TiVo “The Biggest Loser”

1 part sinking realization that earlier nagging fear was about odds of contracting early-onset Alzheimer’s

1 part self-pity over getting stuck conversing with marketing exec neighbor

1 part self-congratulation at not being marketing exec neighbor

1 part euphoric recollection of definitely remembering to TiVo “The Biggest Loser,” thus reducing likelihood of early-onset Alzheimer’s

1 part self-loathing over TiVo full of “The Biggest Loser”

Shake well and serve with metaphysical hangover.