Alejandro Escovedo with Warren Hood

A surprising evening from musicians associated with cowpunk and Chicano rock. 

Highly recommended

The Connection (Cédric Jimenez)

The Connection continues the crime drama The French Connection in Marseilles rather than New York City, and in doing so it becomes the American film’s antithesis.  Set between 1975 and the early 1980s, the 135-minute film has none of the heart-thumping car chases of William Friedkin’s 1971 action film. Instead, it is almost flat, not in a bad way, but in the way life generally is: we go about our daily lives, never really knowing what will come of our decisions or chances; only in retrospect do we realize that our successes were really failures, our disappointments carved out opportunities, the end of the film brings us back to the beginning.  The betrayals in this film are numerous and the double-crosses heartbreaking.  Even the protagonist (the magistrate Pierre Michel) and his antagonist (the crime boss Tany Zamba) lead lives that oddly parallel and mirror one other.  The magistrate’s family suffers from and resent his single-minded efforts to clean up his city, while the drug lord’s family adore him and relish the privileges his cash-happy work provides.  

Recommend

Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg)

I've read most of Thomas Hardy's novels, including (I thought) Far From the Madding Crowd. I find his plot twists excruciating, but they pull me along in my desire for a happy resolution that never materializes.  Imagine my surprise when Far From the Madding Crowd closes with a happy ending--and the plot summary in my handy Oxford companion confirms it's not a Hollywood fabrication. Happy, that is, if you're Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak, and not poor Boldwood.

Lovely to watch. Carey Mulligan was very fine, and the men in her life conveyed their thoughts and feelings with ever so subtle glances and twitches. 

The subdued and restrained musical score was much welcomed.

Highly recommend.

The Liar (David Ives)

David Ives' verse "transadaptation" of Pierre Corneille's 17th romp is pitch perfect.  Coupled with the cast's impeccable timing and dynamic performance, the play was all we could have hoped for a Friday evening's reprieve after a particularly difficult week. I groaned when I realized it would be in rhyme, but I should have known that Ives' rhyming would not get tedious; instead, he uses it to set up unexpected relationships, combining, for instance,  "pont neuf," "e-neuf [enough]," and "leuf [love]" to create humor and pointed commentary.  The valet, Cliton, sets the tone with his witty and dynamic opening meta-commentary that provides just the right amount of exposition to get the play off to a rollicking start. Excellent direction by Penny Metropulos and scenic design by Kristen Robinson.

Highly recommended

Elevada (Sheila Callaghan)

A terrific romantic comedy about cancer and love, that steers away from sentimentality and veers clear of moralizing. And it's funny!


We were particularly impressed with the way the frequent scene changes were handled.  Bravo to the set, lighting, and sound designers!

Recommend.

Preston Montfort: An American Tragedy (Ryan Campbell)

The third installment of this year's Carlotta Festival of New Plays, Campbell's play appropriates the Greek heroic tragedy--there were nods to Euripedes' Herakles and Sophocles' Ajax--and its conventions--most pointedly the doomed hero and the chorus of naive citizens--to comment on the US's repeated global military intrusions to preserve the American way of life while destroying the lives of innocents abroad and the lives of the soldiers it sends. 

The opening monologue and the closing dialogue between Preston and his buddy, Chris, are the most powerful segments of the play. Though the lines are sometimes leaden and off key, some are lyrical: "I'm a breathing gun, a walking bomb, a knife that slithers in the night."  (Scenes involving Preston's brother Edward are tedious; his character and his scenes could be eliminated without crippling the play in any way.)

It is an ambitious play, and we look forward to seeing more of Campbell's work.

Recommended.

The Children (Phillip Howze)

The second installment of the 2015 Carlotta Festival is a musical based on a community of homeless LGBTQ young people in NYC.  Intriguing book. Because we're not fans of musicals, I'll won't comment further. 

Deer and the Lovers (Emily Zemba)

It's that time of year again: Yale's Carlotta Festival of New Plays is in full swing. Tonight, we saw the first of three and were very impressed.

The program notes were limited to a Frida Kahlo quotation and her self-portrait as a St Sebastian- arrow-pierced, antlered deer. Together, they set up expectations for a theatrical piece of feminist surrealism, expectations immediately defied by the pedestrian stage sets. Of course, the sets misled us, and Frida spoke to the heart of the matter.

Seventh-inning stretch: scene change during intermission performed by animal-masked grounds keepers

Zemba's comedy depends upon apparently absurd situations that are explained away with seemingly plausible reasons---until the rational sides is twisted into further absurdity.  Her use of language places her squarely in the school of Will Eno, with the linguistic ground constantly shifting about us. Zemba has a good ear for language, and I look forward to seeing her future work.

The first act was stronger than the second, when the timing was off and the play attempted a bit too much.

Recommend

'Tis Pity She's a Whore (John Ford)

Red Bull Theater’s production of John Ford’s Tis Pity She’s a Whore presented a clear exposition and interpretation of this memorable (but seldom performed) Jacobin revenge tale of sibling incest and atheism.  This play does not explore the causes and consequences of accidental incest, that unfortunate mistake resulting when identity is misplaced and family lost through catastrophe or carelessness.  Instead, as the play makes clear from the first scene, Giovanni and Annabella move from siblings to lovers knowingly. In fact, Giovanni has already sought sanction from his confession. Rather than abandon his desires for his sister, as admonished by the friar, he forsakes his religious beliefs and accepts the mantle of the atheist.  

In this way, the way seems to be more about atheism than incest.  With many parallels to rightwing arguments made in today’s single-sex marriage debates, the play speaks forcefully about the consequences of ignoring Christianity’s bedrock principles; without the grounding of religious faith, the play threatens us with the specter of all sorts of despicable practices becoming the norm.  

Frequently, Giovanni takes on the heroic cast of Stanley Fish’s version of Milton’s Satan: the hero sent to test our values.  Just how much do we find ourselves sympathizing with the incestuous lovers? With whom are we more upset, Annabella pregnant with her brother’s child or the cuckolded husband who beats her? 

Jesse Berger’s production spreads out these issues for the audience, and there is no turning away from their brutal reality.  It's good to see his Red Bull productions moving uptown to Broadway.

A final note. Perhaps this production sees camp as another point of intersection between the Jacobian and the contemporary; otherwise, the costuming was baffling and absolutely off-putting.

Recommended. The caveats should be obvious. 

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Shakespeare)

A few years back, we made a mad dash to New York, landing in a small off-off-Broadway venue—perhaps a former bank lobby turned performance area.  Mike had managed to snag two of the season’s hottest tickets, Fiasco Theater’s 7-actor production of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline.  Because I hadn’t read the reviews, I expect some sort of corny, madcap confusion closer to Shakespeare, Reduced than serious theater.  Instead, we encountered the most lucid and most moving full-production of the Shakespearean romance we had ever seen.

Fiasco’s newest production, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, originated at Washington D.C.’s Folger Theater, and it is now at Theater for a New Audience’s Polonsky Center in Brooklyn.  Our expectations were very high, and Fiasco exceeded them. No exceptions.

From that spectacular production, I will mention a few notable moments: Julia’s tearing up of Proteus’ love letter and then piecing it back together (her delivery was a pitch perfect blend of comedy and realism); Zachary Fine’s embodiment of Crab the dog (so much work done with a black clown nose, his barely parted lips, and lively eyes); Emily Young’s saucy and justly righteous Sylvia; Valentine's closing forgiveness of Proteus (unironic and deeply plausible); and the 60+ minute talkback wherein the actors showed themselves to be as thoughtful and articulate as the production itself.