THE THEATER MIRROR, New England's LIVE Theater Guide
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The God on the doorpost between the years looks forth toward the future yet back toward the past, so this is the time for resolutions, and ten-best lists. Last year, for instance, I resolved to see an average of two plays a week --- and I failed. As year's end approaches, I can count only 98 programs in my file; so I came up six plays short. Mea culpa...
"Bests"
I won't even try to winnow out ten, with a best in the #1 spot. There are always too many good ones, and each one deserves to top the list for its own unique reasons. Take new plays, for instance. The five I picked are, every one of them, THE Best new play I saw all year:
HUNGER --- written, directed, and produced by Milton
Coykendall for his Java Theatre at the BCA, was a tensely
expressionistic, minimalist reduction of a series of eating-
disorders into the pressure-cooker of a single disfunctional
family. It was spare, with every irrelevance shaved and
sandpapered away.
DIRT, however --- written directed and produced by Abe Rybeck
for his Theatre Offensive at the BCA --- was an all-over-the-place
explosion of incident and ideas, bitingly insightful and
blindingly hilarious at the very same time.
JACK THE RIPPER --- Music & words by Steven Bergman &
Christopher-Michael DiGrazis, by Centastage at the BCA --- was an
imaginatively serious musical making this serial murderer and his
time intensely alive and compelling. (I saw it twice.)
WHEN THE WORLD WAS GREEN (A CHEF'S FABLE) --- by Sam Shepard
& Joseph Chaikin for A.R.T. at the Puidding --- was, again, a
boiled-down concentration of text to poetically powerful,
gradually expanding ideas flawlessly acted.
TIMEPIECE --- by Emerson student members of The Other Theatre
--- was several months of creativity-workshops finally facing an
audience. Everyone learned something about theater at these
performances, whether performing or attending.
Then there are plays new to ME, and perhaps new to Boston.
THE EIGHT: REINDEER MONOLOGS --- Directed by Fran Weinberg
for TheatreZone --- was a New Yorker-style send-up of Clement
Clark Moore's beloved cliche's.
VITA AND VIRGINIA --- Threshold Theatre at the BCA --- told
me things about Virginia Woolf I had never known, and introduced
me to a woman I'd hardly known anything about called Vita
Sackville-West.
GOOSE & TOMTOM --- Harvard/Radcliffe Summer Theatre --- was a
wierdly wired drug-dream of fantasy and paranoia demanding and
getting fearlessly honest performances by students.
FIRES IN THE MIRROR --- Wharf Rat Productions --- was Anna
Deveare Smith's set of significant monologs doled out to a
handfull of performers regardless of color or sex. Done by a not-
for-profit-but-for-charities company out in Salem dedicated to
doing good work and contributing to good works. Everything about
this show was unique.
LUCKY STIFF --- Lynn Ahrens & Stephen Flaherty at Worcester
Foothills Theatre Company --- was a year's-end triumph of
silliness and farce, Directed and Choreographed by Dennis
Courtney, that should be revived more often.
And then there's a whole set of plays, all but one of which,
I had seen before, which were made new again:
THE MAIDS --- Portal Theatre Company, at the BCA --- was the
culmination of five months of work by the three ladies in the cast
and Director Rachel Rahav Shatil. Their depth and dedication made
every line of this old warhorse gleamingly new.
A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN & AMERICAN BUFFALO --- Directed by
Rick Lombardo for The New Repertory Theatre --- were examples of
what professional theater people can accomplish in smaller houses
affording intimate contact with audiences so close to the action
they must be involved.
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? --- Directed by Joseph
Zamparelli, Jr., for The Delvena Theater Company at the BCA ---
was a second mounting for this company, with two new cast-members.
Neither an Atma Theater production years ago, or the surprisingly
good movie version, prepared me for this re-creation of a play
that gets better every time I see it.
FALSETTOS --- Directed by Russell R. Greene for The Footlight
Club --- was so much better than a Jerry Zachs production I saw on
the professional stage that it was a whole new play.
CABARET --- Directed by Julianne Boyd foor Barrington
Stage/Cambridge Theater at The Pudding --- was a real re-making of
this musical, in selected cuts and inclusions, and in original
interpretations and readings of familiar lines.
LIPS TOGETHER, TEETH APART --- Directed by Nancy Curran
Willis for The Vokes Players --- came close on the heels of a fine
SpeakEasy Stage production done at The Lyric Stage, but this
community theater crew made the characters people, and let the
messages percolate up through their humanity.
COMPANY --- by the Huntington Theater Company --- de-
emphasized the dancing and used huge character-portraits to turn
the central character into a believable painter/photographer, as
well as making his final decision --- to marry despite all that
those good and crazy people his married friends had taught him
about matrimony --- believably the correct one.
THE ZOO STORY --- Frank Annese for his New Neighborhood
Theatre --- again proved the power of Edward Albee's writing, as
well as its enduring freshness.
Two one-woman shows at the Little Flags Theatre in Cambridge
both reduced theater to essences and proved its enduring power.
PLUM PUDDING saw Paula Plum doing three different
monologs/plays by three different authors demanding three
different styles of presentation.
GREETINGS FROM HOLLYWOOD was a set of interior monologs
written and performed by Cindy Freeman and arising out of her own
personal experience.
My list of excellent directors comes directly from my list of
"plays made new":
Rachel Rahav Shatil (Portal's THE MAIDS), Rick Lombardo (New
Rep's artistic director), and Julianne Boyd (Barrington's
CABARET) shaped their shows so that their work seemed all but
invisible. Fran Weinberg's work with THE EIGHT stood out only
because past plays done by TheatreZone paled by comparison. And
both Joe Zamparelli, Jr., and Russell R. Greene paid their casts
the ultimate compliment of insisting it was their acting and not
the direction that made the productions shine.
I hope to see the
work of all these directors often in the future.
When it comes to naming great performances I'm hesitant and
confused, because I can't often separate out one performance from
the whole. My most heartfelt award goes not to stand-out jobs, but
to ensemble playing.
The honors here go to everyone connected with THE MAIDS,
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, HUNGER, A MOON FOR THE
MISBEGOTTEN, AMERICAN BUFFALO, and TIMEPIECE.
Still, the scope and variety and subtleties necessary to play
Josie Hogan in Eugene O'Neill's A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN make
Ann-Marie Cusson's performance stand out from anything this season
had to offer.
Likewise Lynne Moulton's Martha in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA
WOOLF; and Paula Plum's three monologs in PLUM PUDDING were
unforgettable.
But women play against men, and it was John FitzGibbon's
James Tyrone Jr. in MOON and Fred Robbins as George in WHO'S
AFRAID who stood out.
Christopher Yates in CABARET made the writer/narrator
Clifford Bradshaw a pivotal force in the plot, and Frank Annese
simply made THE ZOO STORY compellingly real.
Techies tend to get short shrift because their best work is
meant to emphasize rather than upstage the action and the actors,
and it often gets overlooked.
Nevertheless, Janie Fliegle's sets for MOON and AMERICAN
BUFFALO added immeasurably to their success.
Christiana Pepin's set for THE ZOO STORY at the New
Neighborhood Playhouse was so solidly designed and deftly detailed
that it looked like real marble and concrete. In fact, they looked
so real I thought she had cleverly used permanent parts of the theater
for her set!
Judy Stacier took the oddly shaped BCA space and forced it to
accommodate JACK THE RIPPER'S many period scenes quite
expressively.
And Helen Shaw likewise put the audience in both sides of the
Loeb Experimental Theatre to give GOOSE & TOMTOM a starkly spare
non-set that perfectly expressed the play's odd unreality.
Finally, John Malinowski's lighting effects for A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN at New Rep were remarkable most because they did Not upstage the action. The slow march of moonlight first through trees and then into clear light, and the slow progress of oncoming dawn, gave that play's action a physical counterpoint every inch of the way.
But let me close with one observation: Six of the unforgettable productions I got to see last year were presented at The Boston Center for The Arts, which may be the busiest theater complex in the city. I've got to go there more often in the year to come. Maybe, if I do, I can finally break a hundred before next December....
Love,
===Anon.