Theater :

The Seafarer

Written and directed by Conor McPherson
Starring Conleth Hill, Ciaran Hinds, Sean Mahon, David Morse, and Jim Norton

Booth Theatre

Dublin-born playwright Conor McPherson’s dramas often trade in the supernatural, from the apparition of a guilt-ridden man’s dead wife in “Shining City” to his latest play, “The Seafarer,” a hit last season at the National Theater. The play is both comic and melancholy in its portrayal of the wasted, haunted lives of whiskey-sodden buffoons and losers, bonded together by alcohol. Newly sober Sharky Harkins (Morse, in a deeply touching and sorrowful performance) has returned to his family home near Dublin to take care of his irascible, autocratic newly blind older brother Richard (the wonderfully ornery Norton, who won an Olivier Award for this performance) after a drunken accident.
A man with a notable temper that has cost him jobs and reduced him to being a chauffeur, Sharky is in for a terrible surprise when drinking buddy Nicky Giblin (Sean Mahon) – who has taken up with Sharky’s ex-wife – brings a mysterious stranger to Harkin’s shabby abode for a Christmas Eve of whiskey and poker. Mr. Lockhart (Hinds), a dapper man with the underlying Pinteresque menace of a thug, turns out to be the devil incarnate, literally, and he has come to get his due – Sharky’s soul.
The "boozy Irishman" is a cliché, and for the first act McPherson milks this stale stereotype to tiresome effect. His metaphors – the literal blindness of Richard, the blind drunkenness of the chums – are unsubtle and literal. It is only when Mr. Lockhart, in an aria of despair, describes the horrors, endless loneliness, and darkness of eternal damnation in Hell to the anxious Sharky that the melancholy comic fable soars, and the repetitive comedy takes on a deeper metaphysical meaning. Under McPherson’s direction, the wonderfully vivid actors cohere into a colorful and tight-knit ensemble.
– Jane Klain

Rock 'n' Roll

Written by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Trevor Nunn
Starring Rufus Sewell, Brian Cox, Sinead Cusack, and Alice Eve

Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre

Stoppard’s play follows the success of “The Coast Of Utopia” with a meditation and history lesson about the political, social, and cultural revolutions in Czechoslovakia from 1968 to 1990. “Rock 'n' Roll” is this year’s great theatrical divider. While some find the play challenging and riveting, an equal number find the drama boring; apparently, hoards of people leave at intermission. That is a pity, for the rather tedious minutia of Czech political and intellectual life and the heated political arguments between the play’s protagonist Jan (the astonishing Sewell), a Czech doctoral candidate at Cambridge, and his mentor Max (Cox), a passionate Communist, give way in the more gripping second act to a more intimate personal drama.
Jan returns to Prague in 1968 when the “Prague Spring” is squashed by the invasion of Soviet tanks. Surrounded by his beloved vinyl rock albums, Jan reluctantly becomes a dissident, not because of any overt political activism but because of his devotion to the music of the Czech rock band, The Plastic People Of The Universe, whose non-conformity make them a symbol of anti-authoritarian rebellion and earn them (and Jan) prosecution by the repressive regime. Music figures throughout the play, as each of the brief vignettes is introduced by the rock music by the likes of Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, U2, and most importantly Pink Floyd that infuses and reflects Jan’s life.
Cusack is extraordinarily moving in the scene where Max’s wife Eleanor, a classics professor battling cancer argues: “I am not my body. My body is nothing without me.” The versatile Eve plays both the young Esme and in the second act, Esme’s teenage daughter. It is Sewell, however, who dominates the stage. Ultimately, the ambitious “Rock 'n' Roll” is both intriguing and tediously political, often at the same time.
– Jane Klain

The Farnsworth Invention

Starring Hank Azaria, Jimmi Simpson, and Alexandra Wilson
Directed by Des McAnuff
Written by Aaron Sorkin

Music Box Theatre

One can see why the Emmy-winning “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin was drawn to the David and Goliath story of inventor Philo Farnsworth and corporate capitalist David Sarnoff’s fight over the invention of television. As he did in his 1989 military courtroom drama A Few Good Men, Sorkin creates strong adversaries who wage a battle of wills and morality. He takes as his two antagonists Phil T. Farnsworth (Jimmi Simpson, in an auspicious Broadway debut), the Mormon science protégée from Utah who first conceived of an electrical means of transmitting live images across great distances as a 12-year-old schoolboy; and David Sarnoff (Hank Azaria), the Jewish immigrant who fled the pogroms of the Russian shtetl as a child and Horatio Alger-fashion worked his way up the corporate ladder to become the head of RCA and the founder of NBC and impresario behind the rise of radio and television, and has them battle for the patents and licensing rights of the new medium.

While Sorkin scores some points about the American drive for success at all costs (or as he has Sarnoff proclaim “The ends justify the means. That’s what the means are for”) and gets some digs in about the intellectual state of television, the play is ultimately static. Perhaps it is because Sorkin tells rather than shows: He has the two protagonists narrate the story, each describing and commenting on the events. The dialogue is sharp, Simpson and Azaria’s performances are strong, especially Simpson, who gives Farnsworth a Jimmy Stewart hayseed naiveté and sweetness, but secondary characters (17 actors portray over 60) are ciphers used mostly to advance the plot. Even Philo’s dedicated wife and inventing partner Pem (Alexandra Wilson) is rendered colorless. Yet, director Des McAnuff (Jersey Boys, The Who’s Tommy) has tailored a sleek and stylish production that holds one’s attention. David C. Woolard’s costumes sharply define character – Sarnoff in corporate navy pinstripe suits, Farnsworth in shapeless tan jackets.
If the play were less static, perhaps we could forgive Sorkin for the play’s many factual errors – including the most important one of all: Who actually won the patent fight at the core of the story. Not only is the play rife with anachronistic language, but Sorkin has appropriated a popular blue joke making the rounds about 15 years ago (about a blow job and the first man on the moon) and put it into the mouth of Sarnoff for an easy laugh. He has also written a stirring confrontation and conciliation scene between the two adversaries that his Sarnoff then confides never actually happened. These flaws mar what could have been a thrilling and dramatic tale two of sides of the American character.

­ Jane Klain

August: Osage County

Starring Deanna Dunagan, Dennis Letts, and Kimberly Guerrero
Directed by Anna D. Shapiro
Written by Tracy Letts

Imperial Theatre

Transferred from its acclaimed produc- tion by Chicagoıs Steppenwolf Theater this summer with its brilliant ensemble cast mostly intact, Tracy LettsıAugust: Osage County has opened on Broadway to rapturous reviews and great popular acclaim.

The epic three- act, three and a half hour playıs logo shows a house a-kilter, and in this outrageous come- dy/drama, Letts has created the dysfunctional family to end all dysfunctional families. The Westons are a clan mired in a tawdry soap opera world of adultery, incest, drug abuse, alcoholism, and pedophilia. In the first scene, the familyıs patriarch, Beverly Weston (Dennis Letts, the playwrightıs father in a lovely performance), a poet who since the 1960s has drowned his bright promise in alcohol, interviews Johnna (Kimberly Guerrero), a young Cheyenne woman, for the job of housekeeper while he quotes melan- choly poems by T.S. Eliot and John Berryman. He informs her: ³My wife takes pills and I drink. And these facts have over time made burdensome the maintenance of traditional American routine.²

When Beverly goes missing, his pain pill- addicted wife, Violet (the phenomenal Deanna Dunagan in a chilling and hilarious performance), sends out an SOS for her three daughters, who return to the three-story home in Pawhuska, Oklahoma (beautifully rendered by set designer Todd Rosenthal to resemble a dollıs house), each bearing her own dark secret. Emotionally abused as a child herself, Violet, who has cancer of the mouth, lashes out at every- one around her with a vicious, acid tongue that leaves scars and opens old wounds. Her menopausal eldest daughter, Barbara (the moving Amy Morton), tries to hide the facts that her college teacher hus- band (Jeff Perry) has left her for one of his students, and their frighteningly precocious 14-year-old daughter Jenn (Madeleine Martin) has a weed habit. Karen (Mariann Mayberry) brings along her new and fairly shady boyfriend Steve (Brian Kerwin), who attempts to seduce her underage niece. And Ivy (Sally Murphy) is having a clandestine affair with her first cousin Little Charles (Ian Barford). Violetıs blowsy and tart-tongued sister Mattie Fae (Rondi Reed channeling Shelley Winters), Mattie Faeıs passive, kindly hus- band Charlie (the sympathetic Francis Guinan), and their son Little Charlie turn up to assist in the search for Beverly. The large house vibrates with the overheated emotions of this unhappy clan. August: Osage County skewers all the myths about family and sister- hood, and its hilari- ous funeral dinner ­ as one of them notes ­ resembles a cockfight.

When Letts reaches for larger themes, such as the dissipation of the American family and the ³greatest generation,² he bur- dens his play with more weight that it can bear. At times, it may resemble a particu- larly nasty and uproarious episode of Carol Burnettıs ³Mamaıs Family,² but underneath the humor, Letts celebrates the survivor instinct in even the most miserable of lives. As one character says, ³Thank God we canıt tell the future, or weıd never get out of bed.²

­ Jane Klain