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May 28, 2004
TT: Cameo appearance
Hello, there. To all those who've written, I'm feeling better, though not enough to resume full-scale blogging activities (or any other kind of activities, for that matter). I'm hoping the holiday weekend knits me up more or less completely.Sick or not, I always manage to write my Friday drama column for The Wall Street Journal, and this week, God knows how, was no exception. I wrote about two shows, Donald Margulies' Sight Unseen and Here Lies Jenny, a new Kurt Weill revue starring Bebe Neuwirth.
I liked Sight Unseen rather better than well enough, mostly because of Laura Linney:
Is there a better American actress than Laura Linney? Judging by the Manhattan Theatre Club's revival of Donald Margulies' "Sight Unseen," playing at the Biltmore through July 11, I'd be hard pressed to think of anyone who qualifies. Every word she speaks and every gesture she makes has the bright ring of gospel truth. To be sure, Ms. Linney is no off-the-rack star. Her serious face and flat, unfancy vowels are as plain--and as beautiful--as a New England meeting house. But that, too, is part of her priceless gift: what she says, you believe.
Ms. Linney does much to ennoble "Sight Unseen," a smart but superficial dramedy that hasn't aged well in the 12 years since its Off-Broadway premiere. It's about Jonathan, a trendy Jewish painter (Ben Shenkman); Patricia, his WASP-y former fiancée (Ms. Linney); and Nick, her husband-on-the-rebound (Byron Jennings). Their triangular interactions are presented in the upside-down manner of "Merrily We Roll Along" (the last scene of each act is a flashback). Jonathan is cynical and miserable, Patricia frustrated and miserable, Nick angry and miserable. No surprises there, a fact which Mr. Margulies' too-clever chronological trickery fails to conceal....
As for Here Lies Jenny, it surprised me--the wrong way:
I'm a great fan of Bebe Neuwirth--who isn't? So I was more than slightly surprised to have been disappointed by "Here Lies Jenny," the late-night Kurt Weill revue directed and conceived by Roger Rees in which Ms. Neuwirth appears through July 24. I was sure it couldn't miss, but "Here Lies Jenny" turned out to be the last thing I expected: dull.
The Zipper Theatre has been dressed down to look like a broken-bottle joint run by George (Ed Dixon), a bartender in an advanced state of disrepair, and patronized by Jim and John (Greg Butler and Shawn Emamjomeh), a pair of pumped-up thugs. Into this den of low-rent debauchery staggers Ms. Neuwirth, a washed-up song-and-dance gal. No words are spoken, but it seems this rathole used to be her hangout once upon a time--or maybe not. For a while I thought she might be slinking back to the place where she got her start--or maybe not. Everything in "Here Lies Jenny" is deliberately left vague, not in an evocative way but in a frustrating one, like watching a bad print of an old movie with the lights on....
No link--visit your local newsstand. And thanks for bearing with me through this exhausting, difficult week! I hope to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed come Monday morning.
Posted May 28, 2004 12:45 PM
