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April 15, 2005
TT: Whodunnit? Don't ask
I had a great week at the theater: three shows, three winners. Granted, I'd already seen and liked two of the shows in question, but good is good, right?Anyway, here's the weekly teaser for my Wall Street Journal drama column, which leads off with a slightly qualified but nonetheless definite rave for The Pillowman:
The National Theatre of Great Britain has shipped yet another show to Broadway, and unlike "Democracy," this one's a winner, if a weird one. Martin McDonagh's "The Pillowman," now playing at the Booth Theatre, is a loose-jointed, slightly rambling shocker by the author of "The Beauty Queen of Leenane," performed by a cast of American actors led by Billy Crudup and Jeff Goldblum. I had my doubts at intermission, but by evening's end I'd succumbed--though perhaps that isn't quite the right word--to Mr. McDonagh's tale of a writer whose darkest fantasies come to messy life....
It's not entirely clear what Mr. McDonagh is up to in "The Pillowman." Is it a postmodern metanarrative? A black comedy about life under Stalinism? A parable of the unintended consequences of the writer's art? Beats me, and in the first act the unclarity is extreme enough at times to suggest a switchboard whose plugs are stuck in the wrong holes. Not so the second, more closely woven part, which builds to a predictable but still horrifying climax that hits you like...well, like a bullet in the back of the head.
As for John Patrick Shanley's splendid Doubt, which has transferred to Broadway and won a Pulitzer Prize, I saw pretty much what I expected to see:
I'm pleased to say that it looks good, John Lee Beatty's spare, suggestive set having been discreetly altered to fill the much higher opening of the proscenium stage of the Walter Kerr Theatre.
Brían F. O'Byrne and Cherry Jones have also heightened the scale of their bravura performances as Father Flynn, who may or may not have molested a young boy, and Sister Aloysius, who has no doubt of his guilt and is determined to muscle him out of her parish whatever the cost--including, if need be, her own soul. While I miss the charged intimacy they brought to the Off Broadway production, what they're doing now is no less effective for having been expanded in emotional scale (and volume) to accommodate the needs of a much larger audience....
Last is Sides: The Fear Is Real, an off-Broadway show that I commend most emphatically to your attention:
Collectively written by the six terrific Asian-American performers who make up Mr. Miyagi's Theatre Company, "Sides" is a zany catalogue of everything that can possibly go wrong at an audition. Pretentious playwrights, sexually omnivorous casting directors, fresh-out-of-school actors caught in the chokehold of stage fright: all are portrayed with such demented gusto that you barely stop laughing long enough to catch your breath. Pay no attention to the inside-baseball title, which refers to the script handouts given to actors who try out for a role in a play, TV show or film. Civilians will find "Sides" fully intelligible--and rib-crackingly funny.
I first saw "Sides" two years ago at the New York International Fringe Festival, and since then I've been hoping that it would have an Off Broadway run. My wish has come true: It's playing through May 1 at PS122. I'm sure this won't be your last chance to see it, but why wait? Catch it now and in five years you can tell all your friends how you first saw Sekiya Billman, Cindy Cheung, Paul Juhn, Peter Kim, Hoon Lee and Rodney To back when they were still struggling actors.
No link, for reasons more than adequately explained here. To read the whole thing, buy today's Journal at your neighborhood newsstand, or stride boldly forward into the new age of electronic media by going here.
Posted April 15, 2005 12:06 PM
