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January 13, 2006
TT: The old-fashioned way
I'm back from a quick playgoing trip to Washington, D.C., just in time to review Nilo Cruz's Beauty of the Father in this morning's Wall Street Journal:Nilo Cruz, the prolific Cuban-American playwright, didn't make his Broadway debut until 2003, when "Anna in the Tropics," which won that year's Pulitzer Prize for drama, had a three-month run at the Royale Theatre. Though it got mixed reviews, I liked "Anna in the Tropics" very much and resolved to keep an eye on Mr. Cruz thereafter. Now he's back in town with "Beauty of the Father," a play about Emiliano, a bisexual artist (Ritchie Coster) whose reunion with his estranged daughter (Elizabeth Rodriguez) hits the skids when she falls for his boyfriend-protégé (Pedro Pascal).
In spite of the contemporary flavor of Mr. Cruz's plot, his stagecraft is delightfully old-fashioned. His characters are forever waxing poetic, reeling off elaborate soliloquies at the drop of a paintbrush...
In addition, I paid a return visit to The Light in the Piazza:
Long-running musicals have a nasty way of developing quality-control problems over time, especially when the members of the original cast move on. "The Light in the Piazza" was my favorite musical of the 2004-05 season, but I hadn't seen it since last April and was wondering how it was holding up, especially given the fact that three of the four stars had since been replaced by new faces (Victoria Clark is still in the cast). So I went back for a second helping on Saturday, and was pleased to find that it was every bit as good as I'd remembered....
No link, so take yourself to the nearest newsstand and shell out one thin dollar for a copy of the Journal, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will provide you with instant access to the complete text of my review (along with plenty of other art-related stories).
Posted January 13, 2006 8:48 AM
