I reviewed two new plays in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Lisa Loomer’s Living Out
(which I liked) and Jez Butterworth’s The Night Heron
(which I way didn’t). Here’s the lead:
Clear the decks for superlatives. Of all the new plays to open in Manhattan since I launched this column six months ago, Lisa Loomer’s “Living Out,” running through Nov. 2 at Second Stage Theatre, is easily the smartest, with acting and direction to match. Dramatically speaking, it’s a dry martini, mixing crisp satire and heart-tugging pathos in exactly the right proportions, and unlike the flabby, feeble 9/11 plays currently buzzing around town, it never stoops to pretentiousness.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, since I came within inches of passing up “Living Out.” Who wants to see a play about Latino nannies in Los Angeles and the well-to-do Jewish mothers whose children they tend? Not me, I thought. I have the strongest possible aversion to heavy-handed political playwriting, and never having seen any of Ms. Loomer’s work, I expected the worst. Well, fear not: “Living Out” contains no sermons, no bumper stickers, no clunkily obvious messages of any kind whatsoever. It’s about life, not politics, and it aims its shafts of wit in all directions–including straight at the heads of the audience….
No link, so to find out more about Living Out (and to read the terrible things I had to say about The Night Heron), extract a dollar from your wallet, buy a copy of Friday’s Journal, and turn to my theater column in the “Weekend Journal” section. I highly recommend it–and not just for my stuff, either.
Unpaid advertisement: I can’t tell you how many people I know are surprised to find out that the Wall Street Journal covers the arts, and does it well. You don’t have to be rich to read it–all it takes is a buck, and I’m there every Friday.