But the majority of “Jet Lag” is boring and autobiographical to a fault, with generic guitar and percussion-heavy instrumentation that borders on the soporific. Wolf too often can’t see anything but himself; he doesn’t have the ability of a musician like the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle to turn highly personal, painful experiences into art with a universal reach. It might be possible to overlook this problem if “Jet Lag” didn’t drag so heavily from track to track. There just isn’t enough to hold the interest of the listener — musically, lyrically or otherwise — to have him slog through the entirety of “Jet Lag” without wanting to flip off the iPod. Wolf’s grief is genuine, but it’s easier to want to feel for him than it is to actually do so.

Part of the reason for this is his limited vocal range, which certainly reinforces the monotonous nature of “Jet Lag.” And it also doesn’t help that Wolf sometimes just tries too hard be profound. The lyrics veer from the conventional, as in “That Kind of Man,” when he muses banalities like, “bad decisions leave a scar on the hearts of women and men” to the irritating, as in “The Apart Meant,” when he sings “Unused I love yous / build up in my throat / and my apartment smells like divorce.” A line like this would be barely tolerable if it only occurred once in a track, but Wolf chooses to repeat the stanza over and over as if it carried the weight of a Shakespearean sonnet. Listening to “Jet Lag” from beginning to end isn’t quite the musical equivalent of taking a red-eye from New York to Bangkok; but once finished, it’s doubtful anyone would be in a hurry to take the journey again anytime soon.

Presumably a rebuke to the book of the same title, sans question mark, by economist Jeffrey Sachs, filmmaker Philippe Diaz’s radical neo-Marxist screed affirms once again the inherent cinematic dullness of seething liberal guilt. Well, at least its many talking heads — comfortable, variously credentialed pronouncement-makers of the first world and pitiable, variously disenfranchised sufferers in the third — do hail from all over the globe. And at least it goes deeper than the usual our-awful-world doc by surveying five centuries worth of history, albeit to insist that the economic exploitation of underdeveloped nations has been insidiously entrenched via corporatism and colonialism since 1492. It’s dodgy, but determined. The rest, quite blandly academic except when narrated with bloated speechifying smugness by Martin Sheen, is a blizzard of unsourced factoids, with no coherent alternative to the alleged poison of privatization save for some hazy nostalgia about the concept of “the commons.” Probably what’s worst, though, is that the Diaz diatribe ultimately seems so impersonal. At least Sachs’ book, which posited restructuring international aid to abolish such horrific and widespread destitution, was partly a memoir of his own direct experience of doing exactly that.

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Monday, March 8, 2010
Broadway Impact co-founders including Gavin Creel (star of “Hair”) will be at the “TalkOut” Monday, March 15 of The Temperamentals

Variety lays off the theater critic David Rooney and both staff film critics, saying the trade paper will rely on freelance reviewers from now on. Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) reacts: Variety fires Todd McCarthy and I cancel my subscription…RIP, schmucks

A View From The Bridge has recouped its investment, the producers announced. Four more weeks to make a profit. (The show closes April 4th).

Know of an Off-Off Broadway theater person deserving an award? The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation is accepting applications for its three “Honorary Awards” until May 1.

Patti Lupone to make her NYC Ballet debut in “The Seven Deadly Sins” in 2011 as singer, a part originated by Lotte Lenya

BAM and Donmar Warehouse present the U.S. premiere of new version of August Strindberg’s Creditors, directed by Alan Rickman April 16-May 16

New Yorker magazine theater critic Hilton Als LIGHTS into Martin McDonagh’s “A Behanding in Spokane,” calling it “vile” and the Anthony Mackie character a Stepin Fetchit
I should point out that I too had problems with the racism in A Behanding in Spokane and what I called the “pitch-poor” black character.

Eddie Redmayne, mostly a film actor (the naive son of Matt Damon in “The Good Shepherd”; “That Other Boleyn Girl”), is playing opposite Alfred Molina in “Red,” a play about the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko, which played in London and begins performances this week at the Golden Theater on Broadway, with a scheduled opening on April 1.
Asked about the play, and whether it will be made into a film, Redmayne said: “It’s a two-hander, a very intimate tale about apprenticeship and this sort of father/son relationship. It’s everything I’m kind of interested in. I don’t know if there’s a film life for it, but certainly I’m thrilled that since it’s this New York play by an American writer, that New York will get to see it.”

Tuesday, March 9, 2010
@GoToOffBroadway: It hasn’t officially opened yet, but it’s already a hit: Kander & Ebb’s “The Scottsboro Boys” extends to April 18!

Broadway’s Fela! records cast album, available in stores June 8

“The Miracle Worker” will continue, producer says, even though business has not (yet) picked up.

Nixon vs. Journalism vs. Drama. My review of “Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers” at the New York Theater Workshop.
There are plenty of old plays about even older issue-laded historical events that stand up: “Inherit the Wind” (a 1955 play about the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial) may be the most noteworthy one. The Nixon era has inspired fresh dramas such as Peter Morgan’s “Frost/Nixon.” But “Top Secret” feels like something resurrected past its time, and presented in a way that keeps us at an even greater distance. full review

Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Roundup of reviews for “Love Never Dies,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sequel to “Phantom of the Opera” which has opened at the Adelphi Theater in London, with plans to open on Broadway in the fall. In his review, New York Times theater critic Ben Brantley called it “a poor sap of a show,” But British critics were more mixed. Meanwhile, “The Phantom of the Opera” lives on, with a new U.S. tour

Lincoln Center has announced its summer festival, which will include will include a 12-hour version of Dostoevsky’s “The Demons”- in Italian, on Governors Island. “The Demons” will have English subtitles…but still!

The New York Post’s Michael Riedel says there is talk that the next cast for “God of Carnage” might be all-black (Eddie Murphy? Mo’nique?) It worked with Hello, Dolly; “Cat on A Hot Tin Roof” etc

David Rooney, fired Variety theater critic, talks of the “erosion of arts coverage” and how the “critical voice is being undervalued.”

“Banana Spheel,” the Cirque de Soleil show that was going to being in Feb, has been delayed again; Previews are now set for April 29

Thursday, March 11, 2010
Despite mixed reviews, “Love Never Dies”, Phantom sequel, is still planned for Broadway in fall, but with some changes likely.

The Public Theater’s artistic director Oskar Eustis will direct New Yorker magazine writer Lawrence Wright’s one-man show about the crisis in Gaza, “The Human Scale”, at Joe’s Pub March 17-21.

Dame Judi Dench to publish her memoir “And Furthermore” in October, her life as an actress (and not just as M in the James Bond flicks)

“The God of Carnage” will not go on national tour,at least not yet. The producers couldn’t line up enough theaters to make it profitable.

My review of Next Fall: Religious Faith, Gay Love, and One-Liners On Broadway:
The easiest thing to say about “Next Fall,” a play by Geoffrey Nauffts that debuted last year at Playwrights Horizon and is now being “presented” on Broadway by Elton John and his life partner David Furnish, is that it is a moving, amusing and thoughtful evening at the theater. It is more difficult to label the play, to call it a comedy or a melodrama or a love story or a gay play or a drama about religious faith. It is all these things and not precisely any of them, a modest play on its surface with degrees of depth hinted at by the several possible meanings of its title.
Full review

Friday, March 12, 2010
“Unchain My Heart, the Ray Charles Musical” with book by Pulitzer winner Suzan-Lori Parks, is set to open on Broadway in November.

Kelsey Grammer will play both Georges & Albin, the gay couple of “La Cage Aux Folles,” opening on Broadway April 18, but not at the same time.

“Promises Promises” star Sean Hayes (who came out as gay earlier in the week) talked about his co-star Kristen Chenoweth: “People [will say] ‘Holy crap! I didn’t know she had that in her.…’ By that, I mean me.”

World Theatre Day 2010 is on March 27th — and it has a Twitter account @WTD10
@WTD10: We also have a blog, which acts as a hub for sharing.

From Playwrights Horizon (@phnyc) We’re kicking off new student and 30&Under memberships next season… starting 4/1!

The Orphan’s Home Cycle plays its 200th performance tonight. My favorite play(s) this season.

Baseball plays are at bat — certainly in Hoboken, the supposed birthplace of baseball, where the Mile Square Theater company has commissioned close to 50 baseball plays over the past eight years.

I’m at the Drama Book Shop.To my left, a woman reading August Osage County. To my right a man reading a directory of casting agents
Anthony Smith (@ashtonhminty, student) sounds dreadful. get yourself some wine.

Saturday, March 13, 2010
Everyone from Lily Tomlin to Buzz Aldrin pushing for Carol Channing to receive 2010 Kennedy Center Honors. (She hasn’t already?)

Lisa Waldrop (@lisawaldrop, Alabama, “always wishing I was in New York City”): Neither has Dick van Dyke! Crazy!

Downsized Backstage theater editor Leonard Jacobs (@clydefitch) on Variety’s firing theater critic David Rooney — ‘critics’ may vanish; cultural arbiters will not.

Broadway Time Machine
The Broadway League (@thebwayleague) asked: If you had a time machine and comp tickets, what show would you see and why?
Elyssa Gross (@slick144×2): I don’t need a time machine! @rockofages takes me back to the 80’s and that’s all I need!!
@thecraptacular: Easy. Opening night of Pal Joey, Gene Kelly starring.
Laura K. Jacobs (@laurak23): So many! But one I would definitely see is the original Pajama Game cast.
@conssrtfan: I would see Camelot c.1960 the music of all my younger life, & Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well c. 2007
Tony Lance (@tonylance): Either opening night for original production of West Side Story or original production of Ragtime.
Kiaosha (@blckbettyboop): Original cast of Dreamgirls with Jennifer Holiday.
@BwaySalsera: RENT- Would’ve loved to feel the energy & see it in person
Richard Sobel (@shonufflives): Opening night of My Fair Lady…Dame Julie Andrews, Rex Harrison and The Magnificent Score
Mike Lancaster (@lancmike): My pick- Funny Girl at the Winter Garden starring Barbra Streisand’
Arvin Mendoza (@Wildcard2500): I’d go see Sunset Blvd. because we’ll probably never see sets like that again on Broadway

When The Rain Doesn’t Stop
Jonathan Mandell (@newyorktheater, that’s me): I’m supposed to see The Scottsboro Boys tonight, but it’s so wet. (not the show, the weather)

Linda Buchwald (@PataphysicalSci): Rainy days are great for last minute tickets. Saw matinee of @nextfall & really moved by it

Alex Jensen (@jensen11us): I also have tickets for that in April let me know what you think

Jonathan Mandell (@newyorktheater): I talk about it being wet & suddenly I get all these London theater followers! You’re an inspiration. I’m going. Never too wet to see a show!

@angelstoughbark: So true so true i would never miss a show for a little wetness

Sunday, March 14, 2010
GLAAD Media Awards in theater last night went to “A Boy and His Soul” by Colman Domingo and “She Like Girls” by Chisa Hutchinson

Dennis Baker: Does your schedule allow you to create art or are you about to implode? How are you as an artist creating a work/life/art balance?

The still-anonymous @BroadwayGirlNYC , who has been on Twitter exactly a year today (her Twitterversary), has just announced she will have a weekly column Thursdays on BroadwayWorld.com.

My review of A Miracle Worker — Accessible, Engaging, Endangered
To judge whether there is an audience for “The Miracle Worker” the first-ever Broadway revival of the 1959 play about the awakening of Helen Keller, let’s look at the numbers: as many as a million adults in the United States who are both deaf and blind; 20 million or so who are hearing-impaired; more than 25 million who are vision-impaired (people who have trouble seeing even with glasses); more than 300 million who experience frustration, yearn for connection, feel inspired by a true story of triumph over challenges. Full review

My review of “Looped” – Tallulah Ends Up Oprah
Tallulah Bankhead, the quotable and oft-caricatured sultry-voiced star whom Valerie Harper is playing in “Looped,” was the inspiration for both Cruella de Vil in “101 Dalmatians” and Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire”; indeed, Tennessee Williams is said to have asked her to play Blanche on Broadway, but she turned him down because, according to Harper’s Tallulah, “How would it look for an aging promiscuous Southern woman who drank too much to play an aging promiscuous Southern woman who drank too much?”
She is, in short, made to be played full review

–
The Week in New York Theater Tweets appears every Monday in The New York Theater section of The Faster Times, a selection (and enhancement) of the past week’s 140-character Twitter messages by Jonathan Mandell. To sign up to the New York Theater Twitter account, click on this link.

Past issues:

Sondheim Daily, Shakespeare Twitterized, Hand Loss, Hand Loss. 03/08/10
American Idol on Broadway. Bad Theater. Political Theater. Internet Theater. 03/01/10
Best Plays Ever, Gay Plays Now, Spring 2010 Theater Preview, 02/22/10

Broadway Love, Cell Phone Hate, Absolutely Fabulous Debuts. 02/15/10

Jackie O, Jersey Boys/Jersey Shore, Picking (On) Playwrights. 02/08/10

Avenue Q/South Park 2? Time Stands Still. American Idiot Doesn’t. 02/01/10

Scarlett Johansson’s First Time; Victor Garber’s 15th; A Nasty Bye Bye. 1/25/10

Antonio Banderas Back On Broadway? Angels Back In America. 1/18/10

Sinatra, Elvis, Green Day, Bono Coming To Broadway 1/11/10

Ragtime and Rainbow Shockers; The 2010 Season; What’s Wrong With Waltre Krre (Theater vs. Theatre)1/04/10,

From Arthur Miller to Catherine Zeta-Jones 12/28,

12/21, 12/14, 12/07

As a teenager, Amanda Graystone went crazy and was committed after her brother died in a car accident. Current circumstances–no longer a doctor, no longer a mother and lonely days of being a busy man’s wife–drive her crazy all over again. She finds herself chasing the ghost of her dead brother down the street. Aside from booze and pills, her only solace comes from new friend Sister Clarice.

Joseph tracks down Heracles (formerly no-named gamer guy) and forces him to play guide in the underground V-World. In New Cap City, Joseph finds the rules of the game similar to life: No flying, and when you die, you’re gone, never to return. Being a clumsy old man in a young person’s world, he gets Heracles killed and finds himself at the mercy of a new guide.

A-Zoe and Philo the lab tech meet in V-World for a proper first date. To him, her name is Rachael. She goes off on a tangent about V-World being used for higher purposes, like the extension of life, rather than a playground with generic details. Piqued by tech talk, he counters, “I work with top secret military robots.” She plays swooning and they kiss.

Daniel doesn’t understand why the Cylon robot works at all and being unable to pinpoint the scientific reasoning behind its working existence leaves his military contract in limbo. Inspired by Rachael’s words, Philo suggests a theory that mass-production, like human offspring, must use a generative process with an unchanging variable–kinda like DNA? Daniel sits in his lab, playing fetch with the dog. The robot joins in, a movement that is just another show of its sentience. Daniel walks up to it, stares into its red eye, senses familiarity and wonders aloud, “Zoe?”  

Sister Clarice and Amanda meet at a bar to smoke some drugs and chill out. But friendly girls night out this is not–Amanda weeps over the disintegration of her life and apparent sanity, while Clarice carries a secret Messiah complex, believing God has a specific plan for her only. Amanda is convinced that “surviving is the punishment for leaving things left unsaid.” Every kindness a scheme wishing her closer to A-Zoe, Clarice urges Amanda to trust in God’s unknowable wisdom. “Which God do I trust?” Amanda asks her, needing truly to know. The One True God, perhaps?

Spaceman says, “Bitchin!”

Spaceman Exclamation Ratings

Great: “Bitchin!”

Pretty good: “I felt some G-Force!”

Not so hot: “Not sure this puppy can fly!”

Not recommended: “Let’s get outta here!”

Caprica airs Fridays, 9pm Eastern on Syfy.

Cast: Eric Stoltz (Daniel Graystone); Paula Malcomson (Amanda Graystone); Alessandra Torresani (Zoe Graystone); Esai Morales (Joseph Adama); Sasha Roiz (Sam Adama); Magda Apanowicz (Lacy Rand); Polly Walker (Clarice Willow); John Pyper-Ferguson (Tomas Vergis); James Marsters (Barnabas)

Photo by Joe Pugliese via LiGado em Serie 

She is, in short, made to be played, and although she has nowhere near the name recognition she had while alive, she has been reincarnated on the stage many times, by actresses like Kathleen Turner and female impersonators like Craig Russell, in plays with titles like “Tallulah Hallelujah!” and “Dahling,” named after her signature greeting: She called everybody “darling” because “all my life I’ve been terrible at remembering people’s names. Once I introduced a friend of mine as ‘Martini’. Her name was actually ‘Olive’.”

That line and many of Tallulah’s far more notorious remarks are packed — one could say overstuffed — into “Looped,” which has now opened at the Lyceum. After Harper makes her dramatic entrance, stumbling hours late into an L.A. sound studio wearing dark glasses, a full-length mink coat, lacquered-red fingernails and blush-red lips – and soon holding a cigarette in one hand and booze in the other — she delivers one foul-mouthed crack after another non-stop for a solid 10 minutes.

How entertaining you find these and the rest of the play’s Tallulah-isms depends on your tolerance of everything that surrounds them. “Looped” has an annoyingly amateurish script by playwright Matthew Lombardo, who could have done better, judging by “Tea at Five,” his more adroit vehicle at the Promenade a few years back about the life of Katherine Hepburn.

The premise for “Looped” is based on an actual if insignificant event that occurred during the making of Tallulah’s last film, which had the unpromising title of “Die, Die, My Darling.” By the time she died in 1968 at the age of 66, Tallulah long had been better known for her outrageousness than her acting; as one obituary put it, her “personal life had such flair that, in recent years, when she did so little stage work, there was a tendency to underestimate her talent…” Few of her films matched her achievements in the theater, most famously as Sabina in Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” and Regina in Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes,” but her best-known performance was in a movie, Alfred Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat.” That was all many years in the past when, three years before her death, she appeared in a horror movie inspired by the success of “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane,” which had starred the aging actresses Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, launching a genre that Charles Busch has since labeled Grande Dame Guignol. Tallulah was called to a sound studio to redub a single line in “Die, Die My Darling.” What should have taken five minutes took …forever, the entire length of this play.

The playwright places Tallulah in that studio and pairs her with a (presumably) imagined character named Danny, who as the film’s editor is elected by default to handle the dubbing, or looping, with the impossible and inebriated actress.

There is virtually nothing about Danny that rings true, no line he utters that doesn’t grate. He scolds the actress for her shortcomings in a barking manner that is entirely unbelievable and then opens up about his own problems (homosexuality, estranged daughter) in such a theatrically weepy way that it would be laughed off an afternoon soap. It is possible that Brian Hutchison is a good actor – his credits include stints on Broadway in such high-quality works as “Exit the King” and “Proof.” If so, then casting him as Danny has done him dirt.

A theatergoer with great Zen strength might be able to tune out every one of Danny’s lines in Act I, hearing only Tallulah and her zingers. That maneuver would fail, however, in Act II, when his story starts to crowd out hers, and Tallulah abruptly becomes Oprah – or, for that matter, Rhoda (Mary’s Jewish neighbor in the “Mary Tyler Moore Show,” the character for which Valerie Harper is still best known) — dispensing hard-earned buck-em-up advice from the heart.

Maybe Tallulah really reached out to people like this; Tennessee Williams said she exhibited “an instinctive kindness to a person in whom she senses a vulnerability that is kin to her own.” Her vulnerability came from a lifetime of tragedies, including the death of her mother shortly after giving birth to her, and her own near-death and hysterectomy in her early thirties that the play attributes to venereal disease she contracted from movie star Gary Cooper. But there was surely a better way of dramatizing this lesser-known aspect of her personality than filling up precious time with…Danny. It is especially a shame since there is so much about Tallulah that remains fascinating. Left out from “Looped,” for example, is the political activism of this outspoken liberal off-spring of a prominent Alabama political family: Both her uncle and her grandfather were U.S. Senators; her father was the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The moments in “Looped” that attempt to show Tallulah’s tender and tortured sides, even the brief ones, are so treacly as to gum up the whole enterprise. Ironically, it was only during the piling on of witticisms, many of them self-deprecating or self-destructive, that I was struck with a sense of how unfunny much of her life probably was.

Still, to the extent that “Looped” is worth seeing, it is to watch Harper’s impressive comic impersonation of a Tallulah whose utterances can still shock even while they amuse:

“Cocaine isn’t habit forming. I should know – I’ve been using it for years.”

“I’m bisexual. Buy me something and I’ll be sexual.”

“There are two kinds of men, the men who want to fuck me, and the men who want to be me.”

“If I had to live my life again I’d make all the same mistakes - only sooner.”

Twitterers: Follow Jonathan Mandell at New York Theater

Looped
at Lyceum Theater (149 West 45th Street)
Written by Matthew Lombardo
Directed by Rob Ruggiero
Sets by Adrian Jones, costumes b William Ivey Long, lighting by Ken Billington, sound by Michael Hooker and Peter Fitzgerald
Cast:
Valerie Harper as Tallulah Bankhead
Brian Hutchison as Danny
Michael Mulheren as Steve
Running time: about two hours with one intermission
Ticket prices: Normal: $25 (for balcony) to $111.50. Student Rush: $25.00. Premium: Up to $226.50

Those challenges belonged both to Helen Keller, who at 19 months old was felled by a disease that made her both deaf and blind, and to Anne Sullivan, a young woman who had herself been blind until her sight was partially restored after nine surgeries, and had grown up in an orphanage. Anne Sullivan was hired to be Helen Keller’s teacher.

“Here’s a houseful of grownups can’t cope with the child,” exclaims Helen’s father, when 20-year-old Anne Sullivan first arrives at the Keller’s Alabama home. “How can an inexperienced half-blind Yankee schoolgirl manage her?”

The answer to that question is the focus of William Gibson’s play. The original Broadway production won four Tony Awards, including best play and best actress (Anne Bancroft; she and Patty Duke won Academy Awards for a reprisal of their roles in the 1962 movie adaptation). The play ran for nearly two years.

A few days after the opening of this second production, the producer announced that he was thinking of closing the show unless ticket sales picked up.

That would be a shock, and a shame. As directed by Kate Whoriskey, who was universally praised for her direction of “Ruined,” Lynn Nottage’s play examining the way civilians adjust to the terror of war in the Congo, “The Miracle Worker” presents its own kind of war, literal physical combat between two extraordinary young actresses, embodying characters who are very much fighting their personal terrors. Abigail Breslin, nominated for an Academy Award for her role as an unlikely beauty contestant in “Little Miss Sunshine” at the age of 10, is a wordless Helen — staring into space, disheveled, defiant, ever-eager to reach beyond her grasp — who uses her face and body with compelling clarity to reveal the world of a trapped intelligence. Alison Pill plays the young, stubborn working-class Anne determined to connect Helen to the rest of humanity, through language. Theatergoers may not recognize Pill as the same 23-year-old actress who was the lesbian activist campaign manager in the movie “Milk,” the cancer patient in denial in the HBO TV series “In Treatment,” the put-upon stamp collector’s daughter in “Mauritius” and the infatuated teenage terrorist in “The Lieutenant of Inishmore.” To remember her in those roles is to understand how completely she has transformed herself here into a young woman who feels in her own way as much a misfit from the world as her pupil.

The main objection to “The Miracle Worker” (besides just the fact that it’s a play rather than a musical) seems to be its staging in the round at Circle in The Square, which requires pieces of furniture attached by cords that rise and fall from the ceiling when needed, and which occasionally obstructs the viewing, depending on where in the theater you are sitting.

None of this bothered me. Maybe I had a good seat, or maybe what mattered most were the accumulation of moments in Anne’s battle to teach Helen, first the manners of civilized society, then (through finger-spelling) its language:

I liked this sense of scenes floating in space, the large empty stage seeming almost ethereal, a stand-in for the larger unknown world as it is experienced both by Helen because of her physical limitations and Anne because of her isolated upbringing.

The unorthodox staging would not bother the blind members of the audience either. They can take advantage of D-Scriptive audio description system available for free. For the hearing-impaired, there is both the Assistive Listening System available in other Broadway theaters, and something called I-Caption, a hand-held captioning system. There is also ShowTrans, which translates the proceedings (not just the dialogue) into Spanish, Portuguese or Japanese. Certain performances are interpreted in sign language or presented with open captions (the theater equivalent of film’s subtitles).

The next open-captioned performance, according to the Miracle Worker Web site, is Tuesday, March 23 at 7pm. The next sign-interpreted performance is Tuesday, March 30 at 7pm.

There is no other show on Broadway that is so accessible, to both the disabled and the young, and that speaks to them so directly.

Helen Keller, born in the 19th century, went on to become an internationally renowned figure of the 20th, author of 12 books, inspiring public speaker, political activist. After graduating from Radcliffe College – the first blind-deaf student to graduate from any college – this daughter of a former officer of the Confederate Army became a leading suffragette, anti-war activist, a socialist, advocate of birth control, one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union, and a disability rights activist. She was even credited with having introduced the Akita breed of dog to the United States. Maybe the time is right for a new drama about the adult Helen Keller? For the moment, there is, for the first time on Broadway in 50 years, “The Miracle Worker.”

Twitterers: Follow Jonathan Mandell on New York Theater

The Miracle Worker
At Circle in the Square Theater (235 West 50th Street)
By William Gibson; directed by Kate Whoriskey; sets by Derek McLane; costumes by Paul Tazewell; lighting by Kenneth Posner; music and sound by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen; hair design by Charles LaPointe; physical coaching and movement by Lee Sher;
Cast:
Abigail Breslin (Helen Keller), Alison Pill (Annie Sullivan), Jennifer Morrison (Kate Keller), Elizabeth Franz (Aunt Ev), Matthew Modine (Captain Keller), Tobias Segal (James), Daniel Oreskes (Doctor/Anagnos), Michael Cummings (Percy), Simone Joy Jones (Martha), Yvette Ganier (Viney) and Lance Chantiles-Wertz (Jimmie).
Running time: 2 hours with one intermission.
Ticket prices: Normal: $80 to $117. Day of performance ticket lottery: $26.00. Premium seats: up to $202.

Terrorist bombings continue throughout Caprica. Sister Clarice is panicked and angry, wanting to take control of the Soldiers of the One leadership, but certain vulnerabilities (like drug and drink) have proved distracting. She knows Zoe’s avatar–a near-perfect copy of Zoe herself, who was as smart and innovative as her old man–is the missing piece in the STO’s further monotheistic vision.

Also chasing the big idea left behind by Zoe’s death, Lacy intends to fulfill her promise and transport a package to Geminon–package being A-Zoe, in her heavy-metal Cylon incarnation. Keon agrees to help and takes her to see Barnabas, the radical religious zealot who leads the STO and wears barbwire for bracelets. But when Lacy refuses to divulge the contents of her package, Barnabas turns her away.

Sister Clarice visits the Graystone residence under the guise of returning Zoe’s school books. Amanda welcomes her and soon enough they’re boozy and nostalgic–Amanda going so far as to invite Clarice into the private space where Daniel does defense work. As she gazes lovingly at her dead daughter’s childhood paintings, Clarice lurks behind, using a small touch-transfer device to download data from Graystone Industries. Clarice is hoping to discover Zoe’s missing avatar–a pursuit all the more twisted as A-Zoe stands across the room in Cylon robotic form.

Speaking of A-Zoe, she’s gaining a love life, but it’s not clear why. Philo, the sympathetic lab tech, is frustrated over the universe’s lack of response to his online dating attempt. So A-Zoe sets up a meet between him and her in V-World. She gives him a fake name and claims a cheap Zoe Graystone avatar was all she could afford. Sparks fly, but is A-Zoe just bored? Or does she have far-reaching use for this new friendship?

In the beginning, a barter was made between Daniel Graystone and Joseph Adama: If Joseph, with his shady ties to the mob underground, stole the technology needed, Daniel could create near-exact replicas of their dead loved-ones. Joseph’s brother Sam, being a professional, covered his tracks and apparently killed two men in the process. So how did Tomas Vergis find out it was Daniel?

Daniel’s had to answer to a lot of people lately–his wife, his shareholders, a talk show host, the twelve worlds, and not to mention Joseph, to whom he promised a miracle and failed–but it’s only when he’s asked to answer for the original crime that Daniel can’t imagine telling the truth.

Vergis takes off his blazer and rolls up his shirtsleeves to reveal tattoos. He points to the ones representing the children of the two murdered men. Vergis is a Tauron, believing in blood for blood, and those men were like brothers to him. He doesn’t care about the truth or a confession. He only intends to corrupt Daniel’s life–”until the debt is paid.”

Spaceman says, “I felt some G-Force!”

Spaceman Exclamation Ratings

Great: “Bitchin!”

Pretty Good: “I felt some G-Force!”

Not so hot: “Not sure this puppy can fly!”

Not recommended: “Let’s get outta here!”

Caprica airs Fridays, 9pm Eastern on Syfy.

Cast: Eric Stoltz (Daniel Graystone); Paula Malcomson (Amanda Graystone); Alessandra Torresani (Zoe Graystone); Esai Morales (Joseph Adama); Sasha Roiz (Sam Adama); Magda Apanowicz (Lacy Rand); Polly Walker (Clarice Willow); John Pyper-Ferguson (Tomas Vergis); James Marsters (Barnabas)

Photo by Joe Pugliese via LiGado em Serie 

“Too soon?” we worried when director Paul Greengrass brought out “United 93″ five years after the fact in 2006. Not so, it turned out, but there’s no getting around the less tactful too-lateness of Greengrass’ “Green Zone,” a juddering thriller with Army officer Matt Damon in 2003 Iraq trying to prevent bogus WMD intelligence from escalating a falsely predicated war.

Well, at least the movie preempts a charge of 20-20 hindsight with its own weird sort of willful myopia: the battle-zone tunnel vision compelled by a customary Greengrass rush of relentless adrenalization. After a prologue quite succinctly approximates the duress of shock and awe from Iraqi officials’ perspective, we whip right over to Damon’s chief warrant officer leading his inspection team into casualties and chaos and turning up nothing. He finds himself standing around stupidly in a dank and empty old building, like Geraldo Rivera in Al Capone’s vault. (Yeah, I’ll show you some ancient history.) A sense of futility has stirred in our good chief, and he is becoming annoyed. “This is the third straight time,” he barks. WMD? WTF?

At a briefing, Damon pipes up and inquires as to the source of this so-called intelligence, but gets rebuffed. Then a CIA man with weary eyes (Brendan Gleeson) finds him outside and tells him he’s right to worry. Meanwhile, Greg Kinnear’s Paul Bremer-esque Pentagon suit, quite clearly a weasel descended from a hawk, rushes to dismantle and alienate the otherwise potentially cooperative (if troublesomely Baathist) leadership of the Iraqi army, thereby precluding any hope for law and order. Amy Ryan also appears as an anguished journalist, prodding Kinnear for direct access to his mysterious intel source and starting to panic about getting a runaround. She’s basically Judith Miller of the New York Times, except less stubbornly credulous and (accordingly?) employed by the Wall Street Journal instead. “How does somebody like you write something that’s not true?” Damon eventually asks her, touching a nerve.

Screenwriter Brian Helgeland has a knack for lines like that, which is too bad because it curdles his film into conventional thriller claptrap. So much for the so-called inspiration of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s nonfiction book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” which had a better, bleaker sense of humor about blowing the Green Zone’s poolside-bikinis-and-pizza-deliveries bubble up and away from the ravaged rest of Baghdad. Helgeland generally sticks to telling over showing. “Your government wanted to hear the lie,” says the menacing Baathist general (Igal Naor) who becomes a major plot point. “Whatever you want here, I want more than you want,” says Damon’s friendly Shiite informant (Khalid Abdalla). And so it goes.

That’s the other thing: These aren’t characters; they’re symbols. Damon’s, like Private Ryan all growed up and promoted for moral purity, is so very noble of purpose, so brave and authoritative and committed. We understand his indignation because it’s obvious, but what made him, in the first place, so righteous? Where did this guy come from? Does he have a family or any close friends? (Certainly he has an enemy, in Jason Isaacs as one conveniently villainous Special Forces opponent.) Obviously he never rests, or smiles, or allows himself to register an attractive woman, but does he even eat or go to the bathroom? Even Damon’s Jason Bourne, when pressed centrifugally against the wall of a Greengrass whirligig, made the effort to reflect once in a while. (Which of course, yes, was part of his problem.)

Here, excepting the occasional dignity of mute contrition (one of his specialties), Damon more or less forfeits any subtlety of characterization to the direct projection of star power. His hero is an immovable object, as set in stone as John Wayne, or Gary Cooper, or, hell, even that grunting Vietnam War revisionist Sylvester Stallone.

Ramboesque endorsements tend to tarnish even the leftiest of politics, and so there’s no way around “Green Zone”’s condescending subtext of “I want to make it absolutely clear to all the simpletons who voted against their own best interests just how wrong this war really was.” It’s supposed to be cathartic but just seems like too much when Damon actually shouts, “The reasons we go to war always matter!” Yeah, take that, former “Talk Soup” guy who was in “Little Miss Sunshine” and now stands for glib administrative obfuscation! The act of trumping up is what “Green Zone” claims to abhor, and also all it apparently knows how to do.

It’s so frustrating to know that Roman Polanski makes great movies at least in part because he’s such a creep. But so it goes, and here is “The Ghost Writer”: a classic-seeming new thriller with the recriminative gall also to be an inside joke about how we’ve let the real world turn into something like a Roman Polanski movie.

Ominous intrigue ensues when a nameless young writer (Ewan McGregor) steps in for a mysteriously deceased predecessor to massage the memoirs of an embattled former British Prime Minister (Pierce Brosnan), recently self-exiled to a swanky modernist bunker on a slate-gray island off the Massachusetts coast. Turns out the PM’s grim little hideaway, with its devious-seeming characters lurking around every angular corner, is a sanctuary from a CIA rendition scandal and the long arm of the International Criminal Court. And that, as the ghost writer gradually discovers, is just the first thread of a very tangled web. What twisted fun it’ll be to watch the poor bastard get himself stuck in it.

Although adapted by the director and Robert Harris from Harris’ novel, “The Ghost Writer”’s masterfully proportioned combination of unsettling solemnity and deadpan cheek is pure Polanski. However sick we are of seeing his name in headlines, it’s clear that the movies have missed him. With cinematographer Pawel Edelman supplying a leaden atmosphere of exquisite menace, Polanski doesn’t bother with cheap, expected shock tactics. Instead, and with consistently riveting results, he calmly and intelligently assembles the rather quaintly old-fashioned paranoia of movie-thriller-style conspiracy. And from the elegantly foreboding opening to the harrowing and gleefully mordant final shot, the old son of a bitch never seems to put a foot wrong. His touch is as pearled as ever.

“The Ghost Writer”’s bag of tricks includes knifelike dialogue, succinct characterization, methodical pacing, a twitch-inducing score by Alexandre Desplat, and what surely must be the most improbably, fantastically cinematic use of an in-car computer navigation system in movies to date. And of course it also has a fine group of actors. With this arguable career-best performance, Brosnan stands in not just for Tony Blair (with one dash of Reagan and one of Clinton, too), but also for the notoriously banished filmmaker himself. It’s amazing how much unique vitality he brings to the part of a political proxy, and how keenly he reveals the corrosiveness of public power and charismatic mystique. Meanwhile Olivia Williams, giving everything and nothing away, excels as his tetchy Lady Macbeth-like wife — the fulcrum of the film and its deepest source of mystery. And finally, any lost hope for McGregor’s potential is at last restored by his shrewd but unfussy turn as the appropriately apparitional cipher at this story’s core.

Notwithstanding a few forgivable plausibility problems that are par for such a course, “The Ghost Writer” hums right along with its maker’s surety and muted showmanship. Never mind weak-link Kim Cattrall as the politico’s executive assistant and mistress; relish instead that tantalizingly too-brief moment between McGregor and Eli Wallach as an island old-timer with some useful and unsettling information. Watch in wonder as Tom Wilkinson turns up at exactly the right time to make short, sharp work of his role as a subtly evasive old crony. And trust in the implied promise here that satisfaction — however sinister — will be guaranteed.  All it takes is a great director. Even if he is a creep.

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/arts/2010/03/11/the-ghost-writer-review/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/arts/2010/03/11/next-fall-review/ http://thefastertimes.com/arts/2010/03/11/next-fall-review/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:34:44 +0000 Jonathan Mandell http://thefastertimes.com/arts/2010/03/11/next-fall-review/ The easiest thing to say about “Next Fall,” a play by Geoffrey Nauffts that debuted last year at Playwrights Horizon and is now being “presented” on Broadway by Elton John and his life partner David Furnish, is that it is a moving, amusing and thoughtful evening at the theater. It is more difficult to label the play, to call it a comedy or a melodrama or a love story or a gay play or a drama about religious faith. It is all these things and not precisely any of them, a modest play on its surface with degrees of depth hinted at by the several possible meanings of its title.

“Next Fall” begins in a New York City hospital where friends and family gather after Luke, an actor in his thirties (Patrick Heusinger, best known from TV’s “Gossip Girl”), was injured in a taxi accident and has fallen into a coma. We meet his divorced parents, who have travelled from Florida, and eventually his lover Adam, a man in his forties (Patrick Breen of Off-Broadway’s “Fuddy Meers” and Broadway’s “Big River”). It is clear right away that Luke’s parents and his lover don’t know each other; Luke never told his (bigoted) parents about Adam.

The fluorescent ceiling lights of the hospital retract, some walls move, and it is five years earlier, on a rooftop with a nighttime view of the skyline, where Adam and Luke have just met: They have escaped a party where Luke executed the Heimlich maneuver on a choking Adam. (“You looked so cute all doubled over like that,” Luke tells Adam, joshing banter that becomes the norm.) Luke is working as a cater waiter, but has just been cast in a production of “Our Town.” Adam wants to be a writer but has worked for the past six years in the candle shop owned by his friend Holly.

The rest of the play alternates between scenes in the hospital and scenes moving forward through the years of the two men’s unlikely relationship – unlikely not primarily because of the difference in their ages or types (Luke is an openly friendly hunk, Adam a sardonic intellectual nerd) but because Adam is an atheist and Luke is a committed, and apparently fundamentalist, Christian. From the beginning, Adam is relentless in attacking Luke for subscribing to a theology that dismisses gay relationships as sinful. Luke argues that all human beings sin, that having sex with men “just happens to be mine,” but that his sin, as all sins, will be forgiven because he has accepted Christ as his savior.

Adam: So then, if Matthew Shepard hadn’t accepted Christ before he died, he’s in hell, and his killers who, say, have, are going to heaven? Is that what you’re saying?”
Luke: Can we change the subject?

It is a credit to the script, though, that Adam doesn’t score all the points, that Luke’s faith is shown to have value. Indeed, each of the characters in his or her own way has some kind of spiritual life, whether on a journey or confidently arrived. These are not just pat mouthpieces for their positions. At a vulnerable moment, Adam confesses “you don’t have to believe in hell to walk around feeling like you’re going to burn in it.”

It seems largely on the strength of its positive Off-Broadway reviews last summer that “Next Fall” first extended its limited run several times and now has transferred with no discernible changes (other than a larger set) to the Helen Hayes. But there were critical dissenters then, and on theater chat rooms now, who find the characters sketchy or stereotypical, or question the credibility of some of the play’s details, for example how two people who work in a candle shop could afford an apartment in Manhattan that Luke’s father on a visit describes as “swanky” (Maybe their parents are helping them with the rent?); more significantly, how two people with such sharply conflicting core beliefs could stay together so long (Love finds a way?) One can also detect a certain coyness in the play about Judaism. The hospital is a Jewish hospital (there is a scene in the hospital chapel that makes this clear), Luke’s mother Arlene makes some silly (but not really anti-Semitic) comments about Jews. Yet, while Adam might as well have “Made by Woody Allen” printed on his chin — aspiring writer; hypochondriac; politically-minded, CNN-watching, wise-cracking Upper West Sider – we are apparently supposed to believe (based on one throwaway line) that he grew up in a non-religious but Christian-heritage household. Not impossible, but not typical. (Maybe playwright Nauffts didn’t want his play overwhelmed by Bridget-Loves-Bernie issues.)

What makes any such gaps trivial is the acting. Nauffts, the artistic director of Naked Angels, the theater company where “Next Fall” originated, is also an actor who has appeared in dozens of films and TV shows. He and director Sheryl Kaller have assembled a cast of six first-rate actors (brought intact from the Off-Broadway production) and given them a chance not just to express emotions fully and believably, but to bring out those feelings in the audience as well – and that includes both tears and laughter.

Of special note are Patrick Breen as Adam, who seems to have been destined to play this role, and Connie Ray as the overly talkative pill-popping Arlene, Luke’s post-responsible mother, who makes a potential sitcom joke into a believable woman through her expertly modulated performance. Singling out these two is not intended as a disparagement of the other four, all of whom have stand-out moments that are touching or tickling, and feel true. The playfully affectionate scenes between Luke and Adam, as performed by the two Patricks, go a long way to establishing a reality in their relationship, and making it appealing.

Producers need to be brave to bring almost any play to Broadway these days. What the producers needed for “Next Fall,” a play without music or stars but one that contemplates the heavens, was something close to faith. Faith is largely what “Next Fall” is about.

Twitterers: Follow Jonathan Mandell at New York Theater

Next Fall by Geoffrey Nauffts
At the Helen Hayes Theater (240 West 44th Street)
Directed by Sheryl Kaller
Sets by Wilson Chin, lighting by Jeff Croiter, sound by John Gromada, costumes by Jess Goldstein
Cast:
Patrick Breen as Adam
Maddie Corman as Holly
Sean Dugan as Brandon
Patrick Heusinger as Luke
Connie Ray as Arlene
Cotter Smith as Butch
Running time: 2 hours and 20 minutes, including one 15 minute intermission
Ticket prices: Normal range: $81.50 - $116.50. Student rush: $26.50. Premium top price: $226.50

excerpts from other reviews