A Very Common Procedure

A Very Common Procedure is a new play that opens tomorrow from MCC, running at the Lucille Lortel theatre. I have to admit, I didn't have terribly high expectations walking in to the theatre - but I walked away thinking this was a really solid play, which made me think about a lot of things I haven't really considered before.

Essentially the show is desribed as "a husband, his wife, and her doctor take a crash course in the workings of the human heart. Carolyn Goldenhersch begins an extra-marital affair with Dr. Anil Patel that takes them from Indian restaurants in Queens to Jewish delis on the Lower East Side."

Well, reading that it doesn't sound terribly interesting - but add in the fact that Carolyn and Anil met in a hospital after he had just performed unsuccessful heart surgery on their infant, it throws the show into a whole new direction. The climax of the story (as the three characters all finally come together and confront each other) is really powerful, and I felt quite anxious as I was watching it - a feeling I hadn't gotten in a while. Despite being incredibly sad at moments the show is also quite funny - laugh out loud funny. The men, Amir Arison as Dr. Anil Patel, and Stephen Kunken as Mr. Goldenhersch, are fantastic and both very comfortable with their characters. Lynn Collins as Carolyn is a bit less comfortable - partly due to her terrible wardrobe (really, whose idea was it to put this woman in a low-cut black dress, black stockings, and ugg-like boots?...see photo). As the show progresses, she grew on me - but I still preferred the two guys.

All in all though, a good solid play - something that doesn't happen all that often in theatre. I'll be anxious to see what the reviews say.

(photo - Sara Krulwich, NYT)

A Few Shows...

Wow, have I been a bad blogger. I'm not sure what happened, but I've seen several shows since I last wrote - so here's a brief re-cap of each of them.

Anon
Anon is a new show at the Atlantic Second Stage - and it's actually the first production on this new stage. What a great space it is - let me tell you, fantastic! The playwright, Kate Robbin, was a writer on Six Feet Under, a theme you'll see repeated in one of the shows below (All That I Will Ever Be) - although this show is much better than the other. The show focuses around sexually-addicted men and the women that are in relationships with them. Two couples are the main focus - Trip and Alison, and Trip's mother and father - and each relationship is a disaster. Trip meets Alison when she comes over as a pet psychologist to try and help his ailing cat. The two share an instant chemistry that day and begin their relationship. Things start to go really wrong when Alison learns of Trips addiction to Porn, and his open admission of no longer being attracted to her. Cut to Trip's parents - his Dad's been constantly cheating on his Mom for years, and she's yet to leave him. Really healthy, huh? Between these two stories, monologues from ten actresses are interwoven, giving us a glimpse into all kinds of terrible relationships with sexually-addicted men. I really enjoyed the play - right up until the ending. I'm a big believer in a good ending - to anything really, be it a book, play, movie, etc. This show just didn't have any big punch at the end - and I needed a bit more resolution. I think it's got a lot of potential so hopefully it can have that played out in another production.

All That I Will Ever Be
I've written in the past about how much I really love New York Theatre Workshop. I really do love mostly everything about it. It's too bad that this time around, I loved everything about my experience there - except the play that I saw. With Alan Ball, the esteemed writer of Six Feet Under and American Beauty, I thought to myself - really, how can this go wrong? But it did, and it's too bad - because it's not too often that a well-hyped new play comes about from an American writer. The play follows the story of a shape-shifting man playing the roles of a cellphone salesman and male hustler. This man, who we know mostly as Omar, changes his name and nationality several times as the story unfolds. We see Omar actually let his guard down to begin a relationship with the down-and-out LA slacker, living on his Dad's money. Blah blah blah ... problems ensue and Omar starts to give away more and more of his identity - only not to Dwight, but to his other Clients. After two and a half hours - of dialogue that can mostly be cut - we get not real resolution and all of this talk amounts to not much at all. I walked away feeling like I'd seen this before - in all the shows of the past two years, Little Dog Laughed, The Scene, etc etc...this play didn't bring anything new for me to think about. So - I guess NYTW can't get them all right - that'd be just asking for too much.

No Great Society

The second show I saw at NYTW (at their smaller East Fourth Street theatre) was an extension of a piece that played earlier at PS 122. The hour-long show splits into two parts, both showcasing and reinventing Jack Kerouac's television appearances. The first is The Firing Line show, in which Buckley (Ben Williams) hosts Kerouac (Susie Sokol) on a panel with Lewis Yablonsky (Vin Knight), a sociologist who wrote a book about hippie culture, and Ed Sanders (Scott Shepherd), a musician, poet and radical. What a combination. What's great about this panel (which is to define Hippies) is that it never really gets anything accomplished. None of the guests really define hippies and Kerouac spends the show in a drunken (and hilarious!) stupor.

The second part of the show, Steven Allen's radio talk show - Kerouac reads selections from two of his works and lots of craziness ensues. I got a bit lost in this segment - and honestly could have just stood to see more of the first part. I was laughing hysterically, especially when Kerouac falls out of his chair and begins stroking his co-panelist's shoe (the uptight sociologist no less). Susie Sokol is brilliant in her interpretation of Jack Kerouac. I read in her bio that she's a second grade teacher - what a fun class that must be! As for this type of experimental theatre - I can take it or leave - but I think I'll take this one.

Edward Scissorhands - The Musical

So I saw this show in Philadelphia a few weeks ago. Apparently it's a transport from London and played at the big Broadway style theater in Philadelphia. The show is obviously based on the movie, but it's entirely a dance musical with no dialogue or songs, choreographed and directed by Matthew Bourne who did "Play Without Words." I thought this was pretty obvious from the play description, but apparently not to the bulk of Philadelphia audiences who would say things like "I sure hope they talk soon" about every 10 minutes.

Even though I hadn't seen the movie in a long time, the musical was very easy to follow and worked surprisingly well without any dialogue. In fact, it's hard to imagine seeing it with dialogue. It was definitely a play that built on the images and colors that are so prominent in the film (which I'm watching right now), so it was definitely a spectacle with regards to sets and dancing. It was a little underwhelming though, as I expected the dancing to be significantly more wow and the sets to be a bit more whoa. But it was still pretty nice.

So it was a nice night at the theater, although nothing to really write home about. I think the scenes from the website are a bit more exciting than they are live, but it was still quite pretty and fun. It did make me want to re-see the movie, which thanks to Encore and my last week of discounted cable, I'm able to do right now.

The Fever

Oh how I dread posting about this show, and I usually like posting about shows that are awful. Unfortunately, I have a) absolutely NO recollection of what the play was about, b) absolutely NO recollection of what happened in the play and c) absolutely NO desire to relive the time spent at the play.

Let me give you a little background. Wallace Shawn wrote and starred in this one man play. He then talks for about two hours. I don't know about what. I just recall there being maybe ... nope I can't remember anything about it. I do remember that the house lights would turn on every now and then because he would change characters or settings or something, and that would annoy me, because I was sitting very much in his line of view, and the lights made it quite obvious to him that I was sleeping. Often I would wake up with pretty good timing, but since the lights were on, it was pretty darn obvious that I was asleep anyway. So obnoxious.

But the show wasn't all bad. I will say that it was pretty cool, because they served free champagne to the audience (which prompted the question, "will I enjoy it more if I had a few drinks?" to which the answer is a resounding "YES." And by enjoy it more I mean, it will help you fall asleep). The audience was also able to walk around the set and touch stuff and sit in Wallace Shawn's chair (which I did for a good 15 minutes before the audience showed up) and talk to the Sicilian himself. Also, we added another house manager to the list of house managers we really like to usher for.

So ultimately, were these things worth sitting through the show? Um. No.

PS - this is Lydia - why oh why were the reviews so good? This is definitely on my worst shows of all time list!!!

The Scene

So we saw 'The Scene' at Second Stage about a month ago, and I guess it was my responsibility to blog on it and I never did. So I'm going to now. Or at least try, since it was a while ago.

'The Scene' was really quite good. It was very funny, but also rather emotionally charged as well. I thought Anthony Shalhoub (or as Anotonio the cab driver from "Wings," as I like to remember him) was incredible, and Patricia Heaton was great for the most part. Anna Camp played a very blonde girl from Ohio, and while you kind of wanted to kick her every time she opened her mouth, I think that's what they were going for.

It was definitely one of the better shows I've seen recently, and Second Stage continues to whip out solid productions. The set is very New York, and it's basically worth seeing. The ending was a bit disappointing, but it definitely did not ruin the play. The reviews for this one have been pretty stellar, so the critics agree that it's pretty darn good.