‘PICTURES FROM HOME’: Zoe Wanamaker. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

PICTURES FROM HOME
Written by Sharr White
Based on the photo memoir Pictures From Home by Larry Sultan
Directed by Bartlett Sher
Through April 30, 2023
Studio 54
254 West 54th Street
(212-239-6200), www.PicturesFromHomeBroadway.com

By David NouNou

Here is the conundrum: Pictures From Home, “based on the photo memoir”—in a digital age, where every picture is either posed for or a selfie on a smartphone camera, where every shot looks like the previous shot, and the images are thumbed through and disposable—feels awkward in 2023. Writing a play about analyzing pictures that seem to appear as they are when they were taken, but can tell a different story when dissected, is inherently problematic in the 21^st century. It’s a singular idea viewed in a dual dimension.

The play has the feeling of being performed in a vacuum. Sharr White’s play is based on photographer/college professor Larry Sultan’s book, a photo memoir, analyzing pictures from his childhood in Brooklyn with his parents and two brothers. His parents move to the San Fernando Valley in California. Starting in 1982, for eight years Larry (Danny Burstein) is searching for his parents’ aspirations in various pictures taken in earlier years. His father, Irving Sultan (Nathan Lane), was a suit salesman in New York City and moved to California for a better life and became a VP, selling Schick razors. His mother, Jean Sultan (Zoe Wanamaker), is a successful real estate broker. His father has been retired for years, but his mother is still working, awaiting the day they can both retire and move to Palm Desert. What’s keeping them in their home? It is Larry coming every two weeks to dissect his parents and their pictures.

Although Larry is a successful photographer and a college professor, he lives in San Francisco with his pregnant wife and son. He flies down in constant search for something even he doesn’t know what he is looking for— it must have been nice to have such an understanding wife—and here is the head-scratcher: I understand that this is Larry’s odyssey; however, there is no mention of either one of his brothers. They are nowhere to be seen or talked about other than their childhood photos. Larry behaves as if he is the only son in the family searching for his aspirations through the dissection of his parents.

59 Productions must be given credit for their projections of Larry Sultan’s family pictures. They are not superimposed pictures of Nathan Lane and Zoe Wanamaker but the actual pictures of Irving and Jean Sultan. This is also where the vacuum and conundrum take place. Trying to thread aspirations through yesteryear’s pictures and trying to get a resolution is not compelling enough for a 105-minute play. Because ultimately, what family doesn’t have its ups and downs?

We are left with three of Broadways best veteran actors doing their best to give us a semblance of what Larry is searching for. Nathan Lane delivers a savagely charming performance as Irving, both biting and effective. Zoe Wanamaker as Jean, long absent from Broadway, delivers the best performance of the evening. She is the anchor that gives reality to this flimsy tale and she does it with great compassion. The hardest part is Larry. Mr. Burstein tries to imbue him with humanity, but the character is so lost in search of his parents, that when Larry’s children grow up, they will be facing the same dilemma of where was their father when they were growing up.

Director Bartlett Sher works hard trying to breathe life into this project, but it is very difficult to add focus to a play with so many flaws.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published February 23, 2023
Reviewed at February 22, 2023 performance.

‘PICTURES FROM HOME’: Nathan Lane & Danny Burstein. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘PICTURES FROM HOME’: Danny Burstein & Nathan Lane. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

‘PICTURES FROM HOME’: Nathan Lane & Danny Burstein. Photo: Julieta Cervantes.

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GARY: A SEQUEL TO TITUS ANDRONICUS
By Taylor Mac
Directed by George C. Wolfe
Through August 4, 2019
Booth Theatre
222 West 45th Street
212-239-6200, https://garyonbroadway.com/

By Scott Harrah

One doesn’t need to be familiar with Shakespeare’s grisly tragedy Titus Andronicus to appreciate Gary, billed as a “sequel” to the epic. The show has a stellar cast and an incredible set by Santo Loquasto, and there is enough lowbrow, slapstick humor here to make the first moments of the 95 minutes pass quickly even if one hasn’t seen the show on which it is based. However, Taylor Mac’s jet-black comedy falls flat on so many levels that, despite the initial laughs, we are left scratching our heads halfway through. Other than being a star vehicle for Nathan Lane, why is Gary even on Broadway?

Set in the year 400 during the fall of the Roman Empire, Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus opens with Carol (Julie White), a midwife supposedly “on the verge of death.” Shortly after she appears onstage, a mysterious liquid shoots from her hand. Is it blood? Water? Vomit? Another gross body fluid? Go figure, but it is the first of a series of repeated sight gags throughout Gary that grow increasingly tiresome.

The set is a gruesome hodgepodge featuring dead bodies and various severed limbs and other human remains all piled up. The years of bloody Roman battles are supposedly over and Gary (Nathan Lane) is a servant/clown whose job is to clean up the mess. He speaks in a cockney accent and honks a horn whenever he makes endless unfunny jokes. Helping him clean is his boss and fellow cockney Janice (Kristine Nielsen). She shows him how to insert a tube into the dead bodies to pump out the contents of the intestines and how to bend the corpses to and fro in order to release trapped gas. Of course, this is an excuse for excessive fart noises (one of the only genuinely funny moments in an otherwise dreadful evening). Gary is also hot for the corpses (he masturbates one) and in another scene, robotic soldiers, staged with “movement” created by Bill Irwin, sport metallic armor and firm erections (don’t ask). The show has fittingly creepy original music by Danny Elfman.

Gary has little to do with Titus Andronicus. Some may argue it’s a profane burlesque of the grotesque, with shades of vaudeville (hence Gary’s honking horn). Gary and Janice mostly banter and babble about power and what they would do if they ruled the world. Are they simply cleaning up the mess made from people in authority? Who knows, but one thing is certain: Taylor Mac’s narrative is dull, puerile and fails to make any real comedy out of tragedy. Like Titus Andronicus, much of Gary is written in iambic pentameter, but this is all the more confusing to anyone unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s tragedy.

Perhaps Taylor Mac is trying to make a statement about the current mess in Washington, who should clean it up and the parallels to the Rome of Titus. If so, he misses the mark. Mr. Mac has taken three minor characters from Titus Andronicus—Gary, the clown, Janice, the maid and Carol, the midwife—and attempted to create a farcical sequel to Shakespeare’s play.

 Gary is haphazardly directed by George C. Wolfe. Mr. Lane, who was absolutely brilliant last year as Roy Cohn in the Angels in America revival, is a huge disappointment as Gary. Here, Mr. Lane mostly hams it up for laughs, and he can only do so much with the paper-thin material.  Kristine Nielsen gives a far more convincing performance as Janice. Ms. Nielsen’s Janice is full of energy and she delivers dialogue with razor-sharp wit and timing. Tony Award winner Julie White has lots of spunk as midwife Carol, but her talents are mostly wasted.

With Gary, Taylor Mac attempts to mimic the absurdist sensibility of Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco. However, the jokes and visual gags here seem more like “gross-out” stuff from early John Waters films, but Mr. Waters’ shameless antics were at least funny.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published April 21, 2019

‘GARY: A SEQUEL TO TITUS ANDRONICUS:’ Nathan Lane. Photo: Julieta Cervantes

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‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Nathan Lane, giving the performance of his career. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

ANGELS IN AMERICA: PART 1, MILLENNIUM APPROACHES & PART 2, PERESTROIKA
A GAY FANTASIA ON NATIONAL THEMES
By Tony Kushner
Directed by Marianne Elliott
Neil Simon Theatre
250 West 52nd Street
877-598-0955, https://angelsbroadway.com/

By Scott Harrah

There are two main reasons to see this revival of Tony Kushner’s classic two-part AIDS epic, Angels in America, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika. The first part is a masterpiece and one of the most provocative American plays of all time. Finally, the cast is superb and many of the performances are among the best in the past decade.

Both plays can be either seen in two parts on two separate evenings or on “marathon” days, when both Part 1, Millennium Approaches and Part 2, Perestroika are shown consecutively in repertory in the matinee and evening performances, at a total running time of nearly eight hours, with two intermissions in each part. If you decide to see only one part, Millennium Approaches is the better of the two because it is a seamless depiction of the early days of the AIDS pandemic. Mr. Kushner’s intricately constructed play is a heartbreaking visit back to that dark period for gay men in 1980s America, particularly poignant for those of us who lived through it, and of rich and important historical value for younger audience members who have never known someone who died of AIDS.

Millennium Approaches revolves around the stories of gay couple Louis Ironson (James McArdle) and his lover Prior Walter (Andrew Garfield), who is dying of AIDS; and “straight” couple Joe Pitt (Lee Pace), a Mormon lawyer, and his wife Harper (Denise Gough), a pill-popping housewife. Prior tells Louis he has AIDS, but Louis isn’t able to deal with having a sick lover. Roy Cohn (Nathan Lane), a right-wing lawyer, offers Joe a job in the Justice Department in Washington. However, Joe’s wife Harper, suffering from anxiety and hallucinations and a growing dependence on Valium, does not want to move to Washington.

Joe finds Louis crying in the men’s room one day and this is where the two couples’ lives start to intertwine. The two men begin a friendship, partially because Louis suspects Joe might be gay. In a dream sequence, Harper and Prior meet and she reveals that her husband is a closeted homosexual. She later confronts Joe but he denies being gay.

Meanwhile, Roy receives shocking news from his doctor. The doctor diagnoses Roy as having AIDS. Roy considers gay men weak and refuses to accept that he has AIDS, a “gay” disease. Roy says he will tell people he has “liver cancer,” but his doctor insists his efforts would be better spent acquiring an experimental AIDS drug.

The plot is complicated and has the feel of a classic Greek tragedy, with all of Harper’s hallucinogenic scenes and Roy being visited by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (Susan Brown), the American woman he helped put to death based on allegations of Communism and “treason” back in the 1950s.

While Louis shuns his lover and seeks anonymous late-night sex in Central Park, Prior finds some comfort and compassion from his nurse, Belize (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett). Sexual tension grows between Louis and Joe, and Joe eventually makes a surprising revelation to his mother Hannah (Ms. Brown in a dual role) back in Salt Lake City.

Part One ends with a cliffhanger, which anyone familiar with the story already knows (so discussing it is not exactly a spoiler). Prior, growing increasingly ill, has a prophetic vision when an Angel (Amanda Lawrence) crashes through the roof of his apartment and ominously says, “The Great Work begins.”

Part One is a carefully constructed work. However, Part 2, Perestroika, is a much weaker and disappointing show. Harper is hallucinating wildly, imagining she is in Antarctica, but she’s really in Prospect Park, Brooklyn and gets picked up by cops. Joe is not around, but his mother Hannah arrives in New York and takes Harper in, offering her a chance to visit her at the Mormon Visitor’s Center. Hannah is volunteering there.

Roy Cohn grows sicker and is admitted to the hospital where Belize works. Roy starts off making horribly racist comments to the nurse, yet Belize, ever the professional, takes the proverbial high road and offers the dying lawyer advice on his treatment. Later, Prior tells Belize about the Angel.

It is at this point that making sense of Perestroika gets challenging, as the narrative becomes more convoluted. The Angel gives Prior a prophetic book and explains that God abandoned the Angels in Heaven after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, and they believe they are powered by human sexual activity. Prior is now horrified by the Angel and tries to avoid her.

What makes the story so compelling, in addition to the dark subject matter about how AIDS affected so many, is the skillful way playwright Tony Kushner makes the lives of the characters intersect.

Director Marianne Elliott certainly puts a new spin on Angels in America, but her directorial choices may not please purists familiar with the original production. However, two actors give performances that are first-rate in every sense and help make this a “must-see” revival regardless.

British actress Susan Brown is simply incandescent in her multiple roles, whether she’s playing a rabbi, Hannah the Mormon mother or the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg. Her hospital scene after Roy Cohn’s death, in which Ethel’s ghost recites the mourner’s Kaddish in Hebrew, is truly haunting and eerily touching. Her interpretation of Hannah, the woman torn between her Mormon faith and compassion for her son and Prior grappling with his illness and the Angel, is consistently outstanding and rings with truth.

Andrew Garfield as Prior gives a fine performance, as does Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as the nurse Belize (although he is perhaps a bit too camp in places), and Lee Pace as Joe is superb, but Nathan Lane as Roy Cohn overshadows everyone. New York theatergoers have seen Mr. Lane many times before, but never like this. He is absolutely riveting every moment he is onstage, displaying all the hatred and rage and self-loathing of the Roy Cohn character. Toward the end of Roy’s life, as he is dying in a hospital bed, convulsing as he goes in and out of seizures, Mr. Lane’s interpretation is nothing less than awe-inspiring. This is, without question, the virtuoso stage performance of Nathan Lane’s career.

The original production featured the Angel with realistic-looking traditional wings, but in this revival the Angel, as conceived by puppet designers Finn Cardwell and Nick Barnes, looks more like Rodan, with the wingspan of a 747, about to destroy Tokyo in one of those old Godzilla movies. In addition, six actors alternate playing “Angel Shadows” to hold up the “wings.” The result is silly and distracting and adds nothing to the show. Puppetry may have worked for director Marianne Elliott in War Horse, with its gorgeous horse creations, but this new angle on angel wings just reeks of hubris and pretension here. As the adage goes “less is more,” and that is certainly the case here in an epic saga that is already so complicated, but there is no doubt this revival is a memorable one and should attract new generations of Tony Kushner fans, and will be talked about for many years.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published March 25, 2018
Reviewed at March 17, 2018 preview performance.

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Beth Malone & the ‘Angel Shadows’ (in dark costumes). Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Andrew Garfield & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: James McArdle & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’. Lee Pace. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Susan Brown as Ethel Rosenberg. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: James McArdle & Lee Pace. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Nathan Lane & Susan Brown. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: Nathan Lane & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Nathan Stewart-Jarrett & Denise Gough. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-MILLENNIUM APPROACHES’: Susan Brown. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

‘ANGELS IN AMERICA-PERESTROIKA’: (Front) Andrew Garfield & (back) James McArdle, Susan Brown & Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Photo: Brinkhoff Mogenburg

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THE FRONT PAGE
Written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Directed by Jack O’Brien
Through January 29, 2017
Broadhurst Theatre
235 West 44th Street
(212-239-6200), http://thefrontpagebroadway.com/

By David NouNou

When you have a cast that includes Nathan Lane, John Slattery, John Goodman, Jefferson Mays, Robert Morse, Holland Taylor and Sherie Rene Scott, it hardly matters what the play is about. The people are paying to see the cast, not necessarily the show. Hence the capacity business.

Written in 1931 and set in 1928 in a press room of the Criminal Courts Building, in Chicago, Ben Hecht writing The Front Page in collaboration with his partner, Charles MacArthur, is writing of his early days as a journalist. He wrote for the Chicago Daily Journal, among others. The story centers on journalists trying to find the latest dirt or gossip that is going on around town. On this particular day they are trying to get a scoop on Earl Williams (John Magaro), a white man and supposed Communist revolutionary convicted on charges of killing a black policeman. While Williams is being given a psychological test, he shoots the examiner and flees jail.

Walter Burns (Nathan Lane), head of the Herald Examiner, is looking for his head writer, Hildy Johnson, (John Slattery) to get the scoop on the escape. Hildy has quit the paper and is off to New York with his fiancée, Peggy Grant (Halley Feiffer) and her mother, Mrs. Grant (Holland Taylor). He has come back to say good-bye to his cronies for the last time and get his money from Walter and take off. Complications arise that hold him back from leaving, especially the escape of Earl Williams from prison. What a final scoop?

The storyline is interesting enough, but is verbose and way too long. The show runs almost three hours (has two intermissions) and a lot of things are repeated. Shows of the 1930s and 1940s were usually three hours and not the 90 minutes we are used to today. Although The Front Page is a comedy, it lacks a lot of humor. The humor arises in Mr. Lane’s antics. The subject matter was considered serious, so the humor is at a minimum and what there is of the humor seems dated and the journalists are stereotypes. All sorts of journalistic lingo of the day is flying around, journalists running in and out, giving their scoops to their editors over the phone. Yes, those were the days when they phoned in their story; no emails, texts, none of today’s conveniences.

The story moves along and the performances are all fine and genuine. However, the main reason to see the show, Nathan Lane, doesn’t even enter until near the end of Act II. When he finally enters, the speed of the show picks up from 35 miles an hour to 65. Mr. Lane entertains us with his high-strung mercurial speeches and manners–and we have come to love and appreciate each and every one of them, of his utterances, nuances and movements–and once he arrives, the play finally picks up speed and becomes enjoyable. The performance that Lane is giving is wonderful as usual, but he has done this performance hundreds of times, yet who cares? It moves the play along. The rest of the cast are all fine and they all give exact (if not stereotypical) performances.

Unfortunately for this play, journalism has taken such a turn; it was revered once and held as gospel. Look at journalism today and the mockery that is going on in the elections; it has hit a new low. Instead of interesting subject matters or viable candidates, networks and journalists select a candidate who gets ratings. Although it is a good revival, it is hard to get involved in the storyline, as something is missing: Salaciousness.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 20, 2016

‘THE FRONT PAGE”: John Goodman. Photo: © Julieta Cervantes

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STAR POWER: (left to right) Megan Mullally & Nathan Lane. Photo: Joan Marcus

IT’S ONLY A PLAY
Written by Terrence McNally
Directed by Jack O’Brien
Through January 4, 2015
Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre
236 West 45th Street
(212-239-6200),www.ItsOnlyAPlay.com

By David NouNou

The first instinct of any theatre-goer who hears that Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Stockard Channing, Megan Mullally, F. Murray Abraham and Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley of Harry Potter fame) are starring in Terrence McNally’s revival of It’s Only A Play would be to order tickets. And they did just that, creating an advance sale of millions of dollars. One wonders what this cast of luminaries saw in this flimsy excuse for a play.

It was presented as a re-write of Mr. McNally’s Broadway Broadway and played at the small Off-Broadway house at the Manhattan Theatre Club for 47 performances in 1985. It must have been a fluff piece about a playwright, his best friend, cast, producer and a critic awaiting the reviews of a show on opening night.  The premise was this: While waiting for the reviews, a lot of famous names of the day were mentioned, those evoking the mirth and humor. Well, now it is a fully mounted Broadway show with all the above-mentioned stars in this overblown, overlong, namedropping bacchanal, in which boldfaced names—ranging from Lady Gaga to Alec Baldwin and James Franco to Ben Brantley, critic of the New York Times—are bandied about as if the very mention of them creates an instant hysterical punch line.

For a comedy to truly work, it has to be embedded in reality, the people have to make sense, and the humor has to flow naturally. Yes, there are some genuinely funny lines as a result of the celebrity namedropping, but you can’t build a whole show around it. In addition, a critic who hasn’t written his review of the show yet would never be attending the producer’s opening night party. Worse yet is having a British director throw a tantrum that critics have only praised him and his works and he has not known a failure. I know that theatre people live for praise; I don’t think anybody in the theatre yearns for a failure…..and so it goes. What humor did all the above- mentioned A-listers see in this bit of fluff that has not been revived since 1985?

Thank God for Nathan Lane, for no one can inject humor into a listless line like he can. He and Stockard Channing manage to save the day with their over-the-top performances. Mr. Lane is James Wicker, the playwright’s best friend. Ms Channing is the drug and booze-addled leading actress Virginia Noyes of said play, The Golden Egg. The playwright, Peter Austin, is Matthew Broderick, delivering another one of his one-dimensional robotic, monotone performances; it now seems no one can flatline a comedy like him.

Megan Mullally is a puzzlement here; she is among the best scene stealers in comedy. However, as the producer, Julia Budder, she seems lost between a combination of her Karen Walker character from TV’s “Will & Grace” and a Southern bimbo who wants to be the sole producer of a show. Her part is too underwritten to make her believable or effective.

A part that could have very easily been written out of the play is Ira Drew, a critic played by F. Murray Abraham. He is fine in the role but there is nothing to substantiate his existence here because critics are a producer’s nightmare. Totally miscast, as the sniveling British director, is Rupert Grint. Why he was made out to look like Tim Burton, the film director, is a head scratcher.

Jack O’Brien, the director, does his best to keep things moving. After all, it is a step up from his 2013 Macbeth with Ethan Hawke at Lincoln Center. The pity of it all is there was so much anticipation and potential for this show. Had it not had so many stars, with each needing their stage time, this could have been written as a tighter, more insightful play for audiences to learn what really goes on after the curtain comes down on opening night and the agony of cast and crew having to wait for those ever-dreadful reviews. But then again, this is supposed to be a comedy.

OPENING NIGHT JITTERS: (left to right) Rupert Grint, F. Murray Abraham, Stockard Channing & Nathan Lane in ‘It’s Only a Play.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

THERE’S NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: (left to right) Micah Stock, Megan Mullally, Rupert Grint & Nathan Lane in ‘It’s Only a Play.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

Video Excerpt from It’s Only a Play

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 12, 2014
Reviewed at press performance on October 11, 2014

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