‘THE PARISIAN WOMAN’: Josh Lucas & Uma Thurman. Photo: Matthew Murphy

THE PARISIAN WOMAN
Written by Beau Willimon
Inspired by Henri Becque’s La Parisienne
Directed by Pam MacKinnon
Through March 11, 2018
Hudson Theatre
141 West 44th Street
(855-801-5876), www.ParisianWomanBroadway.com

By David NouNou

Somewhere in heaven, the late novelists Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins are fuming and wondering if they can collect any royalties from Beau Willimon’s The Parisian Woman. Every ludicrous cliché they ever wrote in their novels (from blackmail to scandalous illicit affairs) is here. Whereas theirs was “pulp fiction,” no pun intended, and can be read over and over again as escapism, this is expensive babbling at high Broadway ticket prices and it will be dated within four years hopefully (if not earlier, if there is any justice in the political world of today).

Uma Thurman is gorgeous as the calculating Chloe. A woman who doesn’t do much these days but did fritter her youth away with love affairs, art and beauty in Paris. She now lives to further the career of her husband Tom, the equally gorgeous Josh Lucas. He is a tax lawyer that sees his time as now in the helter-skelter world called Washington, D.C. to be a nominee for chief justice. Chloe and Tom live in a luxury townhouse, no children, and are allowed to have affairs on the side as long as they don’t talk about it. An ideal situation in the imperfect Duchy of Washington.

The snake in this idyllic garden is Peter (Marton Csokas), a D.C. banker and supporter of the RNC and he has connections with an incoming president whose last name begins with a “T.” His character is more absurd and more ridiculous than anyone Ms. Susann or Ms. Collins could have ever concocted. He is hopelessly, madly and jealously in love with Chloe. He even divorced his wife for her. He is so enamored by Chloe that within the first 10 minutes of the play, she is manipulating him to put in a good word with “you know who” for the seat in the Justice Department. After all, this is only a 90-minute play, so the proceedings have to move quickly.

There is also Jeanette (Blair Brown), some bigwig who has just been appointed by “you know who” for I don’t know what and wants to befriend Chloe because of her spunk and refreshing forthrightness. Jeanette has a lovely daughter, Rebecca (Phillipa Soo), who has just graduated from Harvard Law School, wants to go into politics, jump through a few political hurdles first, and then has her eyes set for the ultimate prize, being president of the USA. Of course, to right all the wrong that is being done today by “you know who.”

All this folderol is directed with the usual leaden hand of Pam MacKinnon (remember earlier this spring, she helmed the dreadful dud Amelie?) Ms. MacKinnon also recently directed David  Mamet’s putrid China Doll and the awful 2015 revival of The Heidi Chronicles.

The one bright note in theatrical parlance is Blair Brown. She is a perfectionist and can make the most awful mundane lines seem plausible. Credit must also be given to Ms. Soo for adding some gravitas to her trite role. As for Ms. Thurman and Mr. Lucas, they have to settle for gorgeous.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published December 6, 2017
Reviewed at December 5, 2017 press performance.

‘THE PARISIAN WOMAN’: Uma Thurman. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘THE PARISIAN WOMAN’: Phillipa Soo & Uma Thurman. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘THE PARISIAN WOMAN’: Uma Thurman & Marton Csonkas. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘THE PARISIAN WOMAN’: Phillipa Soo. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘THE PARISIAN WOMAN’: Josh Lucas. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘THE PARISIAN WOMAN’: Blair Brown. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘THE PARISIAN WOMAN’: (left to right) Uma Thurman, Blair Brown & Phillipa Soo. Photo: Matthew Murphy

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‘CHINA DOLL’: Al Pacino. Photo: Jeremy Daniel

CHINA DOLL
Written by David Mamet
Directed by Pam MacKinnon
Through January 31, 2016
Broadhurst Theatre
Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre
236 West 45th Street
(212-239-6200), www.Chinadollbroadway.com

By David NouNou

David Mamet’s latest, China Doll, is an enigma. Enigmas can be fun and brilliant. Just think of last year’s film The Imitation Game; Alan Turing cracking the so-called unbreakable codes of Germany’s World War II enigma machine. Now that was genius. A present-day audience cracking the so-called undecipherable codes of Mamet’s China Doll, however, is pointless; you’ll just end up with a headache.

Mr. Mamet’s last play, The Anarchist in 2012, had a narrative that was too confusing, and unfocused to qualify as a solid drama. However, in China Doll, the narrative is so undisciplined and structure-free that it is hard to connect to its central character Mickey Ross, portrayed by Al Pacino. It is hard to decipher whether Mamet based the character Mickey Ross after Donald Sterling, the former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, or if this was the way Pacino wanted to portray Mickey Ross.

Mickey Ross is a self-made billionaire who can be a bully and get his way. As the play opens, he is berating his assistant, Carson (Christopher Denham), for what Mickey thinks was a job not well executed. The first act is all about Mickey having bought a Swiss-made, custom-built jet but its serial number has been switched from Swiss numbers to an American number, making it impossible for it to land in the U.S. Otherwise, if it does, Mickey has to pay a $5 million tax. On board this plane is his (unseen) much younger, beautiful girlfriend (who was commissioned by Mickey to redecorate the interior of the plane to her specifications) who is supposed to fly directly to Toronto, but the pilot had to make a forced landing because of a malfunctioning signal light at 41,000 feet, forcing him to land in the U.S. and then go to Toronto. The dynamics of the first act are almost a total monologue by Mickey, having to talk to various attorneys and friends to straighten things out with who owns the plane, who should pay the taxes, and how his girlfriend was humiliated by a strip cavity search at the American landing site. As the curtain for Act I is about to come down, politics rears its ugly head and a lot of belligerence and bile is spewed by Mickey.

Yes, indeed politics becomes the root of all evil in Act II. As Mickey is about to make his mea culpas for his belligerence the night before and get out of the business, and take his young fiancé with him, that’s when his real problems begin. There is blackmail, bribery, extortion, conspiracy, revenge, prison sentencing, everyone consorting with everyone else, double dealings—all the absurdities that embroil the late Jackie Collins’ novels, but are not half as much fun. In other words, Act II unravels faster than you can say Lucky Santangelo.

If you had gotten used to the staccato, rapid-fire bandying of words in his masterpieces Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-The-Plow, American Buffalo and Race, forget it here because the dialogue comes in leaps and spurts. Since it is almost a monologue, Mr. Pacino bears the burden of the delivery. Poor Mr. Pacino, either he has problems remembering all the lines that are being fed to him by earphones, thus his deliveries are stilted and late; or he is deliberately doing a slovenly Donald Sterling imitation with no character shading or nuances. Christopher Denham as Carson, the assistant, just has to stand, be obedient and deliver his one-liners.

Alas, the culprit who failed both Mamet and Pacino is the highly touted director, Pam MacKinnon. She is way out of her league with two super egos like Mamet and Pacino; she never had a chance.

At the end I had to wonder if all billionaires have the tsuris (I left some out, so why spoil it for you?) that Mickey Ross goes through in 24 hours, or is this what the “one percenters” have to deal with in their everyday life? Maybe Mamet’s moral here is who needs to be a billionaire? You can get by easier by just being a millionaire.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published December 4, 2015
Reviewed at press performance on December 3, 2015

‘CHINA DOLL’: (left to right) Christopher Denham & Al Pacino. Photo: Jeremy Daniel

‘CHINA DOLL’: (left to right) Christopher Denham & Al Pacino. Photo: Jeremy Daniel

‘CHINA DOLL’: Christopher Denham. Photo: Jeremy Daniel

‘CHINA DOLL’: Christopher Denham. Photo: Jeremy Daniel

‘CHINA DOLL’: Al Pacino. Photo: Jeremy Daniel.

‘CHINA DOLL’: Al Pacino. Photo: Jeremy Daniel.

‘CHINA DOLL’: Al Pacino. Photo: Jeremy Daniel.

The post Pacino can’t save Mamet’s broken ‘China Doll’ appeared first on StageZine.

POWERFUL BUT DATED ‘HEIDI CHRONICLES’: (left to right) Tracee Chimo, Jason Biggs, Elisabeth Moss & Bryce Pinkham in the revival of the Wendy Wasserstein classic. Photo: Joan Marcus

THE HEIDI CHRONICLES
By Wendy Wasserstein
Directed by Pam MacKinnon
The Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th Street
(877-486-3037),www.theheidichroniclesonbroadway.com

By David NouNou

Before Heidi there was “Maude,”and shortly after Heidi came “Murphy Brown,” all of them feminists, enterprising, uncompromising women, and unfortunately, all define a particular decade. “Maude” made a statement for women’s lib in the 1970s, “Murphy” advanced career women in the 1990s, but poor Heidi, she is stuck in the 1980s and really doesn’t stand for very much. She is a follower, not a leader. She is extremely well educated, bandies about the different prestigious colleges she attended or taught, an art historian, campaigned for women artists, and for all the women’s movements and activism she championed, she ultimately is defined through the eyes of the two men she met very early on in her life.

Heidi first met Peter Patrone in 1965 at her high school dance. He is charmingly caustic, clever, shy, endearing certainly (as portrayed by Bryce Pinkham). By the late 1980s, he is New York City’s foremost pediatrician. This relationship, although lifelong, is never an option for Heidi, for Peter to no one’s surprise but Heidi’s is gay.

The second man in her life is Scoop Rosenbaum. They met in 1968 at a McCarthy for president rally in New Hampshire. Scoop is arrogant, pushy in a likeable way (or maybe it is just because Jason Biggs is so likeable) and a successful editor of a magazine. Like Heidi, he is headstrong and not a good match. He ultimately marries a malleable woman who makes no ripples for him nor challenges him; this is not Heidi. They shall forever be the love of each other’s lives and the one that should have been but wasn’t meant to be.

Heidi’s life crisscrosses with these two men until the plays end in 1989. Throughout her many movements, many women enter in and out of her life, and all of them seem to move on successfully or not, except for Heidi. She glows when she lectures about female artists and their place in art history, but where is Heidi? Nothing ever seems to fulfill her or make her happy. Does she want too much? Does she want everything, but thinks she can’t attain it? These were heady questions for women up to 1989.

Unfortunately for The Heidi Chronicles, it is a play that is steeped and confined in its time frame and era. Hampered by the songs of each decade it represents, images of Geraldine Ferraro, pictures of women’s lib, with banners as backdrops, all add to the datedness of the play. Unlike Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Glass Menagerie, or Death of a Salesman, all of which are timeless and can be revived every few years by a visionary director that gives them a new slant, this play is so structured and confined that its parameters are limited. Of course, women’s rights are still relevant today, but Wendy Wasserstein took it only up to 1989 and a lot has happened for women since then—a lot of it good and some not so good: Sarah Palin for vice president, not so good. Hillary Clinton as the next president of the U.S.? Now that would be progress and who says women can’t have it all?

Okay, back to the play and cast; both Jason Biggs as Scoop and Bryce Pinkham as Peter shine in the play. They enliven the stage and are charismatic in their parts. A standout among the women is Tracee Chimo in multiple parts. Which brings us to Heidi and Elisabeth Moss; Heidi is not a very likeable person; she seems to be her own worst enemy. She participates in a lot of things but nothing makes her happy. Most of the major characters develop and grow, but Heidi seems to revel in her unhappiness. As portrayed by Ms. Moss, hardly anything changes through the decades, not even her hairdo. Ms. Moss, an accomplished, multi Emmy-nominated television actress (most notably in “Mad Men”) is not comfortable on the stage, thus making Heidi less interesting than even the minor characters in the play.

Although The Heidi Chronicles won the Tony and the Pulitzer Prize for Best Drama in 1989 and was revolutionary for its day, with Heidi even going so far as striking a chord by the end by becoming both a single mom and a career woman. As a revival, it all seems old hat; been there done that already.

NOT MEANT TO BE: Elisabeth Moss & Jason Biggs as former lovers Heidi & Scoop in ‘The Heidi Chronicles’. Photo: Joan Marcus

GIRL POWER: Ali Ahn, Leighton Bryan & Elise Kibler in ‘The Heidi Chronicles.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

HAVING IT ALL? Elisabeth Moss in ‘The Heidi Chronicles.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published March 26, 2015
Reviewed at press performance on March 25, 2015

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