Death of a Salesman

The Mike Nichols production of Death of a Salesman is the best Broadway play I expect to see during my time in law school. After waiting for two hours, I successfully rushed a pair of thirty dollar student tickets this past Friday.

I had heard good things about the production, but didn't expect to connect to the material in a very meaningful way since I am a Miller novice. After seeing the terribly staged mid-century play, Look Back Jin Anger, a couple days ago, I was worried that I was in store for athree our snoozefest. sitting down in a partial view box seat with my friend as the curtain went up, I was also skeptical of the casting. Though I love Philip Seymour Hoffman, isnt he a bit too young to play Willy Loman, the sixty year old salesman drifting into senility? His sons, Biff and Happy, the inheritors of his hopes and dreams, are portrayed by the too-young looking Andrew Garfield and Finn Wittrock.

But ten minutes on, I was hooked. Philip Seymour Hoffman carries his heft around convincingly as a man who has eaten unhealthily for thirty five years as a traveling salesman. He first enters the stage, muttering "boy oh boy" quietly, after returning early from a failed sales trip. There's no sense that he's aware of an audience, but rather is just inside his own head. When his wife, Linda (Linda Emond) hears him shuffling around, she comes and persuades him to go to bed in the manner of the lifelong partner who just wants to make things easier for her husband near the end.

As a first time viewer of any production of the play, I was also drawn in by the writing and the plot. set in the 1940s, Miller's story is eerily resonant today. People of Willy Loman's age were the most susceptible to losing their jobs during the recent recession, no matter how loyal they were to the firm for the past thirty five years. I know many Biffs today--though generally from more affluent families--whom, having been raised by the school of self esteem, now find themselves unable to do anything. But the story is both general and specific.

Despite the global issues it addresses, Death of Salesman focuses on one specific family. Though everyone can relate to Willy's tendency to ask what could have been had he taken a different road, his plight is unique. We see Willy's life and motives through the hallucinated conversations he has with his brother (John Glover), a man who had gone to Alaska to make his fortune off the land. Now Willy, overweight and tied to the trappings of a middle class existence--- nice house in Brooklyn, a refrigerator, and other appliances--he wonders if should have gone the way of the other Loman and inhabited a new frontier.

The play's success must ultimately be attributed to the Mike Nichols, the director. Though I'm new to Miller, there were several scenes that were conducive to melodrama. Many scenes where people could be yelling at each other are toned down to reveal several notes of both disappointment and anger. The only person who overacts at times is Andrew Garfield, who shakes his head in anger a few too many times in the final twenty minutes of the play.

Death of a Salesman is a must see show. My only regret is that I hadn't seen other productions to compare it to.

Why is Everyone Mad at Mike Daisey?

Mike Daisey has been pilloried in the press lately for making false statements on This American Life recently. Daisy, a monologist, wrote and starred in the immensely popular The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which debuted at the Woolly Mammoth in DC last year and went on to achieve great success at the Public Theater in New York. The Agony and Ecstasy is a one-man show about the factory workers at the Chinese Apple supplier, Foxconn. Daisey tells his story in the first person relaying things that he supposedly saw first hand when he went to ShenZhen, China. Some of this show was excerpted in This American Life in January.

But last week, This American Life aired an hour-long retraction of Mike Daisey's segment. Apparently, Daisey hadn't experienced many of the things he said he had, including meeting many under aged workers, workers who had been poisoned by n-hexane, nearly driving off an incomplete bridge with his translator, and even going into the factory dorms with his translator.

When This American's Life retraction episode went live, the mainstream media's judgment came swiftly and harshly. Far too harsh, in my opinion. Most of the criticism focuses on Daisey's representation that he was telling the literal truth both onstage and off. Ira Glass really hands it to Daisy in the retraction episode, asking him why he "lied." The New York Times' theater critic, Charles Isherwood wrote "I certainly believed that the stories Mr. Daisey told — of seeing guards with guns at the Foxconn factory, of interviewing a 13-year-old girl who worked at the factory, of talking to an elderly former Foxconn worker whose hand had been destroyed — were true."

I'm not surprised that the media has been so critical. After all, they are all journalists and editors. The part former (current?) aspiring journalist part of me does think what Daisey did failed to meet journalistic standards. I couldn't imagine telling an editor "Yes, I saw this," or "Yes, he said this," if I indeed hadn't seen those things first hand. I also agree with the Slate Culture Gabfest that it's pretty reprehensible of Daisey to "play fast and loose" with the lives of Chinese workers--the exact people he says he's trying to help.

But is what Mike Daisey did so bad when seen from the audience's perspective? I don't think so. As Isherwood admits himself, we don't expect documentarians with an agenda to take an evenhanded approach. I saw Daisey's monologue in the same way. He clearly has an agenda to criticize Apple's standards for factory conditions. The monologue also starts with a guilt-tripping segment about him being the world's biggest Apple fan. Who in Twenty-First Century America can't relate to that? Indeed, whenever I turn on This American Life and they have people like Mike Birbiglia telling stories based on their own lives, I assume some of the dialogue to be made up or exaggerated. Even when reading John Jeremiah Sullivan's recent collection, Pulphead, I took some if his exact quotes from interesting characters he meets in his essays with a grain of salt. The point is to get at a larger truth rather than retain the accuracy of specific details. As consumers, we also rely on the marketplace of ideas for different views. For a Chinese perspective on factory workers, see the documentary, Last Train Home.

What makes this issue particular interesting to me right now is that I'm also seeing it from a legal perspective. My media law class has me thinking about what the WBEZ/This American Life legal counsel must think about Mike Daisey's misrepresentations. In general, media outlets are liable for defamation in American courts only if the statement is defamatory, false and done with malice for a public figure. For a private figure, the plaintiff must show that the statement is false and defamatory only. In this case, we certainly have a public figure in both Foxconn and Apple. The representations about the factory workers are hardly facts directly about Apple. In other words, despite being riddled with lies, it would be difficult for someone to bring a defamation suit here. (This does highlight an interesting question of whether journalistic standards are higher than legal standards, and whether they should be, but we'll save that for another time.)

If it makes a good story for the audience, and doesn't really seem to be that damaging from a legal perspective, why is everyone so mad at Mike Daisey? Because Daisey hits two nerves at once. First, he seems incredibly lazy, and ended up hurting his cause. Second, he raises the question of what our standards for creative non fiction in an age where many journalists have a tendency to bring themselves into their stories. Daisey is lazy because he wanted a good story, but didn't dig around enough for the story. He probably could have found some underage workers if he tried to. And now his controversy is overshadowing the original story.

But what is really irking people, I suspect, is that it highlights the agony and ecstasy of creative non fiction. What exactly is "truth" when it comes to creative non fiction? Should we even care? This is a huge issue now when more writers are inserting themselves in their works, blurring the line between opinion and fact. The other anxiety-causing thing is that anyone these days can practice "journalism" on a blog. They aren't investing millions of dollars into fact checking everything. The large media companies are the ones who have the most to lose if the floodgates open to allow everyone to exaggerate facts. They would rather readers not expose themselves to ideas in the marketplace, and instead just go to them for having a monopoly on "the truth."

This whole debacle hasn't really changed my mind about Mike Daisey, This American Life, or theater. But I'll worry about artists sacrificing truth for fact in the future.

The Milk Train Should Stop Sooner

The first production of Tennessee Williams' The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here closed after 69 performances. The second closed after five. Though I admire the Roundabout Theatre Company's audacity in reviving this maligned play, I really wish they had chosen any other Williams instead.

On the surface, the synopsis is promising: the elderly Flora Goforth (Olympia Dukakis) is living out her last days on an Italian mountaintop while "writing a memoir" to avoid the inevitable. Trapped on the mountain with her is her assistant and ghost writer, Frances Black, whom Flora calls "Blackie" (Maggie Lacey). Their lives are suddenly interrupted by a tall, dark and handsome stranger, Christopher Flanders (Darren Pettie). All the elements of a genuine exploration into death and dying are there.

Unfortunately, Williams makes his point early on, and then just repeats it again and again for a whole two hours and twenty minutes. We get a sense of Flora's former life and her current insecurities about death through the rambling stories she dictates to Blackie. Flora was a debutante type with many suitors, but alas there was one who got away. Now we watch her struggle against loneliness armed with only two servants and Blackie. Dukakis channels Flora well, acting like a diva who is doing anything to distract herself from death. So when Christopher first shows up, he seems like a possibly fun distraction. Pettie, who also plays the closeted Lee Garner Jr. on Mad Men, knows how to use his body to his advantage. A mobile artist, Chris goes around Europe crashing with wealthy patrons who appreciate his company in their twilight days. Indeed, many such patrons have died in This has earned him the nickname "The Angel of Death."

While some attempt at a profound conversation about death ensues, it's hard to look past the web of cliches. For instance, no sooner does Christopher arrive then he starts seducing Blackie. Flora, naturally, gets jealous, and tries to shoo the Angel of Death off her property. Williams tries to make this segue into a heated exchange where the characters let their masks down and show the audience their views on death. To Chris, death is nothing to be afraid of. His job is to ease his patrons to comfortably let go. But to Flora, death is something to be ignored. However, the characters are too thinly drawn to let us buy in to any of their emotions. While Flora says she has loved and lost, she doesn't reveal what she is truly afraid of. We certainly do not sympathize with a wealthy lady who has appeared to lived a rich life. Either Williams or the director, Michael Wilson, has given Flora too much bravada and not enough vulnerability. Similarly, it's a mystery why Chris is there in the first place. Should we trust his message because he looks so good without a shirt and is an artist, or should we be suspicious of him because he admits to bumming off old folks? I blame the director for having failed to ask Pettie to pick one side. The most annoying character of all is Blackie. She seems to have no purpose except to show how stifling life on the mountain has become.

Halfway through the play, it becomes quite obvious how it will end - with death--what else? But even this is dragged on for an eternity. Wilson should have eliminated some of the long glances between the characters. Or better yet, he probably could have adapted the play to end it at any one of several good options before Williams' chosen ending.

Written in 1963, twenty years before Williams' death, I can't forgive him for being an old man contemplating death. Perhaps we can just write off The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore as what happens when starts resting on the laurels of past achievement.

A Small Fire Ignites

A very obvious metaphor lies at the center of Adam Bock's new play A Small Fire playing this month at Playwrights Horizons. Emily Bridges (Michelle Pawk), a middle aged woman who owns a successful construction company--and acts like she owns everyone in it--suddenly loses her sense of smell. She begins a quick decline that leads to blindness and other lost senses as well. At first brush, Emily's strange illness is only a tool to render her helpless, forcing her and her husband to reverse roles. Whereas Emily is used to being the breadwinning woman who speaks her mind, John Bridges (Reed Birney), who works in HR, must now be the strong one and care for his wife.

Despite this gimmicky proposition, Bock successfully shows the depth of an entire marriage over the course of Emily's decline. Emily and John's grown daughter, Jenny (Celia Keenan-Boger), plays the role of an outsider whom the marriage must be explained to. As Jenny changes her mind about her parents and their marriage, so do we. Early on, we see Emily berate Jenny about her upcoming marriage. Emily thinks Jenny's fiance is basically a joker who isn't good enough for her. Keenan-Bolger betrays a lifetime of resentment in each look she throws at her mother. Clearly the good cop, John explains why he has stuck with Emily through all these years of abuse when he is confronted by his daughter. "You should have left her," she implores. "I can't be alone," is his simple answer. Birney's delivery of this line is perfect. He seems to have thought about Jenny's question before, and now only briefly hesitates to tell her or not. He finally does get the words out, clearly and definitely.

Emily struggles with her own loneliness as she loses each sense that put her in touch with the rest of the world. It's understandably difficult for a seeing person to act like she's blind, and Pawk does not master the task. However, her body does show the growing inwardness of her mind. Vibrant and wholly present on stage in early scenes, she takes on a ghostlike presence in later ones as she seems to shrink into her baggier clothing. But when visitors come, Emily shouts as if to reassert her presence. Bock's dreamlike sequences for Emily are supposed to reveal her more to us, but are unnecessary. Emily stands downstage with her narration in voice over. Though blocked in a dreamlike way, we simply learn that Emily feels trapped, which is not really a surprise.

The most controversial scene in the play is a lengthy sex scene at the play's literal climax between Emily and John. John is completely naked, with careful blocking the only thing between us and his junk. Lasting several minutes, I sense that we are supposed to see Emily and John getting closer in this scene. Perhaps Bock wants to make us uncomfortable as a contrast to the couple's lack of inhibitions. But it probably could have been said with more clothes.

Eventually, we see why John cannot be alone, and why Emily and John may be a good match. In one scene, Emily admonishes Jenny to take care of her father because he does not know how to be strong on his own. Yet John also seems to be the best person to take care of Emily. He devises a mechanism by which to communicate with her once she is in deeper decline. The two have grown into each other over the years.

Time Stands Still is Far from Static

Two restless souls--he a foreign correspondent, she a photojournalist--come back to their Brooklyn apartment after she gets hurt on the job in Donald Margulies' new play Time Stands Still. After a successful Broadway run through Manhattan Theater Company in the 2008-2009 season, it is now back after a summer hiatus. Sarah Goodwin (Laura Linney) has just woken from a coma after a roadside bomb flung her from her car, simultaneously killing her translator, Tariq. Wearing a leg brace and facial scabs, she limps around the apartment while her partner Jamie attends to her. But Sarah is also quick to shrug off special treatment, allowing her editor Richard (Eric Bogosian), and his new girlfriend Mandy (Christina Ricci). When they ask about the explosion, Sarah replies, "Occupational hazard," in a typically practical manner.

After the first two scenes, we may feel that we have all four of these characters figured out. Sarah is a cerebral world-saving workaholic; Jamie is her perfect counterpart as a romantic journalist; Richard is suffering from a midlife crisis, which involves getting together with Mandy, an unintellectual event planner.

Slowly, through incremental, well-paced steps, Donald Margulies reveals the back story behind Sarah's stoicism and Jamie's obsequiousness. Margulies peels back the layers of their personalities to reveal that things aren't as simple as they first appear. Margulies has mastered the art of exposition through convincing dialogue. It's not surprising that Time Stands Still earned him a Tony nomination for best play last year. Just like how a real couple might not dive into everything that they did while apart for work, it takes Sarah and Jamie some time to warm up to each other here.

When they do, things they want to say to each other seem to explode out of their mouths. Jamie proposes they get married after eight years of living together. He claims it's a good idea for hospital visitation rights while giving off the hint there's something lingering beneath the surface. Perhaps it's Sarah's affair with her translator, Tariq, which she reveals in the next line. Perhaps it's Jamie's own breakdown after seeing children explode in front of him, causing him to leave Sarah with Tariq in the first place. Is Jamie trying to redeem himself? Is he just insecure? And where does Sarah's hesitancy come from?

Margulies provides the answers to these questions in the second act without hitting the audience over the head with the characters' motivations. There are no sudden epiphanies or revelations. Rather, the characters figure themselves out at the same time as the audience. Sarah and Jamie realize that their real problem may be that they simply want different things. Jamie, to settle down, but Sarah to keep traveling. At the same time, Sarah's starting to question her own motives for her profession.

In one of the most moving monologues in the play, Sarah tells Jamie how she kept shooting film despite a woman's protests after an explosion in Mosul. "What I did was so wrong it was indecent...They didn't want me taking pictures. That was a sacred place to them...I live off the suffering of strangers." Meanwhile, Mandy is the perfect counterpoint to Sarah's worldviews. Looking at Sarah's pictures, Mandy starts to get upset. "Why didn't you help them?" she wants to know. Indeed, why don't we help the millions of poor people in the world, is one of the questions Time Stands Still asks us to consider. But the more important one is how does our answer to that question effect our relationships?

Angry Little Foxes

Foxes are hungry, gnawing creatures. Constantly looking for ways to get ahead, they are also very practical. Jonathan Franzen even alludes to a fox chewing his own leg off to escape a trap in his novel, The Corrections. We can imagine foxes eating their own young if they have to. The Hubbards in Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes, fit this stereotype perfectly. The loud, chilling music that opens The New York Theatre Workshop's new production--under the direction of Ivo van Hove--reflects the violently loud, chilling ways in which the Hubbards use people to advance their own class ambitions.

The Hubbard men, Benjamin (Marton Csokas), Oscar (Thomas Jay Ryan), and Oscar's grown son Leo (Nick Westrate) seem to stalk and glower over the Hubbard women in the opening scene when the whole family celebrates a new deal they've struck with a Chicagoan businessman. This deal will turn the Hubbards' $225,000 investment into millions. Regina Hubbard Giddens (Elizabeth Marvel), Oscar and Ben's sister, is giddy with excitement. Van Hove's excruciatingly tactile production has a drunk Regina scratching the velvety carpets and walls with her entire body as if she expects the rich velvet to increase her own worth. Birdie Hubbard (Tina Benko), Oscar's wife, indulges Regina by listening to her dreams of living in a big city like Chicago.

Regina and Birdie's reveries are soon dispelled by the Hubbard men. They are moody because the deal isn't quite complete yet. Benjamin and Oscar still need Regina's share of the initial investment. But she being a woman, and this being the South, they need her husband Horace to officially hand over the money. Sadly for them, Horace (Christopher Evan Welch) is resting up at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland. Her brothers' demands stop Regina's daydreaming in its tracks. She immediately falls under their--or, more accurately, Ben's--spell, and joins them in conniving to get Horace's money. Mimicking her brothers' control over others, Regina has no qualms about manipulating her teenage daughter Alexandra (Cristin Milioti) to compel Horace's return. How far Regina will go to secure her fair share of the Hubbard fortune, and what consequences she'll suffer in turn form the central drama of the play.

This tension has been played out regularly since The Little Foxes first premiered in 1939. Revived several times on Broadway with a 1941 Bette Davis movie as well, the story of the Hubbards has survived the Twentieth Century. Hellman's script holds up even ten years into the Twenty-First Century for its exploration of the timeless American tragedy of constant striving. Ben, Oscar, and Regina repeat throughout that there are two types of people in the world: those who get ahead, and those who watch. Its clear that the Hubbards are in the first camp as we learn about Oscar's careful scheming to marry the most blue-blooded girl in town. According to Birdie, "My family was good....Ben Gubbard wanted the cotton and Oscar Hubbard married it for him. He was kind to me, then...Everybody knew what he married me for. Everybody but me."

Like all the other stories, Benko recounts this in a forlorn, matter-of-fact manner. In contrast to the violent physical action, the actors have more sober direction in line delivery that leads to devastating results. A line in Hellman's original play that calls for Regina to scream " I hope you die!, I hope you die soon!, I'll be waiting for you to die!" at Horace is delivered here by Marvel softly as she strokes her husband's head, as if she's actually putting a curse on him. This is indeed the more chilling option.

Initially set in the early Twentieth Century American South when the last of the plantation class was being overtaken by carpetbaggers and industrialists, The Little Foxes could be easily transported to the post-Lehman world where people are once again unsure of their fortunes. But one problem with van Hove's production is that it's temporally confused. On the one hand, a LCD monitor that's used to project the upstairs happenings suggest a modern day setting. On the other hand, the abundant use of the N word, the allusions to trains and cotton suggest the last century.

Since I saw the production in its first preview, there were a few technical glitches as well. The music during scene changes was a little overdone. The final scene ended abruptly when the music swelled to a sudden cut out. I'm hoping they've turned that into a slow fadeout by now. Nonetheless, the "van Hove treatment" makes The Little Foxes an intense viewing experience for modern audiences.

Trust: Don't Trust Those with Trust Funds

Trust, this season's mainstage opener at 2nd Stage Theater, begins on a spare stage. Large and embossed with some kind of metal, it feels like a dungeon. The only item present is a weird contraption hanging from the ceiling. Harry (Zach Braff) wanders on to the stage, just as surprised by these tools as we are. It's his first visit to a dominatrix, and he doesn't know what to expect. What he finds out is that the he is not a huge fan of dominatrix activities, and that dominatrixes are just like normal people. Indeed, Mistress Carol turns out to be Prudence Teller (Sutton Foster) from Harry's high school class. The power roles switch -- the first of many such switches -- as Harry reveals that he knows Prudence's real name.

Harry, it turns out, is quite an accomplished businessman who sold an internet start up for $300 million. He tells Prudence that he's looking to be dominated "on a whim." Perhaps he was bored. The writer Paul Weitz, who is better known for his screenplays (In Good Company), turns this potentially cliched idea of a rich man bored by his own wealth into a deeper character study in Trust. Prudence and Harry, both easily typed upon first meeting as a person who needs to dominate because of daddy issues and a person who needs to be dominated because everything came too easily to him, may actually be just the opposite.

Indeed, Harry, who appears to have an "aw-shucks" quality about him, immediately asks Prudence to help him manipulate his wife. Harry invites Prudence over to help him evaluate his wife without telling her that she's a dominatrix. Is Harry just a thoughtful husband, protecting his wife, or a controlling one?

Prudence does an odd 180 soon after. In one of the next scenes, Prudence asks her boyfriend, Morton (Bobby Cannavale), for rent money. He has just come back from gambling and hands her all his cash. When this isn't enough, she demands the balance. Morton immediately flies into a rage, twisting Prudence's body by her hair, and wrestling her down for some anger-fueled sex. "You love me," Morton repeats. Prudence seems to give in quite easily, making us wonder if she actually enjoys being dominated in this way and losing control over situations.

Prudence and Harry's significant others are just as complicated as their counterparts. Harry's wife Aleeza (Ari Graynor) is more than just a depressed housewife who hasn't accomplished anything. As we get closer to the truth of why she hasn't accomplished anything with her painting, we learn that Harry has played a bigger role in her apathy than it may first seem. Similarly, Morton is a book smart person--"I got a 1560 on the SATS"--who now spends all his time sitting around, trying to make a quick buck.

However, there's no time to develop sympathy for these characters. Although the characters are more complicated than they first appear, Weitz doesn't really reveal their depth until the end, when--in fits of genius--the characters figure each other out. The figuring out, however, felt like an exercise in hide the ball. Like Agatha Christie forcing us to try to figure out her killers' motives all the while hiding vital information from us until the end, Weitz makes each of his characters a therapist for another one, revealing their motivations to themselves and to us. For all the flaws of this style, however, it does make for delicious voyeurism.

Me, Myself, and I

"Me, Myself, and I," which premiered in Princeton at the McCarter Theatre two years ago, is now making its New York premier at Playwright's Horizons. Edwards Albee's latest play--written as he approached his eighties--is not the heavy fare of is "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" days. Instead, "Me, Myself, and I" is an absurdist comedy that draws its laughs through wordplay and jokes about dramatic conventions. Indeed, it seems as though the character of the Doctor's only role is to point out double meanings and correct others' grammar to comic effect. As one character threatens that his dad will come back on a carriage led by black panthers to usurp the Doctor's role in the house, the Doctor remains unfazed. He simply asks, "Black Panthers? Even today? I didn't know they were still around."

In addition to being aware of grammar, the characters are excruciatingly aware of the fact that they're in a play--a fact which they enjoy pointing out. From the beginning, Albee allows his characters to speak directly to the audience. Standing alone in front of the proscenium, Otto asks "Do you like my mother?" In one scene depicting a picnic on a nearly bare stage, the Doctor remarks, "It's strange how things just disappear around here."

The reason I haven't mentioned the plot yet is because the plot is not the point. If you must know, the plot involves a set of twins, both of whom are named Otto. The only difference is that one is OTTO (Zachary Booth), the other otto (Preston Sadleir). Their mother (Elizabeth Ashley) is a bit of a crazy person whose husband left her right after she gave birth. Now, twenty-eight years later, she still can't tell the twins apart aside from the fact that one of them loves her and the other doesn't. She also resides with her Doctor. The action in the play revolves around tight few days following OTTO's announcement that he has a new brother, and thus, otto no longer exists.

While this set-up ostensibly could lead to some profound examinations into the nature of self and individuality, "Me, Myself and I" doesn't take itself anywhere near seriously enough to form some grand synthesis on these ideas. Instead, it gently jabs at the audience with its comic approach. Although otto goes around asking people "Do I exist?" in an increasingly shrill manner, we're never in doubt of his physical existence. What we are in doubt of is his ability to be whole without his brother. The relationship between OTTO and otto is only an extreme example of any close human relationship. At one point, OTTO complains that otto is a shadow that constantly stalks him. Any audience member who has felt responsibility for another person can empathize.

Albee is also interested in goodness. OTTO is ostensibly the evil twin, and otto the good. However, neither can fully embody his designated trait. Albee does not take this idea very far, though, and asks the viewers to draw their own conclusions. Overall, Albee's technique effectively asks us to contemplate some deep issues in a way that won't tax your little grey cells.

Learn the "Secrets of the Trade" at 59e59

For a play that's about the theater, Jonathan Tolins' Secrets of the Trade is surprisingly cinematic in its scope and narrative devices. Tolins' play -- which probably includes some autobiographical elements -- is a coming-of-age story about a theater-loving young adult named Andrew Lipman (Noah Robbins) who matures under the influence of a legendary stage director, Martin Kerner (John Glover). The play checks in with Andrew in mostly two year intervals from the age of sixteen when he first writes Kerner to ten years later. Andrew's initial fawning admiration for Kerner sours into a love-hate relationship as Kerner simultaneously educates and disappoints Andrew over the years.

In addition to the fallen-idol trope, Tolins integrates the anguished-parents trope as well. Peter and Joanne Lipman are the supportive parents who yearn for Andrew's admiration even as he comes to value Kerner's approval the most. Mr. Lipman suffers the irony of pushing his son to write to Kerner only to find himself losing to Kerner in the battle for Andrew's affection. The climax of the Lipmans' struggle with their son occurs after he has graduated from college and produces an avant garde autobiographical play that portrays his parents as suburban buffoons who don't understand their son. Mr. and Mrs. Lipman also represent dried up hopes. Peter Lipman had the chance to work with a famous architect and gave it up for his family. Joanne Lipman was a dancer in "her other life," who now only has memories of her performing days. Their performances make us think about our own processes of growing up and severing parental ties.

The New Yorker describes Secrets of the Trade as a comedy, and it does have many funny lines. The cynical assistant, Bradley, is played perfectly by Bill Brochtrup, who offers moments of comic relief as he alludes to Kerner's inner diva. But ultimately, Tolins is trying to illuminate the difficulties of growing up in an uncertain age.

The age here is the Reagan era. We're not so-subtly told that it's Reagan by the crackling radio at the beginning projecting the voice of an NPR announcer who says that Reagan has just won. While the Reagan era is irrelevant for the first half of the play, it takes a more prominent place in the viewer's mind once Tolins explores

The current Primary Stages production of the play at 59e59 Theaters benefits from a cast of seasoned actors. Amy Aquino, a regular on television, plays the aggrieved Jewish mother competing for her son's affection convincingly. She deadpans in the appropriate places and inspires the most sympathy in her snarky moments. Aquino's success isn't surprising since she was in the premier cast in LA's Black Dahlia Theater.

Wolves: A Metaphor for Love

Wolves is a play about 30-year old angst in New York City that grows into a play about 40-year old angst in New York City. It transforms from a play about growing up to a play about growing old. But it's a transformation with some rough patches.

Wolves opens with a couple driving home from a party. We can tell that Caleb (Josh Tyson) and Kay (Elizabeth Davis)'s relationship is on the rocks from their stifled car conversation. Flashbacks between them in the car and the party help fill in the gaps. Caleb is a former college football kicker who is now an unemployed writer. Delaney Britt Brewer's script doesn't reveal what Kay does for a living, but her elitist breeding comes across in the insecurities that Caleb expresses to Kay's friends during the party. "Where did you go to school?" Roslyn (Sarah Baskin) asks him. "Just a lower state school. One step up from a community college...One step down from KFC." Needless to say, Kay doesn't appreciate this self-deprecation, and confides to Ros that she's turning into her mother, with a permanent frown plastered to her face. In the midst of all this, Caleb gets hit on by a twenty-one year old who encourages him to take ecstasy. Back on the drive home, the combination of drugs and repressed emotions causes Caleb to hit a wolf. A debate ensues as to whether or not they should kill the wolf. Kay wants them to kill the wolf cause it's in pain, while Caleb can't bear the thought of killing a creature with "love in its eyes." The disagreement leads them to confront their own love for each other. (The wolf is a metaphor for love--get it?)

As you may have guessed, the wolf metaphor continues throughout the play's three (short) acts. In the second act, our attention shifts to Julie and her brother Elliot as they wait to throw their mothers' ashes to the wind. Julie is struggling with a recently ended relationship with Sasha, a woman who now "wants a family," who is now with the Caleb of the previous act. A hallucination involving a wolf suggests that she is afraid of love. The third act shifts back to Caleb--now with Sasha. They have a daughter named Wolf, through whom they speak to each other. This section is the most originally thought out. Wolf sits on a spinnable miniature house and reads out loud from pieces of paper that represent notes that Sasha and Caleb have supposedly written to each other. Unfortunately, the wolf metaphor is quite transparent--as are all the characters' feelings. They use elegant, yet improbably sentences to explain their feelings. For example, Caleb compares the phrase "I love you" to wall paint when he confronts Kay.

Staged in the intimate, 56-seat Theater C at 59e59, a major advantage is that there are only good seats in the house. However, the close-up look also magnifies the fact that Wolves takes on slightly more than it can chew. It could have done without the middle act. Neither Elliot nor Julie's characters are given enough time to develop. In fact, Brewer seems to take a shortcut by devoting a large portion of Julie's time to a hallucinatory scene. At the same time, I'd rather see a relatively obvious play than a willfully obscure one.

Next to Normal Provides Deep Catharsis

By intermission, there was nary a dry female eye surrounding me in the audience of last night's performance of Next to Normal at Broadway's Booth Theatre. It wasn't surprising that Tom Kitt's musical about the effects of a mother's bipolar on her family and self would have such an effect. After all, it did win the 2010 Pulitzer for drama, an accolade that is seldom bestowed on musicals. But Next to Normal is not your typical musical. It doesn't seek to transport you away from your problems to Oz, or the African jungles. Nor does it allow you to indulge in your favorite artists such as Frank Sinatra, Franki Valli, or even Green Day. Rather, Next to Normal forces audiences to dive inward and plumb the depths of their own emotions. In this way, it's more similar to a play than a typical musical.

Next to Normal is set in a typical American suburb during contemporary times. It opens with a "Just Another Day," where the mother, Diana (Marin Mazzie), sings "They're the perfect loving family, so adoring/And I love them every day of every week." Of course, this is the first sign that they're not the perfect loving family. The opening number ends with Diana making sandwiches on the floor. Her daughter Natalie (Meghann Fahy) storms off to leave her dad (Jason Danieley) to deal with this latest outburst. But this is no Desperate Housewives cliche of the soccer mom driven crazy by an boredom and routine. We soon learn that the source of Diana's angst is her son's death--sixteen years ago. She now imagines her son (Kyle Dean Massey) as a seventeen year old stomping around the house.

The major plot here, then, is how Diana treats her illness, and whether or not she can let go of the major cause -- her imagined son. Along the way, York also incorporates criticism of the medication of mental illness.The darkly funny piece entitled "My Psycho-pharmacologist And I," follows Diana through seven weeks of trying drug cocktails. In the background, the other characters sing "Zoloft and Paxil...Xanax and Prozac...these are a few of my favorite pills!" After seven weeks Diana tells the doctor, "I don't feel like myself. I don't feel anything," to which the good doc replies "Patient stable.

But Next to Normal is not a groundbreaking critique of the pharmaceutical industry. Its strength lies in its emotional depth and clarity. The two major relationships are between Diana and her husband Dan, and between Diana and Natalie. Diana's husband has been supportive all these years, but now must confront the fact that he may be enabling his wife. The chemistry is palpable between real-life couple Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley throughout. Most poignant is a duet in which Dan explains why he's stayed with Diana through all these years of mental illness. It's entirely believable by this point that a husband would stay so steadfastly by, driven by a complex mixture of love and commitment. The duet asks audiences to think of their own commitments. Is there anyone you would stay by through decades of mental illness?

The relationship between mother and daughter is rarely explored in this way in musical theater. Natalie has essentially been ignored for her entire life as her mother obsesses over her dead brother, and her father obsesses over her mother. Now when her classmate Henry (Adam Chanler-Berat) wants to date her, she cannot handle all the attention. How Natalie juggles her hatred, and her longing for her mother at the same time is beautifully shown through her defensive persona. Natalie is given many sarcastic lines, which Fahy delivers well. It's enough to remind the audience of their own insecurities as well.

Next to Normal has been criticized for being too serious. This is a good thing. I hope that this production's seriousness will inspire more thinking-person's musicals on Broadway.

Bachelorette: Partying Gone Awry

Last night I attempted to see Bachelorette at the 2nd Stage Theater. Due to lack of internet and thus, lack of planning, I arrived 30 minutes late to this 90 minute production. Sweaty and embarrassed (I had gotten the time and location wrong), the production did a great job of taking my mind off of my travels, and throwing me right into the story. The set up was pretty clear. Becky is getting married, and she has invited her maid of honor, Regan (Tracee Chimo) to use her hotel room on the eve of the wedding. Unfortunately for Becky, Regan has decided to invite two of Becky's ex-friends, Katie and Gena. While Becky's still out doing night-before activities, the three remaining girls take the opportunity to party in the hotel room. Soon, the combination of alcohol, pot, and other drugs drive the girls to destroy the room, and to call each other out for previous misconduct.

I entered the theater right when Regan, Katie, and Gena decide to play with Becky's dress, tearing it as a result. Then a blame war resumes in which each tries to prove how the other is a worse person, and therefore more responsible for destroying Becky's room. Regan brings up Gena's abortion while a hurt Gena can only dejectedly reply, "Why did you say that?"

The answer to this question is slowly revealed over the next hour as Regan takes a center role. After the next scene change, we see Regan and Katie (Gena had gone to find a tailor for the dress) re-entering Becky's hotel room, each with a guy in tow. Regan's conversations with her guy Jeff (Eddie Kay Thomas) raises questions about Regan, such as why she is hooking up with other guys when she has a boyfriend. Why does she think her job, reading to child cancer patients, is "boring?" Meanwhile, Katie (Celia Keenan-Bolger) discusses her former prom queen status with her guy Joe (Fran Kranz). She reveals plenty of secrets while in her drunken stupor, inviting audiences to reflect on their own moments of inebriation.

Though there are many plays about late night conversations leading to "meaning," or revelation, there aren't many that do this convincingly. The dialogue in Bachelorette is natural, even in the most unsurprising moment, when one character reveals that one of their friends died of alcohol poisoning--a death that they've always felt some responsibility for. The naturalness of this story can be attributed both to the superb acting and the diction. The characters are supposed to be in their late twenties, and they believably speak like today's twentysomethings. The playwright, Leslye Headland, avoids the forced "dudes," and instead gives her characters an appropriate blend of wisdom and forced casualness. Regan interrupts her conversations to check her phone. "Ugh...I can't believe these guys keep texting me," she remarks while obviously delighted by the attention.

While the drugs and revelations are not particularly disturbing, the final confrontation between Regan and Becky is. This ten minute climax towards the end is worth the entire ninety minutes of the production. As Becky tries to understand the damage done to her hotel room, you can see Regan scheming to turn this into Becky's fault. The two then torture each other in a battle of saying the most hurtful things possible. In the end, you get to decide who wins.