Best of all is Jeremy Strong’s Dr. Thomas Stockmann, who vividly recalls Dr. Anthony Fauci, especially when this good Norwegian doctor is warning a town about the dangers of an impending epidemic.

The only problem with making “Enemy” a blow-by-blow retelling of Trump and Fauci’s battles is that what we all endured in real life a few years ago was so much more dramatic than what’s being offered onstage under the direction of Sam Gold.

“An Enemy of the People” typically runs three hours or more. At Circle in the Square, the playwright Amy Herzog delivers a swift two hours with an intermission at which drinks are served gratis onstage. Pre-pandemic, Daniel Fish’s radical rethinking of the musical “Oklahoma!” offered similar refreshments at intermission in the same theater, but Gold doesn’t make a habit of repeating what other directors do.

In fact, his recent interpretations on Broadway of “The Glass Menagerie,” “King Lear” and “Macbeth” have taken their knocks for being far too eccentric. Gold’s “Enemy,” on the other hand, sticks to the Norwegian locale and the late 19th century time frame of Ibsen’s play. Isabella Byrd’s very atmospheric lighting even features a lot of gas lamps, the set design by Dots delivered in rough-hewn wood.

In a sweet directorial touch, standees are offered seats on the stage after intermission to rest their feet and witness up-close Strong’s speech to the townspeople that they not believe his brother the mayor (Michael Imperioli, being very Trumpian) or those jerks at the newspaper (Caleb Eberhardt and Thomas Jay Ryan, being very Giulianian), because “we’re going to have an epidemic,” the doctor warns.

Back in 1882, Ibsen cautioned his publisher that he wasn’t sure if they should call “An Enemy of the People” a drama or a comedy, because he thought the Dr. Stockmann character exhibits perhaps a bit too much zeal in wanting to close down the town’s contaminated spa. What Ibsen never worried about is anyone calling his play “agitprop,” which is what Herzog and Gold have turned it into.

Has there ever been a more pure hero and a more abused victim on stage than Strong’s wonderful doctor? Of all the vipers on “Succession,” Strong was able to imbue his capitalist with the most humanity. Here in “Enemy,” without the shackles of greed and ambition, he achieves beatification. Strong last appeared on Broadway as Richard Rich in the 2008 revival of “A Man for All Seasons.”

Herzog’s rewriting of “Enemy” (they’re calling it a “new version”) is a vast improvement on her rewriting of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” last season, in which 19th century characters were heard saying stuff like “he’s wasted” and “I’ll take you up on that” and “what’s going on with you?” With “Enemy,” Herzog turns on the automatic pilot of modern slang only once, when someone cracks, “She was messing with me.” Not that this writer doesn’t occasionally flex her creativity.

In Herzog’s version, Dr. Stockmann momentarily contemplates leaving Norway so he can say, after the doctor has nearly been stoned to death by ice cubes left over from the bar at intermission, “In America we won’t have to worry about anything like this!” This line might get the biggest laugh ever recorded in a theater serving up a play purported to have been written by Ibsen.

Hitting even closer to these shores is Stockmann’s daughter, Petra (Victoria Pedretti), who toys with opening a school at play’s end. She tells her father about his young son, “I can actually teach him something if I don’t have to follow the ridiculous standards.”

If this good doctor gets his way and the family actually moves to America, let’s hope the Stockmanns don’t make the mistake of ending up in Florida.

The post ‘An Enemy of the People’ Broadway Review: Jeremy Strong Makes a Great Dr. Fauci appeared first on TheWrap.

Much beloved is the 2004 movie version in which an old man tries to reawaken his wife’s memory by reading aloud from her notebook. The new musical gets half the story right. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong half. Or the wrong third, as it turns out in this unusually cast production.

In the movie, the romance of the young lovers Allie and Noah, played by Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling in breakout performances, dominates the narrative. They aren’t so much in love as they are hornier than hell for each other, and Allie and Noah’s unabashed lust fuels the movie. It’s as close to soft-core porn as anything ever delivered by a movie rated PG-13.

Far less successful is the movie’s framing device, which are those scenes between James Garner and Gena Rowlands, whose Allie doesn’t make the connection between her husband Noah and the stranger reading the notebook until the movie’s end. Rowlands may have been the first character with Alzheimer’s to travel with her own personal stylist. In the movie, this older Allie looks ready to accept a career achievement award from Vogue.

On stage, Maryann Plunkett delivers an Allie who’s a very confused and troubled senior living out her last days in a nursing home, and her uncompromising performance is supported immeasurably by Dorian Harewood’s sympathetic Noah. When these two veteran actors are on stage together, “The Notebook” is the moving, unabashed, heartfelt tearjerker it’s needs to be.

The four actors playing Allie and Noah’s younger selves are another story. Book writer Bekah Brunstetter — or perhaps it was directors Michael Greif and Schele Williams? — has decided to use two couples to play the roles that McAdams and Gosling handled all alone. On stage, we get the younger Allie and Noah (Jordan Tyson and John Cardoza) and the middle Allie and Noah (Joy Woods and Ryan Vasquez), with Plunkett and Harewood being the older Allie and Noah.

If that’s not confusing enough, imagine how you’ll feel when the middle Noah first shows up to sing a song about renovating the dream house for the middle Allie. I had no idea who this guy was, and had to wonder if maybe the younger Noah had hired an enterprising realtor to do the house makeover for him.

Playing the two youngish Noahs, Cardoza and Vasquez share the same reserved style of lovemaking. Needless to say, unlike Gosling, neither of them is going to make People’s sexiest man alive cover. But at least they’re operating on the same chaste page.

Regarding the two youngish Allies, it’s difficult to believe Tyson and Woods were ever in the same rehearsal room together. Tyson exhibits a spunky tomboy spirit. Woods appears to be auditioning for the next “Bachelorette.” When the middle Allie and Noah reconnect after a decade apart, their love scene in the renovated house plays like a fantasy suite episode gone completely awry. Neither of them deserves the rose.

This musical version of “The Notebook” features five interracial couples. Its casting can be seen as a progressive sign. It also requires that “The Notebook” musical takes place nowhere and in no specific time period. In the novel and the movie, World War II resonates as a defining event. How the middle and older Noah in the musical injured his leg is pretty much up for grabs.

The Vietnam War is mentioned but never dramatized. The redneck South of the novel and the movie is the real villain, and contributes profoundly to the oppression Allie and Noah experience. Here, the former Confederate states (North Carolina in the novel, South Carolina in the movie) have been banished and replaced with a far more tolerant place that does not exist.

Brunstetter’s script advises that the sets (by David Zinn and Brett J. Banakis) and costumes (by Paloma Young) “feel timeless.” That approach sometimes works for a classic tragedy, but a melodrama like “The Notebook” needs context. In this musical, the only thing keeping Allie and Noah apart is her rather uppity parents (Andrea Burns and Charles E. Wallace).

Ingrid Michaelson’s score is middle-of-the-road pop. It’s pleasant. It’s easy on the ears. It’s not in any way what this musical needs to be, which is soaring and romantic.

The post ‘The Notebook’ Broadway Review: Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams Are Sorely Missed appeared first on TheWrap.

Just as psychoanalysis is seen as a cure-all in “Spellbound,” antidepressant drugs are seen as an evil cop-out in “The Effect.” Just as a smitten Bergman is irresponsible for treating Peck’s neurosis, a smitten female psychiatrist (Michele Austin) can’t shake her past affair with a male psychiatrist (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith) with whom she’s conducting a drug trial that involves two patients (Paapa Essiedu and Taylor Russell).

“Spellbound” is not one of Hitchcock’s great movies, but it delivers and it doesn’t cheat.

“The Effect” is not a great play, but it delivers and it also cheats. Prebble has written a sci-fi horror show, but even fantasies need to set their artificial parameters and then stick to them. Never explained is why two heterosexual patients of the opposite sex would be given an experimental drug and housed in the same room or ward (the play is vague on their cohabitation), but somehow this couple breaks the rules when they – surprise! – end up having sex. They also fall in love. Or is it just the effect of the drug they’re taking?

This production of “The Effect” doesn’t give us Salvador Dali illustrations a la “Spellbound” to visualize the patients’ drug-induced dreams and nightmares. Since Jamie Lloyd is onboard to direct, however, there is his usual brand of trippy effects, which can best be described as extravagant minimalism. Here, Soutra Gilmour’s set features a floor that throbs with a vast array of lighting arrangements, by Jon Clark. It’s reminiscent of “Saturday Night Fever,” especially when a huge cloud of smoke floods the stage so the two patients can show off their dance moves (ballet for her, hip-hop for him) while the audience is sent into a coughing fit. Major moments in the drama are punctuated by a portentous Vangelis-esque score by Michael “Mikey J” Assante.

The performances are uniformly subtle to the extreme, their faintest whispers amplified to the hilt (sound design by George Dennis). Surprisingly, Lloyd eschews video screens, depriving the audience of close-ups as his actors deliver their camera-ready performances.

What’s love? What’s depression? What’s real? What’s not? Or is everything just some chemical reaction in the brain? In case the play’s thesis escapes us, Prebble includes a scene near the end where the female psychiatrist takes a human brain out of a small white plastic canister and shows where each thought, each memory, each feeling originates in that toaster-size mass of tissue.

In “Spellbound,” an old male shrink tells Ingrid Bergman’s character, “We both know that the mind of a woman in love is operating on the lowest level of the intellect.”

What a difference several decades doesn’t make. It is the two female characters in “The Effect” that end up being gaga in love. Or is it just the drugs talking?

The post ‘The Effect’ Off Broadway Review: Lucy Prebble Delivers a ‘Spellbound’ for the 21st Century appeared first on TheWrap.

The two-act play runs two hours 45 minutes and tells the big, sprawling story of how Labour Party politician Tom Watson (Toby Stephens) tried to bring down Murdoch’s News International in the phone-hacking scandal that went to trial in 2014. Rogers doesn’t need to give us Murdoch in the flesh on stage because he has a much better villain in Rebekah Brooks (Saffron Burrows). Women make the best bad guys, and as the tough-as-nails, ball-busting editor of “News of the World,” Brooks would be twirling her mustache if she could grow one.

There are shades of “Succession” when Murdoch’s son James (Seth Numrich) appears so Brooks can call him a Nepo Baby. Like that TV series, “Corruption” is delivered in lots of short scenes, but since it is a play and Rogers needs to get his actors off the stage, he gives them an explosive button or some pithy aphorism to help do the job. A rampant punchiness soon begins to infect the whole enterprise.

Completely shameless is the end of the first act when Watson, who has had little success in bringing down Rupert and Rebekah, sees a supportive tweet from George Michael. It gives him cause to celebrate and the excuse to play one of the pop singer’s hit songs. There’s nothing like “Freedom” to send an audience up the aisles to the bar and the restrooms at intermission.

“Corruption” is based on Watson and Martin Hickman’s 2012 book, “Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain.” Clearly a title like “Dial M for Murdoch” is too trashy for the high-minded lesson Rogers wants to teach us. In a Playbill program note, he writes about “scenes that are invented whole cloth,” and this play makes the current “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” look like an exercise in total veracity.

But getting back to the play’s punchiness. The director Bartlett Sher has either allowed or pushed his ensemble of 14 actors to overact egregiously. In part, all that shouting and gesticulating is needed to deliver those aforementioned buttons and aphorisms. In part, it’s the problem of actors playing far too many roles. Some of them have to essay half a dozen roles, and the result is the delivery of gross caricatures.

Occasionally, the result is downright baffling. The actor John Behlmann is introduced as Brooks’ new husband, only to show up later as a journalist at a rival newspaper. You might wonder if the couple got a quickie divorce, and the ex-husband wants to stick it to his ex-wife by jumping to the competition. T. Ryder Smith has more success going from a star investigative reporter to a lawman on the take. Most convincing is Dylan Baker. His soft-spoken “News of the World” lawyer lives in a completely different world from his totally sleazy “News of the World” phone hacker.

Elsewhere, the actors can be excused for their demonstrative performances — because Rogers hasn’t written them any characters to play. “Corruption” is populated with nothing but cartoon figures. Watson’s wife (Robyn Kerr, who also gets to play the surrogate carrying the Brooks’ baby, as well as a mother whose dead child’s cellphone has been hacked by “News of the World”) is a dreary woman who sobs throughout the play, begging her husband to give up his fight for justice to spare their six-year-old son from being threatened and harassed. Despite everything she’s been yammering about for nearly three hours, this recalcitrant wife gets a Frank Capra makeover at the very end to become her husband’s biggest cheerleader in taking down the Murdoch empire. 

Another cornball speech follows when Watson delivers a barnstormer that would embarrass even Jimmy Stewart’s naïve politician in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

The post ‘Corruption’ Off Broadway Review: Rupert Murdoch Gets Away With It – Again appeared first on TheWrap.

Where is a show supposed to go from there? Frankly, that’s where this wild ‘n’ crazy roller-coaster ride of a musical goes wonderfully off the tracks.

“Dead Outlaw” had its world premiere Sunday, presented by Audible at the Minetta Lane Theatre.

You might have your doubts about “Dead Outlaw” when McCurdy (Andrew Durand) proves to be a miserable failure in the world of crime. Itamar Moses’ book is mildly clever, much of the action told by a singing narrator (Jeb Brown). David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna’s score swerves from country to rock to bluegrass, all of it strung together by s–tkicking orchestrations.

Especially effective is Durand’s tendency, when he sings, to resemble a young Jerry Lee Lewis. However, McCurdy is such a loud loser on every level that his over-the-top act begins to grow stale rather quickly. Only half an hour into “Dead Outlaw” and you might be ready to give him the hook, and that’s when the sly makers of “Dead Outlaw” beat you to it — and shoot this creep dead. It’s the moment when their show goes from merely quirky to downright bonkers.

No longer alive, McCurdy is now a traveling-show mummy (“The Bandit Who Wouldn’t Give Up”) that makes its way across the country in a variety of venues. I’ve buried the lede: “Dead Outlaw” tells a true story.

Unlike Janet Leigh in “Psycho,” Durand doesn’t leave the stage after McCurdy is murdered in 1911. The corpse is embalmed with arsenic and stands in an open coffin for all to see. No family member claims it, but passers-by are so intrigued they begin to pay money to gawk.

His eyes open, Durand moves only occasionally, usually to illustrate some state of mind that the narrator gives the dead body. (If ever Durand blinks, I missed it.)  If you don’t identify with this reprobate when he’s living, you will feel great compassion for him when he’s dead. Suddenly famous, the dead McCurdy gets passed from one sleazeball impresario to another.

In the 1970s, the mummified stiff continues to attract voyeurs in an amusement park spook house in Long Beach, California. Discovered by crewmembers of the TV series “The Six Million Dollar Man” — you can’t make this stuff up — McCurdy’s body finally ends up on the autopsy table of Los Angeles’ chief coroner Thomas Noguchi in 1976.

It’s here that Yazbek and Della Penna switch gears, writing a lounge song for the famous “coroner to the stars,” played to sleazy perfection by Thom Sesma. The tune manages to link Marilyn Monroe, Natalie Wood and Sharon Tate to the mummy in question. Yes, America is a land of the strange, the cruel, the downright sick. And the song is truly delightful.

Yazbek never repeats himself. His Broadway career started with “The Full Monty” in 2000, and along the way he has written a couple of great scores (the Tony-winning “Band’s Visit” and the wrongfully ignored “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”) that bear no resemblance to his work on “Dead Outlaw,” except for the fact that he’s once again operating in top form.

Key to David Comer’s effectiveness directing here is one of the weirdest sets ever to grace an Off Broadway stage. At first glance, Arnulfo Maldonado’s scenic design amounts to a big box that houses the show’s five band members. It leaves almost no room for the actors to perform, so Comer relegates them to odd spaces on the peripheries of the stage: on top of the box or off to the sides, almost in the wings. It’s a crazy scheme that pays off when Durand’s life in crime goes south, and the box wanders all over the stage, pushed by the actors. Like McCurdy’s corpse on Noguchi’s table, you have to see it to believe it.

On this strange journey, Dashiell Eaves and Julia Knitel bring an inspired loopiness to a variety of characters.

The post ‘Dead Outlaw’ Off Broadway Review: How to Make a Musical About a Mummy appeared first on TheWrap.

Smaller, less-recognized films such as “Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret,” “Fire Island,” “Summoning Sylvia,” and “Memory” were also among the winners for cinematic achievement.

Television awards juggernauts “The Bear,” “Beef,” “The Last of Us” and “Succession” continued their season steamroll to take many of the TV categories. Departing series “Reservation Dogs” and “A Black Lady Sketch Show” also picked up prizes.

Animated film went to favorite “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” while Netflix’s “Big Mouth” triumphed in the TV category.

Theatrical productions were also recognized, including such Broadway blockbusters as the Daniel Radcliffe-starring “Merrily We Roll Along,” the hugely successful revival of “Into the Woods,” starring Sara Barflies, and the national tour of pop sensation “Six.”

The three ceremonies took place in Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton with host Niecy Nash-Betts; in New York at the Edison Ballroom with host Alex Edelman; and in London at the White City House with host Samantha Morton. 

Below is a complete list of the Artios winners.

FEATURE FILM WINNERS:

FEATURE – ANIMATION

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”: Mary Hidalgo

FEATURE BIG BUDGET – COMEDY

“Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret”: Francine Maisler, Melissa Kostenbauder, Betsy Fippinger (Location Casting), Tara Feldstein Bennett (Location Casting), Chase Paris (Location Casting), Molly Rose (Associate Casting Director)

FEATURE BIG BUDGET – DRAMA

“Killers of the Flower Moon”: Ellen Lewis, René Haynes, Kate Sprance (Associate Casting Director)

FEATURE STUDIO OR INDEPENDENT – COMEDY

“The Holdovers”: Susan Shopmaker, Lisa Lobel (Location Casting), Angela Peri (Location Casting), Melissa Morris (Associate Casting Director)

FEATURE STUDIO OR INDEPENDENT – DRAMA

“Past Lives”: Ellen Chenoweth, Susanne Scheel

FEATURE LOW BUDGET – COMEDY OR DRAMA

“Memory”: Susan Shopmaker

FEATURE MICRO BUDGET – COMEDY OR DRAMA

“Summoning Sylvia”: Steven Tylor O’Connor

THE ZEITGEIST AWARD

“Barbie”: Lucy Bevan, Olivia Grant (Associate Casting Director)

TELEVISION (SCRIPTED AND UNSCRIPTED), COMMERCIALS, SHORT FILM, SHORT FORM SERIES WINNERS

TELEVISION PILOT AND FIRST SEASON – COMEDY

“The Bear”: Jeanie Bacharach, Mickie Paskal (Location Casting), Jennifer Rudnicke (Location Casting) AJ Links (Location Casting), Alison Goodman (Associate Casting Director)

TELEVISION PILOT AND FIRST SEASON – DRAMA

“The Last of Us”: Victoria Thomas, Corinne Clark (Location Casting), Jennifer Page (Location Casting), Megan Bayliss (Associate Casting Director)

TELEVISION SERIES –  COMEDY

“Reservation Dogs”: Angelique Midthunder, Chris Freihofer (Location Casting), Stacey Rice (Associate Casting Director), Tara Mazzucca (Associate Casting Director)

TELEVISION SERIES – DRAMA

“Succession”: Avy Kaufman, Scotty Anderson (Associate Casting Director)

LIMITED SERIES

“Beef”: Charlene Lee, Claire Koonce, Danny Gordon (Associate Casting Director)

LIVE TELEVISION PERFORMANCE, VARIETY OR SKETCH – COMEDY, DRAMA or MUSICAL

“A Black Lady Sketch Show”: Erica A. Hart

REALITY SERIES – STRUCTURED AND UNSTRUCTURED

“Queer Eye”: Danielle Gervais, Pamela Vallarelli, Jessica Jorgensen, Quinn Fegan

REALITY SERIES – COMPETITION

“RuPaul’s Drag Race”: Goloka Bolte, Ethan Petersen

ANIMATED SERIES

“Big Mouth”: Julie Ashton

CHILDREN’S AND FAMILY PILOT AND SERIES– LIVE ACTION

“American Born Chinese”: Leslie Woo, Julina Baber (Associate Casting Director)

SHORT FILM

“Motherland” Matthew Glasner

SHORT FORM SERIES

“We’re Doing Good”: Alexa Pereira

COMMERCIALS

“Spark – Autism Awareness”: Ken Lazer

FILM, NON-THEATRICAL RELEASE

“Fire Island”: Jessica Munks, Andrew Fem (Associate Casting Director)

THEATRE WINNERS

NEW YORK BROADWAY THEATRE – COMEDY OR DRAMA

“Leopoldstadt”: Jim Carnahan, Maureen Kelleher

NEW YORK BROADWAY THEATRE – MUSICAL

“Into the Woods”: Craig Burns, Geoff Josselson, Bernard Telsey

NEW YORK THEATRE – COMEDY OR DRAMA

“Downstate”: Alaine Alldaffer, JC Clementz

NEW YORK THEATRE – MUSICAL

“Merrily We Roll Along”: Jim Carnahan, Jason Thinger

LOS ANGELES THEATRE

“The Inheritance: Part 1 & Part 2”: Phyllis Schuringa

SPECIAL THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE

“Fiddler on the Roof”: Tara Rubin, Merri Sugarman, Becca McCracken (Location Casting)

REGIONAL THEATRE – TIE

“A Chorus Line”: Stephanie Klapper

“What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank”: David Caparelliotis

THEATRE TOURS

“Six (Boleyn Tour)”: Tara Rubin, Peter Van Dam, Kevin Metzger-Timson

Tonight’s honorees also included:

• The Marion Dougherty New York Apple Award was presented to The Drama Book Shop. The annual recognition from the casting community is to individuals or organizations who have made a special commitment to the New York entertainment industry through their collaboration with casting professionals. 

• The Associate Casting Director Spotlight Awards were presented to Matthew Glasner and Josh Ropiequet. 

• The Capelier-Shaw Award for Excellence in Casting was presented to Francesco Vedovati by the European Chapter Board of Governors. This award is named in honor of legendary European casting directors Margot Capelier and Rose Tobias Shaw, and is given annually in recognition of casting as well as unique contributions to the craft. 

• The Creative Collaboration Award was presented to Jina Jay, Shaheen, Baig and Jane Arnell, the founders of the National Film & Television School (NFTS) Casting Certificate Course. The award, presented by the European Chapter Board of Governors, is given in recognition of significant and outstanding creative or professional contributions to the entertainment industry, including distinctive support of casting professionals and the art and craft of casting.

The post ‘Barbie,’ ‘The Holdovers,’ ‘Succession’ Among 39th Artios Awards Winners appeared first on TheWrap.

First, let’s applaud the change of that venue’s name. It’s wonderful to see a great impresario honored and not a corporate sponsor. The American Airlines Theatre never sounded quite right.

It’s also nice to report that the first production into the newly renamed theater is a real winner. “Doubt” worked beautifully off Broadway in 2004 (and again, on Broadway the following year), but the dreary 2008 film version with Meryl Streep and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman remains a limp affair that possesses not a smidgen of humor.

“Doubt” is often very funny. At least, it was funny on stage with its original cast Cherry Jones and Brian F. O’Byrne, and once again, it’s often a laugh riot with Schreiber and Ryan, her Sister Aloysius getting to deliver most of the zingers. This nun is such a control freak that she repeatedly challenges a younger nun (Zoe Kazan), who, in effect, represents the compassion and charity of the Second Vatican Council. Ryan’s Sister Aloysius fully embraces the punishment and retribution of the Old Testament, and the whiplash between her and Kazan’s Sister James fuels “Doubt” with mordant humor. But above all, “Doubt” is a power play in which the Roman Catholic Church patriarchy, and not a nun on the warpath, is the real villain.

When the play had its world premiere, there were constant headlines about yet another pedophile priest. Make that “priests.” It didn’t go unnoticed in that storm of abuse that there used to be at least 20 nuns for every priest in the Church.

Jones presented a real fascist dictator on stage. Ryan matches her there, but also makes Sister Aloysius a tad nuttier. O’Byrne turned Father Brendan Flynn into a nice, comfy regular Joe of a basketball coach (In Catholic schools of the 1960s, the time period of “Doubt,” priests were often the equivalent of the public-school athletic coach that masqueraded as a social-scene teacher). Schreiber is anything but nice. As an actor, he can’t help but be heavy, and while that might appear to work against Shanley’s play, it simply makes Ryan’s challenge all the greater — and so, her take-down of him is all the more stunning.

Sister Aloysius has an odd precedent in the movies. For me, she brought to mind Orson Welles’ corrupt detective in “Touch of Evil.” She is as desiccated as he is bloated. Both characters may be right, but neither of them plays fair.

As the mother whose son may or may not have been molested by Father Flynn, Quincy Tyler Bernstine wisely resists turning the character into a victim, which is what Viola Davis does in the film version. Bernstine presents this mother as being as strong and resolute as Sister Aloysius, which presents a flip side to the effects of the nun’s tunnel vision. Both women wear blinders, but only one of them knows it.

Scott Ellis directs as if he were the referee at a boxing match.

The post ‘Doubt’ Broadway Review: Liev Schreiber and Amy Ryan Battle for the Soul of the Church appeared first on TheWrap.

There’s a meet cute between drop-off laundry owner Owen (David Zayas) and Fran (Cecily Strong), a customer whose laundry his establishment lost several months ago. It makes no sense. Who returns to a drop-off laundry to get your clothes washed when the place already has a track record for losing your clothes?

Even worse, Owen immediately tells Fran that she’s “gloomy,” which is an understatement. That unusual come-on ends with his asking her out on a date, which, even more unbelievably, she accepts. Maybe Fran just wants to prove she’s not gloomy.

Before that dinner date, at which they both drop mushrooms and get into a conversation about the spectacular lighting that emanates from the open grill – it’s that kind of restaurant – Fran visits her dying sister, Trish (Florencia Lozano), and they reminisce about how much fun they had as kids playing cards with their mother, now a ghost roaming the mobile home. At least Trish thinks Mom continues to lurk about. Trish remembers having a blast back then, but it’s debatable how much Fran really enjoyed her childhood, not to mention her adulthood. Let’s just say she continues to be gloomy.

There’s another sister, Susie (Andrea Syglowski), who, like Trish, has married a creep. That’s the big problem with all the women in this family, including Fran’s deceased mother: They have horrible taste in men. And that’s to say nothing of the way they decorate their homes (set design by Santo Loquasto).

Fran also has a chronic man problem, because she gets all hung up on Owen after just one act of sexual intercourse. It must have been quite a session, because Owen gets hung up on Fran after that same act of sexual intercourse. These characters are cast as middle-aged, but sound and act like hormonal teenagers, and even then, who would want to spend 80 minutes watching them?

Between loads of laundry, there’s a lot of talk and consternation about the two sisters’ three kids. Not to be a spoiler, but if the network doesn’t go for “Brooklyn Laundry,” there’s always “Full House,” if that title hasn’t already been taken.

Shanley directs his own play.

The post ‘Brooklyn Laundry’ Off Broadway Review: Cecily Strong Gets Stuck in the Spin Cycle appeared first on TheWrap.

Now, just two months into the New Year, the city’s theater delivers another instant classic. It’s Itamar Moses’ “The Ally,” which had its world premiere Tuesday at the Public Theater. We always hear a lot about the Golden Age, which is always sometime many years, if not decades, in the past. Hello, theatergoers! We’re living in a golden age of great new American plays, and even a pandemic couldn’t stop it.

Granted, there’s something more than a little daunting about entering a theater and being told by the friendly usher that the play you’re about to see is just under three hours with an intermission. That said, only five minutes into “The Ally” and it’s obvious you’re in the capable hands of a magnificent storyteller, a writer on the level of George Bernard Shaw.

Anyone who knows what “The Ally” is about may be appalled by that comparison of Moses and Shaw, because the latter was an avowed antisemite who disparaged the characterization of Jews as a chosen nation as “a monstrous presumption.”

Which is a good place to start writing about the incendiary tale that “The Ally” tells. In Moses’ play, Asaf, a Jewish college instructor (Josh Radnor), has been asked by a Black student (Elijah Jones) to sign a petition protesting the murder of a young Black man by the campus police. The petition is a protest effort led by Asaf ’s old girlfriend (Cherise Boothe), whom he hasn’t seen in 20 years. To make things even messier, the written appeal contains a few controversial things to say about the state of Israel, linking its treatment of Palestinians to America’s treatment of people of color.

Asaf wonders why the petition singles out Israel and not other countries (China, India, Russia, Turkey) that have a history of discrimination against minorities living within and just beyond their borders. He signs it anyway, and supports efforts by a Jewish-Palestinian student alliance (Michael Khalid Karadsheh and Madeline Weinstein) on campus to sponsor a speaker who has been critical of Israel. The fallout from one Jewish colleague (Ben Rosenfield) is immediate.

The above synopsis does not begin to feature all the controversies Moses has packed into his play. This playwright’s sheer knowledge of the world’s history for the past century (make that the past few millennia) is nothing short of astounding. There’s also the little matter of Asaf’s wife (Joy Osmanski), who works for the college to lead its expansion into an adjacent low-income neighborhood (think Columbia University moving into Harlem back in the 1960s) — and even much messier, she knows next to nothing about her husband’s old girlfriend.

Moses sets up Asaf as a human punching bag, and much like Shaw does in all his plays, the character gets hit from all sides. As he dodges one blow after another, we find our sympathies and allegiances constantly shifting. The debates are as dense as they are fascinating — and better yet, Moses laces them with scathing humor.

There’s a delayed split-second timing to the delivery of these zingers, obeyed by all the actors, that suggests they have been led by a very talented director, Lila Neugebauer. She also brings an amazing fluidity to the stage, with one scene getting a head start even before the one we’re watching has finished.

Asaf could come off as a real wimp. While Radnor gives more than a few nebbish dimensions to the character, he manages to make Asaf extraordinarily compelling in the way he gets floored repeatedly but keeps coming back for more. His journey is empathetic to the point of heartbreaking.

The post ‘The Ally’ Off Broadway Review: The Israel-Palestine Debate Leaves Josh Radnor Reeling appeared first on TheWrap.

The bio’s photos feature the actor Cynthia Nixon dressed in a number of outfits and wigs. In one shot, she looks like a Picasso painting, in another her head appears to have been wrapped in wire by Méret Oppenheim. Viewed all together, this stylish collection of photos (by Serge Nivelle) suggests a middle-age woman undergoing an extreme cosmetic makeover. What could be more fun than one of the “Sex and the City” stars appearing in an extended riff on your favorite episode of “Botched”?

That play, however, isn’t being performed here. Instead, Nixon appears in Jordan Seavey’s “The Seven Year Disappear,” presented by the New Group, which received its world premiere Monday at the Jewel Box. To be clear, the play has nothing to do with the disappearance of facial lines and everything to do with Nixon’s remarkable vanishing act into several roles. It is, also, often hilarious in its depiction of the insular New York art world and its navel-gazing participants. Part of the delight is seeing Nixon play not only the egocentric Miriam, but a variety of other characters, a couple of which are the older men with whom her young adult son, Naphtali (Taylor Trensch), is having very wild, drug-induced sex.

Trensch plays only the one role, leaving it to Nixon to keep us guessing: what accent will she hit us with next? Miriam sounds a lot like the Miranda we know from TV, and she is pissed as hell over Maria Abramovic getting a show at the Whitney. She asks her son: which Whitney, uptown or downtown? For hardcore narcissists like Miriam, it’s all about the status, the publicity, the ego (And yes, “The Seven Year Disappear” is set a few years ago when, indeed, the Whitney boasted two museums on the island of Manhattan).

Nixon switches to a German accent to play a MOMA executive, although, who’s paying attention to what the actor sounds like when Naphtali talks about putting his hand up Wolfgang’s butt? Best of all is Nixon’s patrician accent for an HIV-positive Episcopalian priest living in Cobble Hill who gives Naphtali his first hit of G. It’s unclear whether the two characters remain conscious long enough to have sex.

If this sounds like “The Seven Year Disappear” is a series of amusingly spicy skits, you get the picture. Also flashy is Derek McLane’s sleek multi-paneled set, which allows director Scott Elliott to dress it all up with lots of pre-taped videos, projected photographs and the biggest cliché of today’s theater: several sequences are filmed live so that we don’t have to bother watching the actors, but can follow them on big screens where their faces are delivered in close-up.

The only thing that puts a damper on all the fizzy fun is Naphtali, who is the very soggy center of this drama. It is his life that Miriam has used for a number of her performance pieces, and now that he’s finally an adult, he wants her to quit or, at least, explain herself.

From Miriam’s bio in the theater lobby to her absurd conversion to Judaism (the funniest bit in the play), it’s difficult to see the character as anything but an object of ridicule. Nixon’s colorful shifting of characters only adds to the derision, which makes it difficult to switch gears to see Naphtali as a real person. The confusion forces Trensch to deliver an overly angst-ridden performance as the play progresses to its Ah-Ha conclusion, where Mommie Dearest suddenly pulls a very unconvincing about-face.

The post ‘The Seven Year Disappear’ Off Broadway Review: Cynthia Nixon Vanishes Into Several Roles appeared first on TheWrap.