Philip 6247

See it if The actors were game and not bad for what they were asked to do, although the "mothers" (played by men) came off often as silly stereotypes.

Don't see it if you're tired of the current trend toward gimmicks and other overly clever add-ons to plays that would probably be better told straight.

Also Despite the playwright’s explanation in the program for why she had her three actors play two family members, each of a different gender (i.e., the two male actors each played a mother and her son; the woman played a sister and a brother), I’m still baffled by that decision. This was not the same as doubling characters. While the actors, through voice and physical actions (as well as changes in lighting) signaled that now he or she was playing a man, now a woman, all this gender-swapping seemed to do was add layers of confusion and distraction—a gimmick that interfered with what the play was trying to show about the difficulties of relationships and connecting even with those one has long known. Most of the time I was wondering what if anything does all this gender-switching contribute to the play’s themes? What’s its symbolic importance? Does the playwright not have enough confidence in her basic material?... Read more Read less

See it if you're up for seeing a timely albeit uncomfortable and mostly ignored subject (i.e., the fate of child abusers in a halfway house).

Don't see it if child abuse, with a somewhat sympathetic look at the perpetrators, would be unacceptable to you or put you off.

Also At the start the adult who was abused as a child seems to be the central character, but he really isn't; we soon see that his offender, whom he's come to confront, & two others (there's also a 4th who follows his own trajectory) are, more than he, a kind of aggregate central character. I find that an ensemble structure dilutes my empathy; the play nonetheless elicits strong emotional responses by its arguments about criminal justice & from the intense, climactic confrontation of the three "central" offenders & the adult who'd been abused. I think the wife of the abused adult is underwritten & represents a missed opportunity. But Norton individualizes the main characters through action & speech & with presenting scenes where several characters are on stage at once talking & talking over each other (so many plays consist of scenes with only 2 characters talking to each other). And how long does it take for a body to decompose to emit so intense a smell? The action lasts less than 24 hrs.... Read more Read less

See it if you're interested in Walt Disney a short while after he started and long before the company became the behemoth it is today.

Don't see it if if you find labor and management conflicts too predictable and your sympathies are immutably on one side or the other.

Also It's interesting to see the early version of the Disney Corporation in crisis, where management (Walt) is at loggerheads with labor (his cartoonists, inkers, and storytellers). This doesn't quite feel like a complete play. Maybe the subsequent parts of this proposed exploration of Disney will reveal that this is more like one act of a whole rather than the incomplete presentation it feels like.... Read more Read less

See it if you have an interest in Korean history mainly of the 20th Century. (It doesn't pretend to be a historical play.)

Don't see it if you prefer a play with clearly identified characters whose conflict(s) build to a climax and dramatic payoff.

Also This play comprises several chronological set pieces of Korean and later Korean-American struggle and durability. The set pieces are connected, although not always clearly but, in any case, definitively in the last one. The drama diminishes as it goes along, from the Korean revolution in 1930 to World War 2, where Korean comfort women suffer the pitiless sadism and chauvinism of their Japanese conquerors, to the Korean War, to the US (the LA riots) and finally to the present day. In a way, the climax occurs at the beginning so that what follows sometimes felt to me like a long coda. Nonetheless, the historical underpinning throughout was of considerable interest.... Read more Read less

See it if you'd enjoy a clever take on "Romeo and Juliet 2: The Sequel."

Don't see it if you think you'll never be able to enjoy the real Romeo and Juliet again.

Also There are some hilarious moments. The songs, based on Italian songs (mostly late 19th Century songs, plus one Rossini "sin of my old age") are imaginatively adapted to 1960 Brooklyn, and almost all the lyrics are unfailingly clever. The performers are terrific--there are some fine singers up there--and the fun they are having makes it irresistable.... Read more Read less

See it if You want to see how a 25-year-old play handles an issue that occupies an even greater part of our social consciousness today.

Don't see it if The abundance of news & TV shows about sexual abuse deter you from seeing a memory (or from today's POV recovered-memory) play about it.

Also A woman who as a girl was the victim of sexual abuse by her uncle recalls in non-sequential memories how she learned to drive-i.e., to live or come to terms with life. The predatory uncle is portrayed with considerable sympathy, which enhanced the experience for me and also ratcheted up the discomfort of the whole sordid story, because, predator though he is, he is still always human, albeit painfully and pathetically so. References to his WW 2 service suggest he returned with emotional and psychological damage that remains mostly muted in his interactions and assertions (e.g., I won't do anything you don't want me to, etc.) The girl and the uncle come off as palpably real people; the other characters, however, are functional, and stereotyped. Then again, the play is the girl's memory of them, and perhaps they are in fact only stereotypes in her memory.... Read more Read less

See it if you want a glimpse into what it's like to have the FBI show up at your door esp. if you're guilty of what they've come after you for.

Don't see it if you want a play rather than a clever realization of a real FBI transcript. Not that there's no drama, but it's not the same as a play.

Also By my watch this theater piece lasted 60 minutes, not the 75-80 minutes advertized.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to take advantage of seeing small theaters and unknown actors doing a creditable job of putting on a timely play by Shakespeare.

Don't see it if you're disinclined to see unknown actors performing in small venues.

Also Imaginative staging with limited resources. Two quibbles: (1) the costumes made it difficult to place the time the play.takes place; (2) the chairs in Angelo's "office" would be better placed so that the actors' backs are not to the audience.... Read more Read less

See it if you have an interest in Milton or stage adaptations of epics.

Don't see it if a re-telling of a re-telling of a biblical story doesn't interest you.

Also The sets and the staging are perhaps the most noteworthy element of the production. The acting is generally good. The tone and language veer between biblical and contemporary. The focus shifts (unfortunately) from Satan's rebellion to the fall of Adam and Eve so that by the end Satan more or less disappears. Eve is a proto-feminist. Adam is god-fearing and ever-grateful that God gave him Eve (he too has feminist leanings). Beelzebub might have been one of Spats Columbo's henchmen if he'd lived during Prohibition.... Read more Read less

See it if a play that wants to be the avatar of the anti-retroviral era as Angels was of the AIDS-Reagan era & BITB of the closeted era interests you.

Don't see it if A 2-ticket, 7+ hour play that covers a lot, perhaps too much, territory is not how you want to spend your time.

Also In a writing class Adam invokes EM Forster to help him start writing, which is what we see for 7 hours: a story sometimes told, sometimes shown. There are many strengths (ambition, some clever dialogue, humor, characters in conflict), along with a few weaknesses, such as (1) scenes become soap-operatic or baldly manipulative (with tug-at-the-heartstrings music for big moments), (2) characters who seem more often representations than fully-realized people, & (3) a woman whose teary story is affecting but tangential to the action. Walter's house may be the most interesting character of all.
And someone should really defend Forster, who’s attacked a couple of times for not publishing Maurice in his lifetime. Have they all forgotten Oscar Wilde? Do they really think it would have opened the minds of the closed-minded?... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see a clever, often funny, more often raunchy presentation of bi-racial couples where the black partner is sexually frustrated.

Don't see it if you know over-hype when you read or hear it. The play’s worthwhile but not nearly as provocative as the hype would have you believe.

Also The play wants to be both a satire on role-play therapy (& maybe acting) & an exploration of how race affects bi-racial couples. The satire dominates. Santayana’s comment about history applies here. The therapy session is an amusing X-rated comedy sketch (the facilitators needing as much therapy as their clients).
The mirrored backdrop symbolically (& unnecessarily) makes us part of the action; I felt more that I was in a sports arena watching the semifinals of Survivor. The play’s heavier on concept & symbols than on drama; the couples would likely have gotten the same insights from traditional therapy. The ensemble nature of the play produces less dramatic satisfaction than if it had a true central character. The last scene suggests that Kaneisha & Jim are the central characters; however, what happens before doesn’t support that. Perhaps the point is that they stand for each of the 3 relationships.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see a slice of life of a part of America you won't often see.

Don't see it if almost three hours of a dour play which should be more dramatic would put you off.

Also I sense the author aspires to emulate Chekhov & Miller in illuminating the pathos & tragedy of people who exist in a "forgotten" part of America-an admirable, ambitious effort. Past, present, & future for these characters are the same: hopeless. You feel for Maggie & Joe, whose lives have largely ceased before death. That's part of the dramatic problem that the play fails to solve: Maggie dithers but makes no sustained effort to change her life; Joe is incapable of doing so: they've already sunk & are foredoomed. But unlike, say, foredoomed Oedipus, there's no process through which they go to arrive at self-understanding; Bill is too factitious & sentimental a creation to offer credible help. The play feels static perhaps because it relies so much on the reiterative style of dialogue (Remember back when we were in high school. When I flew up to Alaska & found you homeless, etc.). So the powerful ending ends up more melodramatic & overwrought than affecting.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to laugh, perhaps in spite of your best intentions.

Don't see it if you are a Mormon or are offended by sacrilegious humor, verbal or physical.

Also The show was funny but somehow not as funny as I expected based on all the promotions and hype. The music is forgettable, although the performances and the lyrics usually carry the day. Beneath all the hi-jinks and vulgarity, the plot turns out to be much like that of many inoffensive musical comedies, wherein a "loser" becomes a "winner" through luck and pluck. There's some history presented here too as well as a dung-heap's worth of satire aimed not only at Mormonism but also at religion in general.... Read more Read less

See it if you aren’t put off by relentlessly dark themes.

Don't see it if an acted-out audio-book presentation (lots of addressing the audience) is not your taste.

Also Talented but depressed, socially-isolated, socially-inappropriate, friendless, awkward, Raskolnikov-loving, suicidal-author-admiring Freshman writer seeks self-isolating, friendless, terminally sick but healthy-looking middle-aged female has-been writer/prof for inspiration & highfalutin palaver larded with metaphors, similes, & literary references/allusions.

I'm not sure what sounds (silence? emptiness? demons?) are inside nor what inside (mind? body? classroom?) are meant by the title.
I'm also not sure I’d want to spend more time with these two, but in some ways the play seems too short for its ambitions. I wondered if Christopher is the medicine that cures Bella-if, symbolically speaking, he dies so that she can live. But it doesn't really matter.

There's some suspense during the course of the play but in the end it's predictable.

Yale Prof Baird, wordsmith & logophile, should know that disinterested does not mean uninterested.... Read more Read less

See it if you enjoy what might be called "observational" theater pieces that gussy up the mundane to pass if off as profundity.

Don't see it if you're ready to throw your hands up at yet another play filled with labored quirkiness.

Also Here's what this piece means, as far as I can tell: When the curtain falls upon the funeral, we're left with the metaphoric taste of apple juice; life, which of course is to be lived, has come full circle from apple to apple juice. Back pain will stay with you through life, no matter how often you change genders or races. Several leitmotifs reinforce those messages: swimming (i.e., water=the beginning of life), tennis (i.e, skill, development, more back pain), & veterinarianism (i.e, animal husbandry & wifery, humans, after all, being animals). Everything that happens to us UNDERLIES us, whether we are Chris, Christine, Christiane, Kris, or even Crhis; and this is true regardless of age, race, & gender. We are Chris & Chris is we. Chris is everyman & everywoman. By the end we are bidden to go forth & underlie. The play, in a manner of speaking, begins again, just like life, which of course should be lived.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see a (mostly) naturalistic play about family dysfunction.

Don't see it if you'd find a play that has cancer, child abuse, sexism, and misogyny overwhelming or overwrought.

Also The family's problems are exposed early on, so this isn't a play that climaxes when secrets are exposed. Rather, it's a drama where you want to find out what the characters will do as the confrontations intensify. In the end Mom is the character who makes the most difficult decision, yet she hardly seems to be as central as her critical moment suggests; it seemed to me she should have been made central to the action rather than peripheral. The brother, whose disease has brought everybody together, sucks up way too much dramatic air, considering how normal he is. Several times Jewish liturgy is introduced with heavy-handed symbolism & portentousness. Much of the humor falls flat. Nonetheless, the playwright makes an honorable effort to deal with serious & all-too-common problems.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see a play that at least superficially involves parenting.

Don't see it if you have a low tolerance for disjointed narrative.

Also There's a good satire to be made from the competition among mothers over who's the best (including a man and a nanny as candidates), who has the "best" baby, & who knows the most about parenting; this play raises the idea but fails to dramatize it. Another interesting idea, is raised when one of the mothers wonders if anyone should have children in a world like this-the world like this, though, is in the future when an Apocalyptic war is going on; but this idea isn't argued or dramatized either. Nor is the process by which the nanny takes extreme action: does she because she's not the mother of the children (her children are elsewhere) or because she's actually the best at mothering, with an insight into pain & suffering that the mothers lack? As an ensemble piece, there's no central character, so the focus keeps shifting among the women. There are echoes of Lord of the Flies, the Donner Party, Terminator, & Sophie's Choice. Shock trumps drama in this concoction.... Read more Read less

See it if you'd like an ensemble (as opposed to character-driven) play that presents its subject from an off-the-beaten-path angle.

Don't see it if you might be frustrated watching kids (whose speeches aren't always easy to hear) or are tired of plays about dysfunctional families.

Also Like so many ensemble plays this one has little in the way of plot & lacks a main character whose needs & conflicts are the foundation of the drama. One might say the ensemble is the main character, but that begs the question. I cared more about the characters as a collective than as individuals. For me the play was not so much a drama as a diorama in which we watch the various pieces being put in place. As such, it does put together the pieces of a mystery; for what it was. I thought it well-structured, well-acted, & nicely written for the most part. It does a good job of obscuring and diverting the predictable & oft-trod subject of family dysfunction. Carl's eulogy, the content of which was generally affecting, was overwrought in its performance; I found his request to read it to his siblings as practice to be a not-very-credible action for so solipsistic & distant a character: it seemed to me to happen because the author, not the character, wanted it to.... Read more Read less

See it if you enjoy the Temptations' (and other Motown singers') songs and somewhat hyped-up versions of their dance routines.

Don't see it if you need more than the predictable dramatic developments that musical "biographies" offer.

Also Talented young man adrift finds his calling in music, forms group, group achieves success, group suffers clashes of egos and personalities, group undergoes significant changes, group survives.
The interesting problems for the Temptations--the control exerted by Berry Gordy, the desire to break away from the formulaic hits for which they're known, & Otis's desire to write songs--are touched on, but this show is driven by the music and dancing, not the "drama."
The show never intended to be about what made the Temptations different from the other Motown groups, although, after seeing it, I'd have liked to find out.
One noticeable characteristic of the show: I don't think any songs were sung through from beginning to end; they were, e.g., usually interrupted by commentary (Otis Williams telling us about the life and times of the Temptations.)... Read more Read less

See it if a worthwhile opportunity to see 3 short but related plays written in a repressive regime.

Don't see it if you don't like or have had enough of political plays, or would find a mix of absurdity and realism incompatible.

Also The Pinter sets the tone; the Beckett seems anti-climatic, although appropriate as a brief portrait of the state striving to keep the artist manipulable and silent.
Variable as the Havel plays are-I liked the 3rd (the straightforward one) best; the 2nd one least (over the top absurdity).
Critics often call writers or their work "brave," "fierce," and so on; to me such characterizations are hyperbolic and unwarranted. But Havel really was brave (he'd probably have denied
it) and his plays and years in jail prove it. Critics diminish the bravery of truly brave writers by using "brave" as a generic adjective for work (which may be very good) that points out political or family problems in our society.... Read more Read less

See it if you enjoy plays about language used for subverting political repression.

Don't see it if the combo of absurdity (DH) & mostly realistic action (CM) might seem labored & tenuous (I believe an argument can be made.)

Also The connection between the two plays, other than Shakespeare (and Beckett less directly), is embodied by Easy, the delivery guy. In DH, he is befuddled by the language called Dogg. In CM he has become fluent in it. It made me wonder how long it would take the sinister Inspector in CM to learn it, thereby undermining the efforts of the artists who've been straining to liberate themselves and all Czech artists from the oppressive regime.... Read more Read less

See it if you'll enjoy a satire that indirectly explains how & why the music & lyrics of modern musicals sound alike & banal.

Don't see it if you find improv tiresome.

Also Every performance is different because the songs are improvised on the spot from a raffle of titles provided by the audience. There are also more performers in the troupe than performed the night I attended-it appears the show presents 4 performers, 1 pianist, & 1 emcee per show.
When they're good, as the performers I saw certainly were, they do a remarkable job of inventing music & lyrics for a non-existent show--and performing them with a consistency that almost makes you believe they actually come from a real show.
No need to see the Tonys after seeing this.... Read more Read less

See it if you, like me, are an admirer of Donald Margulies’s work.

Don't see it if you want a play with a compelling drama and surprises.

Also This play seems cobbled together from clichéd situations. Margulies always writes credible dialogue and keeps things moving so that boredom is held at bay. But in other plays he’s created a drama that kept me asking questions—i.e., made me want to keep watching. Here, the central character David, a successful consultant, faces the problem of what to do when his wastrel older brother Billy shows up unannounced at his office and needs lodging. I won’t say anything else except that one predictable scene follows another; the real drama as far as I can tell resides in the relationship between David and his wife Molly, but even though Billy affects the relationship, there is so much tiresome business involving Billy that he usurps most of the dramatic attention. The acting was serviceable; the script doesn’t seem to demand more.... Read more Read less

See it if a play popular from several years ago, overpraised and overrated but amusing, witty, occasionally touching, and never boring nonetheless.

Don't see it if you want to support a new (three-years-old or so) worthy theater company and pass two hours pleasantly ..

Also The play left me wondering if the point of all its busy-ness is that everybody in the world is in pain, physical, mental, or both. That does indeed seem to be the point. The play starts off with a lot of energy, humor, witty dialogue, and interesting characters but never builds on that beginning or develops a deepening conflict that would have made me sit up and keep watching eagerly to find out what would happen. There's no "arc" of rising action so that when, in the more or less arbitrary climax, the main character tells off two characters (who have not really become his antagonists), it clearly feels as if the playwright has checked off (another) box. The final scene is likewise a wrap-up: a box that has to be checked off. All the characters, even the main one, seem peripheral as they bounce around in a play that wants to say a lot but doesn't really say much more than the point I mentioned above.... Read more Read less

See it if you want a chance to see a famous play in the early style of French theater of the absurd.

Don't see it if you don't have patience for a sometimes slow play that veers between absurdity and melodrama.

Also The actress playing Madame is young--perhaps too young. Madame hardly seems neither hateful in her behavior nor worth hating. But then the point may be that the maids hate themselves and not Madame, despite asserting that they do. I probably should read the play.
The night I saw the play, it seemed there were a few times that the players had momentary lapses of memory regarding their lines.
The Seeing Place, however, is always resourceful and presents plays are usually worth visiting or re-visiting.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to experience a great score from the golden age of musical comedy.

Don't see it if you won't abide even the somewhat updated-for-the-pc-era book about "taming" a woman who doesn't really need taming.to begin with.

Also A few points off for pc revisions to the book. O'Hara terrific singer & actor & always worth seeing, but not quite inhabiting Lilli Vanessi, at least not yet.
I'm sure that the writers of Kiss Me Kate expected a laugh when Lois/Bianca says "between him & I, or is it between he and me?"-which, in addition to her accent & high-pitched voice, reflects her lack of or limited education and her aspirations for a higher-class life (i.e., she wants to speak correctly, even though both of her choices are grammatically incorrect.)
The same sort of grammatical mistake occurs in Guys and Dolls, for similar reasons, in the introduction to Marry the Man Today, where Adelaide (the chorus girl) sings, "Now doesn't that kind of apply to you and I?" & Sarah (the educated Salvation Army girl) corrects her: "You and me."

But the joke in Kiss Me, Kate gets no laughs because "between he and I" and its variants are heard so often these days that the audience finds nothing amiss.... Read more Read less

See it if you'd appreciate a modern version of an old-fashioned type of play w/a large cast (no doubling of parts), a lot of text, & 3-hr running time

Don't see it if another play about "The Troubles," the IRA, and the attendant violence doesn't appeal to you.

Also It's impressive to see a play with so many characters distinctly individualized & with smart dialogue. Despite its length I was never bored. It's basically a simple but engaging story with main & subplots & high stakes for protagonist & antagonist alike; it feels more complicated perhaps because the 3 elder characters verge toward stereotypes complete with bloviations, blarney, & rants. They & the little kids provide humor & texture, but are not indispensable to the action. Reduced, say, to only 6 or 8 characters, the story would, it seems to me, have been a tighter, tenser, more frightening coil-spring of a drama.... Read more Read less

See it if you would be moved by a story of racial injustice in South Africa that has metamorphosed over 50 years into one of existential survival.

Don't see it if you demand action and have no patience for untranslated lines spoken in Afrikaans as well as sometimes hard-to-understand English accents.

Also The acting is intense and a lie revealed late puts paid to any real reconciliation. There are times, though, especially in Act 1, where long stretches of expository dialogue and monologue, however well-written, almost grind things to a halt.
N.B. This is a 2-act play with no intermission. (I'd have preferred there to be one.)... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see a play, more symbolic than dramatic, about empowering women, especially women of color.

Don't see it if you prefer a more traditionally designed drama rather than a more metaphorical one.

Also The intent is implicit in the title-Marys (plural) Seacole-explicit in the final scene: when women of any color, especially black ones, believe in themselves, they can all become Mary Seacoles. Indeed, the whole play comprises scenes from various times & of various levels of realism that reiterate this theme. So the play seems more about the idea of Mary than about the real Mary. The b.g. for the historical Mary is provided primarily in an insert to the program but also in the opening monologue & periodic later ones. Mary was a remarkable Jamaican, half-Scot, half-Creole, who overcame racism & sexism by men & women to become a successful entrepreneurial medical practitioner. We do see this, not as dramatic development but as fact. The scenes are by turns affecting, amusing, puzzling, & labored. The play seems more parts of a sum than the sum of its parts; the final scene being less inexorable climax than choral reiteration now that its allotted 90 minutes are almost up.... Read more Read less

See it if you’d root for (mostly) sympathetic women to achieve fulfillment at a convent, an ironic setting for this spiritual/quasi-religious retreat.

Don't see it if Don’t see it if you’re skeptical of EST and all the other spiritual/quasi-religious retreats that people pay a lot of money to go to.

Also The play’s thesis is presented, apparently without irony, as an axiom: Women must love themselves before they can love anyone or anything else. Are we to take it seriously? Apparently. No one challenges the assertion; no one asks how you live according to the axiom, which might not be that easy & whose consequences might not be desirable; no one argues against what one might see as a formula for narcissism or egocentrism. Whom do we know who loves himself before everything else? But then, our president is not a woman.

The axiom is communicated throughout the play via the metaphor of a castle & expressed explicitly by a homeless woman at the end. Has she lived her life according to the axiom, yet ended up homeless, or is the axiom knowledge she learned from having lived homeless?

There are interesting mini-dramas: mother-daughter, mother-with-herself, lesbian attractions-but this being an ensemble play, like most such plays, none of these dramas receives a satisfying examination.... Read more Read less

See it if See it for the moving depiction of a woman in treatment (hopelessly) for cancer.

Don't see it if you’re averse to seeing (yet another) play that brings together quirky family members to air out their mutual complaints and resentments.

Also I found the scenes about the effects of cancer, treatment, & hospital stay on the dying mother to be moving, honest, & affecting. The 2 daughters were insufferable much of the time. Like the other characters, they predictably have quirks that define them but that seem more imposed than organic.
Not really much drama here since we know what the outcome of the cancer will be, & the father-daughter & daughter-daughter conflicts, while played with emotion, didn’t keep me guessing or engaged. The ending is exactly as we hope emotionally & sentimentally-the family starts its tentative reconciliations
The point of the play: there are different ways to say I love you-e.g., through a song or by offering to buy you candy. Maybe, maybe not, but seems valid for this family.
I found much of the comic business forced & unfunny (I was in the minority).
One of the daughters said, “If I would've went.” Nothing else in her speeches suggested she’d have made so obvious a grammatical mistake.... Read more Read less

See it if you don't want to miss the chance to see two intriguing plays.

Don't see it if Churchill's sometime-mannered writing or Norman's cool and almost clinical writing about so stark a subject will turn you off.

Also A Number may be more admired than enjoyed (by me), but in fairness to the play I have to admit I didn't catch all the lines when there were overlaps in dialogue or when the actors weren't facing me. Not so with 'Night Mother, which proved to be exhilarating, despite its dark subject; I found myself rooting for Jessie despite myself, which I consider a tribute to the play and the production.
I know the Seeing Place needs money. I wish the company would allow both the play to end and the audience to leave without solicitations; I'd rather think about the play. SPT should let the jar, which is impossible to miss in the small lobby, do the begging. This is why I always feel uncomfortable after one of SPT's usually fine productions.... Read more Read less

See it if you would enjoy a play where the history of medicine and the history of slavery intersect in America c. 1850.

Don't see it if you object to history plays that take significant liberties with the history they’re presenting.

Also The play has some fine acting, characterizations, and ensemble writing. Ironies abound—e.g., to solve a medical problem afflicting all women, a white doctor uses slave women as guinea pigs, as much for the sake of the South’s economy (the slave women being useless unless cured) and for the sake of getting the procedure right when it’s time to help white women.
However, the play seems more history lesson than drama, a conclusion manifest most clearly when, after it's over, the actors silence the applause to tell us what in the play was historically accurate and what completely made up (like the after-word in movies “based on a true story”). Several proto-subplots remain undeveloped and unexamined (e.g., the George-Philomena-Josephine and the Lewis-Philomena relationships). The doctor’s revelation of the solution is by pure chance.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see relatively brisk production of a Chekhov play.

Don't see it if you are not enamored of the type of play (Chekhovian) that unfolds like a slow-burn of several interior dramas.

Also This production is based on a new translation. I don't know whether or not there have been any cuts. The translation does a fine job of seeming modern without being "contemporary"--that is, there are no contemporary linguistic tics (e.g., four-letter words) that try to turn the old setting into one that is hip for modern audiences. The problems in the play are modern enough. At times, different characters have interior monologues that they "exteriorize" by addressing the remarks to specific members of the audience; in addition to taking me out of the play, the monologues were sometimes inaudible as they were done around the circumference of the theater-in-the-round production. But I found the evening worthwhile.... Read more Read less

See it if you'd appreciate an approach to dementia that has humor.

Don't see it if you've overdosed on plays, movies, & TV shows about dementia.

Also The characters are well-drawn, & the playwright does a notable job of presenting several of them on-stage at the same time. Since dementia inevitably goes only one way, I looked for other dramatic situations in the play. In that respect, the play is routine, as, e.g., the outcomes of Donny's & Adam's marital problems & of Jackie's pregnancy have no real bearing on Dot's fate or Shelley's need. Nonetheless, the situations are presented authentically & have an emotional if not dramatic payoff. This isn't an overpowering play where one or more characters needs to be destroyed in order to rebuild or arrive at a truth about him- or herself. It's a play that presents an all-too-familiar family problem with an ending perhaps a little too happy.
Dot's financial situation is not entirely clear (or I missed mention of it). She lives in a well-appointed house & may have the money to pay for care for a few years. Also Dot goes downhill extremely fast in two days. I guess that's dramatic license.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to take a chance on a small theater & a very interesting early play by Camus, with eerie parallels to today’s political climate.

Don't see it if you insist on seeing only highly polished productions.

Also I admire Medicine Show Theater for several reasons. They have put on a play you’re not likely to get many chances to see. They are clearly dedicated to what they’re doing. It would be disingenuous of me not to mention that the acting and production are uneven, but the intensity is admirable. And the play about a mad, maniacal, power-besotted, evil genius emperor unfortunately never gets old.... Read more Read less

See it if you enjoy fictional constructions of events that didn’t happen but conceivably could have .

Don't see it if you demand more historical accuracy and a plot with strong internal logic.

Also The dialogue is often bright & witty, though some of it & its delivery are more 2018 than 1897. Sarah was most interesting when she questioned & criticized Hamlet & Cyrano. There’s an attempt to make credible her request to Rostand to revise the play & his agreeing to do it: her complaints about the poetry, the inscrutability of Hamlet (an eternal issue), Rostand’s admiration & love for her, the fact that others in the past rewrote Shakespeare texts (eg, Colley Cibber). But given her intelligence & determination & Rostand’s need to write his own plays, the request to revise seems a contrivance to keep up momentum for Act 2. We learn more than once that Sarah's broke; evidently everyone works for her gratis (strains credibility) because she’s “divine.” There’s a plot, but the dramatic question will she succeed in doing Hamlet isn’t that compelling: if she doesn’t, so what? More interesting: will Rostand ruin his marriage & produce a usable revision? Act 2 might be called Rostand/Hamlet... Read more Read less

See it if a timely story about African-Americans-some who are honest & caring, some who are not-trapped in a ghetto-like neighborhood appeals to you.

Don't see it if you blame a play for its lack of coherence & cumulative effect on the playwright rather than on yourself for not getting or buying it.

Also I couldn't help but think of how often the play development process kills a play with kindness. The process seems to be so intent on eschewing "traditional" forms of drama that it turns a compelling story (a young street-wise woman searching for her missing foster brother) into an overwrought, often tedious (though sometimes affecting) Rube Goldberg machine.

The title of the play puzzles me. It uses the plural "cycles." I'm afraid I saw at most one cycle, that being the play itself, which I took to be a presentation of yet another cycle of frustration and despair.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see or support an admirable troupe that often converts prose into plays and/or are interested in Chekhov's sensibility.

Don't see it if seeing a not entirely coherent and well-integrated presentation of several stories will leave you disappointed or frustrated.

Also I like this little company and have seen several of their productions. While I admire the talent and ambitious effort to mount this production, in the end, I don't think the creators succeeded--notwithstanding the production's humor and occasional charm--in making the stories flow and weave in and out of Lady with a Lapdog so that the viewer leaves satisfied by the payoff.... Read more Read less

See it if a melodrama concerning shades of blackness, black slave ownership, & voodoo in 1813 New Orleans at time of LA Purchase interests you.

Don't see it if you're not prepared for some lines garbled by accents or unarticulated pronunciations & for loud hip-hop before Act 1 & at intermission.

Also After Act 1 I got earphones to see if they would help me make out the lines with more clarity. I could hear the lines better, but they were garbled, only louder.... Read more Read less

See it if you enjoy traditional and well-made plays or are willing to give them a chance.

Don't see it if you like drawing room comedies or feel you’ve seen one too many.

Also Calling a play “traditional” &“well-made” is damning it with faint praise. Which is a shame, because a traditional, well-made play often offers up a compelling drama of conflicts & complications that lead to a climax keeping us in our seats & wanting to know what will happen next. That’s what was so engaging about Conflict. So many modern plays strain to be different & “original” but end up being haranguing & undramatic.
My main complaint: Dare emerges as the central character & undergoes significant change; her evolving political & personal feelings & decisions would have more credibility (& therefore the whole play would too) if we had a deeper sense of her inner life & a clearer view of the arc of her struggle to break free of the stifling conventions of the English upper class.... Read more Read less

See it if you have wondered how a meeting between the family of a heart donor and the recipient might go.

Don't see it if you don't speak Spanish and are not prepared to read the translated lines on the screen on the back of the seat you are facing.

Also It was frustrating at times to follow the dialogue; the translation frequently lagged behind the on-stage' lines; when it caught up, it just as often skipped to the next translation too fast for me to read it. I obviously missed several lines & often paid more attention to the screen than to the actors.
The play is propelled by the question: what will happen when the spouse of a heart donor meets the recipient? But of course there's more concerning the relationships among the dead spouse, his widow, & their children. The most interesting character is the recipient; the drama of the donor family devolves in the 2nd act into melodrama with predictable confessions & secrets predictably revealed, much as you'd expect in any melodrama about a family; the heart transplant thus seemed largely like a gimmick. The play might better have focused much more on the man with the new heart.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see a presentation of the hopeless, trapped, violent, cop-controlled, expendable lives of young African-American men.

Don't see it if you’re looking for a drama (as opposed to a presentation) about those young African-American men.

Also That sensible people agree with a play’s point of view doesn’t make the play good. PO is thematically grim & honest but dramatically static. Neither the expletive-laced dialogue nor the characters' Vaudeville-like interactions as they prowl the stage nor the predictable climax make up for the paucity of action & drama.
Moses & Kitch bring Waiting for Godot & Exodus to mind, but the comparisons are invidious. Moses wants to pass over, i.e., to get out of the stifling, dehumanizing “there” they live in, to freedom & joy. They are hopelessly trapped-freezing instantly at the sound of police sirens-so that no attempt to pass over is attempted. The play’s energy rises when the white guy shows up to create some much-needed tension; his 4th-wall-breaking ending monologue reveals the play to be the harangue it is. The monologue is the author’s last shot at making sure we know America doesn’t care.
We already know.... Read more Read less

See it if you're interested in a piece that is more an evocation of than a drama about grief and the journey past it.

Don't see it if you expect a probing psychological drama.

Also This piece probably comes as close as anything to translating a haiku to the stage.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see a great and moving play. I like it more than Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Don't see it if the usual characteristics of O'Neill's play-length (4 hours), repetitiveness, windiness, speeches in dialect-you deem to be insurmountable.

Also I think this play is a remarkable playwriting achievement.
But I can't figure out why the director puts Hickey in a chair facing the audience for his long speech near the end of the play; he doesn't have to face the barflies the whole time, but he's supposed to be talking to them, not to the audience. Surely, there's a better way of staging that speech, one that comports with the way the rest of the play has been staged.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see the first, and still pretty good, play about the gay subculture of pre-Stonewall NY (and urban America).

Don't see it if you find self-hating gays too retro or simply too depressing.

Also Kudos to the author for writing an ensemble piece where several, instead of just always 2, characters talk at once. It's also very funny & witty. I think Jim Parsons is somewhat too effeminate to play Michael, the self-hating gay man who, based on his history, clearly had the capacity to pass as straight, at least among ignorant straight people. Harold seems to be an underwritten role.
There are also a few contrivances, not the least of which is the "telephone game"; it seems the playwright wants the characters to play it more than they do. Nonetheless, the current version is well-acted & ratchets up the tension as it moves to its inevitable climax.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see a play epic in its scope and its examination and critique of America and its politics past and present.

Don't see it if you are a Republican or a Morman, and certainly not if you are both.

Also The decibel level was sky high. The music between scenes was rock-concert loud. The cast often shrieks & screams, especially Garfield & Lane, no doubt directed to do so.

Despite all the characters & the intertwining plots, most scenes are dialogues between two people. The plots are straightforward. Joe & Harper are aliens in NY; I found their relationship the most dramatic of the various relationships & the one I’d have liked to see more of. The political rants, to the extent you can follow & process them, are left-leaning & anti-Republican.

Part 1 condemns the American Dream & the government’s failure to deal with the plague (AIDS), yet Part 2 ends with a somewhat unconvincing, quasi-hopefulness that undermines the anger of Part 1: What exactly is great work is beginning at the end of Part 2? Maybe this play?

This Gay Fantasia--a mashup of improvisation, pseudo-history, wisecracks & fantasy--except for a few scenes moves swiftly toward its date with the angels of life & death.... Read more Read less

See it if you want to see one of the cornerstones of red-meat American theater.

Don't see it if O'Neill's flaws as a playwright deter you more than his strengths appeal to you.

Also This is the 1st time I've seen this play, so I have no basis of comparison with either the movie or other productions. I have read it, though. It's long, slow, repetitive, but it's dramatic, full of internal & external conflict, & equal-to- if not bigger-than-life characters. O'Neill may meander, but I always have a clear sense he's going somewhere with a payoff (which I like). It's an ensemble play, but unlike so many modern ensemble plays, it has leading characters, not just first among equals. Unfortunately, sitting in the balcony at BAM is an uncomfortable experience. I heard Irons & Manville well enough, but the other actors not so well.... Read more Read less