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Hedda Gabler

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
Lauren Demerath in ‘Hedda Gabler: A Play with Music.’ (Photo: Austin D. Oie)

“Originally staged in Germany in 1891, 12 years after the premiere of A Doll’s House, Hedda Gabler reinforced Ibsen’s growing reputation for realism and social provocativeness. The idea that a woman of privilege would mess with the lives and minds of others in her social and family circles — from a need for entertainment, spite, existential ennui, or all of the above — was quite subversive at the turn of the 20th century. In 2020, a time when women running for the nation’s highest office still have to worry about ‘likability,’ not much social edge has been shaved from Hedda’s unapologetic, mercenary approach to create an engaging existence for herself.

In a prosaic vacuum, the character remains easy to experience as a singular act of naked and arbitrary cruelty. However, the TUTA Theatre reimagining, as adapted and directed by artistic director Jacqueline Stone, takes away that audience privilege, with the inventive addition of an angry rock opera device that lets us deeper inside the mind of a living, breathing borderline personality disorder.

Giving theatergoers hints of Alanis Morrisette’s seminal 1995 feminist scream, Jagged Little Pill (recently adapted into a Broadway musical), with a dash of Trent Reznor’s disaffected nihilism, this take on Hedda leverages strategically deployed musical numbers to help audience members get at the “why?” that drives the title character to depraved indifference. From the mournful, wistful ballad that opens the first act, through the strobe light-flashing, bass-pulsing growls that predict Hedda’s ultimate downfall, the TUTA production team takes an interesting, if not always transparent approach, to filling in the character blanks left by Ibsen.”

Read the full review on The Broadway Blog.

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A Doll’s House

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
(l to r) )Amira Danan and Gage Wallace in Raven Theatre’s ‘A Doll’s House.’ (Photo: Michael Brosilow)

“The play’s denouement still has the power to produce audible gasps in the 21st century. The audience, privy only to the superficial thoughts and actions of both Nora and Torval, becomes trained to take both spouses at face value. Director Lauren Shouse and her talented cast prove that a well-known conclusion can still offer genuine surprise, dropping subtle breadcrumbs throughout the play that suggest Nora’s ‘Aha!’ moment is subconscious work years in the making.

Torval — shallow, unimaginative and condescending — is a man who enjoys telling anyone who will listen about his hard work and moral rectitude. He is at his most interesting when interacting with longtime family friend and secret Nora acolyte, Dr. Rank (Terry Gallagher). Rank, physically aggrieved and cynical, is all-too-aware that life’s pleasures are ephemeral and meant to be enjoyed. While his bond with the hedonist-lite and beautiful Nora makes perfect sense, it’s hard to understand the character’s amusement with kill-joy Torval.

Yet Wallace allows his character to display endearing flashes of heroine worship toward his wife that hint at greater, if repressed, emotional depth. His clear, superficially besotted yearning must have weakened the knees of a young Nora, as undoubtedly as it does the audience. It is easy to love someone who routinely espouses one’s perfection.

But thanks to Danan’s commanding performance, we sense that Nora never fully trusted her husband’s placement of her on that pedestal. It’s evident that she sees herself as window dressing, albeit fluent in niceties. Danan infuses Nora’s Act I trifling dialogue with a sort of omniscient dread that makes a familiar journey feel novel. This character sees it all coming – even if she doesn’t know it until the moment she picks up her small bag and walks out the front door.”

Read the full review on The Broadway Blog.

Roe

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
Kate Middleton in ‘Roe’ at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. (Photo: Liz Lauren)

“Middleton creates a fully realized portrait of Norma as sexually and ideologically conflicted, the product of a broken home, and an uneducated addict with a shifting moral code. The multi-dimensional portrayal is engaging. The real Norma was no saint. Neither was she a villain. Instead, like so many impoverished women trapped by society’s legal control of female reproduction, she needed options, support and validation. Middleton’s interpretation of these dramatic tensions gives the audience a Norma McCorvey who is desperate for acceptance, aware of her limitations, and always in search of her personal truth.

That said, some of the play’s other characters are difficult to endure, and in the quest of fair and balanced dogma, the playwright performs too many narrative contortions to make them work. For example, there’s Flip (Ryan Kitley), the “minister of the Free Methodist Church and future head of Operation Rescue.” Norma meets Flip and his family while volunteering, post-Roe v. Wade decision, at an abortion clinic. Audiences can see Flip for the manipulative, flim-flam spiritual practitioner that he is, just as easily as we understand why Norma is seduced by the ideas of forgiveness, salvation and community.

So why for God’s sake (pun intended), does Loomer bother with Flip’s reformed, dissipated youth backstory? It’s frustrating, inauthentic, and seems to imply, however unintentionally, that Flip now walks the right moral path and is a fit judge of Norma’s spiritual journey. Egads.  Hasn’t she endured enough without the extra heavy helping of mansplaining?”

Read the full review on The Broadway Blog.

SHEEPDOG

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
(l to r) Drew Schad and Leslie Ann Sheppard in ‘SHEEPDOG.’ (Photo: Lowell Thomas)

“Should we care about the story of the police shooter in the aftermath of his or her life-claiming error, however well-intentioned? I’m not sure I would have otherwise considered the question, but SHEEPDOG dares audience members to get invested in Drew, even if we can’t fully understand or forgive.

In a display of dramatic brass, Artigue, a white male writer, successfully creates Amina, an independent, intelligent, tough, self-made African-American woman. She is the vehicle for our collective investigation of the complicated socio-economic and racial dynamics that so frequently end in the death of young black men. But she is also a fully-realized human being — in love, ready to start a family with her trusted “person,” a fellow servant of justice and the public.

The choice for a white male author to put this much burden on a black, female character could be interpreted as an act of unearned creative privilege. And in the hands of a less deft production company, the deployment of a black woman to take us through an “All Lives Matter” story might irritate. But in this production, it absolutely works for a few important reasons, including the narrative voice which belongs completely to Amina, forcefully articulated by Sheppard’s performance.”

Read the full review on The Broadway Blog.

Stop Kiss

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
(l to r) Kylie Anderson and Flavia Pallozzi in ‘Stop Kiss.’ (Photo: Patrick McLean)

“As the play opens, the audience meets two very different New York City women. Callie (Flavia Pallozzi) is a sophisticated on-air traffic reporter who stayed in the Big Apple after graduating college. Callie knows all the good restaurants and maintains a somewhat messy friends-with-benefits arrangement with her longtime friend George (Shane Novoa Rhoades). She lacks real passion for any of it, assuming that existential boredom is a tradeoff for the sensory stimulation of urban life.

Bright, excited and freshly relocated from St. Louis, Sara (Kylie Anderson) is a sheltered free spirit ready to leave her mark on New York. A committed public school teacher who has already tried and rejected heteronormative suburban life with her ex-fiancé Peter (Joe Faifer, in a dual role), Sara is looking for something more. After a rather pedantic establishment of their friendship rooted in cat-sitting, it’s clear that Sara and Callie have simmering chemistry.

The structure of the play’s narrative fully supports the organic, but complicated development of the women’s relationship. Their mutual attraction becomes apparent, then the action and timeline flip to a violent incident months later, which explicitly calls upon the integrity, resilience and heretofore undefined commitment of both characters. As the production moves back and forth between the nascent days of Sara and Callie’s attraction, and the “after,” which must necessarily change everything, we can follow the halting emotional and spiritual investment the characters make in one another, finding it as relatedly imperfect as our own unpredictable experiences.”

Read the full review on The Broadway Blog