One of the great moments in Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan’s long-awaited and under-publicized two-and-a-half-hour film, is when high school student and protagonist Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin) approaches Mr. Aaron (Matt Damon), a well-meaning math teacher she had sex with, as he walks with a female colleague. Abruptly, Lisa tells the two teachers that she had an abortion. Mr. Aaron, who had given into young Lisa’s advances just a few weeks beforehand, tells her she should tell the father, whoever he is. Lisa says that it probably doesn’t matter, the guy is probably sorry. Mr. Aaron says that it doesn’t matter if he’s sorry, that doesn’t mean anything. The guy needs to own up to what he’s done.

The scene shows Lisa as a character in the mode of Hamlet. The story is about Lisa’s coming to terms with her sexuality and her thinking about culpability. Margaret has to make a big decision, and she goes about seeking the knowledge necessary to make this decision in a variety of ways. Approaching Mr. Aaron resembles Hamlet’s attempt to figure out if his stepfather is guilty of killing his father by staging a play and watching his reaction.

Margaret is the story of Upper West Side teenager Lisa Cohen who distracts MTA bus driver Gerry Marretti (Mark Ruffalo) by flirtatiously shouting to him about his cowboy hat as he drives a Manhattan bus. The driver runs a red light, accidentally killing Monica (Allison Janney), a middle-aged female pedestrian. Lisa lies to the police, covering up for the bus driver, and says that the light was green, when it was really red. As the film progresses, Lisa starts to think she made a mistake. She asks every person in her life who she respects whether or not she should go back to the police and tell them she lied. It is the best friend of the deceased—whose name Lisa got from making some phone calls—who eventually gets Lisa to revise her initial statement, saying it’s her responsibility to tell the truth.

Lisa does, and the film explores the question: Is it Lisa’s responsibility to tell the truth? Won’t she be hurting the bus driver, who has a family to raise and protect?

The film’s fidelity to exploring and ultimately answering these questions is one of its many strengths. It is a coming-of-age drama, but a sophisticated one. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan seems genuinely concerned with tracking Lisa’s consciousness, watching her as she considers the situation and learns.  Nearly every scene involving Lisa shows her worldview coming up against someone else’s and Lonergan writes each scene with both knowledge of his characters and real verve. The film’s characters are all intelligent and idiosyncratic. We do see the characters’ foibles through what they say, but one never gets the feeling that Lonergan feels anything but compassion for them.

Lonergan’s subtlety and cleverness as a writer is exemplified in one scene between Lisa’s single mother Joan (J. Smith-Cameron) and her love interest, Ramon (Jean Reno). The two go to an opera, at Ramon’s behest, and the show ends with tuxedoed audience members shouting “Bravi!” “Bravi!” On their walk out, Joan comments on how pretentious the Americans are who shout “Bravii!” Ramon explains that it is customary in Italy to shout “Bravi” because it is the plural of ‘bravo.’

JOAN:  It’s just so pretentious. “Bravi!” “Bravi!” Why can’t they just say bravo?

RAMON:  Well it’s the plural.

JOAN:  I know—

RAMON:  It’s the plural of “Bravo.” It’s what they say to acknowledge the ensemble.

JOAN:  No, I know it’s correct, it just—don’t you think there was something a little pretentious about those people?

RAMON:  Pretentious?

Here, Lonergan subtly dramatizes the new couple’s inability to connect. As one watches the film, it becomes more and more clear that, in addition to the expansion of Lisa’s consciousness, it’s the development of relationships that is driving the movie forward.

Lonergan imbues each of his characters with sparkling intelligence, particularly Lisa, and this makes for exciting and often combative interactions. So often in the film, we don’t know who to root for. When Lisa argues with her mother, Joan, or the deceased’s best friend, Emily (Jeannie Berlin), with whom Lisa eventually partners to bring a lawsuit against the city, it’s difficult to say which of them is acting irrationally. Lonergan isn’t pursuing a simplistic idea of youth being wiser than adults, but he does show the messiness of relationships and the fallibility of people in general, no matter how intelligent they are.  Most effectively, he dramatizes how difficult it is for a child to sort through the varying worldviews held by the adults by whom she is surrounded.

Consider this interaction between Lisa and Emily, the executive of the deceased’s estate. Here, Lisa explains that when she held the dying Monica in her arms, the woman mistook her for her deceased daughter (coincidentally, also named Lisa).

LISA: But then when I found out her daughter was dead, ever since then I keep having this really strong feeling that some way, for those last five minutes I kind of was her daughter. You know? Like maybe that’s the reason I was there: Like in some weird way, this obviously amazing woman got to see her daughter again for a few minutes, right before she died.

EMILY (very dry): I see.  And is she still inhabiting your body? Or did she go right back to the spirit world after it was over?

LISA:  I didn’t mean she was literally inhabiting my body. I don’t believe in all that stuff at all.

EMILY: I don’t give a fuck what you believe in.

LISA:  Oh my god!  Why are you so mad at me!?

EMILY:  Because this is not an opera!

LISA (flushing): What? You think I think this is an opera?

EMILY:  Yes!

LISA:  You think I’m making this into a dramatic situation because I think it’s dramatic?!?

EMILY: I think you’re very young.

LISA:  What does that have to do with anything? If anything I think it means I care more than someone who’s older! Because this kind of thing has never happened to me before!

EMILY:  No, it means you care more easily! There’s a big difference! Except that it’s not you who it’s happening to!

LISA: Yes it is!  I know I’m not the one who was run over—

EMILY: That’s right, you weren’t. And you’re not the one who died of leukemia, and you’re not the one who just died in an earthquake in—Algeria!  But you will be. Do you understand me? You will be. And it’s not an opera and it’s not dramatic.

LISA:  I’m well aware of that!

EMILY:  And this first-blush phony deepness of yours is worth nothing.

The scene starts to wind down when Lisa tells Emily she’s being ‘strident.’ Lisa isn’t sure about her usage of the word—she claims that she didn’t know exactly what it meant, and that she must have misused it.  But Emily is being strident. She also has a point—Lisa does need to be aware that this situation is affecting others more than her, that she is not the center of the universe. But Emily could stand to work on her delivery. Lisa is forced to learn two things here: one of them is about herself, and the other is about Emily.

The brilliance of this film lies in that we sort through the moral dilemma with Lisa; we grow and learn with her.

It is a grueling, glorious and enlightening experience and, for my money, the best one offered in the cinema today.

Eric Rosenblum is the founder, editor and host of www.theartsinnyc.com.  Eric teaches writing and English at Pratt Institute. His writing has appeared in Guernica Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Reader and Playboy.com.

Despite the darkness surrounding the three main characters of Annie Baker’s newest play, The Aliens, the show sustains a playful levity throughout much of its less than two hour runtime.  Under Sam Gold’s direction, The Aliens is most alive when the two leads, a couple of thirty-something male vagabonds, and a seventeen-year-old restaurant employee about to do a stint as a counselor in training at a Jewish band camp, are seen struggling to negotiate their relationships.

This happens most explicitly at the end of the play’s first act when Evan (Dane Dehaan), a rising high school senior, joins his older, hippy-slacker new friends at a makeshift July 4^th literary salon on a picnic bench behind the Vermont restaurant where he works.  Scruffily bearded Jasper (Erin Gann), recently heartbroken, reads aloud from a Bukowski-inspired novel in which his protagonist fondly, if not narcissistically, recalls his girlfriend proclaiming him a genius.  When Jasper finishes reading, his best friend KJ (Michael Chernus) dances in celebration before hugging Jasper ebulliently. “Whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthefuck.  Oh my god,” says KJ, praising his friend.  “That was really cool,” says Evan sincerely.  “That was really really cool.”

Jasper’s novel—a road story written in patches of purple prose—is not good, but we want it to be, just as KJ does. The scene works so well because these men are banding together against the dismal situations of their lives.  It is touching to see them fulfill one another’s emotional needs.  KJ needs to believe that Jasper is a great novelist, and Jasper needs KJ to believe it. It is a privilege to witness this odd friendship unfold before our eyes.

The scene’s intensity grows when Jasper won’t let KJ drink from Evan’s stolen bottle of peppermint schnapps and we learn that KJ has an alcohol problem.  “This is so fucking pointless,” shouts KJ.  “I could march over to the liquor store and buy whatever I want.  I’m thirty fucking years old!”  This conflict is compelling—there is a dangerous rift between the close friends.  The fear is that they might not be able to save one another.

When the play takes a surprising turn in the second act, however, the drama seems to lose its way. While still compelling, the characters make a bit less sense in the play’s second half, and we have less reason to care about them.

Nonetheless, all three performances are superb.  Most notably Michael Chernus as KJ captures just the right combination of innocence, wide-eyed enthusiasm and desperate sadness.

And one more thing is clear: Annie Baker writes lovely characters and lovely scenes. There are plenty of both in The Aliens.  Watching these three take care of one another is gratifying.  Baker finds subtle drama amongst unusual people, in surprising places and situations, where most of us wouldn’t think to look.

Written by Annie Baker and directed by Sam Gold, The Aliens is at the Rattlestick Theater from April 14th until May 23^rd.

James Spader, David Alan Grier and Richard Thomas in Race.

David Mamet’s newest drama, Race, currently showing at the Ethel Barrymore, begins with black attorney Henry Brown (David Alan Grier), of the high profile law firm Lawson and Brown, lecturing his potential client, the white and wealthy Charles Strickland (Richard Thomas), about black people.  Charles has been accused of raping a black woman and his lawyers-to-be are trying to get the facts.  Henry’s monologue, ostensibly an attempt to intimidate Charles into honesty and submissiveness, is also an accusation that the defendant is a thinly veiled racist:

HENRY: You want to tell me about Black folks?

I’ll help you: O.J.  Was guilty.  Rodney

King was in the wrong place, but the

police have the right to use force.

Malcolm X was noble when he renounced

violence.  Prior to that he was

misguided.  Dr.  King was, of course, a

saint.  He was killed by a jealous

husband, and you had a maid when you were

young who was better to you than your

mother.  She raised you.  You’ve never

fucked a black girl, but one sat near you

in science class, and she was actually

rather shy.

Brown assumes that Strickland sides with the cops who beat Rodney King, and he posits that Charles subscribes to right-wing conspiracy theories about who killed MLK.  The most pertinent detail in the opening monologue, though, is the last one.  Brown assumes that Strickland was surprised by what he suspects to be Strickland’s one experience with a black girl because it defied what he had previously held to be true about black girls.

As he speaks, though, Henry is exhibiting the very behavior of which he is accusing Charles Strickland: making assumptions about a person based on his ethnicity and class.

While it seems initially that Race is about whether Lawson and Brown can successfully defend Strickland, the real dramatic question posed by Mamet is: Will the play’s protagonist, the cynical but brilliant attorney Jack Lawson (James Spader), get tripped up by his own brand of racial profiling?

Lawson’s journey in Race is not merely to defend his client, but also to navigate his professional relationship with his pretty, black assistant and protégée, Susan (Kerry Washington), who accuses Lawson of racial profiling. She gets her way by playing on Lawson’s sense of guilt as a white man living in a world where white men have a history of abusing power.  Despite his shrewdness, Lawson overlooks Susan’s disloyalty to the firm because of his feelings of self-reproach as well as the fear that he will be accused of racism.

Mamet creates drama not so much by questioning the morality of racial profiling, but rather by questioning its usefulness.  Each of the principal characters in Race is depicted as using ethnic stereotypes as guideposts for his or her actions.  Susan is convinced of Strickland’s guilt because of his whiteness; Henry Brown is convinced that Strickland is a racist; and Jack Lawson has a habit of summing people up in a hurry based on demographics.

Consider the following interaction between Lawson and Susan, after Lawson discovers that a Latina hotel chambermaid, whose testimony is crucial to his defense of Strickland, has gone to the district attorney to revise her description of the room where the rape occurred:

Jack: You’re telling me, some half-literate illegal hotel maid

suddenly takes it upon herself to go back to the police…

Susan: “Half-literate…”

Jack (off sheet of paper): Rosa fucking Gonzales. (To phone)  I have to call you         back.

SUSAN: “Half-literate.” Hotel Maid.

JACK: Can we call things by their name?  Her social security number is false, her employment application is written in a misspelled scrawl, she is illegal.  God

bless her, that’s what she is.

Lawson’s coarse assessment of the “hotel maid” is offensive, but he seems to redeem himself a moment later when he demonstrates he is merely describing in bald terms the woman’s cultural background.  Or does he redeem himself?  Mamet ultimately shows Lawson as having made a mistake by following assumptions based on the hotel maid’s race.

The play’s ending may remind Mamet fans of Speed-the-Plow, Mamet’s tale of two Hollywood film producers, the more powerful of whom almost makes a career-ending error when he over-sympathizes with a scheming female before being saved by his more level-headed partner, whose desire to make money has not been so disastrously clouded.  In both Speed-the-Plow and Race, a boys’ club is almost penetrated by a dangerous, self-interested and attractive woman.  It is surprising to see Mamet recycle this dramatic structure—here it feels like the use of a deus ex machina; Susan’s character doesn’t seem sufficiently developed in the first part of the play to justify her actions in its conclusion.

Also surprising in Race is the pervading assumption shared by the characters that all black people hate white people and all white people are out to screw black people.  Consider the following exchange, in which Jack Lawson proclaims blacks and whites to be mortal enemies:

Jack: I’ll prove it to you. Black know things no white man knows.

Susan: Tell me one thing.

Jack:  That the whites will screw you. Any chance we get. We cannot help

ourselves.

Susan: Now tell me why.

Jack:  Because we know you hate us.

Similarly, Henry Brown says to Strickland  in Act Two:

Henry: “Do I hate Whitefolks?” Z’at your question? “Do all black people hate

whites?” Let me put your mind at rest.  You bet we do. White folks are “scared?”  All to the good. You understand?

This feels like an unsubtle idea, and, although Mamet is famous for using rhetorical devices to present and examine bold concepts, he often looks at an idea from all angles—to the point where it’s difficult to understand where the play itself stand on the issue.  Most conspicuously missing, though, is a dissenting opinion.  Two characters in the play share the above assumption—they express it repeatedly—and no one challenges them.

Lawson and Brown’s assumption that all blacks hate whites calls to mind the paranoid but earnest opening line of Mamet’s 2006 book on modern-day Judaism, The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-Hatred, and the Jews.  Mamet writes: “As you have taken the time to read and I to write this book, I believe we should be frank: The world hates the Jews.  The world has always and will continue to do so.”

Does Mamet really believe this?  In an essay about Race in the Times last September, the playwright quotes from a joke comedian Chris Rock made about the American public being surprised that Reverend Jeremiah Wright was a 75-year-old black man who hates white people.   “Is there any other kind of a 75-year-old black man?” Rock asked the audience.

“This rang true to me,” Mamet writes in his Times essay. But it doesn’t feel as true coming out of the mouths of Brown and Lawson, two men in their mid-forties, who came of age after the Civil Rights Era.  Perhaps this facet of Lawson and Brown’s beliefs is congruous with the fact that all these characters live and die by racially-based assumptions, but there are additional moments when the lawyers’ dialogue seems out of line with what otherwise seems to be razor sharp intelligence.  Take Lawson’s summations of the different types of self-disdain that blacks and Jews experience: “All people deal with shame or guilt,” he says.  “Jews deal with guilt.  Blacks deal with shame.  It’s two of the wonderful ways we metabolize feelings of inferiority.”  Of course, the last line here is lovely, but Lawson provides no useful distinction between shame and guilt.  And in regards Jews having guilt, he seems to be merely repeating an age-old cliché.

Race is most successful when Lawson or Brown incisively dissect the legal system as they scheme how to best defend their client.  “There are no ‘facts of the case,’” Lawson explains to Charles Strickland.  “There are two opposing fictions.  Which the opposing teams each seek to impose upon the jury.  That is part of the wisdom you’d be paying us for.” As he did with real estate sales in Glengarry Glen Ross, higher education in Oleanna, and the Hollywood machine in Speed-the-Plow, in Race, Mamet brilliantly lays bare the legal profession.

Race, which seems unusually broad and blunt for the title of a Mamet play (think how esoteric are his titles Speed-the-Plow and Oleanna), is perhaps a double entendre meant to indicate that the true subject of this drama is the one that Mamet returns to again and again: the rat race.  Despite the play’s shortcomings, Race is a bold and nuanced dramatic meditation on race relations and Mamet’s most exciting drama since The Cryptogram in 1995.

The particular brand of emotional devastation that comes at the end of viewing a great production of either of Tennessee Williams’s two best plays, The Glass Menagerie or A Streetcar Named Desire, depends on the audience developing a sympathetic bond with the female lead.  In The Glass Menagerie, we watch fragile innocent Laura Wingfield on the verge of romance with her high school crush.  In A Streetcar Named Desire, we hope that Blanche Dubois can escape her past and find salvation and a husband in the sturdy and seemingly kind Harold ‘Mitch’ Mitchell.  We look on as Blanche and Laura come so close to having their prayers answered and then we must watch in terror as all hope is taken away.

“Deliberate cruelty is not forgivable,” says Blanche in Streetcar, “It is the one unforgivable thing in my opinion and it is the one thing of which I have never, never been guilty.”  But, of course, she has been guilty of deliberate cruelty.  As she reports, Blanche found her young husband with another man and publicly humiliated him for it, leading to his suicide.  This act of cruelty is paralleled by Stanley’s later deed, when he exposes Blanche for having been the town floozy of Laurel, Mississipi.  Both Blanche and her deceased husband are victims of the prejudices of a chauvinistic society, and both Blanche and Stanley are envoys, enforcing that society’s ideals.  These circumstances account for the heartbreak we experience at the end of a great production of Streetcar—we watch an individual, however flawed she may be, destroyed by the society in which she lives.  

Part of the reason for Streetcar’s enduring status as a classic—and there are many, many reasons—is that it provides two of the juiciest roles available in contemporary theater: Blanche Dubois and Stanley Kowalski.  Cate Blanchett seems born to play Blanche Dubois.  Her high cheekbones signal noble origins and feminine grace; her voice is rich, husky, and almost regal; her svelte physique is the perfect embodiment of a woman who both believes absolutely in maintaining appearances and seems to exist on a liquid diet.  Blanchett gives a stellar performance and captures with particular acuteness the superiority and sensuality inherent in the role.  As Blanche Dubois, Blanchett owns the stage, alternately fretting, bossing around her sister and seducing every man in sight..

Joel Edgerton, as Stanley Kowalski, is also perfectly cast.  With his massive arms and chest, Edgerton exudes a sense of bravado and menace.  When Edgerton’s Stanley ‘clears’ the dinner table by whipping his plate against the wall, we shrink in our seats just as Blanche and Stella do.  The Australian film star adds a wonderful flourish to this scene by spitting a mouthful of food onto the table in defiance of Blanche and Stella’s manners.  And when Stella and Stanley paw at one another in bed, Stanley rubs his hand on Stella’s crotch.  Edgerton’s Stanley is also something of a dolt.  I didn’t know that there was comedy in Stanley’s ranting about Louisiana’s Napoleonic Code, but this performance makes these lines funny.  Edgerton’s vulnerability allows us to see Stanley as a character not quite as intelligent as he thinks.

The sexual chemistry between Blanche and Stanley drives much of the play’s first half and accounts for the finest scene of the evening—the poker night.  In Ullmann’s hands, Stanley’s drunken tantrum seems the result of jealousy over Blanche.  The poker crew stops playing, and Stanley watches Blanche, Stella and Mitch listen to music.  He rushes into the bedroom where Blanche sits in her slip, staring at him provocatively as she blocks the radio.  It is a stunning, unforgettable image.

The melodramatic tone of much of the production’s second half, though, overpowers the play’s more subtle naturalistic elements.  When Mitch unbuttons his clothes to get from Blanche what he’s ‘been missing all summer,’ the attention-grabbing gesture is striking but cartoonish.  The grandiosity of the production’s more eventful incidents makes the less action-oriented ones—conversations between Blanche and Stella, for example–seem dull.  Ultimately, the emphasis on creating a spectacle lessens our sympathetic bond with Blanche.

The production’s visual and sonic elements, however, are triumphant.  The second floor of the apartment building features a long windowless stretch of grey façade, more reminiscent of the communist block than the French Quarter.  This is a strong and interesting choice by set designer Ralph Myers as it helps to convey the squalid conditions in which the Kowalskis live, as well as Blanche’s sense of imprisonment.

No contemporary playwright makes more use of weather than Tennessee Williams—consider how many times the characters comment on the heat in Streetcar—and the sense of the outside elements here is presented with a tender poetic quality.  “Don’t you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour—but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands—and who knows what to do with it?” Blanche asks.  Lighting designer Nick Schlieper captures just the right shade of the moon’s blue glow coming through the Kowalskis’ windows.  Through these windows we also see the occasional jagged bouncing shine of the streetcar named Desire’s headlight passing by.

Similarly, during the final showdown between Blanche and Stanley, a loud beating of jazz drums transforms into the rumbling sounds of the streetcar, then changes back to the original rhythmic percussions.  In these details, director Liv Ullmann and sound designer Paul Charlier innovatively capture a startling combination of magic and reality.

A Streetcar Named Desire is at the Brooklyn Academy of Music until December  20^th.  It is written by Tennessee Williams and staged by the Sydney Theatre Company.  This production is directed by Liv Ullmann.

During the course of the nearly three hour long world premiere of The Starry Messenger, writer and director Kenneth Lonergan’s newest play, we witness the protagonist, Mark (Matthew Broderick) comfort his mistress Angela (Catalina Sandino Moreno) who has just lost her 9-year-old son; we see Angela, in her job as a hospital nurse, kiss a dying 72-year-old man (Merwin Goldsmith) on the lips to comfort him; and we see Mark repeatedly tell his wife Anne (J.Smith Cameron) how much he loves her, as he assures her he’s not on the verge of asking for divorce.  Throughout The Starry Messenger, Lonergan showcases his characters as they baldly express themselves, often on the verge of or in the midst of tears.  But the portrayal of all this emoting is in no way saccharine; there is a painful irony beneath each of the characters’ sincere expression of their feelings.

The Starry Messenger, which takes its name from Galileo’s 1610 treatise on the wonders of the telescope, takes place in 1995, when the original building that housed New York’s Hayden planetarium was about to be torn down.  Mark, who long ago settled for a career as a City College astronomy professor rather than pursuing the field work about which he is truly passionate, meets an attractive 28-year-old single mom and begins sleeping with her on the sly.  The play covers a month or so of their lives, and the production features a single set with four different sections.  The action drifts fluidly back and forth between scenes in Mark’s classroom, his apartment, Angela’s apartment, and the hospital room of Angela’s patient Norman, a 72-year-old dying of cancer.  

The play’s funniest and most telling moment is when urban dilettante Ian (Kieran Culkin), Mark’s young Introduction to Astronomy student at the Hayden Planetarium, offers him a mid-semester critique of his teaching.   The comedy of Ian’s earnest but arrogant attempt to offer his teacher guidance quickly turns to pathos when the student leaves the room and Mark reads aloud from the critique.  “…I have to say it is truly amazing how anyone could possibly take such an incredibly pedestrian approach to what has to be the single  most expansive, awe-inspiring subject of them all,” Mark reads aloud.  “But you do. Almost as if you thought the stars themselves were boring.”

Ian’s observation accurately reflects Mark’s inability to find magic in his life.   Mark struggles throughout the play to discover something greater than the mundanity of his everyday, but Lonergan shows this as an often hazardous and futile journey.  When Mark makes a conscious effort to convey his love of astronomy to his students, he is interrupted by a loud-mouthed woman (Stephanie Cannon) asking irritating and irrelevant questions.  And when he comes home from work, his wife bombards him with the boring details of their holiday plans.  Mark can only find wonder in adultery and, as Lonergan makes clear, this has its own consequences.

Set Designer Derek McClane’s stunning backdrop to the set, a large digital screen that extends the width and height of the stage, is emblematic of the lyricism in Lonergan’s writing.  Between sets, the audience is treated to glimpses of the wondrous cosmos as the screen shifts from images of a nocturnal New York skyline from the perspective of Central Park, to depictions of the galaxies in the night sky.

The influence of Chekhov is evident in the biting irony beneath the tender moments of The Starry Messenger and also in the play’s ending.  While the characters are offered a temporary resolution to the play’s conflicts, the audience is assured only that the pain and difficulty in these lives will continue long after the play is over.

The performances here are all superb, with standouts by Broderick and Cameron Smith, who both capture the humanity in their flawed characters.  I haven’t seen everything on stage in Manhattan this season, but my guess is that there’s nothing that comes close to topping this show.  You should see it.

The Starry Messenger is at the Acorn Theater, 410 West 42nd Street, Manhattan; (212) 279-4200. Through Dec. 12.

Seen from the perspective of the play’s protagonist, a middle-aged professor named John, David Mamet’s Oleanna is a nightmarish tale; John’s fervent and earnest attempts to educate and connect with Carol, his failing undergraduate student, backfire when she files a sexual harassment complaint with the tenure committee.  Suddenly, everything in John’s life is in danger of evaporating: his job, the house he’s about to buy, his reputation, and the respect and admiration of his young son.  All because of his innocuous efforts to educate his student.

Or are his actions so innocuous?  Is there something insidious and condescending about his offers to ‘help’ Carol?  Is it hypocritical of John to openly mock academic conventions in his course while simultaneously employing them?   Does Carol have a point about John’s patriarchal pomposity, or is she just using her newly discovered power to express pent-up anger unrelated to John’s actions?  

These are the questions that Mamet pursues with great dramatic craftiness in Oleanna, making it arguably the most powerful and intelligent of his works. The play is most exciting when both sides of the argument are presented with credibility; a successful production of this classically structured tragedy should have audience members rooting for John to persevere as they understand, simultaneously, that Carol’s arguments have merit.

Director Doug Hughes takes an even hand in this compelling production, and both characters come off sympathetically.  Bill Pullman’s John is appropriately agitated and concerned; he shows the professor as trying desperately throughout Act One to make up for his callous criticism of Carol’s writing.  His face betrays a trying effort to both repress and articulate his feelings and ideas in a clear and professorial manner.

Julia Stiles’ portrayal of the notoriously difficult role of Carol is also impressive. The actress finds some tender notes of humanity in Carol that I had not previously seen hit, but this is the third time I’ve seen Oleanna performed (including the film version and a production at Chicago’s Stage Left Theater), and I’ve never seen anyone really nail the part of Carol.  Stiles gives it an excellent go here, but her depiction of the plaintive student doesn’t have enough of a back-story.  The character claims at the beginning of the play to come from a lower socio-economic class, but this fact is in no way accounted for in Stiles’s performance.   It ends up being difficult to reconcile the leap she makes from not understanding the word ‘paradigm’ in the first act to sounding like a Rhodes Scholar in the second and third acts.

The production’s set is an enormous university office with windows that look out onto a woody, picturesque campus that is interestingly only visible between sets.  Once the action is about to begin, large metal blinds slowly cover the windows, blocking out the campus scenery with a loud continuous screech, evocative of a piece of heavy machinery that needs to be fixed.

The production also suffers from too much movement on the stage; the actors circle around each other incessantly, creating a tension that doesn’t help develop what’s happening between the two characters.  At one point, Carol moves behind John’s desk in what seems to be a too-obvious bit of metaphorical blocking.

In the show’s final moment, John is pushed not merely to violence, but to sadism, as if to show how low a person will go when oppressed by a relentless power structure.  The climax in this production is upsetting not because we care so much about John’s fate, but because the violence seemed sad and preventable.

Despite the fogginess of Hughes’ vision, this is a competent production of Mamet’s extraordinary play.

David Mamet’s Oleanna, Directed by Doug Hughes at the John Golden Theater on Broadway, starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles.

Pantheon, which constitutes the majority of the evening, feels more like Mel Brooks than it does David Mamet.  Its major draw is Brian Murray, cast as the lusty, aging troupe leader Strabo, who could entertain for infinity with his volume-speaking facial expressions alone.  Murray’s performance is reminiscent of Zero Mostel in the original film version of The Producers: he sputters nearly every line in exasperation or desperation.  The supporting characters are cast with a similar aptness.   JJ Johnston is particularly wonderful as a Mafioso-like tough guy who, while keeping watch over the imprisoned Strabo and his crew, tries to negotiate a painless death for the troupe if they’ll give up the group’s studly acting student for a half hour of sexual mischief.  The show is gleefully not ‘about’ anything but getting laughs; don’t go in expecting the topical fodder provided by the two other Mamet  productions, Oleanna and Race, about to hit New York stages this season.

In addition to Pantheon, is the world premiere of Mamet’s 10 or 15 minute-long one-act, School, a more traditionally Mametish game of conversational ping pong between two school administrators who debate the merits and nuances of the sustainability movement in relation to an art project done by elementary school students on recycled paper.  “Wouldn’t it just be better to save the paper?” one of them wonders.  They also discuss the ethics of making sex offenders’ names public and the tactics they might employ to restrict a crossing guard who they think is a child molester.  This part of the evening also turns oddly sexual as the play makes light of one of the two administrators who feels that the lower school children intentionally wear provocative clothing to mock his desires.

This very short (about 80 minute-long) evening is worth it for Mamet fans who want to see the playwright’s comedic skills.  It was probably the funniest night I’ve ever spent in the theater, but, still, it didn’t leave me wanting more.  See it if you’re up for something rowdy and fun.

Visit the Atlantic Theater Company’s website for more information.

In the second act of director David Cromer’s production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, currently enjoying an open run at the Barrow Street Theater, the character of the Stage Manager, performed by Cromer himself, interrupts the play’s main storyline to reflect, as he is wont to do, on the nature of love and marriage: 

“You know how it is: you’re twenty-one or twenty-two and you make some decisions; then whissh! You’re seventy: you’ve been a lawyer for fifty years, and that white-haired lady at your side has eaten over fifty thousand meals with you.”

 As he speaks, the Stage Manager picks up a boot from the floor and whacks it onto the table, thus replacing the ‘whissh!’ specified in the text with a startling ‘wham!’  This emphasis – seemingly intended to shock the viewer into awareness of the dangers of floating through life, asleep – corresponds to the other idiosyncrasies of this surprising production.  In Cromer’s hands, Our Town is not folksy or cutesy; it is daring and cautionary.  Cromer’s Stage Manager does not wear a top hat, he has no beard, and does not smoke a pipe.  He is an everyman, who speaks in ominous tones, wears an untucked button-down shirt and jeans, and tells viewers of the fleeting, unpredictable, often sad nature of life in the same dry, matter-of-fact tone with which he tells us of the physical geography of the invented town, Grovers Corners, New Hampshire.

In addition to the flourishes of this production, the show has a raw, Chicago-style, shoe-string budget feel.  The small square-shaped stage area in the room’s dead center is surrounded by five or so rows of chairs on each side.  The room’s bright lights remain on throughout the show, which, like the slammed boot, make sure that the audience is awake and aware.  Emily and George’s childhood bedrooms are represented by having the two teenagers sit on chairs on top of what are used in other scenes as their families’ breakfast tables.  And the theater’s second level, used in other Barrow Street shows as balcony seating for viewers, is transformed in this production into the church in which town drunk Simon Stimson practices with the choir.

There is an exciting innovation at the end of this production, the secret of which has been protected by the city’s critics.  I will not reveal it.  I will say that, thematically, the surprise towards the show’s end is in line with the other embellishments heretofore discussed.  This show is powerful because Cromer makes decisions based on a clear, uncompromised point of view regarding what this play means.  This is a lively, exciting and insightful take on Thornton Wilder’s Pullitzer Prize-winning 1938 classic.

The combination of this blocking with the relish evident in Yasha’s delivery is funny, and it’s exemplary of Mendes’ ability to find and create humor in unexpected moments. The production is full of instances like this, in which Mendes accentuates Chekhov’s dialogue by either having actors engage in attention-grabbing behavior or by making emphatic use of the show’s beautiful high-tech set.

However, as clever and inventive as Mendes’ direction proves to be, the audience’s emotional connection to the show is sometimes diminished by the director’s too heavy hand.

In 1904, Chekhov famously admonished Stanislavsky for directing his final work as if it were a political drama, not, as the author specified in the play’s subtitle, “A Comedy in Four Acts.” Perhaps because of Chekhov’s criticisms, the great director reportedly lost some faith in his production of “The Cherry Orchard,” and resorted to fabricating fanfare by opening the play on Chekhov’s 44th birthday and using the event to celebrate the famed author’s career (Chekhov himself skipped opening night, until he was sent a note during intermission begging him to come.)

Unlike Stanislavsky, Mendes does not seem to have lost faith in his own production, but one wonders if he has enough faith in the power of Chekhov’s words. Something is lost in Mendes’ reliance on the bright white lights that surround the stage, used to represent the cherry blossoms of Liubov Ranevskaya’s (Sinead Cusack) childhood memories. Solemn music plays as Liubov delivers her nostalgic monologue, but watching her feels something like watching a mourner at a stranger’s funeral; it’s clear that she’s sad, and the reason for her tears is obvious enough, but one cannot share in her pain.

Similarly, in Act Three, the peasant-turned-businessman Lopakhin (the otherwise excellent Simon Russell Beale) flies into a rage after boasting that he’s the new owner of the cherry orchard. He runs around the ballroom and slams chairs to the ground, ostensibly expressing his mixed emotions over having to buy the cherry orchard out from under his beloved Liubov. But his tantrum seems unearned and in contrast to what is specified in the play’s text. The excessive action serves to obscure rather than elucidate the nuances of Lopakhin’s emotional state.There are, however, aspects of this show that Chekhov would have cheered. The cast is generally spectacular. The deafness and rigidity of ancient butler Firs (Richard Easton) is played with a wonderful buoyancy, the pompous ineffectuality of Gaev (Paul Jesson) is a source of great humor and Beale’s mensch-like Lopakhin carries the show. The play’s first act moves by swiftly and with great humor. But in the second half, the drama melts into melodrama, and no amount of stagecraft or striking images can make up for the absence of the subtle, repeated realization of how poignant these characters’ lives are.

Eric Rosenblum’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Guernica Magazine, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Reader. He currently teaches writing and English at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

The play’s current Broadway revival was cast with a similar sense of irony and savvy. In an era when a cable television show such as “The Sopranos” regularly provokes comparisons to the work of Shakespeare, and the series “The Wire” is said to embody the principles of Greek tragedy, the line between art and entertainment is more obscure now than ever. With this seemingly in mind, “Speed-the-Plow” director Neil Pepe cast actor Jeremy Piven, of HBO’s “Entourage,” and Elisabeth Moss, of AMC’s “Mad Men,” along with Broadway actor, Raul Esparza, as the show’s stars. Piven’s and Moss’ roles on television closely mirror their roles in the play and the subject matter of “Speed-the-Plow” echoes that of the stars’ TV shows. “Entourage” is a comedy that depicts the Hollywood elite reveling in Dionysian excess, while “Mad Men” deconstructs the gender politics of American society prior to the sexual revolution. Both shows are tremendously entertaining and insightful; they thematically link to Mamet’s work in a myriad of ways.

“Speed-the-Plow” is the story of Hollywood producer Bobby Gould (Piven) facing a dilemma: he can green-light his friend Charlie Fox’s surefire hit prison-buddy movie or he can attempt to find meaning and further the career of his secretary and sudden love interest, Karen, by giving the go-ahead to an adaptation of a literary novel that depicts the apocalypse. The tension of the play rides on Gould’s decision: Will he, at Karen’s urging, make art or will he continue to produce empty, dehumanizing schlock?

Because Bobby Gould’s predicament doesn’t feel quite dire enough (in this production it seems feasible that he could green-light both movies if he really wanted), “Speed-the-Plow” doesn’t inspire the “cleansing awe” that Mamet claims in his treatise on drama, Three Uses of the Knife, is the purpose of theater.

Mamet, in fact, seems to acknowledge that “Speed-the-Plow” falls short of theater’s ultimate aim in a New York Times article from September of this year in which he argues that drama’s sole purpose is to entertain:

“But what about High Art?” Mamet writes. “I, personally, don’t think it is the lookout of drama. I believe that the business of America is business, and the aim of drama is to put tushies in the seats; and that the best way to do that is to write a ripping yarn, with a bunch of sex, some nifty plot twists and a lot of snappy dialogue. If you are looking for such, I suggest “Speed-the-Plow.””

“Speed-the-Plow” may not have a bunch of sex (though there is some, and Esparza’s Charlie Fox does hump Gould’s desk at one point), but there are some fairly nifty plot twists and some of Mamet’s best dialogue ever:

Fox: Life in the movie business is like the, is like the beginning of a new love affair: it’s full of surprises, and you’re constantly getting fucked.
Karen: But why should it all be garbage?
Fox: Why? Why should nickels be bigger than dimes? It just is.

The play comes most alive when Piven and Esparza share the stage; the characters appear to have real affection for each other and their conversation is jovial and funny. In Pepe’s hands, the play’s pressing question is not whether or not Gould will stop making crappy movies; it’s whether or not he will betray his friend for a woman.

Finally, it’s exciting to see Piven show his range as an actor as he portrays a character who is vulnerable, boyish, and confused. “Speed-the-Plow” offers voyeuristic pleasure for fans of “Entourage,” who will enjoy considering how Bobby Gould differs from Piven’s Ari Gold.

The play’s ending, as well as its high-profile casting, seems to endorse Mamet’s idea that the purpose of drama is to put tushies in the seats. Like Madonna’s pop ballads, this production straddles the line between art and entertainment. “Speed-the-Plow” does not incite the sublime heartbreak of Mametian plays such as “Oleanna” or “Glengarry, Glen Ross,” but it does exhibit the master’s wordplay at its most raucously hilarious and that, combined with strong performances by Esparza and Piven, make this show worth seeing. Even if it is the brand names that really put the tushies in the seats.

Eric Rosenblum’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Guernica Magazine, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Reader. He currently teaches writing and English at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.