A Hard Look at Stage Diversity Dos and Don'ts

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Another impossibly busy weekend is staring me in the face so I don’t have time to tell you about any of the recent shows I’ve seen. But I have managed to steal a few minutes to put together a different kind of post for today. It’s a little photo essay on two trends that really bothered me this past season.

In what I assume is an attempt to add some diversity to their shows, too many playwrights and directors are falling back on some old stereotypes: the big sassy black woman and the oversexed Asian woman. 

Nobody cares about diversity in the theater more than I do. It's important that we have people of color on stage and behind the scenes. So I try to applaud producers, directors and writers who include them. But this trend is diversity done wrong.
Now I’m going to be honest, it’s uncomfortable for me to talk about this because  (1) I don’t think it’s malicious; although I do think it’s creatively lazy. And (2) I don’t want to talk anybody out of work; I appreciate the eager-to-get-any-acting-job bind that these actors are in and the majority of them do as much as they can with the material they’re given. 
Still, I’ll bet they’d love to play some other kinds of parts. I know that the best of our showmakers are talented and imaginative enough to come up with some better ways to use them. And I’d really love to see what all of them can do once freed from these old clichés. 

In the meantime, here's where we are now:

 THE BIG SASSY BLACK WOMAN: Always there to belt out some big, brassy number

Clockwise from top left: Lysistrata Jones, Ghost, Newsies, Leap of Faith

THE OVERSEXED ASIAN WOMAN: Always ready to jump the bones of the nearest nerd

Clockwise from top left: Seminar, Outside People, 4000 Miles, Asuncion

"Medieval Play" Isn't One for the History Books

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It’s usually not a good thing when your favorite part of a show is its scenery. That’s the way I felt after I saw Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and that’s the way I felt when I walked out of Medieval Play, the new Kenneth Lonergan comedy that is running at The Pershing Square Signature Center through June 24.
And there’s another similarity between those shows: both are built around smart and intriguing ideas that got overwhelmed by the self-indulgence of their creators. 
Lonergan made his name with such plays as This is Our Youth and Lobby Hero about modern-day slackers, well-meaning but aimless and apathetic young men usually working in dead-end jobs. He’s kept the character type in this new work but he’s radically changed the setting. Medieval Play takes place in 14th century Europe during the wars between rival popes.
The play's protagonists are Sir Ralph (Josh Hamilton) and Sir Alfred (Tate Donovan) two knights-for-hire caught up in the decades-long conflict. At times, they are like Hamlet’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, side players to the main action who provide comic commentary on the goings on.  And at others, they are versions of Waiting for Godot’s Vladimir and Estragon, everymen wrestling with the big existential stuff like faith in God and loyalty to one’s friends.  Sounds promising either way, right?
Alas, neither promise gets fulfilled. The problem is that Lonergan is so busy showing off how much he knows about the period and making himself laugh that he loses all perspective.  The moral questions get trampled and the same jokes get hit over and over and over again.  An adept director might have helped but Lonergan serves as his own director and allows his playwright to frolic unbridled.
The show’s main conceit is that the medieval characters talk like today's hipsters. Anachronisms, profanity and scatological behavior abound. Saints drop F-bombs. A couple engages in a long, bare-butts sex scene.  One of the knights decides to take a dump on stage. And everyone makes meta references about their times and ours.
It’s the kind of stuff that might be funny for about five minutes in a “Saturday Night Live” skit but Lonergan stretches it out for nearly three hours.  Whole rows of people fled during intermission at the performance I attended. Those of us who soldiered on fell into conversations during the break and afterward on the way out of the theater in which the word “sophomoric” could be heard echoing from one group to the next.
As usual, the cast is game, particularly the six who play a dizzying variety of roles from noblemen and saints to peasants and whores. Heather Burns stands out as an officious saint Catherine of Siena, who often serves as the show's narrator, providing the historic context and filling the audience in on all the research that Lonergan did. 
I’ve always been fascinated by the Middle Ages and so those were almost my favorite parts. The only thing I liked better was set designer Walt Spangler’s simple but witty Candlyand version of the medieval European landscape and its castles. Some of the stuff he came up with really made me laugh and did it without trying too hard.

"Love Goes to Press" isn't Front-Page Material

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At some point, almost every frequent theatergoer has probably thought “I should write a play.”  Unlike most of us, journalists Martha Gellhorn and Virginia Cowles went ahead and wrote one.  The result is the romantic comedy Love Goes to Press that is playing at the Mint Theater Company through July 22.

The Mint, as theater fanatics know, specializes in works by playwrights who have been forgotten and those of well-known writers that have been overlooked. Gellhorn, the best known of the play’s two writers, falls into the latter category. 
Although a legendary war correspondent who covered conflicts ranging from the Spanish Civil War in 1936 to the U.S. Invasion of Panama in 1989, she is probably still best known as Ernest Hemingway’s third wife. And while she published 17 books and scores of articles,  Love Goes to Press is her only play and hasn't been done in 65 years. 
It was a hit when it opened in London in 1946 but a Broadway production the following January lasted just five performances. The New York Times' Brooks Atkinson dismissed it as "a fairly routine story about affairs of the heart that need not detain you this morning." 
The plot, which borrows liberally from its authors’ lives, centers on two intrepid female reporters covering World War II. Annabelle (Gellhorn’s surrogate) and Jane (the substitute for Cowles who was also an accomplished war correspondent) are old buddies who turn up at a press encampment near the Italian front. 
With sisterly support from one another, they scheme how to get closer to the action so that each can report the big story she's pursuing. At the same time, Jane finds herself dealing with romantic overtures from the British pr officer who runs the camp but believes a woman’s place should be in the home. And Annabelle has to contend with the Hemingway stand-in who is her ex-husband, double-dealing rival who uses dirty tricks to beat her on stories and the guy she still loves. 
Gellhorn and Cowles wrote their play as a lark, telling themselves that they could sell it to the movies and set up an annuity for their old age. They threw it together in a few days and there is a kind of slapdash quality to Love Goes to Press. Still, it’s great to see a war story where the gals get to be the swashbucklers who outwit their male competitors and break hearts in the process. 

The design team has paid excellent attention to period detail and special kudos must go to Jane Shaw’s sound design. But, alas, the rest of the production isn't as tip-top. The direction is indecisive and the acting is uneven. Still, everyone appears to be having fun.  And you may too, particularly if you read up on Gellhorn’s backstory before you go. 
It may also amuse Mint regulars to see that Annabelle is played by Heidi Armbruster, who played another Gellhorn-inspired character in The Fifth Column, Hemingway's only play, which the Mint produced back in 2008 (click here to read my review of that one). It undoubtedly would amuse Gellhorn to know that, even with its faults, her play is better than his.

Why "3C" Barely Rates a Grade of D from Me

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Judging by all the honors he’s already racked up, the playwright David Adjmi has plenty of fans and doesn’t need me.  His bio boasts that he’s won a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Writers’ Award and the Steinberg Playwright Award, among other prizes, and he even made New York Magazine’s "Top Ten in Culture" list for 2011. 

On top of all that, Adjmi is also an alum of my alma mater, Sarah Lawrence College (although we graduated years apart and have never met) and he’s the friend of a good friend of mine, who chided me for not having seen Stunning, Adjmi’s play about Brooklyn’s Syrian-Jewish community, which had a sold-out run back in 2009.  So I was obviously eager to see 3C, Adjmi’s dark comedy which opened last week at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater.  
But now, having seen it, I’m at a loss for what to say, except to repeat that it’s a good thing that Adjmi doesn’t need my approbation.  Because 3C doesn’t work for me in any way. 
The play is a riff on the old ‘70s sitcom, “Three’s Company,” in which a guy pretended to be gay so that he could split the rent on an apartment with two female roommates (an airhead blonde and a sensible brunette). The supporting characters here includes their lecherous landlord, his batty wife and a macho-man neighbor. 
What seems to tie them all together are their dysfunctional attitudes toward sex.  The blonde is a nympho who will screw anything in sight. The brunette is a prude who worries that people will think she is a lesbian. The guys seem to be in various stages of the closet.  And the landlord is a dirty-old man whose actions and comments are meant to be unsettling— and really are.
The play made me squirm. Watching a man stick his hand down the pants of an unwilling woman or listening to vile homophobic jokes will do that. But 3C never makes it clear why it's showing these things. It’s certainly no longer a revelation that sitcoms are shallow or that people can have delusional sex lives.

The jokes in 3C (some groaners, some grotesque) aren't funny enough to sustain it as a comedy.  Meanwhile, the perversities in which it traffics suggest that it wants to be taken seriously. What results is a muddle.
Call me old-fashioned but I think a play, even one with absurdist pretensions, should convey some idea of why the themes it deals with matter.  When it doesn’t, it runs the risk of coming off, as this one does, as being merely gratuitous. 

It also leaves very little for the actors, or for director Jackson Gay, to work with, even though everyone works hard. Too hard. Poor Jake Silbermann, who plays the male roommate, makes his entrance in the nude and spends much of the rest of the play being hit in the face.
The design team comes off better.  Scenic designer John McDermott has created an archetypal bland livingroom that would fit on almost any ‘70s sitcom set. Costume designer Oana Botez has lots of fun with the polyester shirts and bell-bottom pants from that period. And sound designer Matt Tierney has put together an amusing mixed tape of disco music from the era.
But the production missteps here too. It brings in Deney Terrio, the guy who taught John Travolta how to dance for “Saturday Night Fever,” to choreograph a series of numbers.  But those dances stop the action cold as the characters flail about the stage for far longer than seems warranted. Afterward, over a far more agreeable dinner at the nearby Waverly Inn, my husband K and I debated whether the actors had been directed to dance badly or were simply bad dancers.
Some audience members at the performance we attended applauded the dancing and laughed uproariously at the other antics as well but the fact that the claqueurs (friends of the actors? family of the playwright? suborned interns?) were seated together in just one part of the small theater only underscored how lame the whole thing was.

There's A New Spider In Town

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T.V. Carpio’s  first official performance as “Arachne” in SPIDER-MAN Turn Off The Dark is one she will likely remember for the rest of her life.  She emerged from the stage door a star, with a giant bouquet of roses in hand, to meet a crush of news crews and photographers.  Everyone wanted to know what it felt like to land the role and if she had any trepidation in taking it on.  The bouquet was from co-star Reeve Carney.  It turns out T.V. goes way back with Reeve and his super-guitarist brother Zane Carney.

Onstage her character uses her powers of illusion to wreak global havoc, but off stage she is humble and demure. Earlier in the day, she told George Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America,” “I have a great want to step into some big shoes and do the best I can do to service this piece.” 

Sir Paul McCartney confirms he is in talks to play at London 2012 Olympics

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Sir Paul McCartney yesterday said he is in talks to take part in London 2012 and “could easily” be involved in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

The former Beatle, 69, who performed at Buckingham Palace for the Golden Jubilee in 2002, is going to a meeting about the Games today.

He said: “I am seeing the guy because there is something they want me to do. I might be doing something in the Olympics. I won’t know until then.”

The Mirror reported last July that Macca had been approached to headline the opening ceremony.

Sir Paul, promoting his new album Kisses On The Bottom in London, added he was a “big fan of the Queen”.

He said: “I think she’s great and does a great job. People say, ‘Ugh, the monarchy and all that’, but what are you going to get in return?

“David Cameron? I’m not sure I want him to represent all of Britain. So if I get asked I could easily do it.”

Simon Cowell: I will blast Britain's Got Talent winner into space

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Simon Cowell always wanted to rule the Earth – now he has set his sights on space as well.

The TV mogul is returning to British screens after a year in exile and he’s come up with an out-of-this-world stunt to announce his comeback.

In a telly first, Simon has declared he intends to blast this year’s Britain’s Got Talent winner into orbit.

He has teamed up with show’s new sponsor, Virgin’s Richard Branson, to offer the prize of a flight in Virgin Galactic’s 2,500mph spaceship.

Branson’s rocket for space tourists could be ready for lift off as soon as next year, taking passengers on a weightless trip above the atmosphere.

Yesterday, just a few hours after jetting back to the UK following his New Year break in Barbados, Simon said: “We are trying to work out a way so that the winner of the show gets to go up in the spacecraft and will be the first person to perform in space.

"I am being serious, I swear to God. You could be the first singer or dog act, whatever, performing in space.”

Simon, 52, even pledged to join them. “I would go on the spaceship myself. I love the idea that, if they are up for it, they have the option of performing in front of the whole planet in space. It can’t be compulsory, but it will happen.”

He is trying to revitalise BGT after a lacklustre 2011 series and the cash prize will also more than treble to £350,000 – most of it from his own pocket.

Glossing over the problems of gravity and oxygen in space, he added: “It’s tens of millions of pounds but Richard is up for doing it. Don’t worry about the details, we’ll make it happen.”

And he laughed: “If it’s a juggler that wins, then we’ll need to make heavier balls. If it had been a few years ago, Susan Boyle could have been singing Unchained Melody in front of the whole planet. Amazing. What does the winner of The Voice get?”

Ah yes, The Voice, the forthcoming new BBC singing contest that has its sights set firmly on Simon’s X Factor in the Saturday night ratings battle. His annoyance, he reveals, is the reason he poached Strictly Come Dancing’s Alesha Dixon for the BGT judging panel.

He says he likes Alesha but the decision was 70/30 based on his desire to get one over on the BBC.

“I like her a lot,” he insists. “When I was in America I’d read about all the ratings battles going on over here and I did think Strictly were getting a bit smug.

"I’d see Bruno Tonioli in LA looking smug and I was thinking, ‘You’re not going to be smiling quite so much next year if this comes off’.”

He approached Alesha BEFORE the Strictly final last month. He explained: “I’d approached her originally to do X Factor but she’s ended up on Got Talent. I just wanted her for one of our shows. I thought she looked brilliant.

“She’s got energy, she gets it, and she wanted to do something different, not just for the money. She’s an ambitious girl and I wanted to work with her.

“With us and the BBC, I laugh about it, but there is unbelievable rivalry now. They want to be number one, I want to be number one. We do what it takes.

"It’s a game, all meant to be in good spirit, and it’s not supposed to be dirty tricks. We all begrudgingly shake hands when we see each other – but you don’t do anything for second place.”

Simon reckons the BBC threw down the gauntlet by spending £30million on X Factor rival The Voice, which airs in the spring at the same time as Britain’s Got Talent.

“They’ve done this to have a pop at the X Factor and to have a go at the BGT ratings. They will definitely go head to head with us. But I’ve got Alesha now.”

His relationships with women have been patchy (ask poor Kelly Brook, who lasted just a few days on BGT).

Having spent the last few weeks sunning himself on a yacht in Barbados, surrounded by a bevy of beauties, Simon shifts uncomfortably when quizzed on his fiancee Mezghan Hussainy. Not only did she not join him for his sunshine break, she hasn’t been seen with him for months.

Refusing to confirm speculation they have split, he said: “Everything is fine. We speak on the phone all the time, I talked to her yesterday.”

But asked about his new holiday friends, who included diamond heiress Zeta Graff, he insisted: “None of them are my girlfriends. They are just friends, 100%.” So does that means we’ll be hearing wedding bells soon then? “Er, I didn’t say that,” he answers.

His decision to return to Britain’s Got Talent came after realising that last year had been a bit of an annus horribilis.

He explained: “We all got a big smug last year, I certainly got a bit too cocky, a bit arrogant. I ended 2010 on a real high, it was the Matt Cardle year, my favourite year and the figures were huge.

"We went into 2011 thinking ‘it’s all going to be easy’ and of course it wasn’t. From BGT, to Red or Black, to me making these massive predictions about America.

"I had a massive wake up call. You think you are great, you get a bit of smack, then you go, ‘Fine, don’t be too cocky’. When I was talking about the numbers X Factor US was going to do, I thought, ‘Christ, why did I say that?’

"But I am naturally enthusiastic and you do say things and you kind of regret doing it, but you have got to have that confidence. I feel something in the air this year which I didn’t a year ago.

"There was a lot of fear, a lot of negativity in the air in Britain full stop. I genuinely thought they’d be glad to see the back of me for 12 months. I didn’t think it did me any harm staying away for a while. I do feel this year there is a lot more confidence.

"That might be because of the Olympics and the Diamond Jubilee.”

Simon was unimpressed with the efforts of last year’s judges, who included David Hasselhoff and Michael McIntyre with returning regular Amanda Holden.

He said: “I don’t think the judges did a good enough job, to be honest. There are always stars waiting to be discovered. Sometimes they need to be pointed in the right direction and I don’t think that happened enough last year.”

For the next series David Walliams has agreed to join the panel. Simon grinned: “He’s weird and he makes me laugh without trying to be funny.”

He also insists Red or Black will be back – but with more checks on contestants to avoid last year’s debacle when the winner turned out to be a woman-beater.

And there will be changes for X Factor too, though he hasn’t decided who out of judges Gary Barlow, Louis Walsh, Tulisa and Kelly Rowland will stay or go. He teased: “Anything could happen.”

Shameless sex scene screened in background during TV news

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 A rude scene was played in the background of a report on Scotland Tonight

Eagle-eyed viewers of a current affairs programme were stunned to see the news suddenly turn into the NUDES.

Ed Miliband’s Labour leadership was being discussed on live TV when a background monitor started showing a naked woman having sex.

Some viewers north of the border witnessed the romp as Scotland Tonight host John MacKay interviewed internet blogger Dan Hodges, who was in the ITN studio in London.

Paul Traynor, who saw the steamy scene while watching at home, said: “Someone should explain why some irresponsible employee decided to watch porn while live on TV.”

The clip is thought to have been from Channel 4 show Shameless, which was on at the same time.

An insider said: “It's unfortunate but in a busy newsroom we have monitors showing all the various TV channels. You can only see the scene for a few seconds and the vast majority of viewers won't have even spotted it."

Scottish Television said: “We hope that viewers weren’t too distracted by the ­unexpected content.”

Room 101 - BBC1, 8.30pm

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After 11 series between 1994 and 2007, Room 101, the torture chamber containing the most horrendous things in the universe, must already bepretty full.

I imagine it looking a bit like my loft – filled with all that random clutter you don’t want but that the binmen won’t collect either: BBC2 logos, jellyfish, Anne Robinson, people who look like cats and the year 1975, just for starters.

The revamped Room 101 sees Frank Skinner as the host presiding over three guests, each competing to have their pet hates consigned to pretend oblivion.

It’s a good move, ensuring no more of those awkward pauses as guests rack their brains for more hilarious reasons why they can’t stand the skin on rice puddings or novelty underpants.

Tonight Robert Webb, Fern Britton and Danny Baker battle it out before Skinner makes his final decree.

Another Look at the Season's Biggest Transfers

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So many shows opened in the final weeks of the theater season that officially ended on April 26 that I’ve had to scramble to catch up with all of them. There were 14 new shows on Broadway in April alone  (I just saw the final one on my list last night) and maybe a half dozen more off-Broadway.   
There simply aren’t enough Wednesdays and Saturdays for me to tell you what I think about each one.  Luckily, I saw a few of the big Broadway shows when they played off-Broadway and I talked about them then. And since this is an unbelievably busy weekend for me (yes, I do have a life besides seeing shows and writing about them) I’ve decided to cheat a bit with just a small update on three shows that made the transfer to Broadway with their original casts fully intact:
Clybourne Park Click here for my review of the production that ran at Playwrights Horizons two years ago and before this riff on Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Olivier Award for Best New Play when it ran in London last year. It’s now in residence at the Walter Kerr Theatre and although I still have some problems with it, the audiences are gasping with delight at its blunt talk about race and the production has been nominated for a shelf-load of awards, including four Tonys, among them Best Play.   


The Lyons Click here for my review of the production that ran at the Vineyard Theatre just last October.  One scene has been cut since the production moved to the Cort Theatre but the play still offers the same sardonic look at a dysfunctional family as it prepares for the death of its cancer-ridden patriarch. My tepid feelings about the show are pretty much the same too, except that this time I was content to just sit back and marvel at the comic genius of Linda Lavin, who is deservedly a frontrunner for a Tony in a competitive pack that includes Venus in Fur’s wunderkind Nina Arianda, Tracie Bennett for her turn as Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow, Stockard Channing as the matriarch of a differently troubled family in Other Desert Cities and Cynthia Nixon as the dying poetry scholar in the revival of the Pulitzer-Prize winning  play Wit.

Peter and the Starcatcher Click here for my review of the production that played at New York Theatre Workshop last spring.  Some of the anachronistic jokes have been toned down for the move to the Brooks Atkinson Theatre but I still don’t know who the target audience is for this fanciful prequel to the Peter Pan story.  Yet its low-tech storytelling is still great fun and the performances are delightful.  Christian Borle--whose performance as the songwriter on "Smash," NBC's behind-the-Broadway-curtains series, is the best thing about that show--is still a hoot as the villainous Black Stache but I’ve now also fallen in love with Celia Keenan-Bolger, who is not only believable as the show’s plucky tween heroine Molly but makes her the kind of role model that any 21st century girl should admire.  But the entire show has become the, ahem, darling of smart theater lovers, having picked up nine Tony nominations.

A Hard Look at Stage Diversity Dos and Don'ts

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Another impossibly busy weekend is staring me in the face so I don’t have time to tell you about any of the recent shows I’ve seen. But I have managed to steal a few minutes to put together a different kind of post for today. It’s a little photo essay on two trends that really bothered me this past season.

In what I assume is an attempt to add some diversity to their shows, too many playwrights and directors are falling back on some old stereotypes: the big sassy black woman and the oversexed Asian woman. 

Nobody cares about diversity in the theater more than I do. It's important that we have people of color on stage and behind the scenes. So I try to applaud producers, directors and writers who include them. But this trend is diversity done wrong.
Now I’m going to be honest, it’s uncomfortable for me to talk about this because  (1) I don’t think it’s malicious; although I do think it’s creatively lazy. And (2) I don’t want to talk anybody out of work; I appreciate the eager-to-get-any-acting-job bind that these actors are in and the majority of them do as much as they can with the material they’re given. 
Still, I’ll bet they’d love to play some other kinds of parts. I know that the best of our showmakers are talented and imaginative enough to come up with some better ways to use them. And I’d really love to see what all of them can do once freed from these old clichés. 

In the meantime, here's where we are now:

 THE BIG SASSY BLACK WOMAN: Always there to belt out some big, brassy number

Clockwise from top left: Lysistrata Jones, Ghost, Newsies, Leap of Faith

THE OVERSEXED ASIAN WOMAN: Always ready to jump the bones of the nearest nerd

Clockwise from top left: Seminar, Outside People, 4000 Miles, Asuncion

"Medieval Play" Isn't One for the History Books

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It’s usually not a good thing when your favorite part of a show is its scenery. That’s the way I felt after I saw Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark and that’s the way I felt when I walked out of Medieval Play, the new Kenneth Lonergan comedy that is running at The Pershing Square Signature Center through June 24.
And there’s another similarity between those shows: both are built around smart and intriguing ideas that got overwhelmed by the self-indulgence of their creators. 
Lonergan made his name with such plays as This is Our Youth and Lobby Hero about modern-day slackers, well-meaning but aimless and apathetic young men usually working in dead-end jobs. He’s kept the character type in this new work but he’s radically changed the setting. Medieval Play takes place in 14th century Europe during the wars between rival popes.
The play's protagonists are Sir Ralph (Josh Hamilton) and Sir Alfred (Tate Donovan) two knights-for-hire caught up in the decades-long conflict. At times, they are like Hamlet’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, side players to the main action who provide comic commentary on the goings on.  And at others, they are versions of Waiting for Godot’s Vladimir and Estragon, everymen wrestling with the big existential stuff like faith in God and loyalty to one’s friends.  Sounds promising either way, right?
Alas, neither promise gets fulfilled. The problem is that Lonergan is so busy showing off how much he knows about the period and making himself laugh that he loses all perspective.  The moral questions get trampled and the same jokes get hit over and over and over again.  An adept director might have helped but Lonergan serves as his own director and allows his playwright to frolic unbridled.
The show’s main conceit is that the medieval characters talk like today's hipsters. Anachronisms, profanity and scatological behavior abound. Saints drop F-bombs. A couple engages in a long, bare-butts sex scene.  One of the knights decides to take a dump on stage. And everyone makes meta references about their times and ours.
It’s the kind of stuff that might be funny for about five minutes in a “Saturday Night Live” skit but Lonergan stretches it out for nearly three hours.  Whole rows of people fled during intermission at the performance I attended. Those of us who soldiered on fell into conversations during the break and afterward on the way out of the theater in which the word “sophomoric” could be heard echoing from one group to the next.
As usual, the cast is game, particularly the six who play a dizzying variety of roles from noblemen and saints to peasants and whores. Heather Burns stands out as an officious saint Catherine of Siena, who often serves as the show's narrator, providing the historic context and filling the audience in on all the research that Lonergan did. 
I’ve always been fascinated by the Middle Ages and so those were almost my favorite parts. The only thing I liked better was set designer Walt Spangler’s simple but witty Candlyand version of the medieval European landscape and its castles. Some of the stuff he came up with really made me laugh and did it without trying too hard.

"Slowgirl" is a Smart Choice for Theater Lovers

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For people obsessed with theater, talking about how the theater is dying is like talking about the weather for regular people: you know you can always get a conversation going.  And yet, the theater, like the weather, continues to roll on regardless of what’s said about it. And sometimes, all the elements come together and create one of those near-glorious days that make you glad to be alive—or to be in love with the theater.
I had one of those days last week when I saw Slowgirl, the new show that opened on Monday night as the inaugural production at Lincoln Center Theater’s new Claire Tow Theater.
In keeping with a tradition at Lincoln Center, the Claire Tow is named after a female patron. The new space, which has just 112 seats, sits atop the Vivian Beaumont Theater and includes a small bar and a broad terrace with benches and grand views of the Upper West Side. 
It reminded me of the new Pershing Square Signature Center, not in style, because architect Hugh Hardy’s design is less expansive than the one Frank Gehry did for Signature, but in the optimism that the arrival of both convey that there continues to be a place for theater in the 21st century.
The Claire Tow was built to provide a home for Lincoln Center’s LCT3 program which supports the work of emerging playwrights.  And it could hardly have found a better inaugural production than Slowgirl, which was written by Greg Pierce, the 34 year-old playwright who recently achieved another first when he became the first lyricist to collaborate with John Kander after the death eight years ago of Kander's longtime partner Fred Ebb (click here to read more about how that production came together). 
That project, The Landing, had a two-week run down at the Vineyard Theater that my theatergoing buddy Bill and I managed to see but that I didn’t write about because it was part of the Vineyard’s lab series, which allows theatermakers to experiment without having to worry about the judgment of critics. But I will say that The Landing didn’t prepare me for the multi-layered pleasures of Slowgirl.
A two-hander, Slowgirl is set in the Costa Rican rainforest, where Sterling, an American who lives in lonely, self-imposed exile, is playing host to a hastily-arranged visit from his 17-year-old niece Becky, whom he hasn’t seen since she was in grade school. It’s no spoiler to say that both are hiding painful secrets which, over the course of the 80-minute play, are eventually revealed and, at least partially, healed.
The plot resembles that of 4000 Miles, Amy Herzog’s equally terrific play about the reunion between a grandmother and grandson that began as an LCT3 production but is now playing a longer run at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater through July 1.  But each show creates characters who ground the universality of their experiences in distinctive and believable people.
Slowgirl’s titular character isn’t Becky but a classmate with a learning disability who was the victim of an incident in which Becky may be implicated. Becky is a teenage motor mouth, whose syntax is ruled by the I-like-said-and-he-like-said formations that punctuate the utterances of so many young people today and her vocabulary is littered with casual profanities.  Her Uncle Sterling is her polar opposite, a man comfortable with silences and almost awkward with words. 
They are terrific roles, filled with heart and humor, and the actors playing them are superb. Sarah Steele, a bright young actress who always manages to be both intriguingly quirky and utterly natural, is a crowd pleaser as Becky. Just 23, Steele knowingly captures the  jittery bravado that so many teens use to shield the insecurities roiling inside.
But Sterling is the soul of the play.  Pierce is the nephew of David Hyde Pierce (click here to watch a short video clip in which the playwright talks about his family and this play) and Sterling would have been a wonderful role for his uncle but I don’t think even that fine actor would have played it with any more sensitivity than does Željko Ivanek. 
A two-time Tony nominee whom we now see far too little of on the stage, Ivanek turns in a nuanced performance that is all the more remarkable because so much of it has to be conveyed with expressions that flitter across his face or the way he holds a cup of tea. 
He and Steele are supported by an equally first-class production.  Rachel Hauck’s simple but lovely set manages to get both the humble hut where Sterling lives and the surrounding forest onto the Claire Tow’s cozy stage. Japhy Weideman’s lighting is at times poetic. Meanwhile, Leah Gelpe’s sound design conjures up the mysteries and the comforts of the forest.  And, of course, kudos must go to director Anne Kauffman who orchestrates it all brilliantly.
But the main thing here is the play. Slowgirl may not be a great work but it is a deeply satisfying one and as welcomed as the first breeze of summer.