Finally, after being disappointed in play after play this year, finally one has come along that I'm actually excited about. And to be perfectly honest, if you had asked me about what I was looking forward to in the new year, this wasn't even on my radar. Just this week I saw two extremely disappointing plays from young up and coming playwrights Adam Bock (Drunken City) and Itamar Moses (The Four of Us - more on that in a bit), and I suppose it's worth adding to that list Sarah Ruhl (whose Dead Man's Cell Phone was perhaps the biggest let down of all, a few weeks ago). Who would have thunk "From Up Here," a play by Liz Flahive (who?), would be better than those by such comparatively big names. Add to the shock that this was a last minute replacement for the highly anticipated "The Starry Messenger" by Kenneth Lonergan, that was supposed to star Matthew Broderick. I think most Manhattan Theatre Club subscribers are still grumbling about how a play that sounded like one of the hot tickets of the season was replaced by one by (as far as I can tell from her bio) a first time playwright, though granted starring Julie White (who, granted, is far more exciting than the always irritating Broderick). I went in knowing nothing about the plot of the play, nothing about the playwright, having read nothing on any of the message boards even though it started previews on Thursday (you know there would have been fifteen posts on "The Starry Messenger" after the first preview alone), and I can't remember the last time I was so genuinely pleasantly surprised.
The play is one of those quirky dysfunctional family affairs, with the main source of all of the conflict coming from the unstable high school-age son who was caught possibly preparing to shoot a bunch of his classmates one day. The other major characters are the mother who is a bit overwhelmed but tries hard, the step-dad who's really nice though the kids still hate him, the boy's sister who's also in high school, the kooky aunt who's in from a stint in the peace corps, and two classmates - one being a nerd who has a crush on the sister, and one who's a goody two-shoes smart kid. Put them all together in a bowl, stir well, and bake at 350 degrees for an hour and fifty minutes, and you basically have the play. I'm usually too lazy to pull out my Playbill to look up the names of actors I don't really know, but I'll make an exception here for Tobias Segal, who plays the son. He's full of quirks, but there was just something really endearing about him, and also strangely enough a lot in him in both the way the character was written and the way he was played that I found I could relate too (not that I'm on anti-depressants or that I ever considered killing classmates, but other things...).
I will say that my mother really didn't seem to like the play at all and my father didn't look too pleased either, so it maybe it has more of an appeal to the younger - I'm bad at gauging appeal but maybe the 18-29 crowd? - which I suppose the average MTC subscriber, or theatergoer for that matter, is not - I don't know for sure, but I will say I was personally An Exciting New Find (and other less exciting ones)really moved and entertained by the play, and there was just something about it that I found really easy to relate to. I'm very excited to see what Liz Flahive next has to offer.
Oh - and one more thing before I forget - I really liked the incidental music (mostly just background instrumental stuff for scene changes and whatnot), but when I looked in the Playbill afterwards I saw it was composed by Tom Kitt (of "High Fidelity" and "Next to Normal"). Was curious to see what he was going to do next, and while this obviously isn't a musical, it was an interesting surprise.
Other shows this week:
"The Four of Us" (at MTC's Stage II) by Itamar Moses. I found this to be rather dull. I'm glad I read the reviews first because they pointed out that this was based on the playwright's friendship with Jonathan Safran Foer (who I suppose is most famous for "Everything Is Illuminated," a book well worthy of its hype), so at least some scenes that probably would have been somewhat boring had a bit of that gossipy tell-all quality. Then again, I watched the whole play substituting the "real" names in my head, whether or not that was really the intention of the playwright. There is an amusing twist at the end that I enjoyed, but really, so much of the play was just so slow, that it really didn't make up for what had come before. It was definitely an interesting premise for play, just not executed as well as I would have liked.
"Juno" (at Encores). Well I can see why this show ran two weeks in its original run, and I don't think it was, as Joseph Stein insists, it was because the original was cast with two people who couldn't sing the score in the least roles. The first act is really really dull. The second was much better, with a really peculiar dream ballet focusing on a character with one arm (it was amazing to watch him dance with only one arm out for balance - I was really impressed), and the ending (it's based on "Juno and the Paycock," one of those typically really really depressing Irish plays) was quite moving. It's nice to see Encores do a musical for once that really fulfills what seems to have been its original purpose - presenting works that are in danger of never being seen again (unlike such recent choices as say... "Bye Bye Birdie" or "The Pajama Game"). I'm definitely glad I saw it, but I really have no desire to either pull out the cast recording to give it another shot, or really to ever see a production of it ever again.
I also saw "Cry-Baby" again - not on purpose, but because I already had tickets for Friday before I knew I would see an even earlier preview. I noticed they cut a couple of lines that didn't really make much sense the first time around, but overall it's the same underwhelming, unfunny, untuneful, generally unentertaining show it was the first time around. Whatever.
