THE MORNING LINE DATE: Wednesday, April 3, 2013 FROM: Michael Strassheim, Emily Meagher, Michelle Farabaugh Katelyn Levy, Madeline Haurin PAGES: 19, including this page

Amanda Plummer, Brad Dourif To Star in Tennessee Williams's 'Two-Character Play' - NYTimes.com

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/...plummer-brad-dourif-to-star-in-tennessee-williamss-two-character-play/?pagewanted=print[4/3/2013 9:12:31 AM]

APRIL 1, 2013, 4:38 PM

Amanda Plummer, Brad Dourif To Star in Tennessee Williams’s ‘Two-Character Play’

By ERIK PIEPENBURG

The Tony Award-winning actress Amanda Plummer (“Agnes of God”) will return to the New York stagefor the first time 15 years in the Off Broadway premiere of Tennessee Williams’s “Two-Character Play,”the show’s producers announced on Monday. The production, to be directed by Gene David Kirk, willalso star the Academy Award-nominated actor Brad Dourif (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”).

It will be Ms. Plummer’s first major New York stage appearance since “Killer Joe” in 1998. (She had ashort run in “The Exonerated” at the Culture Project in 2003.)

Loosely based on Williams’s relationship with his sister, Rose, “The Two-Character Play” weaves in andout of reality as two actors, a brother and sister, are forced to perform for an audience after beingdeserted by their own acting troupe. A news release describes the play as “equal parts Southern Gothicthriller, black comedy and psychological drama.”

The play made its debut in in 1967 in London. It played only 12 performances on Broadway in 1973under the title “Out Cry,” in a production that starred Michael York and Cara Duff-MacCormick. In Oct.2010 Mr. Kirk directed a revival at London’s Jermyn Street Theater.

Previews begin at New World Stages on June 10, with opening night scheduled for June 19.

He Sings, She Sings: Who’s Right? - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/...eviews/the-last-five-years-a-musical-at-second-stage-theater.html?hpw&_r=0&pagewanted=print[4/3/2013 9:10:45 AM]

April 2, 2013THEATER REVIEW

He Sings, She Sings: Who’s Right?By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

In the more than 10 years since “The Last Five Years” was first produced, this two-character musical by JasonRobert Brown about the life and death of young love has been embraced by new generations of musical-theaterlovers. Watching the revival that opened at Second Stage Theater on Tuesday night, I fancifully imagined Icould hear all the fans in the audience singing along in their heads. They greeted almost every number withfervent applause, as if each were the guest of honor arriving at a birthday party.

I wish I could feel the joy. But “The Last Five Years” remains to me what it always was: a series of nicelyturned contemporary show tunes that add up to something less than a wholly satisfying musical. Now, as whenit was new to New York in 2002, this show’s young lovers — an aspiring novelist who rises quickly to fame andan aspiring actress who doesn’t — seem generic types rather than individuals, and their relationship unfolds toa score that ranges across musical genres without evincing much distinctive personality of its own.

The first New York production starred Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie René Scott, superb singing actors whohave gone on to happily enduring stage careers. Their big shoes are filled capably this time around by AdamKantor and Betsy Wolfe as Jamie Wellerstein and Cathy Hiatt, the novelist and actress whose last kiss is theshow’s striking first image.

Jamie and Cathy then part ways, dramatically speaking, for much of the show. Her musical arc traces theirrelationship backward, from this parting kiss to their meeting five years earlier. Jamie’s moves in the oppositedirection, beginning with a song about his excitement at encountering the “shiksa goddess” of his dreams,moving forward in time to the unhappy unraveling of their marriage. This complicated chronology — it’s notreally easy to track unless you’re aware of it going in — means that the characters share only one full duet, inthe middle when they pledge their love during a momentous moonlight boat ride in Central Park.

Mr. Brown’s songs move from light jazz to reflective ballads and even klezmer for a comic number about aJewish tailor that Jamie sings to cheer up Cathy one Christmas. Most occupy the easy-on-the-ear but rarelygut-grabbing middle ground of show music strongly influenced by Stephen Sondheim, whose exploration of therough terrain of adult love is more finely honed (and whose lyrics are more sophisticated).

Ms. Wolfe, who portrayed the ingénue Rosa Bud in this season’s festive Broadway revival of “The Mystery ofEdwin Drood,” has a bright, strong soprano with a keen belt. With her wholesome blond beauty she is well castas a girl who arrives in New York with a suitcase full of idealism about her chosen career. Among the show’smost appealing passages is a series of scenes in which Cathy auditions — and auditions and auditions — forroles that she fails to get.

Nerves wreak havoc on her vocal cords, and her confidence drains away in various dispiriting encounters withrecalcitrant accompanists and bored casting directors. The self-lacerating interior monologue of an actor

He Sings, She Sings: Who’s Right? - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/...eviews/the-last-five-years-a-musical-at-second-stage-theater.html?hpw&_r=0&pagewanted=print[4/3/2013 9:10:45 AM]

wilting in the spotlight is rendered by Ms. Wolfe with touching forlornness:

Why did I pick these shoes?

Why did I pick this song?

Why did I pick this career?

Why does this pianist hate me?

While Cathy must fight for every small break, eventually landing a summer-stock gig in Ohio, Jamie embarkson a career that would be the envy of any tortured young novelist. Having left his studies at Columbia, he getsthe first chapter of his novel in The Atlantic, and soon Random House is publishing it to acclaim. Mr. Kantorconveys Jamie’s excitement at his rollicking success as well as his sympathy for Cathy’s struggles and laterfrustration when she begins to resent feeling like an appendage to a literary star. But the boyish-looking Mr.Kantor exudes a certain callow perkiness that robs the character of necessary gravity, and his voice is not quiteexpressive or soulful enough for Jamie’s sad confessional “Nobody Needs to Know,” sung to another (unseen)woman.

Because they are rarely fully interacting onstage, the musical takes on a he-said, she-said quality that can befrustrating. As the characters sing one solo after another about their ambitions — thwarted or fulfilled — andthe pleasures and regrets that come with love, the audience is put in the position of a shrink listening to twopeople who for whatever reason refuse couples therapy. The conflicts that tear Jamie and Cathy apart arenever fully dramatized before us — we see reactions more than action — and thus the dying of their love has anabstract quality.

Well, it does to me at least. Through its cast album and amateur and professional productions over the yearsthe show has become a cult favorite for aspiring musical-theater performers, and more than a dozen videosfrom various versions are on YouTube. (I remember being startled, several years ago, when covering a summercamp for high school actors, to hear teenagers singing songs from a show I’d assumed had disappeared afterits two-month run Off Broadway.)

Mr. Brown has staged his production handsomely. The sets, by Derek McLane, feature windows that rise andfall, often giving bewitching views of New York skies filled with snow or rain, thanks to the atmosphericprojections of Jeff Sugg. The band’s excellent six musicians are arrayed against the brick back wall on risers,almost as if they’re playing their instruments (an interesting mix including two cellos) on tenement fireescapes.

While Mr. Brown evinces admirable compassion for both characters, the often prosaic lyrics and the melodieswritten to match them only rarely take on any sense of heightened drama. Jamie’s imploring attempt to drawCathy out in “If I Didn’t Believe in You” is an arresting exception, as he sings:

No one can give you courage,

No one can thicken your skin.

I will not fail so you can be comfortable, Cathy.

He Sings, She Sings: Who’s Right? - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/...eviews/the-last-five-years-a-musical-at-second-stage-theater.html?hpw&_r=0&pagewanted=print[4/3/2013 9:10:45 AM]

I will not lose because you can’t win.

Unfortunately, for most of the show such piercing insight into the hearts of the characters is absent or mutedby the pleasant but blandly meandering melodies. It all goes down smoothly but too easily.

The Last Five Years

Written and directed by Jason Robert Brown; sets by Derek McLane; costumes by Emily Rebholz; lighting byJeff Croiter; sound by Jon Weston; projections by Jeff Sugg; music direction by Tom Murray; musiccoordinator, Christian Hebel; production stage manager, Bonnie Panson; stage manager, Johnny Milani;associate artistic director, Christopher Burney; production manager, Jeff Wild; general manager, Dean A.Carpenter. Presented by Second Stage Theater, Carole Rothman, artistic director; Casey Reitz, executivedirector. At Second Stage Theater, 305 West 43rd Street, Clinton; (212) 246-4422, 2st.com. Through May 12.Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes.

WITH: Adam Kantor (Jamie Wellerstein) and Betsy Wolfe (Cathy Hiatt).

When the Artist’s Muse Loves the Artist’s Wife - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/...er/reviews/three-trees-a-play-about-giacometti-by-alvin-eng.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[4/3/2013 9:13:44 AM]

April 2, 2013THEATER REVIEW

When the Artist’s Muse Loves the Artist’s WifeBy CATHERINE RAMPELL

“Three Trees” is inspired by the life of the 20th-century artist Alberto Giacometti and his unusual relationshipwith his muse, the Japanese philosophy professor Isaku Yanaihara. Unusual not only because the muse wasmale, but also because he happened to be sleeping with Giacometti’s wife, with the artist’s full knowledge andconsent.

There are a lot of existential musings from this muse, and from Giacometti and his coterie too: about thefrightening power that comes from being able to manipulate subjects’ likenesses, to control how they arepresented to the world and to mold, in a way, their exo-psyches. The characters frequently discuss, in long,circuitous dialogue, whether capturing someone in a portrait preserves and extends the sitter’s life, orsomehow extinguishes it. Or perhaps both, by redirecting that life into a new medium.

Says Giacometti: “If I can see a face on a canvas or in a sculpture, it is alive. When I can no longer see it, it nolonger exists.”

In between scenes of posing and portrait making, there is plenty of drama: the love triangle, petty jealousiesand rivalries, deceit, fits of loneliness and rebellion. But the humanity and emotionality of these events oftenget lost in the diffuse dissertations of Alvin Eng’s script; for a work so obsessed with art’s ability to prolonglife, this play has a distressing tendency to make lively events seem a little lifeless.

“Three Trees” (the title refers to a Rembrandt etching) never really captures what’s so beguiling aboutYanaihara (Marcus Ho), for example, and what makes him so powerful a muse.

That said, Jean-Pierre Stewart is excellent as the needy, bumbling genius Giacometti, a man alternatelyobsessed with work and begging to take a break, who sometimes speaks in taut aphorism and sometimes inhalting, groping ellipsis.

The design elements of this Pan Asian Repertory Theater production — including re-creations of Giacometti’sstudio by the set designer Gian Marco Lo Forte, and of his artworks in various states of completion by DanielleBaskin — are likewise remarkable. Of course, a reproduction of a man’s external trappings is no substitute forone that captures his essence, as Giacometti himself learns throughout the play.

Falling to Earth, Only to Witness a Pole Dance - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/theater/reviews/dream-play-at-the-here-arts-center.html?pagewanted=print[4/3/2013 9:15:21 AM]

March 29, 2013THEATER REVIEW

Falling to Earth, Only to Witness a Pole DanceBy CLAUDIA LA ROCCO

It’s easy to be fascinated by our own dreams. Yet when the dreams of others are recounted to us, so much getslost in translation. Or, to put it more plainly: suffering through someone else’s jump cuts and surrealmetaphors can be tedious as all get-out.

There goes art imitating life again in the National Asian-American Theater Company’s “Dream Play,” anadaptation of the Strindberg drama by Sung Rno and Andrew Pang, at the Here Arts Center. It’s admirable fora company to tackle such difficult material, but there is precious little to hang onto during this production ofroughly 90 minutes.

“A Dream Play” follows Agnes, the daughter of the Hindu god Indra, as she travels down to earth to try tounderstand what it is to be human. There is great potency in many of Strindberg’s lines, and humor. But thework is also, to borrow the daughter’s words, “a ponderous world,” shot through with pedantic messages andheavy-handed emotionalism.

This version, directed by Mr. Pang, tends to emphasize these less enthralling qualities. As Agnes, Tina Chilipspends far too much of her time welling up and wringing her hands. She is surrounded by the members of ahard-working, overemoting ensemble, who come and go as multiple characters through a spare, movable setdesigned by Joseph Lark-Riley.

Structurally, the production also falters, never finding an inner logic or coherency to guide itself. Instead of animble navigation and bracing assessment of the mutable paradoxes within the human experience, this “DreamPlay” just lurches around. There is a recurring pole dance motif.

Pole dancing can be disturbing, alienating, objectifying, distasteful — there are any number of intriguingpossibilities. But here, like the larger context in which it occurs, it is reduced to something silly and pallid. Getout while you still can, Agnes. Save yourself.