ScheckOnTheater

It’s ironic that John Osborne’s classic drama Look Back in Anger is now as much of a period piece as the “well-made plays” it was attempting to usurp. This work--which revolutionized British theater when it received its 1956 premiere at the Royal Court and popularized the concept of the “angry young man”—can easily come across as a dated relic unless infused with sufficient energy and passion.

Thankfully, those qualities are well evident in the revival presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company. Forcefully and imaginatively staged by Sam Gold and featuring first-rate performances by its four-person ensemble—that’s not a typo, as one minor character has been excised—the production effectively suggests the power that the original must have had, even if it necessarily can’t duplicate it.

The iconoclastic nature of the staging is evident upon entering the theater. Just as its first audiences were supposedly startled by the mere sight on an ironing board on stage, Andrew Lieberman’s set design here is equally arresting. To be technical, there isn’t much of a set. The actors are confined to the lip of the stage, performing in front of stark backdrop with only a few feet of room. The space is littered with a few battered pieces of furniture and much detritus, presenting a stylized spin on the usual realistic depiction of the characters’ squalid living space.

Inhabiting that space, as any drama student will recall, are Jimmy Porter (Matthew Rhys), a well-educated but working class Brit; his long-suffering wife Alison (Sarah Goldberg); and, most of the time, their best friend Cliff (Adam Driver), who acts as mediator when tensions flare.

At this point Jimmy’s railings against a stuffy, conformist society might seem antique. That is, if Occupy Wall Street and the current class warfare afflicting modern politics hadn’t rendered them all too relevant. So, unfortunately, is the depiction of the near abusive, co-dependent relationship between Jimmy and the more refined Alison, which is rendered with emotional sensitivity by Rhys and Goldberg. And the seemingly immediate substitution of Alison’s best friend Helena (Charlotte Parry) in Jimmy’s life after Alison leaves has a nastily ironic aspect that surely influenced Harold Pinter.

The staging is infused with theatrical touches that keep us slightly off-guard, such as the house lights staying on at times and the actors hovering at the sides of the house in full view when they’re offstage.

Ultimately, however, it’s the performances that must carry the work, and the ensemble here doesn’t disappoint. Rhys, making his New York stage debut after five seasons on TV’s soapy Brothers and Sisters, mines Jimmy’s combination of dark humor and angry intensity to great effect, with his Welsh accent recalling Richard Burton, who played the role in the film version. Goldberg, also making her stage debut here, beautifully conveys her character’s complex feelings towards the man she loves. The physically imposing Adam Driver is boisterously entertaining as the good-hearted Cliff, while Charlotte Parry does as well as possible with the more problematical role of Helena.    

Look Back in Anger will never again have the same impact that it must have had upon its premiere. But this production certainly provides a hint of what those lucky audiences at the Royal Court must have felt more than half a century ago.

Laura Pels Theatre, 111 W. 46th St. 212-719-1300. www.roundabouttheatre.org. Through April 8.

Beware sexy Russian men bearing gifts. That seems to be the primary message of Russian Transport, the new play by Erika Sheffer being given its world premiere by the New Group. This uneasy blending of family and crime-themed drama is all too predictable in its depiction of a Russian immigrant family being torn apart by the arrival of a relative from their home country who turns out to have nefarious ends in mind. While the material might work reasonably well as a film—shot in real-life locations that would lend it a natural authenticity—its artifices shine all too clearly onstage.

The Sheepshead Bay family consists of Misha (Daniel Oreskes) and Diana (Janeane Garofalo) and their Americanized teenagers, seventeen-year-old Alex (Raviv Ullman) and fourteen-year-old Mira (Sarah Steele). Their car service business is clearly struggling financially, as evidenced Diana’s demanding that Alex immediately hand over his paychecks from part-time job at a cell phone store.

Their day-to-day routine--marked by much would-be comic, profanity-laced squabbling--is interrupted by the arrival of Boris (Morgan Spector), Diana’s younger brother. Handsome and charming, Boris quickly wins over the teenagers, but his influence on Alex soon reveals a sinister edge, as he enlists him in his human trafficking operation by having him pick up newly arrived, young Russian girls at the airport and delivering them to their unfortunate fates.

You can see where the plot is going from the very beginning, and the attempts by the playwright to give it texture with endless family arguments—the characters snipe at each other with a comic ferocity that feels wholly artificial—proves wearisome. And such moments as when Mira impulsively kisses her uncle romantically and Alex and his father have a confrontation involving a gun he’s smuggled into the house fail to produce the intended shocks.

The business of the proceedings is accentuated both by Scott Elliott’s high-pitched direction and Derek McLane’s awkward two-level set design which makes some of the action difficult to see.

The actors pour much conviction into their performances, to uneven effect. Spector displays such a strong physical presence and charisma that his galvanizing effect on the household is understandable. Oreskes, always a commanding performer, is here given unfortunately little to do, and Ullman and Steele, the latter doubling as several of Alex’s unfortunate passengers, are quite convincing. The marquee draw is Garofalo, and while the actress has clearly worked hard on her accent she seem miscast here and never quite convincing as a tough Russian matriarch. But then again, little about Russian Transport is convincing or, for that matter, transporting. 

Acorn Theatre, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com. Through March 10.

Reunited with his American Beauty director, Sam Mendes, Kevin Spacey pulls out all the stops with his devilishly entertaining turn in the title role of the Bridge Project’s production of Richard III. Stepping into the footsteps of such illustrious predecessors as Laurence Olivier, Al Pacino and Ian McKellen, the actor delivers a performance that is as much comic as it is menacing, but is always mesmerizing.

The final offering of this ambitious transatlantic theatrical collaboration among the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Old Vic and Neal Street, the production is not exactly subtle in its approach. Mendes seems to be working for maximum shock value most of the time, and the actors have clearly been encouraged to not hold back. The result is a less than nuanced Richard, but certainly one that well conveys the sensationalistic aspects of Shakespeare’s history play.

Spacey, fitted with a leg brace and a hunchback, establishes the dark comic turn right from the start, when he punctuates his delivery of the famous “Now is the winter of our discontent” speech by tooting on a party noisemaker. His Richard is clearly one who relishes his villainy, and delights in sharing his glee with the audience. He makes us fully aware of the cleverness of his elaborate machinations, and while some of the embellishments are a bit much—I could have done without the Groucho Marx impersonation—he’s wildly entertaining from start to--some three-and-a-half hours later--finish

Mendes’ modern-dress production is powerfully effective, although its devices are by now all too familiar. Video projections are used extensively, most effectively in which we see a close-up of an offstage Richard as he pretends to resist the crowd’s clamoring for his ascension to the throne. And though every modern Shakespearean production seems to employ a percussionist or two, their use here well signals the growing tension.

The ensemble, a mixture of American and British actors, offer good support, with particularly striking turns by Gemma Jones, scarily intense as the wronged Queen Margaret; Haydn Gwynne, haughtily imperious as Queen Elizabeth; and Annabel Scholey, touchingly vulnerable as Lady Anne.

But the evening is all about Spacey, whose physical energy and emotional intensity never flags in the second longest Shakespearean role after Hamlet. His obvious exhaustion at the curtain call, just after a terrific coup de theatre in which Richard’s corpse is displayed to the audience in a manner recalling Benito Mussolini’s, seems entirely deserved.

BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100. www.bam.org. Through March 4.

The Chinese language is all that one seems to be hearing lately. Not only did presidential candidate Jon Huntsman resort to Mandarin while rebuking Mitt Romney during a recent debate, but David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish, currently playing on Broadway, has much of its dialogue delivered in Chinese with English supertitles for those audience members who don’t happen to be multi-lingual. Like that play, Zayd Dohrn’s Outside People also deals with cross-cultural themes concerning a hapless American visiting China who finds himself in way over his head.

Co-presented by the Vineyard Theatre and Naked Angels, this dark comedy concerns a young American, Malcolm (Matthew Dellapina), who has traveled to Beijing to work for his old college buddy Da Wei, or David (Nelson Lee), a successful businessman who prides himself on his ability to bridge Eastern and Western culture. On his first night there, the severely jet-lagged Malcolm finds himself set up with the gorgeous Xiao Mei (Li Jun Li).

Despite Malcolm’s awkward shyness and inability to speak Chinese, the pair quickly hit off. They begin a tentative romance, which is further complicated by the fact that she’s been hired to tutor Malcolm in Chinese. But when the relationship starts to turn serious, David forcefully expresses his objections, claiming that Xiao Mei is only using Malcolm to make a new life for herself in America.

There’s an complexity and ambiguity to the characters—the fourth being Samanya (Sonequa Martin-Green), David’s girlfriend, a transplant from Cameroon—that makes the play consistently intriguing even if it never quite lives up to the ambitiousness of its themes. But under the skillful direction of Evan Cabnet, it moves along briskly, and the pungently comic dialogue garners many laughs. The playwright is admirably unafraid to not spell things out, the best example being the scene depicting an intense confrontation between David and Xiao Mei that is all the more compelling for its being spoken in Chinese, with only the performers’ body language and vocal delivery cluing us in to its meaning.

The performances are terrific: Dellapina infuses Malcolm with a comic, Woody Allen-style neuroticism; As Xiao Mei, Jun Li is both sexy and sweet while subtly hinting at an underlying steeliness; Lee is hilarious as the swaggering, macho David; and Martin-Green brings an edgy sultriness to Samanya.

Vineyard Theatre, 108 E. 15th St. 212-353-0303. www.VineyardTheatre.org. Through Jan. 29.

David Hyde Pierce somehow always manages to project a vaguely uncomfortable, awkward quality in his characters. It feels totally appropriate for Close Up Space, the uncomfortable, awkward new comedy being presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club. This overly mannered play by Molly Smith Metzler squanders not only the talents of its leading man, but also such terrific supporting players as Rosie Perez and Michael Chernus and its talented director, Leigh Silverman (Well, Chinglish).

Hyde Pierce here plays a role that fits him like a glove: Paul, the widowed, high-strung head of a small but prestigious Manhattan publishing house. He’s the sort of exacting editor whose standards are so rigorous that he takes it upon himself to edit a letter--sent by the dean of the expensive private school his daughter attends—informing him that she’s just been kicked out.

Her malfeasances are not his only problems. His best-selling author (Perez) is deeply unhappy over Paul’s editing of her trashy tomes. And his homeless office manager (Chernus) has been reduced to camping out overnight in a tent in the middle of the office.

And when daughter Harper (Colby Minifie), finally does make an appearance, she insists on hurling both insults at him in Russian and the snowballs she’s brought along in her bag.

Balancing whimsy with emotion to little effect, the play barely makes any sense whatsoever. The central element—the relationship between father and daughter that has suffered due to his emotional withdrawal after his wife’s death—is handled in such silly absurdist fashion that it’s impossible to care about the outcome. And Hyde Pierce’s low-key charm is so potent that despite his character’s numerous faults, he remains entirely sympathetic, especially as compared to the bizarre creatures surrounding him.

Perez and Chernus occasionally manage to wrest some laughs from their poorly conceived roles, something that is clearly beyond Minifie. But as usual with this theater, there’s at least one redeeming element--Todd Rosenthal’s gorgeously detailed set, so warm and inviting that more than a few audience members will also be tempted to set up residence there.

New York City Center—Stage I, 131 W. 55th St. 212-581-1212. www.nycitycenter.org.