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.

Margaret Edson has just written one play in her life, the brilliant Wit, now receiving its Broadway premiere a mere seventeen years after it was first produced and went on to win nearly every theater award, including the Pulitzer Prize. This new incarnation could well result in another accolade: a Tony for Best Revival of a Play.

Anyone who saw the brilliant Kathleen Chalfant in the original Off-Broadway production might wonder whether Cynthia Nixon would be as effective in the role of Vivian Bearing, a poetry professor suffering from Stage IV ovarian cancer. But while Nixon offers a quite different, less officious interpretation than her predecessor, she is no less affecting.

Her character acts as the play’s narrator, directly addressing the audience in telling the story of the diagnosis of her affliction and her subsequent agreement to an experimental chemotherapy treatment that will not cure her but rather provide much needed data for the medical researchers handling her case.

It’s grim stuff, to be sure, but the play beautifully balances pathos with humor in its depiction of the emotional and mental anguish that Bearing undergoes as she becomes little more than a research subject for her doctors. Along the way, flashbacks reveal her earlier life, from when she was a young girl hungry for knowledge to her distinguished career as a professor specializing in the works of the 17th century John Donne--famous, of course, for the line “Death be not proud.”

The playwright once worked in the cancer unit of a research hospital, and clearly knows the terrain well. She beautifully captures the unthinking casual breeziness of the doctors, including one young researcher (Greg Keller), who used to be Bearing’s student and who treats her with the same rigorous exactitude that she applied in her classroom.

There is no shortage of heartbreaking scenes, most notably one towards the end involving a visit to the dying Bearing by an elderly woman (a superb Suzanne Bertish) who was once her professor and who climbs into bed with her and reads her a children’s story while gently stroking her hair.

Under the sensitive direction of Lynne Meadow, the supporting players--including Michael Countryman as a doctor supervising the case and Carra Patterson as a friendly nurse and the only person who actually treats the patient as a person—deliver sterling work. But it is Nixon, perfectly conveying her character’s combination of emotional reserve, acerbic wit and brilliant intellectualism—“It’s highly educational, I am learning how to suffer,” she remarks at one point about her ordeal—who powers the production. Her sublime, deeply affecting portrayal, for which she bares both body and soul, is a revelation.   

Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200. www.Telecharge.com. Through March 11.

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 plays of Athol Fugard often require heavy lifting on the part of an audience. That’s particularly true of his 1987 drama The Road to Mecca, now being given its Broadway premiere in a revival by the Roundabout Theatre Company. This tale of an elderly woman artist rebuffed by her community represents the playwright at his talkiest and most didactic. Still, it has its moments of quiet beauty, and its return is welcome if only for the opportunity to see the luminous Rosemary Harris onstage.  

Director Gordon Edelstein has assembled a stellar cast for the production: Carla Gugino plays Elsa, a schoolteacher and friend of Harris’ Miss Helen, and Jim Dale is Pastor Marius Byleveld, a role that was originally played by the playwright himself.

Miss Helen is based on a true-life figure, Helen Martins, who lived in the remote Karoo region of South Africa where the play is set. At the play’s beginning, it’s established that has become a depressed, reclusive figure, shunned by her fellow villagers because her iconoclastic artworks, with which she has copiously decorated her house and garden, offend their religious sensibilities.

Her friend Elsa, concerned for her friend’s plight, has traveled hundreds of miles from Cape Town to see about Miss Helen’s health and to urge her to resist any efforts to dislodge her from her home. The play’s 65-minute first act consists of a rambling, repetitive conversation between the two, the general banality of which will tax even the most tolerant theatergoer’s patience.

Act II picks up considerably with the arrival of the pastor, who speaks to the clearly emotional fragile Miss Helen in a soothing, solicitous manner that only partially conceals the intolerance underlying his arguments.

Although this part of the play is indeed livelier, thanks in no small part to Dale’s energetic presence, it’s also filled with the sort of heavy-handed metaphors with which Fugard frequently infuses his more labored works. There’s also a lot of candle lighting—Miss Helen uses them as the sole illumination in her house, and they figure in a less than incendiary plot revelation—but the overall dimness isn’t alleviated.

Harris is, as always, exemplary here, delivering a subtle, graceful performance that touchingly makes clear her character’s underlying vulnerabilities. Gugino is appealingly feisty, and Dale provides a welcome liveliness as the pastor whose motivations are more complex than they initially appear.

Michael Yeargan has provided a wonderfully detailed, eccentric set—one that supposedly replicates the real-life subject’s home, which is now a tourist attraction—even if Peter Kaczorowski’s necessarily dim lighting, designed to replicate the effects of all those candles—makes it rather hard to see clearly.

American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300. www.roundabouttheatre.org.