THE MORNING LINE DATE: Monday, May 2, 2016 FROM: Melissa Cohen, Michelle Farabaugh Claire Manning, Amanda Price PAGES: 16, including this page

May 2, 2016

Review: A Darwinian ‘Streetcar’ With a Feminist Streak

By Ben Brantley It really is a jungle out there, Blanche, that same cruel, do-or-die world described by Darwin. And while it’s noble of you to plead with your sister not to “hang back with the brutes” — to choose the aesthetes over the animals — you surely know it’s a waste of breath. The New Orleans neighborhood where Blanche DuBois comes calling so disastrously in Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” has never seemed quite as atavistic as it does in Benedict Andrews’s compellingly harsh revival, which opened on Sunday night at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. This production pits a fully adrenalized Gillian Anderson, as Blanche, against Ben Foster, as her adversarial brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski, in a riveting study of the survival of the fittest. Even if you are unfamiliar with the plot, you shouldn’t have trouble predicting its outcome. Mr. Foster’s slyly commanding Stanley — a performance that makes the specter of Marlon Brando, who created the part, temporarily retreat into the dusk — is obviously the younger, stronger and more confident of the two. But Ms. Anderson’s Blanche has her own arsenal of weapons, and though they may be outdated, she puts up a vigorous defense. This fading feline beauty is clearly fated to lose, but she’s also going down fighting, tooth and manicured nail. This brave new “Streetcar,” which originated at the Young Vic in London, takes a lot of presumptuous risks, yet most of them pay off, at least for as long as you’re watching it. Mr. Andrews, whose wild and divisive production of Jean Genet’s “The Maids” was in New York two summers ago, has dared to reset Williams’s masterpiece in the 21st century. That means no picturesque French Quarter squalor. Magda Willi’s wall-less revolving set — which gives us a drone’s-eye-view of every angle of the two rooms shared by Blanche’s younger sister, Stella (a terrific Vanessa Kirby) and her husband, Stanley — has the generic starkness of an Ikea-furnished starter apartment for newlyweds. Blanche’s tight, short, flashy wardrobe (Victoria Behr is the costume designer) wouldn’t look out of place in a television pilot for “Real Housewives of New Orleans.” And ear-grating electronic music is blasted between scenes. Yet in bringing us into the present, Mr. Andrews is also leading us into a timelessly primeval world, observed with an anthropological clarity. The New Orleans glimpsed beyond the walls of the Kowalski’s home is inhabited by men and women who scrap, prowl, bloody one another’s noses and mate like alley cats.

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There is little conjuring of the illusions that Blanche says she lives by, and she registers more as a stretched-thin pragmatist in fight-or-flight mode than the usual windblown butterfly. Even when Jon Clark’s lighting plunges us into darkness, the show always seems to be happening beneath the glare of the bright, naked bulbs that are anathema to our shadow-seeking heroine. Such an interpretation largely strips “Streetcar” of its poetry. And there were certainly moments when I missed that poetry. But I was also willing to trade the delicate lyricism of Mr. Williams and Blanche for genuinely original insights into a play I’ve seen many times. In particular, you become conscious of a prescient feminist streak in “Streetcar,” a piercing awareness of a society that values its women according to youth and attractiveness. In this context, Blanche’s obsession with looking pretty acquires a sad emotional weight that tips into existential panic. “People don’t see you — men don’t — don’t even admit your existence unless they’re making love to you,” she says to Stella. “And you’ve got to have your existence admitted by someone.” That’s a pretty realistic appraisal, coming as it does from a woman who has always relied on the kindness — and interest — of the male sex. And as Ms. Anderson says these lines, and others like them, a sense of Blanche as a desperately plotting strategist comes to the fore. Best known for her television appearances as the coolly intelligent detectives on “The Fall” and “The X-Files,” Ms. Anderson endows Blanche with a self-preserving skepticism that is starting to lose its edge and a calculatedly feminine, shrilly Southern persona that feels thoroughly of the moment. This is the first Blanche I’ve encountered who specifically evokes women of my generation, like those former popular girls you come across at high school reunions, teetering on stilettos between husbands and highballs. This Blanche is forever positioning herself as an object of masculine desire. (Watch her undulating half-naked behind a semitransparent curtain while Stanley and his pals play poker.) Her sense of sex as a weapon, on the one hand, and a necessity, on the other, is beautifully conveyed in her defensive scenes with Mitch (the excellent Corey Johnson), her diffident suitor, and her aggressive encounter with the delivery boy (Otto Farrant), who summons the ghost of the young man to whom she was briefly and ruinously married. And though she may be forever trying to convince her sister to leave the barbaric Stanley, you also feel she’s competing with Stella for his attention. In vain. As embodied by Ms. Kirby, the pregnant Stella glows with the confidence conferred both by new life and her sexually charged relationship with her husband. The physical interdependence between this pair has seldom felt so thick, and when Mr. Foster cries out the immortal mating call, “Ste-ll-a!,” with a mix of childlike anguish and grown-up longing, you know why Ms. Kirby comes running. Mr. Foster, seen on Broadway in “Orphans” in 2013, provides an effortlessly natural Stanley, unencumbered by the usual preening self-consciousness. He also manages to evoke a type of man we’ve seen a lot of in recent months — the working-class guy who says he’s voting for Donald Trump because he wants America to be strong and virile again.

Contemporary parallels recede, though, as the struggle between Stanley and Blanche acquires momentum. Mr. Andrews has done a masterly job of arranging the play’s central antagonists, so as the set revolves, we’re always aware of their positions in relation to one another, as they take stock of their respective strengths and weaknesses. It’s not easy to keep your balance on a moving stage, or in a changing world. Ms. Anderson’s Blanche becomes increasingly unsteady on the perilously high heels she wears. Mostly, this unusually dynamic “Streetcar” plays more on our nervous system than with our hearts. But when Blanche finally goes down for the count, it’s impossible not to feel a choking rush of compassion for a valiant, misguided fighter who never stood a chance.

May 2, 2016

Review: ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ Puts a Twist on Teenage Angst

By Charles Isherwood If an exposed nerve ending could walk, talk and attend high school, it would surely resemble the title character of the terrific musical “Dear Evan Hansen,” about a friendless 17-year-old played with such prickly authenticity by the wonderful Ben Platt that you can practically feel his flop sweat on your own brow. What’s Evan so anxious about? Well, what have you got? Even ordering in food — a seemingly stress-free transaction, as his mother points out, in the age of online access — sends Evan into a tailspin of fear. “You have to talk to the delivery person when they come to the door,” he explains. “Then they have to make change. You have to stand there while it’s silent and they’re counting the change and … ” His voice trails off, as he envisions the horrific scene in his angst-addled mind. But it’s primarily the agony of being a misfit facing his first day as a high school senior — with a crush on a junior he can’t bring himself to approach — that gives Evan the jitters. He has been advised by his therapist to improve his self-image by writing himself daily pep notes. As he’s dutifully printing one out at school, it’s snatched up by another outsider, the black-clad Connor (Mike Faist), who stuffs it in his pocket. And noticing that poor Evan has been unable to find anyone to sign the cast on his broken arm, Connor scrawls his name across it with a mocking sneer. When Connor subsequently commits suicide, his grieving family — which happens to include Zoe (Laura Dreyfuss), the very girl on whom Evan has long been crushing — reaches out to Evan, assuming that the letter they found in Connor’s pocket was written to his best friend. Corroborating evidence: that lone signature on Evan’s cast. Connor’s family had thought he had no friends at all. Evan finds himself faced with the kind of moral dilemma that would send even the most tempered soul into crisis mode. Should he tell the truth and both embarrass himself and disappoint Connor’s family? Or should he allow them to believe what they want to believe, that the alienated Connor, whose antisocial behavior made him an outcast even at home, was not really the suffering soul they believed him to be? The letter ended: “Would anyone even notice if I disappeared tomorrow?”

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“Dear Evan Hansen,” which opened on Sunday at Second Stage Theater in a superb production directed by Michael Greif, addresses with great heart and humor both the social anxiety we all experience at some point or another and the new modes of communication that can amplify either a sense of belonging or nonbelonging. The clever book, by Steven Levenson, tracks Evan’s sudden ascendancy from a neglected nerd to the lionized leader of a social media movement to combat the pressures that lead kids like Connor — and Evan — to such dire extremes. (The set, designed by David Korins, features a series of scrims across which Peter Nigrini’s projections — of tweets and Facebook posts and Instagram feeds — almost constantly scroll, evoking the sometimes treacherous, sometimes buoying virtual waters in which high-schoolers swim.) At the same time, Evan — whose mother, Heidi (Rachel Bay Jones), a nurse’s aide, works or goes to class most nights — is drawn into the embrace of Connor’s better-off parents. Larry (John Dossett) and Cynthia (Jennifer Laura Thompson) are happy to have a surrogate son to fill the void left by Connor, as Evan is happy to find a welcome in a more conventional family. (Evan’s father left long ago.) Although it occasionally trades in perky caricature — specifically in the character of the hyper-achieving Alana (a very funny Kristolyn Lloyd), who appoints herself co-president of the “Connor Project” — for the most part Mr. Levenson’s book sensitively explores Evan’s predicament. Among his solutions: enlisting his “family friend” Jared (an amusingly snarky Will Roland) to create a series of backdated emails between Evan and Connor. The songs, by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“Dogfight,” “A Christmas Story”), strike the same complex notes, with shapely, heartfelt lyrics that expose the tensions and conflicts that Connor’s death and Evan’s involvement cause in both families. The music, played by a small but excellent band on a platform upstage, is appealingly unstrident pop-rock, with generous doses of acoustic guitar, keyboards and strings. It’s the finest, most emotionally resonant score yet from this promising young songwriting team. Ms. Jones is particularly touching as Evan’s overworked mother, whose deep love for her son is expressed in her attention to his sensitivities, but who also develops her own thin skin when she sees Evan turning to another family for emotional support. Ms. Thompson’s bright soprano is always a pleasure to hear, and while Mr. Dossett’s singing is less assured, he affectingly illustrates how Larry’s quasi-paternal relationship with Evan helps chip away at his remote veneer. And as Zoe, who is at first dubious about Evan’s friendship with her brother — how could the bully who tormented her be the sensitive soul revealed in those emails? — Ms. Dreyfuss is understated and lovely. But the appeal of “Dear Evan Hansen” is virtually inseparable from the endearing awkwardness that Mr. Platt brings to the stage. With his eyes blinking and twitching nervously, Evan has trouble conducting even the most minimal conversation without somehow twisting himself into a pretzel of self-doubt. His hands flutter nervously, as if trying to semaphorically erase his latest awkward utterance. But when Mr. Platt sings Evan’s songs — including the touching introductory cri de coeur, “Waving Through a Window” — we can simultaneously hear the heartsore, conflicted young man and the intelligent, kindly kid buried inside him. And as Evan blossoms under the attention his notoriety draws, Mr. Platt illuminates both his

growing sense of self-esteem and the remorse that practicing his deception — however well intended — causes him. At times Mr. Platt’s performance feels so exposed that you want to look away, to give him some breathing room. But it’s impossible. Mr. Platt draws us so deeply into the character’s psyche that it would be like looking in a mirror and trying not to see your reflection.

April 30, 2016

Review: In ‘Anna Akhmatova,’ a Magical Interlude Reconjured

By Andy Webster With “Anna Akhmatova: The Heart Is Not Made of Stone,” Eve Wolf, the founder and executive artistic director of the Ensemble for the Romantic Century, moves 180 degrees from her troupe’s dazzling, phantasmagorical April 2015 work, “Jules Verne: From the Earth to the Moon.” Which is not to say that the engrossing “Akhmatova” — having a five-day revival at BAM Fisher after its 2012 debut at Symphony Space — has any less merit. This show, written by Ms. Wolf and directed by the Ensemble stalwart Donald T. Sanders, is an ode to the Russian poet Akhmatova (1889-1966), whose work was suppressed for decades by the Soviet government but who had a devoted following, not least for remaining in her country despite political upheavals and repression. The set — designed, like the costumes, by Ms. Wolf’s frequent collaborator Vanessa James — presents worlds at odds. At far left is a cluttered desk where almost comical apparatchiks (Robert Ian Mackenzie and Michael Lewis), overseen by a K.G.B. officer (Kate Konigisor), monitor Akhmatova (Ellen McLaughlin). On a rear wall is a framed portrait that gradually morphs from Czar Nicholas II to Stalin to Khrushchev. At far right is a sofa on which Akhmatova lounges in a kind of domestic exile, a Chekhovian model of aristocracy in twilight, in Leningrad. With her is her son, Lev (Tommy Schrider), who is destined for the gulags. And at center is a white grand piano where Ms. Wolf and Max Barros perform, accompanied by other musicians. A narrative highlight of the show, which encompasses the years 1945 to 1965, is Akhmatova’s overnight 1945 encounter with the Latvian-born philosopher and political theorist Isaiah Berlin (Jeremy Holm), visiting from Britain. He quotes her work, and they drink, talk literature and enjoy an intimate if platonic rapport. It will be years — spent enduring Lev’s confinement and a ban on much of her own work — before she will see him again. Ms. McLaughlin has a presence worthy of an intellectual giant, as does Mr. Holm. But the real stars are the musicians: Ms. Wolf, Mr. Barros, the cellist Andrew Janss and the violinist Victoria Wolf Lewis, playing rapturous accounts of Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich. What “Akhmatova” lacks in story detail, it makes up for in the muscularity and shimmering lyricism of its music, so reflective of the Russian character.

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The video designer David Bengali, who graced “Verne” with galactic tableaus on three video screens, here conjures a quietly austere and wintry landscape of gorgeous black and white. It is a fitting analogue to the bleak arc of Akhmatova’s life, which, despite its travails, had a defiant passion at its core. “Anna Akhmatova: The Heart Is Not Made of Stone” runs through Sunday at the Fishman Space, Fisher Building, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 321 Ashland Place; 718-636-4100, ticketcentral.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.

May 2, 2016

Review: A Wedding Reunion Goes Down Like a Shot of Whiskey in ‘Kentucky’

By Alexis Soloski

To love and to honor, to cherish and to obey. These verbs do not rank high on Hiro’s skill set or in her vocabulary. A capable New York marketing executive with a hip wardrobe, a blinkered emotional life and various substance-abuse issues, Hiro has decided to return to the abusive home she fled and disrupt her little sister’s calamitous marriage. This is a move that even her easygoing therapist characterizes as “a big, huge, self-destructive mistake.” Guess she won’t be angling to catch the bouquet.

Leah Nanako Winkler’s “Kentucky,” co-produced by Ensemble Studio Theater, the Radio Drama Network and Page 73, is a riff on the family play, the homecoming play, the coming-of-age play and also occasionally a musical, with Ms. Winkler’s own compositions facing off against contemporary Christian rock. (The devotional pop is livelier; Ms. Winkler’s music, with lyrics like “These people have shaped you/These people are horrible,” is cleverer.) The style is what a naturalistic play might look like after several pitchers of juleps.

The show begins in highish dudgeon as Hiro (a nicely choleric Satomi Blair) explains her plans to her schlubby therapist, Larry (Curran Connor). Then it’s wheels up and whiskey downed as Hiro confronts her violent father (Jay Patterson), doormat mother (Ako) and born-again sister (Sasha Diamond), a sunny sort given to insist, “Jesus is awesome!” (No wonder Hiro sinks enough anti-anxiety meds to mellow a rhino.)

While avoiding her maid-of-honor duties, Hiro finds time to carouse with high school friends and beds a former crush (Alex Grubbs). That bridesmaids, the groom’s family, a grandmother and a talking cat also crowd the Ensemble Studio Theater’s petite stage suggest that Ms. Winkler is not the sort of playwright to be cowed by thoughts of budget or square footage.

Under Morgan Gould’s energetic though sometimes frenetic direction, the characterizations flirt with stereotype and elements of the action feel less than credible. While the ensemble scenes are absorbing, Ms. Winkler also supplies confessional monologues, which are reasonably engaging, though ultimately unnecessary. The more skillful actors can communicate their fears and desires without recourse to direct address.

But if the script is overstuffed, “Kentucky” marks the full-length debut of a distinctive new voice — mouthy, sly and bourbon sweet, with the expected kick.

“Kentucky” runs through May 22 at Ensemble Studio Theater, 549 West 52nd Street, Manhattan; ensemblestudiotheatre.org, 866-811-4111. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.

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May 1, 2016

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May 1, 2016

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May 9, 2016

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May 2 – 15, 2016

112

May 1, 2016

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