As Catherine, Chastain, making her Broadway debut, has effected a remarkable transformation from the role for which she is best-known, Celia Foote , the clichéd but appealing blonde bombshell with the heart of gold in The Help. But she doesn’t go far enough.

Chastain is in a long line of beauties who have impersonated plain Janes. The former fashion model Charlize Theron won an Oscar for playing buck-toothed serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster; the former fashion model Halle Berry won her Oscar for playing a downtrodden, makeup-free mother in Monster’s Ball. Fashion model to “monster” seems an assured path to winning over the voters of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Fashion models can make a rag look like a princess’s gown. There is a certain type of person who does the reverse. They may be good-hearted and intelligent, but they are no more graceful than a platypus. That is how I view Catherine Sloper, an impression helped along by my good fortune in having seen Cherry Jones play the part in the last revival of “The Heiress” on Broadway. When Jones as Catherine descended that staircase wearing a beautiful red dress, her deportment was so awkward that you cringed for her. Having seen Cherry Jones in other plays, I have no doubt this was just exquisite acting – and possibly also a clever costume designer.

Chastain, who was never a model (though she was recently “named” an “ambassadress” for a new perfume), seems to have a natural physical grace, which she apparently can’t turn off while playing Catherine. Yes, she is shy, literal-minded and blunt-spoken; we see the pain in her face while attempting to be sociable. But her acting is largely limited to her facial expressions. Her body tells a different story.

Chastain’s beauty and grace throw the delicate dynamic of “The Heiress” out of whack. At its best, “The Heiress” offers the audience something of a subtle tug-of-war for our affection: Is Morris Townsend just a cad, or is his interest in her money accompanied by an eagerness to make her happy? Is Dr. Sloper legitimately protective of his daughter as well as insufficiently impressed with her good qualities? In this production, Catherine’s father is not just disappointed in Catherine; he seems delusional about her. Morris Townsend’s motives seem clear-cut: Catherine is rich, single, pleasant and pretty; who wouldn’t want to marry her?

It takes an intense willingness to overlook the miscasting of Chastain in order to gain maximum pleasure from director Moises Kaufman’s other choices. Derek McLane’s set is elegant in its rich hues and delicious in its details. Albert Wolsky’s costumes and David Lander’s lighting take us back to mid-19th-century New York. Dan Stevens is nearly as dashing and personable here as when he plays the dreamboat Matthew Crawley in the BBC TV series Downton Abbey. It seems the right choice not to make Morris Townsend a blatant schemer, which is evident not just from Stevens’ performance but in the script for “The Heiress,” written in the 1940’s by Ruth and August Goetz. On the script is the information that their play is “suggested” by Washington Square, the novel by Henry James, a curiously weak attribution, since the plot, characters and indeed whole swaths of dialogue are taken directly from the book. But there are substantial changes – most noticeably in the more dramatic ending, but most significantly in some of the characterizations. One of these is Morris Townsend. Another is Catherine’s aunt, Mrs. Penniman. In the novel, Aunt Lavinia is a meddlesome widow so taken with the romantic possibilities of the courtship that her involvement becomes pernicious. She is no less a meddlesome but a more benevolent figure in “The Heiress,” especially as played by Judith Ivey, who is the stand-out in the cast, a subtle and entertaining blend of busybody and what we would now call a support system. However worthwhile her performance, it says something about the imbalance of this production of “The Heiress” that the cheerleading widow is the character with whom we most identify.

The Heiress At the Walter Kerr (219 West 48th Street, NYC) by Ruth and Augustus Goetz “suggested by the novel by Henry James, Washington Square” Directed by Moses Kaufman Set design by Derek McLane, costumes by Albert Wolsky, lighting by David Lander Cast: Jessica Chastain, David Strathairn, Dan Stevens, Judith Ivey, Molly Camp, Kieran Campion, Virginia Kull, Dee Nelson, Caitlin O’Connell Running time: 2 hours and 45 minutes, including intermission Buy tickets to The Heiress

“The Heiress” is scheduled to run through February 10, 2013.

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“House for Sale,” Jonathan Franzen’s first essay in The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History, one of his seven published books, tells the story of his return to Missouri after his mother’s death to sell the house he grew up in. He writes about the minutia of packing up the house, and interviewing three real estate agents, but also digresses into a kind of portrait of his mother and memories of his sullen childhood interactions with his parents, especially a closing scene at Disney World.

Read it, and the story has an odd charm. It is often funny and, despite Franzen’s scrupulously unsentimental tone, at times affecting. There are moments of insight. Before his mother had died, she had meticulously assessed the house, estimating its value at $350,000. Franzen writes:

“This figure was more than ten times what she and my father had paid for the place in 1965. The house not only constituted the bulk of her assets but was by far the most successful investment she’d ever made. I wasn’t a ten times happier person than my father, her grandchildren weren’t ten times better educated than she was. What else in her life had done even half so well as real estate?”

The Transport Group has been around for more than a decade, responsible for such highly-praised productions of late as “See Rock City and Other Destinations,” and “Queen of the Mist,” as well as a recent revival of “Boys in the Band” and the Broadway musical “Lysistrata Jones.” It is thus thoroughly baffling how completely its adaptation of “House for Sale” misfires.

Five performers sit in chairs at some remove from the audience, taking turns reciting Franzen’s essay, more or less verbatim, although some lines are suddenly repeated four or five times, and the actors also recite transcripts of various Youtube videos about the Disney character Goofy that are inserted willy-nilly. Occasionally one performer or another will change into or out of a costume. One or another will play the piano. But mostly they just recite. There is no discernible effort to communicate the tone or even the meaning of Franzen’s sentences, no real focus for the audience’s attention.

The set by Laura Jellinek seems similarly unfocused. There is a screen that for most of the 80 minutes of the show presents a still image of Faye Dunaway. This eventually becomes a film clip, and includes other images, such as Mickey Mouse. There is a kind of a plank that separates the audience from the actors that, on closer inspection, could be a horizontal representation of a wall in a movie theater lobby: On top of a patterned wallpaper, there is an Exit sign, a flat screen TV, and a row of five colored bulbs. There are several similar light fixtures throughout the set.

Those bulbs turn out to have great significance to this production, and not just because lighting designer Thomas Dunn uses them for some distracting visual effects. Each color corresponds to one of the actors. When one color is lit, the actor who has been assigned that color reads the next passage in the story. When the orange light went on, it was Rob Campbell, the red light, Lisa Joyce, and so on.

As we are told in the program (which is not distributed until the performance is over), the show is “cued live.” In other words, the order of the colored lights changes at each performance, meaning the performers don’t know precisely which part of Franzen’s story they will be reciting until they see the light. This sounds like a stimulating challenge for the performers. It is a challenge completely devoid of stimulation for the audience.

Indeed, it is hard to understand the point of just about any of director Daniel Fish’s choices. Some of the stagecraft might be intriguing in and of itself, given a different context, a different text — say, perhaps, one more familiar and thus more open to deconstruction, or one more avant-garde on the page and thus more fitting for an experimental treatment on the stage. At the Duke, it is as if somebody gave the directive to make Franzen’s “House for Sale” as inaccessible as possible.

House for Sale at the Duke on 42nd Street By Jonathan Franzen Adapted for the stage and directed by Daniel Fish Original music by Polly Pen Scenic design by Laura Jellinek, costume design by Terese Wadden, lighting design by Thomas Dunn, sound design by Daniel Kluger, video projections by Andrew Lazarow. Cast: Rob Campbell (orange light), Lisa Joyce (red), Meritt Janson (green), Christina Rouner (blue), Michael Rudko (white) House for Sale is set to run through November 18

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The Roundabout Theater Company’s production of “Cyrano de Bergerac” has these elements ALL IN THE SAME SCENE – followed by a scene with nuns and falling leaves!

Now, look, I am no more immune than any other theatergoer to the humor and pathos in the story of a man who helps another man woo the woman he himself loves. Who isn’t touched by unrequited love? Who can’t identify with somebody who is superior in every way to those around him except for the one thing that seems to matter most to the one who matters most to him? His appearance – more specifically, his big nose.

You would think that audiences might rebel at the anachronism of it all – Just get a nose job! – but no: Type “Cyrano” into Netflix and you get a long list of “takes” on the tale, from Steve Martin’s “Roxanne” to rapper inflected “Let It Shine” to lesbian “Cyrana” to James Franco teen comedy vehicle “Whatever It Takes” to “Donald’s Double Trouble” starring Donald Duck.

On Broadway alone, there have been 15 Cyranos, counting the current one. The 14th , starring Kevin Kline,was just five years ago.

Director Jamie Lloyd takes that beloved story, and does some fresh things to it. He casts Douglas Hodge, the accomplished British actor who was last (and first) on Broadway as the flamboyant Albin in “La Cage Aux Folles,” as a refreshingly reinterpreted Cyrano. Hodge is not just the usual swashbuckling dandy but an extraordinarily talented man trapped in an ordinary body, angry and resentful at his undeserved fate. Also in the cast is deep-voiced classically-trained Patrick Page, who as the Green Goblin was the best thing about Spider-Man, who gives more than the usual one dimension to the villain. Also cast is the lovely (and actually French) actress Clemence Poesy from the Harry Potter movies, as Roxanne. Mix in with a large cast, imposing sets, fancy costumes. How could this go wrong? For many, it hasn’t. For me, at nearly three hours long, this Cyrano felt like a homework assignment.

Hodge makes his entrance as Cyrano complaining – I kid you not – about the show: “Get off the stage right now, you ham,” he shouts. He is talking about a play-within-the-play, but I sympathized. Hodge knows what he is doing, but he is saddled with a dubious translation by Ranjit Bolt, who works the words “pissed” and “shit” into his rhyming couplets at least half a dozen times, and, at the same time, uses “stalactitic” more than once. At one point, this translator has Cyrano proclaiming about his nose:

“It’s vast/

Proboscis-wise, its bulk is unsurpassed.”

This is bad doggerel. Maybe its mediocrity is deliberate, something of an inside joke, but this and too many other lines don’t fit the character speaking them. Cyrano is supposed to be as witty a poet as he is brave a soldier; the whole plot hinges on his spectacular cleverness.

I dread the thought of a well-meaning teacher or parent taking their young charges to see a “classic,” and having those kids think that this mix of vulgarity and pomposity is language to which they should aspire.

Luckily, they are unlikely to pay much attention to the language, given the rowdy, all-for-one-and-one-for-all Les Miz-like fight scenes that the director gives us – distractions almost as large as this Cyrano’s nose, so big and ugly at the American Airlines Theater it’s impossible to ignore.

Cyrano de Bergerac At American Airlines Theater By Edmond Rostand, translated by Ranjit Bolt Directed by Jamie Lloyd; sets and costumes by Soutra Gilmour; lighting by Japhy Weideman; sound by Dan Moses Schreier; music by Charlie Rosen; hair and wig design by Amanda Miller; movement by Chris Bailey; fight director, Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbau Cast: Douglas Hodge (Cyrano de Bergerac), Clémence Poésy (Roxane), Patrick Page (Comte de Guiche), Max Baker (Le Bret), Bill Buell (Ragueneau), Geraldine Hughes (Duenna/Sister Marthe), Kyle Soller (Christian) and Andy Grotelueschen (Montfleury/Pastry Cook/Cadet/Friar). Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes, including one intermission. Cyrano de Bergerac is scheduled to run through November 25

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The original “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” caused a sensation, and that is true as well of the Steppenwolf Theater Company’s production, transferred intact from Chicago, directed by Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park) and starring Tracy Letts and Amy Morton, the Pulitzer-winning playwright and Tony-nominated star, respectively, of “August: Osage County.” It is sensational.

I mean that in at least two ways. There is something of the tabloid-sensational in the story of two married couples descending into alcohol-fueled, vicious late-night mind games. But there is no denying that Albee’s words, full of wit and fury, can make for crackling good theater.

The surprise here, at least for New York audiences, is the performance by Letts, making his Broadway acting debut, who takes control from the moment he kicks off his shoes in the opening moments of the play, as George, the disappointing and disappointed history professor, married to Martha, the daughter of the college’s esteemed president. Upending the normal dynamic of the play, this George is not the emasculated drunk normally rendered in the role, but more of a shrewd schemer. Amy Morton, playing one of the most spectacular roles for women ever created for the American stage – played larger-than-life by Uta Hagen, Elizabeth Taylor, Kathleen Turner — is less of an over-the-top diva, more vulnerable, brittle. Their characterizations are a recalibration that makes the work feel fresher.

Rounding out the cast are Madison Dirks and Carrie Coon as Nick, the cocky and callow young new professor in the biology department, and Honey, his mousey wife, the couple whom Martha invites back to the house after a faculty party, launching the long night of revelations, debauchery, and cruelty. These two actors are also making their Broadway debuts, and their performances are spot-on. So is Todd Rosenthal’s set, an academic’s house with every corner covered with piles of books – a perfect little detail.

It seems wrong simply to swoon over a play that is so acerbic and surreal, so let me force a quibble. Albee has written deeper dramas since “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Both “A Delicate Balance”

and “Three Tall Women” strike me as more substantive and more anchored in a recognizable (if no less harsh) reality.

On the other hand, none of Albee’s three dozen or so plays has accumulated so much lore around it – not just the Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor movie, which was Mike Nichols’ debut as a filmmaker, but the scandals and controversies.

Edward Albee in 1962

Albee was already famous as a bad boy trickster playwright for the one act “Zoo

Story” four years earlier, when “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” hit an unsuspecting Broadway, winning five Tony Awards, including for best play. It was also selected by the nominating committee for the

Pulitzer Prize for Drama. But the trustees of Columbia over-ruled the

committee, reportedly concerned about reactions to the play as too vulgar and shocking. No drama award was

given that year.

Though the trustees continue in this unfortunate habit of overriding the juries, they would be far less likely to do it for the same reason today, because audiences are far less likely to be shocked now by adult shenanigans on stage – thanks to Albee’s influence, which Letts recently acknowledged is ubiquitous. Is it ironic that Letts the playwright is one of those responsible for making “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” seem less revolutionary? No matter. Letts the actor does penance, by turning this “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” 50 years later, into an eye-opener and a thrill.

Win two tickets to see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

At the Booth Theater (222 West 45th Street)

By Edward Albee

Directed by Pam MacKinnon; sets by Todd Rosenthal; costumes by Nan Cibula-Jenkins; lighting by Allen Lee Hughes; sound by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen; technical supervisor, Hudson Theatrical Associates

Cast: Tracy Letts (George), Amy Morton (Martha), Carrie Coon (Honey) and Madison Dirks (Nick).

Running time: 3 hours 5 minutes, including two ten-minute intermissions

“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” is scheduled to run through January 27, but I’ll be surprised if it isn’t extended.

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Complete Grace Review

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But this Enemy is also a bit like Julian Assange, and like the play’s main character Dr. Thomas Stockmann – easier to admire than to love.

Boyd Gaines plays Stockmann, a village doctor who discovers after rigorous scientific study that the water used in the town’s spa is polluted. Rather than curing the tourists who seek it out, it’s poisoning them. Richard Thomas plays the doctor’s brother Peter, the mayor of the resort town, which depends on the spa as its main source of revenue. The mayor leads the effort to silence Dr. Stockmann.

Director Doug Hughes (Doubt, The Royal Family, The Whipping Man) has put together this version with the evident mission of eliminating any reputation for mustiness that clings to Ibsen’s work – a reputation that initially made Arthur Miller reluctant to accept a commission to adapt the play during the McCarthy era. This production uses an adaptation (originally used in London four years ago) by hot British playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz that is fresh and swift, cutting the normal running time to two hours, which includes an intermission. The updated language adds an edge to the confrontations between Gaines and Thomas.

Here for example is an exchange between the Stockmann brothers, as rendered in the first known English translation, in 1897, where the mayor has just read his brother’s report about the toxic water:

Peter Stockmann: As usual, you report violent expressions in your report. You say, among other things, that what we offer in our baths is a permanent supply of poison.

Thomas Stockmann: Well, can you describe it any other way, Peter?

In Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s version, Peter is reading aloud directly from the report:

“’All we can offer our visitors at present is the promise of poisoning, paralysis and pestilence,’” Peter reads, and then adds, sarcastically: “Very good use of alliteration for dramatic effect.”

“It’s fact, not drama,” Thomas replies indignantly.

Of course, “An Enemy of the People” is a drama, and in the hands of Lenkiewicz and Hughes, a heightened and more voluble one — at times too voluble at the expense of nuance. At the same time, however, in some ways it has become less of a melodrama, less black and white. If the doctor is not a real enemy, neither is he a complete hero, even though he clearly thinks he is.

This is evident in the most difficult part of the play for modern audiences to swallow, the long speech that Dr. Stockmann delivers after it is clear to him that the public has turned against him. It is an argument not just against mob rule, but against majority rule. “Idiots outnumber geniuses,” he shouts. “Are you telling me the average man should rule over the great?”

In the new production, Stockmann is not the voice of reason against the mob; he has lost control, perhaps temporarily lost his mind; he has become reckless in response to the censorship and massive snub by his community; the danger of the polluted water doesn’t seem to matter to him anymore. He even is moved by his anger to start to strike his wife, only with great effort restraining himself.

This is a different approach than Arthur Miller’s idealistic man of science. It may also be contrary to Ibsen’s intentions. Ibsen is said to have written “An Enemy of the People” in response to the virulent public attacks he received for “Ghosts,” the play he wrote the year before. When Dr. Stockmann inveighs against the majority, some critics have speculated, he is a stand-in for the playwright’s embittered argument for artistic autonomy — for the truth that exists in art, regardless of public opinion.

The public meeting scene in An Enemy of the People by Ibsen

While Stockmann’s complex characterization adds extra coloring to the play, making it more thought-provoking, it may also be one of the factors that distance us from this ‘Enemy.’ Perhaps one can also blame this distancing on the size of the Friedman (although it is one of the smallest theaters on Broadway). John Lee Beatty’s sets, which feel like the drafty interiors of some old unfinished wooden meetinghouses, and Catherine Zuber’s stock 19th century costumes don’t help. It is interesting to note that a recent adaptation of the same play by Richard Nelson completely rewrites the scene of the public meeting to make it more intimate – because, Nelson has explained, the way Ibsen writes it, it would require “50 or even a hundred people” filling the stage. A BBC adaptation fills the screen with a heckling mob. What the MTC production does is seat members of the play’s “public” in the first few rows of the theater — which should make the audience feel like the townspeople of this 19th century Norwegian town, faced with the dilemma of losing our livelihood to avert a public health calamity. But it doesn’t.

An Enemy of the People Written by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz

Directed by Doug Hughes; Scenic design by John Lee Beatty; costume design by Catherine Zuber; lighting design by Ben Stanton; original music and sign design by David Van Tieghem. Cast: Boyd Gaines, Richard Thomas, Maïté Alina, Gerry Bamman, Kathleen McNenny, Randall Newsome, John Procaccino, Michael Siberry, James Waterston Running time: two hours (with one 15 minute intermission)

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If there is a special connection between movie stars and watery stages, I haven’t found it yet. But I do see the fresh connections that young British playwright Nick Payne makes in the play in which Gyllenhaal is appearing at the Laura Pels, entitled “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet.”

The four-character play tells the story of a family whose members barely know how to speak to one another. Anna (Annie Funke) is the 15-year-old overweight, bullied daughter of teacher Fiona (Michelle Gomez) and scholar George (Brian F. O’Byrne). Fiona transferred Anna from her old school to the one where Fiona teaches, which has made things worse for Anna. As the play opens, she has been suspended from school and is nursing a bloody nose after head-butting a classmate who poured custard in her shoe. Enter Terry (Gyllenhaal), George’s brother, long absent from the scene, who returns home and develops a special bond with his niece.

George, meanwhile, is obsessed with climate change and with our contribution as a species and as individuals to the destruction of the planet. He is writing a book that assesses the carbon footprint of our everyday activities. “A latte a day, for instance, equates to roughly the same C02 as a sixty-mile drive in an average car.” George’s concerns at first seem satiric, or at least easily dismissed, especially as we realize that his fanatical devotion to the earth causes him to neglect his family. He refuses to take a vacation with them anymore because he doesn’t want to fly in an (energy-guzzling) airplane; is it any surprise that his marriage is fraying, and he is estranged from his daughter?

But director Michael Longhurst’s production, aided by set designer Beowulf Boritt, forces us to look for the connection the playwright is making between the earth and George’s family, both falling apart. Not only does the water fall from the ceiling into a water tank as the play begins, but the furniture and props are all piled on top of the stage. For each scene, the actors take some of the furniture and, when that scene is finished, dump the furniture and assorted detritus into the water trough. Water figures in a climactic and startling scene involving Anna as well.

What I might largely have dismissed as a young dramatist’s standard dysfunctional family saga (first produced in London in 1999, when Payne was 25), turns into something eerier, more memorable. The cast is superb, Gyllenhaal all the more so for losing himself in the role, for not standing out in this ensemble work. He nails his British accent (based on my extensive experience watching “Mary Poppins” and “My Fair Lady”), but more importantly he subtly captures the nuances of Terry’s maddening, endearing, foul-mouthed, kindly, reckless, restless personality. For all his good intentions, Terry can’t even get Anna’s name right; he keeps calling her Hannah. Annie Funke could not be better as Anna, capturing an adolescent girl’s moodiness in her silences as much as in her speeches, and Michelle Gomez is credible as a woman who doesn’t know how to make things right with either her daughter or her husband. Brian F. O’Byrne, whom I last saw on a New York stage five long years ago in The Coast of Utopia (and who was more recently on the screen as Mildred Pierce’s hapless husband and Prime Suspect’s nasty detective), elevates anything in which he appears. His George is awkwardness incarnate, cold to his family in a way that feels like the playwright’s manipulation (not quite believable), but O’Byrne manages for all that to make his character seem sympathetic.

Those looking for a fully satisfying plot probably won’t find it in “If There Is, I Haven’t Found It Yet” (a play that deserves better than that title.) But to me, the disparate themes pulled together when George asks, probably rhetorically, “Are we worth saving if we’re not prepared to change?” He means human beings on earth, but he could just as easily mean his own family. If I’m reading Nick Payne right, his answer seems to be: Despite it all, yes.

If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet At The Laura Pels Theater By Nick Payne Directed by Michael Longhurst; sets by Beowulf Boritt; costumes by Susan Hilferty; lighting by Natasha Katz; music and sound by Obadiah Eaves; production stage manager, J. Philip Bassett; dialect coach, Ben Furey Cast: Annie Funke (Anna), Michelle Gomez (Fiona), Jake Gyllenhaal (Terry) and Brian F. O’Byrne (George). Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes with no intermission Scheduled to run through November 25 Buy tickets to “If There Is, I Haven’t Found It Yet”

The post If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet Review: Jake Gyllenhaal’s American Stage Debut appeared first on The Faster Times.

Why do good people suffer? How can an all-knowing, all-benevolent Supreme Being allow evil in the world? These are questions with which people have grappled since the beginning of history, and they lose none of their currency, or urgency, today.

Doing a theatrical version of the Biblical tale seemed like yet another good idea in The Flea’s continuing (and almost solitary) effort to address the losses that so many people feel in these hard times. Initially commissioned by the Soho Rep, “Job” is written by Thomas Bradshaw, a professor of playwriting at Northwestern University, in what is billed as “an honest, un-cynical adaptation.” In Bradshaw’s version, we first see Job (Sean McIntyre) acting like a local magistrate, showing mercy to a thief with a hungry family, then condemning a rapist to death by stoning. This is not in any translation I’ve read of the Book of Job, but it makes sense, since the story has not been updated to modern times, where such activity might be dismissed as limited to vigilantes and the Taliban. Job is said to be upright and righteous. In Biblical times, given the absence of a local judicial system, a righteous man would see it as his duty to enforce the commandments and interpret divine law.

The next few scenes dramatize the bet made between God (Ugo Chukwu) and Satan (Stephen Stout) about whether Job will continue to be pious if his good fortune and good health are taken away from him. These scenes take larger liberties, with the playful addition of two of “God’s sons,” Jesus and Dionysus (Grant Harrison and Erik Folks), who exhibit a sibling rivalry and comical exchanges threaded throughout the rest of the play. (“Why are they always sacrificing lambs?” Dionysus asks Jesus about mortals. “Why do they think we like that?”) It’s conceivable that some deeply religious Jew would be offended by the insertion of Jesus into a tale that is part of the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, but it is unlikely that anyone like that would wind up watching a show at the Flea in the first place.

No, the wrong turn comes once God has agreed to let Satan visit afflictions upon Job. In the Bible, foreigners destroy his livestock and kill his servants, then his children, and then Job himself is struck by illness – specifically, boils cover his skin.

In Bradshaw’s version, one of Job’s sons kills and rapes one of his own sisters and then is himself sodomized with a broomstick and killed by another brother, who later commits suicide. Job himself has his eyes gouged out and his penis cut off. This is all done very graphically: The murdering brother briefly masturbates naked before he rapes his sister; Job’s eye sockets spurt blood inches from the audience; we see his bloody penis thrown onto the stage. Director Benjamin Kamine should probably take the hit for this X-rated, B horror movie treatment.

It is virtually impossible to take seriously or feel moved by anything after that exercise in Grand Guignol; even just absorbing what’s going on is not easy, especially during two long monologues by Job complaining about his lot, which jarringly lift poetic passages verbatim from the King James English translation. Job also gives a mini-lesson in Jewish history to the daughter of a friend (“Who built the first temple?” “King Solomon”), making one briefly wonder whether a demented Sunday school teacher has suddenly hijacked the theatrical enterprise.

Indeed, several scenes feel like a production straight out of a (really liberal) religious high school, an impression helped along by the uneven performances and uniformly young age of the 20-member cast. All of them are members of the Bats, the Flea’s resident theater company, which is basically a non-paying internship that attracts recent graduates. Previous productions have shown me the tremendous talent within this ensemble, and there are certainly stand-outs in this cast, including most of the principals. But as a whole, they feel ill-used in “Job.”

Job

At the Flea Theater

41 White Street

Written by ThomaS Bradshaw based on the Book of Job

Directed by Benjamin H. Kamine

Set by Aaron Green, lights by Jonathan Cottle, costumes by Ashley Farra, sound by Jeremy Bloom, choreography by Joya Powell, makeup artist and special effects by Justin Tyne, stage manger Courtney Ulrich

Cast: The Bats:

Bradley Anderson, Mimi Augustin, Jaspal Binning, Ugo Chukwu, Alex Coelho, Timothy Craig, Jimmy Dailey, Edgar Eguia, Eric Folks, Cleo Gray, Grant Harrison, Layla Khosnoudi, Adam Lebowitz-Lockard, Abraham Makany, Sean McIntyre, Chester Poon, Ivano Pulito, Marie-Claire Roussel, Stephen Stout and Jennifer Tsay.

Job is scheduled to run through October 7.

The post Job Review: Why Good People Suffer, At The Flea appeared first on The Faster Times.

“But we don’t have a dog,” Sharon’s husband Kenny says.

“We don’t have a dog. Exactly,” Sharon says. “I said ‘Ma’am, people have accused me of many things before, but they never accused me of having a dog.’”

It’s a surreal moment, never explained, in a play that until then has been deeply rooted in present-day reality – the reality facing those struggling to stay in the middle class. Call them the 47 percent.

Kenny and Sharon (Darren Pettie and Sarah Sokolovic) are new to the neighborhood, a once-bright, friendly suburb of what may or may not be Detroit. The title is more of a metaphor, and it is one of several, a symbolism expertly and unobtrusively threaded throughout the work.

We first see the couple in the backyard of their next-door neighbors Ben and Mary (David Schwimmer and Amy Ryan), who invited them to share a barbecue. Ben has just been laid off from his job as a banker. He plans to set up a website that will launch a new business as a financial adviser for those facing a credit crisis. His wife Mary supports the two of them as a paralegal. They are, as it turns out, in better shape than their new neighbors. Both Kenny and Sharon are employed, but they work at low-paying jobs with little security, he in a warehouse, she at a call center. Worse, they met in drug rehab, and it’s not clear that the rehab completely worked.

Indeed, nothing quite works the way it should for the characters in “Detroit,” from the patio umbrella in Ben and Mary’s backyard to their physical well-being right up to each character’s literal dreams and lofty plans.

“I’m supposed to set goals and take night classes that will expand my horizons,” Sharon confides in Mary. “But to be honest I feel like the real opportunities are the ones that fall into your lap. Like winning the lottery or somebody’s rich Uncle needing a personal assistant.” Kenny and Sharon seem to be placing their hopes in a personal lottery, counting on winning what sounds like a dubious lawsuit against a supermarket where Kenny slipped and fell a few years back — if in fact Kenny is telling the truth.

“Detroit” seems composed of casual conversations and everyday scenes between the two couples as their friendship deepens. But there is more going on here, as the explosive climax and aftermath make startlingly apparent; the play turns from orienting naturalism to an unnerving surrealism, each of the characters delusional in their own way. But the tensions are hinted at all along, thanks to director Anne Kauffman, who has assembled a production at Playwrights Horizons that does justice to D’Amour’s play, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and was at one time planned for Broadway. The acting is spot-on, each of the performers capturing the dual nature of their characters. Amy Ryan’s Mary is polite and well-meaning, and also fearful, awkward and a secret drunk. David Schwimmer’s Ben is amiable and assured, but secretly clueless and drifting. Pettie’s Kenny — like his wife a mysterious character both to the other couple and to the audience — is one hell of a guy, but also a dangerous, resentful menace. Sarah Sokolovic’s Sharon is cheerful and friendly, but also harbors a feeling of hopelessness. The always reliable John Collum makes a late appearance in the play, primarily to provide some necessary exposition and a dollop of symbolism, but, thanks to his delivery, he has the funniest, most poignant line in the play (which I won’t spoil.)

Adding to the effect are Louisa Thompson’s sets, which rotate between the two houses, front and back, of the two couples, and Matt Tierney’s sound design, which, with its combination of cricket chirpings and revving engines, offers its own lesson in suburbia. Everything about the production, in other words, works well to show some ways in which America is not working.

Detroit

At Playwrights Horizons

By Lisa D’Amour

Directed by Anne Kauffman; sets by Louisa Thompson; costumes by Kaye Voyce; lighting by Mark Barton; sound by Matt Tierney; Cast: John Cullum (Frank), Darren Pettie (Kenny), Amy Ryan (Mary), David Schwimmer (Ben) and Sarah Sokolovic (Sharon).Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes with no intermission.

Detroit was initially scheduled to run through October 7. It has been extended to October 28th.

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Brown got his first gig on Broadway at the age of 22 as the rehearsal pianist for “Kiss of the Spiderwoman.” Six years later, he had won the Tony for his score of the 1998 musical “Parade,” about the lynching of Leo Frank. That he has had to struggle to get his musicals onto a New York stage since says more about Broadway than about Brown.

Luckily, there are now places like Below 54, which bills itself as “Broadway’s Nightclub” and is below the Broadway theater Studio 54, where he can perform his work. On Thursday night Brown sang 15 songs, accompanying himself on the piano, partnering with vocalist Shoshana Bean (best-known for Wicked and Hairspray, but a singer-songwriter in her own right) and backed by a three-piece band of Gary Sieger and Matt Hinkley on guitar and Randy Landau on bass.

Most of the songs were from four of his musicals. The best-known song “I’d Give It All For You” came from “Songs for a New World”; three were from “The Last 5 Years,” the story of a failed marriage (my favorite was the comic “Shiksa Goddess.”) The Last 5 Years is being given its first New York revival at Second Stage in March. Brown also previewed four songs from two new musicals aiming for Broadway – “The Bridges of Madison County” and “Honeymoon in Vegas.”

Then there were the songs from his past and forthcoming albums: “When I say ‘forthcoming,’ I’m not saying I’m doing anything, but…someday,” he told the crowd. The songs ranged in sound from rousing blues to lyrical Irish folk to comic ditties to love songs to standards of jazz and cabaret, pop and rock – or songs that should be standards, anyway.

The only one of his songs that was not his own was in honor of the 100th anniversary of John Cage’s birth, and by some loopy connection, it was a song from Yoko Ono’s Off-Broadway musical, “New York Rock.” (Ono was a “disciple” of Cage?)

Brown is a winning performer, a fine interpreter of his own songs, friendly in a low-key way, and very witty. Attending his show at Below 54 is like getting a preview of the Broadway to be, and the Broadway that should be.

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