A Review of INTO THE WOODS at the Delacorte Theater (Act 1 only)*

*I wrote this review as a Facebook "note" and posted it sometimes in the night - but I'm proud of my work and think it deserves more eyes than a late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning post would garner, so here it is on my blog. 

************* 

(I'm somewhat retired from criticism these days, but I thought I'd flex the old muscles a bit on this piece. I'm writing it more in the style of an essay meant for someone who's familiar with the show, as I'm doing it for fun and don't have the desire to recap the storyline here.)

There is a notion - perhaps old fashioned, but it's still around - that drama is all about the day where something out of the ordinary happens. It's never about the birthday party that goes off without a hitch, the courtship that runs smoothly, the friendship that sustains. More to the point, it's about how the out-of-the-ordinary affects those (often) ordinary people. Do they embrace the strange or run from it? Or ignore it entirely? 

At its heart, INTO THE WOODS is about people who long for change, get it, and have to deal with its effects. They are not contented people, and, for many of them, they will never be content, always changing old wants out for new ones. There is a restlessness that drives the piece from the first urgent piano chords and Cinderella's plea, "I wish!" Yet for all of the danger and realism that the Delacorte's modern costumes and alfresco setting promises, and for the driving pace needed by a space that is unable to provide black-outs or closed curtains and so must rely on quick entrances and exits, there is no urgency in this production. 

Part of the problem rests with the creative team's substitution of an imaginative boy (Jack Broderick) as the Narrator. While the young actor's line readings were lively as he told the story as a child playing with his toys, and his hand-of-God machinations in the actions of the characters through his manipulation of the dolls were nicely chilling in places, this gimmick (might as well call it what it is) somewhat robs the characters of motivation beyond their good/evil status. How can a little boy understand a long-married couple's longing for a child? How can he know the pride and fear in a mother's heart as her daughter grows older? Though some of these themes come to play more strongly in Act 2 (which I didn't see, as I attended an Act 1-only family matinee), their lack of "oomph" in Act 1 didn't set the stage for their post-intermission exploration. 

But I may be confusing directorial intent with lack of character development here. The show's central couple is the Baker and his Wife, played by Denis O'Hare and Amy Adams, respectively. He is played as an offbeat and somewhat slow man (perhaps a reflection of the Homer Simpson doll the boy uses as his playtime stand-in?), she as a nice-enough, clever-enough woman whose massive stack of hair is the only remarkable thing about her. (I didn't get a look at the doll that represented her, but that sure sounds like Marge Simpson to me.) There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason as to why they are a couple, working as they do on such different wavelengths. And if I didn't hear the Narrator tell us how desperately they wanted a child, I wouldn't know it by their actions. They go about their hero's quest as though a voice from above were telling them what to do, not because of a strong passion of their own. Again, unless it was a conscious decision of the co-directors to have the Baker and Baker's Wife act like action figures, there should've been a directive to Mr. O'Hare and Ms. Adams that commanded, "You want a child that badly? Go FIGHT for it!" 

Perhaps the most unexpectedly low-key performance of the night was given by Donna Murphy as the Witch. Of course it's best not to repeat note-for-note the showy turn of Bernadette Peters; if we wanted her, we'd listen to the CD and watch the DVD. However, I wasn't anticipating Ms. Murphy's choice of making the most fantastical and magical character of the show into one of the most naturalistic ones (tree branch hands aside). Her misery and outsider status were certainly there, but, devoid of the usual histrionics, she didn't work quite as well as the catalyst for the Baker and Wife's trip into the woods, which in turn acts as an agent of change in many of the others. 

Two of the more effective actresses in this show were Sarah Stiles as Little Red Ridinghood and Jessie Mueller as Cinderella - perhaps because the wants of these characters are so clear, and in fact, made clearer through this re-staging. Little Red, seen here as a tart teen in roller derby guise, hides her vulnerability and lack of adult emotional and worldly intelligence with her nonchalant-tough exterior. She thinks that because she attracts the attention of a sexy rocker wolf with an "American Idol"-style growl (Ivan Hernandez), she's old enough to handle him - but she isn't, and her "I Know Things Now" holds even more "innocence-lost" resonance. Cinderella's problem is not a lack of awareness of others but of herself; she wants to attend the King's Festival but has a hard time figuring out if her head's been turned by the Prince or by the experience itself. She is so used to negative attention from her step-family that positive attention is perhaps confused with love. Both actresses gave a little more and a little weirder than what is usually expected in their roles, to much success. 

John Lee Beatty and Soutra Gilmour's enormous three-tier set allowed for a wondrous, creepy and highly adaptive workspace for the actors. It was both a part of and apart from the real trees that surrounded it - though it required some high-level endurance on the part of the performers who must climb up and down a series of stairs to get to each playing space. The orchestra was as it should be - crisp and unobtrusive, enough so that it was only because I was sitting next to a musician that I made an attempt to figure out where they'd been stashed, as they weren't clearly visible (for the record: on the middle level, behind the scenery). 

All in all, a lot of the unexpected happens in Act 1 of INTO THE WOODS - and even more so in Act 2. But with a production that seems to favor visuals over emotions, why should I care? 

- Lauren Snyder

greener grass that can do what it wants

My little family unit lives in Queens, unlike most of the people that I know; they are in New Jersey and Brooklyn, both of which might as well be Maine for all of the visiting that we do. This is generally fine with me, as I tend to prefer having a lot of acquaintances but very few friends. (Friends were a bit too much work for me even before I had a husband and Kid.) But of course, woman cannot live on the company of her spouse, child and the people who work at the neighborhood stores alone. So, fortunately, I've started cultivating friendships in the local theater scene.

It's always interesting to start out in a new group of people. I've never had a really hard time doing this, though, as has been mentioned in a previous blog, sometimes it takes a while for me to warm up and have my full personality emerge. I'm a space heater, not a fluorescent light, you see.

Anyways, I'm enjoying being a part of the larger Queens drama society, even though my participation is fringe at best. But it seems that the people my age or thereabouts that go out after shows are mostly single or dating, with a few married-no kids around. Of course it works out fine; I know better than to talk about my family life, sticking to common ground, and since the Hubby is generous enough to hold down the fort during these once-every-month-or-so outings, I don't have to worry about getting home at a certain time. (It helps that I go out on Saturdays, when people often have a matinee the next day and can't stay out all night.)

The only times I feel uncomfortable are when these no-strings-to-tie-them-down folks talk about what they're doing, projects-wise. They go from show to show, without a question as to whether or not it's possible. The last time I did a show, I had to rearrange my whole family's lives and schedules, resulting in lots of stress and some financial hardship. It was worth it, yes - even when I'd get to rehearsal five minutes late, sweaty from running all of the way and still fuming over an argument I'd just had, I could then disappear into my old life and my character for a while. Still, I've had to take a few months off, and even when things had calmed down, I've had to wait for a project that was within walking distance with a role for me with dates that I could do. I'm still waiting.

Within the next six months, the Kid should be old enough to hang out at rehearsal with me until her father can pick her up. In a few years, she could read or do homework at a table unsupervised when I'm onstage. The problem is that I'm 33 now, old enough for the good 30s roles and young looking-enough to go for late 20s stuff as well. I have a small window for playing Marian the Librarian, or Miss Balish in She Loves Me - and that window is closing a little more every day. It's no surprise that actresses get pregnant in their late 30s; it's a fallow time of being too old to be an ingenue and not old enough to be the matriarch. Silly me, I got knocked up at 30 instead.

This is one of those issues that come with the "being married" territory. Thing is, if I hung out with more married people, I could gain the missing perspective that would turn this from a nagging jealousy to a manageable notch in the loss column. I was hoping that writing about it here would help me to work it out ... Clearly, I've been watching too many sitcoms these days. My problems can't be solved in 22 minutes, or in 2000-odd words. :)

the art of the sell (out)

As is generally the case, things have been quiet in my blog because things have been anything but quiet in my "real" life. The husband, cats and I moved to Forest Hills, I've been spending money at Home Depot and Bed Bath and Beyond like a drunk interior design show producer, and my body has been gradually rebelling against me as it sides with the baby in her quest for extra-uterine viability.

Today I made the decision to leave my job at the end of November instead of the second week of December. It's really bizarre to know that I have 11 days at work after today, and then I'll be a SAHM, to use the common abbreviation. (Is it just me, or does anyone else see that abbreviation and think it means "Single Asian Heterosexual Male" or some other personal ad acronym?)

I went to a play last Friday (Sister Cities at T. Schreiber Studio), but I didn't review it for any publication. The storyline wasn't my cup of tea, but, for the kind of hot-button personal issue melodrama that it was, the characters were well-developed and the dialogue crackled with realism. (The set was also spectacularly conceived and dressed. Why is the designer working off-off Broadway instead of raking in the loot by doing bigger projects?)

I'd like to think that a playwright as smart as this one penned the show more for its commercial value than its dramatic value. It's a one-set show starring five actresses - one in their mid-twenties, three in their 30s to early 40s, and one in their 60s/70s - that bursts with talent-showcasing secrets and monologues. There's a script that'll have an active life in theaters across the country! If you're going to sell out, just sell the f*ck out, you know? :)

Sometimes I think of doing that ... of writing a play that's so god-awfully commercial that I can get it published and collect some sweet royalties from community theaters across the country. Maybe there could be a festival of shows like that, like that "bad theater" festival this summer that I can't remember the name of. Imagine a series of shows tackling cancer, death, mental illness, AIDS, and the war in Iraq, and they all have monologues and minimal sets and parts for character actresses in their 30s and show-stealing turns made for grand dames in their 60s!

Is it wrong to dream about creating low art as often as dreaming about creating high art?

the final two?

As we theater aesthetes know, there is no specific formula for figuring out if a show is going to be a winner before you see it. It' s fairly easy to spot a dog from a mile away - a poorly written/cheesy synopsis, actors/writers/directors you think are lame and underachieving theater companies can save you from an hour or two of blah. But some shows remind me of that quote about a girl looking like a piece by a certain painter: cute from far away but ugly up close. (I'm thinking it was a Picasso, but wouldn't a painting by Seurat make more sense?)

Last week I went to see the last two shows I'm reviewing before pregnancy. They'll be the last two reviews I'll ever write for offoffonline, and, possibly, my last two reviews ever. While I wouldn't say that they were zeros, they weren't exactly perfect 10s, or even modest 7s.

offoffonline: review of Say Your Prayers, Mug!

offoffonline: review of The House of Yes

There was no guarantee that my last-ever review would be of a show that was phenomenal, but I guess I was hoping for that.

Now, this isn't to say that I won't see any more theater between now and whenever this baby decides to come. I'd really like to see Young Frankenstein, mostly because I'm a huge fan of the film rather than the fact that it'll be such a big musical to-do. Of course, with my upcoming emigration from Manhattan to Queens, and paying off debt before I stop drawing a salary, and what looks to be a month or two of griping about how huge I am and how much my back hurts, the cost of a ticket as well as the physical cost of a trip to Times Square is kinda prohibitive. (When am I gonna start getting comps to big shows already?! *jk*)

So, I'll be focusing on my Advertising Copywriting Class at NYU (through 11/8), and procrastinating about writing up a spec script for Scriptapalooza, despite the fact that I already have a great idea in outline form. I'll also read other people's reviews and miss writing them. Then I'll have to remind myself that being published means finding a show, setting aside time to see it, figuring out travel to the theater and dinner beforehand, keeping myself awake (especially tough these days), and forcing myself to write 500 words about it before too much time goes by. Laziness will beat down the pangs of nostalgia.

Happy Tuesday, everybody!

As promised:

offoffonline: review of Love Sucks

Next up is The House of Yes tonight and Say Your Prayers, Mug! on Friday. Then I may or may not review next week (depending on whether or not someone takes a specific show) ... and I'm done. Perhaps forever, at least for a year. Weird to stop after 2 1/2 years, but what can you do - I certainly can't take a baby to an off-off Broadway show, that's for sure.

Anarchy in the U.S.A.

I just saw LOVE SUCKS at the New York Musical Theatre Festival last night. This is a fantastic show with an excellent cast of honest-to-goodness musicians, and would be a perfect date night for the dude who loves punk and the chick who loves Shakespearean romantic comedies. (Or the punk rock girl and the chick flick-lovin' guy. Or two fellas or two ladies. It's universal, people.)

Having been in a band for several months until I was kicked out (no, not for substance abuse or inter-band promiscuity - for not being enough of a tortured soul frontwoman for them; long story), I can attest to the work you need to put in to have a tight ensemble. The show's fictional male band, the Molotovs, seemed like they'd been playing together for ages, both in their precision and their onstage camaraderie. (The Guttersnipes, which was the female band, also sounded good, and had two great singers in Rebecca Hart and Heather Robb.)

The music's catchy, the characters are endearing, the action is well-paced, and, if you're into rockers, there's a lot of foxy-looking people onstage. Go see it before they take my advice, produce a commercial off-Broadway run and charge twice as much for tickets.

I'll add a link to my review once it's up - should be in a few days.

reviews and career choices

In my longest review to date, I critique Austentatious at the New York Musical Theatre Festival:

offoffonline: review of Austentatious

There isn't really anything I could write here that those 835 words didn't cover. It's amazing that, at the beginning, I had to strive to reach the site's 500-word minimum.

Unrelated note: Having a rapidly developing 24-week-old girl in one's tummy can change one's choice in periodicals. To wit, last night I bought my first issue of Time Out New York Kids, and was delighted at their Kid Confidential section.

Is it too late to change my desired occupation to princess songwriter? :)

required viewing

Tonight I took advantage of Turner Classic Movies on Demand and caught up on some films I've been meaning to see. The first was Kiss Me Kate, starring Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, and that musical theater dynamo Ann Miller. One of Bianca's suiters was played by Bob Fosse, who mostly did the waltz-y dancing of Hermes Pan except for his last number, when he totally Fosse-d the crap out of the sequence. Yes, I know for a fact that the guy was an asshole and a womanizer, but shit, could he move. He's in a rarefied group with Gene Kelly and Prince as guys who dance gracefully but are utterly masculine even in delicate movement.

The other film was Please Don't Eat the Daisies, which I felt I had to see as a Doris Day fan and a theater critic. In the movie, based on a book by Jean (wife of theater critic Walter) Kerr, David Niven plays a professor turned play reviewer - one of the top seven in NYC, as a matter of fact. He lives in a large two-bedroom apartment with a chic address, and eats at Sardi's all of the time. Perhaps I shouldn't power down my critical career if success means a Manhattan apartment with a doorman and an elevator and constantly eating at see-and-be-seen places ... :)

His dramatic arc was that, though he got into reviewing because he loved plays, he became more fond of being cruel and penning poisonous critiques full of mean-spirited jokes. When people started telling him that he was now feared, and that he'd made a playwright quit the profession, Niven's character was scared straight, folks! Good moral to the story for us taste makers, I think. It is a tough slog through the Doris-Day-as-Niven's spouse/housewife fixing up their hellhole suburban house and managing a sheepdog and four kids (one of whom is locked in a cage!) plot lines, no matter how sweet and plucky Doris is or how jazzy-pretty she lays down a song. She does sing a bit of Que Sera, Sera, though, and makes a Rock Hudson joke. Ha ha, scriptwriters! We totally get that she was in movies with him! How insider-y do we feel right now?!

Seriously, guys ...

Poli degaine at Here Arts Center - you've got to check it out!

I went to see it tonight, and La Pendue were just as good as last year. (The show was more or less the same as the one I saw, except that one or two of the sequences had changed.) Most of the dialogue is in French, but non-French speakers will get the gist and will laugh, too.

There were des gens qui parlent le francais in the audience, but I don't know that everyone understood French, or all of what was said. (The puppeteers spoke really fast, and Polichinelle has a Donald Duck-type voice that takes some getting used to.) I do know that the audience went crazy for the show.

For the next few weeks I'll be taking a hiatus from playgoing to focus on Mets games and enjoying what's left of summer. This is not to say that the blog will be on hiatus as well - or that I won't end up seeing a show. It depends on what I have to say ... and if I have to pay for tickets. :)

See this show!

As a tightfisted old lady (30 is the new old) theater critic, it's rare that I'll pay for theater, let alone full price. But sometime over the next few days, I will make it to the show Poli degaine by French theater company La Pendue.

http://www.theatermania.com/content/show.cfm/show/136494

I saw their show La Remede de Polichinelle ("Punch's Remedy") while at the World Festival of Puppet Theatres in France last September. My companions and I, all sober-minded theater critics in our mid 20s to early 30s, left the show holding our aching jaws with happy tears in our eyes. La Pendue's command of the puppets' physicality and their contagious energy were inspiring, and unmatched by the three other Punch shows I've seen since then.

Go to this show, Internet. I implore you, for the sake of your funny bone.

last of the fringe!

My final Fringe review of 2007 is up:

offoffonline: review of HAIL SATAN

I have such a soft spot for the work of the Nosedive Productions crew. It's like an intellectual kinship/crush. This is not to say that I can't say unkind things about them; it's just that it hurts when I have to do so. It's probably time to bar myself from seeing their shows in an official capacity ...

Mind you, I don't think it's a bad thing to follow actors or writers by going to see their stuff. If you get what they do, you're doing them a service by making sure that the review is written by someone who knows what they're about. This can be a crapshoot with actors, though, as they have less control over the projects they do and you can find yourself getting over them really fast.

Case in point: I saw two actresses give strong performances with decent Canuck accents in this dark, Canadian play. A few months later, when looking for another show to review, I read about a play that sounded kinda iffy, but both of the actresses were in it. I decided to take a chance on it and trust their judgment. Bad move - both the show and the actresses were pretty mediocre. Now I'm less trusting of the material that they choose.

I'm not sure that I'll be covering anything else in August; I may wait for September and the start of the NYMF. However, I've attempted to put an iron in yet another fire - let's see what that produces ...

my introduction to blog nation

Hello, Internet! In this forum I'll be blogging about theater and writing. Please note that I am more than sufficiently intelligent to do so, and have an enormous vocabulary, theatrical and otherwise. Expressing myself in violet type using a charmingly jazzy literary voice shouldn't negate the quality of my viewpoint. :)

While I admire the style of the serious NY theater bloggers, I don't enjoy writing that way, and will never engage in their kind of analysis. I'm more about content and execution, and the exploration of what works and does not work onstage. Oh, and I'm obsessed with puppet theater thanks to my participation in IATC's Young Critics Seminar in France last September. (I'm developing a truly dark and downtown work using a style of Romanian puppets. By "developing," I mean that I know the look and structure of the show, but have very few details mapped out, and can't build marionettes. But it will be awesome if it ever sees the light of day.)

It's completely typical of me that I'm starting this instead of writing reviews for the Fringe shows I saw this weekend. (At the moment, I'm a staff writer for offoffonline.) The excuse-maker in me would defend my procrastination by saying that the distraction helps to foment my opinions. (The excuse-maker likes fancy words.) To an extent, this is true: I've always had to let things sit (ferment?) before I give out opinions in order to avoid delivering inane surface statements ("I liked it!") or overly caustic remarks ("It was excruciating!")

Of course, it's my firm belief that some productions are so shoddy that they don't deserve in-depth deconstruction. This isn't laziness, this is fair play. If you don't take the time to work out the kinks in your show, then don't expect me to take the time to point them out to you.

Thanks for reading, Internet! I'll try to be back soon with links to my latest reviews.