Lend Me A Tenor

Lend Me A Tenor at the Music Box Theatre on Broadway.
Gratuitous Violins rating: *** 1/2 out of ****

One good thing about going to Broadway after the season ends is that you've read the reviews and heard the buzz - or lack of it. And the revival of Lend Me A Tenor had great buzz.

Honestly, I'm not really into farce. Broad physical comedy, disguise, mistaken identity, slamming doors, hiding in the bathroom or the closet - a little goes a long way. It can become repetitive and tiresome.

But this terrific ensemble, directed by Stanley Tucci, had me in stitches. What a fast-paced production, with memorable characters and perfect comic timing from an expert cast. I was laughing from the beginning to the inspired curtain call.

Ken Ludwig's play is set in 1934, in a hotel room in Cleveland. An impresario, Saunders, played by Tony Shalhoub, has brought a famous opera singer to star in Otello and he's got a lot riding on the evening's success. (Without giving too much away, let me simply say that complications ensue.)

Justin Bartha, in his Broadway debut, was especially impressive as Max, the mild-mannered, eager assistant assigned to babysit the tenor - who turns out to be quite a handful.

Bartha, who was in the hit movie The Hangover, is so confident and expressive that he seems born to be onstage. I hope this is only the first of many Broadway roles.

Anthony LaPaglia is great as the egotistical tenor, Tito Merelli. And Jan Maxwell, whom I loved as a 1920s Broadway star in The Royal Family, is just as wonderful here playing his tempestuous wife, Maria. Jay Klaitz stands out in a small role as an opera-loving bellhop.

Since I couldn't make it to New York City in the spring, I missed several limited-run plays. In the summertime, a Broadway play is nearly an extinct species. Lend Me A Tenor closes Aug. 15, and I'm so glad I got to see it.

Elie Wiesel versus a playwright

File this one under: What was she thinking?

A play by Deb Margolin that included a fictitious conversation between Bernard Madoff and Elie Wiesel in Madoff's jail cell has been canceled.

Wiesel, among those fleeced by the disgraced financier, objected to his depiction in "Imagining Madoff" and threatened legal action if it were performed at the Jewish theatre troupe Theater J in Washington.

Margolin, a performance artist who teaches theatre at Yale, says her intention was to use Wiesel as a foil for Madoff because “his name is synonymous with decency, morality, the struggle for human dignity and kindness.”

She says she was "devastated by his response" in a letter Wiesel wrote to her. I'll bet. I imagine that having your work described as "obscene" and "defamatory" by a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate must be humbling.
Update: The conversation continues at Parabasis, where Margolin comments.

This episode does raise some interesting questions.

What obligations do playwrights have when they depict real people? Must they adhere to the truth, the historical record, or can they use their imaginations?

Update 2: NPR interviewed lawyer and Columbia University lecturer Richard Lehv, who specializes in intellectual property, about what rights a living person has when they're fictionalized.

Personally, I do think you have to take some care when dealing with historical figures, with people who are still alive. But I also think artists should be free to experiment. It's a difficult balance and I'm not going to pretend I always know the right answer.

Two plays I've seen on Broadway, Mary Stuart and The Farnsworth Invention, have included imagined meetings between historical figures. (There are probably others that I've forgotten. It's practically a literary genre all its own.)

A crucial scene in the play Mary Stuart involves a confrontation between Mary, Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I that never happened. The historical accuracy of Aaron Sorkin's play The Farnsworth Invention has been questioned and likewise includes a fictitious meeting between the main characters.

Of course, the real people who are at the center of those plays have died. I didn't get a chance to see Enron but I wonder whether playwright Lucy Prebble received any correspondence from the very much alive Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow.

Since they're both serving prison sentences in connection with the collapse of the Houston-based energy company I guess they could hardly claim their reputations have been damaged. Perhaps that's something for playwrights to keep in mind.

Let's expand the Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Now that I've digested the drama surrounding the awarding of this year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama to the musical Next to Normal, here's a thought: has the award outlived its usefulness in its current form?

Newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer, who established the prizes in his will as "an incentive for excellence," empowered an advisory board to make changes "if in the judgment of the board such suspension, changes or substitutions shall be conducive to the public good or rendered advisable by public necessities or by reason of change of time."

For example, since the inception of the prizes in 1917, an award has been added for photography. Beginning in 2009, the journalism competition was expanded to include online-only news organizations.

Those additions reflect technological advances and changes in the way Americans view the news. They make sense.

The drama prize dates to a time when there were no movies or television. Drama generally meant theatre and theatre was a form of mass entertainment. If the prize was centered around New York productions well, there probably weren't many, if any, regional theatre companies.

So, here's my proposition: if the goal is to reward excellence in dramatic writing, preferably on an American subject, maybe it's time to expand the definition. Let's open the Pulitzer Prize to screenplays written for movies and television in addition to plays written for the stage.

Okay, I'm being a bit provocative here. I realize it's not likely to happen. Screenplays aren't generally read for their literary value. They're sometimes group efforts rather than the work of a single individual. And there's value in promoting playwriting as an American art form.

But American culture has changed since 1917. In a given year, it's possible the finest dramatic writing may appear not on stage but on television or at the movies.

Gamm Theatre 2010-2011 season

It's the most wonderful time of the year - when theatre companies announce their new season.

First up is the Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket, which I think has a very promising 2010-2011 planned.

There's a North American premiere, a couple of plays I missed in New York that were fairly well-received, a classic of 19th century drama and a 20th-century play that seems all-too suited to our current economic woes.

The theatre is an intimate space, only 137 seats, and it's one I should get to more often. I saw a terrific production of The Elephant Man there in 2007.

Here's the schedule:

Glengarry Glen Ross
David Mamet
Sept. 2 - Oct. 3

Mauritius
Theresa Rebeck
Oct. 21 - Nov. 21

A Doll's House
Henrik Ibsen
Jan. 20 - Feb. 20, 2011

Paul
Howard Brenton
March 17 - April 17, 2011

Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them
Christopher Durang
May 5 - June 5, 2011

Even though I was disappointed by the two David Mamet plays I've seen on Broadway, Speed-the-Plow and Race, I do like the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross and I'm eager to see it on stage. Be aware that there's plenty of Mamet's trademark profanity in this 1982 play about small-time real-estate agents desperate to make a sale.

Theresa Rebeck's play is about half-sisters battling over the family inheritance - a rare stamp collection - premiered on Broadway in 2007 and drew some comparison to Mamet's work. So it'll be an interesting follow-up. Steve on Broadway called Mauritius "surprisingly thrilling and highly entertaining" in his review.

Christopher Durang's play premiered off-Broadway in 2009 at the Public Theater. It has an intriguing, convoluted plot about a woman who wakes up after a hangover and finds herself married to man who may be a terrorist. The New York Times review called Why Torture is Wrong a "hilarious and disturbing new comedy about all-American violence."

A Doll's House, a domestic drama written in the 19th century by Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, is considered a seminal work because of its focus on the lives of the middle class and on the position of women in society. The protagonist, Nora, is an intense, physically demanding role, one of the most challenging dramatic parts for an actress.

Paul, by British playwright Howard Brenton, is about St. Paul's conversion to Christianity. The play caused some controversy at London's National Theatre in 2005. But it also won praise as "a compelling study of faith and of the human need for stories that explain the world and inspire action." The Gamm production will be its North American premiere.

Revivals and revivals and revivals

The New York Times has a great spring/summer theatre preview today. What caught my attention was an article examining why familiar plays and musicals are being revived more frequently on Broadway.

Two of this season's revivals mentioned in the story are the musical La Cage aux Folles, which begins previews April 6 and the play A View from the Bridge, which runs through April 4.

I thought these comments were very sobering:

“One reason the wait time is getting shorter is that there are fewer and fewer great plays,” said Sonia Friedman, the London-based producer of La Cage aux Folles. "Many plays written in the last 10 to 15 years are on a smaller scale or too tied in to the zeitgeist.''

"Anthony LaPaglia, who won a Tony Award in the last View From the Bridge and stars this spring in Lend Me a Tenor (previously on Broadway 20 years ago), concurred: 'The talent pool is very thin, the generations of writers who stayed with theater has passed. Now they get the call for Hollywood and are gone.' "

Okay, maybe there's a kernel of truth. I don't doubt that the lure of Hollywood is a strong one. It always has been. Both William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote for the movies. Shakespeare would have, too, if he'd had the chance.

Certainly, writers who concentrate on movies today would have been writing for the stage a couple generations ago. But I think Friedman's and LaPaglia's comments seem awfully dismissive of the current crop of playwrights.

What we ought to do is encourage writers to move among genres, like Martin McDonagh, who started in theatre, won an Oscar and is back on Broadway this spring with A Behanding Spokane.

Notable, quotable American plays

I've been looking over the results of a poll by the Denver Post that came up with the 10 most important American plays. They are:

1.) Death of a Salesman
2.) Angels in America
3.) A Streetcar Named Desire
4.) Long Day's Journey Into Night
5.) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
6.) Our Town
7.) The Glass Menagerie
8.) A Raisin in the Sun
9.) The Crucible
10.) Fences

The only one I haven't seen is The Glass Menagerie. I've seen four on stage - Our Town, A Raisin in the Sun, Fences and The Crucible - and movie versions of the others. (My high school put on The Crucible, so it's been a long time!)

The newspaper surveyed people connected with the theatre world and the list is filled with high school and college English class fare. They're older works, which I guess is how you become a classic.

Two things surprised me about the list.

First, they're all exceedingly serious. Hasn't anyone written a great American comedy? Second, the article includes a quote from each play and I was surprised by how few I recognized.

These are important plays for the way they illuminate American life. But if I didn't already know the names of the top 10, I would only have been able to match the dialogue to the play for three - Death of A Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire and A Raisin in the Sun.

I'm not sure that's important. A great play is more than a collection of snappy one-liners, right? Maybe it's just a reflection of my lousy memory. I can't quibble with the list or say that I would have done any better.

Anyway, here's a clip from a 1985 TV production of Death of A Salesman, adapted from the 1984 Broadway revival. It featured Dustin Hoffman as Willy Loman, John Malkovich as Biff, Stephen Lang as Happy and Kate Reid as Linda.

For Willy's sake, please pay attention!

Bringing The Mountaintop to Broadway

Producers of the play The Mountaintop are aiming to bring it to Broadway next fall, which interests me for two reasons.

The subject of Katori Hall's play: the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr. on the last night of his life, sounds fascinating. Here's an interview with Hall from 2008, where she talks about what led her to write it.

The title comes from King's stirring and prophetic final speech, delivered at a Memphis church on April 3, 1968:

"Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!"

What surprises me is that The Mountaintop had its world premiere in London last summer. It was praised by the critics, including the very discerning West End Whingers, and has received an Olivier nomination for Best New Play. (Update 3-21: In an upset, The Mountaintop won the Olivier for Best New Play!)

London?

Why did a play by an American writer about such an important American subject have to go across the Atlantic Ocean to get produced?

That just seems astounding to me and a little sad. (Apparently there was some kind of in-development reading at the Lark Theatre in New York.)

Why couldn't Hall get The Mountaintop commercially produced in the United States? Is there something about London that makes theatre producers salivate, that gives a play a little extra cachet?

I found an interview with Hall from the London theatre Web site What's on Stage, and maybe this is part of the answer:

"I would love to work here again. The space for new writing is much much bigger here. New writing is much more respected. It seems like there’s a bigger space for it ..."

Here's the trailer from The Mountaintop:



My guess is the play, which has only two characters, King and a maid at the Lorraine Motel, will be re-cast with American actors.

I'd like to nominate Tony winner Jeffrey Wright, who's already portrayed the civil-rights leader in the HBO movie Boycott. Just my 2 cents but he's about the right age and I think he'd be a great choice.

Saying goodbye to Superior Donuts

I wish I could be in New York this afternoon for the final performance of Tracy Letts' Superior Donuts. The play, which opened Oct. 1 at Broadway's Music Box Theatre, is closing after 108 performances. It's one of my favorites and it deserved a longer run.

Theatergoing is a communal experience but whether or not a play grabs you is such a personal thing. When I think about all of the plays I've seen over the past three years what it comes down to is this: Don't lecture, tell me a story. And if you can surprise me, that's a plus.

Superior Donuts, the story of a rundown donut shop in a changing Chicago neighborhood, did both of those things for me. I laughed, I got choked up and there was a moment when I truly gasped. Most of all, I was entertained.

I thought Michael McKean as the worn-out shop owner and Jon Michael Hill as the eager young man who comes to work for him had terrific chemistry. They were so much fun to watch together and Hill especially was amazing in his Broadway debut.

Last year, some of the performances I enjoyed on Broadway in November were overlooked by the Tony nominators. So I hope they remember McKean and Hill when spring rolls around. (And James Schuette's set design also deserves a nomination. It was so detailed, down to the gum stuck underneath the tables.)

The cast is made up of mainly Chicago-based actors, all of whom transferred with the play from its premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. In addition to McKean and Hill, they are Jane Alderman, Kate Buddeke, Cliff Chamberlain, Michael Garvey, Robert Maffia, James Vincent Meredith and Yasen Peyankov. I hope I get to see them on stage again.

It's a shame that there isn't room on Broadway for a play like Superior Donuts, a slice of life that's well-acted, with witty dialogue, memorable characters and a story that draws you in. This was a play of sweet, small moments, poignancy and humor from a terrific ensemble.

It's so different from Letts' previous work, the Tony and Pulitzer-winning August: Osage County, an acerbic, multigenerational family story. I love them both and I love the fact that they're so different.

(Although they share Letts' memorable characters and sharp dialogue and like August: Osage County, I think Superior Donuts would make a great movie. Spike Lee would be the perfect director for this gritty urban story.)

In an interview with the American Theatre Wing's Downstage Center program, Letts noted that Superior Donuts was his first play set in his adopted hometown of Chicago. While he didn't start out to write a work that would be smaller in scope, he does like to stretch himself.

"I have an impulse to mix it up. When I finish one thing, the next thing I work on I want to be different. I want to challenge myself in different ways. I want to explore different things, whether it's writing or acting."

I'm so glad Letts did challenge himself and I'm looking forward to his next play.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

First, via the Wayback Machine, here are some of the plays and musicals that will celebrate their 50th anniversary in 2010.

The musicals that opened in 1960 include:

Bye Bye Birdie, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Irma La Douce and Camelot on Broadway; Oliver! in London's West End; and The Fantasticks off-Broadway.

I've never seen The Fantasticks, which is currently playing at the Snapple Theater Center in Times Square. So maybe this will be the year!

Among the plays that opened on Broadway in 1960 were:

A Taste of Honey, by Shelagh Delaney; Becket, by Jean Anouilh, Toys in the Attic, by Lillian Hellman, The Best Man, by Gore Vidal, and All the Way Home, by Tad Mosel, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Interestingly, there were two stage adaptations of noteworthy novels that opened on Broadway in 1960: John Hersey's The Wall and Allen Drury's Advise and Consent.

Here's to a happy and healthy 2010! I hope it's a year filled with great theatre. And as always, thank-you so much for stopping by.

Race

Gratuitous Violins rating ** out of ****

Knowing how much David Mamet likes to press those hot-button issues I was really looking forward to a provocative evening when I went to see his latest play, Race, at Broadway's Barrymore Theatre.

From what little Mamet revealed about the plot in advance, I knew it concerned three lawyers - two black and one white - defending a prominent white man accused of raping a black woman.

And the cast sounded promising - James Spader from Boston Legal, comedian David Alan Grier, Kerry Washington from Ray and The Last King of Scotland. But most exciting for me was a chance to see Richard Thomas on stage - John Boy Walton in the flesh!

The tortuous history of race in America is a subject I care about - passionately. I've had numerous, lengthy discussions over dinner with friends and colleagues - black and white - about matters like affirmative action. I've heard expressions of anger, hurt, frustration and yes, bigotry. I've also heard painful accounts of discrimination. I've tried to listen as much as I've talked and I hope through that process, I've gained greater understanding and empathy.

But in all of those discussions I never experienced the overriding emotion that struck me while watching Race. I was bored. At times, the play felt more like a legal brief than an incendiary piece of theatre designed to provoke impassioned debate. It seemed so contrived and I really didn't care about any of these characters, whether they were guilty or innocent.

(I also had trouble hearing some of the actors, especially Spader and Washington, both of whom are making their Broadway debuts. But I learned later that Washington wasn't feeling well, so maybe that was part of it.)

Spader and Grier, as law partners Jack Lawson and Henry Brown, get off some good one-liners as they try to decide whether to defend Thomas' Charles Strickland, the man accused of rape.

As Lawson, Spader is an arrogant know-it-all, without his TV counterpart Alan Shore's charm or humor. "There is nothing that a white person can say to a black person about race which is not both incorrect and offensive," Lawson says early on. He then proceeds to spend practically the entire play doing just that!

Washington seems kind of stilted and unconvincing as Susan, their young associate. It doesn't help that Mamet has her behave in a way that seems unlikely for someone in her position. Grier is good in a forceful role, as the partner who doesn't quite trust her.

And Thomas, as much as I loved him in The Waltons, is disappointing here. He seems too meek and unsure of himself to be convincing as someone wealthy and prominent. His character is so mild-mannered I didn't believe he could have done what he was accused of doing.

But my biggest problem is that Mamet really doesn't have anything very interesting or revealing to say about race. Too often the dialogue sounded unrealistic. I found myself thinking, "people don't really talk that way."

He's also incredibly cynical, basically doubting that black and white Americans will ever understand each other or trust each other. Well, hello! I used to be pretty pessimistic on the subject of race, too. But now that we've elected a black man as president, I find it hard to maintain that same level of pessimism.

Maybe I'm simply not a Mamet fan, because I didn't like last year's Broadway revival of Speed-the-Plow very much either. He seems to write plays that are more about ideas rather than fully developed characters and stories.

In fact, I think Race is less about the relations between black and white Americans and more a critique of the legal system.

Through Lawson, Mamet has some pointed things to say about how lawyers manipulate juries. It's as much about psychology as it is about presenting evidence. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. If I were accused of a crime I'd want my lawyer to use everything in his/her bag of tricks.)

But you know, even Mamet's digs at the legal system weren't terribly thought-provoking. If you've watched Boston Legal you've probably heard them before. And at least you would have been entertained.

Broadway audience, 2008-2009

The Broadway League released its annual demographic report this week for the 2008-2009 theatre season. There weren't too many surprises and I don't think the numbers are all that different from previous years.

Here are some statistics:

• The average age of the Broadway theatergoer was 42.2.
• Forty-seven percent of theatergoers at musicals said a personal recommendation was the strongest factor in deciding which show to see.
  
• Women comprise 66.2 percent of the audience.
• International visitors accounted for 21 percent of the 12.5 million ticket-buyers, the highest ever.
• Overall, tourists bought 63 percent of all tickets for Broadway shows.
• Broadway theatergoers reported an annual household income of $195,700.
• Of theatergoers over age 25, 73 percent had completed college.
• The typical playgoer saw eight shows in the past year, compared with four for musical attendees.
• Those who saw 15 or more shows comprised 5 percent of the audience but represented 31 percent of all tickets sold.
  

What interested me most was the racial breakdown: 73.7 percent white; 8.6 percent Hispanic; 3.9 percent Asian; 2.4 percent black; and 11.4 percent other.

In a news release accompanying the report, Charlotte St. Martin, executive director of the league, exclaimed:

"Broadway is a national pastime! As there is more of a choice for the theatergoer than ever before, it is exciting to report that we are seeing a wider audience for Broadway. Our shows, and our audience, are more diverse than ever."

Well perhaps the Broadway audience is getting more diverse but if it's three-quarters Caucasian, largely college-educated, with a household income of nearly $200,000, I don't see how you can lay claim to being a national pastime.

Still, I'm a little hopeful that next year's figures will show some improvement.

The percentage of Hispanic theatergoers jumped from 5.7 percent to 8.6 percent in one year. Part of that could be more visitors from Spanish-speaking countries, or the success of musicals like In the Heights, which takes place in a Latino neighborhood in New York City.

Attendance by black theatergoers reached a 10-year high of 6.7 percent in the 2006-2007 season, only to drop to 2.4 percent two years later.

Now, this is my anecdotal evidence from one weekend in New York City but I noticed at Memphis, Race and waiting in the lobby at Fela! that the audiences for these shows with strong black characters seemed a lot more racially diverse than usual.

(And next spring's Broadway revival of Fences, with the box-office cachet of Oscar winner Denzel Washington, will hopefully draw theatergoers of all backgrounds.)

If Broadway truly wants to call itself a national pastime, let's hope that what I saw was part of a growing trend.

The Royal Family

Gratuitous Violins rating: ***1/2 out of ****

It would be perfectly understandable if The Royal Family showed its age. After all the play, by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber, made its Broadway debut 82 years ago, in 1927. The story is based on the Barrymore clan and the only Barrymore I know is Drew.

Well, the Manhattan Theatre Club revival of this three-act play is anything but a musty period piece. As directed by Doug Hughes, The Royal Family, at the Friedman Theatre, feels immensely witty and fresh.

What a lively, stylish homage to the 1920s. John Lee Beatty's opulent Manhattan apartment and Catherine Zuber's glamorous costumes richly evoke the decade. I sat in the front row - a first for me - and I laughed, a lot. I know some reviewers felt it started out slowly but I enjoyed myself from beginning to end.

Rosemary Harris, best known these days as Aunt May in the Spider-Man movies, is so warm and regal as matriarch Fanny Cavendish. Trouper that she is, she's determined to go back on the road again after recovering from an illness.

As her daughter Julie, a Broadway star in her own right, Jan Maxwell is superb. She's trying to cope with all of the crises that erupt in this family of theatre actors, as well as dealing with some of her own mixed feelings about continuing on the stage. When it all finally becomes too much, Maxwell is amazing to watch.

I loved the supporting cast, too, including: Kelli Barrett as Julie's daughter Gwen, who wants to quit the business and get married; John Glover and Ana Gasteyer as Fanny's brother and sister-in-law, desperately trying to revive their fading careers; Tony Roberts, a favorite of mine since Annie Hall, as the family's put-upon agent.

And Reg Rogers is perfect as Tony Cavendish, the womanizing, spendthrift son who's turned his back on the stage for - horrors - Hollywood and the movies. Luckily for us, he returns to the family hearth when things don't quite work out as planned. Rogers plays this role to the hilt, including some terrific swordplay. He's hilarious and I loved every moment of his performance.

For all the deliciously witty parts of The Royal Family, there are some thoughtful ones, too.

I loved the passion for their craft, the dedication and pride that comes through when these characters talk about the theatre. As much as they try to get away from the stage, as ambivalent as they sometimes feel, it's clearly in their blood.

The Manhattan Theatre Club calls The Royal Family "a valentine to the theatre." And it is - a funny valentine, a touching one, too. I certainly gained some insight into what it's like to be part of a family business when that business is show.

A Steady Rain

Gratuitous Violins rating *** out of ****

Truth be told, I'm not a big fan of the cop genre in any form: movies, tv, books. But if there's a chance to see Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman portray two Chicago police officers on a Broadway stage, count me in.

And in A Steady Rain, it's all Craig, all Jackman, for all 90 minutes of this play's running time at the Schoenfeld Theatre. The two are onstage alone from beginning to end of Chicago playwright Keith Huff's two-hander.

Craig is Joey and Jackman is Denny, beat cops and friends since "kinneygarten" as one of them says. (I can't remember which.) Joey, a lonely bachelor with a drinking problem, is the more even-tempered and thoughtful of the two while Denny, married with children, is a hothead with a racist streak and a drug habit.

The set design by Scott Pask has Denny and Joey are sitting under bright lights on a bare stage with a black backdrop, in what could be an interrogation room. The backdrop changes a couple of times and I think it's effective. You get a sense of where the action is taking place and the change of scenery gives your eyes a rest.

At first, listening to Joey and Denny's meandering conversation, I couldn't figure out where A Steady Rain was heading. But gradually, as the talk turned to their experiences as beat cops patrolling some of Chicago's meaner streets, I really got into it.

Okay, it's hard to believe all of the things that happen to Joey and Denny, both on the job and in their personal lives, could really happen to two people. Parts of the convoluted story are probably similar to ones you've seen on dozens of cop shows or read about in the news.

Still, even though A Steady Rain was more entertaining than deeply affecting, it was great to see these two actors onstage for the first time and I was genuinely surprised at some of the twists and turns. (Maybe my ignorance of the genre was a plus!)

True, Jackman isn't entirely convincing as a rough-edged, hardened street cop but I enjoyed watching him play an unlikable character. And Craig is great as the partner who tries to rein in his friend's worst tendencies. He's the complete opposite of his most famous big-screen role. (Still, I couldn't help myself. I did think a few times, "That's James Bond!")

Huff is developing A Steady Rain as a movie and I can tell you right now it would definitely be too violent for me to watch. (Maybe after it comes out on dvd.) But onstage, where the violence is described and implied, I could handle it.

There's something mesmerizing about watching two actors simply telling a story through their tone of voice and body language, creating characters we never meet, taking us to events we never see, but feel like we do.

Where have all the Neil Simon fans gone?

I can't believe it. I saw the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs a week ago tonight and now, a provisional closing notice has been posted for Sunday. Its companion, Broadway Bound, which I was so looking forward to seeing, has been canceled. I feel like crying.

Why can't a play with so much humor and heart, with a terrific cast, find an audience? I mean, newcomer Noah Robbins is hilarious and sweet as Simon's teenage alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome. And Laurie Metcalf exudes so much strength in a memorable performance as his mother, Kate.

Last week, Brighton Beach Memoirs could fill just 61 percent of the 1,200 seats at the Nederlander Theatre, with an average paid admission of only $21. 32. With lackluster ticket sales, the producers simply couldn't justify spending any more money, a source told The New York Times.

The original production opened in 1983 and ran for three years, making a star out of Matthew Broderick, who garnered a Tony award. What happened this time?

Are fans of Neil Simon simply dying out and not being replaced, as David Edelstein implies in New York magazine? Edelstein admits that Simon's plays "connected with their audience on a level that theater almost never does anymore" but questions whether they can be made to seem fresh or new.

I disagree. I think director David Cromer brought a level of depth and understanding to Brighton Beach Memoirs that I wasn't expecting. The story of a struggling Jewish family during the Depression seemed so relevant. It wasn't at all an exercise in nostalgia. (And as I said in my review, you didn't have to be Jewish to relate.)

According to the most recent statistics from the League of American Theatre Producers, tourists purchased about 65 percent of the nearly 12.3 million tickets sold to Broadway shows. And foreign tourists comprised more than 15 percent of attendees.

That's great for the New York City economy but not so good for those of us who love plays and don't care whether or not there's a famous face in the cast.

President and Mrs. Obama's trip to see Joe Turner's Come and Gone in the spring is the exception to the rule - it seems like most people come to Broadway these days to see a musical or someone they recognize from movies or television.

I guess the issue is closer to what producer David Richenthal told The New York Times earlier in the week about casting Abigail Breslin as Helen Keller in a Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker:

“It’s simply naïve to think that in this day and age, you’ll be able to sell tickets to a play revival solely on the potential of the production to be a great show or on the potential for an unknown actress to give a breakthrough performance. I would consider it financially irresponsible to approach a major revival without making a serious effort to get a star.”

Hey, I'm not knocking it. Those tourists pay salaries and keep thousands of small businesses afloat. I love seeing musicals and big stars, too. But we're pretty close to the point where Broadway consists of musicals and limited runs of plays with celebrities.

As a fan of 20th century American drama who always hopes to discover a great performance by an actor who's unknown to me, that makes me sad.

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

Way back on July 4, 2008, I wrote a blog post wishing Neil Simon a happy birthday and bemoaning the fact that while I'd seen most of the movie versions of his plays, I'd never seen one on stage.

Well, the theatre gods heard my prayers.

When it was announced that not one but two Simon revivals would open on Broadway this fall, with Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound playing in repertory, I was beside myself with anticipation.

Then I started to worry. Would the plays be too Jewish? Would they be Jewish enough? Would they seem outdated? Would Noah Robbins as Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome be as good as I imagined Matthew Broderick was in his Tony-winning performance in the original Brighton Beach Memoirs?

I'm happy to report that all of my anxiety was for naught.

Brighton Beach Memoirs, set in the late 1930s, is a semi-autobiographical account of the playwright's Brooklyn childhood. The Jerome family - Eugene, his older brother Stan, and parents Jack and Kate, share their home with Kate's widowed sister Blanche and her daughters, Laurie and Nora.

Just as director David Cromer did with Our Town off-Broadway, he brilliantly strips this play down to its essence: a warm, humorous portrait of a family scraping to get by during the Great Depression. They're absolutely Jewish but you don't have to be to appreciate their struggles, their humor and their hopes and fears.

Robbins is remarkable as the 15-year-old Eugene, obsessed with baseball and discovering girls, taking careful notes about his family in his journal for the play he hopes to write someday - if he doesn't play for the Yankees. He makes Simon's quips sound so natural. What a confident, winning performance from a 19-year-old in his Broadway debut.

Dennis Boutsikaris is wonderful as Jack Jerome, a gentle, understanding man who's in danger of wearing himself out providing for the seven people living under his roof.

And I loved Laurie Metcalf as Kate, who's not spouting one-liners but getting at the real emotion contained in those lines. She is an awesome Jewish mother. It's a role that would be so easy to overplay but Metcalf gets to the strength behind the stereotype.

As Blanche, Jessica Hecht has her hands full raising her two daughters, the rebellious teenager Nora, played by Alexandra Socha, and the sweet but sickly Laurie, played by Grace Bea Lawrence, while trying not to be a burden on her sister's family.

Some of my favorite scenes take place in the tiny second-floor bedroom Eugene shares with Santino Fontana's Stanley. They argue and confide in each other and clearly love each other. Listening to Stanley explain a thing or two about the facts of life to his little brother - and watching Eugene's reaction - is hysterical.

But as funny as this play is, it's also quite serious and moving at times. We know war is looming and everything that means for a Jewish family one generation removed from the old country. Under Cromer's direction, the talented cast adjusts seamlessly as emotions change.

Designer John Lee Beatty crams a lot into his set. I sat in the left orchestra, a few rows from the stage, which is a great vantage point for Eugene and Stanley's bedroom and the front door. While the dining room table is stage right, the cast did a good enough job of projecting that I didn't feel left out during the dinner scene.

Now, I'm even more excited to see Broadway Bound, which takes place a decade later. The cast includes Boutsikaris, Metcalf, Fontana and Hecht but with Josh Grisetti as the adult Eugene. Previews begin Nov. 18 and this time, I'm not nervous at all because I know it's in great hands.

Playwright Steven Dietz, for beginners

When Trinity Repertory Company announced its 2009-2010 season and I saw that a play by Steven Dietz was included my first reaction was, "Who?"

And that surprised me, because even though I haven't been a regular theatergoer for that long, I like to think that I recognize the names of most well-known playwrights.

Previews begin tonight at Trinity Rep for his romantic comedy Shooting Star. It features Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson, a real-life married couple, portraying two former lovers who meet unexpectedly in a snowbound airport. The play runs through Nov. 22.

And despite my ignorance, Dietz is a prolific playwright. Shooting Star, from 2008, is his 31st play to be produced. This article calls him "arguably one of the most widely produced living playwrights in the country" and notes that his "well-made plays - tight and polished" are suited to regional theatre.

He's been able to earn a living doing something he loves, no small feat for a playwright:

"I've never written a hit play. I've never written a masterpiece. And when colleagues of mine had those moments, oh, man am I envious," he says with a chortle and a wide smile. "But the flip side of all that is that I have a career (as a playwright). The art form and the deadline business of the art form has let me - or forced me - to write a lot of plays."

Among his most produced plays are Lonely Planet, about the AIDS epidemic, and God's Country, about the role of a white supremacist group in the murder of Denver talk-show host Alan Berg. He's also written plays about Sherlock Holmes (Love to see that one!) and Dracula (No thanks!)

Dietz, 51, grew up in Denver and graduated from the University of Northern Colorado. He moved to Minneapolis after college, where he honed his craft at the Playwrights' Center. From 1991 to 2006 he was based in Seattle, and now divides his time between there and Austin, Texas, where he teaches at the University of Texas.

In 2004, he talked to Playbill about the virtues of not being a New York-based writer:

"As much as I wanted my early plays to have a big New York success, the very fact that they didn't — or more importantly, didn't go to New York and get hammered — meant that I got to write my next play, and my next play. So I feel like I've had this 20-year apprenticeship. I've gotten to learn my craft."

Dietz is also familiar to readers of American Theatre magazine, which published his Audience Manifesto. It says, in part:

"Tell your theatre that you're ready for anything, and that you plan to let them know exactly what you think of it, good or bad. Getting your money's worth is not good enough. Get your heart and mind's worth. As artists and audiences, together we share the theatre. Together we share this grand, eloquent, messy, unpredictable experiment. Let's revel in that."

I especially like that line about getting your money's worth isn't enough. He's right, it's about getting your heart's and mind's worth. It's about something that makes you think or moves you. Hopefully, it does both.

The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later

I played a little role in making theatre history last night when I attended a staged reading of The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later in Providence, performed by students in the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA program.

This is an epilogue to The Laramie Project, the play that examines the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay student at the University of Wyoming who was tied to a fence, beaten and left to die.

Members of New York's Tectonic Theater Project created that earlier work by going to Laramie and interviewing people with a connection to the case, who knew Shepard, or were just ordinary citizens, gay and straight. In 2008, they returned to Laramie to see what had changed.

The result was The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later, presented on the same night - the anniversary of Shepard's death - in 150 venues across the country and around the world. It was incredible to be part of such a unique and powerful experience. The words "theatre community" have never seemed so real.

The 16 actors, dressed in jeans and black shirts, sat on folding chairs arranged in a gently curved semicircle, scripts on music stands in front of them. Sometimes they'd stand while reading their lines, other times they were seated. They all played multiple characters and a narrator introduced them.

At a very informative talkback afterward, Trinity Repertory Company's artistic director, Curt Columbus, compared the play to Our Town, and I can definitely see the similarity. There's no set or props. What you hear are the words of real people, culled from interviews with the Tectonic members. (Beware, there are spoilers from here on out.)

Laramie residents with no connection to the case were either tired of hearing about the murder or felt that what their community had done to remember Shepard was enough. Some cited a report on ABC's 20/20 that it wasn't a hate crime but a robbery or drug deal gone bad.

The university seemed halfhearted in its response. It's not that they've ignored the murder. We learn that there's a memorial bench to Shepard on campus and more courses on gender identity and a social justice symposium named in his honor.

But members of the university's board of trustees have dragged their feet on offering domestic partner benefits to gay and lesbian employees. They don't seem to understand that treating all of their employees equally, fairly and with dignity would be the best and highest way to honor Matthew Shepard.

The closer you get - we hear from the police who investigated the murder, people who knew Shepard, gay and lesbian citizens of Laramie - you realize the extent to which these wounds are still open and raw.

When I watched the HBO movie based on The Laramie Project, I turned down the volume when Shepard's injuries were described. I just couldn't listen. Last night, I couldn't tune out and I felt like I was going to faint while listening to Darien Johnson, the actor who plays investigator Rob Debree. Reggie Fluty (played by Ruth Coughlin), the now-retired police officer who found Shepard, says, if you'd seen him, you wouldn't doubt that this was a hate crime.

I remembered Jonas Slonaker from the movie talking about how much he loved Wyoming but also the fear that he felt as a gay man after Shepard's murder. Slonaker, played by Will Austin, now has a partner and a job at the university where he's out and accepted. But he's cautious and knows that if he worked somewhere else, it would be different. Every gay person, he says, has to find that safe pocket.

That's not to say there hasn't been progress.

Cathy Connolly, a university professor, was elected in 2008 to the state House of Representatives, becoming Wyoming's first openly gay legislator. In the play's most moving section, Connolly, played by Lauren Lubow, talks about the successful fight to defeat a proposed amendment to the state's constitution defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman.

Unexpected support comes from a conservative Republican colleague, Rep. Pat Childers, (played by Tommy Dickie) who discloses during the debate that one of his daughters is a lesbian. "Folks, till my dying breath there isn't anybody in this country who could say that she is a terrible person, or someone that needs to have their rights restricted."

Members of Tectonic also conducted interviews with Shepard's killers, Aaron McKinney, played by Charlie Thurston, and Russell Henderson, played by Tyler Weeks.

McKinney especially is chilling for the casual way in which he speaks about the murder, not really showing any remorse, saying that he doesn't remember much about it. He tells the interviewer that he's been reading up on Nazi Germany and he's very proud of his tattoos, including the swastika, which he reckons might prevent him from visiting Germany if he should ever get out of prison.

We also hear from Judy Shepard, Matthew's mother, (played by Mary C. Davis) who has become a tireless advocate for expanding hate-crimes legislation to include people targeted because of their sexual orientation. The measure, as the play notes, still has not become law. (Although it passed the House last week.)

Shepard says that people ask her why she simply doesn't let her son go, which strikes me as offensive. She responds that it's her way of keeping Matthew alive. Since there are still hate crimes, still people being victimized because of their sexual orientation, of course we need her advocacy. It's a reminder of the terrible human toll of homophobia, of all forms of bigotry.

Kudos to Trinity Rep and the Brown MFA program for presenting this work. Here are the students who participated: Will Austin, Phillipe Bowgen, Tommy Dickie, Brough Hanson, Kevaughn Harvey, Lovell Holder, Darien Johnson, Ricky Oliver, Charlie Thurston, Tyler Weeks, Ruth Coughlin, Mary C. Davis, Mia Ellis, Caroline Kaplan, Alexandra Lawrence and Lauren Lubow. The performance was directed by Shana Gozansky and the stage manager was Tammy Kinney.

The students did a great job in making this work so compelling and I'm looking forward to seeing them onstage in Trinity Rep productions over the next several years.

Revisiting The Laramie Project

Monday is normally a dark night for theatres in the United States but tonight is different.

An extraordinary event will take place when more than 150 theatres present a staged reading of the same work - The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, an 80-minute epilogue to the play about the murder of Matthew Shepard.

Today marks the 11th anniversary of Shepard's death. The 21-year-old University of Wyoming student, targeted by his killers because he was gay, was tied to a fence, beaten and left to die on the outskirts of Laramie in October 1998.

Five weeks later, members of New York's Tectonic Theater Project, including cofounder Moises Kaufman, traveled to Wyoming to interview people who knew Shepard or were connected with the case or were just ordinary citizens, straight and gay.

After a year, the transcripts were turned into the play The Laramie Project, which opened off-Broadway in 2000. It later became an HBO movie, which I watched last year.

It's a horrific story and heartbreaking to hear gay and lesbian citizens talk about how they lived quietly, in fear, before the death of Matthew Shepard. And it's also inspiring to hear how his death galvanized them, along with many straight Wyoming citizens, to speak out against homophobia, no matter what the consequences. But there are also interviews with others who seem totally unaware of their bigotry.

In 2008, Kaufman and Tectonic returned to Laramie for more interviews. They also spoke with Matthew's mother Judy Shepard, and Aaron McKinney, one of the men convicted of his murder. The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later is the result.

"We went there with a hypothesis that there would have been great change, and that was correct," Kaufman told the Los Angeles Times. "Whether the change is for better or worse or both is what people will see when they come to the show."

Greg Reiner, Tectonic's executive director, says interest in the epilogue demonstrates the power of Matthew Shepard's story "as part of our collective history and as a lesson to all about homophobia, what is means to be gay in a small town and how stories must be re-told to ensure that the legacy of these kinds of incidents is correct."

In Rhode Island, the play will be presented by students in the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA program at 7 p.m. at the Pell Chafee Performance Center, 87 Empire St., Providence; by Brown University undergraduates at the Leeds Theatre on campus at 8 p.m.; and at the University of Rhode Island's Fine Arts Center, 105 Upper College Road, Kingston, at 8 p.m. All are free and open to the public.

The odds catch up with The 39 Steps

Broadway shows come and go but this one is a little more personal for me than most. The 39 Steps is responsible for my becoming a theatre blogger and it was the subject of my very first Gratuitous Violins post.

So when I heard that the play is closing Jan. 10, I was disappointed. I saw the British import at Boston's Huntington Theatre Company in September 2007, during its pre-Broadway run. And I loved it just as much when I saw it on Broadway in July 2009 at the Helen Hayes Theatre.

But nothing lasts forever on Broadway, except possibly The Phantom of the Opera. And I knew that the nonprofit Second Stage Theatre announced in July 2008 that it was acquiring the Helen Hayes as a venue for contemporary American drama.

Plus, this little play, which began previews in January 2008, beat the odds. It changed theatres twice, transferring from a nonprofit to a commercial run to become the longest-running Broadway play in seven years. That's not bad for a production with no recognizable actors, based on a movie few theatergoers have seen.

In July, I got my ticket at the Times Square TKTS booth and apparently a lot of other people went the discount route, too. The 39 Steps was playing to 60.7 percent capacity last week at the 597-seat Helen Hayes, Broadway's smallest house, with an average ticket price of $64.34.

But I have to give the producers credit for trying different ways to get people into the theatre, including hosting talkbacks, an Alfred Hitchcock lookalike contest, a scavenger hunt based on The Amazing Race and posting clues on Twitter about tickets hidden at various spots in midtown Manhattan.

I've written before about how the play, with its four-person cast and a few props, uses wit and inventiveness to retell the story of the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock movie about a man caught up in a spy ring. I've seen far more elaborate shows that didn't thrill me and or make me laugh nearly as much.

For a brief period over the summer, as this New York Times article notes, The 39 Steps was the only play on Broadway. Arnie Burton, who's been with the production since Boston, called it "an homage to the theatre. It's a valentine to that kind of creativity and imagination, of doing so much with so little."

There's still time to see The 39 Steps on Broadway. Discounted tickets are available through Playbill.com.

The national tour has already been at the La Jolla Playhouse and moves to the Seattle Repertory Theatre from Sept. 25 to Oct. 24. Although the tour "officially" kicks off in November at the Shubert Theatre in New Haven. Here's the schedule.

In his review from La Jolla, Los Angeles Times critic Charles McNulty said that the play "sets out to prove that anything movies can do, theater can do less expensively and more hilariously." I definitely agree.

The Neil Simon press non-event

So the promised tweets from today's press event for Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound had me glued to my Twitter account. Sadly they turned out to be less than riveting.

Hey Boneau/Bryan-Brown, if you're going alert twitterdom to "Make sure you follow us this afternoon as we tweet live from The Neil Simon Plays press event starting around 6ish," please try to have something more interesting to say than this:

1.) The photogs are ready for the cast.
2.) Does Neil Simon have a caricature at Sardi's? If not, he should.
3.) They did readings of both plays today. That's a lot of Simon.
4.) Neil Simon is here. Surprise! (And that was a re-tweet from someone else.)
5.) David Cromer says he dresses from the "rumpled genius" line of clothing.
6.) Cromer said the key to these plays is only casting the perfect actors in each part.

No. 5 is kind of funny. As for the rest, meh!

That's okay, I'm still psyched about the revival of these plays, which tell the story of a Jewish family in Brooklyn in the 1930s and '40s and are a thinly veiled account of Simon's life and career.

And of course I can't stay mad for long. Just look at the picture: Noah Robbins, who plays Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome in Brighton Beach Memoirs, Neil Simon himself, Josh Grisetti, who plays Eugene in Broadway Bound and director David Cromer, of the amazing Our Town off-Broadway.

I'm a little verklempt.

The first preview of Brighton Beach Memoirs is Oct. 2 and it opens Oct. 25. Broadway Bound previews begin Nov. 18 and it opens Dec. 2. They'll play in repertory at the Nederlander Theatre. Preview tickets are only $50 if you order by Sept. 6.