Dance Nation
Clare Barron is a young scenarist and actress,
not yet thirty-three, but on the strength of this
intermissionless, hour-and-forty-ive-minute
piece she’s on her way to becoming a signii-
cant playwright. And that’s because theatre is
in her bones. The story concerns a small group
of amateur pre-teen female dancers (and one
dude) who want to win Tampa Bay’s Boogie
Down Grand Prix, but at great expense to them-
selves, and to the group. Friendships are chal-
lenged, bodies are damaged, and male approval
is striven for as the performers, led by their un-
smiling dance teacher, Pat (the wonderfully cast
Thomas Jay Ryan), deal with stereotypical fe-
male behavior, often without questioning it at
all. The director, Lee Sunday Evans, has assem-
bled a fabulous cast of various ages to play the
dancers, whose dreams are less life-airming
than life-distorting. (Playwrights Horizons, 416
W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200.)
The Gentleman Caller
According to Philip Dawkins, Tennessee Wil-
liams was an aggressive, conident lirt back in
1944, even before his irst hit, “The Glass Me-
nagerie.” This new two-hander takes place as that
play was about to première in Chicago, and Daw-
kins (“Charm”) imagines a pair of encounters be-
tween Williams (Juan Francisco Villa) and Wil-
liam Inge (Daniel K. Isaac), then an arts critic
in St. Louis. The two men circle each other in
an increasingly dense fog of booze, but their re-
lationship is overwhelmed by Dawkins’s torrent
of biographical and literary references and sassy
repartee. At times the show, directed by Tony
Speciale, overheats so much that it feels like a
long-lost play by Charles Ludlam’s Ridiculous
Theatrical Company. “You’re too bitch for my
tastes,” Inge tells Williams, who replies in mock
ofense, “Bitch? Moi?!” As Blanche DuBois never
said, Oy gevalt. (Cherry Lane, 38 Commerce St.
866-811-4111. Through May 26.)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Those who know Lesley Manville only as
Cyril, the ice-cold sister-consigliere in “Phan-
tom Thread,” may be stunned to see her as the
bundle of nerves known as Mary Tyrone, the
fragile matriarch in Eugene O’Neill’s family
drama. Hooked on morphine since the birth of
her younger son, Edmund (Matthew Beard),
Mary clings to the past, which she uses—along
with dope and self-delusion—to cloud out the
present, like the fog rolling in over the Long Is-
land Sound outside. Her husband, James (Jer-
emy Irons), and older son, Jamie (the potent and
sardonic Rory Keenan), prefer booze to dull the
pain of living, but that can’t stop their recrimi-
nations from surfacing as night falls. Sir Rich-
ard Eyre’s production (imported from the Bris-
tol Old Vic) gives Manville a jewel-toned stage
on which to fall apart beautifully, with a preci-
sion that even Cyril would envy. (BAM Harvey
Theatre, 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn. 718-636-4100.
Through May 27.)
Operation Crucible
On a cold night in 1940, the Luftwafe blitzed
Sheield, targeting English steelworks that man-
ufactured airplane engines and bomb casings.
Seventy or so civilians sheltered in the Marples
Hotel; when the hotel took a direct hit, only a few
men, holed up in the bottling cellar, survived.
This event inspires Kieran Knowles’s brisk and
muscular “Brits Of Broadway” drama, about four
steelworkers trapped in a lightless basement as
the bombs start to fall. “It were worse because
you couldn’t see aught, you had to imagine it,”
one character says. Not that Knowles leaves much
to the imagination. Though the dialect-thick
writing is often heavy-handed, it still conveys
the horrors of the attack. The play is ultimately
about the limits of the camaraderie, but, under
Bryony Shanahan’s direction, the performers—
Knowles, Salvatore D’Aquilla, Christopher Mc-
Curry, and an especially ine James Wallwork—
come together to conjure a world as it shatters.
(59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200.)
Paradise Blue
The year is 1949. Blue is a talented and tormented
trumpeter, and Paradise is the name of the jazz
club he owns on a prime plot in Black Bottom,
the foremost African-American community in
Detroit at a time when the city is still mostly
white. The local government wants to buy Blue
out for an “urban renewal” project (which in real
life would eventually destroy the neighborhood),
and everyone who relies on Paradise wants ei-
ther to buy the club or to talk Blue out of sell-
ing it. Part of Dominique Morisseau’s trilogy of
Detroit-based plays, Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s
charming and often incisive production zips
along with the spirit and verve of the music
that imbues it, ofering a rich slice of postwar
African-American life, not least in Neil Patel’s
spot-on set and Clint Ramos’s delectable period
costumes. (Pershing Square Signature Center, 480
W. 42nd St. 212-244-7529.)
Twelfth Night
“Twelfth Night” was the most produced Shake-
speare play in the United States last year. In
New York, we return to Illyria with enough
regularity that theatregoers can compare mul-
tiple versions: the Fiasco company’s take, for
instance, was just a few months ago, and yet
another will be in Central Park this summer.
For now, it’s the director Maria Aitken’s turn,
for this Acting Company and Resident Ensem-
ble Players co-production. Sadly, she does not
summon the ingenuity and visual wit that she
brought to “The 39 Steps.” Most lacking is the
trouble that should be born of the excitement
and fear of falling for the wrong person—the
wrong sex, even. Only Susanna Stahlmann’s
Viola suggests a soupçon of the required play-
fulness and confusion. Though occasionally en-
livened by Joshua David Robinson’s lovely ren-
dition of the songs, the show mostly shules
from one scene to another. Just another op’nin’
of another “Twelfth Night.” (Polonsky Shake-
speare Center, 262 Ashland Pl., Brooklyn. 866-811-- Through May 27.)
1
ALSO NOTABLE
Angels in America Neil Simon.•A Brief His-
tory of Women 59E59. Through May 27.•Carou-
sel Imperial.•Children of a Lesser God Studio - Through May 27.•Frozen St. James.•Harry
Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts One and Two
Lyric.•The Iceman Cometh Jacobs.•Light
Shining in Buckinghamshire New York Theatre
Workshop.•Mean Girls August Wilson.•Mli-
ma’s Tale Public.•My Fair Lady Vivian Beau-
mont.•Saint Joan Samuel J. Friedman.•The
Seafarer Irish Repertory. Through May 24.•Sum-
mer Lunt-Fontanne.•Summer and Smoke Clas-
sic Stage Company. Through May 25.•Three
Tall Women Golden.•Travesties American Air-
lines Theatre.
THE THEATRE“Essential reading.”
—LYDIA POLGREEN“Astonishing reporting ...
One of the most
important books of
our time.”
—WALTER ISAACSON“Perhaps the most
riveting and relatable
book on foreign policy
and diplomacy that
I have ever read.”
—MARTHA RADDATZ“A must-read.”
—IAN BREMMERB W. W. NORTON
Independent publishers since 1923
http://www.wwnorton.comINSTANT
NEW YORK
TIMES
BESTSELLER