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Review - The Grand Inquisitor - Religion Used for Political Gain and Power

New York Times

Holy Man and Holier in a Battle for Power
Peter Brook’s production of “The Grand Inquisitor,” at the New York Theater Workshop, is less an interpretation than a straightforward presentation of Dostoevsky’s parable of worldly and spiritual power

Newsday

'The Grand Inquisitor': Jesus at the Inquisition

Bloomberg.com

Brook Tortures Dostoyevsky in Staging of `Grand Inquisitor': John Simon
"The Grand Inquisitor,'' adapted from a segment of "The Brothers Karamazov'' at Peter Brook's behest, is showing at New York Theatre Workshop in the East Village, a favorite venue for outlandish offerings.

Variety

Review: The Grand Inquisitor
As delivered by a magisterial Bruce Myers lecturing a mute Christ, the harsh but brilliantly argued critique of the bedrock positions of Christian theology lands with a shock.

Back Stage

The Grand Inquisitor reviewed by David A. Rosenberg
Although this is more a rhetorical exercise than a play in the traditional sense of that word, the evening engages willing listeners as two men challenge each other.

TheaterMania

Review: The Grand Inquisitor
Peter Brook's staging of an excerpt from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is a rapt and challenging experience.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: The Grand Inquisitor
The Grand Inquisitor, the C.I.C.T./Théatre des Bouffes du Nord piece that Theatre for a New Audience and New York Theatre Workshop are coproducing at the latter’s East Village mainstage, is obviously a frugal producer’s dream. But it has so many strikes against it at the outset for the average audience member, on paper the project looks like one big scribble. . . .

nytheatre.com

Review: The Grand Inquisitor
Review: Hunchback

CurtainUp

Review: The Grand Inquisitor
Very well-written and executed but ultimately it's a purely intellectual exercise

New York Times

Contagious Disturbances on the Home Front, While War Rages Over There
Adult actors playing children onstage is usually about as appealing as adults acting like children offstage. But Gio Perez handles this delicate task with an aplomb.

New York Post

'Trees' leaves much amiss
There's a lot of communication going on in Steven Levenson's "The Language of Trees," but precious little understanding. The characters in this tale of an American translator imprisoned in Iraq talk at, but not really to, each other. Lapsing into magical realism in its final sections, including an imagined encounter between the...

Associated Press

'Trees' Looks at a Family Fractured by Iraq War
A family fractured by the Iraq war is at the center of ''The Language of Trees,'' the impressive second offering of Roundabout Underground, a new-play initiative that brings the work of fledgling writers to the stage.

Variety

Review: The Language of Trees
In the 5½ years since the conflict began, many playwrights have weighed in on the Iraq war from military, political and ideological perspectives, but relatively few have focused on the home front. Steven Levenson explores the emotional minefield of those left behind with sensitivity in his stylistically ambitious but uneven debut....

Back Stage

The Language of Trees reviewed by Adam R. Perlman
The Language of Trees, Roundabout Underground's domestic drama set during the first months of the Iraq war, tries hard to be sensitive.

TheaterMania

Review: The Language of Trees
Steven Levenson's uneven new play examines the impact of the war in Iraq on the family of an American translator

Talkin' Broadway

Review: The Language of Trees
If you fear the imminent death, or at least the long-term hospitalization, of issue-oriented theatre, Steven Levenson’s preachy and pretentious new play The Language of Trees is not for you. This Roundabout Underground show, in the intimate Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, is the polar opposite of the youth-oriented initiative’s first offering last year at this time, Speech & Debate: While that show was highly cool, subtly sexy, and up-to-the-moment alert, this one is covered in Halloween-ready cobwebs. . . .

Walk into New York Theatre Workshop for The Grand Inquisitor, which NYTW is presenting in collaboration with Theatre for a New Audience, and you'll find that all that's on stage are a small black crate and a black stool that are at opposite corners of a gray square. The piece, adapted by Marie-Hélène Estienne from a section of Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," consists of one actor (Jake M. Smith) sitting silently on the crate while another, Bruce Myers, clad in a black cassock for most of the production speaks. It may not sound like much, but the piece and production, directed by the legendary Peter Brook, is one of the most intellectually fascinating works to come to New York's stages in a long while.

"Inquisitor" takes place in Seville during the height of the Spanish Inquisition. Myers plays the cardinal Grand Inquisitor who has arrested Christ (Smith), who has returned to Earth and performed miracles in front of grateful and worshiping Spaniards. His presence brings the cardinal to ask "Why, then, have you come to disturb us?" For just under an hour, the cardinal goes on to describe how the Catholic Church has worked to undo the damage done by Christ when he first appeared in human form. The cardinal believes Christ's gift of free will and choice in religion to be more of a punishment to mankind than a blessing, and explains how the church's work over 15 centuries has been to make men and women happier by removing the onus of choice from their lives.

It's troubling rhetoric and there's more. The cardinal goes on to describe how torture and other methods employed by the Inquisition and the Catholic Church in general have been about destroying a sense of freedom.

What's most disturbing in "Inquisitor," though, is how palatable it all sounds in Myers' delivery. The actor never plays the cardinal as a villain. Instead, he plays the cardinal as a rather matter-of-fact man with total conviction in what he's saying. Here is a man who rarely raises his voice despite his growing consternation with Christ's silence (Smith's concentration on his fellow's performer's words and movements only draws theatergoers further into the piece). Gestures are used with care and it's hard not to be mesmerized by this piece of almost businessman-like oratory.

Audience fascination, of course, is the point of "Inquisitor." The artists have created a piece which draws audiences almost into agreement with reprehensible tenets and practices, Brook and Estienne are asking theatergoers to contemplate the ways in which religions can be perverted for political means. As an election day approaches, it's an important lesson to be reminded of.

Brook's production, lit with nuance and care by Philippe Vialatte, never provides any theatrical pyrotechnics, but that doesn't matter. This is a work that shatters through words and delivery alone.

---- Andy Propst

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The Grand Inquisitor plays at New York Theatre Workshop (79 East 4th Street). Performances are Tuesday at 7pm; Wednesday through Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 2 and 8pm; and Sunday at 3 and 7pm. Tickets are $75.00 and can be purchased by calling 212-239-6200 or by visiting www.telecharge.com. Further information is available online at www.nytw.org or www.tfana.org.

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AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - Romantic Poetry - Searching for Love, As Always, Is Difficult

New York Times

Singing a Song of the Lovestruck Life
This cloying show about the irrationality of love, finds John Patrick Shanley communing loudly with his madcap side, which hasn’t been very visible in recent years

amNY New York City Theater

Review of Romantic Poetry
There must be some mistake. John Patrick Shanley, the author of “Doubt,” and Henry Krieger, the composer of “Dreamgirls,” could not have written this train wreck of a new musical. Was this a cruel joke? Did we walk into the wrong theater?

New York Daily News

'Romantic Poetry' not ready for rhyme time
Since Cher is busy, we'll deliver a memo to the muck-a-mucks who decided that "Romantic Poetry" - by John Patrick Shanley ("Moonstruck"), who wrote the book and lyrics and directs - was ready for a world premiere: Snap out of it!

Newsday

Review: John Patrick Shanley's 'Romantic Poetry'
....Despite all that productivity and such a vast assortment of styles, Shanley has never before written the lyrics and book for a musical. We now know why.

No love lost on 'Poetry' with no rhyme, reason
There's little chance of being moonstruck by "Romantic Poetry," the new musical collaboration between John Patrick Shanley...

Hartford Courant

New York Stage: 'Romantic Poetry' by John Patrick Shanley

Star-Ledger

'Romantic Poetry' has heart in the right place
A cheerfully disorderly musical, "Romantic Poetry" is a sketchy affair regarding passion, both artistic and amorous.

Associated Press

'Romantic Poetry' stumbles in its tale of love

Bloomberg.com

Shanley's Pretentious Musical; Ibsen's Shaky Superman Builder: John Simon J
ohn Patrick Shanley, author of the spellbinding ``Doubt,'' and Henry Krieger, composer of the captivating ``Dreamgirls,'' have banded together to concoct one of the most incongruous, foolish and pretentious musicals ever inflicted on an audience.

Variety

Review: Romantic Poetry
The new John Patrick Shanley-Henry Krieger musical comedy "Romantic Poetry" is neither romantic nor poetic; there's lots of music -- 25 songs, no less -- but the comedy is mostly in the mind of author-director Shanley. Manhattan Theater Club has had a rough opening to its 38th semester, following the critically maligned "To Be or Not to Be" with this baffling opus.

Back Stage

Romantic Poetry reviewed by Adam R. Perlman
What a glorious minefield must be the mind of John Patrick Shanley.

TheaterMania

Review: Romantic Poetry
John Patrick Shanley and Henry Krieger's whimsical new musical is a definite disappointment.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Romantic Poetry
What happens to love after doubt creeps into it? An excellent question, and one of the more notable ones addressed in Romantic Poetry at Manhattan Theatre Club. But a better one is: What happened to John Patrick Shanley after Doubt crept out of him? . . .

For the characters in John Patrick Shanley and Henry Krieger's quirky new chamber musical, that opened at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage 1 at City Center last night, life should be quite simple. All they're looking for is a little of that magic that's found in the stuff of the tuner's title: Romantic Poetry. You know, the big emotions where everything is swirling and pretty and everyone feels good all of the time. The characters sing about their need for this elusive commodity in the show's opening number and spend the next two hours or so trying to attain it. Their ride, like the musical itself, is rocky, but when all is said and done, it's also an exceedingly enjoyable ride, sort of like love itself.

Connie (Emily Swallow) and Fred (Ivan Hernandez) are the lovebirds at the center of "Poetry." They've both been married twice before and as the musical begins they've arrived at their honeymoon getaway in the Poconos. From the way they're fighting (she's wielding the baseball bat that she found in the priest's car she drunkenly stole from their reception), romance is not going to come easy for these two on the third time around. When Mary (Patina Renea Miller), the hotel's assistant manager, shows up in the room with a complimentary bottle of champagne and instantly falls for Frankie (Jerry Dixon), the caterer who's followed the newlyweds demanding payment on the bill Connie's dad hasn't paid, love does spring at the honeymoon resort. They share Krieger's pop-infused, almost Ashford and Simpson-like, tune "Destiny" and retreat to another room in the hotel.

With love blooming for this latter couple, and seesawing for the former, "Poetry" flies off into other directions. Fred's convinced that Connie is the woman that his aunt predicted would ruin his life, but at the same time, Connie's willing to let him drop his job as a cell phone salesman to try his hand at being a poet. Frankie and Mary confront a similar dilemma when she announces that all she's ever really wanted to do is be a painter. The lives of all concerned are further complicated by the presence of the emotionally challenged Red (Jeb Brown) and the somewhat oily attorney Carl (Mark Linn-Baker), Connie's first and second husbands respectively.

Shanley's book and Krieger's score run a gamut of styles. Sometimes farce collides with opera. Elsewhere, there's a strict razzmatazz Broadway sensibility to it all. Sometimes, "Poetry" even brings to mind the emotional and musical complexity of shows from Stephen Sondheim and William Finn. It's a hodgepodge – sort of like the process of navigating a relationship – and it's to Shanley's credit as the director show's that "Poetry" succeeds as well as it does. As the piece becomes increasingly absurd (and in the second half it almost derails as the story twists and turns), theatergoers are swept along with the characters and their stories, with rarely a moment to register incredulity or skepticism. (David Korins' scenic design which brings to mind the sort of bare stage that might have served for a Busby Berkley production number allows Shanley's staging to move with its fluidity and also brings a sort of old-time glamour to the proceedings).

The performers navigate the varied tones and styles of Shanley's script and Krieger's score with aplomb. Swallow makes Connie not only deliciously coarse, but also appealingly vulnerable. Dixon's smooth tones are beautifully suited for Krieger's music and he makes Frankie's straightforwardness about finances seem reasonable rather than harsh. Miller imbues Mary with a sultry artsyness and Brown and Linn-Baker are total delights at the sort of old-school vaudevillians who are generally on the sidelines of the action but sometimes at its center. Ultimately, theatergoers find that these two are looking for a little romance in their lives as well, only enhancing and complicating the joys to be found in Romantic Poetry.

---- Andy Propst

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Romantic Poetry plays at Manhattan Theatre Club at City Center (131 West 55th Street). Performance schedule varies. For complete information and online ticketing visit: www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com or www.NyCityCenter.org. Tickets are also available by phone at 212-581-1212.

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