AmericanTheaterWeb Original News & Reviews

A shrewd sort of wisdom and a great deal of tuneful happiness winds through Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?, a new revue running at the Triad Theatre on the Upper West Side.

Conceived and directed by Bill Daugherty, who's also one of the six performers in the show, "Brother" offers up just over two dozen songs from the Great Depression. Among the selections, standards that have never fallen out of favor or far from public consciousness: things like "We're in the Money" and "Happy Days Are Here Again." Others in the show are familiar, but have not been revisited much of late – during the heady times of Internet bubbles and a general national prosperity, and yet, these, regardless of the tines are gorgeously crafted, insightful and diverting songs that deserve to be better known. "My Forgotten Man," by Al Warren and Harry Dubin, is a marvelously plaintive tune – delivered with understated passion and anger by Deborah Tranelli – about a returning soldier's inability to find work. The tune has the ability to haunt no matter when it's sung, but today, it cuts a little deeper: unemployment among Iraq War veterans is several percentage points higher than the national average.

Realizations like this occur throughout "Brother," and thankfully, many are much more pleasant. Rhyming "Berlin" with "a pair of arms to hold your girl in" can't help but bring a smile to theatergoers' faces. And how about just the simple idea of "I'll be up on a rainbow, sweepin' the clouds away"?

Given that so many of the songs are by the likes of Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg, the great men of the American Songbook, it's little wonder that the tunes can both transport and inspire reflection. Still it doesn't hurt that the gifted sextet of performers serves the songs up so well, using Doyle Newmyer's simple, yet clever, arrangements. ("Get Happy" is delivered almost like a Sondheim-inspired dirge.)

The one drawback to "Brother" is the non-musical portion of the show. Taped recordings of speeches and performances from the period give color but last a bit too long. Similarly, sequences in which company members deliver monologues focusing on the personal problems that people faced in the Depression are over-extended and could be pruned without diminishing the show's impact.

The piece is much more successful when someone like Daugherty comes center stage to offer up Rodgers and Hart's whimsical "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!" or Jennafer Newberry channels Betty Boop for "I’m an Unemployed Sweetheart." Throughout Tranelli and Christine Morrell's vocals and thoughtful interpretations impress and move, and ultimately, "Brother" proves to be a songfest that, though a little too timely, is also a beguiling musical journey to the past.

---- Andy Propst

---

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? plays at the Triad Theatre 9158 West 72nd Street). Performances are Friday at 7pm and Saturday and Sunday at 3pm. Tickets are $45.00 and can be purchased by calling 212-352-3101 or by visiting www.TheaterMania.com.

Printer-friendly version

 

AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - Impressionism
A Clear Picture Fails To Materialize

New York Times

The Past Comes Alive, Frozen in a Frame
Pithy little life lessons keep coming at you in Michael Jacobs’s “Impressionism,” as if off a conveyor belt in a greeting card factory.

New York Daily News

Making a bad first 'Impressionism'
It took 16 producers to present "Impressionism," a new play now open at the Schoenfeld Theatre. They would have been better off investing in low-interest CDs.

amNY New York City Theater

Theater Review of Impressionism
Something is probably wrong when the scene changes are better than the scenes that follow.

Newsday

Good actors, poor impression
Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen have great bones. The play, alas, does not

New York Post

Boring play makes a very bad impression
We all know what a Broadway flop is supposed to look like: a spectacle of near-farcical vulgarity. Think of the Earth, Wind & Fire...

Edge New York

Impressionism
Michael Jacobs’ new play, "Impressionism," is best appreciated from a distance... perhaps across the street in another theater.

Hartford Courant

New York Stage: 'Impressionism' Feels Like An Art History Quiz
Now that it has opened, it is easy to see why the initial unveiling of "Impressionism" was postponed. Despite a solid cast headed by Jeremy Irons, Joan Allen and Marsha Mason, this new American play by Michael Jacobs too often feels like an art history quiz.

Bergen Record

Searching for the big picture at an upscale art gallery
Playwright Michael Jacobs serves up a variety of ideas, as well as nuggets of information on a wide range of topics, in "Impressionism," which opened Tuesday night at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. ...Unfortunately, they rarely connect to one another, in a play that makes little dramatic sense.

Associated Press

An Awkward Romance Sinks B'way's 'Impressionism'
''Impressionism'' is an elaborate if awkward romance -- positively brimming with self-importance -- and showcased in a setting that includes a parade of gorgeous photographic reproductions of famous paintings.

Bloomberg.com

Jeremy Irons, Joan Allen Give `Impressionism' Flashes of Color: John Simon
Two distinguished actors, Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, are mired in Michael Jacobs’s “Impressionism,” at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. The play suffers from three major ailments: pretentiousness, trickery and triviality.

USA Today

Allen, Irons try to connect the dots in 'Impressionism'
Michael Jacobs' new play, which opened Tuesday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, is set in a Manhattan art gallery and features works by Monet, Chagall, Picasso and other celebrated and lesser-known masters, all represented as lovingly as they are detailed in the author's stage directions. There's also the presence of Joan Allen, impossibly stunning at 52, and the still-debonair Jeremy Irons, appearing on Broadway for the first time in 20 and 25 years, respectively.

Variety

Review: Impressionism
...two distinguished lead actors long absent from the New York stage and a plot about mid-life love to speak directly to the prime Broadway play demographic. But did no one get up close enough to read Michael Jacobs' pretentious bore of a script?

Hollywood Reporter

Theater Review: Impressionism
It doesn't take an art history major to predict that "Impressionism," the new play starring Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, is going to use that groundbreaking style of painting as a metaphor for life.

Back Stage

Impressionism reviewed by David Sheward
There's a lot of talk in Impressionism, Michael Jacobs' shallow romantic comedy-drama about the titular school of painting.

TheaterMania

Review: Impressionism
Tony Award winners Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen return to Broadway in Michael Jacobs' juvenile and unrealistic portrait of a photojournalist and art gallery owner.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Impressionism
It’s a time-honored secret of showmaking: If you must choose between a great first act and a great second act, go for the second act so people will be delighted as they leave the theater - and more likely to tell their friends. If your play is only in one act, so much the better: You can do whatever you want for 85 percent of the time, secure in the knowledge your audience (and word of mouth) will love you as long as you provide a slam-bang finish. . .

CurtainUp

Review: Impressionism
The many real paintings on display bring to mind Jack O'Brien's brilliantly overlap of a Manet painting with a scene in Coast of Utopia. But Mark Jacobs is no Tom Stoppard and this is at best a minor pleasure rather than a major theatrical event

Chicago Tribune

Steppenwolf's Joan Allen trapped on Broadway

 

AmericanTheaterWeb

Review - Zooman and the Sign
Revisiting Urban Violence of the Late '70s

New York Times

A Cold Soul, and the Society That Put It on Ice
The concluding production of the Signature Theater Company’s season devoted to the Negro Ensemble Company is a lackluster revival.

New York Daily News

'Zooman and the Sign' is worth your time
In "Zooman and the Sign," the murder of a 12-year-old black girl, Jinny, pits her grieving family against their community in late-70s Philadelphia.

Associated Press

Violence Scars a Scared Community in 'Zooman'
A randomly violent, sociopathic teenage killer; the angry and grieving family of one of his young victims, and a black community either too frightened or too numbed into apathy by repeated gang violence to speak out and identify the killers.

Variety

Review: Zooman and the Sign
...but thesp-turned-helmer Stephen McKinley Henderson has added to the play's pacing problems with some deeply confused direction. In initial production and its previous revivals (in 1983 and 1994), the play was declared incendiary, if problematic and occasionally flat. Now, unfortunately, it's problematic, flat and no longer unique.

Back Stage

Zooman and the Sign reviewed by Erik Haagensen
Charles Fuller's Zooman and the Sign is a problem play, the problem being the social deprivations and concomitant personal failures that lead to gang violence, senseless murders, and terrified citizenry.

TheaterMania

Review: Zooman and the Sign
Charles Fuller's play about a neighborhood crime lacks urgency and vitality after nearly three decades.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: Zooman and the Sign
It takes less time than you might think for a play to go from hopelessly harsh to hermetically hardboiled. Charles Fuller’s Zooman and the Sign needed only 28 years - at least judging by the restless new production the Signature Theatre Company is giving it at Peter Norton Space. . . .

CurtainUp

Review: Zooman and the Sign
Fuller's play offers no solutions to the endless cycle of problems that destroy young lives, but it certainly provides a powerfully revealing glimpse into a part of American life most would like to forget

 

Is life more like realism or impressionism is one of the questions that's posed in Michael Jacobs' muddled and dispiriting play Impressionism, which opened last night at the Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway.

Art gallery owner Katherine (Joan Allen) poses the query to Thomas (Jeremy Irons), a once-renowned photographer who works with her at the gallery where she seems to be loath to sell any of the works that she has on display. When Julia (Marsha Mason) comes into the shop to purchase an aquatint of a Mary Cassatt painting, Katherine hedges on making the sale. The same is true of a painting of an elderly couple sitting on a park bench which an engaged couple wants to buy. As for the Modigliani study that Douglas (Michael T. Weiss) has consigned, Katherine is heartbroken when he removes it from her shop after it's been hanging there for a year.

The reasons for Katherine's attachment to these pieces are explained in flashbacks. The Cassatt reminds her of the moment in which her father walked out on her mother (Allen and Irons play the parents). As for the Modigliani, this artwork brings back memories of the time Katherine almost posed nude for an upcoming painter (also played by Irons), who has been leading her on. She only discovers this after she admits to adoring him. The third piece turns out to be a painting by this painter who achieved a modicum of fame after Katherine and he broke off their relationship and used her unwillingness to look him in the eye while posing as a source of inspiration.

While this description makes Impressionism sounds as if it’s a cogent 90-minutes, Jacobs' play, which director Jack O'Brien has staged with a maximum of technical flair and a minimum of illumination, is anything but clear. The flashbacks unfold behind scrims that are an important part of Scott Pask's minimalist scenic design; the opaque flies are necessary for Elaine J. McCarthy's projection design which enlarges many of the artworks that are being discussed.

Perhaps if Jacobs' script stuck simply to the importance of the works in Katherine's psyche, Impressionism might work, but it's muddied by an underdeveloped backstory for Thomas, who has refused to snap a single picture since he was unable to rescue a small African boy, the subject of one of Thomas' most famous photos, from dying. The script also includes – to almost wearying effect – the day-to-day banter that Katherine and Thomas share at the gallery; chit-chat that belies his interest in her and her almost willful obtuseness about the romantic tension in the air.

Allen, who looks terrific in a plethora of chic career-woman ensembles from costume designer Catherine Zuber, and Irons deliver proficient performances in their various roles. But these are not the sort of turns that theatergoers might expect from these two award-winning actors. Part of the problem is that the characters are not so much enigmatic as sylphs whose motivations are almost capriciously mercurial.

More successful are the turns from Mason and Weiss in the supporting roles, playing characters that are more clearly, albeit simply, defined. The same can be said of Aaron Lazar and Margarita Levieva who play the young couple deep in the throes of love, and also of André De Shields, who brings a certain dignity to the role of an elderly baker who shows up in the gallery one day when Katherine has forgotten to pick up her usual order.

De Shields also plays a sweet African native when action of the play reverts to Thomas' time in Africa. This scene, like the seven other that surround it, are undoubtedly meant to give theatergoers an sort of impressionist's view of not only Katherine and Thomas' life together, but also the history that informs their relationship. Theoretically, it's the stuff of agreeable romantic drama, but the piece ultimately feels like a series of ink blots rather than an elegantly executed theatrical collage.

---- Andy Propst

---

Impressionism plays at the Schoenfeld Theatre (236 West 45th Street). Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 8pm; Wednesday and Saturday at 2pm; and Sunday at 3pm. Tickets are $66.50 - $116.50 and can be purchased by calling 212-239-6200 or by visiting www.Telecharge.com. Further information is available online at www.impressionismtheplay.com.

Printer-friendly version

 

Charles Fuller's Zooman and the Sign provides a chilling reminder about the violence and hopelessness that haunted the poorest neighborhoods of America's cities in the late 1970s. Fuller's play, which opened last night at Signature Theatre Company and concludes the organization's season dedicated to work developed and produced originally by the Negro Ensemble Company, may no longer pack the sort of emotional punch that it had when it premiered, but this portrait of a Philadelphia family coping with the loss of its youngest member nevertheless proves to be a moving experience.

Set in and around the inner city house (scenic designer Shaun Motley ably puts their comfortable interior within the crumbling neighborhood) that the Tates have called home for nearly 20 years, Fuller's play details what happens after Zooman (Amari Cheatom) shoots Jinny Tate as she plays jacks one afternoon on the stoop of the family home. As Jinny's parents, Rachel (Rosalyn Coleman) and Reuben (Evan Parke), and teenage brother Victor (Jamal Mallory-McCree) attempt to make sense of the killing, they must also cope with their anger at the unprovoked violence and their neighbors' unwillingness to help police investigate the crime. Interspersed with the scenes involving the family are monologues from Zooman who describes not only this crime but others as he continues to prowl the streets which he calls home.

Although Victor learns from Russell (a shrewd turn from W. Tré Davis), a school pal, that there are rumors that the bullet that killed Jinny was fired by Zooman, there's no concrete evidence and there are no witnesses, despite the fact that Rachel saw many of her neighbors on the street when she herself came out after the shot. Enraged, Reuben hangs a sign on the family's front porch blaming the community for allowing the killer or killers to go free.

Fuller's play not only explores the wide range of emotions that flare following Jinny's murder, but also the ways in which people accept responsibility for their actions. Zooman, arrogantly amoral and almost willful in his street-smart stupidity (traits all brought to life vividly by Cheatom), finds it easy to blame his victim who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Reuben, an ex boxer, and his uncle Emmett (Ron Canada) find it difficult to accept the fact that not only can they not become vigilantes and hunt the killer or killers down themselves, but also that the community as a whole is unwilling to assist in the police investigation. Similarly, the community as a whole begins to protest Reuben's sign, feeling that it casts a bad light on African-Americans as a group.

As Fuller couples these thematic elements of the play with the nearly overwhelming grief that plagues the family which already was in crisis because of Reuben's philandering, it's nearly impossible to not be touched by the play. Concurrently, there's a curious sense of datedness to "Zooman," which, though once crushingly immediate, has become less intensely timely as inner city violence has diminished.

Nevertheless, the production, directed solidly by Stephen McKinley Henderson, features an array of splendidly observed performances, particularly from the actresses. Coleman delivers a powerful turn as grief-stricken, but still fiery, Rachel. Lynda Gravatt and Portia are play two of Rachel's friends with sensitivity and comic flair. Their work is heartfelt as is much of the writing in "Zooman," and it's this emotion that carries audiences through the piece which opens a window to a sad chapter of our not-so-distant past.

---- Andy Propst

---

Zooman and the Sign plays at Signature Theatre Company (555 West 42nd Street). Performances are Tuesday at 7pm; Wednesday through Saturday at 8pm; and Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. Tickets and further information are available online at www.signaturetheatre.org.

Printer-friendly version