Theater Reviews: The 5-hour “Initiative” at the Public Theater Is Laudable and Ambitious, and We Must Thank Broadway’s “Chess” for the Music

Initiative (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: Initiative 
At the Public Theater 

Coastal Podunk, California is the title of a novel being written by a character in Else Went’s five-hour, three-act play, Initiative, at the Public Theater. So, it should be no surprise that the writer is an overachieving high school outsider named Riley (Greg Cuellar) at the start of the current millennium, with no other outlet to channel his artistic sensibility in the seaside California town he lives in. Went’s play takes place during the whole high school experience of Riley and his small “bande a part,” which gave me pause (Netflix is littered with so many subpar high school shows), but the first act put me at ease as they give us realistic, honest and, more importantly, funny interactions between them. Clara (Olivia Rose Barresi), Riley’s best friend, has been home schooled for the last three years but she has convinced her parents to let her attend high school with him. Later, they are joined by introvert Em (Christopher Dylan White) and boisterous Tony (Jamie Sanders), a pair of mismatched childhood friends, as well as Em’s homoflexible neighbor Kendall (Andrea Lopez Alvarez) and Ty (Harrison Densmore), a transfer student. Between just trying to survive and stay unnoticed in high school and the usual teenage angst (X likes Y who actually likes Z, and so on and so on), they decide to form a Dungeons and Dragons crew, with Riley, using his artistic skills, as Dungeon Master. Not unlike the teens of Stranger Things, a lot of their personal problems are paralleled in the fantasy world of action (including the titled move) and inaction. And like most adventures, there’s a shadow character. In this case, it’s Lo (Carson Higgins), a high school jock who has chaotic interactions with most of the other kids — he’s Em’s overprotective but distant older brother, has a crush on an open-hearted Clara and he’s Riley’s former best friend after things soured during a summer camp sexual experimentation goes wrong. 

Theater Reviews: Three Visionary Productions Create Unique Worlds in the Thorton Wilder of “The Seat of Our Pants,” The Gay Variation of Shakespeare’s “Richard II” and the Disillusioned Commune of Ex-Pats in “The Burning Cauldron of Fiery Fire”

The Seat of Our Pants (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: The Seat of Our Pants 
At the Public Theater 

I have always had a love-hate relationship with Thorton Wilder’s 1942 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, The Skin of Our Teeth, a visionary absurdist allegorical retelling of man’s existence on Earth via the Family Antrobus (Greek for human), including inventor father George (Shuler Hensley), dutiful housewife Maggie (Ruthie Ann Miles) and their children, the hotheaded and toxic Henry (Damon Daunno) and the intelligent but trend-loving Glady (Amina Faye). They also had a son named Abel who may have been Biblically killed by his brother. In the first act, we are at the couple’s home in an amalgam of the world of Ice Age cavemen and future dystopia, post-pandemic version of Excelsior, New Jersey (mixing the hungry and cold humans with dinosaurs and mammoths). The second act moves to Atlantic City, where the humans are thriving in a hedonistic world led by President Antrobus, who cares more about his reputation than the impending flood that is about to hit. And the third act takes place back in the Antrobus home after a long war, with the family now exhausted and full of despair about the future in a chaotic and broken world. For me, some of these headier academic ideas in Wilder’s premise don’t make a logical translation onto the stage, especially the religious references that are spoken of but then quickly dropped. But in 1942 (with the world still in the throes of WWII), these big flourishes and wild takes on the follies of humans, may have been too hard to resist. 

Theater Reviews: Reunions Abound With the Amusing Musical Adaptation of “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” a Charming Two One-Act Musicals Called “Reunions” and the Immigrant Women of the Gripping “Queens” Who Dream of Family Reunions

Queens (c) Valerie Tarranova

Theater: Queens 
At Manhattan Theater Club 

Martyna Majok’s follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize winning Cost of Living in 2017 was queens, her play at LCT3 about immigrant women sharing a small and cramped basement in Queens, and while I liked the ambition of the play as well as giving voice to the voiceless, the play’s actual plot felt very dispersed and unwieldy. After a couple of years of tinkering, the play has returned (now with a capital Q in its title), in a confident, shorter production by Trip Cullman and an enjoyable ensemble of actors, headed by a fierce Marin Ireland as our guide into this world at Manhattan Theatre Club. Ireland plays Renia, a Polish immigrant, who in 2017, owns a house in Queens, and is confronted one day by a young and homeless Ukrainian Inna (Julia Lester), confusing her for the mother who left her when she was a little girl to find a better life in New York City. Renia offers the girl a refuge in her empty basement, the same basement she moved into when she first arrived in NYC soon after the attacks on September 11th, when immigrants were especially scrutinized. At that time, the basement was overflowing with immigrants from all corners of the world, with Belarusian Pelagiya (Brooke Bloom), the self-declared warden of the basement; Afghani Aamani (Nadine Malouf, who played the role in the original), taking on the role of mother hen as she furiously tries to obtain legal status; and Isabela (Nicole Villamil), who at the time of Renia’s arrival in 2001 is going back to Honduras, as her pursuit of the American dream has failed. Majok finds some common themes in these women’s shared plight: Many have children they left behind, and many do not have the support of a partner, so they make the big and dangerous leap to come to the U.S. for a better life. The play’s dialogue has an internal poetry to it, especially the underlying theme that to even attempt to find a better life makes them figuratively queens of their own story. 

Theater Reviews: “Liberation” Moves to Broadway With Timely Messages About Woman Rights; “Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?)” Is a Harrowing Tale of a Korean Daughter; “Not Ready for Prime Time” Focuses on the First Set of SNL Players

Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) (c) Emma Zordan

Theater: Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) 
Ma-Yi Theater Company at the Public Theater 

Every new generation of solo storytellers, especially ones for the theater, always has a primary story that defines their narrative, whether it’s David Sedaris, John Leguizamo or Mike Birbiglia. Zoë Kim, whose first solo play, Did You Eat? (밥 먹었니?) had its world premiere with Ma-Yi Theater Company, has already planned a trilogy of stories (surrounding the theme of hunger) and this show, directed by Chris Yejin, is an inviting introduction to Kim’s style and themes. The former is a modern aesthetic, highlighted by Iris McCloughan stylistic choreography, and the latter, well, is very dark and heavy. At the start of the play, Kim bounces on stage, all smiles and warm waves to the audience, but who she’s actually talking to is a younger version of herself, represented by a small orb of light. How old is this orb version of Kim is not determined: It could be Kim as a teenager, a toddler, a baby or even an embryo. But she tells her own life story to the orb, starting even before her birth, when her umma (mother) is expected to give birth to a son for her appa (father), and both are horrified when baby Zoë is a girl. Now, you might think “horrified” is a bit hyperbolic, but you can decide for yourself after hearing Kim’s story, from her having a boy’s name in Korean, her appa’s physical and emotional abuse of her and her umma, and umma’s belief that it is Zoë’s fault her life has become sure a torturous ordeal. 

Film: Award Season Continues (With One of the Best Films of the Year), Including the Winning Adaptations of the Novella “Train Dreams” and the Ibsen Play, “Hedda,” as Well as Another Yorgos Lanthimos Visionary Joint, “Bugonia”

Train Dream (c) Netflix

Film: Train Dreams 
In Cinemas on November 7,                                                  streaming on Netflix on November 21 

Writer director Clint Bentley made the 2021 modest, modern western, Jockey, focusing on an aging racehorse jockey (played with grace by character actor Clifton Collins, Jr.) trying to hang onto his career while dealing with his ailing and failing body. So, it’s not surprising that Bentley’s next movie would be the adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated novella, Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, which follows the life of a rather unremarkable man named Robert Grainier, a seasonal logger and railroad worker in 1917, who endures a horrible tragedy and tries and fails to move on. Grainier is played sensitively and with uncharacteristic restraint by Australian actor Joel Edgerton, mostly known for memorable machismo roles in Animal Kingdom, Warrior and as the young Uncle Owen in the Star Wars prequel series Obi-Wan Kenobi. I also saw him on stage as Stanley Kowalaski opposite Cate Blanchett in 2008’s A Streetcar Named Desire at BAM. But, in Train Dreams, Edgerton is at his best with a character who has barely any dialogue, but able to project big emotions while never breaking from Grainer’s interiority.