Category Archives: Comedy

A Christmas Carol

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A Christmas Carol

Greg Wood as Ebenezer Scrooge; photo: T. Charles Erickson

McCarter Theatre Center’s annual production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol has long been a staple of family holiday celebrations in Central New Jersey. Even 18 years  after the previous version premiered, the show routinely drew huge crowds during its December run. Still, it was time for a new approach, and the revamped 2016 production has been eagerly anticipated.

Director Adam Immerwahr sought a solid Victorian England vibe for this sparkling new production, which premiered December 10 and runs through December 31. Immerwahr’s intent was to explore how Scrooge’s redemption “isn’t just the redemption of one man . . . when a person changes, it can transform an entire community.”  Then he filled it with songs from what Immerwahr calls “the treasure trove of terrific Christmas music of Dickens’s era” (carol playlist). Even some carols not used explicitly have “become part of the underscoring of the play,”  whose music was composed by Obie-award winning composer Michael Friedman.

The show manages to be both different with fresh sets and staging and familiar, retaining the adaptation by award-winning  playwright David Thompson. Ebenezer Scrooge (played by Greg Wood) has never said “Bah! Humbug!” with more feeling, Bob Cratchit (Warner Miller) never more patiently put-upon, and the rest of the cast, mostly playing multiple parts, never more lively, including: Fred/Undertaker (JD Taylor), Lily/Belle (Jamila Sabares-Klemm), Mrs. Dilber (Sue Jin Song), Fan/Miss Kate (Kelsey Carroll), Solicitor Matthew/Young Scrooge (A.J. Shively), Solicitor David/Mr. Fezziwig (Lance Roberts), Mrs. Cratchit (Jessica Bedford), and Mrs. Fezziwig/Lady Char/Laundress (Anne L. Nathan). Dickens’s work is stuffed with memorable characters and many parts amount to a cameo, but all were quite up to snuff.

The familiar tale of a miser’s comeuppance is all there, how the Ghost of Christmas Past (Ivy Cordle) reminds him how he gave up his youthful opportunities for happiness in order to pursue wealth; the Ghost of Christmas Present (Mimi Francis) shows him how others, especially the Cratchits live now; and the Ghost of Christmas Future (Elisha Lawson) lays out a frightening scenario that causes him to vow to change. Old Marley’s ghost (Frank X) is particularly effective (frightening a child sitting in front of me) and has my favorite line from the story, the sententious “I wear the chains I forged in life.” The early dark scenes change to light as Scrooge wakes Christmas morning a new man.

A Christmas Carol

photo: T. Charles Erickson

The cast is augmented by a 27-member community ensemble, which greets theatre-goers, carols and rings bells from the stage, the aisles, and the boxes, and dances exuberantly! Members of this adult group, plus a dozen-member children’s ensemble were recruited through partnerships with ten local organizations and schools. The entire audience becomes involved, with the singing of a carol at the beginning and end of the performance.

Also underscoring the community nature of this production are the theater’s plans for sold-out Fezziwig Parties, a drama workshop for children on the theme of kindness and generosity (called Cratchit Kindness) on December 28, engagement of local businesses in developing unique refreshments for patrons, as well as its usual audio-described and American Sign Language interpreted performance (December 17) and an open captioned performance (December 18).

Production credits to Daniel Ostling (set design); Charles Sundquist (musical direction); Darron L. West (sound design); Lorin Latarro (choreography); Linda Cho (costumes); Lap Chi Chu (lighting); Jeremy Chernick (special effects); Gillian Lane-Plescia (dialect coach).

For tickets, call the box office at 609-258-2787 or visit the box office online.

Café Society

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Cafe_Society, Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Woody Allen

Eisenberg & Stewart with the director

In the new film written, directed, and narrated by Woody Allen (trailer), actor Jesse Eisenberg gets the Allen role and at times, early in the film, appears to be channeling his klutz persona. But the part requires something more, and Eisenberg delivers that as well.

In the 1930s, Bronx-raised Bobby Dorfman (Eisenberg) travels to Hollywood to look for work with his big cheese uncle (Steve Carell). He keeps semi-busy, but mostly falls in love with his uncle’s assistant Vonnie (Kristen Stewart). Alas, she says her heart is spoken for, though Bobby gives romancing her an energetic, hopeful shot.

Missing New York, Bobby returns to Manhattan to work for his sleazy older brother’s new nightclub, which he helps turn into The Place To Be. Bobby becomes a smooth and sophisticated operator in that world. You know he’ll meet Vonnie again, though what will happen . . . Eisenberg and Stewart add real substance to these characters, and her performance has been widely, rightly praised.

If you like Woody Allen’s humor, the scenes with Bobby’s parents (Jeannie Berlin and Ken Stott) are classic and hilarious. There’s not much story to hold the whole schmear together, but perfect moments of Hollywood hype and Manhattan glitz make it fun to watch. Fantastic score of 1930s jazz, beautiful and atmospheric cinematography, and big dose of nostalgia for a pre-digital age.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 72%; audiences: 68%.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

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Hunt for the WilderpeopleThis New Zealand comic gem (trailer) is about 13-year-old misfit Ricky Baker, whose last-resort foster placement is way, way out in the bush. Frankly, he’d rather be in urban Wellington or Christchurch, hanging with his homies, busting out to his walkman, tagging prime real estate, and living the gangsta life (in his head). But it isn’t to be. He’s too far and too needy to make it back. Not for want of trying.

When Ricky (played superbly by Julian Dennison) disappears into the bush with his foster uncle Hec (Sam Neill, almost unrecognizable under a beard), the child protective system moves into high gear to “rescue” him. This dramatic and high-profile effort to save the boy, one can only imagine, comes after a dozen years of ignoring his needs and the quality and suitability of his placements atop no real understanding of what children need.

Directed with great energy by Taika Waititi, who also wrote the script, it has perhaps one chase scene that goes on too long, but as it occurs, the viewer is still basking in the enjoyment of Hec and Ricky’s hilarious encounter with a real bush man. Colander, anyone?

Manohla Dargis in the New York Times acknowledges Waititi’s effervescent touch reminiscent of Wes Anderson, and says, “Charming and funny, it is a drama masquerading as a comedy about an unloved boy whom nobody wants until someone says, Yes, I’ll love him.” And you will, too.

The credits include mention of drone pilots, and, though there are numerous helicopters in the plot, drones enable an amount of aerial photography heretofore prohibitively expensive. In the film’s travelogue dimensions, also awesome.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 100%!; audiences 92%.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)(revised)

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Shakespeare Theatre of NJYou may recall with delight the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), whose madcap condensation of Shakespeare’s plays began making the rounds in 1981 and became one of the theater world’s most-produced plays. Some of the funniest material from the play’s many international productions has made its way into this new version—“updated for the 21st century”—by the three founding members of RSC: Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield.

It’s a fast-moving farce, well suited for The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s (STNJ) annual outdoor stage production. This new production has new surprises, including a rap version of Othello (thank you, Lin-Manuel Miranda). As directed by Jeffrey M. Bender, it’s as antic and energetic as its predecessor. It would have to be, since (abridged)(revised) presents all 37 plays and the sonnets, after a fashion, in 97 minutes. There’s one intermission an hour in—Red Bull break for the cast, methinks.

The cast includes STNJ regular Jon Barker (a master of body language), Connor Carew, and Patrick Toon, each changing personae at the blink of an eye or slapping on of a wig. Carew’s Ophelia is hilarious, and Toon is a lustily belligerent Romeo. From time to time, there are bits of audience participation, perfect for the relaxed atmosphere of the outdoor stage.

The clever set comprises giant volumes of the Bard’s works. The books’ spines conceal doors, prop drawers, and the like. While the set and the setting are great, and the cast does an amazing job, the script itself fits my mother-in-law’s ambiguous phrase, “it is what it is.” A couple of the most familiar plays—Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet—receive more attention than the others, and the roller-coaster ride through the comedies is great fun.

We overheard that some of the reworking of material was intended to make this play—and perhaps Shakespeare’s works themselves—“more attractive to a younger audience.” In line with that goal, tickets are free for kids 18 and younger at the Outdoor Stage, thanks to grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Bank of America.

Presumably, the younger audience in question means 14-year-old boys, given the emphasis on bawdy humor of the type that makes them giggle knowingly. The script has enough gags—verbal and sight—that there’s no need to tarry in some of the more obvious places (“the last four letters” of Coriolanus, for example). While what people will find funny is heavily a matter of individual taste, Sunday’s audience at STNJ found enough of what they liked to give the performers steady laughter and an enthusiastic reception.

Through July 31 at the beautiful outdoor Greek Theatre on the campus of the College of Saint Elizabeth, Morristown, New Jersey. Arrive early, take a picnic.

For tickets, call the STNJ box office at 973-408-5600 or visit the box office online.

Maggie’s Plan

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Ethan Hawke, Greta Gerwig, Maggie's Plan

Ethan Hawke & Greta Gerwig in Maggie’s Plan

Tons of history and your mom tell you falling for a married man is a chancy way to find happiness and a father for your baby. In this romantic comedy by writer-director Rebecca Miller (trailer), the unlikely happens and aspiring novelist John Harding (played by Ethan Hawke) actually divorces his self-absorbed, chilly wife Georgette (Julianne Moore) and marries the girl. They have a lovely baby. A couple of years on, though, the marriage is just not working.

That’s when Maggie (Greta Gerwig) develops her plan. She’ll try to get John and Georgette back together.

There are some nice moments and some funny moments, though the comedy is never quite as screwball as it might have been. As a tale of female manipulation, Maggie’s efforts don’t reach the delicious complexity of Lady Susan Vernon  in Love & Friendship, also in theaters now.  Lady Susan plows ahead like an ocean liner, let the devil take the hindmost, and that creates a more comic effect than the rather more realistic angsty New Yorkers in Maggie’s web.

Bill Hader and Maya Rudolph are a prickly married couple, long-time friends of Maggie, stuck to each other like burrs. Mina Sundwall is John And Georgette’s teenage daughter, a perfect adolescent cynic.

Gerwig gives an engaging performance, Hawke is always interesting, and Julianne Moore shines as the ambitious academic—with a Danish accent, no less. There’s a real New York feel to the film, too. Says Christy Lemire in RogerEbert.com, director Miller “truly gets the city’s rhythms and idiosyncracies, and her dialogue frequently sparkles.”

Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating: 84%; audiences 59%.

Love & Friendship

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Lady Susan, Kate BeckinsaleIn this brilliantly funny movie (trailer), writer-director Whit Stillman takes on a lesser-known early Jane Austen novella, Lady Susan. It’s a a gem of female manipulation cut and polished on male cluelessness, and Lady Susan Vernon is the lapidarist in chief.

In this early epistolary novel (probably written when Austen was only 23), the author’s disdain for the treatment of women is evident, and her character gets her revenge, deliciously. Though it’s still the cake underneath  her better-known novels, there it’s masked by a thicker romantic frosting (see this recent post about the dark subtext of Austen’s novels).

Near-penniless, Lady Susan must find a husband for herself and her daughter, and Kate Beckinsale is a powerful Susan, “the most accomplished flirt in all England.” The cast is strong, with Chloë Sevigny as the American Alicia Johnson, Susan’s co-conspirator, eager to avoid being returned to Connecticut, Susan’s perceptive sister-in-law Catherine (played by Emma Greenwell), and long-suffering daughter Frederica (Morfydd Clark). Jemma Redgrave, playing Catherine’s mother, immediately reveals herself as an heir to the British acting family through her strong physical resemblance to auntie Vanessa.

The men are cheerfully dim-witted, none more so than Sir James Martin (Tom Bennett). With £10,000 a year, he’s as rich as Darcy. But he’s also “a bit of a rattle”—“Regency slang for blithering idiot,” A.O. Scott reminds us in The New York Times. “How jolly! Tiny green balls. What are they called?” Sir James asks, pushing them around his dinner plate. “Peas.” Catherine’s brother Reginald (Xavier Samuel) is not dim, but even he is no match for Susan’s calculated charm offensive and her “uncanny understanding of men’s natures.”

Quite apropos of the current political season, friends Susan and Alicia blithely justify their most outrageous behavior, putting themselves always on the high ground. At one point, when confronted with her own irrefutable error, Susan snaps, “Facts are horrid things.” Clearly, a woman for this season.

Above and beyond the satisfying plot, delicious characters, and irresistible pull toward respectable matrimony, the charming countryside (filmed in Ireland) and gorgeous costumes are worth the price of admission. Over the story, widow Susan’s costumes go from all-black deep mourning, to light mourning (grey and lavender), to none at all. When she dons that scarlet dress, look out! “It all ends up pretty much as expected,” Scott says, “and yet also manages to take you by surprise.”

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 99%; audiences 74% (I’m betting audiences find it “talky.” But in the talk, there’s wit.)

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All the Days

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All the Days, McCarter Theatre

Caroline Aaron & Stephanie Janssen in All the Days (photo: T. Charles Erickson)

At McCarter Theatre in Princeton through May 29, is the world premiere of Sharyn Rothstein’s new family “dramedy,” All the Days. Three generations have their issues: divorced parents in their sixties, uptight divorced daughter, and a grandson approaching his bar mitzvah. The central conflict, though, is mother-daughter. Author Rothstein says, “Mothers and daughters, if they can stand it, should see the play together.”

The action begins in the mother’s kitchen as she recuperates from eye surgery, and her daughter convinces her to come to Philadelphia “until the bar mitzvah.” The Philly living room becomes the setting for most of the play’s numerous short scenes in which the characters laugh together, yell at each other, and reveal their secrets and desires.

Caroline Aaron plays mother Ruth Zweigman, overweight and overbearing, afflicted with diabetes and its consequences. To manage her fears and resentments, not to mention her grief over the death of her only son, she lashes out. Early on, I found her constant comebacks and jibes simply unpleasant, but Ruth warms as the play unfolds.

Daughter Miranda (played by Stephanie Janssen) doesn’t have the temperament for the constant sparring with mom and fled Long Island for the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia. A social worker and newly converted Christian, Miranda’s in the business of fixing other people’s problems, and is frustrated by a mother who doesn’t want to be fixed.

Ruth’s ex-husband Delmore, played by Ron Orbach, is trying to rekindle a relationship with his prickly ex-wife, drawing on her nostalgia and, perhaps, thinking ahead to what his “liver disease” will bring. Ruth sets him straight, saying, “You can’t live in the past and the future at the same time.”

Rothstein holds a degree in public health as well as her MFA, and wove into this play significant public health concerns—problems of diabetes, diet, and stress-related illness among them.

It takes an unerring sense of timing to keep a two and a half hour production moving without a single check-your-watch moment, which McCarter Artistic Director Emily Mann accomplishes superbly as director. Mann says, “I laughed out loud as I read [Rothstein’s] fiercely funny characters, exquisitely wrought, struggling with dilemmas at once heartbreaking and hilarious.”

Leslie Ayvazian plays Ruth’s sister Monica, absolutely able to give as good as she gets and a long-time realist where Delmore is concerned. Justin Hagan plays Miranda’s boyfriend Stew only now meeting her parents and soon realizing why he’s been spared heretofore. Yet Stew recognizes the mother’s essential loneliness and suggests she meet a friend of his—an herbalist, whom Ruth styles “a medical man,” who soon evolves into “a doctor, a surgeon.” This friend, Baptiste Wright, played by Raphael Nash Thompson, provides a welcome layer of calm and understanding to Ruth, like a smoothing, soothing layer of butter over the bumpy and fractured muffin underneath. Matthew Kuenne is the bar mitzvah boy.

Production credits to Daniel Ostling (sets), Jess Goldstein (costumes), Jeff Croiter (lighting), and Mark Bennett (music and sound  design).

For tickets, call McCarter Theatre’s box office (609)258-2787  or visit the box office online.

Elvis & Nixon

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Elvis & NixonIf you remember the Nixon presidency at all—the odd, stiff gestures, the way the man hunkered down like a turtle trying to duck back into its shell, his paranoia and cluelessness, and his straight-arrow staff (all criminals in the making)—you will appreciate how much this odd movie (trailer) nailed the early 1970s!

My expectations weren’t high, and perhaps that’s the key, because it surprises you at every turn, even though the premise is tissue-thin. It’s based, after all, on the fact that the photo of Nixon meeting Elvis in the White House on December 21, 1970,  is the most-requested photo in the National Archives. When you think of the treasures the Archives possesses, this is absurd on its face. A more incongruous encounter is hard to imagine, as Mark Olsen said in the Los Angeles Times, “one stiff in a businessman’s suit and the other relaxed in a velvet cape.”

What makes the film so strong are the performances. Kevin Spacey is Nixon in both body language and with his bitter, eye-popping rants. Michael Shannon is a less handsome yet ultimately powerfully sympathetic Presley. He visits the President to offer his help. He’s set on obtaining a badge as an At-Large Federal Agent so he can help combat the drugs and youth unrest he sees as destroying the country. In this goal he finds an ally in the President, or, as NPR reviewer Dave Edelstein said, “two lost souls connect.”Presley’s supreme confidence—arriving unannounced at the White House gate—makes an interesting counterpoint to Nixon’s lack of it.

The supporting cast—Colin (son of Tom) Hanks and Evan Peters as Nixon aides Egil Krogh and Dwight Chapin and Alex Pettyfer as Presley confidant Jerry Schilling—all play it so straight the two leads are free to let the absurdities of the situation have full rein:

Krogh (to Bob Haldeman): The King is here.
Haldeman: The President doesn’t have any appointments with royalty.
Krogh: No. THE King. Elvis.

No one knows what really went on in that session. Nixon hadn’t started taping his encounters yet, though staff were present for parts of it. The script by Joey Sagal, Hanala Sagal, and Cary Elwes is a plausible and imaginative recreation.Their humor can be subtle as well as laugh-out-loud (as I did, lots) and some great sight gags, too, like when Presley and Schilling run into an Elvis impersonator in the Los Angeles Airport. But it never goes for caricature or the cheap shot.

“Nobody really wants to see a big takedown of Elvis Presley,” director Liza Johnson said in the LA Times article linked above. “And nobody needs to see a big takedown of Richard Nixon because that happened already.”

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 76%; audiences, 77%.

A Hologram for the King

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Tom Hanks, Hologram for the KingNot every comedy is for everyone (at least I think this was supposed to be a comedy). Last week I saw The Big Lebowski (1998) at the local movie theater. Packed. People in Lebowski t-shirts, people who raised hands to show they’d seen the movie five, ten, twenty times, people anticipating the laugh lines. Eighteen years from now, nothing like that will happen with this film (trailer) from German director Tom Twyker.

Tom Hanks is American businessman Alan Clay, whose marriage is over and whose career as a salesman is on the skids. In what appears to be a last chance at success, he’s sent to Saudi Arabia to sell the king on a costly holographic teleconferencing system for a new city being built in the desert. He encounters bureaucratic delays, clandestine alcohol consumption, confounding cultural gaps, and unexpected romance.

Where I messed up was in thinking, “Oh, Tom Hanks. He’s always great.” Someone so talented just wouldn’t be in a mediocre film. Why would he? And, I thought, “Oh, Dave Eggers wrote the book it’s based on. Got lots of praise for it too.” For example, New York Times reviewer Pico Iyer called the book “an anguished investigation into how and where American self-confidence got lost and — in the central word another lonely expat uses for Alan— ‘defeated.’” And the Boston Globe: “True genius.”

Someplace along the way, the promise of the book and Hanks got lost, and a more disjointed and implausible narrative is hard to imagine. When we’re told that the crowds Hanks saw at a mosque were there because “that’s where the executions are,” it’s hard to believe that a Saudi woman would take the very great risk of being alone with him, an American infidel.

Hanks does get to drive a very sexy 2015 Audi R8, briefly. But even that isn’t worth the ticket price.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 62%; audiences 95%. (I can only assume they don’t have many viewer ratings yet. IMDb viewers give it 6.3 stars out of 10.)

Hello, My Name is Doris

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Sally Field, Max Greenfield, Hello My Name Is DorisThe capsule assessment of this Michael Showalter film (trailer) starring Sally Field, has it exactly right: see it for Field’s outstanding performance though much of the rest drifts toward the unexceptional.

Its story of an aging woman—a wallflower and a hoarder—who falls for a much younger, hipper man, embraces the standard Hollywoodish dichotomy between hopes and realities. That dynamic isn’t confined to the June-November romance, it also characterizes the play’s more serious side, the family pressure on Doris to clean out the house she and her mother lived in and move somewhere smaller and more manageable.

The young man, John Fremont, is played amiably by Max Greenfield, and Tyne Daly is Doris’s long-time loyal friend Roz. Peter Gallagher is convincingly smarmy as a self-help guru.

Some of the best moments come as Doris struggles to bridge the generation gap. When Roz’s 13-year-old granddaughter (played charmingly by Isabella Acres) introduces her to Facebook, Doris finds the path to inside information about John. She pretends to be a fan of his favorite technopop band—Baby Goya and the Nuclear Winters—and they end up at a concert together. Doris’s interactions with Baby Goya (Jack Antonoff) and his mates are hilarious.

In the situations with twenty-somethings, Doris sticks out not just because of her age, but because she is a true original. She sticks out everywhere. Nevertheless, for a while, anyway, it seems as if the decades between 1975 and 2015 whirled past her and the younger generation has now come back around to where she’s happening again.

In short: Field is great and the rest is harmless—“a simple, delightful little human comedy. You know, like life itself,” said Tulsa World reviewer Michael Smith.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 85%; audiences: 95%.

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