Theater Heir Ball Surrealistic Joneses

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12/12/2015Theater: Heir Ball; (Sur)Realistic Joneses | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=ae75180f-0f59-4dd8-b070-c3f5e2e6ec2c&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&1/5Theater: Heir Ball; (Sur)Realistic JonesesTheater: Heir Ball; (Sur)Realistic JonesesTHE HEIR APPARENT *** 1/2 out of **** THE REALISTIC JONESES *** out of ****THE HEIR APPARENT *** 1/2 out of **** CLASSIC STAGE COMPANYShall I compare the new David Ives comedy to his last adaptation of a classic comedy (Moliere's Misanthrope),what Ives calls a "translaptation"? The production of School For Lies, also at Classic Stage Company, was quitesimply brilliant. The Heir Apparent is very funny, but perhaps slightly broader and not an absolute home run. It'sa triple. And who going to bat wouldn't be thrilled with a triple?Shall I compare The Heir Apparent to all the other new comedies of the theater season? It is far, far better andfar, far funnier than anything else I've seen. I've sent people to it and want to see it again. If, like The School ForLies, it doesn't extend or transfer for an open run, it will be a shame.Based on a play by Jean-Francois Regnard I'd never heard of, it's a silly tale of miserly old men, schemingrelatives and servants who suffer these fools while trying to get a little something of their own. Eraste (DaveQuay) is a foppish fool waiting for his tiresome uncle to die already so Eraste can claim what he expects to be amajor chunk of change and marry the pretty Isabelle (Amelia Pedlow). They are madly if superficially in love butwhat's that to her coldly calculating mother Madame Argante (the formidable Suzanne Bertish). If Eraste secureshis fortune, all well and good. If not, no dice.His uncle Geronte (Paxton Whitehead) may be at death's door (indeed, Geronte's every word sounds like thefinal croak of doom), but Geronte refuses to walk through. What's more, he's making up his will and has severalsurprises -- large settlements will be made on distant, dubious relatives who have popped out of the woodwork.And rather than bestow cash on Eraste and secure the lad's happiness, Geronte would rather marry Isabellehimself, sire an heir and bequeath the money to the as yet to be conceived child.Complicating matters is the imminent arrival of Scruple, the shortish lawyer who has never met Geronte but willdraw up the will (hmmmm!). Leave it to the able servants Crispin (Carson Elrod) and Lisette (Claire Karpen) wholove each other in a practical sort of way and must stop Geronte from getting married, ensure Eraste'shappiness, keep Madame Argante at bay, pull the wool over the eyes of the diminutive scribe and make surethey get a little something something out of all this as well.(Photo by Richard Termine)In other words, it's all stuff and nonsense, delivered in hilarious rhymed couplets that range from the juvenile(fart jokes, bad puns and the like) to the even more juvenile (rhyming "far Crimea" with diarrhea). The HeirApparent is deliriously silly. For a while, especially in the first half, it feels a little more slapdash than the stronglyrooted in character work The School For Lies. When one of the guys dons a dress and pretends to be one ofthose scheming distant relatives in order to disabuse Geronte of leaving those people money, you are far fromsurprised when another guy does the same thing and even less surprised when one of the women shows up aswell. It's funny, in a music hall sort of way.12/12/2015Theater: Heir Ball; (Sur)Realistic Joneses | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=ae75180f-0f59-4dd8-b070-c3f5e2e6ec2c&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&2/5Everything changes in act two because the show provides what has been missing: someone of authority tomock and confuse and mystify. Geronte has been too feeble and Madame Argante took nakedly avariciousherself. But with the arrival of Scruple (David Pittu), everything clicks into place. Scruple has been referred to sooften as tiny that it's no surprise to see Pittu literally arriving on his knees (a flowing robe covers his legs). It's asimple visual gag, but his lack of height is not what makes Scruple so hilarious. Yes, he's touchy about hisstature and imagines insults where none reside, but he's also fastidious and demanding and the voice ofauthority. Idiocy swirls around him and he is bewildered, bewitched, suspicious and yet too proud to admit he'snot exactly sure what the hell is going on. Indeed, he's the perfect foil for the lunacy, the figure of powerdesperately needed to anchor this comedy in something other than schtick.As a capper, the play proves at the last to have an actual purpose, for Geronte realizes everyone has beenwaiting for him to die and if that's what your life has come down to, he says, you've screwed up. (Geronte uses amore colorful phrase. It doesn't rhyme but somehow it's very funny. When If/Then used such language, it felt likea forced attempt to be naughty and adult. Here it feels absolutely spot on.)Somehow, the limited space and budget of CSC always brings out the best in set designers and John LeeBeatty is no exception. All the tech elements are excellent, from the costumes of David C. Woolard (jokey outfitsrarely work for me, but he pulls it off nicely in one scene) to the lighting of Japhy Weideman, wig and hair of PaulHuntley (especially well done) and sound design of Nevin Steinberg (unashamed to take a bad joke and repeatit, flatulence-wise).Director John Rando has brought together an excellent cast (with casting by Calleri Casting) and molded theminto an ensemble. I felt they were getting away from him for a while in the first act, but it all gelled beautifully inthe second. Pedlow is not a detriment, but she's the only one that is notably less present than the others (thoughI liked her very much in You Never Call Tell with the Pearl Theatre Company). Karpen is very good as thesensible, truth-telling servant Lisette though she mostly must support the plans of the men. The handsome Quayis game and amusing as the desperate to inherit Eraste. Carson Elrod (so good in Peter and the Starcatcher) isthe star here as the servant Crispin, doing literally everything for a laugh and winning us over from the start.It's no discredit to him or the others to say they stand in the shadows of masterful work by their elders. Olivierwinner Suzanne Bertish is immediately commanding as Madame Argante, effortlessly conveying the weight ofauthority that only old money can provide; even sitting quietly on a couch she draws your attention. Whitehead isequally good in the bigger role of Geronte. His voice is such a croaking death-rattle, I fear for his throat.Geronte's transformation later is literally a miracle, but this is indeed the same actor. What fun he's having andus with him.But I fall to my knees to praise Pittu, who fell to his knees for the role of Scruple. His every grimace is hilarious,his every suspicious glance a master class in comedy. He can literally do no wrong here in surely one of themust-see performances of the year.THE REALISTIC JONESES *** out of **** LYCEUM THEATRETourists will surely be heading to The Realistic Joneses for the chance to see stars Michael C. Hall of Dexterand Six Feet Under, Emmy winner Toni Collette and Oscar winner Marisa Tomei (along with playwright andactor Tracy Letts) up close and in person. But for canny theater-goers, this is the Broadway debut of playwrightWill Eno, one of the sharpest and most distinctive voices working today. It might never have happened -- Eno ismore like the next Beckett than the next Neil Simon -- but it's a testament to his originality and the draw his workhas for actors that it's happened now.The Realistic Joneses is not the breakthrough work that will allow his talent to reach a wider audience, but it's afine introduction to his voice and certainly deserved a sharper production than this one overseen by director12/12/2015Theater: Heir Ball; (Sur)Realistic Joneses | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=ae75180f-0f59-4dd8-b070-c3f5e2e6ec2c&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&3/5Sam Gold which repeatedly lets Eno done in the tech elements. That said, the cast is in sync with the material,the writing is wittily intelligent and unsettling and there's enough to chew on here to make it a satisfactoryevening. Tourists might be a bit bemused but the show leaves no doubt that Eno is the real deal; he just hasn'tdealt aces yet.Set in a smallish town near some mountains, The Realistic Joneses is not quite surreal enough to enjoy as anoff the wall effort nor willing to be real enough to mine genuine human emotion. But it's simple enough to graspand does indeed anchor Eno's playful dialogue in more plot than usual. Jennifer and Bob Jones (Collette andLetts) live quietly, dealing with the strain of Bob's illness from a rare and terrifying disease. Bob puts all theburden on Jennifer's shoulders and prefers to simply swallow the pills he's handed and ignore as much aspossible what is going on.In contrast, their new neighbors are John and Pony Jones (Hall and Tomei). Pony does not like distress of anysort, faints at the sight of blood (and sometimes even faints without seeing blood) and even when her husbandseems to have a seizure of some sort, she leaves it to Jennifer to sort things out and see to his care. These twocouples under tremendous stress meet awkwardly at home and in town, sparring verbally as they dance aroundthe disease that stalks them and the disease of unease that can sneak into a marriage.But it's funny! The temptation is to endlessly quote Eno's dialogue ("Ice cream is a dish best served cold" is hardto resist). But it's not the dialogue on the page that entrances so much as the dialogue brought to life by thestrong cast. Hall has the most vivid role and runs away with it. John Jones is an oddball with an oddball sense ofhumor that's aggressive and circuitous at the same time. John has a tendency to state what people are doing:when he meets Jennifer at the grocery store and after some awkward chitchat she says she's got some stuff tobuy, he bluntly makes clear that she wants the conversation to end, an accurate but off-putting comment thatleaves her unclear if he's upset by it or just noting it. When he then soon is holding her arm in a not-quite hugafter saying she has sad eyes, she feels obliged to say she's happily married. That only prompts John to say hewasn't making a pass; he's not sure what he's doing but it's not that. Every scene with John keeps the othercharacters on their toes and Hall is a pleasure to watch. He can encourage Bob to have an affair with his wifeand then get angry about it and it all makes perfect sense as played by Hall.As his somewhat dim wife Pony, Tomei has the least interesting part but finds her rhythm in it. Collette and Lettsare on more traditional ground (Letts' Bob lashes out from a place of fear over his illness) but they too savor theconstant word play that is the currency of the show. It's not quite cerebral at the expense of reality -- secrets arerevealed, affairs are had and the like. But ultimately it's not the journey of the characters or the emotions theirplight prompts that you remember but rather the off kilter perspective of the playwright.Director Gold has the cast on the same page, but drops the ball with the technical elements. David Zinn doesn'toffer a set design so much as a yard sale, with two sliding doors indicating the homes of the two Joneses andstuff littered about the stage, missing only price tags to make the effect complete. It's not terribly difficult to keeptrack of where everyone is at (the left side of the stage is the home of Jennifer and Bob while the right side ofthe stage is the home of their new neighbors). But you shouldn't really have to think about which home peopleare entering and leaving even for a moment, should you? (And I think they broke the rules and had everyoneenter from the right door when they were going to the backyard of the home on the left; friends and I argued fora bit about this, which is not a good sign.)This vague jumble of two homes is just the start. We can see high up into the rafters, with exposed backstageequipment hinting at the artifice on display. The costumes by Kaye Voyce are innocuous but the lighting by MarkBarton and the sound design by Leon Rothenberg feels bizarrely ominous. Whatever was called for in the scriptby Eno, it's strange to hear a doom-laden groan of sound at the end of many scenes, with the lightingdramatically calling up another primary color in the rafters at the same time. Exactly what they were going for, Ihaven't the slightest, but it weighed down the proceedings.12/12/2015Theater: Heir Ball; (Sur)Realistic Joneses | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=ae75180f-0f59-4dd8-b070-c3f5e2e6ec2c&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&4/5Put all that aside. Eno is a marvelous talent. For me, his play Middletown is the most mature effort yet from him -- it was slightly more surreal than The Realistic Joneses but had more emotional impact. Thom Paine (based onnothing) is a monologue piece that made his name and was a finalist for the Pulitzer. At Signature, they juststaged Open House, which offered a clever conceit (the actors in a family all left the stage one by one andreturned as different characters), though again it had more intellect than heat. For all the faults of the production,The Realistic Joneses lets four actors spar with dialogue that is inventive and fun and is the Broadway debut foran artist who is approaching greatness. He's in the right neighborhood at least. Maybe he'll flower with work thatis more traditional or work that is less traditional, but flower he will.THEATER OF 2014Beautiful: The Carole King Musical ***Rodney King *** Hard Times ** 1/2 Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead ** I Could Say More * The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner ** Machinal *** Outside Mullingar *** A Man's A Man * 1/2 The Tribute Artist ** 1/2 Transport ** Prince Igor at the Met ** The Bridges Of Madison County ** 1/2 Kung Fu (at Signature) ** Stage Kiss *** Satchmo At The Waldorf *** Antony and Cleopatra at the Public ** All The Way ** 1/2 The Open House (Will Eno at Signature) ** 1/2 Wozzeck (at Met w Deborah Voigt and Thomas Hampson and Simon O'Neill) Hand To God *** Tales From Red Vienna ** Appropriate (at Signature) * Rocky * 1/2 Aladdin *** Mothers And Sons ** Les Miserables *** 1/2 Breathing Time * 1/2 Cirque Du Soleil's Amaluna * 1/2 Heathers The Musical * 1/2 Red Velvet, at St. Ann's Warehouse *** Broadway By The Year 1940-1964 *** 1/2 A Second Chance ** Guys And Dolls *** 1/2 If/Then * 1/2 The Threepenny Opera * 1/2 A Raisin In The Sun *** 1/2 The Heir Apparent *** 1/2

Theater Heir Ball Surrealistic Joneses

📄 Theater Heir Ball Surrealistic Joneses

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