October, 10th, 2016

STRANGE SHORE: Dublin and New York City

SUNDRY LAND: The Republic of Ireland and The United States of America

WANDERING WAY: Two Offerings at the Dublin Theatre Festival, and my first theatrical excursion back in New York City

I know what you’re thinking – “me oh my, it must be peculiar for Sharon to be typing in her study after so many months traveling to all those ‘Strange and Sundry’ destinations all over Europe!” 

Well, yes. Yes, it is.

I’ve returned feeling happier and stronger (quite literally, due to lugging suitcases) than ever before. Having reached this hearty lifetime peak, it’s unnerving to walk through New York, land of neurotics and navel-gazers. Will I continue gazing outward towards the horizon…or will I revert to inspecting my belly with the same hell-bent zeal of yesteryear?

Only time will tell, but I’m trying to maintain my “I-feel-so-free-and-joyful” European high for as long as humanly possible. This being the case, I’ll be continuing my merry reportage at “Strange and Sundry” for the foreseeable future. It might make sense to change the blog’s title to something like “Local and Lovely,” but I haven’t the creative energy to think up another name…or format another website. In short, I’m lazy.

So hooray! “Strange and Sundry” will live and (with any luck) thrive in New York City. I comfort myself with the thought that many readers will find my New York lifestyle quite strange and quite sundry, indeed. Given that my everyday ambles mostly include trips to the theater – it’s spelled “theater” and not “theatre” in the U.S. of A. – and artistic excursions to museums, I have every faith that my readership won’t be disappointed with the randomness of my local outings. I need to remind myself that everybody DOES NOT live in New York City even though it seems that way when you actually live here. (Note: a lot of people live in New York City – 8,491,079 million and counting).

Moreover, in continuing the blog, I’ve placed myself in the position of keeping my readers entertained, which may encourage daring day-trips along with other varieties of derring-do, just for kicks. I can just feel that everyone is secretly yearning for me to visit amazing places like Sleepy Hollow, NY and Philadelphia, PA. Woo hoo! Maybe I’ll go to Quebec City! Or Pittsburgh! Or Portland, Maine! (If you can’t tell, I can’t renew my European tourist visa until May. Maybe I should go to Japan…)

Enough explanation! No more exposition! Without further ado, theatre and theater! It’s such a natural transition to move between the Dublin Theatre Festival and The Signature Theatre (“re”! So European!) in New York City. The Irish love New Yorkers; New Yorkers love the Irish – this mutual appreciation probably springs from the history of mass-immigration from Ireland to New York in the nineteenth-century, but Hibernians and Americans also have loads in common because they share comparable experiences of throwing off poncy British overlords in violent revolutions. (Don’t forget that 2016 is the 100 year anniversary of The Easter Rising in Dublin. Have a Guinness in celebration!)

Dublin Theatre Festival: Death at Intervals @ Smock Alley Theatre (https://www.dublintheatrefestival.com/Online/Death_at_Intervals)

I was particularly delighted to catch this adaptation of José Saramago’s novel As Intermitências da Morte (Death with Interruptions) because I’d missed it at the Galway International Arts Festival in July. As if visiting Ireland twice in a calendar year isn’t wonderful enough, talk about the joy of attending two Irish theatre festivals! Given the literary and theatrical bent of Irish culture, it’s a cinch that the Irish know how to throw a nifty theatre festival.

In this noirish tale of an alluring grim reaper, a middle-aged concert pianist (played by Raymond Scannell) flirts with an older woman (played by Olwen Fouéré) who meets him at the stage door to compliment his performance. It’s satisfying to watch a man fall in love with a woman who’s (at least) twenty years his senior – after all, how often do stories with May-December romances involve young men and older women? As their feelings blossom, the audience comes to realize (even as the man remains halfway-ignorant) that this compelling seductress is, in fact, death. Falling in love with an older woman is tantamount to falling in love with death? Um. Despite my feminist qualms, Saramago makes this premise appealing by suggesting that “Death” is totally out of this dude’s league.  

Haunting piano airs interweave with Saramago’s poetic dialogue to suggest that everyone’s demise is a duet with death, a fascinating temptress who defies human comprehension even as she draws humans towards knowledge. It’s a saucy, lyrical sixty minutes of theatre, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it transferred to the 59e59th (http://www.59e59.org), a New York theatre company that excels in importing cutting-edge Irish and British productions.

Dublin Theatre Festival: The Seagull @ The Gaiety Theatre (https://dublintheatrefestival.com/Online/The_Seagull)

Moreover, I hope this Irish production of “The Seagull” transfers to an even larger venue in New York. It’s almost impossible for me to articulate my delight in watching this excellent and bold adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull” (by Michael West and Annie Ryan) after sitting through The National Theatre’s lackluster version earlier in the summer. A dull performance of the “Seagull” is incredibly discouraging, given the beautiful humanity of the play itself. But thank goodness! In this Irish “Seagull,” the acting was uniformly moving; moreover, the production demonstrated a thoughtful understanding of Chekhov’s text while still proposing an innovative, contemporary reinterpretation.

In the most dramatic reimagining of Chekhov’s masterpiece, this production changes the gender of the tortured writer Konstantin (male) to a young woman, Constance (played by Jane McGrath), suggesting that this budding artist is struggling to form her identity as a gay woman as well as an original playwright, even as she’s being dominated and derided by a narcissistic actress who happens to be her mother (played by Derbhle Crotty).

When I realized that a woman was playing Konstantin, I thought, “Huh. Well, that’s interesting. Kinda makes sense, actually…” By the end of the play, I’d almost forgotten that Constantin/Constance is ever played by a man – that’s how well Chekhov’s character jibes with contemporary discussions about gender, gay identity, and social acceptance. In the play program, the academic and author Belinda McKeon comments,

“That the love triangle – soon to take on even more complicated configurations – has become all-female is, in West and Ryan’s hands, no cute trick but rather a change which so perfectly fits with The Seagull’s preoccupations – love and its confusions, identity and its anxieties, artistic ambition and its woes especially in a society in which it’s sometimes hard to be heard – that it seems the cast of characters has always been thus.”

Exactly. I totally, totally agree, and this approach is so successful in intimating compelling interpretive approaches to the original play that it makes me wonder if we’ll be seeing more productions of Chekhov with gender-switches. Just as the cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” proved that it’s revelatory to have a multi-racial cast portray the founding fathers, I have a feeling this “Seagull” will propel more directors to consider gender-blind casting. Although it’s recently become more common for women to portray Shakespearean protagonists, such as Fiona Shaw’s Richard II (http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/27/theater/a-female-richard-ii-captivates-the-french.html),  Cate Blanchett’s Richard II (http://www.economist.com/node/13097656), Harriet Walter’s Brutus (http://www.donmarwarehouse.com/whats-on/donmar-warehouse/donmar-kings-cross/2016/shakespeare-trilogy), Derbhle Crotty’s Bolingbroke (http://druid.ie/druidshakespeare/about/#fndtn-castlist), and Aisling O’Sullivan’s Prince Hal/HenryV (http://druid.ie/druidshakespeare/about/#fndtn-castlist), there hasn’t been much call for women to play Uncle Vanya, Oedipus, or Willy Loman. Perhaps that should change.

While we’re at it, I’d love to see a man play Blanche DuBois…Neil Patrick Harris!? But who would play his Stanley Kowalski? The mind reels!*

(*Note: It turns out this same company DID cast a male Blanche DuBois -- goodness! http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/theatre-arts/theatre-the-seagull-has-landed-with-genderbending-twist-35090371.html)

Small Mouth Sounds @ The Pershing Square Signature Center (http://smallmouthsounds.com)

The Signature Center provides an easy transition from British and Irish theatre-going – this institution only charges $30 FOR ALL PRODUCTIONS unlike most New York City theater companies, which require devoted theater-goers to donate organs and sacrifice first-born sons for the price of admission. I consider myself lucky to still be in possession of both my kidneys.

Since this play kept extending its run all summer, I decided it would make me feel less depressed about returning to New York City. (I may believe in gender-blind casting, but I avoid playing the melancholic Dane whenever possible.) Yes, I needed to remind myself that New Yorkers are more than capable of producing cutting-edge drama, and I made a good choice!

In setting this bittersweet comedy at a New Age retreat where silence must be observed at all times, the playwright Bess Wohl invites the audience to observe human behavior. Often audience members are so focused on the text – even bringing along the script to performances (WHICH IS SO ANNOYING) – that they forget to observe the ACTIONS of the ACTORS. In removing words from the equation, the playwright observes that a pat on the back, a proffered Kleenex, or a shared spliff may forge deeper friendships than the longest conversations. It may sound like a profound insight, but the play's hilarious, too. I can’t remember when I’ve heard an audience laugh with such surprise and appreciation. The subtleties of human interaction can be pretty darn funny even when they’re heartbreaking.

The director Rachel Chavkin (a favorite of mine) enhances the communal atmosphere of the experience by seating the audience on the perimeter of a long rectangular stage – in the front row, my feet were on the floor/stage.

From this perspective, I felt as if I were a part of a New Age workshop myself – one asking me to stop and look. In such an intimate space, I could observe the actors closely… so closely that I felt myself blushing during a particularly raucous nude scene. Though the dialogue was sparse, each character’s backstory became crystal-clear through amused guffaws, welling tears, and disbelieving glares. It made me remember that old Stella Adler quote, “Acting is reacting,” and Marcia DeBonis (a character actress who has been in forty-four movies http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0213482/) proves to be one of the best reactors working today.  

It’s rare gift to be able to transmit a complex character’s emotional life without saying a single word, and I kept sighing, “Oh…” in sympathy with DeBonis’s pain even as she made me laugh the next moment. Such a talent! I’d never get to witness the real acting chops of this phenomenal actress (who’s given walk-on parts in movies) if I didn’t attend the theatre. Welcome home.

P.S. I didn't mention my absolute mortification at electoral politics upon my return the United States because I can't bear to type that evil man's name. Rest assured, I am horrified. Instead, I decided to focus on the wonderful American actress Marcia DeBonis,  who deserves to have her name plastered all over New York City in big gold letters.