Kallan Dana’s new play Racecar Racecar Racecar is an original tale of a daughter-dad adventure in which character is tested, quite literally, if preposterously, during a cross-country road trip. Directed by Sarah Blush, and making its world premiere at A.R.T/New York Theatres, this surreal one-act play packs an emotional punch.
It’s impossible to discuss Pen Pals, Michael Griffo’s new two-hander at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, without first bringing up A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Love Letters consisted of nothing more than two actors reading letters to each other, recounting an epistolary romance spanning almost a half-century. It was so popular because, first of all, it was easy to produce: small set, small cast, and celebrity actors who could jet into town, get onstage, and read the text without having to memorize anything.
What does it take to turn an extraordinary Shakespearean tragedy into an extraordinary production? The first step is vision. King Lear, with Kenneth Branagh in the title role, reflects the artistic vision and collaborative muscle of a directing triumvirate—Branagh, Lucy Skillbeck, and Rob Ashford. They have reduced the Bard’s three-hour-plus saga to two hours with no intermission and cast current and former Royal Academy of Dramatic Art students to bring new energy to a complex story. This series of theatrical risks yields cohesive and riveting theater.
Michelle Kholos Brooks writes powerful dramas about salient issues. Together with director Sarah Norris, she has created a viscerally, emotionally gripping tableau of remembrance. With maximum impact, Kholos Brooks’s Room 1214 hits gun violence out of the ballpark.
In The Blood Quilt by Katori Hall, four half-sisters gather a few weeks after their mother’s funeral for an annual rite of stitching a quilt. As they congregate in their childhood home, the quartet of archetypal characters rehash old conflicts with their different personalities and views of tradition.
With TV star Marcia Cross and beloved stage actor Bryan Batt in the cast, two Tony winners on the design team, and recognizable names among the producers, Pay the Writer would appear to be a solidly financed production. Yet it has a kind of low-rent look to it and clunky staging.
Toward the end of Harry Townsend’s Last Stand, a play that’s set in a New England lake house and revolves around the strained relationship between an aging father and his adult child, a door is opened and the call of a loon is heard. It immediately brings to mind On Golden Pond (“The loons, Norman!”), a play that’s set in a New England lake house and revolves around the strained relationship between an aging father and his adult child. This association doesn’t do Harry Townsend any favors, though, since its parent-child relationship is not as well developed as the one in On Golden Pond and, consequently, the conflict and emotions feel forced.
Decades after his death, Robert Moses’s legacy is still felt throughout New York City, from the Triborough Bridge to Lincoln Center. As the urban planner responsible for much of the city’s 20th-century roadways and infrastructure projects, Moses had a polarizing career, making lasting improvements to the city and the surrounding area even as he was criticized for imposing his plans, no matter the consequences. New Yorkers traveling through Moses’s former domain to the Theatre at St. Clements, however, will find little unique insight into the man behind the infrastructure at Bulldozer: The Ballad of Robert Moses, a bio-musical of the master builder who outlasted mayors and governors to impose his will on New York City and the surrounding area from the 1920s through the 1960s.
