Under the Gaslight

Augustin Daly's 1867 melodrama Under the Gaslight first provided the stage with the image of a helpless victim tied to the railroad tracks.

Who was that helpless victim? A beautiful damsel in distress? Nope. He was a one-armed Civil War veteran who was trying to thwart the villain's wicked plans.

The damsel in distress was the one who takes a hatchet, brakes out of the railroad station where she is locked up, and saves the man. This scene was hardly apolitical, as the veteran remarks after being saved: "And these are the women who ain't to have a vote!"

Under the Gaslight catapulted Daly to success when it first opened at the New York Theatre under the management of the Worrell Sisters. It followed a rich gentleman named Ray Trafford who is in love with Laura Courtland. She appears to be from a good family, though Ray later learns that as a young child Laura was rescued from a life of crime as a six-year-old pickpocket in the employ of a criminal named Mother Judas.

When the secret gets out, Laura runs away, wanting to save her sweetheart from a socially disastrous marriage. The audience gets to see various well-known New York locations onstage, including Delmonico's Restaurant, the "Tombs" jail and courthouse, and a pier looking out over Jersey City. At one point, Mother Judas throws Laura off of the pier, and Ray leaps in after her. The audience must have been on the edge of their seats.

It is the next act that contains the play's true sensation scene, though. It opens in Long Branch, New Jersey, where the fashionable rich New Yorkers have all assembled. They are being shadowed, however, by Mother Judas and the villainous Byke, who claims to be Laura's father (though this turns out to be a lie). Snorkey, who like many disabled veterans at the time was making his living as a messenger, tracks Byke to a railroad station at Shrewsbury Bend. It is there he is overpowered and tied to the tracks.

Onstage trains nearly missing their victims became a staple of melodrama. The year after Under the Gaslight opened, Irish dramatist Dion Boucicault tried to go one better, and have a near-miss with an underground train in London in his play After Dark. Daly sued Boucicault, claiming that scene infringed on his copyright.

Under the Gaslight doesn't get revived very much these days, unlike some Boucicault plays, including The Streets of New York. Still, it's great fun!

Heathers

I missed Kevin Murphy and Laurence O'Keefe's musical Heathers when it was originally Off-Broadway, but now it's back at New World Stages, incredibly dark and incredibly fun.

The musical is based on the cult-hit film from the 1980s about teenage suicide (don't do it) and the effects it has on a high school. This was long before Dear Evan Hansen, and the film's take on adolescence is far too bleak for Broadway.

Off-Broadway, on the other hand, seems a perfect venue. I thought the musical might put the act break after the first death, but no. Like the film, the play starts out pitch black and keeps getting darker. The actual first-act closer "Our Love Is God" is simultaneously soaring anthem and sickening satire.

Obviously, the show had to musicalize the immortal line "I love my dead gay son!" That song becomes the opening of the second act (but with a fun twist from how it appears in the movie). There's also some fun audience participation involving the teacher Ms. Fleming, played by Jeannette Bayardelle.

Isabella Esler is pretty perfect in the leading role of Veronica Sawyer. John Cardoza as J.D. appears to be doing a Christian Slater impersonation, just as Christian Slater in the film confessed to essentially doing a Jack Nicholson impression. In both cases, it worked. The three Heathers, Zan Berube, Jackera Davis, and Ava DeMary, all look like they're having the time of their lives.

If you get a chance to see the show, I heartily recommend it. Just don't drink anything the cast hands you...

Perfect Strangers

A while ago, I was doing some research on A.R.T. in Boston, and I saw they were putting on a musical called Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York).

"Why on Earth," I wondered, "would a theatre in Boston be producing a new musical about New York City?" The answer, of course, was it was in development for Broadway, having already played London's West End.

The piece was written by Jim Barne and Kit Buchan, two Brits who channeled their enthusiasm for far-off, exotic New York into the character of Dougal, a young man from the United Kingdom visiting the U.S. for the first time. Dougal is a bit... much.

Fortunately, his naive enthusiasm is balanced by Robin, a New Yorker who grew up in Flatbush and currently works at a coffee shop in Manhattan, waiting not for her big break, but to figure out what it is she wants to do with her life. Right at the top of the show, we get a musical contrast in their attitudes as he sings the soaring anthem "New York" and she has a quiet but beautiful number called "What'll It Be" as she begins her day in the coffee shop.

The show promises the plot in its title, but for greater context, the cake in question is a wedding cake, and the reason the two people are strangers is that they are related to the couple getting married in different ways. (He's the groom's estranged son, while she's the bride's younger sister.) Things get complicated when a layer of the cake gets dropped, but rather than going in the expected direction of the two protagonists trying frantically to fix their mistake, the play makes a curious turn in the Act One closer "American Express" as they decide to go all out with a borrowed credit card.

While the bride and groom never appear in this two-character play, we do get a sense of them, and the more the play goes on, the more we feel their pending matrimony will be a disaster, and a dropped cake is the least of their worries.

I finally caught up with the play this past weekend, and I have to say it is delightful. If you have a chance to see it, go.

"Chaos is come again"

Last weekend, I saw Atlas Shakespeare Company's production of Othello, starring William Oliver Watkins in the title role.

Watkins was one of the actors I worked with when developing my adaptation of Moby-Dick, and he does a wonderful job as Othello, an authority figure who inspires awe in all who meet him.

His undoing, of course, is Iago, played by Clayton Hamburg. He and Watkins had great chemistry in Atlas's previous production of William Shakespeare's Henry VI plays. As Warwick and the Duke of York respectively, they made a great team. In Othello, we get to see their team disastrously torn asunder by Iago's lies.

Desdemona is played by Charlotte Blacklock, who grew tremendously in the role of Margaret throughout Atlas's productions of the Henry VI plays and Richard III. One of Desdemona's foils is Emilia, who pushes back against her husband even as Desdemona endures shame and abuse from the man she loves. Leah Schwartz, who played Joan of Arc in the first part of Henry VI, sparkles as Emilia.

The rest of the cast is game as well, and Adriana Alter's direction is fresh and original, especially in the final act. The murder scene is shocking, and the final moments get the audience to question if the cycle of violence will ever end.

Othello is playing through June 28th, so make sure to see it while you still can.

Henry VI

The Atlas Shakespeare Company recently performed William Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy in two parts, combining the first two plays, and then performing the third as a stand-alone production.

When the Public Theater announced they would be hosting NAATCO performing Henry VI: A Trilogy in Two Parts, I knew I'd have to check it out, if for no other reason than to compare how the companies divided up the material differently.

The current production reduces The First Part of Henry VI into a single act. Joan of Arc, who is clearly a witch and a sorceress in Shakespeare's text (since there's no way the French could possibly beat the English without cheating), is cleaned up considerably when played by Myka Cue. One could almost mistake the play for being historically accurate.

In the second act, the production further develops the characters of Henry VI (Jon Norman Schneider) and Queen Margaret (Teresa Avia Lim). It is Margaret who ultimately takes over the kingdom, as well as the play, and Lim is more than up to the task. She was recently featured in Gingold Theatrical Group's Pygmalion, but has appeared in a slew of other classical works as well.

The same can be said of Rajesh Bose, who previously shared the stage with Lim in Caesar and Cleopatra and now plays the ambitious Duke of York. Possessing a better claim to the throne than the current king but reluctant to openly defy him (yet), the Duke of York is forced to seek out allies, chief among them the Earl of Warwick, who came to be known as the Kingmaker. Anna Ishida plays Warwick wonderfully, as the Earl attempts to navigate the changing political landscape and also keep his head.

York's dark monologue in which he plots the uprising of Jack Cade both ends the first part of the current production and begins the second part. Did Cade's popular revolt in 1450 have anything to do with York? Probably not, but Shakespeare was never one to allow history to get in the way of a good story. Cade did use the name of John Mortimer, an earlier claimant to the throne, and this production cleverly has Orville Mendoza play both the real Mortimer in the first part and later the fake one.

The second act of part two of this production ties up the later scenes of The Third Part of Henry VI, which display a parade of slaughter. After the Duke of York it given a paper crown and had his head lopped off, the war is continued by his son Edward, played by David Shih. In NAATCO's co-production of Bus Stop at Classic Stage Company, Shih played the somewhat comic character of the bus driver, but while Edward is not above cracking jokes, he can also be terrifying, as when he and his brothers murder the young prince (Tommy Bo).

Shakespeare also gives ample space to the Clifford Family, whose power base was in the north of England, but who owed their allegiance to the Lancastrian King Henry VI. James Yaegashi, who plays the villainous Bishop of Winchester in the first part, returns terrifyingly as Old Clifford in the second part. He is succeeded by a son just as bloody, Young Clifford, played by David Lee Huynh (whom the audience previously saw as the Dauphin of France).

For the most part, Henry VI is like a well-written soap opera: good, escapist fun. However, this tale of incompetent leadership, broken promises, and disastrous foreign wars can't help but resonate with contemporary America. Though the adaptation by director Stephen Brown-Fried cuts a great deal to trim a trilogy down to two evenings, it doesn't needlessly alter Shakespeare's words. Perhaps that's why the audience appeared shocked when Warwick delivered this speech written centuries ago:

    Alas! how should you govern any kingdom,

    That know not how to use ambassadors,

    Nor how to be contented with one wife,

    Nor how to use your brothers brotherly,

    Nor how to study for the people's welfare,

    Nor how to shroud yourself from enemies?

Once again, Shakespeare proves to be our contemporary.

David Copperfield

Yesterday was the final monthly meeting this season of The Friends of Dickens New York, at which we discussed the final chapters of A Tale of Two Cities.

As I've previously blogged, A Tale of Two Cities was adapted for the stage almost immediately after it was published. After our meeting, though, many of us headed to an adaptation of a different Dickens novel, David Copperfield.

The play, adapted by Abigail Pickard Price, Sarah Gobran, and Matt Pinches, was originally produced by Guildford Shakespeare Company and is playing now at 59E59 Theaters (memorably located at 59 East 59th Street in Manhattan).

Performances last for two hours and 15 minutes, including the intermission, which means much has to be cut from the massive novel. (Barkis might have been willin' but still didn't make it into the show.) Eddy Payne plays David, while Luke Barton and Louise Beresford perform everybody else.

The costumes, designed by Neil Irish and Anett Black, help to distinguish the characters, but mostly the performers relate character through voice and body language (and occasionally through puppets). Price, who directed the play as well as being one of the adaptors, skillfully helms the production, making sure the audience keeps up with the action.

If you want to go, the play is still running until June 28th. If you're interested in The Friends of Dickens New York, we'll be taking a break for the summer, but will be meeting again in September, beginning discussions of a new novel, Hard Times.

Sub

Last night, I caught Alex Aguirre's underwater workplace comedy Sub, about coworkers in a dystopian future selling arms to private militia groups from a submarine on a mostly submerged planet earth.

Mitchell Polonsky directed the piece at Erf Gallery, which is in an off-the-beaten-path part of Bushwick. The audience sits on both sides of a long, narrow set, designed by Owen Versteeg to evoke a futuristic submarine.

At one end of the set is a rack of the latest post-apocalyptic fashions designed by nepo baby Freya, played wonderfully by Addie Guidry. At the other end is a steel drum containing weapons manufacturer Peter, played by the magnificent Nick Walther.

We learn the reason Peter is in the drum is that he had both his legs cut off by Freya's father, a nasty powerbroker on which they both must rely. He consoles himself by popping pills and swilling an insane amount of liquor, but the audience later finds out that these are merely placebos.

For her part, Freya has to contend both with her daddy issues and her powerful frenemy, Chloë Chimera, played eerily by Chloe Claudel with the aid of a microphone that electronically alters her voice. Chloë claims to be "post-human" and freed from the conventional morals of an obsolete humanity. The character reminded me quite a bit of some of the post-human imaginings of Bernard Shaw in Back to Methuselah and Farfetched Fables.

Other than Freya and Peter, the only other employee on the sub is Arnold, a splendidly clad but ineffectual security officer played by Jonah O'Hara David. The crew does receive periodic visits from Chloë's husband, a fellow warlord named Barnaby Miller who apes the film noir villains of the past. (Just don't call it his "bit" if you want to live long!) Santiago Mallan is both comic and menacing as Barnaby, who inhabits his retro persona out of a terror of having to deal with the world in which he actually lives.

Chloë has no such difficulties, having fully embraced a world in which human emotions can only prove weaknesses. Having adapted her body to the technology that alters her voice, she's already on her way to becoming a computer, like the one that steers and protects the sub. ("Emily" voiced by Wendy McColm.) All of the cast members are imaginatively costumed by designer Olivia Vaughn Heren, though Chloë's outfits are the most impressive and least human looking.

Ultimately, though, the play is about humanity, and Freya and Peter share an oddly touching moment at the end that reminds us how in dark times hope can be one of the most subversive elements to remain in the bitter remnants of a failed society.

The show is running this weekend only, so see it while you can!