1776

Last night, as I was coming home from seeing the Broadway production of 1776 by Roundabout Theatre Company, I found out that Charles Fuller, author of the brilliant A Soldier's Play, had died.

Roundabout's revival of A Soldier's Play, which I saw at the beginning of 2020 before a certain virus shut down the world, was staged in the American Airlines Theatre, the same theatre where the current revival of 1776 is now playing.

A Soldier's Play is probably the best thing I've ever seen Roundabout do, so it's not much of a criticism to say that the company's current production doesn't live up to it. Nevertheless, it's interesting how different these two historically set revivals were.

Both productions were very much about the present, about now, rather than events that happened decades or even centuries in the past. The production of A Soldier's Play didn't try to run away from the past, though, presenting it with more-or-less historical accuracy, and trusting the audience to make their own connections to America in the 21st century.

The current revival of 1776, however, is in danger of breaking its arm due to the strength with which it is patting itself on the back. As the show's co-directer Diane Paulus notes in the program, the cast provides "multiple representations of race, gender, and ethnicity." This is true, but hardly revolutionary. Yes, this production of a famously male-heavy show has no cis-gender men on stage, but that's hardly a first for 1776.

I remember visiting Nittany Theatre at the Barn out in the middle of Pennsylvania back in 2017, and the cast was reminiscing about years gone by when they had done an all-female version of 1776. Rather than boasting about it, though, they admitted, "Actually, a lot of smaller companies around the country do the play that way. It's kind of become commonplace." The current revival also gets milage out of casting people of color as enslavers, but this is hardly new, either. (Hamilton anybody?)

Hamilton famously dresses its characters in period clothing from the neck down, while heads are left wig-free with hats and hair styles that are modern. The result is a balance that allows the audience to dig into history while ghosting (as Marvin Carlson would put it) contemporary America on top of the centuries-old characters. Costume designer Emilio Sosa instead leans into the contemporary for 1776, providing knee breeches, shoes, and coats that evoke the 18th century, but making sure everything underneath those fancy coats drag us back to the present.

There's a similarly heavy-handed flight from the source material in the stylistic renderings of Sherman Edwards's 1969 score. The music leans into its own corniness at times, but the performers often seem embarrassed by the notes they're singing. Their anything-but-the-melody approach to the music was probably meant to be refreshing, but it sometimes reminded me of the Forbidden Broadway lampoon of Donna Murphy "Whistling a Sondheim Tune" in a revival of The King and I.

The play's core trio of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson is ably played by Crystal Lucas-Perry, Patrena Murray, and Elizabeth A. Davis. However, my favorite musical numbers were those sung by minor characters. As Martha Jefferson, Eryn LeCroy makes the typically weak number "He Plays the Violin" actually work. I've never been a fan of "Momma, Look Sharp" either, but Salome B. Smith nails it as the Courier. "Molasses to Rum" is always a chilling showstopper, but Sara Porkalob knocks it out of the park singing the song as Edward Rutledge.

Both Paulus and her co-director Jeffrey L. Page (who also choreographed the show) have done audiences a favor in bringing this classic musical back to the stage. For all their efforts to make the play relevant to a modern audience, though, the most powerful moments in the piece come from the lines written by book writer Peter Stone, many of them cribbed from the letters of the Founding Fathers themselves.

Sometimes you don't need to beat the audience over the head with an idea, but can just allow great material to speak for itself. That's what Roundabout did with their production of Fuller's A Soldier's Play, and I hope we can see more revivals like that one in the future.

Birthday Candles

Last week, I saw Roundabout's production of Noah Haidle's play Birthday Candles starring Debra Messing. The play follows the life of a Michigan woman one birthday at a time, as she progresses from being a teenager to being an elderly woman.

The piece is reminiscent of plays by Thornton Wilder in that it tries to universalize the human experience, and in particular the experience of the American Family. In many of Wilder's plays, however, like The Skin of Our Teeth, the universal is placed in dialogue with the political and the technological.

What makes Birthday Candles different is its total rejection of political and technological change. Generally, if a person lives for nearly a hundred years, that individual will see depressions, wars, protests, and the advent of new technologies like commercial airline travel, space exploration, and personal computers.

If Ernestine--the protagonist of Birthday Candles--experiences these things, they don't seem to affect her very much. She goes on baking cakes in the same oven her mother used, using the same methods, never changing much of anything. If the characters in The Skin of Our Teeth exist in a timeless New Jersey, it is still a New Jersey shaped by global events, to which the characters in Birthday Candles seem oblivious.

That isn't to say that it isn't a good play, but it feels oddly detached from the world around us. Even when basing a play on Greek myth, like with The Alcestiad, Wilder always engaged with the events going on around the globe while he was writing. Here we are, going through our own turbulent times, and the theatre on display on Broadway is currently taking a very different approach, at least in the case of Birthday Candles.

There are some very strong performances though, particularly by Susannah Flood, who played Dunyasha in Roundabout's previous production of The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov. In Birthday Candles, Flood plays both Ernestine's mother Alice, and her daughter Madeline, and later Ernie, another descendant of the ever-older Ernestine.

Birthday Candles is playing until May 29th, so get your tickets if you're interested in seeing it.

Top Shows (that I missed) in 2020

In past Decembers, I have come up with a list of the best shows I saw that opened in New York City that year. Well, for 2020, that list would have to be pretty short.

Sure, I could talk about Blessed Unrest's Battle of Angels, and Irish Rep's Lady G, and end with Roundabout's standout production of A Soldier's Play, but for the most part, 2020 was a total loss when it came to live theatre.

Instead, I'm going to write about ten shows I missed, plays I was looking forward to seeing live, but couldn't experience because massive government incompetence turned a completely predictable (and predicted) outbreak into the worst health crisis since the influenza of 1918-1920.

This year was supposed to be one of world travel for me, rather than confinement to mostly just four small rooms. That's why my list is not restricted to just New York City this year. Here are ten shows I should have seen, would have seen, and likely would have loved, had it not been for the dumpster fire of 2020:

10. A Touch of the Poet. Okay, this one is partially my fault, since Irish Rep went ahead and produced this Eugene O'Neill play digitally. I was looking forward to seeing it live, though, and Zoom fatigue combined with the added work of trying to teach classes online meant that I missed the virtual performance. I still blame 2020.

9. Hangmen. Was Martin McDonough's latest play going to be a masterpiece? Maybe. Maybe not. But New York never got to find out, because it was still in previews when COVID-19 shut down theatres. Some shows vowed to reopen once the crisis passed, but as it became clear that the shutdown would last for weeks and then months, producers had to pull the plug on this one.

8. Man of La Mancha. The Astoria Performing Arts Center had planned a revival of this classic musical, to be directed by Dev Bondarin, whose work I've always loved. Fortunately, APAC is still going, though other theatre companies have been forced to fold. Theatre in Queens took a big hit when the Secret Theatre announced its closure this year. The one bright spot is that APAC will be taking over the space they've vacated.

7. As You Like It. The Public Theater has experienced tremendous success with its Public Works productions in Central Park, bringing together professional artists and amateurs in a celebration of all that's great about New York City. Shaina Taub did an excellent job composing music for 2019's production of Twelfth Night, and I was looking forward to hearing her score for As You Like It. It looks like I'll have to wait a bit longer now.

6. Richard II. The Shakespeare in the Park production I was really looking forward to seeing this year, though, was Richard II. Though I've seen multiple filmed versions of the play this is the only one in the Shakespeare canon I've never experienced live. After the shutdown, director Saheem Ali organized a radio version of the piece that aired on WNYC. You can listen to each of the four episodes, which are available as podcasts, though it's certainly not the same thing.

5. The Prince of Egypt. After attending a Shaw conference in Spain this May, I was supposed to spend some time with my sister in London. She had already gotten us tickets to see the stage adaptation of Stephen Schwartz's The Prince of Egypt at the Dominion Theatre. The movie was delightful, and the score does seem to lend itself to a stage transfer, so I was looking forward to seeing how it works on stage, as well as spending some time with my sister. Instead, I've only been able to see her virtually this year.

4. Leopoldstadt. Even more exciting than The Prince of Egypt was the other show my sister had gotten us tickets to see. Tom Stoppard's new play Leopoldstadt opened this January in a production directed by Patrick Marber, who had done such a brilliant job directing Stoppard's Travesties. Of all the shows playing in London this year, this was the one I really, really wanted to see. It tells the stories of members of the Jewish community in Vienna during the first half of the 20th century. We had tickets, but now I don't know if I'll ever have a chance to see it.

3. The Devil's Disciple. Though the Shaw conference in Spain was cancelled due to COVID-19, I briefly entertained hopes of attending another Shaw conference in Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada. Instead, that conference went virtual, and the Shaw Festival decided to postpone its summer season for the summer of 2021. That means I might still get a chance to see the Shaw play they were supposed to do this year, The Devil's Disciple. Incidentally, Gingold Theatrical Group had planned to produce the same play this autumn. Will it be possible in 2021? We're still not sure.

2. Great Expectations. This play isn't an adaptation of the work by Charles Dickens, though I would have been excited about that, too. No, this Great Expectations is a reworking of my own short play The Rainbow, but for two older actors. A friend of mine, Ellen DiStasi, approached me earlier this year about doing The Rainbow with Theater of Light, which brings live drama to communities of older folks here in New York. Ellen asked if I could update the script to be performed by more mature actors, so a woman who had recently had a break-up became a widow, and there were a few other changes as well. The biggest thing, though, was that Ellen wasn't sure that a long monologue about a D.H. Lawrence novel would work for her target audience, so I changed it to a monologue about Great Expectations instead, which naturally changed the title of the play as well. I'd love to be able to do this show in 2021, but a play performed by members of a vulnerable community for other members of a vulnerable community....

1. The Love Songs of Brooklynites. I've been working on a full-length version of my one-act play that was workshopped in 2019 at the Theatre of Western Springs. Meanwhile, the one-act version was accepted for the theatre trail at the Arundel Festival of the Arts in the United Kingdom. The Drip Action Theatre Company in Arundel says they want to do the show this upcoming year. That would be wonderful. Though I've had my work performed in Canada, Australia, and even Japan, I've never had a production in the U.K., and Arundel looks like an amazing place to visit. Perhaps I'll be able to go this August and see it. Whether that happens or not, I'm still holding out hope for the full-length version of The Love Songs of Brooklynites to have a New York production once the theatres reopen. That means we're all going to have to wear masks, limit unnecessary travel, and get vaccinated. It also means that the government needs to get its act together and actually distribute and administer the vaccines being produced. Only then are we going to be able to have great theatre back.

A Soldier's Play

Last night, I had the pleasure of seeing A Soldier's Play presented by Roundabout Theatre Company.  Charles Fuller's drama about the murder of an African American soldier outside a military base in Louisiana during World War II remains just as explosive today as when it first premiered in 1981.

Among other things, A Soldier's Play is a detective story, which is why it went on to become a popular film (retitled A Soldier's Story) and won an Edgar Award for mystery writing in addition to the Pulitzer Prize for drama. The plot is tightly constructed, and the acting in this production is impeccable, which is small surprise, since it was directed by Kenny Leon, whose staging of Much Ado About Nothing was one of the most remarkable productions of last season.

David Alan Grier, who is perhaps best known for his comedy, gives an exceptionally dramatic performance as the murdered sergeant, whose story is told in flashback throughout the piece. Grier was also in the original production of the play, albeit in the much smaller role of Corporal Cobb (now played by Rob Demery, making his Broadway debut). As Sergeant Vernon Waters, Grier doesn't flinch from portraying a man who is as cruel to others as he is treated, both victimizer and victim.

The sergeant's death is investigated by Captain Richard Davenport, an African American lawyer of considerable skill and training, who admits to the audience toward the beginning of the play, "The Army didn't know what to do with me." At first he suspects the local Ku Klux Klan of perpetrating the murder, but soon he finds signs pointing to a member of the military committing the crime. Blair Underwood, who is perhaps most famous from L.A. Law, is quite at home playing Davenport as the attorney drills his way to uncovering the truth.

What makes A Soldier's Play remarkable is that it turns the familiar genres of police procedural and legal drama into a probing exploration of race in America and the complexities of innocence and guilt. All of this is set against the background of the Second World War, with the threat of imminent death always hovering in the air.

The original Off-Broadway production boasted some rising stars, including Denzel Washington as  Private Peterson, and Samuel L. Jackson as Private Henson. Nnamdi Asomugha is playing Peterson in this production, and McKinley Belcher III is playing Henson. Both are more than up to the challenge of their roles.

A Soldier's Play will only be on Broadway until the Ides of March, so get your tickets soon!

Top Plays of 2019

I've come up with this year's list of the top plays I saw that opened in New York in 2019.

Of course some plays didn't qualify, like What the Constitution Means to Me, which opened last year Off-Broadway, or Timon of Athens, which I actually saw in England.

Last year, Travesties and Twelfth Night topped the list, and this year included pieces produced by Roundabout and The Public Theater as well. Here's this year's top ten, in reverse order:

10. Antony and Cleopatra - Hudson Warehouse provides a mixed bag of free classical theater in Riverside Park, but this year's modernized production of one of the great tragic love stories of all time was definitely worth seeing.

9. The Importance of Being Earnest - Another great free outdoor production this year was New York Classical Theatre's clever take on Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. This year they performed the play in both traditional and gender-swapped versions.

8. Midsummer: A Banquet - Food for Love Productions turned Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream into a tasty treat with this immersive production directed and choreographed by Zach Morris. The Art Nouveau aesthetic worked brilliantly, but it was the remarkable acting that sold the show.

7. Cyrano - Yes, this musical adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac by the New Group was all over the place, but it still managed to make me cry... a lot. If they end up releasing a cast album, definitely buy it. And yes, Peter Dinklage can sing. (We already knew Jasmine Cephas Jones and Grace McLean could.)

6. King Lear - Glenda Jackson gave a performance of a lifetime in this Broadway production of Shakespeare's bleakest tragedy. Sam Gold's direction was problematic at times, but a supporting cast including Jayne Houdyshell and Ruth Wilson made up for it, and the production was thoroughly enjoyable, if rather long.

5. Caesar and Cleopatra - Gingold Theatrical Group scored a hit again this year with their Off-Broadway revival of an epic historical comedy by George Bernard Shaw. Director David Staller's imaginative staging featured seven amazing actors and one hysterical puppet. I'm looking forward to seeing what GTG does next year!

4. Hillary and Clinton - Lucas Hnath's play about the 2008 presidential primary had already been making the rounds before landing on Broadway this year. His writing is always clever, but Broadway audiences had the added benefit of seeing Laurie Metcalf and John Lithgow in the title roles.  The play succeeded by eschewing historical accuracy in favor of a more metaphorical truth.

3. Much Ado About Nothing - The stand-out Shakespeare production of the year was undoubtedly The Public Theater's production of Much Ado About Nothing in Central Park. Director Kenny Leon assembled an incredible cast, and fortunately their performance was recorded and aired on PBS to be shared with the entire nation. If you missed it in the park, make sure you see the recorded version.

2. Scotland, PA - A lot of people have been crowing about Hadestown, which I saw both Off-Broadway and in London, though I have not yet seen in its new Broadway incarnation. The best new musical that I saw this year was Adam Gwon's Scotland, PA, a brilliant adaptation of the 2001 film, which was itself based on a certain Scottish Play. Alas, Roundabout has closed this production, but it deserves to have a longer life elsewhere.

1. Juno and the Paycock - Though I'm not a huge fan of Sean O'Casey, this spring Irish Repertory Theatre presented his three Dublin plays in rep, which is an opportunity not to be missed. Of the three, Juno and the Paycock is O'Casey's best play, and this production was masterfully directed by Neil Pepe to navigate the layers of comedy and tragedy for maximum effect. Irish Rep has a great line-up of shows for the coming year, including Dion Boucicault's classic farce London Assurance, which is running now.

I'm looking forward to that and lots of other great shows in 2020!

Scotland, PA

Previews are always an exciting time for a show. Last night, when I saw Scotland, PA in previews at Roundabout's Laura Pels Theatre, director Lonny Price came out to let us know we would be the first audience ever to hear new song lyrics that had just been given to an actor that day!

The number was a patter song, he explained, with lots of words sung very quickly, so the actress would be holding a pad of paper. He said we would know the moment when it came, which was true, but fortunately, the character was a detective taking notes anyway, so had he not announced it in advance, we might not have noticed a thing.

If you haven't heard about Scotland, PA yet, it's a new musical with songs by Adam Gwon and a book by Michael Mitnick based on the 2001 film by Billy Morrissette. Inspired by William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the movie and the musical tell a familiar story of ambition, murder, and madness, but re-set in a 1970s-era fast-food restaurant in the middle of rural Pennsylvania.

The three witches are replaced by three hippies, played in the musical by Alysha Umphress, Wonu Ogunfowora, and Kaleb Wells. Ryan McCartan and Taylor Iman Jones play the murderous couple, whose fierce sexuality only grows as they plot to kill their way to the top. In the film, Christopher Walken played the homicide inspector Lieutenant McDuff, but in a brilliant gender switch, the character in the musical becomes Peg McDuff, played by the exceptional Megan Lawrence.

It was Lawrence who did that wonderful patter song, and Gwon's lyrics can be hysterical. Josh Rhodes's choreography is inventive and memorable, and the set designed by Anna Louizos provides just the right tone. At intermission, even the lobby is transformed into a fast-food restaurant adorned with a certain golden M.

This show deserves to be a hit, so I recommend getting your tickets now.

Top Plays of 2018

Each December, I compile a list of the top plays I saw that opened that year in New York City. Last year, Sweeney Todd, HOME/SICK, and Julius Caesar topped the list.

This year both Roundabout Theatre Company and the Public Theater have multiple shows on my list. Playwrights William Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw get multiple nods as well.

So without further ado, here’s my list:

10. Romeo and Juliet – Each year, New York Classical Theatre Company puts on free productions in the city’s parks. This summer’s production of Shakespeare’s classic tale about star-crossed lovers used innovative doubling to tell a familiar story in a memorable new way.

9. Heartbreak House – Gingold Theatrical Group makes the list this year with another innovative adaptation of a classic. This re-imagining of Shaw’s chestnut about Europe during World War I was reset as a play-within-a-play during the London Blitz, which worked quite well.

8. Love’s Labour’s Lost – This Shake & Bake production combines the Bard’s romantic comedy with a five-course tasting menu. The actors do a wonderful job creating magical moments in a pared-down production in the Meatpacking District. The food is tasty, but it’s the acting that is truly delicious.

7. Stories by Heart – So, what is this thing? That’s what John Lithgow quipped at the beginning of his one-man show about the stories his father read to him as a child. Ordinarily, I don’t go in for one person plays, but Lithgow’s mixture of personal memoir with classic storytelling won me over in the end.

6. Othello – Not everyone loved the Public Theatre’s production of Othello this summer at the Delacorte, but I found Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s direction to be superb. The relationship between Iago and Rodrigo was particularly fascinating to me, and Chukwudi Iwuji did a great job playing the title role.

5. Mother of the Maid – The Public Theatre scored another hit with Jane Anderson’s new play Mother of the Maid about the family of Joan of Arc. The piece was marketed as a vehicle for Glenn Close, who played Isabelle Arc, but Anderson’s play tells the story from an interesting perspective, and would be worth seeing even without Close’s star power.

4. Bernhardt/Hamlet – As a fan of both Sarah Bernhardt and William Shakespeare, I knew I had to see this show. This is probably Theresa Rebeck’s best play to date, and the cast was superb. Janet McTeer was deservedly praised as Bernhardt, but Dylan Baker was also wonderful as the legendary French actor Constant Coquelin, and Jason Butler gave a memorable portrayal of the playwright Edmond Rostand.

3. Pygmalion – Bedlam theatre company’s productions are sometimes hit-or-miss, but they are generally memorable even when they don’t entirely succeed. This year’s re-imagining of Shaw’s most popular play definitely qualifies as a hit, though. The immersive first act led into an exploration of not just class, but also race, ethnicity, and assimilation, all in the frantic Bedlam style in which performers play multiple characters to hilarious effect.

2. Twelfth Night – What happened to musicals this year? All of my top ten picks were straight plays this year, with the exception of Shaina Taub’s musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which she co-created with director Kwame Kwei-Armah as part of the Public Works program, but came back in a new production this summer as a part of the regular Shakespeare in the Park season. Taub’s songs are inspired by Shakespeare’s text, but not usually direct settings of his poetry, in spite of the fact that Twelfth Night already contains multiple songs. Her lyrics fit in with the Bard’s play beautifully, and her performance as Feste was equally delightful.

1. Travesties – To me, the most delightful production this year, however, was Roundabout’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s play Travesties. As a playwright, I’ve always admired Stoppard’s skill in weaving together the stories of James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin, and Tristan Tzara into a rollicking farce that also makes us think and feel in new ways. Perhaps because this production was directed by a fellow playwright, Patrick Marber, it was able to encompass both the profundity and goofiness of Stoppard’s writing. A cast that included Tom Hollander, Scarlett Strallen, and Sara Topham also seemed exceptionally sympathetic to Stoppard’s ambitious vision.

So that’s my list. Here’s to an even better year of New York theatre in 2019!

Not One-Woman Shows

I recently saw back-to-back two plays whose marketing makes them look like one-woman shows. Fortunately, both actually provide a diverse cast telling a story far more interesting than the one I had originally anticipated.

Roundabout Theatre Company's production of Theresa Rebeck's new play Bernhardt/Hamlet plays up the star power of actress Janet McTeer, who portrays the divine Sarah Bernhardt. See one of the great actors living play one of the greatest performers ever in what is probably the greatest role of all time! What more could you need?

Well, whether the play needs anything more, it gives us so very, very much more than that. For one thing, the supporting cast of Bernhardt's production of Hamlet is led by the great actor Constant Coquelin, played by Dylan Baker. Coquelin is more than willing to allow Berhardt to take center stage, despite the fact that he himself has played the role of Hamlet numerous times in the provinces.

Today, Coquelin is most famous for originating the title role in Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac, and Rostand himself appears in Bernhardt/Hamlet, played by Jason Butler Harner. Rostand is working on a new play, but Bernhardt's antics keep interrupting his writing. The audience can probably guess that the interrupted masterpiece is Cyrano, and Rebeck gives us a duel between two great artists, Berhardt trying to give a great performance, and Rostand trying to write a great play, both of them in the shadow of the great Shakespeare, who looms in the background like the ghost of Hamlet's father.

As if that weren't enough artists for one play, Rebeck also introduces us to the Czech painter and theatre poster designer Alphonse Mucha, played by Matthew Saldivar. Mucha is deservedly famous for his Art Nouveau posters featuring Bernhardt, and his poster for Hamlet was one of his most iconic creations. Perhaps the most memorable performance in the play, however, is by Ito Aghayere, who plays Rostand's wife Rosamond. The historical Rosemonde Gérard has come to be known as a rather second-rate poet in spite of her fame in her own lifetime, and Rebeck turns her into a portrait of a woman determined to make sure others create great art even if she cannot create it herself.

After being delighted by Bernhardt/Hamlet, I went with a little bit of trepidation to New York Theatre Workshop to see Heidi Schreck's new play What the Constitution Means to Me. I loved Schreck's Creature and There Are No More Big Secrets, but the last play I saw at NYTW was an unimaginative piece of garbage, so I was rather afraid I would be disappointed. Fortunately, I was not. Though Schreck's latest work doesn't have the supernatural elements of some of her earlier pieces, it is filled with a magical theatricality that gives it a similar air of the uncanny.

What the Constitution Means to Me is inspired by Schreck's experience as a teenager traveling to various towns to enter contests by the Veterans of Foreign Wars in which high school students gave speeches about the U.S. Constitution. Schreck's mother was a debate coach, and she created a bit of a racket for her daughter, driving large distances so she could enter what were supposed to be regional competitions for scholarship money. It worked, and Schreck was able to pay for her college education with her winnings.

This all sounds like a set-up for a one-woman show, but again, the play provides us with something much more unexpected, and altogether delightful. Schreck is accompanied onstage by actor Mike Iveson, who plays a VFW moderator giving her warning signs when she approaches her time limit and ringing a bell at the end of sections of her speech. Later, Iveson speaks directly to the audience not as a character, but as himself, as Schreck does throughout the piece. Both speak from the heart about not just the troubled history of our nation, but their own troubled personal histories, emphasizing how the personal and the political intersect.

The third performer in the show is a high-school debater, played on alternate nights by Rosdely Ciprain and Thursday Williams. I saw Williams, who charmingly won over the audience, and not surprisingly beat Schreck hands-down in the debate at the end of the show. Get your tickets now. Both Bernhardt/Hamlet and What the Constitution Means to Me are well worth seeing.