Written by A.R. Gurney; directed by Jim Simpson
Closes June 7, 2015
Signature Theatre, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
signaturetheatre.org
Tuesdays at Tesco's
Written by Emmanuel Darley; translated/adapted by Mathew Hurt & Sarah Vermande
Directed by Simon Stokes
Closes June 7, 2015
59 E 59 Theatres, 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY
britsoffbroadway.com
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| Kristine Nielsen and Carolyn McCormick in What I Did Last Summer (photo: Joan Marcus) |
Summer's autobiographical look back at a teenage boy’s artistic—and, to a lesser extent, sexual—awakening doesn’t linger in the memory as did Family Furniture’s quiet exploration of a family's fraught relationships. Gurney’s odd decision to break the fourth wall and have his characters talk directly to the audience—our hero Charlie, his mother Grace, his Canadian friend Ted and his older sister Elsie all announce that they are the play's lead character—also undercuts his own elegant but incisive dissection of the upper crust.
Director Jim Simpson furthers the alienation effect by projecting stage directions and dialogue onto the back wall, which the characters often refer to (garnering cheap laughs), and having talented drummer Dan Weiner pound away throughout the play, needlessly punctuating jokes or one-liners with rim-shots: that drumming was a big part of two Oscar-winning movies, Birdman and Whiplash, no doubt contributed to this idea. These ill-fated directorial tricks drag Gurney down from his usual civility into the jokily experimental and inconsequential.
For those like me who grew up in Buffalo, there's nostalgia in hearing about summer vacations on Lake Erie and the roller coaster on the water’s edge called The Cyclone (it was actually The Comet at Crystal Beach). But despite an endearing cast—even Kristine Nielsen, who plays Anna, the "crazy lady" of the neighborhood who befriends and teaches Charlie about art, tones down her signature overacting—What I Did Last Summer is little more than a pleasant idyll.
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| Simon Callow in Tuesdays at Tesco's (photo: Carol Rosegg) |
The acting tour de force of Simon Callow in Tuesdays at Tesco’s—part of this season’s Brits Off Broadway Festival—is theater at its most sublime. As Pauline—the middle-aged transgender daughter of an elderly man whose wife recently died, visiting his home once a week to tidy up, do laundry and take him to the local supermarket to stock up on groceries, hence the title—Callow gives an exceptionally lively portrayal that has no hint of the stage ham that might afflict many a lesser actor.
For this 70-minute monologue, Callow’s Pauline enters dressed in a wrinkled blouse and skirt, wearing a wig, makeup and high heels, speaking in that unmistakably mellifluous voice that allows the dialogue, however clunky, to take flight, whether speaking in Pauline's carefully cultivated accent or the father's more gutteral, working-class one.
But this is not simply a drag show. Callow gets straight to the heart of Pauline—nee Paul, which his father still calls her in anger and sadness—with a rich, wondrously humane portrayal (any allusions to Caitlyn Jenner are coincidental) that makes the play itself seem substantial. Written by Frenchman Emmanuel Darley, and translated and adapted by Mathew Hurt and Sarah Vermande, Tuesdays skims the surface of Pauline’s psyche—and ends with a desperate attempt to shock—while director Simon Stokes' abstract staging (complete with a piano player who tickles the ivories to punctuate scenes, as Callow does a few amusingly incongruous jigs) for the most part keeps out of Callow's way. That's the smart thing to do.
What I Did Last Summer
Signature Theatre, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
signaturetheatre.org
Tuesdays at Tesco's
59 E 59 Theatres, 59 East 59th Street, New York, NY
britsoffbroadway.com
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