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||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| (c) Carol Rosegg
Theater: ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||
At Vineyard Theatre
Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Eisa Davis’ latest play with the unique title of ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| defies categorizing. It is definitely a play, but the four actresses that make up the cast all sing and/or play instruments for almost half the runtime. There is a narrative arc, but the production, as skillfully directed by Pam McKinnon, is more interested in moments rather than the whole. The play takes place at a summer music program in the San Francisco Bay Area in which we follow the ||: Girls :||:, who are all in high school focusing on their :||: Music :||. The most intense of them is singer Fax (Hillary Fisher). She loves the rules of classical music and is most lost when asked to improvise, or in the play’s lingo, allow :||: Chance :||: to take over. More adept at :||: Chance :||: is the school resident outsider and drummer, Margot (Naomi Latta), who is looking for meaning in her mostly unsupervised life, with music being her focus now. Pianist Rile (Yeena Sung) is the most typical teenager, sometimes acting like a mean girl, which may be her defense for wanting to find her tribe. Rounding out the cast is Clementine (Gianna DiGregorio Rivera), who plays a lot of instruments and doesn’t seem too bothered by the teenage angst around her. There are a lot of themes swirling around Davis’ play (lost and found parents, earth-shaking life changes, sexuality, eating disorders, suicidal thoughts), but they take a back seat to when the three elements of the title finally find its harmony in the play’s most satisfying scene. But this happens halfway through and nothing in its second half matches the synergy of that moment. All the actors feel natural and vulnerable, but how newcomer Latta exudes Margot’s open wound personality is astonishing and heartbreaking. Davis, whose next project is a musical with Lin-Manuel Miranda, throws a lot at us during the play’s runtime, giving the audience the choice of what is important to us in these character’s stories (with only a late play “father” subplot being the least earned and far-fetched). Still, this is a very special evening of story, song and humanity.
Small (c) Valerie Terranova
Theater: Small
At the Pershing Square Signature Center
If by chance, you encountered the first ten minutes of Robert Montano’s without sound, you will no doubt believe that his solo show, Small, is about his career as a Broadway dancer. Montano’s Energizer-bunny personality is bouncy, and he is obviously familiar with body storytelling. And while he will get to his career as a performer, he starts the play with an introduction to his life in Long Island with his family before getting to the meat of Montano’s play as an incredibly small kid (with a huge toothy smile), whose dream was to be a horse racing jockey. His first visit to Belmont Park was with his religious mother, who doesn’t want to admit it but was there to hopefully (through prayer, of course) win enough money to buy tiles for the house. But the pre-teen Bobby saw how much adoration and respect the jockeys got, especially one also named Robert, a family friend and Bobby’s first mentor. While Montano exudes an easygoing and goofy personality, especially when he embodies the crazy cast of characters he encounters on the road to his first race at age 14, his autobiographical play is very serious and intense as Bobby, who goes through a growth spurt around this same time, becomes obsessed with keeping his weight down. While he promises the senior Robert that he would never do anything illegal, Bobby can’t seem to lose weight by traditional diet, exercise and sauna, so he turns to drugs and self-harm. And while his story and the choices he made are somewhat hard to sit through, Montano, with Jessi D. Hill’s sensitive direction, is a dynamic and engaging performer, in an impressive tour de force evening. Thankfully, if you know Montano as an actor, he does transition from jockey to dancer in the show’s last fifteen minutes, which then provides a happy ending to the trials and tribulations before it. The production, which was first seen a few years ago at 59E59, produced by Penguin Rep as they do it, is well-produced here with an evocative set by Christopher and Justin Swader, smart lighting by Jamie Roderick and special mention has to go to sound designer by Brian Ronan, who helps to create the mood of the race track most effectively.
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Celebrity Autobiography (c) Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
Broadway: Celebrity Autobiography
At the Shubert Theatre
You’d be forgiven if you go to Celebrity Autobiography in which celebrities read the autobiography of other celebrities, and two of the cast members are not readily recognizable. Don’t worry, because Eugene Pack and Dayle Reyfel are the creators of the show and have been with the show off-and-on since its inception (there are examples on YouTube from 16 years ago). Pack mostly stays out of the way of the bigger names, like in the cookbook and dining section, reading the dietary habits of Paul Anka, but Reyfel, a seasoned comedian, gets to milk every laugh, reading and twanging Dolly Parton’s words in the same skit. The celebrities that you do get are on a rotating basis on Broadway, depending on the night you go, but it seems the autobiographies being read are mostly the same. For my performance, I don’t believe anyone could inhabit the autobiography of Sandy the Dog from Annie as well as Emmy Award-winning actor Jeff Hiller. And comedian Scott Adsit has been reading the same passage by David Hasselhoff for a while, but it feels most appropriate for the show’s Broadway stint, as the Knight Rider star recounts his time as a Broadway star in Jekyll & Hyde, especially the duet of the two titled characters he has to sing by himself. Mario Cantone gets to bring out his Fire Island parlor trick impressions of Carol Channing, but especially Liza (with a Z) as part of the segment by Geraldo Rivera (read with all seriousness by TCM host Ben Mankiewicz), in which their flirtation lasts many years. Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer and Nia Vardalos have hysterical moments as well, but of course the two who steal the show every time they are on stage are veteran actresses Jackie Hoffman and Andrea Martin. The show’s certainly not your usual Broadway fare, but as a summer diversion with some standout actors (upcoming guests include Jason Alexander, Matthew Broderick, Katie Couric and Molly Shannon among others), Celebrity Autobiography is probably the best comedy show currently playing in New York City.
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