Reviews: Teens Born With Empathy Try to Interpret Religion in “The Saviors” and Greek Mythology is On a Box Office Roll With “Hadestown: The Musical”

The Saviors (c) Ahron R. Foster

Theater: The Saviors 
At Atlantic Theater Company

The minute you walk into the Linda Gross Theater, it’s sort of a shock to see a realistic sanctuary of a church (courtesy of set designer David Zinn), since the theater used to be St. Peter’s Episcopal Church when it was built in 1854 with a huge crucifix towering over the audience, an altar in the center of the stage, a board with hymn numbers to be sung on the left and a door leading outside to the right. Thankfully, credit playwright Bubba Weiler for having most of the action of The Saviors happen on the sides and not the altar itself. Instead of focusing on the church itself, we watch the days in and days out of two altar boys after mass as they clean up and do their chores. Michael (Ivan Howe), the younger but more gregarious of the two, starts the play conflicted as to what his confirmation name should be. Paul (Julius Rinzel) doesn’t seem to have put much thought into his, so when Michael suggests they take each other’s name, it’s a clue to not only the faith of the best friends, but their relationship as well. Despite this Call Me By Your Name moment, the play is less about sexual awakening (although there is some) and more about religious faith. Paul, like a certain nun in a Pulitzer Prize-winning play, tries to explain to Michael that he has Doubts. This sort of rocks Michael’s world as he always assumed he and Paul would do everything together, including going to the nearby Catholic high school. But Paul doesn’t want to traverse the same path most of the people in this small town seem to be on and explore the outside world instead. 

Film Reviews: A Welcome Return of Gregg Araki and He “Wants Your Sex,” “Motor City” Is the Loudest and Most Violent Silent-ish Film, “The Odyssey” Is Another Christopher Nolan Portrait of a Man Angering the Gods and “Heartstopper Forever” Gives Charlie and Nick a Proper Gay Farewell

I Want Your Sex (c) Black Bear Pictures

Film: I Want Your Sex 
In Cinemas on July 31 

I didn’t know I missed director Gregg Araki’s unique voice and vision until I saw his first film in over 12 years, the quirky comedy, I Want Your Sex, which premiered at Sundance In January, with its only misstep being its risqué title - overkill if you know Araki’s filmography (Mysterious Skin, The Doom Generation). The film’s big surprise is actor Cooper Hoffman, who has done good work so far (The Long Walk, Saturday Night), but here he is really embracing the goofiness of his character, Elliot, a shaggy and aimless but easygoing guy who finds himself first as an intern to provocative visual artist Erika Tracy (Olivia Wilde) and then as her sexual partner. Araki has brought something out of Hoffman, who has never let loose like he does here, pointing towards the kind of symbiotically rich relationship his father Philip Seymour Hoffman had with visionary directors like Todd Solondz and Charlie Kauffman. Wilde is also having a ball as an artist that uses sex as her muse (I Want Your Sex and her other movie from this year, The Invite, have interchangeable titles that still work for both). Where the movie goes from here is part of the fun, so I’ll just say that Elliot gets into some outrageous situations (some with and without dildos), with ample support from Charli XCX as his couldn’t-care-less girlfriend, Margaret Cho and Johnny Knoxville as police detectives, Mason Gooding as his gay co-worker and seemingly his only friend and Daveed Diggs as Erika’s first-in-command. The one thing I couldn’t really figure out is the point of all these sometimes wild and sometimes tasteless shenanigans, not that there always need to be one for a comedy, but a more cohesive commentary about sexual autonomy could have provided added structural foundation. But it’s perfectly fine with just Greg Araki’s playful doodles, stylishly bright palette and some enjoyably campy set-pieces. 

Theater Reviews: Two Buzzy Women-Driven Theater Projects Open: “The Whoopi Monologues” Celebrate Goldberg (The Playwright) and There’s Only Murders in Palermo in the Entertaining “Giulia”

The Whoopi Monologues (c) Angela Marie Orellana

Theater: The Whoopi Monologues 
At Lincoln Center Theatre 

Director Whitney White has reconceived the theatrical work of Whoopi Goldberg and turned it into an enjoyable event for five black actresses to explore the diverse characters Goldberg wrote for herself and see them in a new way. Four of The Whoopi Monologues are from the comedian’s 1984 show supervised by director Mike Nichols, and the fifth is from her 2004 revival. The start of the performances is a variation on how the HBO special of her 1984 hit began in which Whoopi goes to the dressing room of each of the characters she’s going to portray to wish them good luck. We meet the five actresses as they dance their way onto the stage before entering their respective dressing rooms, with the wonderful Kara Young (Purpose) in an oversized men’s suit, kicking things up with Fontaine, a truth-telling junkie who serendipitously is transported from the mean streaks of New York to Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam. Next up is Dominique Fishback (Judas and the Black Messiah) as a little black girl with a white shirt on her head because she doesn’t like her natural hair or her brown eye color. Danielle Pinnock (TV's Ghosts) in a fun blue wig is a Jamaican curios-stand owner who talks about being hired by a rich man she calls “the old raisin” and her adventures in America. Then it’s Kerry Washington (Scandal) playing a beach-loving valley girl (but really considers herself a surfer chick, if you don’t mind) who tells about a flirtation with a cute guy at a party and the aftermath. The final monologue focuses on Lureen (Hell’s Kitchen’s Kecia Lewis), an older black woman going through menopause, fanning herself from a hot flash she describes as “Dick Cheney at a gay wedding hot.” 

Theater Review: A Walk on the Moon” Is an Old-Fashioned Musical With a Streak of 1960’s Radicalism; “Music City” Is a Good Ol’ Honky Tonk Joint; “Are You Now or Have You Ever Been” Is Today as Seen Through the Politics of Yesterday

A Walk on the Moon (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: A Walk on the Moon 
At the Laura Pels Theatre 

If you think the titular walk by Neil Armstrong on the moon in 1969 would lean heavily on the metaphor of change and breaking the status quo in the new musical, A Walk on the Moon, you don’t know the half of it. Based on the 1999 film, directed by Tony Goldwyn and starring Diane Lane and Viggo Mortensen, the musical, adapted by Pamela Gray on her film script, focuses on one Jewish family in the Catskills on that fateful summer-of-‘69 intersection between the moon landing and a certain musical festival in nearby Woodstock. The four couples who vacation together every summer are enjoying everything they always have, from the mahjong games to the knish parties. But something feels off for Pearl (Talia Suskauer), whose daughter Alison (Sophie Pollono) is turning 16, the same age she was when she got pregnant by her now husband, Marty (Max Chernin). Mother and daughter have an awakening when Pearl starts to flirt with the new blouse salesman (Sam Gravitte) making the rounds selling clothes with an unfortunate name, Walker, while Allison starts flirting with Timmy Chalamet wannabe musician Ross (Oscar Williams), as this newer generation is anti-war and pro-free love. There is a lot to enjoy about this modest Off-Broadway show, with the catchy, if slightly safe songs by AnnMarie Milazzo being quite likeable. Unfortunately, the adult love triangle never really feels dangerous or passionate, with a heavily symbolic tie-dyed tee doing all the heavy lifting for Pearl’s unfulfilled life (maybe if she chose The Feminine Mystique instead of On the Road for her summer read, she might have found her calling outside of her love life). Pollono has the better role as Alison, who starts out as a whiny teen but soon gets politically aware (thanks to her love of Joni Mitchell), gets the best of Milazzo’s songs and has real chemistry with Williams. Similar in tone to the musical version of The Bridges of Madison County, the protagonists of both make very pragmatic decisions, which here feel old-fashioned rather than of the times, which were indeed a changin’.