Theater Reviews: In Late Summer, New Yorkers Saw Some Giggle-Inducing “Paranormal Activity,” a Jealous King in “The Winter’s Tale,” a Group of Friends Facing a “Disruption” With AI, and Chekhov Through the Prism of “The Real Ivanov”

Paranormal Activity (c) Matthew Murphy

Broadway: Paranormal Activity 
At the August Wilson Theatre 

It is serendipitous that Paranormal Activity, the first Broadway play ever based on a horror film franchise, is playing at the August Wilson Theatre. First of all, Wilson’s famous 10-play cycle is full of supernatural spirits in post-slavery 20th century America, but the theater was also the host of one of the most infamous horror movie adaptations for Broadway, with 1988’s musical version of Carrie (“God has seen your sinning, just beginning…”). Since then, there have been many attempts to reinvent spookiness from the big screen to the Great White Way, including intellectual horror in the plays of Conor McPherson (Shining City still has my favorite scare moment on Broadway) and recent productions like Stranger Things: The First Shadow and Grey House. The author of the latter, Levi Holloway, wrote Paranormal Activity, which is less an adaptation than in the spirit of. Gone is the hook of showing the spooky happenings on video as the lead couple sleeps. Now we’re following a new couple, James and Lou (Travis A. Knight and Cher Alvarez), recently married, and newly transplanted to suburban England for a fresh start, mainly for Lou’s mental health. But from the beginning, Fly Davis’ beautifully dilapidated two-level, old house does the heavy lifting on the portentous scale that audience members hoping to get jump-scared are looking for. And jump-scares the play does.

Film Reviews: Fans of Green Day Will Enjoy “Nimrods,” a Road Trip Love Letter to Punk Rock, While in “The Last House” a Family Only Has Each Other as the World Ends

Nimrods (c) Inaugural Entertainment

Film: Nimrods 
In Cinemas 

Up-and-coming actor Mason Thames has fought dragons (and then befriended them) in How to Train Your Dragon and a serial killer in Black Phone, but his biggest challenge in his young film career has to be portraying a teen believing that Green Day wants his band, Analog Dogs, to play a concert with them, on New Year’s Eve in Nimrods. It seems in the world of the film that it’s a given that this teen would believe this crazy offer, so how much you go with it will determine your enjoyment of this fun hangout. The hurdles for Tommy (Thames) to overcome are that he’s underage (his mom, played by Jenna Fischer, expressly forbids it) and he also doesn’t have any way to get to California from Missouri with less than $30 to his name. His bandmates are his high-school best friend, bassist Chad (Kylr Coffman), and his high school “can barely stand him but he can play the drums” Fred (Ryan Foust). Their road trip starts with a stolen car and an emergency-only credit card, and from there we get run-ins with all kinds of characters, including a kindly bar owner (Angela Kinsey), a fellow aspiring singer (McKenna Grace) and a very (very!) strange motel owner (Fred Arminsen). But this is all played with a healthy dose of can-do attitude and a smart screenplay by Lee Kirk (with a story assist by the Green Day band members themselves: Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool) so even though every plot point can be predicted a mile away, it is still an enjoyable ride. Thames is a cool but clueless everyman with an impossible dream while the goofy Coffman and self-serious Foust give ample comedy support in a Superbad kinda way. There’s also Keen Ruffalo, son of Mark, as Tommy’s older brother Wayne, who instigates the whole plot and has a nice emotional moment at the end of the film. To say that Green Day does show up is barely a spoiler, but the concert scenes add a satisfying romp for fans of the band, road-trip movies and those American Idiots who refuse to give up on their dreams. 

Theater Review: Thirty-Years Later, in a Bizarro Political Landscape, This “American Daughter” Revival Is Strangely Nostalgic; A Footballer Play Needs Less Banter and More “Pass”-ing; Cat Cohen’s “Broad Strokes” Has Funny Thoughts, As Almost-Death Becomes Her

An American Daughter (c) Joan Marcus

Theater: An American Daughter 
At The Pershing Square Signature Center 

The downside of having a QR Code instead of a Playbill is that essential information is now not readily accessible to theatergoers. For the first New York revival of Wendy Wasserstein’s An American Daughter, which premiered on Broadway in the 1997 with the great Kate Nelligan in the title role, I was wondering if director Sarna Lapine would update the play to modern day MAGA or keep it in the 90s where the biggest scandal was Nannygate, in which President Bill Clinton had to withdraw two female nominees for attorney general because one didn’t pay social security tax for her nanny and the other had hired an illegal alien for hers. Even though set designer Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’ upscale Georgetown living room is gorgeous, its timeless design doesn’t give us any clues. The first clue actually comes from the radio that’s playing Ringo Starr’s version of “You’re Sixteen,” a now looked down-upon song about a man professing his love for an underaged girl, with Lyssa Dent Hughes (Jean Lichty) unironically singing along. We are definitely in 1997. Lyssa is the current nominee for surgeon general, where she hopes to promote women-specific health care. The two solid rocks in her life are her shaggy dog of a husband Walter (Robert Sean Leonard) and her best friend Judith (Montego Glover), who is not only a doctor, but one of the few black Jews at her synagogue. Then there are the young whippersnappers (who today would be political vlogger influencers) with typical Wasserstein Charles Dickens-type names: Quincy Quince (Carmen Zilles), a feminist essayist with aspirations of grandeur, and Timber Tucker (Chris Ghaffari), a political reporter doing a piece on Lyssa. They all end up at a brunch where the most unbelievable character of a play, Walter’s friend named (sigh!) Morrow McCarthy (Ryan Spahn), a conservative, pro-life, gay newspaper columnist willingly and with seeming malice, accuses Lyssa that she, using her busy upper-class life as an alibi, willingly ignored a jury summons. And what was just a throwaway conversation bon mot becomes the current news cycle’s hot gotcha moment that threatens to derail her nomination.