Kafkaesque!, a clever new musical comedy with book, music, and lyrics by James Harvey, draws together the life of Czech novelist Franz Kafka and his major (and one minor) works. The show opens with Kafka (Harvey, a talented composer and pianist) at the piano as he defines who he is: a writer whose work has had so much impact that he’s become an adjective. The opening song about “the evils of bureaucracy, modernity’s alienation, man’s talent for hypocrisy, neuroses and fixation!” showcases the main themes of Kafka’s work that are woven together in the musical.
The price of fame is at the heart of Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold On to Me Darling, a 2016 play that premiered at the Atlantic Theater Company, directed by Neil Pepe. In Pepe’s superbly cast revival, Adam Driver now plays the main character, Strings McCrane, a renowned but feckless country and western singer who enjoys casual romantic relationships but wants more.
Song and story teach us that what a child experiences on a trip to grandmother’s house can go one of two ways. There might be pumpkin pie after a voyage over the river and through the woods. Or, as with the central character in Robyne Parrish’s grim and haunting Tin Church, a nightmare awaits, big and bad as any wolf and capable of swallowing a body whole.
Around three-quarters of the way through Martha Pichey’s inchoate grief drama Ashes & Ink, Kathryn Erbe delivers a monologue that should open the play. It’s the only monologue in Ashes & Ink, and all the experiences that Erbe, as Molly, refers to in it predate the action in the play, so it would be more appropriate at the top of the show, to lay the scene. Coming so late, it just expresses thoughts and feelings the audience is already aware Molly has.
The Alchemist’s Veil, created, choreographed, and performed by dance artist Maureen Fleming, is a fascinating fusion of surreal movement poetry and spellbinding visuals, inspired by the paintings of renowned artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Part dance, part dream, part art appreciation, it’s altogether a showcase for Fleming, who is celebrating her 70th birthday this year and the 35th anniversary of her 1989 debut with La MaMa.
Arlene Hutton’s abortion-rights drama Blood of the Lamb arrives at an unusually timely moment. In the last few days NBC News has reported that maternal deaths in Texas increased 56% between 2019 and 2022, a period that includes the 2021 ban on abortion care in the state. Although Margot Bordelon says in her director’s note that the play began as a work of “speculative fiction,” the serendipity is a boon. The underlying story feels alarmingly real.
An evening of one-act plays, such as those in Brecht: Call and Respond, presents considerable challenges. Playwrights and actors must develop and sustain their characterizations quickly and intensely over a shorter period of time. The umbrella title for three works, Brecht: Call and Respond includes The Jewish Wife by Bertolt Brecht, Sunset Point by Arlene Hutton, and Self Help in the Anthropocene by Kristin Idaszak (the last two were commissioned by New Light Theater Company in 2019).
