Jenny Lyn Bader’s Mrs. Stern Wanders the Prussian State Library is an intellectually stimulating and profoundly moving historical drama currently running at 59E59 Theaters. Directed by Ari Laura Kreith, and inspired by real events, the play is a compelling portrait of a young Gestapo officer who arrests a graduate student suspected of illegal research.
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.
Scott Elmegreen and Drew Fornarola’s lively satiric musical Ghost of John McCain has a throw-anything-at-the-wall feel to it, but it’s apt: the action takes place inside the mind of President Donald Trump between Aug. 25, 2018 (the date of John McCain’s death) and Jan. 6, 2021. Given the attention span of the ex-President, it’s no wonder that events in his mind carom around like billiard balls.
Max Wolf Friedlich packs a boomer–Gen Z clash, thoughts about modern technology, gender politics, liberals’ self-flagellation, the belligerent anxiety that’s become our national character, and a whopper of a twist into the 85-minute run time of Job, his first play produced Off Broadway. Also making her Off-Broadway debut with Job is actress Sydney Lemmon, granddaughter of movie legend Jack, recently seen opposite Cate Blanchett in Tár and opposite the venomous Roy clan on Succession—where her Job costar, Peter Friedman, had a recurring role.
Shortly after launching into his solo show Sugar Daddy, Sam Morrison talks about being mugged. The thief, armed with a gun, demanded his cell phone, and Morrison resisted because it had pictures of his late lover Jonathan on it. “I know we just met,” Morrison tells his audience, “but I think we can all agree that was off-brand.” (It’s clear from the audience’s ebullience that they know perfectly well what his brand is. The mostly young crowd in fleeces and pullovers and trainers have been boisterously waiting for him, even drowning out the pre-show music.) “I’m an anxious, asthmatic, gay, diabetic Jew,” explains the comedian. “We’re not known to excel in moments of crisis.”
You may remember Soho Playhouse before the pandemic. Located in an antebellum row house just off Sixth Avenue, it often featured solo and Fringe Festival plays in its careworn mainstage theater or cabaret downstairs, its stairwell adorned with framed posters of shows that had played there.
The promise of better living through chemistry is put to the acid test in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, a sincere, occasionally scary, and often jovial adaptation of the classic 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson tale. The play won the 2018 Fringe Encore Series Outstanding Production Award and now returns to the Soho Playhouse for a six-week victory lap.
James and Jamesy in the Dark is an extraordinary piece of theater that fits no mold but its own. It draws on many sources—or pays homage to them—but it is a unique, thought-provoking delight. Two gifted physical performers (in whiteface and dressed top-to-toe in gray outfits, including gloves) embody the title characters. Eventually, the audience comes to recognize the taller one as Aaron Malkin’s more phlegmatic James and the shorter, more emotionally fragile one as Alastair Knowles’s Jamesy.
The playful title Signal Failure refers, on the one hand, to a subway signal and, on the other, to signals between Brian and Lorna, a young couple who connect through their dogged observations of people in the London Underground, aka the "Tube" (they’re British and the show comes from the Edinburgh Festival), and then face some bumpy times.
Structured as a series of monologues, sometimes interlocking, from two lonely people, and then eventually incorporating scenes between them, as they connect for sex and their common interest, Signal Failure relies for its charm and romanticism on the immense charm of its two stars. Sasha Ellen, who plays Lorna with a matter-of-fact optimism and a touch of daffiness, also wrote the piece. Her opposite, Spenser Cowan, plays Brian, who begins their story, relating his hobby of watching men and women on the Tube.
“There’s a bloke sitting opposite me. About my age,” says Brian. “In a suit that makes him look small. Scruffy. He majorly oversteps the initial 10-second window. Not just that, but he does it with a girl I wouldn’t even open that window with. She stares intently at her iPad but stops moving her hand. She’s frozen but she doesn’t look up.” She knows she’s being watched, of course.
Brian’s hobby eventually becomes more dogged, as he follows the couples he sees connecting on the Tube, noticing when they leave together and whether they are wearing the same clothing on the following day. “I create a basic structure and watch my stats improve,” he says. It turns out that his own life is empty, through no fault of his own, and he is just trying to fill it.
One day, though, while reading the newspaper, “I find a column with what seems to be personal ads. But when I look closer is actually people texting in about other people they’ve seen on the train. People they’ve liked the look of. Asking them to get in touch. Like an Underground dating agency in a newspaper column. Each text smacks of hope desperation. Most of the messages are generic. ‘To the pretty girl who smiled at me in a crowded carriage’ kind of messages.”
For her part, Lorna becomes clued in to the ads when she tries to comfort a friend, Maddy. “She tells me that she read something that she was convinced was for her. She hands me the newspaper, folded open on a page towards the back. I don’t get it at first but then it clicks. All these people writing in to the paper. Trying to get in touch with someone they glimpsed on the train. It’s quite a cool idea in theory. I try to talk to Maddy, but she’s distraught and I’m a stranger. She wipes her eyes and leaves. I sit in the bathroom for a bit and read the other posts. They are pretty varied in sincerity and tone. Ranging from ‘Yo 2 da curvy blond’ to ‘I believe we are meant to be together.’ ”
Eventually Brian and Lorna meet and sort of click. They make rookie mistakes. Some of the best scenes are these lurching, nuanced ones as they both hang in for the long haul to happiness. As with all romance, eventually their lonely and unhappy pasts trickle out and cause problems. They’re a bit contrived, but the actors are persuasive. (It’s a wonder that Ellen’s first-date description of beams of light shooting out of her pelvis doesn’t scare him off.)
Although the drama is low-key, director Peter Darney keeps the focus on the remarkable chemistry between his actors. (The only set elements are two large wooden cubes and a platform that become table or bed.) Ellen and Cowan are endearing as they stumblingly come together. There’s playfulness from Lorna as she sends a near-naked Brian out to the kitchen as a signal to her roommates that she’s successfully had a night of passion. Meanwhile, a variety of emotions play on Brian’s face the morning after; and when he says, “I will call you, maybe,” it’s with an amusing ambivalence; he’s trying not to be vulnerable. Should he see this girl again or not?
Although Signal Failure may feel small, it carries the weight of truth and serves as an enjoyable calling card for two talented actors you’ll want to see again.
Signal Failure plays at the SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam St., through Nov. 16. Evening performances are at 7:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, 9:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday (with no performance on Nov. 6). Matinees are 3 p.m. Wednesday and Sunday, and 5 p.m. on Saturdays. For tickets, visit www.sohoplayhouse.com.
