Out of Focus

A Civil War Christmas: A fascinating, serious and fun pageant for the ages

The Playbill for Paula Vogel’s A Civil War Christmas -- which opened Tuesday at New York Theater Workshop – contains a “production history” timeline starting with the November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln. The twelfth and final item dated “October-November 2012” notes the production’s rehearsal start, the arrival of Hurricane Sandy and NYTW’s loss of power, and the reelection of President Obama.

But the most important item on this timeline seems to be the fourth: “December 1987 – Paula Vogel promises to honor her dying brother Carl’s request to teach the children in the family about America’s history.” Fifteen years later, Vogel’s history lesson arrives in New York in utterly unexpected and spectacular fashion: akin to a jukebox musical featuring 19th century folk songs, hymns and Christmas carols, A Civil War Christmas plays with almost every theatrical convention imaginable. The end result is a fascinating and wonderful examination of our country’s history through the lens of multiple story-threads on one solitary night – the last Christmas to occur during the Civil War.

Vogel’s Christmas pageant does not attempt to teach the history of Civil War America through those iconic battles and events we learn about in elementary school. Rather, utilizing multiple interweaving and relatively simple storylines occurring in and around Washington D.C. as well as the war’s battlefields, Vogel attempts to give us a general sense of living in this time, in these places, during this turmoil. The 13-year-old southern boy who wants to go fight the Yankees is as vital to this story as President and Mrs. Lincoln.

The runaway slave and her young daughter, so spooked by the rumors of slave chasers, they separate thinking they’ll be safer but actually putting them on a path towards tragedy; or the dying Jewish soldier who just wants another visit from Walt Whitman and has never heard the song “Silent Night” before – Vogel uses stories like these and many others to piece together the experiences of a weary nation searching for peace and vengeance. The musical element enhances the drama and emotion, and even though the accompaniment rarely involves more than one or two instruments and there are certainly no big production numbers, Vogel’s use of – and, in some cases, alterations to – the chosen songs is the propellant that makes A Civil War Musical truly soar.

Vogel is clearly at play and having fun with this piece. She utilizes different narrative techniques throughout, sometimes with characters breaking the fourth wall, providing third person narration directly to the audience and creating the sensation of listening to someone read a fable; and just as quickly, the scene will shift, placing itself fully behind that proscenium separation with a more natural theatrical division between performers and audience. Characters break into song, but it never feels forced or awkward; she moves back-and-forth between light-hearted comedy and tense drama frequently and often when the audience may not expect it. And even as the overall number of stories told and frequent narrative shifts keep growing, she never complicates matters so much that the show becomes difficult to follow.

Checkers: Nixon's most likable moment played out less-favorably

I guess I just expected so much more. The story behind the story of Richard Nixon’s infamous “Checkers” speech; Terry Kinney in the director’s chair and the very talented Anthony LaPaglia and Kathryn Erbe doing the majority of the heavy lifting on stage; a script by the politically astute Douglas McGrath, who gained some satire chops while writing for SNL and received an Oscar nomination for co-writing Bullets Over Broadway with Woody Allen and has directed his own filmed adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and had the misfortune of bringing his (arguably better) Truman Capote movie to the screen second.

Missing from McGrath’s approved bio and credits in the program is theater, and his background with sketch comedy and multiple-short scenes edited together sticks out like a sore thumb throughout the entirety of Checkers, which closed today at the Vineyard Theater. McGrath and Kinney tell the story through one long flashback, framed by two scenes in 1966 focused on Nixon (LaPaglia) deciding to run for president in 1968, against the wishes of his wife Pat (Erbe).

The majority of the play occurs during the 1952 presidential campaign. Dwight Eisenhower chose Nixon as his running mate, however, his campaign was surprised by rumors of a secret (and potentially illegal) slush fund operated by Tricky Dick. McGrath doesn’t provide any real explanation for why Eisenhower ever chose Nixon, but he does make a point of establishing that Ike’s campaign managers and the majority of the Republican establishment is not too fond of the Quaker from California.

When this scandal erupts, Eisenhower must decide whether to drop his running mate from the ticket, and eventually, the campaign forces Nixon to make a 30 minute televised speech explaining the truth behind any fund (that it didn’t exist) and why he did nothing wrong. With that speech, Nixon saved himself and helped seal the deal for Eisenhower. The part most of the audience remembered most distinctly, however, was the few sentences describing the puppy a supporter had sent to him and that his daughter Julie had named Checkers. Suddenly, anyone accusing Nixon of doing something improper was trying to take a puppy away from a little girl, and over 99% of those who chose to call or send a telegram to the Republican National Committee supported the candidacy of the potential Veep On this night, television saved Nixon; ironic, considering how it betrayed him just eight years later running against JFK.

The Checkers speech was a seminal moment in modern American political history. To McGrath’s Nixon, it was his darkest hour. That is not my interpretation of the play, but rather the statement Nixon utters in order to throw the audience from the opening scene back in time 14 years. I would have been much more satisfied had Wayne and Garth simply walked onto the stage waving their arms back-and-forth and up-and-down while making that “do-do-do-do, do-do-do-do” sound.

Sorry: The Apple Family has nothing to apologize for

In the program to his new play Sorry writer-director Richard Nelson writes, “It is my hope that these plays are about the need to talk, the need to listen, the need for theatre, and, I now add, the need to be in the same room together.”

The immediacy of theater sets it apart from the other storytelling- and performance-based arts like film and television. Every show is different, if only in minute ways. Every performance is ephemeral, specific to that moment in time and that audience. Once it’s over, it’s gone.

I have arrived late to the “Apple Family Plays.” Sorry (which The Public Theater has extended through this Sunday, Dec. 2) is the third of a fascinating four-play experiment-in-progress. Even without seeing the first two installments -- That Hopey Changey Thing and Sweet and Sad -- (as I haven’t), I enthusiastically endorse catching this show before it actually closes. Each play presents a peak through a window into the lives of one family on a day of national significance. That important date matches the play’s official opening performance. In the case of Sorry, the audience spends just shy of two hours with the Apple siblings and their uncle Benjamin in the early morning of Election Day 2012, and therefore, the play opened on Nov. 6 as well.

I don’t know how true this was for the first two plays, but Nelson obviously continued changing the script of Sorry all the way up to opening night. At least a few audiences saw this PublicLab production in previews (although I believe it’s schedule was altered due to Hurricane Sandy), but the play just as obviously becomes frozen in time as of that opening night.

The Whale: Theater at its best as Playwrights Horizons does it again

I don’t casually give standing ovations. Generally, I remain perfectly content to clap from my seat, even if I thoroughly enjoyed the just completed work. However, upon the final blackout of The Whale, I leapt to my feet to acknowledge the brilliant and award-worthy performance of Shuler Hensley, and to an even greater degree, the tremendous script from playwright Samuel D. Hunter. The Whale -- now playing at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater, Playwrights Horizons’s smaller, second stage -- is simply one of the best new plays I’ve seen in years. Period.

I never expected to type that sentence. I was more prepared for an evening of obvious metaphor from a play that focuses on a 600 lb. shut-in and bears the title “The Whale.” Yet I have not seen such a captivating and well-constructed play in quite some time; a storyline as lean as its main character is not; and a complete set of five dynamic multi-dimensional characters with complex relationships that all work on multiple levels. Led by director Davis McCallum’s tight staging, The Whale provides a nuanced and fully-formed exploration of love, shame, regret, self-destruction, religious guilt, reconciliation, redemption, control and longing.

Hensley’s Charlie began eating himself into morbid obesity after his partner Alan passed away. While we’re never told precisely how Alan died, the implication is that he essentially starved himself to death, making Charlie’s mode of self-destruction that much more compelling. Charlie now works nonstop as an online essay tutor and never leaves his cluttered apartment in northern Idaho. Charlie knows he has little time left due to regular bouts of debilitating chest pain and his increasing difficulty breathing. His only friend Liz (Cassie Beck) – a nurse who takes care of him – berates Charlie for not letting her take him to the hospital while simultaneously enabling his slow suicide by providing him with buckets of fried chicken and meatball subs.

Wild With Happy: More wild, less happy, looking for the proper balance

Oh, how I would love to be happy all the time! Wouldn't that be wonderful? For that very experience, vacationers spend thousands of dollars to visit the happiest place on Earth, Disney World. In so many ways, they leave the real world to enter an entirely different one, filled with multiple resorts, attractions, countries, malls and, yes, the Magic Kingdom, where every night is New Year’s Eve and ends with fireworks.

Yet Disney World is an illusion, as all those same vacationers discover when they realize just how many thousands they spent for four days and three nights hotel, food, park admission, airfare and all the other requirements to divorce themselves from life in order to become intimate with Mickey. Disney World is the fantasy life we can buy; it is an escape from the heartache, failure, sadness and loss we face in our daily real lives. This conflict between the fanciful dreamer and the cynical realist lies at the heart of The Public Theater’s current production Wild With Happy.

Colman Domingo’s play focuses on Gil, a 40-year-old gay struggling actor with a degree in English literature from Yale who lives in New York, slightly estranged from mother. He calls her by her first name, Adelaide. After a short prologue during which Gil (also played by Domingo) explains why he has renounced church, we learn that Adelaide has died, somewhat (but not 100%) unexpectedly. The rest of the show focuses on Gil’s attempts to deal (or, more accurately, not deal) with this loss.

MISCELLANEOUS MISCELLANY: WEEKEND NOTES BIG ON THEATRE

I'm having motivational issues, so instead of motivating myself, I think I'll try to motivate anyone who happens by here wondering, "Hmm, what's good in New York that I may not know about this weekend." I'm sure I'm the only person with a blog doing that, so it should come in quite handy.

• Closing this Sunday is The Black Eyed by Betty Shameih. I just caught the show on Tuesday, and although I found the show somewhat uneven with a bit too much preachy statement making here and there, there is more than enough in Shameih's writing and a couple of the performances to recommend catching it. The show looks at four Palestinian women who meet in Limbo, all looking for men in their personal histories who they believe might be behind a secret door with all the other "martyrs." One woman is Delilah (as in "Samson and ..."); also there is Tamam, who suffered brutality at the hands of Crusaders; and then two from the modern era: Aiesha, who grew-up in a Palestinian refugee camp and became a suicide bomber, and a woman known only as The Architect, a Palestinian-American killed on one of the 9/11 flights. Jeanine Serralles' performance as The Architect is reason enough to sit through The Black Eyed mostly brisk 85-odd minutes. Her character begins mostly in the background, but when she takes command of the stage near the end, she is absolutely tremendous, filled with nervous energy and using her movement and voice to absolutely captivate the audience. For me, this was important because while I also enjoyed Emily Swallow as Delilah, I found Lameece Issaq and especially Aysan Celik (as Tamam and Aiesha, respectively) mediocre at best. The play begins and roughly ends with the words "Unanswered questions. Unquestioned answers." Occasionally, Shameih hits us over the head with this theme, but her examinations of violence, faith, violence in the name of faith, female identity and power (or lack of), U.S. imperialism. the Palesitnian struggle combined with diverse opinions about the best way to solve it -- depicted most specifically between Aiesha and The Architect -- are generally fascinating and well-handled. Only when Shameih becomes a bit too polemical and do the lines sound like parts of a speech from a protest rally do things get tedious, but not so much to completely undermine the show. If you can get to New York Theater Workshop in the East Village and in to see it (my performance on Tuesday was sold out), it would be well worth your time.
  

• Frost/Nixon, a fascinating look at the behind-the-scenes goings-on of David Frost's famous interview with Richard Nixon in 1977, also closes on Sunday. Written by Peter Morgan (also screenwriter of The Queen and The Last King of Scotland), the show brought Frank Langella a very-well-deserved Tony Award for his moving, sympathetic and riveting portrayal of the only American president to ever resign from office. The play is fascinating not because of how it recreates segments of these very famous interviews, but rather due to its incisive examination of not only a tragic plummet from power into -- and then eventually, even sadder, out of -- self-delusion as well as, and even more impressively, a wonderful look at the power of television. In 1977, a full 17 years after the Kennedy/Nixon televised debate that had its own impact on that presidential election, the true reach and influence of television as a forum and its strength and differences from older media such as radio and newspapers was still not fully recognized. For a piece of theater to do such a great job showing it is marvelous. Four performances left: get there if you can. And if you can't, oh well ... Ron Howard will be directing Langella and Michael Sheen (starring in the show as Frost) in a feature version for next year. I'm not sure whether that's necessarily a good thing, though.