What a cast of characters, places and time periods on Off Broadway stages this month! An elderly philosopher on trial in ancient Greece, women behaving like men in 11th-century Scotland, tenement dwellers torn between fear and hope in 1916 Ireland and a desperate narcissist housewife spreading her poison in the suburbs.
Green Card
Nico Santos, Susan Sarandon and Marin Ireland in Jesse Eisenberg’s “Happy Talk.” Ireland, the home health care worker, needs to get married.
HAPPY TALK
Let’s start with the movie-star vehicle. Susan Sarandon plays Lorraine, a strong-minded suburban wife, mother, daughter and amateur actress, in Jesse Eisenberg’s newest play, “Happy Talk.” Writing in The New York Times, Ben Brantley called Lorraine “another prime specimen” in Eisenberg’s “gallery of ugly Americans” — self-deceiving, passive-aggressive and so much more.
Much of what we need to know about Lorraine we learn from the people around her. Her ailing husband (Daniel Oreskes), who has MS, barely speaks to her. Her grown daughter (Tedra Millan) has cut off all contact and is moving with her boyfriend to Costa Rica. Her dying mother — never seen or heard from directly — is tended to by a warm-hearted live-in home health care worker, Ljuba, played by the excellent Marin Ireland with a Serbian accent.
Lorraine agrees to help Ljuba, who went through some devastating stuff back home and now really needs a Green Card marriage to continue her new life in America. Enter a fellow community theater type (Nico Santos), who wants to help and can definitely use the money. The problem for Ms. Sarandon’s character is that people simply won’t do what she wants them to — and they keep having ideas and plans of their own. It is very unfortunate that Lorraine learns thousands of dollars in cash are lying around in the house. Scott Elliott directed.
“Happy Talk,” Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, signaturetheatre.org. 1 hour 45 minutes (no intermission). Opened on May 16, 2019. Limited run. Closes on June 16, 2019.
Gossip Guys
A scene “Socrates,” set in Athens in 399 B.C., the year of the hphilosopher’s trial.
SOCRATES
The first scene of Tim Blake Nelson’s “Socrates” turned me off. A group of men are sitting together, lolling about in their togas in what seems to be an ancient Greek gym and gossiping about Socrates, who apparently appreciates a good-looking young man when he sees one. The men listening to the stories laugh far too much and too long, way more than the level of humor warrants.
It’s surprising to see that kind of misstep from Doug Hughes, who zoomed to stardom with his Tony-winning direction of “Doubt” (2006). But he pulls his cast together for the rest of this drama and has a lot more to say than the not-big news that a lot of married men in ancient Athens (this is 399 B.C.) had sexual relationships with other men. The real puzzle is that Socrates (a very elegant Michael Stuhlbarg), perhaps the best-known and most respected philosopher in town, is in major trouble with the government for what he’s teaching the young people. Yeah, everybody loves the Socratic method until it’s your underlying presumptions that are being challenged.
There’s a lot of yelling in some of the encounters. There’s a show within a show, starring Hades and Persephone. (Who knew “Hadestown” had been in development for so long?) There’s more intelligence and thoughtfulness in the dialogue than most of us can absorb at one time.
I liked the way The Wrap described the production: as “an extended moment in the theater, brilliantly acted in a way that places it outside time and yet opens a window to the very distant past.” And I liked what Socrates said in Act II: “I question falsehood in any form.” Teagle F. Bougere plays Plato.
“Socrates,” Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, publictheater.org. 2 hours 45 minutes. Opened on April 16. Limited run. Closes on June 2.
Man in Uniform
The pub scene from Irish Rep’s production of “The Plough and the Stars.” Yes, it takes place in 1916. One gentleman at the bar is reliving his glorious past.
THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS
I had an Act I problem with this play too. I had never seen “The Plough and the Stars,” Sean O’Casey’s classic 1926 work before, and having lived across the street from a bar called the Plough and Stars during graduate school clearly had not expanded my knowledge.
Based on the play’s reputation, I was expecting genius, and for the first hour I was seriously disappointed. Seemed like just a pleasant dramedy with colorful period Irish characters, all living in the same crowded Dublin tenement, saying colorful period Irish things.
But Act II revealed the deep pain in those characters’ souls, as every available male went off with the Irish Citizen Army to fight British rule in the Easter Rising of 1916. This urban warfare comes way too close to home, literally and figuratively, as the neighbors band together, learning that the “glories” of war are usually anything but glorious. “The Plough and the Stars” was Irish Rep’s very first production, back in 1988. The Times made this new staging a Critic’s Pick.
“The Plough and the Stars,” Irish Repertory Theater, 132 West 22nd Street, irishrep.org. 2 hours 15 minutes. Opened on April 30. Limited run. Closes on June 22.
Ring Cycle
Cast members of “Mac Beth” at the Lortel Theater. The production, from Red Bull Theater, has an all-female cast.