The Last Cargo Cult

GRADE: A-

By Mike Daisey. Directed by Jean-Michele Gregory. At the Public Theater. (CLOSED)

Mike Daisey's latest solo show The Last Cargo Cult receives near-unanimous praise for its timely, hilarious, and poignant exploration of the American financial system and the crises and mythologies that have issued from it. Daisey tells the story of his visit to Tanna, a Pacific island nation that worships American consumer goods as holy totems, but which, ironically, doesn't have a monetary system of its own. He weaves details of this voyage with commentary on America's bewildering 2008 meltdown. Some critics want an intermission to break up the 2+ hour monologue, but that's about as far as the negative criticism goes. Frequent outlier Matthew Murray may disagree with some of Daisey's ideas, but that's exactly the kind of confrontation Daisey aims for anyway. As Nicole Villenueve of Backstage puts it, "even if you don't agree with Daisey, the thoughts he churns up will make sure you get your money's worth."

Variety A
(Sam Thielman) Almost nobody brings to mind Noam Chomsky and Oliver Hardy simultaneously, but Mike Daisey can pull it off. With "The Last Cargo Cult," the monologist perfectly balances goofball humor on one hand, and on the other, genuine anger at the financial gamesmen who broke the economy and then made us pay for it. Of course it's more complicated (and funnier) than that, with Daisey interweaving his trip to a tiny Pacific island where they venerate America and "all our awesome shit." In fact, it's an incredibly ballsy and humble indictment of the banking system, American materialism and the audience.

Backstage A
(Nicole Villenueve) Daisey calls himself a storyteller, but in the first few minutes of his latest monologue, "The Last Cargo Cult," you get the sense that something much more unusual is happening. Maybe it's Daisey's range as a performer. He travels from comic outbursts featuring trademark facial contortions to moments of such quiet sincerity that you can hear a dollar bill drop in the audience ... Or maybe it's how Daisey constantly asks us to engage, not just with participatory gimmicks but simply through the story itself. After important points, he asks, "Isn't it?"—forcing you to confront your own feelings about the material à la Brecht. And even if you don't agree with Daisey, the thoughts he churns up will make sure you get your money's worth from "The Last Cargo Cult."

Time Out New York A-
(Diane Snyder) Collaborating once again with his wife, director Jean-Michele Gregory, Daisey remains equal parts philosopher, historian and social critic, improvising from an outline and never moving from his table and chair. As moments of serene pontification give way to shout-talking outbursts, he brands bankers “financial terrorists” and our fiscal system a “pyramid scheme,” and intersperses personal anecdotes of his island adventures. At times it may taste like a feast with too many side dishes, but Daisey’s storytelling finesse always guarantees a delectable spread.

Theatre Mania A-
(Dan Bacalzo) Expertly guided by director Jean-Michele Gregory, Daisey pulls out all the stops in terms of pacing, vocal modulation, and facial expression. The look he gives when describing eating fermented yam paste is an image not soon to be forgotten, and the monologue is so lively that you're likely to forget that he spends the entirety of it sitting behind a desk. Peter Ksander's scenic design consists of piles and piles of crates, boxes, and luggage, while sound designer Daniel Erdberg and lighting designer Russell H. Champa incorporate several subtle and not-so-subtle effects to reinforce the rhythms and mood of the performance. While these enhancements add much to the overall production, Daisey hardly needs them in order to get across his excellently crafted tale.

New York Post A-
(Frank Scheck) His rambling digressions are frequently the funniest parts, such as his accounts of his encounters with a friendly baby pig and a potentially financially disastrous auto accident. But they also dilute the show’s impact: Running nearly two hours without an intermission, “The Last Cargo Cult” is as exhausting as it is entertaining. Even so, it’s the most fully realized effort yet in what’s shaping up to be a major theatrical career for Daisey.

New York Times A-
(Jason Zinoman) The way Mr. Daisey makes his arguments, more than the arguments themselves, is what makes him one of the elite performers in the American theater. Sometimes he lays them out straightforwardly, but more often he expresses ideas indirectly through story and, increasingly, through a self-conscious use of language ... In his new show, the seventh that I’ve seen, Mr. Daisey’s longtime director, Jean-Michele Gregory, helped him expand beyond a Spalding Gray aesthetic. For the first time there is an actual set dominated by a mountain of boxes, designed by Peter Ksander. Mr. Daisey still sits down and turns rumpled papers, but he has added more flamboyance to his repertory. He curses more, punctuates several jokes with a Sam Kinison scream; and he really has perfected the art of juxtaposing rubbery facial expressions with absolute stillness.

Curtain Up B+
(Deirdre Donovan) The feisty yarn-spinner new monologue, The Last Cargo Cult, is based on his time on a remote South Pacific island named Tanna, where the natives worship America at the base of an active volcano. At two hours with no intermission, it's long; but Daisey redeems the length by hitting us with some probing questions about American materialism ... It's easy to fall under the spell of Daisey's sense of humor, and powerful story telling. In this latest monologue we learn about the historical origins and development of cargo cults and how cult members still adhere to the same belief system today.

Talkin' Broadway B-
(Matthew Murray) As The Last Cargo Cult vacillates between Tanna and the U.S., it demonstrates some trouble with balance. Daisey’s declamations are more often simplistic than profound. “I think wealth is defined by hunger,” he says, as though “hunger” is by necessity a negative trait ... Daisey makes his case far more effectively when he focuses on the evolution of money from currency to a symbol. His history of money, from its physical advent 5,000 years ago to bonds, stocks, hedging, and the vitally nonexistent derivatives of today, is chilling.

Variety A 13; Backstage A 13; TONY A- 12; Theatre Mania A- 12; New York Post A- 12; New York Times A- 12; Curtain Up B+ 11; Talkin' Broadway B- 9. TOTAL: 94/8 = 11.75 (A-)

Read On »

County of Kings

GRADE: A-

By Lemon Andersen. Directed by Elise Thoron. Public Theater. (CLOSED)

Critics agree that Lemon Andersen may not have as great a gift for convincingly becoming other characters as some fellow actors in current one-person shows, but his likable nature and way with words (the show mixes straight dialogue with verse) make up for this. This is what gives his autobiographical County of Kings positive reviews, even though critics are more divided on other aspects of the production. For example, Ben Brantley describes the design team as "top-notch" in his New York Times review, while Sam Thielman in his Variety review writes that is the inconsistent technical aspects that bring down the production.

Backstage A
(Andy Propst) Anderson's narrative—a mix of hip-hop and poetic prose, English, and occasionally Spanish—is neither sentimental nor angry. Instead, it's a heartfelt and honest recounting of growing up with his heroin-addicted mother, her painful decline and eventual death. As he tells his story, he not only infuses it with humor, he also becomes, with precision and specificity, a number of other characters. Perhaps most amusing is his portrayal of a partially blind busybody woman in the apartment complex where he grew up.

The New York Times A
(Ben Brantley) Directed and developed by Elise Thoron, “County of Kings” is in its outlines a conventional show-biz fable, not unlike the “Fame” movies, in which eager kids from hard-knock backgrounds “learn how to fly” on the wings of talent. But Mr. Andersen invests the formula with a fine-grained grittiness of detail and a rapt love for words that is at least as strong as his love of hearing his own voice. Both kinds of love are essential to his craft, and they endow Mr. Andersen with a magnetism that holds us for the nearly two hours it takes him to tell his story. “County of Kings” begins with a moment of apotheosis, at the Tony Awards in 2003, when “Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam,” a show in which Mr. Andersen appeared, won for “special theatrical event.” From the heights of that evening, the show’s focus glides, like an old-fashioned biopic, down Manhattan, over the Hudson River and into a Brooklyn housing complex called the Courtyard.

Associated Press A-
(Peter Santilli) Under the direction of Elise Thoron, "County of Kings" transforms Lemon's poetry and remarkable story into a compelling drama, with Andersen portraying many of the characters who shaped his development. His ability to bring these characters to life isn't quite on par with, say, Sarah Jones of "Bridge & Tunnel" fame. But he does display an engaging depth in his acting and, more notably, an irresistible abundance of style. This style isn't limited to his complex rhymes and fluid speech. It also pervades his movements. In one of the show's most entertaining scenes, the boy is with his mother at a Coney Island amusement park. When the DJ plays the classic disco song "Ring My Bell," his mother lets go of his hand and "gives her 10-year-old man-child the solo of his life," in which Lemon charms the audience with old-school dance moves.

Talkin' Broadway A-
(Matthew Murray) Andersen’s show, which has been developed and directed by Elise Thoron, and first appeared at this year’s Under the Radar festival at The Public, makes no attempt to hide from - or excuse - the urban clichés from which its author’s story derives. So if you think you’ve seen and heard this all before, you probably have. But what sweetens those sour notes is Andersen himself. Though muscular and dark-browed, wearing oversized jeans and a backward-turned baseball cap, his refined voice and storytelling style offer no hint that they’re emanating from a man who not long ago was a cash-strapped ex-con. Whether rhyming outright or speaking in a more traditional straight-dialogue fashion, Andersen compels you to listen with a shoulder-shaking bravado tinted with a desperate need for acceptance. His speech rings with a wavering musicality that slides from forte to piano, often within only a syllable, dark undertones of pain being suppressed by the floating light of hope. His hand gestures and pointed-forward head motions are designed to appear threatening, but can’t mask the fear lying just behind the eyes, the deep-down understanding that he no longer spiritually belongs to the world that bore him.

New York Post A-
(Frank Scheck) Whether rhapsodizing about his first teenage love, sardonically commenting about his upbringing at the hands of a stepfather whose idea of parenting was to teach him "how to strip cars in broad daylight," describing his time spent on Rikers Island and, later on, winning a Tony for his part in "Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam on Broadway," Andersen infuses the evening with a humor and self-awareness that alleviates its grimness. He refuses to present himself as a victim, making his rags-to-not-quite-riches tale all the more inspirational.

The Village Voice A-
(Alexis Soloski) Under Elise Thoron's direction, Andersen varies his reminiscences with lyrical interludes and the occasional dance break. He switches among characters and accents, returning most often to his pained, posturing adolescent self. Andersen has a prodigious gift for language, making words arc and soar, and conjuring unexpected rhymes. As a performer, he summons a hyperactive energy, interweaving this brio with welcome vulnerability.

Variety B+
(Sam Thielman) The language in Andersen's show is so much fun that it's tempting to quote the entire script, but probably best not to. You can't read his thick, old-school Brooklyn accent or his slightly nervous-looking gaze, and those are the things that make his oddly precise turns of phrase ring out like punchlines. Coney Island is "a mess hall of drunk lifeguards getting robbed under the boardwalk," Brooklynite kids hang out on "a cold April stickball street," in an Ohio prison "all you got is your word, your orange jumpsuit/your uncertified mail" -- these little bon mots appear and then vanish every few minutes, like a tropical lizard running in and out of holes in a cinder-block wall... The sound is too loud, then it's in and out, then it's gone when it's clearly supposed to be there. The lighting is pretty much the same wash except for a couple of moments when it contracts to a spot for Andersen's act-openers and closers. Most importantly, though, we really want to hear every word he's saying, and between the Spanglish and his hyperkinetic delivery style, it takes some major concentration to get the gist of things in too many scenes.

The New Yorker B+
(John Lahr) Inevitably, for someone who has unexpectedly found a voice and a way to be heard, Andersen’s idiom spills out in torrents. It reminded me of the Watts Towers, in Los Angeles—an edifice of scraps, but all the more extraordinary for its defiant accomplishment. Although Andersen’s humor and his courage insure that he never wears out his welcome, the two-hour celebration of his survival would have more clout if it were shorter. He holds our attention so confidently partly because, when she was alive, he held his mother’s. He keeps the memory of her with him and recounts it at the beginning and at the end of the show. He recalls the excitement of being watched by her at the age of ten, as he glided and shimmied on the dance floor. “I could hear her pitch perfect in the background yelling / ‘That’s my boy!’ ” Andersen says. He’s older now, but he’s still someone to watch.

Lighting & Sound America B
(David Barbour) County of Kings mixes straight narrative passages with poetry-slam-style riffs for moments of heightened emotion. At times, the rush of words is so thick that you'll have to listen extra hard. It's also a bit of a challenge because, for all his undeniable skill as a writer, Andersen isn't an especially gifted performer. The ability to deliver a short, intense poem into a coffee-house microphone doesn't really prepare one for the rigors of carrying a 90-minute solo piece. He's particularly weak at evoking the other characters in the text. This problem is especially apparent right now, when such outsize personalities as Coleman Domingo, Charlayne Woodard, and, yes, Carrie Fisher, are holding forth, all by themselves, on Manhattan stages. It's hard not to feel that Elise Thoron, who directed (and also developed the piece), hasn't quite gotten Andersen to the point where he is fully up to the ambitions of his own text.

Backstage A 13; The New York Times A 13; AP A- 12; Talkin' Broadway A- 12; New York Post A- 12; The Village Voice A- 12; Variety B+ 11; The New Yorker B+ 11; Lighting & Sound America B 10; TOTAL: 106/9 = 11.78 (A-)

Read On »

The Singing Forest

GRADE: C

By Craig Lucas. Directed by Mark Wing-Davey. Public Theater. (CLOSED)

The reviews of The Singing Forest are almost as confusing as the play seems to be. (The plot as laid out in the reviews is too complicated to go into in this short space.) It seems that critics respect Craig Lucas too much to slam his play (except for John Simon, who gives the play zero stars), so they get around it by applauding his efforts. They do say the play, referred to in three reviews as "overcaffeinated," is too long and attempts too much, so never really reaches any satisfying conclusions. Nytheatre.com's Stan Richardson disagrees, writing, "When you see it—and I highly recommend that you do—allow yourself to get lost a bit, relish the complexity, be thankful that questions come up and that you don't know what will happen next." Critics are also kind to the actors, especially Olympia Dukakis and Jonathan Groff, who they say do the most they can with the material.

Nytheatre.com A+
(Stan Richardson) Lucas needs every moment of his three acts to show you how this fragmented family—and certain of their lovers and colleagues and patients—end up in Loë's Klimt-cluttered apartment. I find the twists and turns nothing short of exhilarating, and many of the performances are delightful, such as Mark Blum as the conniving boob Oliver, and Jonathan Groff (who, after his exquisite turn in Prayer for My Enemy this past fall, is becoming a definitive interpreter of Lucas's work) as Gray, a non-inward-looking young actor who gets caught up in this mess in several ways that I cannot possibly describe here. Also noteworthy are John Gromada's sensitive sound design and haunting original music, and John McDermott's clever and magnificent set, both of which corporealize an entirely captivating world that Mark Wing-Davey and his actors have conjured from Craig Lucas's fascinating new play.

Backstage A
(Erik Haagensen) "There are no coincidences" is not just the mantra of Craig Lucas' dense and deeply felt The Singing Forest; it's also the three-act play's organizing structural principle. That leads to one of the most unusual instances I've seen of dramatizing theme through form. The play is a bracing, unflinching attempt to accept that the damage human beings do to themselves and one another is often permanent and ever-present. Learning to live successfully with that and each other is the task we all face... Lucas initially lets his audience piece together the characters' connections. Then the past breaks through, intermingling with the present as we learn the toll events have taken and watch everyone grapple with it. Act 2 climaxes with a sequence in which Lucas momentarily accelerates the play into farce as all the "coincidences" pile up, bringing everyone together. The switch in tone dramatizes the theme: Everyone arrives because of something he or she has done that then affects somebody else. No coincidences. The silliness of the sequence reflects the foolishness of the characters' belief in their autonomy. We are all connected.

NYMag A-
(Stephanie Zacharek) This is an ambitious, gangly work, spanning decades and exploring thorny questions about gay identity and even thornier ones about human identity. Sometimes you wish Lucas hadn't tried to pack so much in—he’s juggling so many ideas that some of them emerge only as murky, indistinct silhouettes. But director Mark Wing-Davey deftly guides us through the mishegoss, and in the end the expansiveness of the material works in its favor. Leave it to someone else to write small, intimate, tasteful plays about the complexity of relationships; Lucas prefers the crazy spectacle.

The Village Voice A-
(Michael Feingold) In this turmoil of interlocking stories, which regularly splurts up into either violent confrontations or door-slamming farcical mixups, the prevailing tone is, surprisingly, compassion. Lucas's underlying notion seems to be that, in a world as terror-filled as ours, everyone needs to be forgiven everything before it all becomes much worse. If this flies in the face of reason, it's a natural outgrowth of a narrative whose multiple strands variously rebuke common sense, history, and chronology. Like the sex-farce tone and the Holocaust subject matter, the play's ideas and its tactics simply don't merge. Yet their constant friction steadily produces dazzling showers of sparks, and director Mark Wing-Davey's devoted cast achieves some mighty effects while setting them alight. Dukakis, fiercely acerbic, rides commandingly over the action; Blum and Campbell, twin icons of epic haplessness, are especially moving. Best of all is Groff, who now perfectly incarnates the Craig Lucas hero: sweetly vulnerable yet indomitably determined, venturing bravely forth, wide-eyed with terrified wonder, into the crazy world that will force him to figure out who he is.

Associated Press B+
(Peter Santilli) This ambitious, three-act production, which opened Tuesday at off-Broadway's Public Theater, is difficult to pin down. It is part mistaken-identity farce, part family drama, part historical fiction, among a mix of other things. Lucas crams so much into the cerebral, cross-generational allegory, it seems scattered at times. Despite this minor hindrance, which actually adds an unexpected aesthetic, the play proves thoroughly provocative, thanks to a compelling story, a strong cast and novel stage direction.

Variety C
(Marilyn Stasio) The centerpiece of this modern-day fable is Loe Rieman (Olympia Dukakis), one of those quick-witted, sharp-tongued older women who navigate the city like they own it. Although nothing gets past them and nobody goes unnoticed, such women are largely invisible to the rest of the world... Loe is a marvelous character, and Dukakis is altogether splendid in the role; she plays Loe with an earthy goodness that conveys all of her wit and wisdom without masking any of her pain. The "singing forest" she carries in her head is made up of all mankind, voices raised in "cries of death, keening, loss, terror."... But in his determination to find farcical humor in one aspect of Loe's girlhood trauma -- her guilt over failing to defend her homosexual brother -- Lucas has concocted an elaborate subplot involving two gay shrinks (nice comedy chops from Mark Blum and Rob Campbell) lusting after the same straight patient. The situation is amusing enough on its own terms and rather sexy given the genuinely sweet appeal of Jonathan Groff ("Spring Awakening") as the prize they are fighting over.

CurtainUp C
(Elyse Sommer) Like the lives it depicts, The Singing Forest is messy, sprawling play. It's top heavy with credibility challenging coincidences and in need of trimming. But, while it's a play that will have you walking out a touch unsure whether you really loved and understood what you saw, you won't be bored watching it and you'll probably find yourself thinking about it after you leave. For one thing, attention must and will be paid, if only to figure what's going on and who's really infuriated with who, and why. Then there's Olympia Dukakis as the locus of the Rieman family's dysfunction. This is her most unique role since the TV mini-series Tales of the City. She may be the focal character, but this is an ensemble play and Dukakis is supported by eight eminently watchable actors, each of whom play two roles. That adds up to a total of seventeen intriguing personalities, which include Dr. Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna.

American Theater Web C-
(Andy Propst) The play's bifurcated nature is only exacerbated in Mark Wing-Davey's unevenly conceived staging. With the scenes in New York, there's an edgy, sort of over-caffeinated pacing to the production, but when the play shifts back in time, it seems almost like a set of theatrical brakes has been pulled, and the show jars into a slower, more dreamy realm, certainly appropriate for the action, but theatergoers experience a kind of whiplash nonetheless. And thus, despite some terrifically conceived performances – particularly from Groff and Dukakis – theatergoers watch "Forest" with interest and a bit of skepticism, but never find themselves pulled into the story emotionally. John McDermott's scenic design – a series of sliding coarse wooden panels that simultaneously bring to mind dingy New York apartments and perhaps German boxcars in the 1930s – proves consistently surprising, and can even become some what hauntingly beautiful under an assured lighting design from Japhy Weideman. Gabriel Berry's costumes capture character and period flair throughout, and ultimately, one can't help but watch in fascination wondering what will come next in either era. At the same time, though, one can't help wish that somehow the play, with its high-charged parallel plots, were somehow more emotionally involving.

The New York Times D+
(Charles Isherwood) Mr. Lucas, a wildly uneven playwright who inspires respect for the eclectic reach and emotional depth of his best work, has retooled the play somewhat since its debut four years ago at the Long Wharf Theater, in a production directed by Bartlett Sher. But the changes seem mostly cosmetic. The director of this staging, Mark Wing-Davey, brought out the emotional riches in a similarly complex but far better play by Mr. Lucas, “Small Tragedy,” which considered some of the same themes about the chains of pain that link people together. Here he mostly has to settle for arranging traffic patterns smoothly, and he does not always succeed even at that. (And I wish he’d sped by the lingering scene in which Ms. Dukakis, as the younger Loë, is raped by a Nazi.) Still, the cast members do what they can to humanize the characters, purportedly real people dropped into the machine of farce, scrabbling like hamsters in a maze... “There are no coincidences,” one of the overanalyzed characters says, by way of explaining the absurdity. But in art coincidence must be used sparingly. When indulged recklessly, it can only be called contrivance.

Time Out New York D+
(Adam Feldman) Craig Lucas's new play is in many ways a disaster, but so willful and ambitious a disaster that it commands your staggered respect. In nearly three hours, with two intermissions, Lucas takes Marx's maxim that history repeats itself first as history, and then as farce, and smooshes it into a strange, sticky ball.

New York Post D+
(Frank Scheck) If ambition counted for everything, Craig Lucas' supremely loopy "The Singing Forest" would be a masterpiece -- a nearly three-hour, genre-bending, time-jumping comedy/drama that mixes Nazi atrocities with boulevard farce. It's as if the playwright was suffering from a serious case of "Angels in America" envy.

Theatermania D+
(Dan Bacalzo) Unfortunately, Wing-Davey has not found the proper tonal balance to go easily from a scene in which a multitude of characters farcically hide out in bathrooms, closets, and trunks to one in which the gut-wrenching facts about Loë's past are revealed. It's also a little difficult to tease out what the playwright is attempting to say about the practice of psychoanalysis. With five practitioners of the discipline in the play -- including both Sigmund and Anna Freud -- it's not incidental, and yet, all of the 21st century analysts in the piece behave in such a horribly unprofessional manner that it's difficult to take any of them seriously. And while many of the characters are subject to analysis at some point or another, the results are presented as either insightful keys to a person's state of mind or mere comic fodder -- and in one instance towards the end of the play, Shar's summing up of what has just been revealed is meant to be both. John McDermott's cluttered and rather unattractive set does little to help smooth transitions and only barely suggests changes in location (and sometimes it doesn't even do that). This job falls more to Japhy Weideman's often moody lighting, which is effectively coupled with John Gromada's original music and sound design to create the proper atmosphere in key scenes.

Just Shows To Go You D+
(Patrick Lee) You sense that the dizzying swirl of interconnected characters and the overarching theme of identity are aiming for something larger, even epic, but the play’s moments remain small and isolated from one another: this is a play that adds up to less than the sum of even its best parts.


That Sounds Cool D+
(Aaron Riccio) "It's disgusting to use the Holocaust to distract from your own sins," shouts Laszlo (Randy Harrison), upset with his shrink-turned-lover, Oliver (Mark Blum). As it turns out, Oliver's finally being honest about his mother, Loë (Olympia Dukakis), and his billionaire nephew, Jules Ahmad (Louis Cancelmi), so he shouts back "Sometimes life just is preposterous, you know?" These two liberties end up forming the crux of Craig Lucas's latest play, The Singing Forest, a slovenly three-act play that aims to be about the farcical coincidences of serious drama but is instead a seriously inconsequential farcical drama... On the positive side of things, the cast is also swept up in this tide of performance, and director Mark Wing-Davey makes the most of the ridiculous to stage an amusing showdown in Staten Island. Characters hide in bathrooms, dressers, trunks, and under benches, brandishing guns and breaking down doors, though what this stands for or has to do with the overall theme of Freudian therapy (and the somewhat symbolic and only occasional use of Nazism to that end) is anyone's guess.

Theater News Online D+
(Matt Windman) It is unlikely that any director could have brought a sense of clarity to the play. While Mark Wing-Davey sincerely attempts to direct the ongoing flow of traffic on an ugly urban set, the production only feels powerful in a handful of short well-acted scenes. Dukakis excels at playing the protagonist, who is dry and witty but is also dealing with deep and uncomfortable emotional scars from her past. Groff, who is now appearing in his second Craig Lucas play this season, makes a firm distinction between his modern-day character, who is youthful and confused, and his historical counterpoint, who is unashamed of his sexuality and individuality. There is a good play somewhere inside The Singing Forest. The real question is whether Craig Lucas can find it.

The Daily News D
(Joe Dziemianowicz) One can imagine the better work that would have sprouted had the author pruned this three-act that strives to be serious and seriously funny and ends up missing both marks. The story begins in a pre-9/11 New York City and flashes back to 1930s Vienna and 1940 London. It follows three generations of a damaged clan and how unresolved wounds fester decades later. That's a worthwhile exploration, with some occasionally striking moments — including the title reference to a forest filled with the music of suffering voices. But it's all so convoluted, it taps your patience.

Talkin' Broadway D
(Matthew Murray) Lucas has locked onto an interesting underlying concept in comparing the horrors of Holocaust Europe with current America’s treatment of and approach toward homosexuality; given the ever-simmering issue of gay marriage, this sort of examination couldn’t be more timely. But he deals with it so obliquely and randomly that it never has the chance to cohere. By the time Lucas introduces a full second cast of characters from Loë’s youth to help develop the background of his plot, he’s already juggling so much that he doesn’t have the time to devote to them, either. Considering that the play’s climax involves the full company spending the better part of 10 minutes sorting through their jumbled relationships, it’s fair to say there’s just too much going on. Wing-Davey does not discourage this in his staging, which treats much of New York as a cacophonous, drunken fever dream punctured by only tiny pockets of lucidity. John McDermott’s set, which lurches between post-modern minimalism, Molière-ready, and full-out Viennese conservatory drama, doesn’t help center the action. In fairness, The Singing Forest probably can’t be centered in the traditional sense. It wants to explore so many angles to so many questions that finding a single conceptual foundation is probably not possible. But without it, this feels like a collection of short, unrelated plays rushed through by actors who don’t understand how any of what they do affects the show as a whole.

Lighting & Sound America D-
(David Barbour) It's really, really hard to know what to make of The Singing Forest; my best guess is that the play is itself an expression of neurosis. The script is loaded with incidents of repetition compulsion -- with certain conflicts repeating themselves across generations -- and of hysteria. A cure is dispensed when Loë finally tells the truth and a feeling of resolution -- if not happiness -- descends on one and all. As somebody remarks, "Symptoms are caused by secrets." It's around this time that one begins to suspect that The Singing Forest, for all its skepticism about the couch, is an enormously complex contraption designed to deliver bite-sized, easily digestible, bits of Freudian theory. Repression is a terrible thing, you know. Given the play's frequent hairpin turns and brusque tonal shifts, it's something of a director's nightmare, and, indeed, Mark Wing-Davey's staging runs the gamut from gripping to goofy. Dukakis' natural authority and her devastating way with a wisecrack allow her to dominate the proceedings throughout, but even she is hard-pressed to make sense of the scene in which her home is invaded by the supporting cast. (She is absolutely priceless, however, when, taking a call from the son she hasn't spoken to in 32 years, she shouts, "Stop pestering me!") In a role that seems designed to strip him down to his underwear as often as possible, Jonathan Groff does his best, but Gray is defined by his lack of definition.

Bloomberg News F-
(John Simon) There are voyeurs known as ambulance chasers, and then there is a subset known as theatrical ambulance chasers, who boast of having seen such monumental fiascos as “Moose Murders,” which closed almost before the final curtain. To them I heartily commend Craig Lucas’s “The Singing Forest,” which should close after Act One, before, amazingly, things manage to get even worse in the New York premiere at the Public Theater.

Nytheatre.com A+ 14; Backstage A 13; NYMag A- 12; The Village Voice A- 12; Associated Press B+ 9; Variety C 7; CurtainUp C 7; TONY C- 6; American Theater Web C- 6; The New York Times D+ 5; New York Post D+ 5; Theatermania D+ 5; Just Shows To Go You D+ 5; That Sounds Cool D+ 5; Theater News Online D+ 5; The Daily News D 4; Talkin' Broadway D 4; Lighting & Sound America D- 3; Bloomberg News F- 0; TOTAL: 127/19 = 6.68 (C)

Read On »