Gates of Gold

GRADE: C-

By Frank McGuinness. Directed by Kent Paul. 59E59. (CLOSED)

Gabriel and Conrad in Gates of Gold are based on lovers Micheal MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards respectively, the founders of Dublin's Gate Theater--but not sufficiently enough for most critics, who would prefer more history and less fiction. The biggest complaint is that the subplots and minor characters are unnecessary and underdeveloped. The consensus is that Martin Rayner as Gabriel is the highlight of the production.

The New York Times B-
(Jason Zinoman) In a tender, theatrical performance, Mr. Rayner runs away with the play, and most audiences will happily cheer him along, since the peripheral characters (his sister and nephew, for instance) seem like padding to his story. Mr. McGuinness, who also wrote “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me” and “Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme,” never really develops a strong sense of conflict in this fairly static drama. Still, it’s a compelling slice of life — or death, you might say.

New York Post B-
(Frank Scheck) While the play doesn't provide much information or insight about the real-life figures who inspired it, it does present a touching depiction of a loving couple who managed to live openly in a society that refused to recognize such a union. Adding greatly to its impact are the compelling performances by the leads, especially Rayner, who shows the vulnerability and fear just beneath Gabriel's outrageous surface.

Theatermania C-
(Dan Balcazo) The playwright is also fond of split scenes, but director Kent Paul has not worked out the timing with his cast to make these play convincingly. Instead, the actors often seem overly self-conscious about silently milking a moment while they wait until it's his or her turn to speak. That said, Rayner does a fine job with the larger than life Gabriel, and nicely handles the character's turn to a more vulnerable state. Robinson has a strong presence as the outwardly reserved Conrad, and a nice rapport with Rayner which makes the characters' relationship believable. He has less chemistry with Numrich, and the younger actor seems ill at ease in his role, tending to indicate the character's emotional states instead of inhabiting them. McNenny does what she can with a stereotypically written part. Rounding out the cast is Diane Ciesla, who plays Gabriel's sister Kassie.

New Yorker D+
(Unsigned) With the exception of Kathleen McNenny, playing the nurse, the actors in this otherwise slick production seem unable to find a connection to one another, or meaning in the playwright Frank McGuinness’s words. The play, under the direction of Kent Paul, does not hang together.

Nytheatre.com D+
(David Gordon) Predictable and far too talky, McGuinness's script has a few ho-hum laughs and a slew of go-nowhere plotlines including a relationship between Gabriel's nurse Alma and his nephew, who, years before, had a sexual relationship with Conrad, for which Gabriel hasn't really forgiven either of them. Meanwhile, nephew Ryan has daddy issues that go largely unexplored. There's also Kassie, Gabriel's sister. But she's unremarkable. Kent Paul's staging, appealingly designed by Michael Schweikardt (set), Phil Monat (lighting), and Nanzi Adzima (costumes), is suitable and respectful, never going over the top in a number of cases when it can. The actors have great chemistry and their performances are solid, though the variety of dialects go in and out.

Backstage D-
(David A. Rosenberg) Director Kent Paul not only doesn't weave the strands into a whole; his pacing is funereal. Because their scenes together create whatever tension the evening possesses, Martin Rayner as Gabriel and Kathleen McNenny as Alma come off best, with layered performances. Charles Shaw Robinson as Conrad, Diane Ciesla as Kassie, and Seth Numrich as Ryan hang around the periphery, neither enigmatic nor provocative. At one point Gabriel says, "Dying is like being stuck in a traffic jam in Limerick." Unfortunately, so is "Gates of Gold."


Time Out NY F+
(Helen Shaw) [The play] leaves us feeling like an audience of innocents being smothered, slowly, with a blanket. The lovers are meant to be portraits of Micheál MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards, founders of Dublin’s Gate Theatre. Perhaps a bored fly on the wall would have been drowsily interested in these theatrical figures exchanging cheap ripostes like, “You started it.” “How?” “You loved me.…” but it’s unlikely. It’s best to ignore entirely the ridiculously drawn peripheral characters (a spitfire nurse who, according to my notes, revealed her painful secret in a speedy quarter of an hour), though it’s difficult when McGuinness insists on irritating split-screen simultaneous scenes. These clumsily ensure that half the stage is usually full of silent, vamping actors, trying not to step all over their colleagues’ lines.

New York Times B- 9; New York Post B- 9; Theatermania C- 6; New Yorker D+ 5; Nytheatre.com D+ 5; Backstage D- 3; TONY F+ 2; TOTAL: 39/7 = 5.57 (C-)

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London Cries

GRADE: B-

Adapted from Henry Mayhew's London Labour & The London Poor by Frank McGuinness and Di Trevis. Dir. Di Trevis. Irondale Ensemble Project. (CLOSED)

Irondale Ensemble Project unveils their new Fort Greene digs with an impressive commission from London's Old Vic: an adaptation of Henry Mayhew's classic 19th-century journalism about London's desperately poor citizens, juxtaposed with ironically cheery music-hall tunes of the same period. Critics mostly liked this idea but found the execution uneven at best; a few hailed the fierce performance of Jenny Galloway.

The New York Times B+
(Claudia La Rocco) As it turns out, 19th-century London translates quite well to early 21st-century New York, where all of a sudden lots of people are feeling rather impoverished and grim. Throw in a little scarlet fever and Bob’s your uncle...The star here is Jenny Galloway, whose blustering, charismatic portrayal of the brothel owner, Jenny, contains a dark, sinister undertow that comes closest to conveying the desperation and brutality endured by London’s poor.

Nytheatre.com B+
(Martin Denton) The concept of London Cries is quite brilliant: to juxtapose the songs, sketches, and milieu of Victoria Era British Music Hall with the real lives of the London poor who frequented them...The tension between the harshness of the characters' lives—which Trevis and her company relate unstintingly to us—and the uplift and high spirits of the music hall gives London Cries a unique potency. The cast of 11, headed by British stage star Jenny Galloway (best known to Americans as the definitive Madame Thenardier in Les Miserables), is somewhat uneven. Galloway, as Jenny, is triumphant throughout...Trevis and her movement coordinator Kim Jordon use the company and space beautifully, keeping the show lively and, mostly, tight...London Cries is on its way to becoming a very stirring and very entertaining work of theatre.

New Yorker B
This small musical...would benefit from a plot, a little more dancing, and a glimpse of genuine pain and suffering, to break up the monotony of its many autobiographical monologues. Still, some of the music is strong and catchy, the motley cast, with its less-than-perfect voices and bad accents, is charming, and the set—a huge, spare room in an old Brooklyn church—is grand in an aptly shabby way.

Village Voice B-
(Christopher Grobe) Director and auteur Di Trevis has gathered an intriguing assortment of material, but in the end, London Cries feels a workshop or two short of coherence: It features neither the panoramic scope of a slice-of-society docudrama, nor the clear agenda of a thesis play, nor the organic arc of a dramatic tone poem. In the final song, a sense of purpose emerges, but not one that has been steadily developed throughout the evening.

Backstage C+
(Karl Levett) The creators, Di Trevis (who also directs) and Frank McGuinness, have coupled this bleak but interesting commentary with appropriate songs from the heyday of the British musical hall—songs originally aimed at this same working-class audience. This combination would seem a natural match, but on stage the components often undermine each other, resulting in an odd theatrical tug of war. And the grimmer subjects of sewer workers, battered women, and child prostitution pose difficult problems in finding musical equivalents...This well-intentioned but strung-together piece will still have a difficult time engaging attention on the Old Vic's famed proscenium stage.

Variety C
(Marilyn Stasio) Sentimental to a fault, this superficial treatment pretty much ignores its grim source, finding more inspiration in the formulaic characters and maudlin sentiments of vintage music hall songs...The show’s don’t-take-this-too-seriously aura is established at the outset by the storytelling framework--the stage of a dilapidated music hall theater, executed with more efficiency than flair by house designer Ken Rothchild...The air of make-believe does nothing for the characters...Although they work well as an ensemble under Trevis’ disciplined helming, company members visibly struggle to discover some individuality in their stock roles...As executed on an upright piano with the utmost verve by musical director John DiPinto, the dozens of vintage ditties collected here hold terrific appeal.

NY Times B+ 11; Nytheatre.com B+ 11; New Yorker B 10; Village Voice B- 9; Backstage C+ 8; Variety C 7; TOTAL: 56/6= 9.33 (B-)

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The Master Builder

GRADE: C+

By Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Frank McGuinness. Dir. Ciaran O'Reilly. Irish Repertory Theatre. (CLOSED)

Critics are reverent but mostly disappointed with Irish Rep's revival of Ibsen's late morality play about an ambitious architect and the women in his life. Most critics blamed James Naughton's lackluster lead performance for the production's stiffness, while almost every critic except Vareity's Sam Thielman complained that Frank McGuinness' new adaptation grated on the ears with its mix of contemporary ("push comes to shove") and old-fashioned ("don't tarry") language.

Variety B
(Sam Thielman) It's fitting that Irish Rep should choose to revive The Master Builder in a clever, conversational new translation by Irish playwright and poet Frank McGuinness. It's just a shame the production is so deadly serious...Naughton receives top billing, but the two-time Tony winner (both for musical roles) is somewhat out of his depth, unable to provide what O'Reilly won't or can't. Parry, with whom Naughton shares the stage most often, is in similar shape. What pleasures there are to be had come from the supporting cast...It's a production with no shortage of well-observed individual moments, but no real guiding hand to provide some much-needed urgency.

Curtain Up B-
(Elyse Sommer) Surprisingly—and disappointingly—the dashing hat and coat costume designer Linda Fisher had provided for his entrance fits [James] Naughton to a tee, but this complex role is a far more imperfect fit...In McGuiness's version this play from Ibsen's final years is indeed quite accessible and with fewer grating inconsistencies than most previous translations...Unlike Mr. Naughton's too contained performance, [Charlotte] Parry errs in the other direction. Her Hilde never gets off the emotional, wild child roller coaster.

TheaterMania C+
(David Finkle) Given the tentative grasp this Ibsen opus has on the contemporary imagination, O'Reilly's often awkwardly staged production does not help matters. Nor does the usually reliable Eugene Lee's third-act set in which chairs and tables are stacked upstage as if in a storage facility...Moreover, although [James] Naughton has that famed deep and resonant voice, he fumbled his lines repeatedly—which may be one reason why the other actors' rhythms seem thrown off. On the other hand, [Charlotte] Parry and [Kristin] Griffith slip into their roles as if donning fashionable gloves—even if the play they're in is no longer in fashion.

Back Stage C+
(David A. Rosenberg) The evening fails to ignite despite yeoman work by its hard-working though loose-fitting cast...James Naughton is a vigorous Solness whose wary eyes betray the insecurity and guilt beneath his outward show of control. As the two women in his life, Kristin Griffith is a plaintive Aline, while Charlotte Parry is a fervent, conniving Hilde.

NY Times C-
(Charles Isherwood) Sadly, the woodwork doesn't stop at the furnishings in this stiff production of Ibsen's complex play, directed by Ciaran O'Reilly and employing a starchy new adaptation by the Irish playwright Frank McGuinness. The evening's leading performer, James Naughton, seems ill at ease negotiating the daunting psychological territory of the title role, a man possessed by demons of guilt, doubt, egoism and ambition...For long stretches—particularly in the early going—you get the impression that all the performers are uneasily aware that they are performing in a classic of the remote 19th-century theater.

Time Out NY C-
(Diane Snyder) In Ciarán O'Reilly's morass of a production, which squanders a lucid Frank McGuinness adaptation, Parry splendidly evokes Hilde's contradictory spunky-child, sensible-woman nature, and Kristin Griffith quietly captures the chilly demeanor of Solness's wife. But Naughton struggles to connect with the megalomaniacal master builder and his despair, seeming less lost in character than just plain lost.


Variety B 10; Curtain Up B- 9; TheaterMania C+ 8; Back Stage C+ 8; NY Times C- 7; Time Out NY C- 7; TOTAL: 49 / 6 = 8.16 (C+)

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