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DOC NYC Round Up: Part 1

The fourth annual DOC NYC trumpeted it was the largest documentary festival in the United States, and it was an almost overwhelming showcase of the diverse styles to tell real stories of diverse people. 

It has 72 feature-length documentaries — most accompanied by the filmmakers for audience Q & A’s; second-chance showings of some of the year’s best theatrically released documentaries; and 20 panel discussions and/or master classes on just about anything you needed to know to be a documentarian these days, so it wasn’t possible to see everything. 

Yet during November 14 - 21, 2013, all of this was viewable at either the IFC Center or SVA Theater in special events and in categories of: 

  • American Perspectives -- 11 films
  • International Perspectives – 8
  • Sonic Cinema – 5
  • Art + Design – 7
  • Midnight Docs – 4

There were also two competition categories: Metropolis for films about New York City - 9, and Viewfinders films with “distinct directorial visions” - 8.  

Here’s a sampling of the many bio-docs, documentaries that spotlighted the life of one person each (or group).

Is The Man Who Is Tall Happy? exemplified both the star power and thoughtful richness the festival attracts: a world premiere by eclectic French director Michel Gondry before the theatrical and video on demand debut by Sundance Selects.  Think a series of extended conversations with philosopher/linguist MIT professor Noam Chomsky would be a bore?  Surprise – they talk amidst an amusing and informative visual feast of hand-drawn animation around photographs.  Gondry, umm, draws out the octogenarian Chomsky in a stream of consciousness about his early life (his memories of growing up an intellectual prodigy in Philadelphia and his grief for his late wife humanize the genius) and how his experiences shaped his theories and later peripatetic political activism around the globe.  The child-like animated drawings both contrast and emphasize how Chomsky’s sophisticated erudition come out of his intense way at looking at the world around him. 

The interchanges and illustrations (matched by a score of experimentalist composer Howard Skempton’s selections) almost helped me understand all that Chomsky was talking about, even when I wasn’t completely convinced by his breezy explanations for how language evolved.  But the documentary also gains urgency by Gondry’s increasing anxiety about Chomsky’s mortality if the painstakingly created film will be finished in time for him to critique the final product.  Spoiler alert: Chomsky is still alive.


Portraits of the Artists: Taking Pictures


Finding Vivian Maier Key Image Credit IFC FilmsTwo self-effacing street photographers were the focus of intriguing memorial documentaries, one man well-known to cognoscenti, the other a woman previously known to no one.  Finding Vivian Maier, the Festival Centerpiece in its U.S. premiere, is a fascinating mystery, an insightful reconstruction of an eccentric life, and, even more, a revelation of how extraordinary talent can be hidden in the most ordinary places.  Co-director John Maloof realized his Storage Wars-like buy of a big trunk of old Chicago photographs and thousands of rolls of undeveloped film was more an Antiques Roadshow aesthetic find, as he saved more of the photographer’s items from a dumpster.  But, ironically, it wasn’t until he saw the obituary of the octogenarian Vivian Maier two years later, in 2009, could he follow-up on the photographer.  One by one, he finds parents and children who knew her -- as their live-in nanny, mostly in the Chicago suburbs (where co-director Charlie Siskel also grew up).  But did anyone really know her?  There are clues to her past in her photographs of busy people, room full of detailed pseudonymous receipts and souvenirs, the self-portraits with her ubiquitous, waist-level Rolleiflex camera, but also in her accented voice rambling from piles of audio verité tapes, that help lead back from Chicago to historical research in New York and rural France for a touching homecoming.


Maloof wrestles over much with the ethical dilemma if Maier the tall loner would have wanted all those hoarded rolls developed (and still being done as funds permit), let alone publicly shown and published (and it seems snootily restrictive that museum curators reject photographs not developed under the artist’s supervision, even as photographer Joel Meyerowitz testifies to her artistic sense).  Her street photographs, most black-and-white and some in color, are so timelessly full of life and the revelations about her odd life provoke such curiosity that I wanted to hear more from herself, beyond what a linguistics expert interpreted, and more stories from her former wards of being dragged all over the streets of Chicago as buffers and spontaneous extras by a very unconventional Mary Poppins, who grew more secretive and idiosyncratic, into abusive, over the years.  A CSI-type time line and specification of the years when each interviewee crossed her peripatetic line of sight would be contextually useful as the evidence is pieced together.  Sundance Selects will bring this now unforgettable woman to theatres this spring.


In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons In Life With Saul Leiter fondly follows a living hoarder overwhelmed by his apartment full of his photographs and the Proustian memories they generate about dead friends and lovers – just in time because the film was finished just before he died.  But Leiter was a respected teacher and pioneer in applying color to street photography (amidst commercial fashion work), and, luckily, debut director Tomas Leach nagged him in the last years of his life to capture his philosophy and decades-long daily method of repeatedly shooting his same downtown Manhattan block. 

While the rambling “13 Lessons” include casually pithy and curmudgeonly comments on cameras, boxes of color, his legacy, the ways to God (away from his Orthodox Jewish father), taking photography seriously, the importance of staying still, going out looking for photographs, and even” tickling your left ear”, the key reason to catch the documentary (now in theatrical release after its New York City premiere at the festival) is how it shows you his unique talent.  Leach lets the audience observe the same subject Leiter does, from several angles – but then we see how Leiter’s resulting photographs of the people and elements in his neighborhood, and the off-center, almost abstract, compositions vividly prove that the octogenarian had his creative eye up until the end, demonstrating, as he says, “Photography teaches you to look at and appreciate all kinds of things”.


Noted: Portraits of Musical Artists


Dori Berinstein’s fond memorial love letter to Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love was given a gala New York City premiere before its American Masters’ broadcast on PBS.  While the early story of a classical music child prodigy who couldn’t resist the siren call of Broadway is charming, there were probably as many air kisses off-screen as on seen here in the effusive testimonials and previously-seen clips of Hamlisch on TV promoting his (mostly phenomenally) popular musicals, soundtracks, and American songbook concerts.

 
The Punk Singer is an essential corrective to cliché histories of popular rock ‘n’ roll, generally, and 1990’s punk rock, specifically, by bringing women up front.  Through the intertwined life and art of Kathleen Hanna, mostly in her own words through extensive interviews, debut director Sini Anderson traces the germinal impact of Bikini Kill and her other bands for the Riot Grrrl revolution.  While Hanna seems to have initially agreed to participate to clarify her legend -- minimizing her family abuse and influence on “my friend Kurt” Cobain for her graffitti’d phrase “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and his playing with gender images – she also welcomes the opportunity for the extended conversations to emphasize her intellectual roots in feminist art; her transgressive use of pink and feminine dresses to speak directly to teenage girls, in contrast to perceptions of the grunge rockers around her in the Pacific Northwest and her leading admirers here, Joan Jett, Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker and Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon.

 
punksingerThese insights are impressively illustrated with real finds of early, home video performance footage, tour flyers, and set lists as her songs are heard on the soundtrack.  An important emphasis is on her speaking out against the rampant and dangerous sexism in the mosh pit, like how a young friend of mine was injured at another concert, and her loud insistence on protecting her female fans, proclaiming as in the title of Sara Marcus’s useful book on riot grrrls: “Girls to the Front”.  But even long time fans may be surprised by the last decade of her life since she left the public eye since her band Le Tigre and marriage to Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz (a.k.a. Ad-Rock) until a long, difficult illness was finally correctly diagnosed as late-stage Lyme disease.  The documentary emotionally climaxes with the 20-band “Kathleen Hanna Tribute Show” in New York December 2010, but also triumphantly sets the stage for her revived career with the band The Julie Ruin, and her recognition in past and future rock history.  IFC Films is distributing the film around the country.

The visual impact of a powerful woman singer whose music was integrated with social revolution is also vital in Mercedes Sosa: The Voice of Latin America.  Sosa’s throaty voice helped bring international opprobrium to the military dictatorship that brutally ruled her native Argentina from 1976 to 1983, while at the vanguard of the world music movement until her death in 2009.  Director Rodrigo Vila helps American fans put her songs into the context of her life and times, and not just through subtitled lyrics.  Her physical presence vividly identifies her rural Indo-American roots and her instinctive empathy and life-long championing of the indigenous poor she rose from, even as luck brought her talent attention from a very young age, as heard in recordings and many performance clips.  Her son Fabián Matus, from an abusive marriage to a musician, conducts the most revealing conversations, with family, friends, and collaborating artists from her leadership with the 1960’s "Manifesto del Nuevo Cancionero (The New Songbook Manifesto)” on through exile in France and triumphant return, but who are probably not as familiar to U.S. audiences as Brazilian Milton Nascimento and American David Byrne whose comments on her pan-American impact aren’t as insightful or informative.  Also frankly shown are her later battles with crippling depression and other health problems, even as a continent’s adoration inspired her to come back for tributes.  First Run Features’ release of the film to theaters will help keep her legacy alive.


Revenge Of The Mekons
, in its world premiere as it continues on the festival rounds, is a group biography of an unusual band that is not just for the devoted fans they’ve been connecting with since playing together as Leeds art students in 1977, including interviewed writers Jonathan Franzen, Greil Marcus, and Luc Sante.  (Over 300 chipped in on Kickstarter to help.)  As an anarchic collective of eight men and women (plus six who have rotated in and out), The Mekons have outlasted the flash and burn of the Sex Pistols and Clash that inspired them, sometimes just enough to keep performing at benefits for the many leftist causes they support.  (Their passionate archival concerts for the miners struggling against Thatcher’s economic policies show their solidarity wasn’t just dilettantism).  Despite their continual bad luck and failed record deals (compared to a young U2 photographed opening for them in Dublin), director Joe Angio traces their persistence as they keep turning out albums (a couple of dozen releases so far) when they meet up annually, or so, from their now spread-out home bases to cooperatively keep writing new songs and piling into a van to keep touring (even with cancellations).  Most revealing is how they’ve kept going personally, artistically, and politically with each member clearly identified on screen by their years and specialty in the band, revealing their very different personalities and performing styles for what they bring to the whole, and their extensions (and sustenance) with varied artists eager to collaborate.  While I was only familiar with Jon Langford’s Chicago-based Americana projects, including as one of the Waco Brothers, unexpectedly, Lu Edmonds is an ethnomusicologist traveling Central Asia, and Susie Honeyman’s Grey Art Gallery in London reinforces what the Mekons epitomize -- that grey hair is not only no barrier to creativity, but maturity can be an asset.


Harlem Street Singer Key Image - Photo by Alice Ochs-Getty Images Though I was sorry to miss the U.S. premiere of a bio-doc on a legend of the folk blues revival Harlem Street Singer: The Reverend Gary Davis Story, in the group portrait Folk I followed the travails of three musicians trying to support themselves in today’s non-commercial Americana scene, that I frequent, of festivals and house concerts hosted by fans, with its DIY tour management and publicity, where performers struggle to balance endless touring with a personal life.  Director Sara Terry does a terrific job of getting intimate with the boomer-age Dirk Hamilton adjusting to lower expectations after early success; thirty-something Hilary Claire Adamson who seems straight out of the TV series Nashville for her ambition crossed with her naiveté about business and relationships in her husband-and-wife duo Flyin’ A’s; and 29-year-old Raina Rose’s determination as she tours pregnant, then nursing, on the same bill with the young singer-songwriter Anthony da Costa, whose talent I’ve been admiring since he was a high-schooler.  But the fresh feel of the verité footage is belied by the terribly old-fashioned assumptions about the folk music business.  While the documentary was assisted by a Kickstarter campaign (that I helped promote to my Facebook friends), there is only a dismissive reference to internet promotion and none of the three seem to have any online or social media presence, making them seem as doomed today as the Coen Brothers fictionalized stubborn Llewyn Davis was in 1961.  The visual elephant in the film is how old the majority of the audiences are – where is the future support for this vital music if these folk singers don’t reach out to and bring in younger folks?


Music and musicians infuse The Pleasures Of Being Out Of Step: Notes on the Life of Nat Hentoff, in its NYC premiere and winner of the Metropolis Competition, selected by the jury as the best film set in New York City.  Viewers may already be familiar with Hentoff’s jazz criticism, first for Downbeat, then for decades in the Village Voice, but not know about the importance of his erudite liner notes or his impact in raising the level of discourse about jazz for it to gain acceptance as an art form, with his eloquent words intoned by Andre Braugher.  While debut director David Lewis touts Hentoff’s championship of civil rights, the octogenarian’s non-musical opinions sound less compelling coming from a cantankerous old man.  First Run Features will bring the documentary to theaters this spring

The Other Israel Film Fest: Fiction & Conflict

Under the Same Sun

The 7th Annual Other Israel Film Festival well showcased its strongest offerings yet for dramatic insight into the ethnic and religious diversity of Israel’s population, where over 20% are Arab.  The statistics – and the interactions—get considerably more complex, and rife for cinematic exploration in documentaries and fiction features, when also included are the areas Israel has controlled since 1967, with an increasing sense of uneasy permanence as negotiations drag on.  The films, with accompanying discussions, screened in New York City from November 14 – 21, mostly at the JCC in Manhattan (http://www.jccmanhattan.org/), with selections continuing to stream (http://www.otherisraelondemand.com/) for a national audience, including highlights from previous years’ festivals.  The best films, thanks to committed directors and participants, reveal an involving range of perspectives: from cautious optimism, to the realistic difficulties of living with diversity, to a depressing frankness, and, finally, sinking into pessimisms for the future.

Optimistic Fiction

Under the Same Sun is the first feature produced by Search for Common Ground (http://www.sfcg.org/), an international non-profit organization working on changing how people deal with conflict to bring about sustainable peace.  Despite this idealistically utopian provenance, director Samen Zoabi, who delightfully portrayed the village near the Israeli border where he grew up in the comic Man Without A Cell Phone, deftly and sensitively brings to life Yossi Aviram’s humanistic screenplay that realistically imagines a near-future where Israel and Palestine negotiate a peace deal.  Two entrepreneurs – Nizar in Palestine (well-known Nazareth-born actor Ali Suliman) and Shaul in Israel (Yossi Marshak) -- tentatively prepare to benefit from the anticipated normalization by setting up a solar energy company.  Starting from the necessity of using an Israeli Arab middle-man, the usual problems of starting a new business are heightened by acutely portrayed personal, family, social, and community complications, suspicions and resentments that circle around them and cannot be resolved easily.  Recently broadcast simultaneously on an Israel TV channel and an independent Palestinian satellite station, showings in the U.S., after this New York premiere, will help Americans feel more optimistic.

inheritanceThe Difficulties of Diversity - Friction through Fiction

Two notable first fiction features set in the Israeli Arab villages that dot northern Israel, near the Sea of Gallilee, are more wary about how people living under political and social pressures pay a toll for being very human.

Inheritance is the impressive directorial debut of the Nazareth-born actress Hiam Abbass, internationally renowned for her roles in films such as The Visitor and Lemon Tree.  In her co-written, perceptive script, she also co-stars as Samira, a conventional wife caught up in selfish squabbles as her extended, well-connected family – doctor, political candidate, real estate developer, university student, cab driver -- gathers for her daughter’s wedding at their village near the Lebanese border, all movingly portrayed by a large, mostly Israeli-Arab ensemble that includes Ali Suliman and Jordanian-born comic, co-writer Ghazi Albuliwi as a seriously love-lorn cousin.  Domestic issues arising from tradition vs. modernity press in on the beleaguered Lear-like patriarch (Makram Khoury). 

The outbreak of Israel’s 2006 war with Hezbollah aggravates romantic and business dealings with Israelis and Christians, complicating and rattling the most intimate interactions into desperation.  Even in what could have been a cliché young Romeo-and-Juliet couple, the British boyfriend of the rebellious artist daughter cries out “Your family is a bunch of savages!”  While the characters are strongly individuated, the cultural, generational, and religious differences, and how they grapple with them, are frankly and unsparingly put in sharp relief.

arabaniArabani is not only the absorbing debut fiction feature by writer/director Adi Adwan, but also the first by a Druze and set in his native Druze community in northern Israel, in its U.S. premiere.  An opening scroll describes the Druze as an Islamic sect that rejects intermarriage, then follows the fraught set-up of a prodigal son Yoseph (Eyad Sheety) as he hauls his two typically resentful teenagers, smoldering Smadar (Daniella Niddam) and willing-to-experiment Eli (Tom Kelrich), from life in modern Israel with their Jewish mother back to his mortified traditional mother after his divorce, pleading with her “I have no other solution.”  Seventeen years after leaving to serve in the Israeli army, Yoseph is hopeful his mother will accept her mixed grandchildren (the title is slang for a blend of Hebrew and Arabic), but he’s also nostalgic for those he left behind, particularly an old girlfriend Yusra (Lucy Aharish, the first Arab news presenter on a major Israeli TV channel who was also featured in Under the Same Sun).  While much of the kids’ interactions with the locals are of the universally familiar plugged-in city slicker vs. conservative country trickster variety, the depth of the community’s rejection (even amidst sweet glimpses of love) is almost as disturbing as a horror movie.

Toronto '13, part two

With only three tickets left and hundreds of films to choose from, I was in a quandary. What to see? Well, there was a panel discussion called “Class of 2013: New Canadians Directors to Watch, around noonish, which the home office had sent me an invte for and they kind of wanted me to go, so I had to work around that.

So looking at the schedule, I had to find something that wouldn’t conflict, and after discovering that 12/12/12 hade been postponed for my convenience, I found a harmless enough romantic comedy called The Right Kind of Wrong, directed by Jeremiah S. Chechik, and starring Ryan Kwanten as Leo Palamino, who’s backstory is ripped off from Woody Allen’s Manhattan. Leo, a failed writer turned dishwasher falls in love with Colette (Sara Canningon) the day of her wedding - to another man, the seemingly perfect but demonstrably evil Danny Hart (Ryan McPartlin).

Y’all out there in Internet land know how this thing ends. This sort of thing has been done before dozens of times. However there is some snappy dialogue and the scenery (Jasper National Park in the Canadian Rockies) is totally spectacular. It’s almost worth the price of a ticket to see that alone.

So with that bit of fluff over, I headed to the Filmmakers’ Lounge at the Hyatt Regency Hotel for that panel discussion. ..

Throwing temper tantrums usually end in one of two ways, victory or jail. I had the invite on my hard drive. I showed it to them as well as my credentials, but since my creds were of the third rate variety, they wouldn’t let me in. I argued, I cajoled, I tried to call the people inside (damn you Virgin Mobile!) and it looked like it was getting hairy (and late, it had started) when divine providence intervened.. One of the people who were hosting the thing was just walking by and heard me raising my voice at the security guard.

They weren’t very happy, but I was.

I was then treated to the final fifteen minutes of how to get a grant from the Canadian Film Board. That’s socialism for you. Down here we get to go to banks and have to pay all the money back. One of the directors was one of the most beautiful women I’ve seen all year, and the rest looked like me. Oh well…

When that was over, I found out where the free soda was before heading back to the multiplex to see the next film. A Buffy parody called All Cheerleaders Die, which wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. Okay, it WAS, but nearly not exactly, which is what makes the Midnight Madness section of the festival the best part.

Now comes the logistics part. The home office had sent me an invite to a regular screening of a documentary called Mission: Congo, which was one of the most important films of the entire festival, but more on that later. First I had to sneak in.

Now you may be wondering why I had to sneak in if I already had an invitation…well, this was a regular screening, which meant that without the right creds, I couldn’t just hang around the area and tell them I was on the list. So I had to sneak around and find who and where the publicists were and get a hard ticket. This was harder than it sounded. First off, they weren’t there just yet, and when they got there, they didn’t have my ticket. They called their people back at the office and yes, I was on the list and someone somewhere hat the ticket. UG. Happy ending: just as the lights were going out, they found the damn thing and I got in.

Lara Zizic and David Turner's engrossing documentary lays a well-deserved sucker punch on Televangelist Pat Robertson. It seems this thieving shit conned millions of people into financing his Congo diamond mines by disguising it as aide for the victims of the Rwanda genocide back in 1994.

The film reports that Robertson’s “Operation Blessing” is still soliciting donations to operate Congo hospitals and schools never actually built, Disgusting.

Robertson threatened a lawsuit. I don’t know whether or not he will….

So there was one more ticket left. I wanted to see Gravity, but it started too late. So , instead I took in Peter Landesman’s Parkland, which played out as an episode of Law and Order: JFK. The acting was fine. There was nothing wrong with the film per se, but this story has been done over and over and over again so much, that it feels like it’s sleepwalking. True, it’s about the ordinary people who somehow got caught up it the whole thing , like Oswald’s brother(James Badge Dale) or the doctors at the Parkland hospital emergency room. The Kennedys, LBJ and Oswald seem to be totally out of place in their own story. I expect it’ll come and go without much of a trace.

With that over, and the Festival barely started, I went back to my hotel, got my stuff, and left Canada. Maybe next year, I’ll get to do it right.

NYC Theater Roundup: “Big Fish” on Broadway, Julie Taymor's “Dream,” Irish Rep's “Juno,” Lincoln Ctr Theater's “Luce” off-Broadway

 

Big Fish
Music/lyrics by Andrew Lippa, book by John August; direction/choreography by Susan Stroman
Performances through December 29, 2013
 
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Written by William Shakespeare; directed by Julie Taymor
Performances through January 12, 2014
 
Juno and the Paycock
Written by Sean O’Casey; directed by Charlotte Moore
Performances through December 29, 2013
 
Luce
Written by JC Lee; directed by Mae Adrales
Performances through November 17, 2013
 
Baldwin and Butz in Big Fish (photo: Paul Kolnik)
From Daniel Wallace’s novel and Tim Burton’s film, the musical Big Fish is jammed with big emotions, big production numbers, even big songs. But, as in most new musicals, composer/lyricist Andrew Lippa’s conventional tunes (interchangeable ballads, showstoppers and romantic duets) seem an afterthought, but they advance the show by allowing the always inventive Susan Stroman to choreograph the hell out of each number. Thanks to her ingenuity and the show wearing its sentimental heart on its sleeve, it works, up to a point.
 
 
Big Fish—book, movie, musical—hits on a poignant theme: reconciliation between family members before death makes it impossible. Edward Bloom, an irrepressible teller of seemingly tall tales, recounts his fantastical stories about his life, which include a giant, a witch and his hometown escaping a disastrous flood. His just-married son Will feels that all he knows about his father is through his stories. So when Edward falls ill, Will checks them out for himself with results that surprise his skepticism.
 
Stroman’s brisk but unfrantic pacing helps the show keep moving, even when there may be one Bloom tale too many, as well as a few too many endings. But it’s all done to such an illustrious sheen by its boatload of talented performers—Kate Baldwin as the winsome heroine/wife/mother Sandra, Bobby Steggert as the likable son Will and the indestructible Norbert Leo Butz as Edward—that Big Fish overcomes its flaws to pull in its audience hook, line and sinker.
 
Benko in Taymor's Dream (photo: Es Devlin)
No one would deny that Julie Taymor is a dazzling director, but Shakespeare seems her comeuppance. She did wondrously with The Lion King onstage and Frida onscreen, but when she attacks the Bard (Titus and The Tempest on stage and screen), the results are underwhelming. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream—the inaugural staging at the Theater for a New Audience’s impressive new downtown Brooklyn space—her sumptuous stagecraft obscures the heart at the core of this classic.
 
 
For three hours, a whirlwind of visual wonderment from Taymor and her co-conjurers—Donald Holder (lighting), Sven Ortel (projections), Constance Hoffman (costumes), Es Devlin (sets)—time and again causes the audience to “ooh” and “aah” at will. There’s not as much flying as in her woebegone Spiderman as Taymor’s aerial team Airealistic smartly picks its spots to elevate the fairies. Unfortunately, Taymor is on less firm ground with the play proper, since her performers can’t handle Shakespeare’s verse.
 
Despite a stunning opening—the spirit Puck disappears into the first of the production’s many billowing sheets above and on the stage—Taymor gets the Bard’s impish sprite totally wrong: despite her elasticity, Kathryn Hunter’s mischievous fairy is the least puckish Puck I’ve seen.  It’s tempting to give the rude mechanicals a pass, since Bottom and his performing buddies are supposed to be daffy and dumb: but even with such a resourceful actor as Max Casella playing him, Bottom never reaches comedic heights, and his awkward donkey head (which the actor has to manipulate with controls in his hands) is something that might have worked on paper but stops the seemingly foolproof “love scenes” with the fairy queen Titania dead in their tracks.
 
The less said about the quartet of lovers in the forest—Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander—the better, since none of the actors and actresses playing them makes any impression, and even Taymor seems stymied, resorting to farcical standbys like ripping clothes off and pillow fights, in desperation. The two pairs of monarchs—Athens’ Theseus and Amazon Hippolyta, King and Queen of the Fairies Oberon and Titania—fare better, with Tina Benko’s Titania by default the best performance in a visually memorable but otherwise deficient Dream.
 
The cast of the Irish Rep's Juno and the Paycock (photo: James Higgins)
Sean O’Casey’s humane, masterly Juno and the Paycock delicately dissects the fraught emotional lives of a poor Irish Catholic family—carefree father Jack (the peacock/“paycock”), overworked mother Juno, son Johnny (physically and emotionally crippled by the Irish Civil War), and daughter Mary, hoping for a better life elsewhere—in Dublin, circa 1922.
 
 
In Charlotte Moore’s straightforwardly-directed Irish Rep production—especially intimate on the tiny stage with James Noone’s set credibly evoking this ultra-nationalist and ultra-religious era—the family and their friends (and even enemies) are presented as flawed but recognizable human beings, as O’Casey merges the personal and political in a way that’s still exciting and incendiary.
 
And the performances by Ciaran Byrne (Jack), Ed Malone (John), Mary Mallen (Mary) and, best of all, J. Smith-Cameron (Juno) keep Moore’s respectful presentation of an enshrined masterpiece out of mothballs.
 
Onaodowan and Hinkle in Luce (photo: Jeremy Daniel)
JC Lee’s at times auspicious debut Luce attempts too much as it explores how natural cultural divides lead to misunderstandings—and worse. Lee introduces Luce, a seemingly perfect high school student: he’s smart, well-liked and an all-star football player. He’s also the adopted black son of Amy and Peter, white liberals who plucked him from the war-torn Congo at age seven and have raised him right—or so they think. His teacher Harriet notifies Amy about a paper bag full of explosive fireworks in his locker and a provocative pro-terrorist harangue in a journal he keeps at school, so they begin to wonder about their “perfect” son (Amy more than Peter, it must be said).
 
 
Although Lee sets up the dramatic fireworks convincingly, his characters—Amy, Peter, Harriet, Luce and Stephanie, Luce’s ex-girlfriend who has a revealing scene with Amy at Starbucks—are less plausibly etched. The play is, literally, too black and white: more shading would help. It’s apparent from the start that Luce is guilty, and there’s no doubt about it when he commits a climactic act of treachery that undermines Lee’s lip-service to ambiguity.
 
Under May Adrales’s sensitive direction, the quintet of actors givesLuce a veneer of substance. Would that Neal Huff’s befuddled, hands-off dad, Marin Hinkle’s complicated, loving mom, Sharon Washington’s no-nonsense teacher (though I doubt she would tell a student to “F—off”), Olivia Oguma’s typically shallow ex and Okieriete Onaodowan’s appealing but distant Luce weren’t undermined by this provocative but unprovoking drama.
 
Big Fish
Neil Simon Theatre, 250 West 52nd Street, New York, NY
bigfishthemusical.com
 
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY
tfana.org
 
Juno and the Paycock
Irish Rep, 132 West 22nd Street, New York, NY
irishrep.org
 
Luce
Claire Tow Theater, 150 West 65th Street, New York, NY
lct.org

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