Right now, there are many big-name Broadway shows waiting in line to open on April 29, Tony Award Eligibility cut-off date — culminating in Macbethofficially opened that afternoon.
Away from this constant big-name cavalry, just a few streets away, IslandersNew York cutest new music, will open tonight. Because while it’s opening, against all these giants, the shimmering dramatic musical, conceived and directed by Amy Draper, can be overlooked. It absolutely shouldn’t.
It has no celebrities (though its two leads Kirsty Findlay and Bethany Tennick should/will be stars). It’s so good it deserves to be opened on Broadway, if its simplicity and ingenuity can be preserved — perhaps in Circle in the Square, a friend suggested. It’s a gem, so make a trip to Playhouse 46 at St. Lukes — just go down the street in direction 8order Avenue from Joe Allen on 46order Street — for a great 90-minute performance (running until July 31).
Featuring a book by Stewart Melton and music and lyrics by Finn Anderson, the show is about an island in danger and two people at a crossroads in their own lives. Eilidh, pronounced Ay-lee (Tennick), is 15 years old, and the youngest inhabitant of Kinnan, a small island somewhere off the coast of Scotist mainland (“bigland”). In her life, one day Arran, 16 years old, and… this critic really doesn’t want to talk.
The big break is a surprise in the musical, and will be a surprise to watch. It even seems absurd until it becomes completely normal in the blink of an eye. It is connected with a whale Eilidh found on the beach, and a tense but tender friendship between two young women, and the play comes with a glossary of words if you’re scratching your head. ear. This is a very good practice by the production team, but it is not necessary because the two actors make what they are saying and what they are saying in their own dialects completely clear. Islanders Played with the best heart and seriousness — precise, without pretense or precepts.
It should be made clear that in this basement space there is hardly anything on the floor that women perform. They have a repeater, which helps them make repetitive sounds (of waves and wind), and have a small stem and some microphones.
With lighting by Simon Wilkinson and sound design by Sam Kusnetz and Kevin Sweetser, we were all transported seamlessly to the island, to the raging seas, to a court meeting. mayor, to a party, to confess in deserted schools and emotional hearts—starting on windswept beaches—and then cruising with a woman about to give birth. Conservation of nature and community is a fundamental theme for the Islander, but is woven with personal truth into the personalities and stories of Eilidh and Arran.
Findlay and Tannick spin the space around each other, playing a host of other characters, including a man who always complains at council meetings, and Eilidh’s estranged mother and wonderful grandmother That person has a very convincing ability to play deadly. Islanders really beautiful — sharp, moving, funny, and one of the best musicals in New York right now that nobody (yet) knows about.
It seems a bit of a mystery that Martin McDonagh .’s play Hangmen play off-Broadway at Atlantic Theater Company in 2018 before its inevitable Broadway entry; it arrived with warm reviews, from London. And here it is four years later (Golden Theatre, until June 18), a mixture of brutality and dark humor that McDonagh writes so well, and that is the hallmark of this play.
Directed by Matthew Dunster, because off-Broadway, the play first brought audiences to England in 1963, and to a dingy cell where an inmate named James Hennessy (Josh Goulding) was begging for his life. himself when the hangman’s noose was hung. during preparation.
The hangman is Harry Wade (David Threlfall), a big and innocent Northerner, whom Hennessy immediately mocks: “At least they could have sent Pierrepoint,” he said, alluding to Albert Pierrepoint’s knife. Britain’s most talented government (who appeared later, played by John Hodgkinson).
(l to r) Alfie Allen (Mooney), Gaby French (Shirley) in “Hangmen”.
Joan Marcus
Harry is in Pierrepoint’s shadow, and then – at the worst possible time – Pierrepoint comes up with a problem with Albert talking about his own execution skills in an article. Both men competed on the number of people they killed, and their professionalism. The strangeness of what they’re fighting for — bodies, lives — is darkly, deliciously written and played.
Two years after the execution, with the death penalty abolished, we are at Oldham, the Lancashire pub that Albert hosts with his wife Alice (Tracie Bennett). Anna Fleischle’s evocative photography is a replica of a classic English pub where you can feel the smell of tobacco and the pungent smell. It features a Greek choir of regulars, including a police inspector (Jeremy Crutchley)
He and Alice struggle to understand their daughter Shirley (French Gaby, returning from a production job in the Atlantic). Shirley’s inner turmoil is seen as “stupidity”, and their parents’ ignorance entails, potentially tragically, the arrival of the menacing Mooney (Alfie Allen), who whose name reflects the “trying” that Shirley’s parents struggled to identify. Shirley is insulted and derided by her parents, who don’t realize what they’re doing.
Mooney is a hint of the swinging 60s in this buzzing pub. He has a mocking malice, a peacock air, and an insinuating, slightly menacing chit chat. Mooney is scary and funny. Who is he? What is he? Where did he come from? He reminds this reviewer of Sloane in Joe Orton‘S Entertainment for Mr. Sloane: an endearing smile, a thorn in the side of common authority and modesty, and can conceal a weapon.
Like Orton, McDonagh uses words, reverses meanings, and knows how repetition and puns can work in great silliness, as when these men bluff — or they want us to think — find ourselves saying “the rooster” over and over. Also notable is Syd (Andy Nyman), Harry’s assistant, whose stubbornness is a cover for deception and a sharper ruse than Harry knows.
But Mooney is the unknowable evil of the play, and McDonagh and Allen intend to keep it that way. We see legalized violence and illegal violence take the same form; Individual arrogance and institutionalization can both lead to the destruction of life; a person who carries only the beauty of correctness. What if some of the people the men were hanged were innocent? The play intentionally doesn’t answer this; it just faces the terrible black hole of possibility.
In a male-focused play, its significant downside is that it doesn’t know what to do with its female characters, and its rough treatment of women is just as bizarre. Alice is no different from the archetypal Northern landlady, with her big hair, polite appearance, and a scarred golden heart. Shirley is slightly more calibrated; She is not simply a sharp-eyed person, but also has intelligence and agility that we only see briefly. Schematically, the play guarantees her absence and Alice’s comparative silence.
It’s Threlfall, with his abrupt transition from warm to evil blush, and Mooney, whose intelligence is dotted with acid, and who has a terrifying volcanic temperament, dominating the tavern. The play makes us wonder about the violence of both law and lawlessness. In Hangmenextremely funny because it is, you are left with death — of man and justice.
