#1
Posted: 10/14/05 at 1:18am
One of the things you have to give the Roundabout Theatre credit for is its courageous support of new works by playwrights for the stage. They have supported the work of Richard Greenberg before, but also other American playwrights such as Paula Vogel. It is no small thing to bring a new work by an American playwright to a Broadway house and it doesn't happen that often given the vast expense of producing in these venues.
Roundabout has a slight advantage in that it is a non-profit theatre (wish there were so many more at this level) with a dedicated and loyal subscriber base. Roundabout offers a mix of new, classic and musical shows and is able to offer top talent such as Brian Bedford, argued to be the world's best classicist of Moliere in English. I have seen Frank Langella, Liev Schrieber, Emily Bergl and many other fine classical actors in the various theatres that Roundabout has occupied.
A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, Greenberg's new comedy, can't be easily pegged. It's a send-up, it's over-the-top, it roams and ambles. It is almost the deconstruction of a comedy, a comedy of a comedy, or a comedy on top of a comedy. The naked girl referenced in the title, with the benefit of hindsight I would have expected to be a mythical something someone sees before they fall helplessly in love, [SPOILERS FOLLOW] yet the parents who see her first are already married and seeing her on their honeymoon. The only conclusion I can draw of the reference of the title, which may be a stretch, is that we are all naked creatures who have hidden Dionysian, or since it's Italy, Bacchanalean desires leading to other-than-expected behaviors which will eventually be revealed.
Greenberg sets us up with a softly liberal, well-off Hamptons' couple in a pleasantly elegant and modern home. The parents, Jill Clayburgh and Richard Thomas have writing careers. I am not sure why Greenberg didn't set the parents up as stuffy conservatives to be thrown topsy turvy by liberal children, but perhaps he thought that would be too easy. And perhaps not tenable where he attempts the feat of using a kind of counter-racism as comedy. The couple's three adopted children of different races, Latin/Dominican, Caucasian and Asian in the characters portrayed by Susan Watson, Matthew Morrison and James Yaegashi, all become objects of a barrage of racist comments mostly coming from Mr. Yaegashi which at times are a kind of "victim humor" and other setups for humor that is unexpected.
Greenberg seems to have an intellectual expanse over the play that is a little hard to grasp over the first viewing and I think would become more evident the second time you see the play. For example, before Mr. Morrison enters he is told by his sister not to head in a different direction (next door) but to walk into the home instead. The reason for this becomes clear near the end of the play but initially you may think this means he is seriously handicapped which he doesn't turn out to be.
(CONT.)
Roundabout has a slight advantage in that it is a non-profit theatre (wish there were so many more at this level) with a dedicated and loyal subscriber base. Roundabout offers a mix of new, classic and musical shows and is able to offer top talent such as Brian Bedford, argued to be the world's best classicist of Moliere in English. I have seen Frank Langella, Liev Schrieber, Emily Bergl and many other fine classical actors in the various theatres that Roundabout has occupied.
A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, Greenberg's new comedy, can't be easily pegged. It's a send-up, it's over-the-top, it roams and ambles. It is almost the deconstruction of a comedy, a comedy of a comedy, or a comedy on top of a comedy. The naked girl referenced in the title, with the benefit of hindsight I would have expected to be a mythical something someone sees before they fall helplessly in love, [SPOILERS FOLLOW] yet the parents who see her first are already married and seeing her on their honeymoon. The only conclusion I can draw of the reference of the title, which may be a stretch, is that we are all naked creatures who have hidden Dionysian, or since it's Italy, Bacchanalean desires leading to other-than-expected behaviors which will eventually be revealed.
Greenberg sets us up with a softly liberal, well-off Hamptons' couple in a pleasantly elegant and modern home. The parents, Jill Clayburgh and Richard Thomas have writing careers. I am not sure why Greenberg didn't set the parents up as stuffy conservatives to be thrown topsy turvy by liberal children, but perhaps he thought that would be too easy. And perhaps not tenable where he attempts the feat of using a kind of counter-racism as comedy. The couple's three adopted children of different races, Latin/Dominican, Caucasian and Asian in the characters portrayed by Susan Watson, Matthew Morrison and James Yaegashi, all become objects of a barrage of racist comments mostly coming from Mr. Yaegashi which at times are a kind of "victim humor" and other setups for humor that is unexpected.
Greenberg seems to have an intellectual expanse over the play that is a little hard to grasp over the first viewing and I think would become more evident the second time you see the play. For example, before Mr. Morrison enters he is told by his sister not to head in a different direction (next door) but to walk into the home instead. The reason for this becomes clear near the end of the play but initially you may think this means he is seriously handicapped which he doesn't turn out to be.
(CONT.)
Updated On: 11/24/05 at 01:18 AM
