| My review of THE CHILDREN: Award-winning playwright Lucy Kirkwood makes her Broadway debut | |
| Posted by: jesse21 09:03 am EST 12/12/17 | |
|
|
|
| - Hooray! Intelligent playwriting is back on Broadway after a dispiriting and empty fall season. Give thanks to 33-year-old Lucy Kirkwood. Her haunting and disturbing new play, The Children, has been transferred intact from London’s Royal Court Theatre to Manhattan Theatre Club’s Friedman Theatre where it opens tonight. Unlike the one-dimensional rubbish we’ve been seeing lately, specifically Junk, Meteor Shower and The Parisian Woman, The Children dares to tackle big issues in very human terms with riveting naturalistic dialogue. The set-up: A married couple in their late 60s, Hazel (Deborah Findlay) and Robin (Ron Cook), retired scientists who worked at a nearby nuclear power station, have abandoned their farm to move to a seaside cottage, realistic but also slightly askew to keep us on edge as designed by Miriam Buether (A Doll’s House, Part 2). The power plant has been discharging radiation after being hit by a natural disaster. The play opens soon after the third character, a nuclear physicist named Rose (Francesca Annis) has unexpectedly arrived. She’s an old friend and colleague the couple have not seen in some 38 years. There is tension between the woman but Ms. Kirkwood teases the audience as to why the conflict. In fact, her style is to slowly let the audience in to what is happening in this one hour, 42 minute play in such an intriguing manner that our attention is glued to the dialogue as we anticipate each reveal. What is interesting is how in the face of such apocalyptic disaster, these baby boomers, so accustomed to a life of affluent comfort, go about their daily routines, be that yoga routines or dancing to James Brown’s “Ain’t It Funky Now.” All this leads to the big issue: What has this self-centered generation bequeathed to its children and grandchildren. And, in the face of this deadly nuclear situation, what is their responsibility to their progeny. The seasoned British actors are superb. Francesca Annis is probably best known to older American audiences for her portrayal of Lillie Langtry in the 1970s PBS series Edward the Seventh and then Lillie. Ron Cook recently played the large recurring role of company accountant, Mr Arthur Crabb, in the four seasons of Mr. Selfridge on PBS. Deborah Findlay is an Olivier Award winner for Pam Gems Stanley which also played on Broadway in 1997. The Children is directed by James Macdonald who keeps the dialogue lively and the tension between the characters palpable. He is the director who staged that fantastic revival of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls on the same MTC stage in 2008. (And wow, in today’s social-political climate of sexual harassment, would that play be ripe for another revival.) Mr. Macdonald also directed Ms. Churchill’s Escaped Alone, also from the Royal Court, which was seen at BAM earlier this year and deservedly was chosen as one of the best ten plays of 2017 by both theater critics at The New York Times. (By the way, Deborah Findlay was in the cast as well.) Like that one, The Children dares to take on a large canvas of a dystopian world. Both playwrights, separated by an age difference of 46 years, possess an uncanny dramatic vision and share a style of portraying their themes in the most ordinary situations of every-day life. Lucy Kirkwood gained attention in 2013 when she won all the best play awards in Britain for Chimerica about the culture clash between the rising superpower (China) and the declining superpower (USA). Her newest play, Mosquitoes, opened to excellent reviews at London’s National Theatre last July. The Children may not have a popular comedienne nor an aging glamorous film star to sell tickets. But, who cares. It is a really fine play that entertains and makes you think about the inheritance we are leaving succeeding generations. ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ - Jesse SIDEBAR: THE CHILDREN opens Tuesday, December 12, 2017, at Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street, New York City. Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes. No intermission. Limited engagement. Tickets on sale through February 4, 2018. Link to website. - |
|
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | TB REGIONAL REVIEW: "A CHRISTMAS STORY, THE MUSICAL" in SAN FRANCISCO - T.B._Admin. 09:05 am EST 12/12/17 |
| Next: | A Jewish Theater Company Presents "Looking Through Glass" 12/26-31 - Official_Press_Release 08:18 am EST 12/12/17 |
| Thread: | |
Time to render: 0.007184 seconds.