December theatergoers can always see a slew of shows that celebrate Christmas, Chanukah and Kwanzaa. How they uplift us and make us happy!
This month, though, is also a time when each of us should be ready, to paraphrase what Bob Wallace sings to Betty Haynes in WHITE CHRISTMAS, to count our blessings instead of sheep.
Three recent offerings will do just that for you. Many who see HALFWAY BITCHES GO STRAIGHT TO HEAVEN and GREATER CLEMENTS will emerge from the theater saying “There but for the grace of (fill-in-the-blank) go I.”
In ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, Broadway producer Oscar Jaffee is approached by a doctor who has written a play. “I call it LIFE IN A METROPOLITAN HOSPITAL,” he sings as we laugh at the deadly sounding drama that’s sure to be a dud.
Once again we see ‘taint what you do, but the way that you do it. Certainly Stephen Adly Guirgis fits that description. The list of his eight off-Broadway plays, three revivals and one Broadway show — all since 2000 – shows that he’s one of our most prolific playwrights. This script reiterates that he’s one of our best ones, too. He can make Life in a Metropolitan Women’s Halfway House mesmerize us even for the three hours he keeps us there.
(Credit director John Ortiz, too, for a production that doesn’t seem nearly that long.)
The Beatles were four people who couldn’t last much more than a decade; The Kingston Trio saw a defection and a replacement a mere four years after they’d hit it big. Martin and Lewis as well as Simon and Garfunkel couldn’t last. So if a foursome, threesome and two duos all of whom have had titanic success can’t get along, what chance of day-to-day harmony can there be for nearly a dozen unhappy, failure-prone criminals and drug addicts (not to mention a woman who will simply not bathe)?
The struggle begins immediately as Sarge (the extraordinary Liza Colon-Zayas) – so named because she’s served in the military – tells off Venus, a male-to-female transsexual (who isn’t a cliché, thanks to Esteban Andres Cruz’s human interpretation).
Sarge is transphobic, yet she’s smart enough to cover herself. She claims that her real beef is that Venus is taking a spot in the shelter that could have been given to a “genuine” woman who’s suffering on the street.
One of Guirgis’ greatest strengths is that he shows that people who we may not assume to be intelligent indeed are. They may only have street smarts, but that still puts them on the spectrum of smart. Who knows what they might have become had they the opportunities that many of us have had?
(Count your blessings, friends; count your blessings.)
Better still: Guirgis first gives reason to think a character is wrong but eventually follows it with a line or speech that shows the person has a valid point. Conversely, all the characters – not just the incarcerated ones but those who tend to them, too – get moments that make us dislike them followed by scenes where we understand how they got that way. We follow our contempt with sympathy only to follow that with more contempt and then more sympathy still.
Only a few minutes in this maelstrom, you might feel that the term “halfway house” is a euphemism. Some inhabitants aren’t remotely halfway close to being released. Even those who might be able to manage to beat their demons will need great luck if they are released. Then would come the harder part: managing to get a job and staying with it to lead even semi-productive lives.
(Count your blessings, chums; count your blessings.)
In GREATER CLEMENTS – named for a minuscule Idaho burg — Maggie is mother to Joe, a 27-year-old who’s still living at home. He did forge out on his own a while back only to wind up homeless.
Joe left Greater Clements because he’d committed an anti-social act that made him a town pariah. That misstep in itself wasn’t nearly as serious as the disorder that caused it. It’s right up there with Alien Hand Syndrome and Capgras Delusion.
Playwright Samuel D. Hunter doesn’t tell us if Joe had been a strange individual before this affliction hit him; whatever the case, he’s certainly one now.
Those who review plays must be careful when using the word “brilliant” for it shouldn’t be devalued. Nevertheless, that’s the right word to describe Edmund Donovan as the tortured Joe. He pulls on his T-shirt, scratches his leg when he’s not lifting the other one backwards, gives eerie looks after he finishes every sad explanation of why he acts the way he must before zeroing in on the person that he’s speaking to with eyes narrowed to slits that are both challenging and begging for mercy.
The best part comes late in the third act (yes, three acts — and almost as many hours). Here we discover that Joe’s actually capable of a heroic act. Would that the other characters in the play could witness it.
What a shame, though, that Hunter must use the hoariest of devices to get him to the play’s climax: having one character be at the wrong place at the wrong time and overhear a conversation. SWEENEY TODD does it better: Toby suspects and infers that something sinister is going on just from gut feelings, not because he overhears something. True, he’ll later find evidence, but even that’s better set up than the ol’ walk-in “solution.”
And bless director Davis McCallum, too, for working so well around a terribly unwieldy set – at least until one of the final scenes. While characters throughout the play have taken the stairs to get one from floor to another, suddenly Maggie manages the journey with just a single step.
That’s McCallum’s one misstep.
As Maggie, Judith Ivey makes none. She is magnificent – but what else is new? Ivey has always been great with facial expressions and vocal intonations; has she also always been as effective in using her hands and arms? They’re a show in themselves in the novel way she works them and makes her gestures eloquently talk.
We know that a mother struggles when she must single-parent a son. Hunter reminds us that having a 27-year-old who’s still a child in many ways is substantially harder. Theatergoers who have analogous problems with their kids may want to stay away from GREATER CLEMENTS.
Everyone else, though, will be blessing-counting.
