Theatre

[Takara_Soong 4]

An opportunity to see your favourites on stage.

 

Patrick Stewart - The Master Builder - touring in England in late May

 

Patrick Stewart's website

 

Brent Spiner - Life x3 - opens on Broadway March 31 (possibly limited engagement until June 29)

 

Whoopi Goldberg - Ma Rainey's Black Bottom closes on Broadway April 6

 

Kate Mulgrew - Tea at Five now playing off Broadway

 

If you know of any others please post away.

[Yillara Skye 1]

Darn, Brent on stage and I live nowhere near where I can see!

[Lubak10 0]

Brent Spiner - Life x3 - opens on Broadway March 31 (possibly limited engagement until June 29)

 

 

That is so unfair! My the juniors and seniors at my school are going to be taking a trip to New York around this time and they will be seeing a few Brodway plays. I'm a freshman! I can't go!

[Klingonmike 0]

I work in professonal theatre and although I've never had the pleasure of working with any of the Star Trek stars, I have worked with actors who have played aliens on Star Trek.So far I've worked with a Klingon woman,A Bolian,a Cardassian,and a Romulin! My two favorite actors are Larry Pressman ( Legate Ghemor on the DS9 episodes "Second Skin" and "Ties of Blood and Water") and Norman Large ( Procounsil Neral from the TNG episodes "Unification parts 1 and 2.)

[Takara_Soong 4]

Life X3 opens on Monday. I'll see if I can find a review to post on Tuesday. It will almost be like being there - well if you close your eyes and use your imagination.

 

I know the play that Whoopi Goldberg is in got mixed reviews and I thought I had ready it was going to be closing early but I can't confirm it.

 

Tea at Five also got mixed reviews saying that Kate Mulgrew's performance was much better than the material she was performing.

[Yillara Skye 1]

Thanks for helping out soong_girl, and I will look for reviews as well. You can post it here or on our Family thread. That'd be great!

[Takara_Soong 4]

Some of the reviews are in and they are so so for the play. The reviewers don't really say much about the actors or their performance. It seems it is the play itself that lacks. Not all the reviews have been posted to the web yet so I'll update as I find them.

 

 

 

New York Times

April 1, 2003

A Dinner Becomes a Disaster, in Triplicate

By BEN BRANTLEY

 

Yasmina Reza may have the tidiest mind of any popular playwright working today. It's not that Ms. Reza, the author of that internationally beloved trifle called "Art," doesn't acknowledge that life can be fuzzy, mysterious and downright messy. Her "Life x 3," which opened last night in a damagingly miscast production at the Circle in the Square Theater, might even be called a comedy of chaos.

 

But if the world that Ms. Reza describes is filled with snarled ambiguities, her plays are as orderly as an obsessive-compulsive's sock drawer. Originally written (and produced) in French, they are usually slender sitcoms, elegantly streaked with troubling shadows and shaped with Cartesian symmetry. They are plays that suggest reassuringly that human depths can, after all, be measured by a slide rule.

 

Unfortunately, Ms. Reza's American fans are unlikely to derive much comfort from the awkward New York production of "Life x 3" ("Trois Versions de la Vie"), which features the marquee presences of Helen Hunt and John Turturro. This fuguelike consideration of two haute bourgeois couples, who act out three different versions of the same disastrous dinner party, is in many ways the usual ingratiating Reza-ish cocktail of middlebrow comedy and highbrow references.

 

The play has the same adroit translator (Christopher Hampton) and director (Matthew Warchus) as her previous productions in New York, "Art" and "The Unexpected Man." Like those comedies, "Life x 3" is considerately short (about 90 minutes). And when it was first seen in London at the Royal National Theater two years ago, it had critics beaming with approval.

 

Yet theatergoers are likely to leave the Circle in the Square feeling baffled, which is certainly not the way anyone felt after seeing the easygoing, Tony-winning "Art." Though the first segment of "Life x 3" is greeted with gratified laughter, a moment comes shortly after when you can sense brows creasing throughout the house. One great big "Huh?" seems to hover in the air, and the show never gets the audience back on its side.

 

This is mostly because all but one of the four cast members are themselves unable to handle the transitions the play demands. "Life x 3" is indeed set up like an algebraic equation, but with human variables. The elements that make up the personalities of the four characters are rearranged three times (as is the furniture in Mark Thompson's modishly geometric set), shifting the balance and the outcome in the power struggles among them.

 

The basis for these variations is sitcom simple: one couple shows up for dinner at the Parisian apartment of another couple on the wrong night. The dismayed, unprepared hosts are Henry (Mr. Turturro), a research astrophysicist, and his wife, Sonia (Ms. Hunt), a financial lawyer. Their unexpected guests are Hubert (Brent Spiner), a more successful colleague of Henry's, and Inez (Linda Emond), his eternally resentful wife.

 

Each of the play's three sections uses other ingredients that might have come from an old "(Please stop me from cursing) Van Dyke Show." There is nothing to eat in the house except a few random snack foods, but there is plenty of wine, which means people will get drunker than they would otherwise. Inez has an embarrassing run in her stocking. And Henry and Sonia's unseen 6-year-old son, Arnaud, keeps making distracting noises from his bedroom.

 

Henry and Hubert are not astrophysicists for nothing, however. The characters' comic rivalries and hostilities — professional, sexual and parental — are set off by a sense of cosmic infinitude that makes them seem petty and rather sad. Ms. Reza increases the darkness quotient with each new section of the play. So while the first scene is an exercise in angry slapstick, the last has a brooding quality that calls for (and gets) a wistful, melancholy soundtrack in its final moments.

 

Mr. Turturro and Ms. Hunt are quite funny in the first playlet's opening sequence, as they become more and more exasperated with Arnaud's wails for attention. But while both have done beautifully shaded work on screen, there is little variety in their performances here, which is fatal to the very premise of "Life x 3."

 

Mr. Turturro plays the anguished schlemiel Henry like Danny Thomas on a rampage, and he almost never shifts into a lower gear. Ms. Hunt's trademark naturalistic delivery, with its flat inflections, chafes against the stylized archness of her lines.

 

And while she looks smashing in both a plain bathrobe and a soignée hostess ensemble, she exudes little of the vixenish sensuality her character is said to possess. And it's hard to take her flirtation with the resolutely hearty Mr. Spiner at all seriously.

 

Ms. Emond, however, again proves herself to be one of the essential treasures of the New York theater. As the alternately officious and submissive Inez, she conveys her character's contradictions and changes with an unlikely combination of understatement and clarity. Even the way her hair hangs in her face seems to speak volumes about Inez's states of mind. And she does discreet marvels with the business of concealing that run in her stocking.

 

With the other members of the cast, all the highfalutin talk about the conundrums of space and science in "Life x 3" seems like window dressing for a rudimentary comedy. But Ms. Emond keeps subtly changing the temperature of Inez's character in ways that do indeed suggest the imponderable equations within one personality.

 

When toward the play's end Inez starts to worry about that really big question, the nothingness of the universe, you actually feel that she has earned the right to do so. Her companions, in the meantime, still seem stuck in a more limited realm where life is set to the rhythms of a laugh track.

 

LIFE x 3

 

 

By Yasmina Reza; translated by Christopher Hampton; directed by Matthew Warchus; design by Mark Thompson; lighting by Hugh Vanstone; music composed by Gary Yershon; sound by Christopher T. Cronin; production stage manager, David Hyslop; production manager, Peter Fulbright; associate producers, Jerome Swartz and Joseph Smith; general management, Stuart Thompson Productions, James Triner. Presented by Ron Kastner. At the Circle in the Square Theater, 1633 Broadway, at 50th Street, Manhattan.

 

WITH: Helen Hunt (Sonia), John Turturro (Henry), Brent Spiner (Hubert) and Linda Emond (Inez).

 

Broadway.com

 

If you want a dinner party to go well, here is a good rule of thumb: do not have it in a play, where such gatherings are all but guaranteed to go awry. The one in the first scene of Yasmina Reza's Life (x) 3 is, by any standard, an absolute fiasco. Henry (John Turturro) and his wife Sonia (Helen Hunt) are already in a foul mood, thanks to the ceaseless whining of their 6-year-old son Arnaud; when we meet them, they are arguing sourly about whether to give the boy a cookie to shut him up. Then, because of a scheduling mix-up, their dinner guests Hubert (Brent Spiner) and Inez (Linda Emond) unexpectedly arrive a whole day before they were expected. Hubert and Inez are in an ugly humor themselves, having bickered on the street about Hubert's parking and a run in Inez's stocking, and there is no food to serve them except a box of chocolate fingers and a few small bags of Cheez-Its. Then Hubert--who is in a position to help Henry's academic career--casually mentions that a rival team of scientists is about to publish findings on the subject that Henry has been researching for years. Tempers flare, harsh words are exchanged, and the guests depart in a fury.

 

Social disaster on this scale inevitably prompts a litany of counterfactuals: if only (the child hadn't been so uncooperative, the stocking hadn't run, the hosts hadn't been so touchy), then (everything might have turned out better). In Life (x) 3, the alternatives get staged. At the end of the first scene, Mark Thompson's set--a circular carpet with a round glass table in the middle, rather like a target--rotates to give the surrounding audience at the Circle in the Square a different view of the action. Then the scene is replayed, with a few of the details changed: Arnaud is no longer noisy, more wine is consumed, Hubert has time to make a pass at Sonia. And when this version has run its course, the set rotates again, and the scene is played a third time, with yet another set of variables. The point of this exercise is to highlight the extent to which major events can grow out of apparently unrelated or insignificant factors. Life, it seems, is in the trivia. ("I don't live up in the stars, Inez," confesses the depressed astrophysicist Henry, "Far lower down, if you want to know the truth.")

 

As in Reza's earlier works Art and The Unexpected Man, Life (x) 3 has been tartly translated from the original French by Christopher Hampton (Les Liaisons Dangereuses) and firmly directed by Matthew Warchus. Those who enjoyed Art will appreciate the urbane crackle of Reza's dialogue, and the play can hardly be faulted for lack of conflict. But although Life (x) 3 holds your attention throughout its 90-minute running time, it lacks the weight to linger afterward. The central conceit of the play only literalizes what good playwrights and actors have always known: that the drama on the surface of a scene is an extension of the tiny dramas behind it. And alternate lives have been explored before in works like Caryl Churchill's 1987 one-act Heart's Desire, which took it to absurdist lengths, and the 1998 film Sliding Doors.

 

Perhaps inevitably, the gimmick comes to overshadow the rest of the play, which becomes less compelling with each retelling. With so much of the action designed for contrast and comparison, the characters are finally reduced to the playwright's marionettes. Their screaming matches, especially, seem out of whack with their middle-class politeness; Turturro's frenzied stammering and spitting are alarming enough in the theater, but it is hard to imagine how they would play in an apartment. Hunt's surly, impatient Sonia and Spiner's smarmy Hubert are, for the most part, merely unlikable. Only Emond, as the put-upon Inez, locates a deeper humanity in her portrayal. If Life (x) 3 fails to live up to its ambitions, it is because Reza does not establish these people's reality convincingly enough to toy with it. In the best of all possible worlds, the play would have more life to multiply.

 

Life (x) 3

By Yasmina Reza

Directed by Matthew Warchus

Circle in the Square

[Yillara Skye 1]

Hmmm, sounds like the critics either didn't like it or flat out didn't understand it!! I am not sure, it is not normally the type of play I'd go to see (if I had access to see Broadway plays), but I am sure I'd at least give it a try..even if it was just to get to see Brent live!

[Takara_Soong 4]

I have not copied the part that just describes the story so here is another review:

 

Talkin' Broadway

 

Reza is interested in answering all of these questions and more within the arc of her greater dramatic construct. One of the story's three incarnations focuses primarily on how people believe when secrets and confidences are baldly exposed, another suggests the intricate interaction of words and the truly fragile human spirit. As the alcohol at this party flows freely (Sonia and Henry had very little food but plenty of wine), its effects change as the reasons surrounding its consumption change. That Reza is able to turn even a box of chocolate cookies into a significant sticking point for the characters should illustrate the layers of detail she's applied here.

 

That detail is sumptuously realized in the deceptively simple production. Though it was directed by Matthew Warchus, the contributions of set designer Mark Thompson (who also did the show's costumes) are vital - Henry and Sonia's living room is a tribute to circles, with an enormous round coffee table preventing easy access to every area of the room, and the room's sparse furniture is arranged around the table like the lookout towers of a castle.

 

Or perhaps more appropriately battle trenches; Warchus uses every means at his disposal to provide a striking sense of textual clarity to all his stage pictures. The characters group together physically as they form emotional, spiritual, or verbal alliances (not always of the positive kind) and separate when those bonds are broken. And when, as frequently is the case, the characters are completely at odds, they remain poised upon the furniture as far away from each other physically as they are socially. There's a haunting, cinematic nature to Warchus's direction, which seems perfectly wedded to Reza's text in terms of sheer storytelling ability. Hugh Vanstone's lighting is fine throughout, but comes alive during the scenic transitions to maintain the show's theatrical flair when no dialogue is being spoken.

 

The show is also impeccably cast: Hunt is ideal as the brutally reactionary Sonia whose defenses are frequently beyond her control; Turturro is raw emotion, let out in tiny, barely constrained bursts; and Spiner is the image of professional control, even in the face of fierce opposition. Emond is the evening's most consistently funny performer, alluring as almost a beacon of reality in the play's crazy world, yet making Inez unavoidably brittle and human, as likely to fall apart as be able to hold herself together with alcohol. She does masterful work that deserves to be remembered come award time.

 

Life (x) 3 benefits perhaps more than it should from its top-flight performers and excellent director, who all are capable of smoothing over the show's occasional attempts to do too much. Though the constant reconfiguring of the situations and performers never becomes tiring, in lesser hands, the script's dense and unrelenting nature might prove unbearable. As it is here, paced within an inch of its life, and with respites seldom occurring except during scene changes, Life (x) 3 is a substantial investment that should not be undertaken lightly.

 

But with riskier investments come greater rewards, and Life (x) 3 is no exception. One of the most compelling and thought-provoking productions of the last few seasons, it's hardly the type of play that you can leave behind you in the theater; it almost demands repeated viewings to yield up the balance of its charms and meaning. It remains, however, highly captivating and entertaining even on one viewing, less a slice (or three) of life than a dissection of it, yet one that reveals the blood - and spirit - pulsing within.

[Yillara Skye 1]

I see what you mean by the reviews are just so-so. Some liked it and some did not. This seems to be as divided as the reviews for Nemesis.

[Takara_Soong 4]

I'm surprised that they seem to be so focused on the play and don't really give much on the performances. There are still a couple of papers that haven't updated their sites yet so hopefully someone will say something.

 

If you go to playbill.com you can order a copy of the opening night program for Life X3. Unfortunately right now it is available to those in the US only.

[Yillara Skye 1]

I guess that after they nitpick at the plot, and direction, they'll probably move on to the cast and their acting.

[Takara_Soong 4]

New York Post

 

April 1, 2003 -- THE balances of chance are amazing, making "if only" one of the most pregnant phrases in any language.

Those unpredictable eddies in fate and the human experience provide the flimsy base for the French playwright Yasmina Reza's "Life (x) 3," which opened last night at Circle in the Square.

 

Following the well-worn paths of J.B. Priestley and Alan Ayckbourn, Reza offers three views of the same basic situation, each filtered through a skein of varying circumstances.

 

But unlike those English predecessors, or, for that matter, the Gwyneth Paltrow movie "Sliding Doors," in Reza's parallel universes, the end result remains much the same.

 

Character rules here, not chance. Shakespeare's Cassius in his "Dear Brutus" speech would have approved.

 

Henry (John Turturro), a French research scientist, and his wife, Sonia (Helen Hunt), are trying to put their infant son to sleep when the doorbell rings in their Paris apartment.

 

It is Hubert (Brent Spiner) and Inez (Linda Emond), who've arrived a day early for dinner. Chaos and hastily mustered cookies ensue.

 

Hubert, like Henry, is an astrophysicist - and is in a position to give him the recommendation that would help Henry's faltering career.

 

Henry is on tenterhooks because, not having published any scholarly research for years, he has just finished a paper on the nature of galaxy halos.

 

Alas, Hubert brings the news that a team of Mexican scientists has that morning published a paper disastrously similar to the unlucky Henry's.

 

There is also a great deal of ancillary tension. Henry and Sonia are at odds in their parenting strategies, Hubert and Inez loathe each other, and there is a palpable sexual tension between Sonia and Hubert.

 

With her customary team - loyal English translator and fellow playwright Christopher Hampton; her customary crisp and adept English-language director, Matthew Warchus; and designer Mark Thompson - Reza gives us three variations on that theme.

 

Each could have happened, and one probably did. The trouble is, you don't really care which.

 

In both "Art" and "The Unexpected Man," Reza was more successful in her explorations of the games people play and the way they play them.

 

"Life" just doesn't have quite that same thrill of recognition - that sense of "Yes, I have seen and heard people do just that." Here, her four sophisticated combatants seem more like puppets than people.

 

That's certainly not the fault of the splendid acting. Just to hear a gloriously insecure Turturro stagger his way through the phrase, "What are you talking about?" is pure pleasure.

 

Hunt's almost virginal sensuality has rarely been put to better use, Spiner is a furnace of overweening professional and sexual bravado, and Emond seethes with pain and resentment.

 

Unfortunately, this dinner party destined not to happen also seems a play doomed not to work.

[Takara_Soong 4]

I should have one more review to post tomorrow.