Broadway 5/23

Ladies ruled the stage for our spring visit to New York, with the Tony going to Jodie Comer in Prima Facie, a legal delicacy and one-woman tour de force. Jessica Chastain was formidable in a necessarily smaller but no less affecting role in A Doll’s House. Jessica Hecht and Laura Linney complemented each other in the David Auburn two-hander, Summer, 1976. As much as I love Linney, I could see why Hecht’s performance garnered the Tony nomination instead. Based on pre-play blurbs, I expected Juliet Stevenson to round out this all-star list of female leads, but I was so turned off by her unmodulated harshness and unpleasant character in The Doctor that I left at intermission. As a footnote I should include Lucy Roslyn’s one-woman performance in the off-Broadway Orlando. She was attractive and good at what she was doing, but the play, which she also wrote, didn’t connect.

Then there were the ensemble productions. Fat Ham was the cleverest, with a slew of hilariously winning characters and winking nods to Shakespeare. Thanksgiving Play carried a not-so-subtle post-woke message but was too unsubtle for my taste. New York, New York was our shot at a good old-fashioned musical, but the trite plot, unmemorable songs and dull characters overcame the excellent choreography and drove us out at halftime.