Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts

Saturday, February 3, 2024

The World Premiere of ‘The Cancellation of Lauren Fein’ Portrays the New American Tragedy

 


Must meritocracy be sacrificed at the altar of Diversity-Equity-Inclusion initiatives (DEI) and what is the cost to society when it becomes cancel culture?  That is at the heart of this gripping and disturbing World Premiere of Christopher Demos-Brown’s The Cancellation of Lauren Fein at Palm Beach Dramaworks.  His play pays homage to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible which, although about the Salem Witch trials, is an allegory steeped in McCarthyism and the hysteria over communism.  As Mark Twain remarked, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”  Higher education’s commitment to DEI is giving rise to a kind of vigilante justice with unintended consequences.  It is the next rhyming verse in history, and the playwright and PBD’s production powerfully capture the repercussions. 

 

A liberal university’s “Anonymous Reporting System” (and therefore no accountability, a kind of Orwellian big brother watching you) along with vociferous DEI proponents, aided and abetted by the ubiquity of social media, take aim at a lesbian couple, both college professors, Lauren Fein and her wife, Paola Moreno, impacting not only their lives, but that of Dylan, their 16-year-old African American foster son.  Like a stone thrown in a pond, the ripple effects wash far beyond this one story.  Much of Demos-Brown’s play is a moving suspense-filled court-room style drama in Academia, with Kafkaesque twists and turns, building to a startling conclusion and a highly effective double ending with a truly tragic twist of the knife, the imagined alternative reality in a world of truth and scientific reasoning.  It is unforgettable.

 

The play is an invective of modern academic woke life.  Nothing escapes the playwright’s scathing eye, as his drama examines a liberal university’s killing of the goose and, along with it, the golden egg of truth and academic freedom.  Universities’ core values of intellectual inquiry and research seem to be taking a back seat to values that work against their very mission.  The play is exciting, suspenseful, painful, making you want to shake your fist at good intentions gone unhinged.

 

Demos-Brown pushes the play to the borders of metadrama.  Paola’s academic specialty is the playwright’s spiritual mentor, Arthur Miller, and her colleague, Evan’s, is David Mamet.  The latter playwright wrote Oleanna to which this play finds some commonality, although Mamet’s play was for an earlier time focusing “merely” on sexual harassment.  DEI moves well beyond yesterday’s critical-race-theory outrage and its roots in Title IX.  One only has to consider the recent crisis at Harvard University which morphed into questions concerning the prevalence of anti-Semitism.

 

Yet, the playwright lands his punches with great pathos and humor, the cost to the Fein- Moreno household being just the microcosm to that of society and academic life.  His play is so contemporary, it actually anticipated developments as it was being written even the innuendo of there being positive values to being a slave, shades of Florida’s Governor’s pronouncement.   It is an example of life imitating art, and it is written meticulously to capture the way people really speak and react to one another in love and under unimaginable stress.

 

Niki Fridh plays Professor Lauren Fein the brilliant, indefatigable genetic biologist, on a fast track for the Nobel Prize.  Yet, she is the good academic soldier, agreeing to teach a basic biology course (laughingly nicknamed “Holes and Poles”).  Fridh nails her character’s breezy open manner and her brilliance, neither of which count for much as the cancel-culture hammer comes down on her.  She captures both the tragic side of her fallen character, a victim of her own hubris, and yet delivers lots of the humor in the play, but with a contemptuousness so fitting the nightmare that evolves.  As the play is a tragedy, the seeds are sown in her personality, with off ramps from the crisis readily available, but knowing that she is not guilty she refuses to avail herself of those reputation-saving alternatives.   

 

Diana Garle and Niki Fridh Photo by Alicia Donelan

Diana Garle is Paola Moreno, Lauren’s wife, a professor of theatre and film studies who freely admits that her status as Fein’s wife and being queer and Latina didn’t hurt her future for advancement in their liberal university.  It is a co-leading role, a key one as she breaks the fourth wall, keeping the audience apprised of the back-story. Garle slips in and out of being a truth teller to the audience and a character in the play with ease.  She has the most impactful role in the play, a bravura performance by an actor who is new to Palm Beach Dramaworks.  Paola lives with the consequences of Lauren’s tragedy and Garle’s collapsing resignation at the end is heartbreaking.

 

Malcolm Callender (PBD debut) is very effective as Dylan Fein-Moreno, the troubled 16 year old foster child confused by the world, his place in it, and such is easily manipulated by the nightmarish circumstances.

 

Odera Adimorah and Malcolm Callender Photo by Alicia Donelan

Odera Adimorah (PBD debut) is the kindly Professor Chikezie Nweze “Chi”, Lauren’s Nigerian research partner with a comforting basso profundo voice.  In a way he’s also a soul father to Dylan, trying to help him make sense of the world.  His unease about homosexuality is overshadowed by his dedication to Lauren as he is convinced that her research on sickle-cell anemia will save untold lives in Africa.

 

Lindsey Corey plays the prosecuting attorney, Melanie Jones, with a fervency befitting her nickname “’Melanin’ Jones” who Paola describes as “the DEI movement’s Che Guevara.”  Being a “loser” is not in her character’s DNA and Corey goes on a fresh attack with every push back.  She is also Lauren’s academic adversary as Jones’ field is Gender Studies for which Lauren has contempt as being a phony made-up major, one which siphons off needed funds for her research, a field which can actually publish papers “about how penises cause climate change.” 

 

Karen Stephens, a veteran of many PBD plays Dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Marilyn Whitney, heretofore a friend of Lauren’s.  Stephens projects her character’s pain at having to move from friendship to becoming almost a “tag team” with Jones.  She knows that her new and rarified position of being appointed Dean depends on her appearing to disapprove of Fein’s actions and explanations (“as a woman of color, I’m really under the microscope here”).  Lauren feels betrayed by her once-upon-a-time friend.

 

Lindsey Corey, Diana Garle, Niki Fridh, Barbara Sloan and Karen Stephens Photo by Alicia Donelan

Barbara Sloan makes a mighty effort to stay impartial as Judge Lorraine Miller, and keep order at one point saying “we are academics with PhD’s” (amusingly implying that should ensure decorum in the proceedings).  She marks her territory to Lauren’s defender’s question about her law experience with the acerbic reply “I’d prefer ‘Judge Miller’ in these proceedings.  And, yes – I have a law degree from Duke.”  She also delivers one of the more profound truths attached to the proceedings, the “rules of civil law do not apply here.”  Precisely the problem!

 

Stephen Trovillion plays the voice of reason in the role of Professor “Buddy” McGovern, which I suspect is a stand in for the views of the playwright, who also is a practicing attorney.  He is the only straight white male in the play, and amusingly is a progressive from the old south, complete with a southern drawl which adds to the abundant humor of the play.  Trovillion projects his character’s bewilderment of the proceeding’s disregard for the rules of law to the point that Judge Miller nearly removes him from the kangaroo court.   

 

PBD veteran actor Bruce Linser is perfect as Evan Reynolds, a white, gay film / theatre scholar who has probably been passed over for tenure because of those facts.  He is best friends with Paola and knows the dangers to Lauren saying to Paola “I stopped teaching a long time ago. I just lecture now directly from my pre-vetted notes. But I know Lauren has standards. His feelings of betrayal by Paola are palpable.  He is also the ominous voice of Judge Howard in a real court at the play’s sad, disturbing conclusion

 

Kaelyn Ambert-Gonzalez (PBD debut), plays Zoe, a PhD graduate student who once studied under Lauren, had an affair with her, and enacts an incident as a drunk at a party, the final nail in the case against Lauren Fein.

 

Margaret M. Ledford directs this world premiere production with pace and crispness.  She elevates the verbal sparring of the proceedings, even when they are overlapping.  The director and the Palm Beach Dramaworks team have transported the play to a level of hyperrealism with the video design seamlessly integrated into the performance.  Clearly, she commands the respect of the actors and flawlessly choreographs the action as intended by the playwright, with the help of Nicole Perry (PBD debut), the intimacy choreographer for a number of such scenes.

 

Scenic design is by Anne Mundell who has created an area supporting the other technical designers.  The worn pragmatic benches and tables serve a multiplicity of purposes and could be the setting for Salem in 1692 or appropriately a stage for a modern day Greek chorus.

 


Video design is by Adam J. Thompson.  The visual projection enhances the architecture of the set, identifying different locations and creates a canvas for the brilliant montage of social media at work.  There we can sense the voyeurism of people stepping into private space.  The play is cinematic and so are the visuals.

 

Costume design is by Brian O’Keefe, for real time, extended time, flash backs of each character with his/her own color pallets.  They range from pant suits worn by the professionals, with Dean Whitney’s costume design having military connotations and Buddy McGovern amusingly dressed in attire resembling something Tom Wolfe would wear as the style of a Southern gentlemen.

 

Lighting design is by Kirk Bookman who in Act I has multiple lighting challenges for many different locations whereas Act II is mostly the courtroom with full lights up.  At the denouement there is a ghostly white spot on Lauren and a life like spot on Paola.  It is highly effective and moving

 

Sound design is by Roger Arnold with an emphasis on transitions between spaces.

 

What Paulo says about “Uncivil Rights,” a student’s play she advocated can be said about this play: “In my writing classes, I teach my students: ‘Dazzle, delight, and derange. Find the sacred cow and kill it.’ This kid...located the most tender spot in American political culture and probed it with merciless beauty. The play was everything art should be: Poetic. Painful. Hilarious.”

 

But the future is encapsulated by Buddy McGovern’s impassioned concluding argument: “Is this truly the goal of your so-called revolution? A post-modern world with ad hoc rules at every turn? A world where innuendo kills reputations and rumor ends careers? A world devoid of any semblance of due process? Where subjective slight trumps objective truth? Is that what you really want?”

 

The Cancellation of Lauren Fein is sure to enter the canon of important contemporary drama and it can be seen here, first, at Palm Beach Dramaworks. 

 

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Kenneth Lonergan’s ‘Lobby Hero’ Exposes Uncomfortable Truths in Palm Beach Dramaworks' Production

 

Although written more than twenty years ago, Lobby Hero is a highly relevant play for our post truth world.  It was Sir Walter Scott who penned "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" which is at the heart of this ensemble character-driven plot, leading to disturbing moral and ethical dilemmas.  Each character's actions and choices affect one another's lives.

 

The palette may be small, but Kenneth Lonergan creates major layers of meaning: class issues, racism, sexism, police cronyism, and workplace harassment, leavened by very humorous moments.  These themes clearly emerge in this thoughtful and entertaining production.

 

The stunning set was envisioned by Dramaworks’ award-winning Scenic Designer, Victor Becker, who died earlier this year and to whom the play is dedicated.  This realistic lobby in a Manhattan high rise apartment building is more than a space merely to be passed through.  It is a stoic observer, a fifth character, enabling the lives of the players to be challenged and changed before us.

Tim Altmeyer, Elisabeth Yancey, Britt Michael Gordon, Jovon Jacobs

 

Lonergan builds the play around a pair of parallel relationships, the action unfolding over four successive nights.  The first pair is Jeff, a uniformed nighttime security guard for the building and his captain William and the second is Bill, a uniformed policeman and Dawn, his rookie partner. 

 

Jeff is the antihero in the lobby, “an Everyman,” who views his situation in the world for what it is, having to live with his brother because of debt, hoping for a break, although not knowing what to do in life. Sometimes he feels that he was born to fail; a discernible Dreiserian undercurrent permeates all the characters.

Elisabeth Yancey and Britt Michael Gordon

 

Britt Michael Gordon plays Jeff with an affability which has you pulling for him, in spite of his unguarded casualness in dealing with others. Amusingly, but sometimes disastrously, he just says his private thoughts out loud, even blurting out the truth about others, leading to “the tangled web” of the characters’ enmeshment.  His demeanor makes him feel “safe” for the other characters to talk to, even confess to, and to lecture to as well. 

 

Gordon portrays him with a quirky innocence, belying some poor past choices and the estrangement from his late father of whom he is always reminded as being a “real hero” during the Korean War.  He uses humor as a defense mechanism, particularly to cope with personal insecurities in dealing with others.

 

His boss, William, a black man, is played with an ironclad moral implacability by Jovon Jacobs.  He espouses “living by the book,” especially for the edification of Jeff, but William is on the horns of a dilemma as he later confesses to Jeff -- his brother was arrested for a monstrous crime, one he’s almost certainly guilty of, but he is relying on William to provide an alibi. 

 

William now must weigh that against his equal certitude that his brother will not receive a fair trial particularly as the public defender is overburdened with other cases.  Will he do the right thing, or will he provide an alibi knowing the system, one that is blind to black men without resources, will fail to provide true justice?  Jacobs plays this moral seesaw to the hilt, the impossible choices, drawing Jeff into the details.

Tim Altmeyer and Jovon Jacobs

 

The second pair is headed by Bill, Tim Altmeyer delivering an exaggerated performance as a macho, intimidating cop, imbued by his own self-importance.  However, he certainly nails him as the most unlikable person in the play, who even Jeff in all his innocence calls a “scum bag.”

 

While carrying on an affair with a woman in the same building where Jeff and William are security guards (bristling at being called “doormen” by their police counterparts), Bill also is engineering a fling with his rookie partner Dawn, played by Elisabeth Yancey, her PBD debut who balances bravado, and later, betrayal.  She sees Bill as a love interest until Jeff innocently stirs the pot by blurting out the purpose of Bill’s visits to the building.  Yancey convincingly plays the gullible and then jilted rookie and delivers a lot of pathos in her role.

 

Jeff’s loose tongue provides for many laughs as well.  Gordon’s performance rises to a climatic high point when he is charged by Dawn to share William’s confidence.  He successfully renders this as an existential crisis of finally being able to do something meaningful in his life.  The denouncement hints at some future for Dawn and Jeff, an understanding of doing the right thing, a hopeful upbeat.

 

Director J. Barry Lewis extracts first-rate performances from his very skilled actors, including some fast sounding “New Yawkr tawk .”  Maybe it’s a little over the top along with the mannerisms of Altmeyer and Yancey in their police roles, but those in the audience who grew up in NYC (including myself) will identify.

 

Lewis magnifies some uncomfortable confrontations, such as William’s fury at Jeff for revealing confidences and especially when Bill mincingly and aggressively confronts Jeff for involving himself in Bill’s business, on the precipice of physical violence.  He has paced the play so the humor can land, elevating some laugh out loud moments, so necessary given the play’s themes.

 

The PBD technical staff supports the efforts with Roger Arnold’s sound designs, jazz interludes between scenes as well as the siren sounds of the city, the barking of a dog, the ding of the arriving elevator.  The lighting design is by Kirk Bookman perfectly capturing that glaring light of a lobby in the middle of the night, and PBD’s resident costume designer, Brian O’Keefe devises immaculate uniforms, badges and caps for the four characters, purposely disheveled at times, and street clothes for Dawn in the last scene.

 

Palm Beach Dramaworks production of Lobby Hero successfully deals with its large enigmatic moral dilemmas, with heart, humor and acumen.  

 

All photographs of the actors are by Tim Stepien