Airing the week of December 1st:
Table Manners by Alan Ayckbourn, directed by Dennis Erdman
Table Manners, the first battle in Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests trilogy, in which an infamous seducer of other men's wives lays siege to his sister-in-law.
The British cast is very much up to the vocal demands of this 1973 comedy, only one-third of the trilogy to be broadcast. The sixcharacters in these sinewy plays are: the feckless Norman (Martin Jarvis); his acerbic and cold wife, Ruth (Carolyn Seymour); her clueless brother, Reg, and his mean-spirited wife, Sarah (Rosalind Ayres); Ruth's put-upon sister, Annie (Jane Leeves); and Tom, Annie's next-door-neighbor who loves her, but hasn’t the gumption to tell her so (Christopher Neame), all converge at Annie’s house for a long weekend. Ayckbourn’s three plays – intertwined, but separate – vary from wildly comic to achingly poignant in their portrayals of the relationships between six more-or-less unhappy characters.
You may wince at Norman’s deliberate obtuseness and self-pity, but he is certainly enabled by his in-laws and their actions and reactions. It’s very amusing and listening to wonderful actors have at their characters is instructive, indeed. Under Dennis Erdman’s astute direction, no one actor is better than any of the others, so sit back in the dark, try to figure them out, and enjoy.
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Airing the week of December 8th :
J. Edgar!
Book and Lyrics by Tom Leopold and Harry Shearer, Music by Peter Matz, directed by Mr. Shearer
Satire is very difficult to pull off. And to successfully take on someone as dangerous to democracy and as full of pathological hatreds for others as the late head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) was, well, it’s imperative that the artists should take him very, very seriously. Not that you can’t find humor in misguided and hypocritical leaders (re: how Hitler is portrayed in THE PRODUCERS), but you’d better get to the nub of their psyche in order to understand how they ticked before venturing forth into satirical waters.
J. Edgar!, the musical, is, I’m afraid, a total washout on all levels: as history, as satire, as psychological understanding. This extremely bad musical (with inane book and lyrics and forgettable music) cannot be salvaged by even a decent cast, which they have here, but to no avail. Kelsey Grammer is Hoover, John Goodman and Harry Shearer back him up well, as do the rest of the large cast. But when your show isn’t funny, isn’t insightful, isn’t even – God help us! – mediocre, well, it’s a waste of time and energy to listen. The tired and homophobic exploration of Hoover’s hidden homosexuality, borders on – when it isn’t deliberately explicit – a fear of sexuality itself. Their approach is puerile and un-intelligent, not to mention stupid. God knows the gay communities can be satirized along with any other group of folk, but with wit and insight, s’il vous plait.
Harry Shearer, a brilliant satirist, does his reputation no service with direction that cannot make up for lackluster material.
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Airing the week of December 15th:
The Busy World is Hushed by Keith Bunin, directed by JoBeth Williams
Written in 2006 and recorded by its original cast a year later, Mr. Bunin’s exploration of how a contemporary Episcopalian Church, in the present form of a female priest, her gay son and a young man who will ghost-write her book on a newly-discovered Gospel, create compelling intellectual and emotional arguments, if somewhat on the tame, extra-polite (as Episcopalians are wont to act) side.
What Mr. Bunin wants to explore is how modern and intelligent people take an ancient religion and its rituals and form newly-thought-out ideals from it. Hannah (Jill Clayburgh), a late-40s woman-of-religion has been losing her peripatetic son to extended wanderings away from home and from her, not dissimilar to the way she lost her husband (as a possible suicide) while pregnant with Thomas (Luke MacFarlane), 25 years before. Into their lives comes Brandt (Hamish Linklater), also a young gayman, who will work with Hannah on her book and form an alliance with Thomas. Their skirmishes with each other, coupled with their disparate views of Christianity, is engrossing theatre, if a trifle well-mannered for drama, but capable of holding one’s attention. If there is a problem here, it lies with the two very capable actors playing the men having voices that are similar in timber and because both characters are homosexual, tending to blend, making it somewhat difficult to differentiate. But it’s a small issue: the three actors are uniformly excellent and make for a good listen. For whatever flaws lie in the script, Mr. Bunin has done us all a favor with bringing to the fore ideas that deserve our ears and JoBeth Williams leads her actors into deeper explorations. All-in-all, a worthwhile endeavor.
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Airing the week of December 22nd:
Frederick von Schiller’s Mary Stuart, directed by Rosalind Ayers
Written in 1800 in Germany, von Schiller’s drama about the relationship, political and familial, between Queen Elizabeth I of England and Queen Mary I of Scotland, is the stuff of high drama and a fitting beginning to the Age of Romanticism in theatre. As any good playwright will do, the fact that the two rivals for the throne of England (which should have by rights been given to Mary, as a noble-born, legitimate, granddaughter of King Henry VII) never met is conveniently ignored so that the two might meet outside of Farthingale Castle, which was Mary’s prison for the last 20 years of her life and debate religion, sisterhood, and regicide. His play (in a newish translation by Peter Oswald) maps out the fears the court of Elizabeth had over ever-brewing Catholic plots to assassinate her and put Mary of Scotland on the throne, thus returning England to the religious wars of the previous generations. Mary’s execution, by a reluctant Elizabeth, is well-spelled-out here.
Director Rosalind Ayers (one of the stalwarts of the LATW company), by casting it so perfectly, makes everything clear as to context and action. Alex Kingston as Mary and Jill Gascoine as Elizabeth set the tone of beautifully-spoke language and its clear intents. Ayer’s husband, Martin Jarvis, is the Lord High Treasurer, Lord Burleigh, Simon Templeman is Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a favorite of Elizabeth. Other fine actors are Sheelagh Cullen as Mary’s nurse and companion, Ken Danziger, Seamus Dever, Matt Gaydos, Christopher Neame, Alan Shearman and W. Morgan Shepard.
Beautifully produced and well-acted, this is a show to hear and to own.
The broadcasts can be heard locally in the L.A. area on Saturdays from 10pm to midnight on KPCC 89.3 FM, and can also be streamed on demand at www.latw.org Radio Theatre Series section. Or you can purchase them online.