By Barbara & Scott Siegel
Two Subscription Theatre Companies: Roundabout & MTC – Recent Shows That Lead The Way in Hard Times…
Whether on Broadway or Off, there is no question that not-for-profit subscription theatre companies have a considerable advantage over commercial theaters. In everything from their contractual obligations to taxes, and from financial safety nets to built-in audience bases, subscription theaters can be — and often are —the risk takers that keep theater alive and relevant.
When making a buck is not an easy thing to do (like almost all the time?), commercial theater producers will usually play it safe (no pun intended). That’s usually why the breakout, new shows will usually come out of subscription theaters where there is more reward for the risk. There is probably no better example of that than The Public Theatre’s nurturing of Hamilton.
So, this seems like a good time to look at a couple of our biggest, most prolific and successful subscription theaters, both of which have Broadway houses as well as their original Off-Broadway venues…and we’ll start with The Roundabout…
Roundabout Theatre Company: Liberation and English
(Cast, playwright & director in photo above.)
While The Roundabout has had a long-standing reputation for hiring Hollywood and TV stars to ensure that subscribers actually subscribe, their most recent triumphs both on and Off-Broadway are not star-driven, they are playwright driven! Their current Off-Broadway production of Liberation at the Laura Pels Theatre is written by the celebrated playwright Bess Wohl, a writer with an edgy sensibility but a naturalistic feel for character and dialogue.
Liberation takes place in two different times, the early 1970s and today; it is both a memory play and, in the best sense of the term, a political piece. Speaking to the latter, it’s politics are inherent in its subject matter — the women’s movement, then and now — but its politics are organic and built into the characters, not simply put in the mouths of the characters by the playwright.
The play revolves around the search of a journalist daughter who returns to small Ohio town where her mother once formed a women’s group. She has returned to find out more about who her mother was and what happened to the people in that group who were her mother’s friends. The cast is strong with Betsy Aidem, Audrey Cross, Kayla Davion, Susannah Flood, Kristolyn Lloyd, Irene Sofia Lucio, Charlie Thurston, and Adina Verson. The direction by Whitney White is fast and fluid.
Women’s Liberation, as history has shown us, has been a battle with both victories and defeats. To be sure, the victories outnumber the defeats, but it has been a bruising battle, and that becomes intimately clear in the microcosm that this play presents with humor, empathy, and pathos.
If the play has a fault, it is perhaps trying to be too obviously commercial by virtue of a scene with complete nudity. This necessitates that before the play everyone in the audience has to have their cell phones locked in a bag that they can keep until the play is over and the bags are unlocked. You see, we are forced to write about it — because the audience should be forewarned (Never mind the nudity; we know how you feel about your cell phone!) — but it’s a cheap ploy to get attention, unworthy of the play.
On the other end of the spectrum, however, is a scene between the young journalist and the oldest woman in the group, who takes on the mantle of the young woman’s now deceased mother and gently, and oh-so-humanely, tells her the secret truth that only she could know. It is both deeply emotional and soulfully funny — and clearly the best scene of the play. Kudos, in particular to that older actress, Betsy Aidem, who quietly and surely anchors the play with her authenticity. Kudos, also, to The Roundabout for supporting Bess Wohl’s work and making her writing the real star of the show.
One of The Roundabout’s Broadway venues, The Todd Haimes Theatre on 42nd Street, has the great distinction of giving its stage to the 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Sanaz Toossi — English. A transfer from its earlier production at The Atlantic Theater, English is, as of this writing, the best play on Broadway of the 2024-25 season. This is a bold choice because there are no stars in English, and The Todd Haimes is a very big theater with a lot of seats to fill.
Set in a school that teaches English in Iran in 2008, the play avoids politics to tell a story of cultural shifts in a society. The play could have taken place in Brazil or Taiwan; it isn’t so much about the country, it’s about what language means to a culture; how you identify yourself and live your life as an insider or an outsider in whatever culture you choose to make your own.
Set in an adult classroom where English is being taught to a variety of people, each with their own reasons for wanting to learn this foreign language, we get the expected humor of embarrassing mistakes. But this is a serious play and it gets down to business with each of its characters ultimately revealing what drives them to learn this difficult, confounding language. Some of the reasons are heartbreaking — in fact, most of them are — and some are also surprising.
What makes the play truly great, and worthy of its Pulitzer — is its delicate nuances of character, from the increasingly self-doubting teacher, to her prize pupil and her most difficult student. The play is honest, unflinching, and best of all, it treats its audience with respect, always showing the truth, without ever feeling the need to explain itself. How refreshing! The cast is superb; a wonderful ensemble, and the direction by Knud Adams is flawless. This is The Roundabout at its best!
Manhattan Theatre Club: Vladimir and Eureka Day
The Manhattan Theatre Club is a longtime favorite of ours; we were members long before we were critics — going back to when the MTC was located on the Upper East Side. We’ve seen it grow and expand under the leadership of Lynne Meadow into a theatrical powerhouse, fostering the careers of major playwrights, not least among them Terrence McNally.
We always go to a play at MTC’s Off-Broadway Stage 1 Theater with the expectation of seeing something smart, provocative, and entertaining. We are rarely disappointed. We’ll be seeing a new play there in early April titled We Had a World, and we’re very much looking forward to it.
A little while back we wen to see Vladimir at MTC’s Stage 1 Theatre, a fascinating piece about the rise of Vladimir Putin in Russia without ever seeing Putin himself on stage. It was not one of MTC’s most engaging plays, although it did have the considerable advantage of starring Norbert Leo Butz in, essentially, a supporting role. We have no way of knowing this, but on the face of it, one would guess that he lent his name and fame to the show in order to cement its production on the MTC’s stage. It’s fair to say that his name on a New York theater marquee means more than Putin’s name.
The interior politics of the piece were a bit murky, and we didn’t learn anything about Vladimir other than that he’s someone to fear. We found that the characters in the play that we did meet — mostly journalists, idealists, or party hacks — had to either find their courage…or not. This would have been a better play to have seen several decades ago, but now it’s only an interesting historical/drama footnote made more fun to watch because of Norbert’s flashy performance. But that’s all.
On the other hand, at MTC’s Broadway venue, The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, we saw Eureka Day by Jonathan Spector. The show closed last month, but it leaves a lasting impression, because when most “issue-oriented” plays essentially tell their audiences what they want to hear, this play had the audacity to tell its audiences how things really work.
Eureka Day is an avant garde private children’s school, and we were privileged to see how and why decisions are made, unmade, revised, and tossed — along with people getting tossed — by the school’s governing body.
This was really good theater, because it took place right there in the trenches, presenting the kind of generally well-meaning, highly educated people — the same kind of people who go to the theater — who want to be on a school board because they think its their duty to do so. It’s also about the rich people who hold sway because they donate the most. And it’s finally about democracy at is base level – people looking out for their own interests, the needs of their kids, and the future of their institutions.
Literally led by the always likable Bill Irwin — so smartly cast precisely for that reason — as the head of the Board, this high-caliber cast also included Amber Gray, Jessica Hecht, Thomas Middleditch and Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz. At once satirical and starkly dramatic, we watched the unfolding story with both sympathy and the nervous anxiety of wondering which side of these arguments would we be on, because the stakes are the kinds we live with in our lives all the time. Director Anna D. Shapiro kept the heat on the story and its characters, only letting the comedy sneak through just enough to let us breathe. Finally, one of the other reasons that subscription theaters succeed is they can afford to offer short runs and get stars like Bill Irwin, Amber Gray, and Jessica Hecht because they aren’t committing six months or a year of their lives to the project that isn’t, on the surface, commercial. Until it is. One hopes that MTC did well with Eureka Day; we’re certainly glad we saw it.
Photo: Jennifer Broski
