Antlia Pneumatica,’ with Voices in the Dark

THE MORNING LINE

DATE: Wednesday, April 6, 2016

FROM: Melissa Cohen, Michelle Farabaugh Claire Manning, Amanda Price

PAGES: 13, including this page

April 6, 2016

Diane Lane to Star in ‘The Cherry Orchard’ on Broadway

By Michael Paulson

Thirty-nine years after she first appeared on Broadway as a child in a production of “The Cherry Orchard,” Diane Lane is preparing to return to Broadway, in the same show, this time as its star.

The Roundabout Theater Company, a nonprofit that operates three Broadway theaters, said Tuesday that Ms. Lane would play the lead role, Madame Lyubov Andreyevna Ranevskaya, in a revival of the Chekhov classic this fall. The play has been staged frequently — this will be the 16th run on Broadway, according to the Internet Broadway Database — but this staging will use a new adaptation, by the celebrated young playwright Stephen Karam (“The Humans”).

“I like how in life, you keep coming back around,” Ms. Lane said in a telephone interview. “It’s wonderful to have this precious basket of memories to carry inside myself as I revisit the material.”

Ms. Lane was just 12 years old — but already with considerable theater experience — when the director Andrei Serban asked her to appear in his Lincoln Center Theater production of “The Cherry Orchard” in 1977. The cast featured Irene Worth as Ranevskaya, and included Raul Julia and Meryl Streep; it had two runs, both at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.

“Raul Julia was a Lopakhin for all time, and Meryl Streep’s Dunyasha was unforgettable,” Ms. Lane said. Ms. Lane said she had no lines — she played a peasant child, among other roles — but she had the distinction of ending each show as a sort of forest sprite, or a ghost of the cherry orchard. She said that among her clearest memories of the production was that it was running during the New York City blackout, and when the theater lost power the actors finished the show with flashlights and Bic lighters.

Ms. Lane’s career since has been dominated by film — she was nominated for an Academy Award for “Unfaithful” — and she has not returned to Broadway since that production. She said she will tackle Ranevskaya with trepidation and enthusiasm.

“I couldn’t chicken out,” she said. “It’s frightening and daunting, but also exhilarating — it felt like a dare, and it’s an honor to be trusted with this. All I can do is my best.”

“The Cherry Orchard” revival will be directed by Simon Godwin, an associate director of the National Theater in London, and is to begin performances Sept. 15 and open Oct. 16, at the American Airlines Theater.

“The Cherry Orchard” will be one of two Chekhov plays on Broadway next season. The Sydney Theater Company is planning to bring its production of “The Present,” a new adaptation of Chekhov’s untitled first play, later in the fall, with Cate Blanchett in the lead role.

April 6, 2016 Review: ‘Antlia Pneumatica,’ With Voices in the Dark

By Ben Brantley

Audiences for Anne Washburn’s “Antlia Pneumatica,” which opened on Monday night at Playwrights Horizons, could be excused for wondering if its title might be ancient Greek for “The Big Chill.” Like that popular Lawrence Kasdan movie from 1983, this brow-furrowing work from the author of “Mr. Burns” reunites a group of scattered friends on the cusp of middle age when one of their old gang dies abruptly.

As in Mr. Kasdan’s film, the characters in Ms. Washburn’s play assemble south of the Mason-Dixon line (though in this case, it’s Texas, not South Carolina) to ponder their wild pasts, their anxious presents and the eventual deaths that await them all. They, too, gather in the kitchen to prepare food while rehashing old gossip, tentatively rekindle old love affairs and sing together at night.

Of course, what they sing is a bit different from the Motown standards favored by the folks in “The Big Chill.” These 21st-century mourners intone ditties (written by Daniel Kluger and Ms. Washburn) that lean to solemn melodies and stark, apocalyptic lyrics involving nature in upheaval.

And rather than sneaking out for fleshly trysts, the would-be couple here come together only in disembodied form in dreams. As for that chatter in the kitchen, it tends to involve subjects like whether time is only an illusion.

Their behavior, in other words, is what you might expect from people in a play named “Antlia Pneumatica” — which, by the way, means “air pump” and refers to a dim constellation identified by an 18th-century French astronomer — as opposed to something smart-alecky like “The Big Chill.” Ms. Washburn’s characters, like Mr. Kasdan’s, may crack wise, but they’re a lot less fun to hang with.

I don’t think it’s too big a spoiler to reveal that there’s a supernatural dimension to “Antlia Pneumatica,” which has been directed with a mix of bright whimsy and dark portentousness by Ken Rus Schmoll and features a likable cast led with grace by Annie Parisse. But it is definitely a downer to report that the play’s ghost story feels as leaden and ultimately unsurprising as its collective portrait of midlife doubts in the face of mortality.

As she demonstrated in the thrilling “Mr. Burns” and last season’s “10 Out of 12,” Ms. Washburn is a writer of questing imagination and convention-bending technique. Here, however, she seems to have gotten lost between the traditional and experimental sides of her craft, never finding a comfortable voice that accommodates both.

It could be argued that such discomfort is appropriate to a work about the spiritual and social uneasiness that befalls a once-close tribe of friends as they realize how terminally alone they all are. But the friction at work here seems less a matter of authorial intention than stylistic uncertainty. The dialogue is imbued with both poetic archness and naturalistic banality, and you can feel the cast being drained and defeated by the strain of struggling between the two.

The setting is a remote Texas ranch once owned by the parents of Nina (Ms. Parisse) and Liz (April Matthis). When they were younger, this family compound was a place where they and their friends would come to get drunk and wild and talk to the girls’ famous (and drunk and wild) father, who appears to have been a singer and songwriter.

It seems to be an appropriate place to bury — or divide or fling to the wind — the ashes of Sean, a fiction writer who died on the streets of New York. (At least I think so; Ms. Washburn mostly avoids explicit exposition.)

When the play begins, Nina is on the phone with the great love of her salad days, Adrian (Rob Campbell), from whom she hasn’t heard in years. He does indeed show up, though he comes across as a more elusive presence than the other visitors to the ranch, who include Ula (Maria Striar), Bama (Crystal Finn) and Len (Nat DeWolf).

Also on the premises are Nina’s young children, Casey (Skylar Dunn) and Wally (Azhy Robertson), who are often heard though never seen, reversing the proverbial formula for the behavior of ideal children. Like “10 Out of 12,” which captured the surreal effect of time warping during the taxing hours of a tech rehearsal for a play, “Antlia Pneumatica” includes extended vignettes in which conversation occurs as voices in the dark.

This device makes sense in a production in which it feels as if everyone is being tugged by the gravitational force of a black hole. Rachel Hauck’s set, Tyler Micoleau’s lighting and Leah Gelpe’s sound combine to create an atmosphere of smothering, endless night, punctuated by the distant blaze of stars.

The general murkiness also underlines the play’s greatest strength, its conjuring of the increasingly blurred borders between the living and the dead for people as they grow older. All the characters here have reached the age at which they’re not altogether sure as to who, among the old crowd, is still walking the earth.

Hence the play’s flirtation with tales of the supernatural, past and present. But unlike Stephen Karam’s current (and excellent) “The Humans,” which also summons otherworldly shadows from a traditional gathering of everyday people, “Antlia Pneumatica” so overplays its spectral hand that it loses the power to disturb.

Time indeed may be an illusion, as one of its characters proposes. But for most of “Antlia Pneumatica,” time feels oppressively real and long.

Antlia Pneumatica By Anne Washburn; directed by Ken Rus Schmoll; sets by Rachel Hauck; costumes by Jessica Pabst; lighting by Tyler Micoleau; sound by Leah Gelpe; songs by Daniel Kluger and Ms. Washburn; production stage manager, Megan Schwarz Dickert. Presented by Playwrights Horizons, Tim Sanford, artistic director; Leslie Marcus, managing director; Carol Fishman, general manager; associate artistic director, Adam Greenfield.

Through April 24 at Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, Manhattan; 212-279-4200, playwrightshorizons.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

WITH: Rob Campbell (Adrian), Nat DeWolf (Len), Crystal Finn (Bama), April Matthis (Liz), Annie Parisse (Nina), Maria Striar (Ula) and the voices of Skylar Dunn (Casey) and Azhy Robertson (Wally).

April 6, 2016

Review: ‘Locusts Have No King,’ a Love Triangle Comedy

By Laura Collins-Hughes

Reading the script before I saw a performance of J. Julian Christopher’s “Locusts Have No King,” I wondered how big a spoiler it would be to mention in this review a central fact of the play that the publicity materials skirt. A love-triangle comedy with a supernatural streak, the show unfolds in the course of an evening at the home of Marcus and Jonathan, who have invited another couple, Lucus and Matthew, over for dinner.

I worried that it might ruin things to reveal that all four men are Roman Catholic priests. But honestly? One look at Paul Tate dePoo III’s dark wood-paneled set, with its oppressively awful window treatments and the portrait of Jesus on a bookshelf, and you know that this blend of formality and austerity is not the inhabitants’ chosen décor. This is a rectory apartment. It came with the job.

When we first meet Marcus (Liam Torres), he is telling us — conversationally, and with impressive magnetism — a Gospel story from the Book of Mark. Then the lights dim. When they come up again, he is having oral sex with Jonathan (David Grimm), who is multitasking by getting high before the guests arrive.

Marcus has given up pot for Lent. “If you think there will be any left by the end of Lent, you are sadly mistaken,” Jonathan says, toking away.

Funny though the play is, the surprising and rather lovely thing about “Locusts Have No King” — receiving its world premiere in David Mendizábal’s excellently cast production at Intar — is that it never treats its characters or their vocation as punch lines. These are people in relationships, with each other and with God, and some of them are deeply devoted to their work.

It’s awkward for their partners, though, that two of them are exes: Jonathan and the alcoholic monsignor, Lucus (Dan Domingues, better when he uses a lighter touch with the inebriation). Their playful sexual chemistry nettles Matthew (John J. Concado), a judgmental pill who is somehow touchingly vulnerable, and wounds Marcus, whose own heart is fully invested in Jonathan.

Strange things happen throughout the evening. The chandelier keeps shaking; there’s an odd moment when some water turns to wine; and a glowing object comes crashing through the window. All of this eeriness is meant to build toward a culminating, heightened moment that unfortunately doesn’t work. Neither does the argument that leads up to it.

The strength of “Locusts Have No King,” which takes its title from the Book of Proverbs and its characters’ names from the Gospels, is in its emotional and philosophical underpinnings. It asks these men to consider: For them, is the priesthood a closet, a refuge or both? And what might it mean to live honestly?

B18

April 6, 2016 Frankie Michaels, Who Won a Tony Award at 11, Dies at 60

By Margalit Fox

Frankie Michaels, the youngest person to win a Tony Award — which he earned in 1966, at 11, for his featured role in the Broadway musical “Mame” — died on March 30 at his home in Chittenango, N.Y. He was 60.

The cause was a heart attack, said a friend, Steven Clark.

Mr. Michaels, who was known in private life as Frankie Chernesky, was 11 years, 1 month and 11 days old when he received the Tony for playing the young Patrick Dennis, the nephew drawn into Auntie Mame’s irrepressible gravitational field. (Daisy Eagan, the youngest actress to receive a Tony, was about 11½ when she won in 1991 for “The Secret Garden.”)

“Mame,” with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman, also garnered Tonys for Angela Lansbury, who played the title role, and Beatrice Arthur as Mame’s friend Vera Charles.

Though Mr. Michaels had been trained as a performer from the age of 3½, “Mame” was his only Broadway credit. After leaving the show at 12, he had a brief adolescent career as a nightclub singer, sharing bills in Las Vegas with the likes of Dean Martin and Danny Thomas.

As an adult, Mr. Michaels worked as a lounge singer, voice and piano teacher and electronics repairman.

Francis Michael Chernesky was born in Bridgeport, Conn., on May 5, 1955, the youngest of five children of Michael Chernesky, a lieutenant in the Bridgeport Fire Department, and the former Mary Bissett.

As a young child he was able to pick out tunes by ear on the piano, and before long he was taking lessons in singing, dancing, piano, drums, vibraphone and acting. At 5, he played a piano duet in Bridgeport with a visiting Liberace.

Frankie was already a veteran of “As the World Turns,” the CBS soap opera on which he had a regular role, when he was cast in “Mame.” For his work in the musical, he was paid $400 a week — about $3,000 in today’s money.

He was so gifted, Mr. Herman later said, that he learned all his numbers, among them “My Best Girl” and “We Need a Little Christmas,” in a single day.

Reviewing “Mame” in The New York Times, Stanley Kauffmann wrote: “The hazard with young performers is that either they look coached or, if they are gifted, are show-offs. Young Mr. Michaels is neither.”

But Mr. Michaels found that the market for a child singer, especially one whose voice is changing, was limited, and by the time he was out of his teens he was more or less out of the profession.

For two decades, until his retirement about eight years ago, Mr. Michaels serviced radios for Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Until shortly before his death, he sang on weekends at the Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, N.Y.

Mr. Michaels was married and divorced three times. His survivors include his companion, Lucille Bort; a son, Michael Lloyd Chernesky; a stepdaughter, Desiree Medlin; and a sister, Felicia Hreschak.

About two years ago, Mr. Clark said, Mr. Michaels overcame an addiction to alcohol and cocaine that he had battled for some five years.

In November, Mr. Michaels underwent quadruple-bypass surgery. In January, fearing that his time was limited, Mr. Clark said, he sold his Tony Award at auction for $18,750.

The sale, Mr. Clark said, paid for Mr. Michaels’s funeral. 8

April 6-12, 2016

April 5, 2016