Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ruth Wilson

January 13, 2015 Audra McDonald and Alan Cumming in a Reading of ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ By Patrick Healy Could a Broadway revival of the acclaimed musical “Kiss of the Spider Woman” be on the horizon? A multiday reading of the show, the 1993 Tony Award winner for best musical, was held last week with three big theater names playing the major roles: Audra McDonald as the title character, Alan Cumming as the gay prisoner Molina, and Steven Pasquale as the Marxist revolutionary Valentin. The Tony-winning director John Tiffany (“Once”) oversaw the reading, which was organized by the producer Tom Kirdahy (“It’s Only a Play”). Mr. Kirdahy is married to the show’s book writer, Terrence McNally, and is working with the “Spider Woman” composer, John Kander, on this spring’s Broadway revival of “The Visit.” (“Spider Woman” has lyrics by Fred Ebb.) Mr. Kirdahy, in a telephone interview on Tuesday, said that he was “thrilled” with the reading and that the actors and Mr. Tiffany were pleased as well. “I think everyone is interested in having further conversations, but there is no game plan for a production at this point,” Mr. Kirdahy said. Based on the 1976 novel by Manuel Puig, “Spider Woman” centers on the relationship between two prisoners in a Latin American country and the fixation of one of them on movies and a diva known for many roles, including a deadly spider woman. The show ran on Broadway for two years and won Tonys for its three main actors as well as best book and best score, among others. An email message to a representative for Ms. McDonald, a six-time Tony winner, was not answered on Tuesday. Mr. Cumming, also a Tony winner, is currently starring on Broadway in the Kander and Ebb musical “Cabaret,” while Mr. Pasquale starred last spring in the new musical “The Bridges of Madison County.” Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890 Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986 Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000 January 13, 2015 A History of Christianity, With No Strings Attached ‘The Cardinals’ at the Public Theater By Charles Isherwood The long, tumultuous history of Christianity reels by like a silly cartoon in “The Cardinals,” an uninspired and interminable show being presented as part of the Under the Radar festival. The concept behind the production, which comes from a theater troupe called Stan’s Cafe of Birmingham, England, posits that three cardinals are “on an evangelical mission to broaden knowledge of the Bible — through their traveling puppet theater,” according to a note on the Public Theater website. Alas, the puppets get lost in transit, so the cardinals must jump into the fray to enact famous scenes from the Old and New Testaments. This is, to begin with, irritatingly nonsensical. Unless Pope Francis has radically altered the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church while I was busy playing Candy Crush Saga, cardinals are hardly likely to be producing itinerant theater. Also, if you didn’t read that précis of the show beforehand, you’d have no clue that the cardinals were pinch-hitting for puppets. True, before the tiny pageant begins, one red-robed cardinal in a broad-brimmed hat can be seen shuffling around the backstage area, as if looking for something. He then emits a scream. But the show is mostly wordless (mumbling between the cardinals and their Muslim stage manager can occasionally be heard), and it would take a very perceptive interpreter to deduce that the scream translates as: “Oh, Lord! Where have our puppets gone?” Also, if Jesus and Joseph and Mary et al. were originally to be represented by puppets, why the racks of costumes conveniently full of human-size costumes? The cardinals fling these on and off as they switch characters in their race through a couple millenniums of biblical and Catholic history. The show’s dubious concept would be immaterial, I suppose, if it proved witty or stimulating. But after we’ve absorbed the joke — dignified figures of the church making like amateur actors, mugging away absurdly and donning goofy wigs and headdresses to represent figures from biblical lore — it palls within minutes, leaving more than an hour of the same to be endured. (Any given 10 minutes of Monty Python’s biblical-themed “Life of Brian” is funnier than the whole of “The Cardinals.”) Yes, the intentionally cheesy little tableaus, with their charming hand-painted, two-dimensional props (by Miguel Angel Bravo), sometimes raise a giggle or two. And, yes, it’s mildly amusing to watch the cardinals’ farcical desperation as they attempt, with the assistance of the stage manager, to keep the pageant from falling into a confused shambles. (We see both the puppet theater and the surrounding backstage.) When that stage manager, dressed in black and wearing a hijab, stops performing her duties in order to pray, chaos threatens to break loose — a mild and harmless joke, I suppose, on the clash of religions that has caused so much violence over the millenniums. The performers (Gerard Bell, Graeme Rose and Craig Stephens as the cardinals, and Rochi Rampal as the stage manager), who also devised the show, are certainly game, energetic and adept at comic miming (and timing). Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890 Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986 Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000 But while the flailing and the goofing has been meticulously choreographed, it grows ponderous, and your indulgent smiles tend to get more perfunctory once you realize that this is all there is to the show. Providing an aural backdrop to the zaniness is traditional liturgical and religious-themed classical music, with the stage manager frantically fiddling with cassette tapes to match music to mood. But, for reasons that eluded me, there’s also a snatch or two of a 1980s hit from the Britpop band Bronski Beat, namely its version of the Donna Summer disco staple “I Feel Love.” I wasn’t feeling the love, obviously. In fact, another of that band’s hits seemed more appropriate to these bootless proceedings: the one called “Why?” The Cardinals Devised and performed by Gerard Bell, Rochi Rampal, Graeme Rose and Craig Stephens, with additional devising by Alia Alzoughbi; directed by James Yarker; sets by Miguel Angel Bravo; prop making, sourcing and stage management by Harry Trow; costumes by Kay Wilton; lighting by Paul Arvidson; photography by Graeme Braidwood; graphic design by Simon Ford; video by Oliver Clark; general manager, Charlotte Martin; advisory producer, Nick Sweeting. A Stan’s Cafe production, presented by the Public Theater, Oskar Eustis, artistic director; Patrick Willingham, executive director; Mark Russell and Meiyin Wang, festival co-directors, as part of the Under the Radar Festival. At the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, 212-967-7555, undertheradarfestival.com. Through Jan. 18. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. January 13, 2015 Broadway Review: ‘Constellations’ Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Ruth Wilson By Marilyn Stasio Short and sweet and strangely haunting. That’s the quick take on “Constellations,” a romantic two-hander starring dreamy Jake Gyllenhaal and the radiant British thesp Ruth Wilson (fresh off her Golden Globes win for Showtime’s “The Affair”) as a young couple who break through the boundaries of the time/space continuum to explore the infinite possibilities of their love. Although barely an hour long, this baby bombshell by hot Brit scribe Nick Payne (a play that originated at the Royal Court and went on to the West End) overflows with emotional highs and lows. Who hasn’t wondered about the roads not taken and where they might have led us? Who hasn’t mourned the adventures we never had, the soulmates we never met, the happiness we never knew because we never dared to take that detour off the beaten track? The poet Robert Frost said it in a single memorable line: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood / And sorry I could not travel both.” Gwyneth Paltrow had the rare opportunity to live two simultaneous (and equally dull) lives in the 1998 movie “Sliding Doors.” In its own clumsy way, the musical “If/Then” plays on the same theme by manipulating the chance decisions that allow a woman, played by Idina Menzel, to pursue two alternate lives “Constellations” accomplishes the same metaphysical feat with far more grace and intelligence by sending destined lovers Roland (Gyllenhaal) and Marianne (Wilson) spinning through space, altering their relationship at every turn through the individual choices they make. There’s some cosmological science behind the premise of co- existing universes, but nothing you need master to enjoy the show. On human terms, the infinite possibilities of unlimited choice present themselves in the amusing opening scene, which has Roland, an earthbound beekeeper, and Marianne, a flighty quantum physicist, meeting cute at a Total Weekly Circulation – 30,857 Monthly Online Readership – 2,600,000 barbecue. But before this affair can get off the ground, the scribe re-runs the same scene to show us all the variables involved in any start-up relationship. In one version, Roland is already in a serious relationship. In another version, Marianne is in recovery from a bad relationship of her own. In other variations, Roland is married. Or Marianne is. Each time the scene backs up for a replay, Roland and Marianne are actually transported to an alternate universe and given another chance. Under Michael Longhurst’s silken direction, these hops through space are accomplished without elaborate set changes – just a photographic flash (the work of designer Lee Curran) to light up a stage that set designer Tom Scutt has hung with masses of silver balloons (and balloon-like lights) suggesting individual planets suspended in an endless universe.

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