THE MORNING LINE

DATE: Thursday, February 12, 2015

FROM: Emily Meagher, Michelle Farabaugh Faith Maciolek

PAGES: 11, including this page

February 10, 2015

Stressed Families a Theme in Coming MCC Theater Season

By Patrick Healy

New plays about families under varying kinds of stress, by the writers Matthew Lopez (“The Whipping Man”), Noah Haidle (“Mr. Marmalade”), and John Pollono (“Small Engine Repair”), will be staged in the 2015-16 season of MCC Theater, the company’s artistic directors announced Tuesday.

Mr. Lopez’s “Georgia McBride,” which earned strong reviews during its world premiere at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts last winter, follows the transformation of an Elvis impersonator into a drag queen to make ends meet for himself and his pregnant wife. The play, directed by Mike Donahue, will begin performances on Aug. 20 at MCC’s home next season, the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village.

“Lost Girls,” Mr. Pollono’s drama about a divorced couple forced to confront the past when their teenage daughter goes missing, will begin performances Oct. 22. The director will be Jo Bonney, who staged Mr. Pollono’s “Small Engine Repair” for MCC in 2013.

Mr. Haidle will reunite with the director Anne Kauffman to collaborate again on “Smokefall,” a surrealist look at emotional troubles extending across multiple generations of a family. The two worked together on the play at Goodman Theater in Chicago, where the play earned critical acclaim and an encore production there last fall. MCC’s performances of the play will begin Feb. 3, 2016. A fourth show for the season will be announced later.

Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890 Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986 Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000

February 11, 2015

‘My Name Is Rachel Corrie’ to Be Staged Off Broadway in April

By Patrick Healy

“My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” a one-woman drama about a pro-Palestinian activist, will be staged Off Broadway this spring for the first time since an earlier production nine years ago caused an uproar in some corners of the New York theater world. A spokesman for the show announced on Wednesday that the play would run April 2-12 at the Culture Project’s Lynn Redgrave Theater in the East Village.

Based on the writings of Ms. Corrie, a 23-year-old American who was killed in 2003 by an Israeli Army bulldozer while protesting the razing of a house in Gaza, the play was originally mounted at ’s Royal Court Theater in 2005 and received a warm reception. The actor Alan Rickman had worked with a journalist, Katherine Viner, in assembling and editing the script.

Executives at a prominent Off Broadway company, New York Theater Workshop, then made plans to mount the play on its stage in 2006, only to face questions and concerns from board members, religious leaders and others, including the rabbi of one board member. Soon after, the workshop’s leaders announced they were delaying the production to address the concerns and organize nightly talks so audiences could express their feelings after seeing the play. But the Royal Court offered a different account, saying the New York Theater Workshop had reneged on its deal to produce the work. Famous theater artists like Tony Kushner, Harold Pinter and Vanessa Redgrave criticized the theater company for censorship and cowardice. The play ended up receiving a commercial production in the fall of 2006 at the Minetta Lane Theater, earning mixed reviews.

The new production will be directed by Jonathan Kane, a New York native who works frequently in Sun Valley, Idaho. Mr. Kane’s production company, Sawtooth Productions, is financing the commercial run, which will include an audience talkback on April 10 – Ms. Corrie’s birthday – that will include members of her family. Charlotte Hemmings, an actress who has worked with Mr. Kane in Sun Valley, will play Ms. Corrie.

The show’s spokesman said that Mr. Kane mounted the play three years ago in Sun Valley and that Ms. Corrie’s relatives came to see it, and they all remained close. Mr. Kane, in a statement, said: “I am so excited to bring this amazing story of a young woman that paid the ultimate price for literally standing up for what she believed in. This play seems even more timely now as the divides in our society continue to plague us.”

Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890 Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986 Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000

February 12, 2015

Review: ‘Rasheeda Speaking’ Finds a Chilling Place to Work

By Charles Isherwood

Office politics are a headache for anyone working in the land of cubicles, copiers and water coolers, but they rarely rise to the four-alarm-fire levels of tension on view in “Rasheeda Speaking,” an incendiary but improbable play by Joel Drake Johnson that rather ham-handedly raises ever-topical (sigh) questions about the prevalence of ingrained racism in America.

The play, which opened on Wednesday at the Pershing Square Signature Center in a production from the New Group, stars the equally terrific Tonya Pinkins and Dianne Wiest as co-workers in a doctor’s office, and has been directed by Cynthia Nixon, herself a terrific actor. It mostly holds the attention — despite such fascinating topics of contention as the proper place for a hole-puncher — but not always for admirable reasons.

Mr. Johnson writes crisp conversational dialogue, and the prickly relationship between the central characters is enacted with persuasive sensitivity by Ms. Pinkins and Ms. Wiest. But the characters’ behavior is often so erratic, and occasionally incredible, that you begin to suspect the playwright is more interested in stirring troubling thoughts about racism than in truthfully exploring a complicated subject.

Jaclyn (Ms. Pinkins) has been out sick for five days when the play begins. Her employer, Dr. Williams (Darren Goldstein), isn’t entirely thrilled to have her back, as he reveals in an early morning colloquy with Ileen (Ms. Wiest), who shares the front-office duties with Jaclyn.

“I don’t think she fits in,” he says, although his concerns about her work do not get more specific than this and a reference to her “unhappiness.” He tells Ileen she’s now the office manager, although she flutteringly demurs at the prospect. As part of her new duties, she should start a file on Jaclyn’s work habits, by way of preparing to give her the heave-ho.

So: Dr. Williams, racist — latent or not.

Enter Jaclyn, slightly late according to the doctor and Ileen, but right on time according to her watch. (We see her waiting outside the office door to enter at precisely the right moment.) Ileen greets her with genuine warmth, but Jaclyn looks askance at the pile of work that’s been left to gather on her desk and spends her first few minutes back watering the plants Ileen has ignored and complaining about the “toxins” in the office. When a patient, the frail Rose (Patricia Conolly), enters the office, Jaclyn’s peremptory treatment of her moves beyond crisp professionalism to outright rudeness, as she upbraids Rose for not having checked in downstairs, as is proper. “A possible tumor?” Jaclyn bluntly asks to clarify the purpose of her visit.

It’s hard not to conclude that Dr. Williams may have a case for calling into question Jaclyn’s behavior — even if he doesn’t know that he does. And doubts about her probity are only enhanced when, after she learns that Ileen has been furtively noting aspects of her behavior, Jaclyn begins playing malicious tricks on her and then denying she’s done so.

Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890 Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986 Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000

So: Jaclyn, troublemaker, liar and possibly bigoted, too, as her catty disapproval of the behavior of her Mexican neighbors suggests.

But Ms. Wiest’s Ileen — and even Ms. Conolly’s Rose — are also depicted in unflattering light at various points. Mr. Johnson obviously wants us to see each character with ambiguity, but he goes about it so clumsily that you are more likely to view them all with something closer to contempt.

During a later visit, Jaclyn apologizes to Rose for her unwelcoming behavior. Rose accepts the apology and offers a preposterous response. “My son thinks it’s in your culture to act the way you did,” she says. “Something about your way to get revenge for slavery.” While it is conceivable that an older Chicagoan might have such thoughts (or a son who does), we can conclude from Rose’s voicing them only that she’s a nitwit, and, yes, a racist.

The fine acting cannot always paper over the implausibility. Ms. Wiest is superbly cast as the terminally equivocal Ileen. With her eyes often downcast in embarrassment, and that husky flute of a voice trembling with nervousness as she jousts with her frenemy, Ms. Wiest makes Ileen’s uneasiness touchingly palpable, especially as it mushrooms into serious paranoia when Jaclyn begins messing with her mind.

Ms. Pinkins radiates intelligence and brisk efficiency as Jaclyn, and deftly suggests how the small slights and condescension Jaclyn faces every day (Dr. Williams must be corrected when he keeps calling her Jackie) add up to a potentially inflammable sense of grievance. In her small role, Ms. Conolly is, as ever, unobtrusively excellent, as is Mr. Goldstein. You may be wondering how Rasheeda enters the picture. The name arises when Jaclyn tells a story of the humiliating conversations among entitled white-collar workers (white ones, natch) she overhears on the bus to work in the mornings, men who jokingly refer to middle-aged black women with a generic name they have chosen.

This monologue is the most sensitive and honestly felt in the play, but in context we cannot help but wonder whether Ms. Pinkins’s cool delivery indicates a woman carefully holding back intense emotion or merely spinning a yarn for purposes of manipulation.

There is certainly something provocative in Mr. Johnson’s desire to infuse a social-issue play with the dynamics of a psychological thriller, as he attempts here, but with a subject as sensitive as the issue of race in America, a more probing and less sensational approach is not just advisable, but necessary.

Rasheeda Speaking

By Joel Drake Johnson; directed by Cynthia Nixon; sets by Allen Moyer; costumes by Toni-Leslie James; lighting by Jennifer Tipton; music and sound by David Van Tieghem; production supervisor, PRF Productions; production stage manager, Valerie A. Peterson; associate artistic director, Ian Morgan; general manager, DR Theatrical Management. Presented by the New Group, Scott Elliott, artistic director; Adam Bernstein, executive director. At the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, Clinton, 212-279-4200, thenewgroup.org. Through March 22. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes.

WITH: Patricia Conolly (Rose), Darren Goldstein (Dr. Williams), Tonya Pinkins (Jaclyn) and Dianne Wiest (Ileen).

February 12, 2015

Bob Simon, ‘’ Correspondent, Dies in Car Crash at 73

By Ashley Southall

Bob Simon, an award-winning CBS News correspondent whose career spanned nearly 50 years and many major world conflicts, was killed in a car crash in Manhattan on Wednesday, according to the network and the authorities. He was 73.

Mr. Simon was a passenger in a livery cab that sideswiped a Mercedes-Benz sedan stopped at a red light on 12th Avenue near West 30th Street about 6:45 p.m., the police said. The cab then careened into the median, crashing into the metal stanchions separating the northbound and southbound traffic lanes. Mr. Simon was taken to Mount Sinai Roosevelt Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The 44-year-old livery-cab driver was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center with injuries to his legs and arms, the Fire Department said. The driver of the Mercedes-Benz was not injured, according to the police.

The police said on Wednesday night that the accident was under investigation.

Mr. Simon, who was in his 19th season as a correspondent for “60 Minutes,” won dozens of honors, including 27 Emmy Awards and four Peabody Awards, in a career that dated to the 1960s. He covered many major news events during the course of that career and, as a , was captured by Iraqi forces near the Saudi- Kuwaiti border during the opening days of the Persian in January 1991. He wrote about the experience in his 1992 memoir, “40 Days.” The title referred to the length of his captivity.

He joined CBS News in 1967 as a reporter and assignment editor in New York covering unrest on college campuses, inner-city riots and the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. He found his niche as a war reporter covering the .

He was based in Saigon and London from 1971 to 1977, and left Saigon on one of the last helicopters out of the city in 1975, CBS reported. He also covered conflicts in Northern Ireland and Portugal, as well as American military actions in Grenada, Somalia and Haiti.

He was assigned to the CBS’s bureau from 1977 to 1981, before moving to Washington as the network’s State Department correspondent from 1981 to 1982. He returned to New York as a national correspondent until 1987, when he returned to Tel Aviv as the network’s chief Middle East correspondent, CBS said.

In 2000, Mr. Simon was recognized with a Peabody Award for “a body of work by an outstanding international journalist on a diverse set of critical global issues,” followed by an Emmy for lifetime achievement in 2003. He became a full-time correspondent for “60 Minutes” in 2005. He recently reported on the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt, and earned his most recent Emmy for a story about an orchestra in whose members made instruments out of trash.

Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890 Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986 Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000

His latest contribution to “60 Minutes” aired over the weekend and was an interview with Ava DuVernay, the director of “Selma,” according to CBS.

“It’s a terrible loss for all of us at CBS News,” Jeff Fager, executive producer of “60 Minutes,” said in a statement. “It is such a tragedy made worse because we lost him in a car accident, a man who has escaped more difficult situations than almost any journalist in modern times.”

“Bob was a reporter’s reporter,” he said. “He was driven by a natural curiosity that took him all over the world covering every kind of story imaginable. There is no one else like Bob Simon. All of us at CBS News and particularly at 60 Minutes will miss him very much.”

Mr. Simon was born on May 29, 1941, in , and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University in 1962 with a degree in history, according to his biography page on the CBS website. Before joining CBS, he worked as a Foreign Service officer from 1964 to 1967. He was also a Fulbright scholar in France and a scholar.

His survivors include his wife, Françoise, and their daughter, Tanya, who is a producer for “60 Minutes” in New York.

Emily Steel contributed reporting.

February 21, 2015

Cast Albums