In a crowded month of theater for me, as well as a somewhat
varied one (one straight play—plus another one at the end of November—one
monodrama, one dance-theater piece), comes now a self-described “apocalyptic
vaudeville” presented by the Classic Stage Company (in association with Except
For This LLC, executive producer
Staci Levine; and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts). Aside from the theater’s own promotional
blurb (“It’s the end of the world as we know it. A flood of biblical proportions leaves us with
only two people on Earth, who discover their common language is song and dance”),
I had no idea what to expect when Diana, who shares the CSC subscription, and I
went down to the Lower East Side to the Abrons Arts Center, the performing and visual arts facility of the
renowned Henry Street Settlement, on a snowy, blustery, and cold Saturday, 14
December, for the evening performance of The Last Two People On Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville co-conceived and performed by Mandy Patinkin and
Taylor Mac singing a mix of music by Gilbert
and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Sondheim, R.E.M., The Pogues, Paul
Simon, Randy Newman, and others. (The
two remaining co-conceivers are Susan Stroman, who choreographed and directed,
and Paul Ford, the show’s musical director.) It was the opening night of 18 performances which are scheduled to end on
31 December.
The Classic Stage
Company was founded by Christopher Martin at Rutgers Presbyterian Church on
West 73rd Street in 1967 and has made its home on East 13th Street in the East
Village since 1985. (Martin, who focused
the theater’s repertory on European classics, was forced out in 1985 when the
company’s board insisted that the theater shift direction to more popular
American fare.) CSC still maintains a
commitment to “re-imagining the classical repertory for contemporary audiences.”
Over the years, I’ve seen quite a few
productions there, including a fascinating two-part revival of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt in November 1981 (and a less
fascinating original play by David Ives—better known now for Venus in Fur, 2010, also at CSC—about Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Jewish
philosopher, entitled New
Jerusalem, 2008). (I have a report on a
Washington, D.C., revival of Ives’s Venus in Fur on ROT; see 11
July 2011.)
The Abrons Center,
at 466 Grand Street between Pitt and Willet Streets, was originally built as
the Neighborhood Playhouse in 1915. (The
Henry Street Settlement, a not-for-profit social service agency, was founded
in 1893.) The Abrons has been a
performance venue continuously, but under various names, starting with the
Neighborhood Playhouse: Henry
Street Playhouse (1927), Harry De Jur Playhouse (1967); from 1970, Woodie King,
Jr.’s New Federal Theatre occupied the De Jur.
(NFT has moved its administrative offices, but it still produces at the
Abrons, among other venues.) The current
building, incorporating the 1915 theater, opened in 1975 and was landmarked in
1989; a complete renovation occurred in the 1990s. The facility houses the 350-seat Playhouse
(the original Neighborhood Playhouse), the 75-seat black-box Experimental
Theater, and the Underground Theater which accommodates 99 patrons. Over the decades, some illustrious performers
have appeared at the Abrons, from contemporary figures like the late Lou Reed,
Philip Glass, and Rufus Wainwright, to artists out of performance history like
Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Aaron Copeland, Eartha Kitt, Orson Welles, and Agnes
de Mille.
The 65-minute “workshop
presentation” of Last Two People is “fully staged” by Stroman (Crazy
for You, Tony – choreography, 1992;
Show Boat, Tony – choreography, 1995; Contact,
Tony – choreography, 2000; The Producers,
Tony – choreography and directing, 2001) with live music performed by a trio
led by Ford (Mandy Patinkin in Concert:
"Dress Casual" – musical director, 1989; Mandy Patinkin in Concert: "Mamaloshen" – musical
arranger, 1998; Celebrating Sondheim
– musical director, 2002; An Evening with
Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin – conceiver and musical director,
2011). Stroman was also the director and
choreographer of the short-lived Broadway movical Big Fish which opened in October and will close this month and she
will do the same services for the upcoming Bullets
Over Broadway, another movical, scheduled to open next April. Diana believes the producers are thinking
Broadway ultimately, which may be so, but my guess is Last Two People is headed first for ART, the co-producer. (When Diana called to find out where the
Abrons is and how long the show runs, the CSC announcement said it’s 100
minutes, considerably longer than it actually is. I suggest that, as a workshop—a program note
even warns that the songs may change without notice—this incarnation of The Last Two People On Earth is still
being tweaked and developed and may end up longer than the version Diana and I
saw, which is probably wise if a Broadway or commercial Off-Broadway run is
under consideration. I guess we’ll find
out.)
The New York Times theater writer Charles
Isherwood called the pairing of Patinkin and Mac a “startling matchup”
because “they come from radically different worlds.” Patinkin is, of course, a Tony-winning
Broadway actor and singer whose credits include Evita (1979 – Tony, 1980), Sunday in the Park
With George (1984), The Secret Garden (1991), and The Wild
Party (2000), as well as several
concerts on Broadway (produced by Except For This and Staci Levine).
He famously starred on TV in Chicago Hope (1994-2000) and Criminal Minds (2005-2007), both of
which shows he left precipitously; Patinkin currently appears in the Showtime
series Homeland (2011-present). Mac is a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter
(one of his songs, “Fear [Itself],” is in the show), cabaret performer,
performance artist, director, and producer who often appears in drag. His past projects include Good Person of Szechwan at the Public
(2013); A Midsummer Night’s Dream at
CSC (2012); and The Lily’s Revenge (book, lyrics,
and concept by Mac based on Noh plays) at HERE Arts Center, New
York (2009); The Magic Theater, San
Francisco (2011); Southern Rep, New Orleans (2012); and ART (2012).
The Village Voice crowned Mac
the “Best Theater Actor” in New York for 2013.
Patinkin and Mac (the “characters” don’t have names—which works
out fine since there’s no dialogue anyway) are survivors of a global flood that has wiped out everyone on earth
except the two of them. They find that
their only common language is song and dance.
Sort of like Gogo and Didi of Waiting
for Godot (coincidentally on stage uptown starring another intriguing
pairing of performers), Patinkin and Mac keep each other company, entertaining
one another by recounting the history of humankind to “chronicle the rise and
fall and hopeful rise again of humankind, through music.“
(Ironically, the CSC illustration for the show depicts Patinkin and Mac
in bowler hats, making them look like some portrayals of Estragon and Vladimir
in Godot, including the current Broadway
version. The illustration also brings to
mind René Magritte’s surrealistic paintings The
Son of Man and Man in the Bowler Hat.)
As for the
performance itself—well, who’da thought Mandy Patinkin, whom Jesse Green calls a “shvitzy warbler” in
New York magazine, could be a clown? Okay, he’s not Bill Irwin or David Shiner,
but he does mime and sight gags in baggy pants—his are “dad” jeans, but what
the hey!—and a bowler hat and carries—wields
is perhaps a better word—a cane! Who
knew? I don’t know Mac’s work at all
except by rep, but I gather this is right in his wheelhouse. Hell, from the evidence of this brief
encounter, I’d guess not much isn’t in Mac’s wheelhouse! If I had to characterize this pairing, I’d
say, in a very loose sense, that Mac (an “adorable genderkind”) is a postmodern Stan Laurel (he even vaguely resembles Laurel) and Patinkin
is a sort of grumpy, stern Oliver Hardy.
(Well, they are in a fine
mess, though Mac didn’t get them into it.)
I still don’t think clowning comes naturally to Patinkin—this is a
character he’s playing, and it’s still a little studied and controlled—but Mac
is a natural buffoon. Neither his body
nor his face are as rubbery as either Irwin’s or Shiner’s, possibly the best
clown-mimes working this side of the Atlantic today (I saw them in Old Hats last spring and reported on the
performance on ROT on 22 March), but he’s immensely flexible
nonetheless, and apparently endlessly inventive and imaginative. The program doesn’t say who came up with the
idea for Last Two People, but I
suspect that Mac contributed most of the gags that punctuate the narrative the
songs and dances lay out. (My guess:
Patinkin and Ford, who’ve collaborated a number of times, together came up with
the song selections.)
The teaming of
Patinkin and Mac, of which New York’s
Jesse Green says “an unlikelier duo” is “hard to imagine,” is not only
surprising, it’s not a natural fit, either.
Mac’s organically goofy and silly—his face is changeable depending on
things like where he’s facing and what he’s wearing on his head. Patinkin’s a classically-trained actor-singer
(he went to Juilliard), not an improvisational performer (from what I can
tell), and being loose and unfettered doesn’t seem to come instinctively to him. While Mac is comfortable in his role in Last Two People, enticing Patinkin to
stay when he threatens to leave after a disagreement or devising ways to feed
themselves or pass the time, Patinkin is more studied, rehearsed, and planned
out. This was the opening
performance—there were no scheduled previews—so I presume Patinkin will loosen
up some as the work progresses before an audience, but Mac’s already there. It’s a small distinction, perhaps, but it
makes the match-up uneven in some performative aspects and unbalances the
production, as if the two singers were in different shows with the same
script. Again, this may be the
consequence of the first night plus two actors with different kinds of
backgrounds and it will even out subsequently.
(Then again, maybe it won’t, either.)
The physical
production holds some little pleasures and even a couple of surprises. William Ivey Long’s costumes, since there’s
only one for each performer, are the easiest to handle. Mac is dressed as a traditional vaudeville
clown: baggy pants, threadbare cut-away, bowler—all in black. He also carries a cane and has various props
(including a full dinner setting plus three apples) stashed in his pants or in
his coat pockets. He also wears a vest,
but it’s not a once-elegant black one, it’s an olive-drab, canvas commando’s
vest. (He is a survivor, after all, of a
global flood and washed up on the stage—we never learn where the two are: it’s
up to our imaginations—in an orange inflatable boat, like some kind of
clown-universe SEAL.) Patinkin,
beardless here in contrast with the hirsute Saul Berenson on Homeland, wears work clothes: the baggy
jeans I mentioned, flannel shirt, kerchief
(or bandage) tied around his forehead.
Mac provides the bowler and cane from the rubber boat (which somehow
also holds a host of other useful items like two bentwood chairs and an
inflatable, life-sized naked female doll).
Like Didi and Gogo, they are Nobodies and Everymen at the same
time.
Beowulf Boritt’s
scenery is also simple but highly effective.
It’s been a long time since I saw a show with a front drape, but upon
entering the Abrons auditorium, a traditional proscenium house of the early
20th century, we’re confronted with a curtain, painted to depict an apparently
endless, dark blue body of water with what looks an immense, gray cliff
beyond. Two empty, round spotlights are
side by side rising from the stage level in the center. When the main drape rises, the stage set is
revealed: a decaying, free-standing proscenium arch (the theater’s actual stage
doesn’t have an arch), circa 1910-ish, blue with gold maple leaves or medallions;
there’s a huge steamer trunk up center left.
The lighting by Ken Billington and sound design by Daniel J. Gerhard,
which included piping the live music by Ford on piano, Tony Geralis on
keyboard, and Paul Pizzuti on drums into the house from behind the scenery,
helped establish the apocalyptically vaudevillian atmosphere physicalized by
Boritt’s set. There were also some
wonderfully low-tech special effects, which I presume were developed by
technical supervisor Aurora Productions.
After Mac flings the inflatable lady off stage lest Patinkin see it, it
comes sailing back during a windstorm a few minutes later, flying across the
stage above everyone’s head on an obvious harness and pulley like a tiny zip
line! (Eat your heart out, Spider-Man!)
The show starts
with the sound effects of a great storm.
I don’t know how someone would interpret this without having read the
promos for the performance; maybe it’s obvious to the uninitiated, but it seems
ambiguous to me. (Unlike some
vaudeville-inspired shows, like the Irwin-Shiner Old Hats I mentioned, Last
Two People doesn’t use title cards or captions for the scenes.) Though I had expected two people to emerge
through the curtain to stand in the light spots, that doesn’t happen and when
the curtain rises, Mac is revealed arduously pulling his rubber boat on stage
from the right wing. Singing an English
translation of “The Song of the Volga Boatmen” (“Yo heave ho! Yo heave ho!”), he’s pulling from a seated
position with his back to us, scooting a few feet to the center of the stage
after each successful tug until he manages to get the boat on to the
platform. Then he unloads the
accouterments for a picnic, taking the dinnerware out of his pants and setting
them all carefully on a table cloth he’s spread out next to the large trunk. When he pulls an apple out of his pocket,
shines it up, and places it next to him, right by the trunk, a hand snakes out
surreptitiously and snatches the fruit.
Finding it mysteriously missing, Mac takes out a second apple and
repeats is action, only to lose it again the same way. The third time Mac repeats this business, he
watches the apple and grabs the hand and Patinkin emerges from the trunk, to
the great shock of Mac that there’s another survivor of the flood.
We know from
publicity that the two don’t understand each other (though there’s no dialogue,
so we have to take on faith that this is so), until one of them starts to sing
and the other picks up the song and they realize that this is how they can
communicate. This leads to a rendition
of Thomas Haynes Bayly’s 1833
composition “Long Long Ago,” a song about love.
The rest of the story unfolds through song and some dance and pantomime,
as the two last people on Earth go through friendship, conflict, near breakup,
and reconciliation.
The score covers songs
from the 19th to the 21st century, from traditional tunes to show music to pop
and rock numbers, including comic pieces and serious and even melancholy ones,
but the styles are all mixed and no thought seems to have been given to
matching or blending them. That’s not
actually a fault, but I did wish that so many of the songs weren’t so familiar,
especially the show tunes. Songs that
well known, at least for me, arrive pre-stocked with a lot of context and
Patinkin and Mac don’t necessarily intend for that meaning to carry over into Last Two People. Rogers and Hammerstein’s “You’ve Got to Be
Carefully Taught” (South Pacific, 1949), for instance, is given an ironic and mocking rendition which fights
with the straightforward, sincere plea against bigotry that I know from the
musical. Sometimes, of course, the
familiarity helps in this new setting, as with the closing number, the children’s
camp round “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” In
the end, though, this is a small quibble.
Now, right at the
outset, the narrative of Last Two People
gets a little sticky if you don’t take it on a metaphorical level. The premise of the vaudeville is that the arc
of Patinkin and Mac’s developing relationship relates the story of humanity
and, potentially, its revival. The songs
are often about love and one early number is E. Y. Harburg and Burton Lane’s
“The Begat” (from 1947’s Finian’s Rainbow),
which is about . . . well, procreation (“Sometimes a bachelor, he begat”). Ummm,
how does that happen with two guys? (Parthenogenesis,
anyone?) Before I got to the show, I wondered if Mac
would be doing one of his drag roles (as he did in the Public’s Good Person, in which he played Shen
Tei, the title character—as well as her male alter ego, Shui Ta, roles usually
played by a woman), but he doesn’t. (I
recently saw an e-card with the text, “I'm not saying you’re not my type, I'm
just saying if you and I were the last two people on Earth the human race would
die out,” but that doesn’t seem to be what’s going on here.) The characters Mac and Patinkin are playing
don’t seem androgynous or genderless, and maybe I’m being too literal once
again—but when they sing about love and, let’s face it, sex—a late song is
“Real Live Girl” by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh from Little Me in 1962—well . . .”I’m so confyoooosed!” as Vinnie Barbarino used to say.
All told, for 65 minutes, even on a miserable evening on the New York
streets, The Last Two People On Earth
is an entertaining, intriguing, and provocative piece of theater. The theme is a little daunting if taken
seriously, but the form is unusual and engaging and seeing Mandy Patinkin in an
uncharacteristic role and getting the chance to see Taylor Mac for the first
time was more than worth the price of the ticket. There’s some opinion, it seems, that Last Two People has intentions of being
more than an off-beat cabaret comprising a peculiarly eclectic selection of
songs accompanied by rudimentary vaudeville dances like the cakewalk. There may be plans for a more performance-art
style presentation with more physical acting, something more postmodern, which
could account for the missing 35 minutes.
I have no idea if this is correct, or where it comes from (I saw it in
cyberspace, and we know how accurate that is), and I can’t evaluate what isn’t
there, of course. But it’s thought-provoking. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next
with Last Two People and how it ends
up when the team’s finished workshopping it and they decide it’s ready for
prime time. I’ve only seen one report
about that future and that only said that Mac and Patinkin plan to tour the show to
theaters around the U.S. before returning to New York for an Off-Broadway run
in 2014. My guess about an ART visit is
just that: a guess, so we’ll just have to wait and see.
[At the time I composed this report, no reviews of The Last Two People On Earth had appeared, either in print or on line, and that may be because the
performance is billed as a workshop, so there won’t be any coverage. That makes it difficult to do my customary
survey of published notices, so readers of ROT will just have to go with my assessment and see what else they can
find on their own.]
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