Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – SIGNATURE PLAYS haven’t lost their ability to provoke, move

• By drediman
• May 31, 2016
• No Comments

Over the holiday weekend, I swung by the Pershing Square Signature Center to catch Signature Plays, a patchwork of three short, disorienting one-act plays about the human condition: Edward Albee’s The Sandbox, María Irene Fornés’ Drowning, and Adrienne Kennedy’s Funnyhouse of a Negro. The evening has been assembled to celebrate Signature Theatre Company’s 25^th anniversary. The playwright-driven company, which has becoming an essential player in the fabric of the New York theater scene, had previously produced each of these works during the respective playwright’s initial Playwright-in-Residence season.

Albee’s The Sandbox, a spiky 20-minute meditation on age and death, was the perfect primer, setting just the right tone for the rest of the avant-garde program. Fornés’ spare and somber Drowning followed, and it engrossed me with its alienating view of humanity’s capacity for pain and sorrow. The lengthiest piece (clocking in at around 45 minutes), Kennedy’s unsettling phantasmagorical fantasia on racial identity Funnyhouse of a Negro, concluded the evening. Although these plays were written in 1959, 1986, and 1964, respectively, I’m happy to report that each retains their ability to shock, provoke, and move.

These three one-acts are sensationally directed by Lila Neugebauer, a director who’s been quietly on the rise in recent years. As with her Drama Desk nominated work on the sublime revival of A.R. Gurney’s The Wayside Motor Inn last season (also at the Signature), Ms. Neugebauer impresses here by coming up with three powerful, albeit disparate, visual vocabularies for each play.  She’s also adept at drawing specificity and vigor from her actors. The cast is formidable across the board and includes theater veterans such as Alison Fraser, Frank Wood, and Phyllis Somerville.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

SIGNATURE PLAYS
Off-Broadway, Play
Signature Theatre
2 hours (with one intermission and a pause)
Through June 19