I had a friend from out of town come in last weekend and he very graciously invited me to be his guest at two shows: Grace and Glengarry Glen Ross. I should've made him take me to Golden Boy so we could hit the G trifecta... :) OH, I should say that spoilers will abound below. You have been warned. Seriously. There will be monumental spoilers. Not joking. If you don't want to know what happens in Grace, stop reading now.
For some reason, Grace was sort of off my radar. I don't know why - I enjoy Paul Rudd, Michael Shannon and Ed Asner, and I enjoyed Kate Arrington when I saw her in a show at Steppenwolf a few years ago. I also saw a play of Craig Wright's a few years ago and enjoyed it. So why haven't I seen Grace? Why didn't I even read the reviews after it opened? I have no idea. I vaguely knew that the play was about a born-again Christian couple and I had also heard that the ending is played first and the rest of the play wraps around to show you how they got there. Well, that didn't really prepare me.
HERE COME THE SPOILERS. Clearly, any play that begins with a man shooting himself in the head does so to get my attention immediately. Unfortunately, all it made me do was want to leave. That act so horrified me that I couldn't really get into the rest of the play. And, afterward, I wondered why the playwright wanted me to see that first? How did it illuminate the play?
Grace seems to be a rumination on the nature of faith, but how can we explore that if the first thing we see is clearly someone who has lost faith? Hasn't the deck already been stacked? I don't understand. We even later had a Holocaust monologue. I don't know. I just found the opening moments so disturbing, I've been having nightmares since I saw it. Full disclosure: I know people who have committed suicide. So that most likely added to my discomfort and disturbance. I'd like to think, though, that if the play had been more intellectually engaging, I could've moved past my issues.
The actors are all good - Paul Rudd is one of the best portrayers of guilelessness I've ever seen and Michael Shannon is just always brilliantly and realistically mesmerizing; there is some smart dialogue and I was moved by one of the monologues, but ultimately, I was repelled by this play because of its opening scene, and I was almost sick when we got back to that scene. It's obvious I'm not the audience for this one and should've done more research before I went. Lesson learned. I will say that the audience really seemed to enjoy themselves and they leapt to their feet at the end of the show. So, maybe there's something in Grace that I just couldn't get to. I guess I'll never know.
Yesterday, my friend took me to the matinee of Glengarry Glen Ross. I had assumed I wouldn't be seeing the show, since there are very few discounts available. Also, I adored the last revival, so I figured I could just remember that production and live without seeing this one. But, when a friend offers you a ticket, hey. Gotta go. :)
I will say I was minorly underwhelmed by this production. It didn't blow me back in my seat the way the last revival did. I tell you, when Liev Schreiber let loose, I couldn't breathe. And Alan Alda just oozed desperation. I didn't get any of that here. In the first act, the three scenes seemed like unconnected playlets instead of scenes of the same play. I don't remember feeling that disconnectness before. Yes, Al Pacino is funny and watchable and can wring so much out of every line, but I felt as if in his zeal to be different from the Shelly Levenes that have come before him, he went too far the other way. Taking Mamet's razor-sharp dialogue and slowing it down to a halting, realistic pace, just didn't work for me. Plus, Pacino is constantly speaking without looking at the other actor - he's instead gazing out towards the audience, as if he's pleading with us to love him instead of Shelly Levene pleading for his leads. And the unfocused quality also made him seem stoned or senile or something. I don't know, it just didn't work for me.
John C McGinley and Richard Schiff were a laugh riot in their first scene, which mostly had the drive I was looking for. I normally love Bobby Cannavale, but he wasn't electric enough in his first scene as Ricky Roma. I just didn't see why anyone would listen to him, let alone get that other diner in the restaurant to come over to his table and buy land. Everything seemed to be dialed down and too quiet.
Everyone did come more alive in the second act and it worked much better for me. Pacino had more oomph, but, again, his description of his big sale was directed out to the audience and not to Ricky. It was just weird staging. I did enjoy, though, Pacino and Cannavale's delight in each other's shenanigans. They had a nice, believeable rapport. David Harbour was quite good as the office manager and Murphy Guyer made an impact as the police inspector. Oh, and Jeremy Shamos was terrific in his second scene as the spineless Lingk. In fact, I started to imagine him using Paul Rudd's gun after his pitiful exit from the office.
So, I guess it was a perfectly decent production, but Glengarry shouldn't be perfectly decent. It should be f*cking awesome. And this one wasn't for me. Though, again, I will note that the rest of the audience laughed their butts off throughout and they jumped to their feet and screamed with glee during the curtain call. Maybe I'm just too f*cking picky...
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