Bordelon, Margot (1980- )

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    Disoriented in America: Two Political Plays Reflect a Changed Country

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    The Off Broadway plays “Fatherland” and “Blood of the Lamb” explore the grief, anger and fear of no longer recognizing the country you love.When, in the course of human events, the political bands that have connected a people appear to be dissolving rapidly, it’s fair to ask: Who in their right mind would want to revisit the chaos of Jan. 6, 2021, in the form of a play?I wouldn’t have thought that I did. That history is too recent, too fraught, too unresolved. Yet the theater has always been a place in which to search the dark corners of a nation’s soul, and to sit with grief.That emotion figures palpably in “Fatherland,” a finely calibrated, surprisingly affecting new work of verbatim theater at New York City Center Stage II. It tells the true story of Guy Wesley Reffitt, a middle-aged rioter from a Dallas suburb who was sent to prison for his role in the Capitol attack, and his son, Jackson, who was an 18-year-old high schooler when he turned his father in to the F.B.I., and just 19 when he testified against him.Conceived and directed by Stephen Sachs for the Los Angeles-based Fountain Theater, where the play was staged earlier this year, it is on one level about the profound grief of no longer recognizing a parent you love, or a child you raised. But like another new Off Broadway drama — Arlene Hutton’s “Blood of the Lamb,” more on which below — “Fatherland” is also about the grief and anger, the fear and disorientation, of no longer recognizing your own country.Using text from the transcript of the elder Reffitt’s 2022 trial, and other publicly available sources, the play calls its central characters simply Father (Ron Bottitta) and Son (an exquisitely restrained Patrick Keleher). Their clash, for all its 21st-century Americanness, is as primal as any parent-child conflict from ancient Greek drama, or from Shakespeare.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Let’s Call Her Patty’ Review: Rhea Perlman as an Uptown Matriarch

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      Rhea Perlman stars as a quintessential Upper West Sider in Zarina Shea’s snapshot of affluent, self-flagellating motherhoodShe shops at Zabar’s, does Pilates on Columbus Avenue and resides comfortably in a prewar high rise between West End and Riverside, where she gossips about private lives as though they were front-page news.That she could be any number of women, of some advanced years and moderate means, who live on Manhattan’s Upper West Side is suggested by the taxonomic title “Let’s Call Her Patty,” a new play by Zarina Shea that opened on Tuesday night at the Claire Tow Theater, overlooking its subject’s natural habitat.Close your eyes to picture the type, and the production’s star, Rhea Perlman, may spring directly from a sidewalk crack, with her featherweight frame, babka-colored curls and voice like gravel and honey.Patty is introduced to the audience, chopping onions behind a long and luxe marble-topped kitchen island, by her niece Sammy (Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer). Scene-setting banter between the two demonstrates their shorthand intimacy, and Patty’s reflexive tendency to make other people’s business her own (and, more specifically, about her). That notably includes the triumphs but mostly troubles of Patty’s daughter Cecile (Arielle Goldman), an artist who struggles with body image and addiction.Patty’s maternal relationships with Cecile and Sammy are the play’s sources of conflict (Patty’s offstage husband, Hal, we’re told, is “fine”). When Cecile, who appears onstage only in brief interludes, falls out of touch, Patty considers it personal punishment, simultaneously convinced that she’s to blame for her daughter’s problems and defensive at her own accusation. Sammy, a font of patience as she is of exposition, gently suggests, “I think this is not about you.”Of course, she’s right. Patty is presented as a quintessential Jewish mother, but the qualities she exemplifies are not culturally exclusive; anyone who recognizes her narcissism from their family dynamics might appreciate a trigger warning. And yet, the play’s own narrow focus on Patty works to its detriment.The matriarch is little more than an amalgam of stereotypes; that there is truth to them is hardly a revelation. But the play does little to question or disrupt the preconceived notions it assumes New York audiences will have about “an Upper West Side lady” like Patty. Nor does Perlman mine much unseen depth from a character exclusively defined by circumstance.The production, from the director Margot Bordelon, confines Patty behind her cutting board, where she chops imaginary onions without shedding a tear for much of the play’s brief 70 minutes. If this is a character study, Patty’s pungent, messy center is largely withheld from view.Goldman’s Cecile occasionally drags a folding chair onstage to insert herself into her mother’s narrative, trembling like a frazzled live wire. Unfortunately, Cecile is kept at arm’s length from a story in which she seems to have the most compelling inner life. Sammy is likewise sketched mostly in relation to her aunt; that Sammy’s mother-in-law is near death is relevant only insofar as it keeps her from being with Patty.Patty’s co-op apartment, one of her primary distinguishing features, is suggested with chic austerity by Kristen Robinson’s set, reflecting a fixation on wealth that the play seems unsure whether it means to critique. Pivots in focus and time are punctuated with abrupt shifts in lighting (by Oliver Wason) and sound (Sinan Refik Zafar) that drum up tension and surprise the drama otherwise lacks.“Let’s Call Her Patty” gestures toward an oral tradition of storytelling that aims to preserve local, and often endangered, histories. Sammy’s narration acknowledges the Lenape tribe, who once lived on the land now occupied by New York City, and suggests that one day it will all be underwater. Dutifully recording for posterity the era of the affluent and self-flagellating mother seems to be as much an act of ambivalence as of love.Let’s Call Her PattyThrough Aug. 27 at the Claire Tow Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes. More

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      ‘The Brightest Thing in the World’ Review: Falling in Love, While Loving Heroin

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      An addiction and recovery tale wrapped in a romantic comedy, Leah Nanako Winkler’s play insists on acknowledging the messy coexistence of joy and pain.NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Christmas whooshes in from the wings, making a festive sneak attack. One instant, a recovering addict is deep in a soliloquy about the seductions of heroin; the next, she is standing in her doting sister’s living room, surrounded by sparkle and warmth.“The Brightest Thing in the World,” Leah Nanako Winkler’s potent new play at Yale Repertory Theater, is itself a bit of an ambush, though a more gradual one. Beginning as a rom-com with all the trimmings, it intensifies into a pair of love stories — each golden in its way, each fraught with quiet fear. Directed by Margot Bordelon, this is ultimately a brokenhearted tale.But for a nice long while, it luxuriates in the fluttery pleasure of mutual crushes morphing into romance. At Revival, a cozy bakery cafe in Lexington, Ky., the charming Lane (a stellar Katherine Romans) has been subtly wooing Steph (Michele Selene Ang), one of her regular customers, with coffee and pastries on the house. Lane even bakes her the kind of cake that famously figures in the novel Steph totes around.“See my biceps?” Lane says, boasting of all the egg-beating she’s done. “They’re stronger now.”“Whoa,” Steph says, swooning adorably.Winkler knows her rom-com tropes, so Steph is not only a florist but also a journalist, albeit a fairly unobservant one. She has no idea that everyone who works at Revival is in recovery from addiction. By the time Lane becomes aware of Steph’s obliviousness and fills her in, they are already enmeshed; when they finally got together, fireworks boomed in the night sky. (The set is by Cat Raynor, lighting is by Graham Zellers, sound is by Emily Duncan Wilson.)Della (Megan Hill), Lane’s wacky older sister, actively nurtures the couple’s happiness. On the first of a few Christmases with Steph, when Lane worries that “it’s hard to be all in with someone like me,” Della reassures her.“You’re fantastic,” she says. “And a catch.”This is the play’s other love story: the devotion between Lane, who is four years sober, and Della, a one-woman cheerleading squad who holds on tight to the memories of all the beautiful things that her sister has done and been. It’s Della who recalls Lane, radiant in the audience at a concert one night, as “the brightest thing in the world.”Romans and Megan Hill as sisters who are the second of the play’s two love stories.Joan MarcusWinkler’s script is dappled with fancy and poetry, but some dialogue sounds more schematic than dramatic, as when Lane and Steph talk politics. The play also sabotages two scenes by courting laughs in life-or-death moments — first during a pivotal emergency, and later in a traumatic recollection of loss. Humans can be ridiculous even in the most somber circumstances, but the attempts at comedy undermine the emotion.Those are puzzling miscalculations for a work that is otherwise insistent on acknowledging the messy, scary coexistence of joy and pain, strength and fragility, self-preservation and self-destruction — not only in Lane but in Steph and Della, who love her tenaciously, and whom she loves back hard. It’s just that, as Lane tells Steph, she also loves heroin.Which is why a constant worry long ago insinuated itself into Della’s everyday thoughts: “What do I have to do today … is Lane dead. I need gas … is Lane dead. Do I want coffee … is Lane dead.”It is bold to stage “The Brightest Thing in the World” in the season when jolly-holiday pressures can heighten tensions for addicts and those who love them. That timing could easily make it too much for people to watch.But I’ve been dogged for years by the same dread as Della, with a different name attached. And I’ll tell you, there can be real solace in a play that speaks your own fears back to you.The Brightest Thing in the WorldThrough Dec. 17 at the Yale Repertory Theater, New Haven, Conn.; yalerep.org. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. More

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      ‘… What the End Will Be’ Review: Learning to Let Go

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      The intergenerational comedy is a poignant reflection on sexuality, mortality and Black masculinity by the playwright Mansa Ra.Kinship with our elders is a privilege not often afforded to queer people. How many sons have come out to gay fathers and grandfathers? Imagining the possibility of these generational bonds feels like a reparative gesture in “…What the End Will Be,” an astute and poignant reflection on sexuality, mortality and Black masculinity by the playwright Mansa Ra, which opened on Thursday night at the Laura Pels Theater.Did I mention it’s also a comedy?The play is set in a stylish living room in a posh Atlanta suburb, where Maxwell (Emerson Brooks) has taken in his ailing father Bartholomew (Keith Randolph Smith). Because Bartholomew has Stage 4 bone cancer, there’s only one way this can go, and he is already browsing for caskets online. But Maxwell, a careerist whose ambitions are a fortress against reality, is in deep denial. (“No dying,” he says to his father, laying the ground rules for their new living arrangement.)While Bartholomew is readying his goodbyes, Maxwell’s teenage son, Tony (Gerald Caesar), is figuring out who he wants to be. When Antoine, a femme and fabulous boy from school (Ryan Jamaal Swain), is caught sneaking out of Tony’s room, Tony reveals that he’s more than just a friend. “That’s your type?” Maxwell asks derisively, betraying a reflexive narrow-mindedness. (Tony had already confided in Charles, Maxwell’s more understanding husband, played by Randy Harrison.) But Bartholomew is pleased. “Bring it in, Champ!” he says, with a predictable aphorism about apples falling from trees.Then he grows wistful. “I wish I would’ve had somebody hug me when I came out of the closet,” he continues.Now, Chloe (Tiffany Villarin), a gracious in-home nurse, is Bartholomew’s most intimate source of comfort. The ghost of his dead partner (also played by Swain) haunts him like the pain he refuses to rate honestly on a scale from one to 10.Learning to let go — of personal hang-ups, social expectations and ultimately of life itself — is at the heart of “… What the End Will Be,” which is not shy on sentimentality. Directed by Margot Bordelon, the 90-minute production would not feel out of place on prime-time television, where straightforward setups deliver clear emotional payoffs with a side of laughs. But there’s gratifying nourishment in Ra’s recipe, a restorative fantasy as much as it is an unabashed tear-jerker.What if instead of being presumed absent, Black fathers were depicted as fallibly present? And rather than having his life taken away, a Black man were pictured in control over how he leaves the world? That all of the men in Ra’s play are gay fuels his confrontation with the assumptions and limitations heaped on them because they are Black.Assured and affecting performances from the cast succeed in tugging at heartstrings, especially Smith’s, whose frail ox ready for pasture is rueful but grounded, in a role that might easily turn maudlin. Swain is a total delight as the most self-actualized queen in the room, unwilling to dim his light for anyone still living in the dark. (“I’ve been offending people since I twirled out of the womb,” he says.)Bordelon’s staging for Roundabout Theater Company balances the play’s humor with its sobering central conceit. The slickly appointed interior, designed by Reid Thompson and covered with art that Bartholomew describes as Afrocentric, demonstrates Maxwell’s faith in the protective powers of material wealth. But money is no defense from human frailty.“… What the End Will Be” is less wide-ranging and conceptual than Ra’s previous work Off Broadway, “In the Southern Breeze,” and more playful and light-footed than “Too Heavy for Your Pocket,” also staged by Roundabout when he was known as Jiréh Breon Holder.In “… What the End Will be,” facing death really means reckoning with life — what makes it worth living despite its impermanence — and learning how to seize some measure of joy for yourself. It’s everything that is meant when we say that Black lives matter.… What the End Will BeThrough July 10 at the Laura Pels Theater, Manhattan; roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More