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    ‘Ceremonies in Dark Old Men’ Review: A Father in Defeat

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    Norm Lewis stars as the resigned patriarch of two slippery sons in this revival of Lonne Elder III’s drama from 1969.When it premiered Off Broadway in 1969, “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men” won Lonne Elder III a Drama Desk Award for “most promising playwright.” Today, though, it’s seldom staged or acknowledged. Taking place at a Harlem barbershop in the 1950s, it tracks the way a Black family is undone by scheming ambition and complacency.A new production at Theater at St. Clement’s, starring an excellent Norm Lewis as its flailing patriarch, makes a case not just for its revival but for a re-examination. As with the best of these observant midcentury dramas, “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Death of a Salesman” among them, “Ceremonies” has a bird’s-eye understanding of human behavior, grounded by the specificity of its setting.An old vaudevillian still grieving his long-dead wife, Russell Parker (Lewis) hangs around the deserted barbershop his daughter, Adele, pays to keep. Not attempting to earn clients, he kills time playing checkers with a friendly neighbor (James Foster Jr.) and spinning tales to his unemployed sons, the would-be hustler Theopolis (Bryce Michael Wood) and the sticky-fingered Bobby (Jeremiah Packer).But Adele (Morgan Siobhan Green) has had it. She’d cut her dreams of college short to help support the family, and seven years later, none of them have made anything of themselves. In a week’s time, she plans to sell the shop and change the locks on the adjoining house where they all live. (Harry Feiner’s set fills the bones of its skeletal, two-level structure with homey period touches.)Green fills out her short appearances imperiously. You’re scared she’ll catch the men as they hatch a plan to sell bootleg whiskey out of the shop with help from the shady Blue (Calvin M. Thompson). His phony “Harlem Decolonization Association” is a shameless front for a tentacled racket, which includes looting neighborhood businesses.Elder’s play brims with poignant gestures at the Parkers’ world, capturing a Harlem in the midst of the promise of civil rights, and of those in its community caught in the crosshairs of honest work and easy exploitation. His characters feel real and their relationships insightful, though under Clinton Turner Davis’s direction, some laugh lines seem purposely underplayed, as if leaning into the play’s comedy would undermine its eventual tragedy. But Elder’s sharp humor still peeks through his clever plotting, especially in the brothers’ banter.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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      Review: ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ Knows Its Good Angles

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      The Ruth Stage’s production understands the violence and identity crisis at the core of Brick’s character, but other elements fail to cohere.We know from his personal writing (and context clues) that Tennessee Williams was into trade: hypermasculine men who are just as likely to have sex with men as they are to break their necks. These seductive brutes are strewn throughout his work, just as essential and memorable as his fading belles. There is no Blanche without Stanley.Williams would probably love Matt de Rogatis’s Brick in Ruth Stage’s production of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” which recently opened at Theater at St. Clement’s. The former football hero is still a depressive alcoholic whose drunken escapades earn him a cast, crutches and the growing contempt of his wife, Maggie. But de Rogatis, tatted up and ab-tastic from his backlit shower entrance, compellingly finds the violence and identity crisis at Brick’s core in this contemporary staging.With the character mostly a punching bag for his bellicose Big Daddy Pollitt (Christian Jules LeBlanc) and the talkative Maggie (Sonoya Mizuno) to explode onto, he is often somewhat of a handsome blank slate. De Rogatis, who also produces, convincingly hints at a torrid inner life, congealed into an imposing physique but betrayed by the anguish he voices at the mention of his ambiguously close relationship with a male friend who died by suicide.The performance matches the play, which like many of Williams’ works, is concerned with surfaces as much as its characters’ deeper worlds. A fine-tuned melodrama about a wealthy Mississippi family undone by its patriarch’s cancer diagnosis, the play melts down the characters’ kept-up appearances and oft-mentioned “mendacity” as they scramble for his inheritance.This production, the play’s first Off Broadway staging licensed by the Williams estate, has several excellent surfaces, though not all the elements rise to the occasion. Joe Rosario’s direction, for example, handles the soap opera-style histrionics well but doesn’t land much of Williams’s wicked humor. His characters can often seem aimless and airless, when they should be pointedly animated.The character of Maggie buckles most under this misfire, especially in the first act’s hourlong near-monologue, in which she breathlessly complains about the children of her snooty sister-in-law, Mae (Tiffan Borelli), then laments her own childlessness and the speculation it brings on. Mizuno, though game, lacks a clear focus in this key scene. Hers is not the determined, seductively self-assured feline immortalized onscreen by Elizabeth Taylor — a high bar, to be sure — but a frenzied kitten rattling against a cage. This does, intriguingly, transform her legendary voluptuousness into a believable portrait of an Ole Miss grad whose hard-won financial safety has started to crumble.Similarly, this production manages to make the bourbon-soaked setting feel like the actual South rather than a gauzy memory of the South. Matthew Imhoff’s set is the exact kind of faux luxury gilded Wayfair a contemporary Pollitt family would seize upon, and Xandra Smith’s costumes are exceptionally observed. Mae’s modern good-Christian-girl uniform — sleeveless top, colorful pants, sensible heel — is particularly inspired.Borelli leans into the fun of her recognizable outfit (and hair in a tight bun), tastily spewing Williams’s barbs to crank up his melodramatic flair. She is matched in this by Alison Fraser as Big Mama, marvelously attuned to the work’s tonal balances. Her big, vulnerable eyes, painted smile and full blond hair perfectly convey everything there is to love about the playwright and his addictive fixation on deceiving appearances.This “Cat” evokes most of that allure, give or take a few fizzles. For those looking to cool off on these scorching summer days with a Tennessee Williams classic, it’s a solid trade.Cat on a Hot Tin RoofThrough Aug. 14 at the Theater at St. Clements, Manhattan; ruthstage.org. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes. More

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      Review: ‘Morning’s at Seven’ Awakens Again, Only to Hit Snooze

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      Paul Osborn’s 1930s play is revived, with its thin psychology, predictable structure and somewhat bitter slice of small town life intact.Paul Osborn’s “Morning’s at Seven” debuted on Broadway in 1939, and has clung to the fringes of the theatrical canon ever since. A dyspeptic example of American realism, like an apple pie lightly dusted with arsenic, it plunks its audience into the adjoining backyards of two modest Victorian houses that a few sisters in their 60s and 70s call home. During a late afternoon and the following morning, marriages crumble, siblings quarrel, a brief affair surfaces, an engagement breaks, a mother smothers. Just one big not especially happy family.Old fashioned even when it opened, “Morning’s at Seven” became a regional theater darling and yielded two Broadway revivals, likely because it provides hefty roles for aging actors. Now, it is being staged at the Theater at St. Clement’s, where a new production by Dan Wackerman for his Peccadillo Theater Company opened Monday evening. It has a typically imposing cast — including Lindsay Crouse, Alma Cuervo, John Rubinstein, Tony Roberts — that would have been a bit starrier, but Judith Ivey tore a tendon during previews. Luckily, Alley Mills sidled in, reuniting with Dan Lauria, her spouse on “The Wonder Years.”Peccadillo provided the last show I saw, “Sideways: The Experience,” in March 2020, before theaters closed for the pandemic. It was a work written and staged with such casual and thoroughgoing sexism, I started to think that maybe shutting down some theater wasn’t so bad after all. So to say that “Morning’s at Seven” is an altogether more pleasurable experience is maybe not saying very much. With its thin psychology, predictable structure and characters to laugh at, not with, the play serves a snoozy, somewhat bitter slice of small town life. Imagine Thornton Wilder without the radicalism, William Inge without the melancholy, Lillian Hellman without the flash.Those neighboring Gibbs sisters — living with their husbands, except for Arry (Mills), who remains unmarried — have enjoyed relative contentment for 40 or so years. But one afternoon, Homer (Jonathan Spivey), the 40-year-old, failed-to-launch son of Ida (Cuervo), has come for an overnight visit and brought Myrtle (Keri Safran), his girlfriend of a dozen years. Somehow, that triggers the temporary cave-in of at least two marriages and considerable unrest in the home that Cora (Crouse) shares with her husband, Thor (Lauria), and kid sister, Arry.As expected, these practiced actors perform with relish and finesse. Crouse is nicely sour as Cora, the villain of the piece until she isn’t. And Cuervo neatly represses some of Ida’s hysteria. Roberts, as David — the husband of Esty (Patty McCormack), the eldest Gibbs sister and the only one who doesn’t effectively live with them — earns outsize laughs for some of the play’s meanest speeches. As the younger couple, Spivey and Safran overplay their roles, but seemingly with Wackerman’s encouragement.Mild yet ungentle, “Morning’s at Seven” — which borrows its title, ironically, from a cheery Robert Browning lyric — lets its characters politely abrade each other for the first two acts before tying up the story in a tidy comedic bow. What’s most distinct about the play is the acidity that runs through it, and the suggestion that maturity doesn’t necessarily breed content.“I always thought of getting old sort of like going to bed when you’re nice and drowsy,” Arry says. “But it isn’t that way at all.” In its grimmer moments, the play hints at something wormy at the heart of this American pastoral. But instead of offering a wake up call, it repairs its broken family and just goes back to sleep.Morning’s at SevenThrough Jan. 9 at Theater at St. Clement’s, Manhattan; morningsat7.com. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. More