Review - The Assembled Parties & Macbeth

Apparently, not all upper west side Jewish families spend Christmas Day going out for Chinese food and a movie. Take the extended family of Richard Greenberg's The Assembled Parties, who spend two December 25ths, twenty years apart, in a perfunctory celebration of the holiday while complaining about the inability to find a plumber to come right over fix a leaky pipe (Even when offered a "Nativity surcharge.") and referring to the season's continual playing of Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" as, "a tiny acoustic rape every time you leave the apartment."

The daughter of a famous dress designer, former teen movie star Julie Bascov (Jessica Hecht) lives with her successful businessman husband Ben (Jonathan Walker) and sons Scotty (Jake Silbermann) and Timmy (Alex Dreier) in a stunning 14-room apartment off of Central Park. Scotty's visiting friend Jeff (Jeremy Shamos) describes the place in a phone conversation with his mom as, "like the sets of those plays you love. With the breezy dialogue. They sort of talk that way and everybody's unbelievably nice and, like, gracious and happy."

Indeed the conversation is charming and polite, not to mention educated to the most obscure edges of vocabulary and culture, when Jeff is being entertained by the likes of Julie, played with an airy, affected charm by Hecht ("A cheerful nature is an utterly ruthless thing. I'm the most ruthless woman you'll ever meet."), but Santo Loquasto's swiftly revolving set reveals not only an assortment of rooms but a selection of less-breezy private conversations that may not seem completely related, but begin to tie together in the second act, which stays put in the living room.

Those conversations involve Ben's sister, Faye (Judith Light), her husband Morty (Mark Blum) and their slow-witted daughter, Shelley (Lauren Blumenfeld), visiting from Long Island. There are hints of someone suffering a serious illness and discussion of a valuable family heirloom.

With a plot that is mostly suggested and a theme of transformation as a survival skill that involves events that take place during the twenty year span between acts, the evening seems dominated by Greenberg's urban wisecracks, particularly those volleyed by Light, who has quickly become Broadway's go-to lady for playing troubled, intelligent women who quip dryly. ("Water isn't necessary," she explains while downing a Valium. "Water is a garnish.") References to Y2K and the long process of figuring out who won the 2000 presidential election elicit chuckles of reognition.

Director Lynne Meadow's graceful production really begins to fly when the trio of Light, Hecht and Shamos (whose emotionally bottled-up performance contrasts perfectly with Light's acerbic nature and Hecht's pretensions) become the main focus, elevating a good play into a highly satisfying evening.

Photos by Joan Marcus: Top: Jessica Hecht, Jeremy Shamos and Judith Light; Bottom: Jonathan Walker and Mark Blum.

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"When shall we three meet again?" asks a mysterious stranger, momentarily stopping the two who were about to leave the room. They're not sisters but at least one of them might be described as a little weird.

Perhaps inspired by the title character's description of life as, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing," Alan Cumming's (mostly) solo performance of Macbeth is set in a psychiatric ward where someone who is perhaps an idiot (the savant kind) unexpectedly erupts into an edited performance of Shakespeare's tragedy while being observed through a glass wall and from surveillance cameras by a pair of medical professionals.

And while I wouldn't exactly describe the event as, "a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more," the ambiguity of the concept, coupled with the foggy storytelling, does nothing to truly enhance the text. This is one Shakespeare production where the player's the thing.

Co-directed by John Tiffany and Andrew Goldberg, the piece is performed in set and costume designer Merle Hensel's sparse observatory, which includes a bed, a sink and that fixture that's turning up more and more on New York theatre sets these days, a bathtub. (Yes, it is used.)

The play begins silently with a dazed and bleeding Cumming being attended to by Jenny Sterlin and Brendan Titley. They change him from street clothes to clinicAl Whites, place his belongings in a bag marked "evidence" and leave to take notes from above, occasional coming back to give him an injection. Near the end they're also speaking lines, but they're amplified with a mechanical sounding echo by designer Fergus O'Hare. (No, I don't know why.)

As far as Shakespeare's text is concerned, Cumming attacks his assignment with high energy and a trunkful of stage tricks. The title role is his default setting, sticking to the reedy Scottish voice of his birth land. Lady M. is pitched up a bit and for the trio of weird sisters he faces the surveillance camera so his image pops up on three video screens. Banquo likes to toss an apple in his hand and King Duncan is a loony old man in a wheelchair.

Despite a game effort, many of the characters blend too easily into one another and being able to follow the plot without already having a decent familiarity with the play seems a lost cause. There is plenty in Cumming's performance that will provide surface entertainment, but the context keeps us aware that we're not actually watching the actor playing these characters, but watching the actor playing this mysterious man playing these characters and the payoff that justifies the concept never occurs.

Ultimately, the evening adds up as a testament to Cumming's stamina and athleticism, rather than his dramatic chops.

Photo of Alan Cumming and Jenny Sterlin by Jeremy Daniel.

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"Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it."
-- Bertolt Brecht

The grosses are out for the week ending 4/28/2013 and we've got them all right here in BroadwayWorld.com's grosses section.

Up for the week was: THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL (6.2%), THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (4.7%), MAMMA MIA! (4.5%), THE RASCALS: ONCE UPON A DREAM (3.8%), THE LION KING (1.5%), I'LL EAT YOU LAST: A CHAT WITH SUE MENGERS (1.3%), JERSEY BOYS (1.2%), CHICAGO (1.2%), KINKY BOOTS (1.0%), CINDERELLA (0.6%), SPIDER-MAN TURN OFF THE DARK (0.5%), ROCK OF AGES (0.4%), MATILDA (0.2%), ANN (0.2%), MOTOWN: THE MUSICAL(0.1%),

Down for the week was: THE TESTAMENT OF MARY (-20.4%), ORPHANS (-15.4%), JEKYLL & HYDE (-13.6%), MACBETH (-9.9%), THE BIG KNIFE (-8.3%), ANNIE (-5.8%), NEWSIES (-4.2%), THE NANCE (-3.8%), NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT (-3.5%), ONCE (-2.7%), WICKED (-2.0%), LUCKY GUY (-1.5%), VANYA AND SONIA AND MASHA AND SPIKE (-0.6%), PIPPIN (-0.5%), THE ASSEMBLED PARTIES (-0.4%),

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