It is rather extraordinary, but the English-speaking theater is so obsessed with English that other languages are effectively drowned out. Given what gets produced, one might think that all plays were written only by Americans, various species of Brits, Irishmen, the occasional Australian or South Africa’s Athol Fugard.
When was the last time a modern French, German or Italian play got a chance?
Oh, well. At least the New York Theater Workshop is providing some diversity, having just staged a new French play, “For What You Get and What You Expect.”
The playwright is Jean-Marie Besset, who, incidentally, has translated into French many American and English plays.
“For What You Get” is a most enjoyable farce, smoothly translated by Hal J. Witt, about an architectural competition to place a monument on the moon. (There are plenty of bureaucratic and sexual shenanigans surrounding the contest.)
The style owes something to Eugene Ionesco, yet also to post-war French farces such as Marc Camoletti’s 1960s hit “Boeing-Boeing.”
There is a suave urbanity picked up by director Christopher Ashley, set designer Klara Zieglerova and the cast, including a lubricious Pamela Payton-Wright, a tenacious T. Scott Cunningham and, best of all, a supercilious Daniel Gerroll.
You might have noticed that many plays today are not actually plays but various bundles of what might loosely be called talk.
Two current examples are David Cale’s “Betwixt,” given by the New Group at St. Clements, and Ann Deavere Smith’s “House Arrest,” at the Joseph Papp Public Theater.
“Betwixt,” by far the more entertaining of the two, presents a series of monologues and dialogues (Cale is joined in the performance by Cara Seymour) that are brief vignettes, sometimes virtually short stories.
They are primarily concerned with people either between countries (British expatriates in America) or sexual preferences (gay, straight or, you might say, betwixt) and, on the whole, are both funny and touching.
Cale and Seymour are superb actors. Their variations on the English and, occasionally, the Brit/Yank accent are expert and spot-on. Scott Elliott and Andy Goldberg have staged the evening with effortless grace.
Cale’s people are all oddball losers. There’s a faded rock star, a versatile purveyor of phone sex, a dubiously sexed ballet manager and even a pushy Cockney chauffeur making it in TV.
“House Arrest” is far more ambitious and far more pretentious. Subtitled “A Search for American Character in and Around the White House,” this search, conveyed by some 50 characters, all played with varying degrees of failure by Smith herself, is strictly unavailing.
Her previous forays into this documentary medium, “Fires in the Mirror” and “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992,” were successful enough, but here she seems hopelessly out of focus and oddly irrelevant.
In any case, this style of reportage, originated by the Chicago writer Studs Terkel — to whom Smith here pays deserved homage — may well be more effective in print than on stage.
Among recent off-Broadway fare, James Lapine’s “The Moment When,” at Playwrights Horizons, resourcefully directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, seems to have the makings a very good play indeed.
It’s about the chances of circumstance and how we get where we get.
Unfortunately, Lapine neither properly shapes nor ends it. But there’s something there, and it was beautifully acted with a great cast: Arija Bareikis, Kieran (whatever happened to his brother?) Culkin, Illeana Douglas, a terrific Phyllis Newman and Mark Ruffalo.
Meanwhile, the York Theater Company has been taking a chance on lyricist John (“The Golden Apple,” “Candide”) Latouche, with a revue of songs with his lyrics, all keyed into his life.
Called “Taking a Chance on Love,” the show made me eager to know more about Latouche, and was perfectly engaging in itself.
Then, at the Douglas Fairbanks Theater, there is “The Big Bang,” a silly two-man musical about a backer’s audition for a sillier musical. It provides nothing more than a small pop with no echo.
In reviewing Kenneth Lonergan’s generally disappointing play “The Waverly Gallery,” now well-established at the Promenade Theater, I rightly paid homage to the fantastic performance by one of our favorite octogenarians, Eileen Heckart.
However, I had no space to include praise for the other cast members — Maureen Anderman, Anthony Arkin, Mark Blum and, the narrator, Josh Hamilton, who all perform wonders in making bricks with nothing but straw