For a while, Mat Schaffer's Simon Says--which boasts Brian Murray in a return to the stage after a lengthy absence--looks as if it's going to be fun. The agitated drama, at the Lynn Redgrave, raises questions about the authenticity of paranormal activity.
Murray is Professor Williston, who's been dismissed from his position for reasons not fully explained and has been working for some time with James (Anthony J. Goes), a younger man with apparent gifts as a "channeler." After recovering from a childhood injury, James is in touch with a figure called Simon, who's been reincarnated over the millennia as numerous Simons.
Because of Williston's betrayal involving a stopped college tuition check, James is threatening to do no more channeling, but then Annie (Vanessa Britting) arrives for a scheduled session, Because she's a science teacher, she's skeptical about James's talents and demands impossible-to-supply proof, but as a recent widow still mourning her husband, she's decided to go through with the appointment in hopes that, despite her beliefs, she'll be able to contact her deceased spouse.
For the first third of Schaffer's play, he gives the impression he's having fun with the at-issue issue. He may actually believe in the paranormal. He may be testing his ability to fool others into believing in it. He may want to examine the possibilities in a more serious fashion.
Not knowing precisely where he's leading is part of the appeal as James prepares to storm out, Williston tries to prevent him and Annie, forsaking her strict scientist's stance, succeeds in making him do his Simon thing. Then, with James going into his complicated trance, the enjoyment begins leaking out. Increasingly, it looks as though whether Schaffer believes in the paranormal or not, he's going to give the proceedings over to a demonstration of one man's supposed paranormal skills.
That's when Simon Says turns into a tour de force for Goes as James. He twitches, he writhes, he tumbles, he switches voices, he falls, he goes numb, he looks if he's dead. This continues, with the implication (at least to me) that Schaffer is now intent on selling spectators a bill of paranormal goods.
With Williston and Annie--who's also hoping Simon will disclose the whereabouts of a wedding ring that's gone missing--interrupting James/Simon only occasionally, the channeler's cavorting is initially engaging, then sillier and sillier until, finally, it's no more than tiresome. By fade-out, it hasn't delivered any substantive point at all.
Myriam Cyr directs on a Janie Howland set exactly resembling an academic's lair--stacks of books piled in corners, comfy reading chairs, that sort of thing, curious knickknacks. Cyr certainly puts James through his paces with rewards, and Britting does her best to play a woman whose long-held convictions evaporate a bit faster than seems likely.
Murray is superb playing a man who's almost completely recovered from a heart attack. (Was this written in to accommodate a preexisting Murray condition?) He's quick to mollify; he's quick to anger. His voice commanding, he's thoroughly in control of Williston's determined authority.
What's mitigating here is Williston's eventual shift into an on-stage spectator, into top-billed Murray's being reduced to graciously witnessing a colleague take command of a scene, wrap it up and take it home. It's a treat to have Murray back behind the footlights. Let's hope what he does next is more rewarding for him and his fans.
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In time for July 4 and the weeks following, here's Liberty, described on the Playbill cover as "a monumental new musical." Too bad the pun-ny "monumental" doesn't quite live up to its promise.
Shaped primarily by bookwriter-lyricist Dana Leslie Goldstein and composer Jon Goldstein as an educational children's musical, it's undeniably well-intentioned but ultimately tepid in its recounting the tale of French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi (Ryan Duncan) and his Statue of Liberty (the sweet-voiced Abigail Shapiro) as it's shipped to the United States and kept from being erected until Joseph Pulitzer (Mark Aldrich) mounts a successful campaign in his newspaper, The New York World.
The nice idea here is to have the statue portrayed by a young girl and treated very much like a living person. There's another strong idea couched in a song called "America for the Americans," which has the effect of reminding audiences that the victimizing of immigrants then is still going on today as Donald Trump campaigns.
No surprise that Emma Lazarus (Emma Rosenthal) is among the characters, taking time to get right the "Give me your tired, your poor" poem that Pulitzer immortalizes on his front page--and composer Goldstein sets to music. It's a pity that in 2016 Lazarus's welcoming words have lost so much suasion and are now more like "Don't give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
The music throughout is generically rousing and the figures depicted are also generic--among them a woman pushing a cart on the Lower East Side and a socialite on the Upper East Side (Tina Stafford as both). Those so-so elements go only so far to enliven the patriotic tuner. On the other hand, a big contributing factor is Colin Doyle's expansive projection design.
Evidently, Liberty, directed by Evan Pappas, is an adaptation of Lady of Copper, a previous Goldsteins work with collaborator Robert Bruce McIntosh. Hmm, wonder what went on there that led to this subsequent opus.