Critic at Leisure

Off-Broadway winners! “the Money Shot’ and ‘Ndebele Funeral’

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Broadway’s buzz has currently been a bit back-shelved by a pair of dazzling off-Broadway standing ovation-winners serving up dazzling, provocative theater you don’t want to miss!
Make a beeline downtown to Neil La Bute’s “The Money Shot,” a hilarious skewer of a pair of Hollywood has-beens and the desperate lengths they’re up to in their quest for a make or break comeback. And put 59E59Theaters “Ndebele Funeral,” winner of the 2013 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Award for Best Play, at the top of your list to be emotionally seared by this riveting tale of two friends who reunite in South Africa’s Soweto Township to discover how the new order has fared for one and hauntingly neglected the other.
On Broadway the best “new news” is that Kenneth Lonergan’s brilliant 1996 “This Is Our Youth” is finally receiving its just dessert at the Cort Theater in a thrilling, achingly hilarious revival. That comeback includes the brilliant Broadway debut of young Michael Cera as a nerd with heart — who will break yours — and is surely headed for many kudos come next Spring.

Anything Goes in ‘The Money Shot’

LaBute is one of the most electric lights on the New York theater scene, with an encyclopedic knowledge of every arena he chooses for his knockout plays. On Derek McLane’s toney set of a glistening patio fronting a fairy-tale Los Angeles skyline, a one-upsmanship duel ensues between veteran actress Karen (excellent Elizabeth Reaser), who shares her domicile with her bright, brittle, Brown graduate lesbian partner (terrific Callie Thorne) and equally fading still sexy idol Steve (still sexy Fred Weller). Their sparring is finally overshadowed by the need for the duo to rehearse an obscene scene created to reboot both veterans sagging box-office appeal. Steve has in tow his slip of a wife, budding actress Missy, with Gia Crovatin giving the play’s most indelible performance as a binging bombshell anorexic — with, it’s finally revealed — a brain to boot!
With LaBute’s awesomely informed treasure chest of what makes Hollywood tick — past and present — our audience was a constant chorus of laughter from the playwright’s spearing of any images you might have of the excesses of glam Hollywood life: the greed of its producers, the narcissism of its players and the current “anything goes on screen” state of mind of our cinema (and, increasingly, theater as well!)
Perhaps the most telling of LaBute’s apt observations comes from Reasser’s Karen, whose investments and earning leave only her ego unfulfilled as she envisions a “has been future” for she and Steve: “…and there we are trying not to let some TV judge eliminate us!” The shock effect of the play’s conclusion is met only by the current state of the entertainment industry, where everything, it seems, goes in a search for ever bigger box office grosses. With Terry Kinney’s direction a huge plus in keeping “The Money Shot’s’ action moving, La Bute remains one of theater’s brightest treasures — illuminating truths that may make us uncomfortable—but with singular humor that also makes his play’s primers for the excesses of the 21st century. (MCC at the Lucille Lortel Theatre)

‘Ndebele Funeral’ scorches senses
Set in post-apartheid South Africa, in a rotting tin shack in the slum of Soweto, “Ndebele Funeral” is written with incredible passion and grace by Zoey Martinson, grippingly directed by Awoke Tempo and played to aching, spellbinding perfection by the playwright as Daweti, a young woman dying of AIDS in her home. Once a brilliant student, her illness has made the young woman a shut-in who is using materials provided by the government for restoration of the populaces rotting abodes to build herself a coffin.
When Thabo (superb Yasef Miller) her best friend from university days arrives for a regular visit as Daweti’s only contact with the outside world, he finds his beloved companion despondent, and losing a battle to convince her of her worth. The final cog in this exquisitely sung, danced and poetically verbalized evening is Jan, a bottom rung worker assigned to do door to door to ensure his government’s materials are being used properly. Jan’s meeting with Daweti ends in angry confrontation. When he returns, with Thabo now present, there are revelations as the trio spar — each sharing aspirations unrealized, and a dead-end present. The awful truth is the woman will never become a lawyer, Thebo a writer or glum Jan a brilliant philosopher.
By this time this critic was on the edge of tears, with the play’s exquisite score and vibrant, rebellious choreography pulsing through the close confines of our small theater; And the characters angst a swelling discomfort in one’s body and mind. “Ndebele Funeral” surely deserves a long run past its current Oct. 5 closing. To see an audience hugging each other in teary silence is to partake of a rare chance to open your mind and heart to the truth of the awful conditions that still stifle lives — and populations — all over the globe.
Bravo! Zoey Martinson for caring. Tickets now at 59E59theaters, (212) 279-4200 or www.59east59.org A full review of “This Is Our Youth” next week with tickets now at (212) 239-6200 and info at thisisouryouthbroadway.com.