by Jack Gohn | Oct 2, 2015 | The Close Up, Theater Reviews and Commentary
Take the basic problems presented in Brassed Off, Local Hero, and The Full Monty, i.e. the deindustrialization of Britain and resulting working-class unemployment, observe those problems with the wry humor of those films, add drag performers from La Cage Aux Folles, a sensitive trans person of color from The Crying Game, a “love thyself” theme from Hairspray, and a romance between factory boss and subordinate straight out of Pajama Game. Stir well, and voilà!, you have a tale of a band of shoe workers and their manager who resist the oblivion that awaits British manufacturing by switching from ordinary cobbling to fabricating a line of sexy boots for drag performers
by Jack Gohn | Oct 2, 2015 | The Close Up, Theater Reviews and Commentary
The America depicted here is a place of quests: Father’s for the unknown horizon, Tateh’s for a land where he and his daughter can prosper, Coalhouse’s for reuniting with Sarah and raising his son in a world where blacks are regarded and treated as equals. To these quests might be added two more: Younger Brother’s for some ideal he can build a life around and Mother’s, a quieter one, to nurture a family, whatever contours her decency and generosity cause it to assume. And all of these quests are played out among the novelties and sensations of an exuberant American decade: among the things which will figure in the plot are Henry Ford’s Model T, J.P. Morgan’s library of priceless incunabula, the notorious charms of uber-courtesan Evelyn Nesbit, and the antics of escape artist Harry Houdini.
by Jack Gohn | Sep 17, 2015 | The Close Up, Theater Reviews and Commentary
I was struck by how much of the subject-matter of An Inspector Calls resonated today, despite the play being a product of the 1940s set just before the First World War. For instance, there is Priestley’s approach to what we now call a “living wage.” A complementary up-to-date theme is the frequently unconscious nature of privilege. If Noel Coward and Bertolt Brecht had collaborated, they might have given us this very play.
by Jack Gohn | Jul 22, 2015 | The Close Up, Theater Reviews and Commentary
The characters are all compelled by circumstances to go back into the woods, and this time they encounter there such things as infidelity, divorce, the death of parents, the death of children, abandonment, catastrophe – and overarching this the absence of a narration (the narrator becomes a casualty) or any other authoritative guidance as to the choices that need to be made. As one of the characters observes: ‘The path has strayed from you.’ The unsettling conclusion: ‘You decide what’s right / You decide what’s good.’ This is all incredibly sad and confusing, not to mention frightening, and yet as the core of surviving characters gels, so does the indomitability of the human spirit they evince.
by Jack Gohn | Jul 22, 2015 | The Close Up, Theater Reviews and Commentary
For a weightless and elegant good time, it would be hard to beat The Full Catastrophe, by Michael Weller, at the Contemporary American Theater Festival. There is not one thing in the story to tether it to reality, or trouble us with any true sense of its characters being in any kind of jeopardy, and the presentation of the whole farrago, under Ed Herendeen’s direction, is smooth and amiable. This play is best consumed at the end of one’s visit to this year’s Festival, after sampling the weightier and more nutritional fare.
I lived in London and Vienna before coming to the United States, and grew up mainly in Ann Arbor. I was writing plays and stories as early as grade school. My undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania, where I first reviewed theater, for the college paper, were succeeded by graduate study at the Johns Hopkins University, where I earned a doctorate in English Literature.