Theresa Rebeck's response to Jon Robin Baitz on the HuffPo

Several bloggers are discussing Jon Robin Baitz's excellent piece in The Huffington Post. The piece goes a long way in explaining why it's so hard for playwrights nowadays, why they go to television and film, and why nobody lets Chuck Isherwood sit at their lunch table. It's definitely a must-read, and you should certainly check it out.

BUT I'm interested in a response in the comments. A mysterious commenter named only "Rebeck" (who could it be?) responded:

HILARIOUS. your posting cheered me right up, Robbie. it has never been clear to me why they get so mad when we make a little money from the big old evil TV machine. would it be better for our craft if we jus sat around in crummy overpriced New York studios, worried about how we were going to pay the rent?

my experience has been it helps to have a little money in your pocket, when the New York Times whacks you on the head because of some utterly inane new rule they've come up with as an excuse to dismiss your play. Ben Brantley suddenly decides he likes David Mamet and uses his review of my play to express this fact? Oh brother. Maybe I should dip into my savings and go to Italy for a few days...

Theresa Rebeck's response is interesting, but also sadly unsurprising. She obviously has a point about how it helps to actually get paid, but her mention of the critical response to Mauritius is whiny and embarassing. It's one thing when Brantley and Isherwood carelessly eviscerate work that deserves at least a little respect, but Brantley's review of Mauritius didn't read as a discovery that he likes Mamet - more like an acknowledgement that Rebeck's play (as many, many others said) is just like American Buffalo - only less interesting.

Frankly, I find it difficult to place Rebeck in the same category as those playwrights who would really benefit from a bit more kindness from the critics. With a very few exceptions, her plays aren't really challenging the form. Don't get me wrong, she's written plays I've enjoyed, particularly Bad Dates. But Theresa Rebeck is not.. oh, Will Eno, Adam Rapp, Adam Bock, or the many other playwrights whose work sometimes gets trashed because they're taking risks, and that makes people uncomfortable. Nobody is calling Theresa Rebeck a hipster from Williamsburg in their reviews.

Why I hated Mauritius

A whole lot of reasons.

But something's been bugging me since I saw it a few weeks ago, and I finally put my finger on it. (If you don't want spoilers, don't read on.) The whole play is supposed to hinge on our hero, Jackie (Alison Pill), right? She's the one who seems like a "lamb", but really is all feisty and smart and maybe a little out of control but STRONG and take-no-prisoners, right?

So WHY is it Dennis (Bobby Cannavale), the sly, attractive charmer, who resolves the drama into a happy ending? Why does it have to be Dennis who steals the inverted Jenny stamp, and offers to whisk her away to the land of infinite margaritas? All this yelling and screaming and fighting for two hours, only to have Jackie proven incapable of getting her due, and then have her rescued by an unlikely, outer-borough prince charming? I'm sorry, fuck that! It just sucks.

The Scene also left me with this feeling, like women everywhere were being put down, but in such a under-the-radar way that it was difficult to pinpoint. But now that I'm rethinking it, The Scene resolved with Tony Shaloub's life having been ruined by an sexy evil vixen, and Patty Heaton's character getting rescued by Chris Evan Welch. Does Theresa Rebeck hate women, or just think we can't take care of ourselves? Hard to imagine that of the playwright responsible for Bad Dates. But then again, that play resolved in Mr. Right finally coming along. And it really sucks that the only female playwright represented on Broadway this season can't do better.

What gives, Rebeck? You got some splanin to do.

Review: The Scene

The Scene is an utter, total blast. Watching it is every bit as wickedly delightful as a good chick-lit beach read, minus the guilt factor that comes with rotting your brain away on paragraphs about manolos and flirtinis.

As you might know by now, I refuse to write plot summaries, so here is one from Second Stage:

The tale of an out-of-work New York actor — married to a news producer — who has an affair with a fresh-faced Ohioan ingenue and finds himself more morally and spiritually lost than he was before. This black comedy about the ever-elusive “place-to-be”takes on the empty narcissism of American pop culture with bitterly funny results.

I've never been a huge fan of Tony Shalhoub - he's funny, sure, but he always just seems like the obvious go-to guy for the jewish/ethnic idiosyncratic roles. This changed my mind 180 degrees, and if there is a Tony Shalhoub fan club out there, I'm ready to join. Charlie, the out of work actor, is no Monk - he's a guy's guy, goes to swanky parties, and doesn't take bullshit.. that is, until he begins to unravel and lose his way, falling into the ready, waiting arms of the predatory Clea (Anna Camp, who is about to be NY's it girl because of this role). Shalhoub attacks the role with exactly the right balance of quirkiness and down-to-earth, average-joe new yorker-ness. He goes from hot to cold in a flash, one moment chewing up the scenery, the next drawing us into his loneliness and confusion with simplicity and stillness. It's very convincing that this sudden spiral into desperation could happen to anyone, which makes the play very unsettling, and almost scary.

Patricia Heaton is funny and sympathetic as the overworked tv producer whose husband leaves her just as they're about to adopt a child, and Christopher Evan Welch makes sweet lemonade out of what could have been a lemon of a role - the feckless best friend/sidekick/shoulder to cry on/wingman. Anna Camp is the one who really shines in this production. She begins the play with a string of "ohmigod!"s and "like, totally surreal!"s, a dumb blonde of the highest order. In typical Rebeck style, she soon proves herself to be much more intelligent, manipulative, and interesting than she first appears. Each character has expectations of Clea which she expertly uses against them, to getting exactly what she wants. Watching her work is almost like watching one of the alien machines in War of the Worlds - extracting what she needs for survival out of each character, and then abandoning the waste when she moves along. The results are delightfully horrifying.

The Scene takes aim at the narcissism behind much of what we Americans (especially New Yorkers) put so much value on - youth, sex appeal, a tough 'tude, the "right" friends, success, and money. Rebeck is carefully (and thankfully) ambiguous about any kind of "lesson" within the play, and at the end, it seems that the 40-somethings who have slaved their lives away for success are just as lost as the 20-somethings at the beginning of the journey.

Photo yanked from The Times.