Latest news with #HurricaneDiane
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Hurricane Diane' turns an updated Greek god loose on New Jersey housewives at Hartford Stage
In Greek mythology, Dionysus is the god who oversees vegetables and fruit, particularly the making of wine from grapes, and thus is also connected to ecstatic partying. Dionsysus is also the god of theater. In Madeleine George's play 'Hurricane Diane,' running at Hartford Stage June 5-29, Dionysus becomes Diane, a landscaping expert with an environmentalist streak seeking to change the destiny of humankind by wreaking a little havoc in New Jersey. The play is having a moment. Over a dozen productions of 'Hurricane Diane' have happened, or are scheduled to happen, in the U.S. and Canada this year. The script has been around since 2017, when it had its world premiere at Two River Theater in New Jersey. There was a well-received off-Broadway production at New York Theatre Workshop, then regional theaters and college theaters around the country embraced it. TheaterWorks Hartford had the script on its shortlist for a recent season but didn't end up doing it, making Hartford Stage's production of 'Hurricane Diane' its Connecticut premiere. Other plays by George, who grew up in Amherst, Massachusetts and now lives in New York City, include 'The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence,' 'The Sore Loser' and 'Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England.' George is a writer and executive story editor of the TV series 'Only Murders in the Building.' She is married to Lisa Kron, also a playwright, who is known to Hartford theatergoers for the musical 'Fun Home,' done by TheaterWorks Hartford in 2023 and '2.5 Minute Ride,' done at Hartford Stage in 2002 and 2024. Last year's '2.5 Minute Ride' was directed by Hartford Stage associate artistic director Zoë Golub-Sass, who is now directing 'Hurricane Diane.' The blustery title role in 'Hurricane Diane' is played by Bernadette Sefic, who grew up in Colorado, studied theater (mainly the Elizabethan variety) in California and is thoroughly enjoying their first visit to Connecticut. 'I had not done this play before and I had not seen it, but I had read it in grad school,' they said. 'Now I'm an actor living in New York but I went to the University of San Diego at the Old Globe Theatre. My resume is 90% Shakespeare.' Sefic sees their casting as the modern embodiment of a Greek god as karmic. 'When I was offered this role I was in Greece. I went to see the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens. I've gone back to the writings about Dionysus and whatnot. There are a lot of different versions.' 'Hurrican Diane,' Sefic said, is 'very much a modern contemporary comedy. It hints at ancient Greek plays, but it doesn't live there. There are moments where it gets surreal. The lighting designer and the sound designer, who also composed the music for this, are creating awesome effects.' In terms of style, the script has a big opening monologue for Diane, just as the Greek tragedy 'The Bacchae' by Euripides opens with a big monologue for Dionysus, but in a much more open manner. 'There's a lot of direct address to the audience,' Sefic said. 'To say that she is friendly with the audience is kind of an understatement. But while Diane talks directly to the audience a lot, 'The Women' don't see the audience at all — for them there's this strong fourth wall.' 'The Women' whom Sefic referred to, are the modern equivalent of the women in Euripides' 'The Bacchae.' George makes them a group of New Jersey housewives who spend most of their time together in each others' kitchens. 'They're all unhappy in their lives,' Sefic said. 'We see the response of these four women receiving this energy in their lives. Madeleine George writes that they accept Diane because she is bringing in the natural world.' Sefic said 'The Women' — played at Hartford Stage by Katya Campbell (as Carol), Christina DeCicco (Pam), Alyse Alan Louis (Beth) and Sharina Martin (Renee) — 'are so funny. I feel like I'm running a marathon just to keep up with them. This play has such a range of emotions. It's scary, erotic, terrifying, angry … and also funny, amazing and awe-inspiring. It stays funny until the very end, even with the serious parts.' Sefic identifies as non-binary, uses they/them pronouns and has played both male and female roles in the Shakespeare plays that make up the bulk of her acting resume. How does she see Diane in this play? 'Dionysus, who was very into androgyny, comes to Earth as a butch lesbian. She's a masculine person who doesn't identify as male. She uses she/her pronouns.' 'Hurricane Diane' is written for diverse audiences, yet 'it can be a very queer show and I'm happy that we're doing it during Pride Month,' Sefic said. Above all, the actor said, 'this is a contemporary comedy about the Greek god Dionysus coming to modern day New Jersey and saving the world by seducing some disgruntled New Jersey housewives.' 'Hurricane Diane,' directed by Zoë Golub-Sass, runs June 5-29 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. Performances are Wednesdays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. There are added Tuesday performances on June 10 and 24 at 7:30 p.m. and no Saturday matinee on June 7. $20-$105.
New York Times
28-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Dakar 2000' Review: Which One Is the Liar?
We can't say we weren't warned. Boubs, the narrator of Rajiv Joseph's new play, kicks off the show by informing the audience that 'all of it is true. Or most of it, anyway.' That 'most of it' does a lot of work in 'Dakar 2000,' which just opened at Manhattan Theater Club. But while ambiguity and uncertainty have long been great fertilizers for storytelling, Joseph's two-hander about a couple of Americans in Senegal remains strangely uninvolving. Some of the things Boubs (Abubakr Ali), a Peace Corps volunteer, tells the State Department employee Dina (Mia Barron, from 'The Coast Starlight' and 'Hurricane Diane') may well be fabrications. Over the course of her friendly but insistent interrogation of Boubs, who was involved in a truck accident, we begin to suspect that Dina is no slouch, either, at fudging the facts. 'You're a good liar!' she tells Boubs at one point. 'I don't begrudge that skill set.' It's a useful one for playwrights, too. Mining his own history, Joseph ('Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,' 'King James') did go on a Peace Corps mission in Senegal after college, an experience he credits as instrumental in his becoming a writer. It's unclear whether, as happens to this play's hero, Joseph was ever asked to possibly fingerprint an alleged terrorist who was passed out, or maybe dead, in his hotel room. Has Joseph been the Le Carré of the Rialto all these years? But while the possibility of exciting action always hovers on the periphery, May Adrales's low-energy production is bereft of any tension. That is an achievement of some kind for a show dealing with covert operations, and one in which a character is traumatized (or claims to be) by the 1998 bombing of the United States embassy in Tanzania. 'Dakar 2000' begins promisingly as Dina grills Boubs about his accident, then starts making demands. It's fun to watch her run rings around him, and Joseph and the cast keep the action moving as we ponder what Dina really wants, and whether Boubs is a useful idiot, a cunning faux-naïf, an idealistic young man, or all of the above. That Dina appears to be haunted by apocalyptic feelings — the play takes place during the chaotic, unsettled final lead-up to Y2K, when the world felt as if it was built on shifting sands — should make the stakes even weightier. Instead of capitalizing on that loaded context, though, the play gradually deflates, unable to maximize its own premise and hampered by possibly self-serving moves — a raised eyebrow is the only possible reaction to the improbable notion that Boubs could manipulate the worldlier, more experienced Dina into getting what he needs. 'Dakar 2000' reminded me of an earlier Manhattan Theater Club offering, Erika Sheffer's 'Vladimir,' which played in October and focused on the travails of an investigative journalist in Russia. Both plays flaunt elaborate production designs that look good in the abstract but distract from the story instead of enhancing it (in 'Dakar 2000' it's Shawn Duan's projections and the set by Tim Mackabee with its turntable and ostentatious elevated catwalk). Worse, both lapse into triteness as they try to deal with the intersection of the geopolitical and the personal. Paradoxically, 'Dakar 2000' loses the most steam when it leans on the flirtation between Boubs and Dina. Whether the characters actually are attracted to each other does not matter all that much, but we need to buy that they are at least pretending to be. Alas, the actors struggle to communicate the allure of seduction tinged by danger, and by the time we reach the borderline wacky climax, it feels as if we're watching a misguided adaptation of Graham Greene by Shonda Rhimes. Though that could be more fun than what's actually onstage.
