The Heiress, based on Washington Square, the 1880 novel by Henry James, tells the story of Catherine Sloper, the shy and sheltered daughter of a prominent New York doctor in 1850. Caught between the demands of her emotionally abusive father and the attentions of a passionate young suitor of dubious intentions, Catherine struggles to find her own place in the world.

Much has been made of the fact that Jessica Chastain is too beautiful to play Catherine Sloper. That misses the point of The Heiress – the problem isn’t that Catherine is plain, but that she has been made to feel inferior and socially inept, a very queer theme indeed. Paul Huntley’s wig and hair design, together with Ashley Ryan’s savvy make-up design, tell this story very clearly, as Catherine goes from unflattering but period-correct hairstyles to looser but more confident and genuinely “handsomer” looks.

Chastain herself plays Catherine’s journey smartly with solid attention to detail, even if she doesn’t quite succeed in finding the depths of Catherine’s transformation into a formidable and intelligent women with her own powerful will. In any event, Chastain does locate Catherine’s interior dignity from beginning to end, never cheating her character’s feelings for the sake of a comic moment.

David Strathairn wisely plays Catherine’s father Dr. Sloper as deeply damaged goods rather than the embodiment of evil. The not-so-good doctor, in Strathairn’s approach, does love his daughter, but totally lacks the tools to know how to express that feeling. This effectively points up the society-wide failings of mid-19th Century America, rather than isolating one aberrant man – a far closer approach to the insights of Henry James than previous interpretations.

Downtown Abbey heartthrob Dan Stevens is adequate as Morris Townsend, Catherine’s suitor, handsome and milksopy enough to reflect both the admiration and doubt that comes Morris’s way. As so often happens, Judith Ivey is probably the best thing in the production as the giddy and romantic Aunt Lavinia – we are with her sentimental thoughts until the very last moments of the play. A solid production of a period piece that has aged very well.

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For more reviews and interviews by Jonathan Warman, see dramaqueennyc.com.

This revival of Edward Albee’s masterwork is perhaps the most lucid and clear production of the play I’ve ever seen, and I’m ambivalent about that. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very accomplished production of a great play, with exceptionally intelligent acting and directing choices. I enjoyed it a great deal, and think it’s definitely worth seeing. It’s just that, upon reflection, it’s not totally to my own personal taste.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is set on the campus of a small New England college in the early 1960s, a milieu so boozy that it makes Mad Men look like an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Middle-aged history professor George and his loving yet vicious wife Martha invite a young new professor and his wife home for a nightcap, and the psychological damage mounts as the bottles rapidly empty. I grew up in an academic family, and the stories I heard of 1960s faculty parties were particularly hair-raising. Perhaps this production doesn’t feel messy enough to have the texture of reality for me.

Or perhaps it’s too realistic for me. Albee was very influenced by both the French Absurdists and Tennessee Williams. As someone who’s been reading and directing a lot of Jean Genet and late period Williams, I miss the willful sense of unreality and distortion that has made for Woolfs that I liked better than this one. Again, not a big problem, but it kept this fan of Surrealism from enjoying it as much as he might have.

Tracy Letts’s masterful portrayal of George is the one irreproachably strong thing about this production. Here is a great actor who also happens to be a great and sensitive playwright, and we can see in a very direct way how this play leads to Lett’s own August: Osage County.

In any event, this Woolf demands to be seen on its own terms. If you are a fan of mainstream realism, this is really one of the better examples of that approach out there.

For tickets, click here.

For more reviews and interviews by Jonathan Warman, see dramaqueennyc.com.

In the Roundabout revival of Cyrano de Bergerac, you can almost smell and taste the texture of mid-17th Century France, and I think that’s wonderful. I have recently become fascinated with figuring out how to express on stage the million ways in which the past is a different and alien planet from the one we live on now. I find this way of approaching a period piece makes moments of simple, unchanging humanity vibrate with incredible intensity and poignancy, and that certainly happens in director Jamie Lloyd’s earthy, lusty and rambunctious approach to Cyrano.

Playwright Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano is based on a real-life nobleman of that name, who like Rostand’s character was a master of both language and the sword. The historic Cyrano had a prominent nose, which Rostand has exaggerated into a thing out of legend. The play only tangentially deals with the facts of the historical Bergerac’s life, focusing instead on his love for a woman named Roxane.

Many previous Cyranos have taken their cue from the central love story and created a world that is elegant and romantic – something that couldn’t be further from the rough-and-tumble world in which Cyrano actually lived. Lloyd’s historical approach is perhaps best expressed in costumes of designer Soutra Gilmour (who also did the impressive sets); you can see the line of dirt on the ends of Cyrano’s red cloak, and that one detail speaks volumes about this earlier time when standards of hygiene were entirely different than they are today. Gilmour’s designs are jam packed with such telling details.

Douglas Hodge plays Cyrano, attacking the role like the full and hearty meal it is. Patrick Page is also quite good as the show’s villain, Comte de Guiche, in a performance that brings Vincent Price to mind (in a good way). Ranjit Bolt’s tangy translation works in the French original’s rhyme scheme, while generally feeling natural, no small feat. This is a big, full-bodied revival of a classic that hits almost every note in this complex piece. That doesn’t happen that often, and for that reason alone this Cyrano is well worth seeing.

For tickets, click here.

For more reviews and interviews by Jonathan Warman, see dramaqueennyc.com.