Loading summary
Transcript3 lines
- [00:00]
A
Ready or not, summer is coming and Wayfair's Memorial Day Clearance is on now. Right now through May 25th. Get up to 70% off everything home at Wayfair plus score amazing doorbuster deals all sail long and surprise flash deals on Memorial Day. We're talking thousands of products at every style and budget. Now is the time to save big on must haves for your patio, backyard and beyond. These savings won't last, so don't wait. Shop Wayfair's Memorial Day Clearance now through May 25th Wayfair Every style, Every Home.
- [00:40]
B
It is unusual for a play billed as a comedy, especially one nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play, to work even if the humor doesn't land with an individual audience member. That's the situation that I found myself in with the Ballisters. While I personally did not find the play to be all that fun funny, I did think that it was an excellently written and performed play deserving of being included amongst Broadway's best in recent seasons. Welcome to Broadway Radio. My name is Matt Tamnini and today I will be reviewing the Ballisters, currently running at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway. Clearly, I am not breaking any news here, but generally the jokes are what make a comedy compelling, in part because obviously they're funny, but structurally they paste over shortcuts taken in the story that are designed to leave room for laugh to distract you from realizing the limitations of normally thin and therefore funnier characters. Neither is the case in David Lindsay Abare's new play about an overly attentive homeowners association board in a historic and affluent neighborhood. Now, to be clear, the audience that I was a part of and the general word of mouth have both been far more favorable about the show's humor than I personally am, so the play is by no means objectively unfunny. But because the bulk of the jokes felt very familiar to me and perhaps others who are likely far too online as I am, the laugh lines were more recognizable than surprising, built less on comic revelation than on the familiar rhythms of culture war discourse. While many of the characters, both in the dramatic and personality type sense, who make up this board can come off as caricature ish, because the group is made up of nine people in addition to a very important housekeeper, there is enough balance between all of these stereotypically flat Personas to ultimately provide a well rounded whole. Nonetheless, there are a handful of neighbors who do exhibit some significant depth. The board's newest member, Kira, played by Anika Noni Rose, the board's president, played by Richard Thomas, who was nominated for a Tony Award for his work in the show, and to a slightly lesser degree, the aforementioned housekeeper Luz, played by Maria Cristina Oliveras. Around them is essentially a cross section of every Facebook comment section for some random identity politics post you have ever accidentally stumbled across or gleefully waded into, the board is racially diverse and despite being in an incredibly privileged enclave of varying levels of left leaning politics, nonetheless the HOA meetings become a powder keg of conflicting types and tropes, from the passionately woke young white woman to the hard working blue collar Latino, from the overly suspicious gay black man to the sharp tongued, purposely inflammatory older white woman, and many more. Because we all have experience with each and every one of these character types, either from around the dinner table with friends and family or just from existing in the modern world, there is an immediate shorthand to understanding the characters without having to dive too deeply into into individual exposition. However, what makes the play work beyond what could be simply hackneyed stereotypes and regurgitated social media buzzwords and talking points is that even though it does trade in some of those tired tropes and flirts with some of the worst impulses of reactionary politics, Lindsay Hebert and director Kenny Leon, both now Tony nominated, have crafted a genuinely complex and captivating microcosm of our larger societal problems to peppered with expert level performances. As Kira Rose is not only the newest member of the board but also the newest member of the community. She becomes the chair of a new committee set up to study how installing stop signs, stoplight speed bumps and even speed humps would impact the neighborhood. Thomas Elliot, having approved the formation of the committee, is opposed to nearly all of its recommendations, ostensibly for aesthetic and historical preservation reasons. As both Kira and Elliot attempt to persuade the other members to their side of the debate, the performative veneers that they use to push their own agendas while still appearing to be respectful and collegial colleagues begin to chip away as the subtle gaslighting manipulation and self interested dealings that have in standard operating procedure begin to crack and expose the worst of both sides natures. This, to me, is where the balusters become more interesting than funny. The jokes didn't especially land for me, but the machinery underneath them did. Lindsay Abare uses this HOA board as a miniature political ecosystem where every character has a language of righteousness and every one of them knows exactly how to weaponize it. While the meetings may be procedural by nature, the alliances and allegiances are constantly shifting, not only exposing the fickle nature of modern politics, but also keeping the play feeling fresh and nimble. What emerges is not simply a story about petty power hungry people fighting over the trivialities of neighborhood politics, nor is it truly about the progressive social commentary that it purports to be. Instead, Lindsay Abare delivers an insightful indictment of all people in power and the narcissistic, transactional, tribalistic tactics and rhetoric they use to get what they want and to stay in power. Rose and Thomas both deliver the type of masterclass performances that you would expect from performers of their pedigree as housekeeper Luz Oliveris is something of a fulcrum on which the action of the play shifts. Having recently left Elliot's employ after decades and now working for Qi', Ra, she is privy to all sorts of secrets that have the ability to upset the fragile balance of the board. Oliveris is as close to the audience's avatar in the story as we get, and expertly walks the line between maintaining Luz's dignity and humanity and getting into the mud with the board members as the group's doddering elder stateswoman Penny Mary Louise Burke originates yet another unforgettable role in in a Lindsay Hebert comedy, having done so in 1999's Fuddy Mears and is the title character in the original play version of Kimberly Akimbo. There is little to say about the icon who is now nominated for her first ever Tony Award beyond saying that she is truly a theatrical treasure and every second she is on stage and every flighty line reading she delivers is the stuff that comedic gold is made of. Stage and screen favorite Margaret Collin, Emmy nominee Carl Clemons Hopkins, Desperate Housewives star Ricardo Trevera, familiar faces Michael Esper and Kaylee Carter and multi hyphen Gina Yee all play their more limited roles excellently, primarily serving as the stereotypical comic relief orbiting around the gravity and attention pulling Kira and Elliot of note. While the Ballisters has been running on Broadway, the play Jaesa, which Ye wrote, was also running downtown to the Public Theater, which is some next level double duty. Also worth noting is the gorgeous and illuminating scenic design by Derek McLean. He perfectly appoints an old money sitting room with the trappings of a modern black family, immediately setting up the central generational and cultural battle at the center of the show, underlying the push and pull between tradition and progress. While the Ballisters is not a direct allegory in the way Animal Farm is, it has far more in common with that type of incisive political fable than with the self referential, silly sitcom adjacent satires that we've been treated to lately. The show has true depth and insight that has kept me thinking about it far longer than I expected to. The Ballisters is the latest entry in a recent string of plays, from the Minutes to the Thanksgiving play to Eureka Day, that center around social commentary skewering society's seemingly progressive momentum. In the idea that perhaps those efforts have gone too far, it is clear that for some the pendulum has swung too far to the left. And while I would not disagree in certain circumstances, the what gives me pause is how many Broadway comedies have drawn their biggest laughs from the language, excesses and anxieties of progressive culture, and how often that humor can feel uncomfortably close to the bad faith mockery usually found in the dregs of social media. While there are still elements of that in the Ballisters that make me uncomfortable, ultimately they belie a far more nuanced and perhaps revolutionary perspective. Lindsay Baer is less interested in mocking progressive ideals than he is in exposing how easily the language of goodness, justice, history and community can be weaponized by people who simply want to win. So no, the Ballisters was not especially funny to me, at least not in the way that it seems to have been for many others. But it is smart, unsettling, beautifully performed, and far more trenchant than its familiar culture war setup might suggest. It turns neighborhood meetings into a ruthless study of power, and by the end, the scariest thing about it is not how exaggerated these people are, but how recognizable they have become. The Ballisters is currently scheduled to play the Samuel J. Friedman Theater on Broadway through June 21st. As always, we appreciate your support of Broadway radio. If you want more Broadway radio, head over to patreon.com broadwayradio or broadwayradio.com patreon thank you for listening. This has been Matt Tammanini and I'll talk to you.
- [09:32]
A
Sam.