Mr. and Mrs. Fitch

I love John Lithgow.  I’d love him even if I hadn’t worked with him on that fun video for New York Public Library.  I also love Jennifer Ehle, and sure hope to work with her someday.  I also love Douglas Carter Beane’s plays.  So I had to see Mr. and Mrs. Fitch.  I found myself struck by some sympathies between the play and another play I saw Off-Off Broadway a few months ago, Inventing Avi, by Robert Cary and Benjamin Feldman, starring our dear friend Alix Korey (who was brilliant as a wigged-out producer).  In both cases, the main characters found fame by inventing a make-believe personality–only to have it take life and take over to disastrous effect.  All three playwrights clearly had a lot of fun exploring this clever idea.  Mr. Lithgow and Ms. Ehle were wonderful, of course, playing in a kind of contemporary Noel Coward vein.  It seems they can both truly play anything, and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

God of Carnage

Being a former resident of Brooklyn’s Park Slope added a special zest of enjoyment when my partner and I went to see God of Carnage with its third cast.  We enjoyed the performances greatly, and recognized the characters as people we could have seen on the Slope’s 7th Avenue any day.  It was especially fun seeing Janet McTeer sink her teeth into a viciously comic role, having loved her performances in A Doll’s House and Mary Stuart previously.  It was a fun evening of theatrical bloodletting and the audience loved both Yazmina Reza’s witty barbs and the four strong actors’ energetic deliveries.  An amusing and also thematically sobering play.