**** The Winter’s Tale (Delacorte Theater, to August 23) is, like every entry in Joe Papp’s enduring legacy, a must-see – and free, to boot. Raúl Esparza is perfection as an insecure monarch given to flipflopping paranoia, perhaps warranted by Lily Rabe’s rather bawdish initial affect as his very pregnant consort. Director Daniel Sullivan has convened a brilliant design team to suggest Leontes’ repressive, near-monochrome court but then goes and gives free reign to the rustics who – disporting amid a roll-on island of summer blooms – dominate the second half of this faithful but overlong (3 ½-hour!) production. A mere taste of Elizabethan clowning – Steven Skybell milks his very many moments – would more than suffice, and directors are certainly allowed some leeway at this late date. As to the denouement, engineered by Hermione’s ally Paulina (Marsha Stephanie Blake, fierce), it’s bound to rankle anyone born in the past half-millennium. But you know what you’ll be getting, going in.
**** benevolent (IATI Theater, to September 5): In the early 20th century – 1917, specifically – vagrancy was a crime that could get a young woman of indeterminate means consigned to imprisonment by a soi-disant “benevolent” society. In Sophie McIntosh’s intense 90-minute chamber play, a quartet of young women endure added penance: assigned to the “soiled shift” deep in the institute’s basement, they must hand-scrub a nonstop supply of grossly stained garments, delivered via chute (grim set by Junran Shi, subterranean sound effects by Max Van). Their statuses vary: Young Abby (Livvy Marcus) is a wide-eyed newbie, intent on currying favor with her harder-core workmates. The most seasoned among them is Margaret (Chani Reese), who’s not averse to a bit of situational same-sex amusement with Sarah, a street singer who – unlike her peers – has not (yet) resorted to prostitution in order to survive. What Emma (Mia Fowler), the eldest, has endured will be teased out in this taut, absorbing tale, with its inevitable echoes of The Magdalene Sisters – urban-style and on some level eerily era-less.
** An American Daughter (Signature Center, to September 20): You’d do well to be wary of any production in which the producer accords herself the lead. In this revival-plus of Wendy Wasserstein’s ill-received 1997 play (now “featuring an unpublished second act”), that would be Jean Lichty, who – having assembled an otherwise crack cast (Montego Glover, Robert Sean Leonard, Mary Beth Peil!) – opted to put herself front and center. Alas, she has the acting chops of a flounder, and though her stagemates do their best to keep her afloat, the production sinks like a stone. Lichty plays (at) the role of a female candidate for surgeon general, felled by a picayune civic-duty oversight. Blatant sexism, no? Apparently not: From all evidence in this rendering, the blame lies in the prospective candidate’s utter lack of charisma. You could spend the time admiring Mikiko Suzuki Macadam’s spot-on Georgetown drawing-room set – or better yet, stay home and savor Ben Brantley’s rather scathing review of the original.
*** Broad Strokes (Lucille Lortel Theatre, to September 25): Cat Cohen is such a winning, relatable monologist (she comes across as very young-woman-next-door, only with an unfiltered raunchy/confessional streak) that she’ll easily carry you along on this saga of a congenital flaw that manifested three years ago: She was packing for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival when her left arm suddenly went limp. To frame her tale of death-comes-for-the-princess, Cohen engaged scenic designer Derek McLane to provide a crypt worthy of Vampira; Kelsey Randall decked her out in a glam magenta gown suitable for Renaissance Faire Barbie; and composer David Dabbon helped her cobble her musings into songs that reliably amuse even if they don’t always scan. Delight is the end result of this brief excursion into the flip side of comedy: laughter at all costs.
*** Disruption (Signature Center, to October 4): Andrew Stein’s play, about three upwardly mobile couples hustled by a prosperous, possibly satanic sidekick (John David Washington) is undeniably slick – almost as polished as the closed loop of shiny jet-black plastic with which set designer Zoë Hurwitz frames their interactions. Picture a USB slot writ large: The surround – basically one big screen – lends an ominous, flickery overlay as the characters’ soap-opera-ish machinations evolve. Their inter-relationships are “complicated,” to say the least; however, all three pairs are already off-puttingly prosperous (does anyone really have a drinks trolley anymore?) and innumerable “making it” signifiers – admission to the Fieldston School, the purchase of a Brooklyn brownstone – seem pro forma. Is there a Faustian devil lurking within the AI machine? Most likely, so no huge surprise when the plan – overseen by imperious tech wiz Raven (Emma Kikue) – hits some bumps. If ever a play was made to go straight to Netflix, this soulless exercise surely qualifies.
Disruption. Photo: Emilio Madrid