Kin 2011

Before a grade-school backdrop depicting heathery hills, a pair of confused theatre-goers struggle with an outdated map of Broadway while an offstage chorus sings, “Brink of doom, Brink of do-om,” and before you can say “Come ye to the spoof,” the cast of Forbidden Broadway: Alive and Kicking is promising that, “Just like Jesus and Judy Garland, we're resurrected again.”

Though the sexual revolution was revving into full force in 1965, you'd never know it by America's popular entertainment.  Barbara Eden may have been dressed in a belly dancer outfit while starring in the new hit series, I Dream of Jeannie, but the network censors made sure her belly remained covered.  The next year Marlo Thomas' That Girl would begin a five-year TV relationship with her boyfriend Donald, but at the end of each romantic date they'd end the evening alone in their own separate apartments.

Playwrights Horizons (Tim Sanford, Artistic Director; Leslie Marcus, Managing Director) continues its current 40th Anniversary 2010/2011 Season with KIN.

Early on in Lisa Kron's politically-charged romantic comedy/drama, In The Wake, audiences are reminded of a scene that traditionally takes place in many American households every fourth Thursday of November.  While the rest of the family is ready to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, there's one person pleading to keep the television on for just a little longer, obsessed with the score and loudly complaining about the officiating.  Only this time it's Thanksgiving Day, 2000 and Kron's central character, Ellen (Marin Ireland), isn't concerned with a football game, but is jumping up and down in front of the MSNBC broadcast, wildly cheering for a come-from-behind Al Gore victory in the contested presidential election.

I've yet to hear anyone complain that the trouble with musical theatre today is that too many shows are based on greeting cards, but given the success of the empire known as Nunsense, I'm surprised that more composers, lyricists and bookwriters haven't turned to the catalogues of Hallmark for inspiration.

The title character - well, actually the title prop - of Sam Shepard's new entry, Kicking a Dead Horse, doesn't have to lift a hoof to make an impressive star entrance. Lying beneath a sheet that covers the entire curtain-less stage as the audience enters The Public's Martinson Hall, the slow deliberate removal of its covering at the play's commencement tantalizes viewers until we get what we came to see; a big dead piece of symbolism placed somewhat to the left of center stage. Also revealed at that moment are two large mounds of dirt suitable for tandem mountings of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days. The wide open spaces prairie scene, put together by designers Brien Vahey (set) and John Comiskey (lights) has a kind of respectful artificial beauty to it, similar to the environmental displays you might see at New York's American Museum of Natural History.