Plays are big in N.Y.... or were, rather

NEW YORK CITY —

THIS FALL, instead of new musicals hogging most of the limelight as they usually do, mega-musicals are scarce. And, for a change, modern and classical plays are dominating New York theater — on and Off Broadway.

On Broadway alone, enticing fresh scripts by such proven authors as Tom Stoppard, Aaron Sorkin, Theresa Rebeck and Conor McPherson have brought weighty drama into the autumn lineup.

The stagehands' strike that began Nov. 9 closed down most Broadway plays and musicals. The season isn't going as planned, and straight dramas are the most financially vulnerable. (Labor talks continue as this story goes to press, and no closed shows will resume until next week at the earliest.) The Broadway strike has spiked attendance at some worthy Off Broadway plays that patrons might not have sought out otherwise. But visiting in New York the week before the strike began, this critic was able to take in a few dramas of note, off and on the Great White Way. Here are reports about three of them: Broadway's "Rock 'n' Roll" and "Cyrano de Bergerac," both shuttered due to the strike, and "The Wooster Group's Hamlet," which can be seen Off Broadway at a theater south of Midtown.

"Rock 'n' Roll"

Ever heard of The Plastic People of the Universe? Probably not, if you weren't a hard-rock fan in Czechoslovakia during the late 1960s.

Plastic People, a sort of neo-pagan Prague electric band, ran afoul of the Czech communist regime back then — due as much to their anarcho-hippie attitude and white-face makeup as their covers of Lou Reed and Frank Zappa tunes.

In "Rock 'n' Roll," a 2006 London hit imported to Broadway in its original mounting (and a work likely to be staged in Seattle), Stoppard invokes the Plastic People often while tracking several decades in the life of Jan (Rufus Sewell).

This Czech student and rock aficionado returns from Britain to Prague during repressive times. The play also follows the life of his Cambridge mentor, Max (bombastic Brian Cox), an acerbic lefty prof who is slow in admitting the failure of Cold War Communism.

Like many a Stoppard play, "Rock 'n' Roll" sports articulate, fiery intellectual debate aplenty. And it thoughtfully ponders the dream (and failure) of social utopianism — the subject also of Stoppard's superior recent play cycle, "The Coast of Utopia."

But this is a choppy tale, which also jams in a breast-cancer melodrama; a tentative romance (between Jan and Max's daughter, played by the inimitable Sinéad Cusack); and many generational and ideological verbal battles, voiced at shrill pitch under Trevor Nunn's pumped-up direction.

True to its name, "Rock 'n' Roll" also pays homage to the impact of pop music on late-20th-century youth consciousness. Tunes by such icons as Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Pink Floyd (whose eccentric leader, Syd Barrett, is a shadow figure here) are amplified at top volume, while detailed liner credits are displayed in supertitles.

The revolution/music connection is essential, not facile. But one would gladly trade a few excerpts of tunes for more character development, and more clarity about who was spying on whom as the play veers into Cold War espionage and betrayal.

Still, Stoppard's eloquent, impassioned authorial voice is always worth a listen. And as Act 2 calms down to a more human tone, one savors Sewell's droll, nuanced and touching portrayal of a decent modest fellow caught in the rockin' storms of history.

"Rock 'n' Roll," on Broadway at Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, 242 W. 45th St., New York

"Cyrano de Bergerac"

What a delight to watch an actor who rarely has a false moment on stage — an actor so entirely, intelligently present, he seems (to borrow a phrase from Oscar Wilde) "so much more real than life."

Few performers rise to that level, but Kevin Kline is one. And fans of Kline's (increasingly rare) film turns will be understandably delighted to know he's been tackling big, classic stage roles lately — from Lear and Falstaff to Cyrano.

He's the main reason to see English director David Leveaux's fairly workmanlike framing of "Cyrano de Bergerac" — Edmond Rostand's romantic 1897 celebration of the legendary French warrior, poet and pining lover with the monumental schnozz.

Kline's superb training as a classical actor allows him to recite Rostand's verse as natural conversation. And his expert instincts as an ensemble player keep him from making a mug show out of a performance that, frankly, is in a class by itself in this rendition.

Jennifer Garner, as his beloved cousin Roxane, is radiantly lovely and gorgeously costumed and in no way embarrasses herself (as TV ingenues venturing onto Broadway often do). But she hasn't the ample voice and whip-smart articulation of Roxanes at their best (including, incidentally, Sinéad Cusack opposite Derek Jacobi in the 1980s).

More overtly inadequate are Daniel Sunjata, who as Roxane's ardent but tongue-tied paramour seems ill at ease in this period piece, and Chris Sarandon, giving a surprisingly wan account of the slippery Comte de Guiche.

But none of the above can take away from the effortless gallantry, wit and nobility of Kline's Cyrano. Now, Mr. Kline, how about slipping into Macbeth's armor? Or taking up Prospero's book?

"Cyrano de Bergerac," on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St., New York

"The Wooster Group's

Hamlet"

Two Hamlets for the price of one — what will those stubbornly idiosyncratic experimenters, The Wooster Group, dream up next?

The long-running downtown troupe (which has often visited Seattle) is having its first run at Off Broadway's Public Theatre. And what makes more poetic sense, at New York's primary Shakespeare outlet, than the Woosters' risk-diverse director Elizabeth LeCompte filtering "Hamlet" through her own unique sensibility?

LeCompte has confounded some critics, and more than a few playgoers, with this heavily conceptual outing in which Scott Shepherd plays the Prince of Denmark, often synchronizing his gestures and line-readings with those of a pale, grainy film of Richard Burton's Hamlet turn from 1964.

What seems like a laborious stunt at first actually reveals fascinating layers of meaning if you think hard about it — and the lengthy show gives you plenty of time to ruminate on matters.

Such matters as the famous national televising of the John Gielgud-directed, Burton production of "Hamlet," as an American mainstream breakthrough for modern, "street dress" Shakespeare. And the imminent tragedy of Burton, a great classical actor who cast off his artistry for big Hollywood paydays and a jet-setter life with glam wife Elizabeth Taylor. And the metaphysical condition of stage actors who are, indeed, "the abstract and brief chronicles of the time" — whose vanishing performances "are writ on water."

In the hazy, deftly doctored film projected behind Shepherd and his castmates (including amazing Kate Valk, who plays both Ophelia and Queen Gertrude), the actors may suddenly vaporize and disappear — like, yes, Hamlet's ghost. And the "live" actors halt now and then, demanding cuts in the play — a text so lengthy it is seldom performed in its entirety.

Someday, it would be great to see Shepherd, a charismatic and incisive actor (who starred in the show "Gatz," recently at Seattle's On the Boards), wear the inky cloak in a production with just one Hamlet.

But the "Wooster Hamlet" is theater about theater — very odd, strangely moving and irreverently reverent.

"The Wooster Group's Hamlet," Off Broadway at 425 Lafayette St., New York

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com