#gabriel ebert

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being. - Oscar Wilde

go see jpitv now!!! ⭐️

NATASHA: Jana Djenne Jackson (Kill the Whale; Little Shop of Horrors)

PIERRE: Gabriel Ebert (Matilda; Preludes)

ANATOLE: Bryce Pinkham (A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder; Little Shop of Horrors)

SONYA: Laufey (grammy)

HÉLÈNE: Phillipa Soo (Hamilton; Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812)

new video because the old one doesn't work:

MARYA: Julie Benko (Funny Girl; Harmony)

PRINCESS MARY: Jessie Buckley (Cabaret; War & Peace 2016)

DOLOKHOV: George Abud (Lempicka; Emojiland)

BOLKONSKY: Brandon Uranowitz (Falsettos; Titanic, Encores!)

BALAGA/OPERA SINGER: Joseph Keckler (Preludes)

JOHN PROCTOR IS THE VILLAIN by Kimberly Bellflower, directed by Danya Taymor: Some plays create an instant, almost electrical connection to their audience because they deal with the right subject at the right time. It can happen with bad plays that find a receptive audience despite their flaws.  When it happens with a good play, the results are particularly thrilling. This is a good play, well performed and beautifully directed.

In a small-town Georgia high school, the students in honors English are studying THE CRUCIBLE. Nothing to see here until Shelby (Sadie Sink) returns after an extended absence following her having sex with her best friend’s boyfriend. She’s determined to do well and comes to class more prepared than their teacher (Gabriel  Ebert) might prefer. When she starts pushing the students to think outside the box and look at John Proctor as a misogynistic abuser, it leads to a revelation that made the woman next to me gasp.

That’s the kind of effect this play has on its audience. It starts out dealing with women’s issues almost comically as the students grapple with feminist theory and the birth of the #metoo movement. Even when one girl’s father is caught in an affair with his secretary and faces accusations from a former employee, things are fairly light. Bellflower manages to capture the foolishness of young minds trying ot grapple with a world for which they’re not prepared (Most of the students go to the local Southern Baptist church. ‘Nuff said?), yet she also maintains an affection for them. And though their grappling with abuse issues can be comical, the issues themselves are given the seriousness they deserve. Taymor stages this all expertly, with strong compositions, expressive movements and a final class presentation that sums up not just the issues, but the play’s balance of comic and serious. By the evening’s end the audience was responding vocally to subtle gestures and movements, and cheering characters who are starting to understand what’s really going on around them. My only quibble would be that the cast doesn’t hold much for laughs, so I missed some lines. Fortunately, I picked up the script at The Drama Book Store.

I’d love to see this play in rep with another work in which it is in conversation. You probably wouldn’t play it with THE CRUCIBLE, a play it pretty much decimates. I wouldn’t want to make any more money for David Mamet, so OLEANNA is out. But I think it would make a fascinating pairing with HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE with the schoolteacher also playing Peck and Shelby as L’il Bit.