Nora Ephron's Lucky Guy Digests Its Drama for You; NAATCO's Strindberg Diminishes a Dream

Joan Marcus

Tom Hanks plays journalist Mike McAlary.

Details

Lucky Guy
by Nora Ephron
Broadhurst Theatre
235 West 44th Street
212-239-4200

A Dream Play
by August Strindberg, adapted by Sung Rno and Andrew Pang
HERE
143 Dominick Street
212-352-3101, here.org

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More About

• Nora Ephron
• Mike McAlary
• August Strindberg
• Theatrical Plays
• Theater

Yet Strindberg's impossible play has both the internal emotional logic and the often harrowing concreteness of actual dreams. The Hindu god Indra's daughter (played by Tina Chilip with fetching sweetness) descends to earth, only to discover that human life is a series of prolonged agonies, with poetry the sole alleviation.

For over a century, the script has been a playbook for experimental theater worldwide. Yet New York, in my four decades of reviewing, has done it shamefully little honor. Andrew Pang's production, with an Asian-American cast, brings Strindberg pathetically little three-dimensional life, but at least lets you hear a reasonable sampling of his words (in a stilted adaptation by Sung Rno and Pang). Someday, I hope, our theater will catch up with his dream from 111 years ago.