Weekend review roundup -- philately, philosphy and matricide

Mauritius
As a fan of Theresa Rebeck's work, I'm a bit confused as to why her Broadway debut ended up being this show, a watered-down version of, or perhaps ode to, David Mamet's "American Buffalo" now playing at the Biltmore. Fortunately, a stupendous cast makes it worth the trip. All five are excellent: plucky Alison Pill as the desperate girl who inherits the rare nickel stamps, Katie Finneran as her haughty sister who has her own familial claim to the stamp, F. Murray Abraham as the shady character who wants it at any cost, Bobby Cannavale as his eloquent compatriot and particularly Dylan Baker as the obnoxiously snobbish philatelist. Rebeck purposely leaves a lot of these characters' backgrounds as a blank slate. Bad things have happened in the past, but we never find out what they are. From a high altitude, this makes a lovely picture -- these unknown "mistakes" in the past are what make us, like rare stamps with improper lettering or upside down pictures, valuable. But from the orchestra row of a theatre, it just makes for an ultimately frustrating evening.

Will Durst: The All-American Sport of Bipartisan Bashing
Reviewing this show is rather pointless, as it closed today. And that's a shame. Like the boxing imagery that surrounds his show--he appears on the Playbill wearing boxing gloves, and a pair also appear on the bizarrely decorated set, the centerpiece of which is a chair made of old newspapers--Durst uses, er, used a great rope-a-dope strategy in his political comedy act that played at New World Stages. He starts with a series of soft jabs at our president, even those famous Bush-isms that we've all heard hundreds of times before. But the punches get harder and harder, until the final power uppercut -- a rapid-fire barrage of adjectives describing all the horrors we the people have been subjected to during the past seven years. Even though there were a few equal time jabs at obvious targets like Hillary Clinton and PETA, I just hope some Bush fans weren't fooled by the title and unknowingly wandered into... What am I saying? I hope they WERE.

Electra
Not being anywhere near fluent in Greek, it's rather difficult for me to offer an intelligent review of the National Theatre of Greece's production of Sophocles' "Electra," now playing a limited run at New York City Center. "It was pretty to look at and listen to, and I enjoyed it" is about all I can say. I can say, however, that the audience gets an F. Good grief. These were the most distracting group of folks with whom I've ever had to share a theatre. There were a lot of empty seats in the center, so as the show began, there was a mass exodus from the sides toward those seats. As a result, for the first 20 minutes of the show, I was subjected to--outside of the usual latecomers, candy unwrappers and dolts who can't turn off cell phones--way, way too many people wandering to different seats. Some of these were old folks who can barely get around in the light, so it was a long trip for them. And not a one of them seemed to be able to get out of their seat with letting it slam loudly as it sprung back into place. Awful, awful people. Thanks for giving Europe yet another reason to hate us.