My good mother use to say that the only acceptable compensation for having her children live away (in a different city) would be if they lived in places she liked to visit. She got New Orleans (my sister) and Washington, DC (moi), and said if she had had a third child, she would accept SF.

We have one daughter here in DC and one in NYC, a pretty good compromise (tho when both daughters were in school in Boston and Maine, that may have been a bit better as I could use them as an ‘excuse’ to see my beloved Sox).

Anyway, I try to spend a few days each month in NYC, allegedly to see younger daughter but also to catch the latest Broadway theater.

A long-winded introduction to my recent trip to the Big City and mini-reviews of the three plays in two days. I also spent an hour at the St. Paddy’s Day parade but have to admit that I found it uninspiring -- no real life or intensity.

Anyway, the three plays:

Red, starring Alfred Molina and Eddie Redmayne and written by John Logan, was in previews when I saw it last week. It first opened in London and had quite a successful run there.

It’s about painter Mark Rothko when he was at the height of his productivity and when he had been commissioned for a series of paintings for a restaurant in the new Four Season’s Hotel in the Seagram’s building. The time period is 1958-59.

The 90-minute play is set in Rothko’s studio and is primarily a dialogue between the artist and his young assistant, Ken.  It sounded questionable when my daughter suggested it and not something I’d usually see, but the dialogue and the interplay between the two actors is terrific and keeps you almost riveted for the full hour and a half.

Molina as Rothko and Redmayne as his young assistant were in the production in London and work wonderfully together. In one memorable scene, Rothko and Ken prepare a canvas as they splash paint over a newly stretched canvas while a Gluck aria blares on a nearby record player. It is five minutes that you are unlikely to forget.

The play does what good theater should do: it entertains; it makes you think; it teaches you; and it makes you want to know more about the subject(s).

You need not know much about Rothko, about Abstract Expressionism, nor about art in general to enjoy Red (I am woefully ignorant on all three counts).

If you do know Rothko, know his art, and/or are interested/knowledgeable about the art world in general, I suspect Red would be particularly enjoyable evening for you.

Update: 3/31 - See NYTimes article by Carol Vogel:  http://nyti.ms/comiAp

Update: 4/2 - See NYTimes review by Ben Brantley: http://nyti.ms/cuByFY                                               

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A Behanding in Spokane, written by  Martin McDonagh, starring Christopher Walken and ably surrounded by Zoe Kazan, Anthony Mackle, and Sam Rockwell, is a ‘black comedy’ set in a seedy hotel room in an unnamed town in America.

It is the story of Carmichael (Walken) who has been searching for 47 years for his hand, which he claims was cut off when he was a teenager by some hillbillies who forced him to put his hand on a railroad track and then used it to wave good bye to him from a distance.  He has spent the ensuing years trying to find his hand (and gathering trunkfuls of hands in the process).

He meets and holds hostage two petty criminals (Kazan and Mackle) who try to sell him a hand they’ve stolen from a local museum’s aboriginal exhibit.  The fourth character (Rockwell) is a lonely hotel clerk who cannot seem to make friends with anyone (other than a gibbon he once met in a zoo).

But enough about the story. I know it sounds weird.

It is.

I guess that’s why it’s called a ‘black’ comedy.

And comic it is. 

Well, there’s a lot of laughter that takes place anyway. Walken is wonderful as a likable but dangerous character (sociopath/psychopath?) who delivers hilarious lines in a deadpan manner. You can’t help but like the guy. Scary.

Rockwell, likewise, delivers his humor in a similar deadpan manner, and he too grows on you as the 90 minute play proceeds.

The two petty criminals are more animated, almost the jokers of the play, and they are good foils to Carmichael and Walken. They pale a bit by comparison to the other two characters, but they add to the comic absurdity of the play.

The bottom line on any review, it seems to me, is whether the reviewer recommends the play.

If you enjoy black comedy and good acting, then go.

If it seems just too weird from the description above, you probably won’t enjoy it, except for the acting of Walken.

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A Little Night Music, directed by Trevor Nunn with music by Stephen Sondheim and starring Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones, is a revival. Harold Prince first produced it in 1973, and it won both the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award and the Tony Award for Best Musical that year.

If it were not for Lansbury and Zeta-Jones (is that the correct way to refer to her?), the evening would be disappointing, and I doubt the play would hold its audience.

But Lansbury’s acting and specifically her rendition of ‘Liasons’ is wonderful.  And I suspect we will not have many more chances to see her perform. She is 84, and I can’t say I know any 84 year olds who have the energy and vibrance of Lansbury.  She’s a treasure.

Zeta-Jones’ acting doesn’t quite match Lansbury’s, nor does her rendition of the most well known song from the play, ‘Send in the Clowns.’  But, dare I say that just watching her for several hours is a decided pleasure in itself?

The staging, dancing, and particularly the costumes are terrific, and even though the play seems dated, I think there are enough elements in this revival to make the evening worthwhile.