How to transcend a happy marriage

How to Transcend a Happy Marriage is playing at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre located at 150 West 65th Street. It runs two hours fifteen minute with one intermission. It closes on May 7, 2017.

Susan Hilferty is the costume designer. She won a Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Wicked (2014).

Lena Hall won a Tony Award for Hedwig and The Inch (2014).

Sarah Ruhl is the playwright. She was nominated for a Tony Award for In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play 2010). Sarah was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in 2010 In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) and in 2005 The Clean House.

Marisa Tomei was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Top Girls (2009).

On stage is a dead animal hanging from the ceiling. It is taken away by a women who we learn later is Pip (Lena Hall).

We are now in Janes (Robin Weigert) home. She is talking to her friend George, short for Georgina (Marisa Tomei). Jane is telling about a woman in her office called Pip. She said she was vegan but has taken up hunting animals for food. Pip has two lovers David (Austin Smith) and Freddie (David McElwee). As she is telling this her husband Michael (Brian Hutchison) and George husband (Paul (Omar Metwally) comes into the room.

Jane invites Pip and her friends to her house on New Year’s Eve. Jane’s daughter Jenna (Naian Gonzalez Norvind) is at Jane’s mother’s home.) Things get out of hand; they are having sex among themselves. Jenna walks in on her mother, she is naked. All hell breaks loose. It starts snowing

Act two Pip is teaching George how to hunt. George has a bow and arrow in her hands. Pip tells her hunting makes her feel good. They spot a baby deer; George aims her arrow and shoots. The next thing we know they are in jail. You need a license to hunt and George has killed someone’s dog.

When they are sprung Pip is gone. George says feathers fell down and Pip is a bird. Paul and George are staying at Janes home because animal rights people are protesting on their lawn.

We discover what we thought happened at the end of Act 1 was in Georges mind and didn’t happen. Well part of it didn’t.

A dove shows up, which George is convinced it is Pip. The bird lays three eggs.

Both couple comes to grip with what they want from their marriages.

George makes closure for all the things present and in the future.

The cast was great.

The stage has just enough on it to let you know where you are.

This is a banner show to see.

Review by Rozanna Radakovich

Photos by Annazor.

To read a candid interview with the cast, scroll down to the left for recent photos. Click on a photo, then click on back to album and finally back to gallery for this and other shows.