"Seminar" and "Blood and Gifts"

Good theater must be well acted, have a compelling story and be well written. Once in a while an outstanding show boasts all three elements and provides it is a uniquely thrilling experience.

“Seminar,” the latest work by the extremely talented playwright Theresa Rebeck, is a brilliant piece of writing. It is, in fact, a piece of writing about writing. Each of the four young writers (Jerry O’Connell, Hamish Linklater, Lily Rabe and Hettienne Park) have paid $5,000 for ten weeks of a private seminar held at Rabe’s character’s posh rent controlled East side apartment.

Five-thousand-dollars is a lot of money - unless the teacher is the great actor Alan Rickman, as in Severus Snapes, the Professor of Potions in the Harry Potter franchise. Here, he portrays the dastardly villain who uses magic to inflict harm. Rickman’s character, a writer/editor, uses sarcasm, indifference and sneers to wound even more potently. He’s hired to critique the writing, but instead tares it to shreds, dashing the students' confidence.

The four young actors give fine performances. Rabe is the wealthy Bennington student, O'Connell a pretentious, well-connected capable writer, Linklater the anguished introspective one, and Park provides sexy edginess. However, it is Rickman who gives the play vibrancy and passion. A fine actor, he is a good model and good teacher for the younger performers.

In “Blood and Gifts,” the new play at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, the story is central. The play by J.T. Rogers describes the covert U.S. and British operations in the 1980‘s when the USSR invaded Afghanistan. The central figure, a young American named James Warnock (Jeremy Davidson) is determined to aid the Afghans in their struggle to liberate their country. Despite the tremendous toll their work takes on their personal lives, he and Simon Craig (the British agent played by the wonderful Jefferson Mays) try all the while to keep their involvement secret.