tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57970350926457133292024-03-16T07:00:44.424-05:00Broadway & MeI'm a theater lover. I am happiest when I am sitting in a theater. Or talking about theater. Or reading about theater. Or now blogging about it. If you’re reading this, you're probably a theater lover too and I hope you’ll keep me company as I blog my way through each Broadway season.jan@broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05871839027802882307noreply@blogger.comBlogger1277125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-29173617264035716662024-03-16T07:00:00.000-05:002024-03-16T07:00:02.994-05:00"Dead Outlaw" is the Liveliest Show in Town<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX-QWoLQUixrltfli-ANc7T8wk44UPK43zhU6TEx9XGRzuteQboDVOt0mVEwn6mM8wRTFrdVSANjuwOOyOlZAVSXTD07OtS9i28AY8sUy9gVbkpBFbG0RR-UZAxXefPpplNY6SNx-1VqoDNLgND7Y2IKNBfSxb8Ar-JUtOnYSs9_WWNjp46Ka-3ynhqpE/s702/outlaw%20photo-cropped.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="651" data-original-width="702" height="297" id="id_b023_cbbd_7fc7_79c7" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX-QWoLQUixrltfli-ANc7T8wk44UPK43zhU6TEx9XGRzuteQboDVOt0mVEwn6mM8wRTFrdVSANjuwOOyOlZAVSXTD07OtS9i28AY8sUy9gVbkpBFbG0RR-UZAxXefPpplNY6SNx-1VqoDNLgND7Y2IKNBfSxb8Ar-JUtOnYSs9_WWNjp46Ka-3ynhqpE/s320/outlaw%20photo-cropped.jpg" style="height: auto; width: 320px;" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">You can usually tell within the first 10 minutes or so of seeing a show whether you’re in good hands. And I knew right away that I was in very good hands when I saw <i>Dead Outlaw,</i> the first Audible-sponsored musical that is now scheduled to run at the MInetta Lane Theatre through April 7 and then later will be available to listen to on the Audible website. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">To be honest, I had a hunch that this might be a good one even before I got to the theater because the creative team—composer David Yazbek, book writer Itamar Moses and director David Cromer—had also put together the Tony-winning musical <i>The Band’s Visit</i>; plus, each of these guys is a show-making ace in his own right. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But I had also been a little skeptical because the premise of their new show is totally bonkers. It’s the story of a ne’er-do-well outlaw named Elmer McCurdy, who was killed in a shoot-out after a bungled train robbery </span><span style="font-family: arial;">in 1911</span><span style="font-family: arial;">. He probably would have been forgotten except that a local undertaker embalmed his corpse until someone claimed it and when no one did the mummified McCurdy was put on display for a nickel a peek and eventually passed from one sleazy sideshow venue to another until his remains were finally buried in 1977</span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_McCurdy" style="font-family: arial;" target="_blank"> (click here to read his full story). </a></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You can imagine that turning such an unlikely tale into a musical is the kind of thing that Stephen Sondheim would have relished. But the <i>Dead Outlaw</i> crew</span><span style="font-family: arial;">—</span><span style="font-family: arial;">including Erik Della Penna, who collaborated with Yazbek on the music and lyrics and plays in the show's onstage band</span><span style="font-family: arial;">—</span><span style="font-family: arial;">more than meets the challenge. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">They’ve turned this macabre saga into a nuanced commentary on the fascination with death and violence that fuels today’s obsession with true crime stories. At the same time, they remind us that we should be more respectful of these narratives because death is the one thing that we’re all eventually going to experience first-hand. And then, they’ve set all of this to some terrific toe-tapping music.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">A six-person band plays country tunes and roots music, with occasional foray into hard rock and jazz. The lyrics throughout are wickedly funny but chilling too:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And so you fail with failures and you confront your rivals </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Who stand there armed with Bibles pointing at you </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And you plot, you scheme, you had a chance, you had a dream </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">You couldn’t get a witness so you stand here today </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Your mama’s dead </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">John Gotti’s dead </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Dillinger’s dead </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And so are you </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p></blockquote><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Each of the eight cast members, most of whom play multiple roles, gets at least one moment to shine and they all glow. In fact, they’re all so good that it’s unfair to single out any one of them but I can’t resist shouting out a few of my favorites.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Andrew Durand, last seen in <i>Shucked</i>, is amazing as McCurdy; he sings the hell out of the songs he’s given when McCurdy is alive and then somehow is just as charismatic when he spends half the show standing deathly-still in a coffin </span><span style="font-family: arial;">as the dead man’s corpse</span><span style="font-family: arial;">. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Jeb Brown, who as a kid made his debut as one of the no-necked monsters in the 1974 revival of <i>Cat on a Hot Tin Roof</i> and has knocked around Broadway in small parts ever since, has finally gotten the role he's no doubt been waiting for and now totally nails: as the show’s guitar-playing and pork-pie-hat-wearing narrator </span><span style="font-family: arial;">he is folksy, funny and sexy.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Meanwhile, the veteran character actor Thom Sesma almost steals the entire show in a cabaret-style number as the famed L.A. coroner-to-the-stars Thomas Noguchi. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Much of this has to be credited to the nimble direction of David Cromer, who not only keeps everyone on the same page but somehow manages to keep the show simultaneously light and dark. It’s a deft dance with death that you’re bound to enjoy.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-46116950975795416622024-03-02T09:15:00.001-05:002024-03-02T09:19:26.170-05:00"The Hunt" Kind of Misses the Mark<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaVm6JwMYMJstEhlWP9ItiwM5BhqnjoSEvXQ_8yBtfl1DVeTxqL2suqHF3TY9MFDU13REtNo1hKrejGx7AzJD2w3O2Rb48uIHJRFiWi3HlWsm4X6JQA4znaFV_95sUL8zBN0Q6Dek1LSFS8ycUYHKQ4LL0WoF4EkHNFYMEh2JMnVP5Rp4w0hAZ057a8yQ/s8256/illi=hunt-house.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5504" data-original-width="8256" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaVm6JwMYMJstEhlWP9ItiwM5BhqnjoSEvXQ_8yBtfl1DVeTxqL2suqHF3TY9MFDU13REtNo1hKrejGx7AzJD2w3O2Rb48uIHJRFiWi3HlWsm4X6JQA4znaFV_95sUL8zBN0Q6Dek1LSFS8ycUYHKQ4LL0WoF4EkHNFYMEh2JMnVP5Rp4w0hAZ057a8yQ/w400-h266/illi=hunt-house.jpg" width="400" /></a></p><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">We’re now used to getting musicals based on movies but it’s rarer for a straight play to be adapted from a film. However that’s the case with <i>The Hunt,</i> which opened this week at St. Ann’s Warehouse following a run at London's Almeida Theatre in 2019. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But just as so many musicals have done, the staged version of "The Hunt" has failed to capture the very qualities that made the film special and worth adapting in the first place. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Directed and co-written by the Danish director Thomas Vinterberg, the film tells the story of a recently-divorced kindergarten teacher named Lucas whose life unravels when he’s falsely accused of exposing himself to one of his little students. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Almost everyone in the rural town where he lives turns on Lucas to the point that he begins to fear for his life. It’s such an affecting morality tale about the dangers of mass hysteria that the film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2013.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The stage adaption by David Farr hews fairly closely to that storyline. But its effectiveness is undermined by the ways in which the story is told. The film is subtle in its storytelling but right from the start, director Rupert Goold amps up the onstge fireworks. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The film opens with a scene that establishes Lucas’ role as an integral part of the community. A group of his friends are showing off their manliness by skinny dipping in the frigid waters of the local lake but when one of them cramps up, it’s Lucas who, fully dressed, dives in and saves him. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The St. Ann's production starts off with the local men literally beating their bare chests, stomping their feet and chanting in a ritualistic fashion that's not only supposed to display their manliness but foreshadows their coming barbarism. Meanwhile Lucas is nowhere to be seen. It's as though he's already an outsider before he's even been accused of doing anything wrong.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Goold seems more interested in the look of his production than its content. And to be fair, some of the images he and his team have created are hauntingly beautiful. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The trendy set designer Es Devlin <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/28/es-devlins-stages-for-shakespeare-and-kanye" target="_blank">(click here to read about her)</a> has created one of those glass boxes that have become the way that British productions (<i>Yerma, The Lehmann Trilogy</i>) now signal that they are really cool. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Shaped like a kid’s drawing of a house, Devlin's box stands in for the school, the town church, various homes, and the local lodge where the menfolk hangout, drink and talk about guns. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But the box is especially effective when the lighting by designer Neil Austin turns its walls opaque and the structure becomes a physical manifestation of how shortsighted the townspeople are.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The British actor Tobias Menzies plays Lucas <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/theater/tobias-menzies-the-crown-the-hunt.html" target="_blank">(click here to read a piece about him).</a> Menzies, perhaps best known as Prince Phillip to Olivia Colman’s Queen Elizabeth in the middle seasons of the Netflix series “The Crown,” is too good an actor to fail to elicit sympathy for Lucas. But the show’s ending, which varies in a significant way from the film’s and even from the play's printed script, renders his plight less poignant. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There’s also something a bit unsettling about watching this show in 2024. The film came out five years before the revelations about </span><span style="font-family: arial;">the movie producer Harvey Weinstein's </span><span style="font-family: arial;">sexually predatory behavior sparked the #MeToo movement. The environment is different now.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Throughout the film, the girl’s parents say they believe their child. But even though her accusations aren’t malicious but rather a product of childish anger prompted by Lucas’ rejection of a present she made for him, they still ruin a good man's life. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The events of the past few years, including the recent verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s suit against Donald Trump, have reminded us that accusers in these situations are usually telling the truth. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">So I found myself wondering why I was sitting in a theater watching a story centered around the opposite point of view. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><p><br /></p><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-67306255770555810072024-02-24T08:42:00.001-05:002024-02-24T08:48:07.876-05:00Hailing the High-Camp Virtues of "Oh, Mary!"<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1qli2clVxsl8vcqH2pnBsdV-M-w7Pfk-XMOH-DJ4ZjMfsHu9SsmqqVhyphenhyphenOo2D3fjPuDW7q3ZnduK60dYZw97wJvSN-p4mCwQ1VTpHcLuwUqj8aaeYZOF7vyP7fYbOVrALFtQunXQsMtaX2hKpq1-OVt_MXCRByLakOkV2jPgDNmYruraW0v-mAFrcyQmc/s967/couple-cropped.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="967" data-original-width="687" height="320" id="id_5fd7_637b_36c4_46bb" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1qli2clVxsl8vcqH2pnBsdV-M-w7Pfk-XMOH-DJ4ZjMfsHu9SsmqqVhyphenhyphenOo2D3fjPuDW7q3ZnduK60dYZw97wJvSN-p4mCwQ1VTpHcLuwUqj8aaeYZOF7vyP7fYbOVrALFtQunXQsMtaX2hKpq1-OVt_MXCRByLakOkV2jPgDNmYruraW0v-mAFrcyQmc/s320/couple-cropped.jpg" style="height: auto; width: 227px;" width="227" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">If I had access to a time machine one stop I’d make would be sometime around 1960 at Caffe Cino in Greenwich Village where young playwrights like John Guare, Sam Shepard and Lanford Wilson staged daringly offbeat shows and up-and-coming actors like Bernadette Peters, Al Pacino and Bette Midler performed in some of them. Of course that kind of time travel isn’t currently available but the next best thing might be seeing <i>Oh, Mary!,</i> the proudly queer and unabashedly ridiculous comedy that has just been extended at the Lucille Lortel Theatre through May 5.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Oh, Mary!</i> is the nonbinary playwright Cole Escola’s bizarro-world version of Mary Todd Lincoln’s activities in the weeks leading up to the assassination of her husband at Ford’s Theatre on April 15, 1865. It’s filled with swishing hoop skirts, swishy leading men, secret love affairs and a liquor-swilling First Lady who wants more than anything to be—of all things</span><span style="font-family: arial;">—</span><span style="font-family: arial;">a cabaret star. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Escola has said that they did almost no research before writing <i>Oh, Mary! </i><a href="https://www.theatermania.com/news/interview-cole-escolas-zany-portrait-of-the-lincolns-in-oh-mary_1730809/" target="_blank">(click here to read more about that).</a> Instead the show cheerfully cherry picks hearsay about the Lincolns (Mary’s reportedly high-strung personality; Abe's supposedly gay proclivities) that will lend themselves to jokes that are silly (the show’s Mary keeps asking who’s fighting in the Civil War) or raunchy (an aide-de-camp brings new meaning to the role of a president's body man).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This kind of high-camp stuff can wear out its welcome pretty fast. But Escola, wearing a wig with sausage curls and looking like Sutton Foster’s deranged kid sister, is so delightfully daffy as Mary that it’s almost impossible to resist this show’s outrageous lunacy. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The cast and design crew commit to the hijinks too and director Sam Pinkleton has made sure they're all on the same page of the playbook. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">The witty sets by the design team known as Dots frolic on the line between realism and parody. And the period-appropriate costumes by Holly Pierson and Astor Yang are in on the joke too. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Meanwhile the five cast members gamely tweak stock roles taken straight out of a 19th century melodrama. But no one breaks character or mugs unnecessarily (although there is plenty of appropriate mugging). Conrad Ricamora is particularly terrific as a Lincoln torn between managing the war, managing his uncivil wife and managing his uncontrollable libido.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Similarly, James Scully is pitch perfect as a tutor the president hires to keep Mary occupied and Scully not only makes for a hunky juvenile lead but delivers a Shakespeare soliloquy that would make any RSC grad proud. And Bianca Leigh and Tony Macht are just as winning in smaller roles. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Comparisons to the works of Charles Ludlam and Charles Busch are inevitable but Escola brings a deadpan mischievousness to the drag damsel in distress that is utterly unique and deliciously goofy. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">The result is an 80-minute gigglefest. And who doesn't need</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> a good laugh in these trying times. </span></p><p><br /></p>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-11150123469571789432024-02-17T07:55:00.000-05:002024-02-17T07:55:10.745-05:00"I Love You So Much I Could Die" is Too Intimate for Its Own Good—Or Anyone's<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRNKOsNOFKhDZDdKndpy5Ov01nScemFJ61LeF6eX8HCNa0hT19_YdFBYt2pcA-47dvG6bheTY_m9TPLqNbfwksaBNBDw6C5I9ftBo6KeFLP1qOdHvLI5n7i5KWMWO5kF2opmLUXRn2W8I5WG7F_g23TdFtspRsOzJXHXb8NGx_NHxj5P6yMTOv6cQ4oiM/s1646/mona%20crop.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1166" data-original-width="1646" height="284" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRNKOsNOFKhDZDdKndpy5Ov01nScemFJ61LeF6eX8HCNa0hT19_YdFBYt2pcA-47dvG6bheTY_m9TPLqNbfwksaBNBDw6C5I9ftBo6KeFLP1qOdHvLI5n7i5KWMWO5kF2opmLUXRn2W8I5WG7F_g23TdFtspRsOzJXHXb8NGx_NHxj5P6yMTOv6cQ4oiM/w400-h284/mona%20crop.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Valentine’s Day was celebrated this past week and the new show <i>I Love You So Much I Could Die</i>, which opened at New York Theatre Workshop on Feb. 14, struck me as an ultimate gesture of love. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">For this playlet—it runs barely more than an hour—was written and performed by Mona Pirnot and directed by her husband Lucas Hnath and it’s unlikely that the show would have been done in such a prestigious venue if they weren't cashing in on the cultural cachet that Hnath has earned as the playwright of such inventive works as </span><i style="font-family: arial;">A Doll’s House, Part 2 </i><span style="font-family: arial;">and</span><i style="font-family: arial;"> Dana H.</i></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I don’t mean that as a put down. <i>I Love You So Much </i>is Pirnot’s attempt to deal with the kind of deep grief that any loving spouse would do anything to ease. So kudos to Hnath for being that kind of husband and to Pirnot for having the good sense to hook up with that kind of guy <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/12/theater/lucas-hnath-mona-pirnot-audio.html" target="_blank">(click here to read more about the couple).</a> But alas, I can’t extend kudos to their show. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s a minimalist affair that takes place on a bare stage, furnished solely with a small desk and chair, a lamp, a laptop hooked up to a speaker, and a guitar sitting on a stand. Pirnot, the sole performer, spends the entire time seated with her back to the audience while a male text-to-audio voice on the computer reads what seem to be diary entries recording her responses to a tragic event involving her sister, although the exact nature of that tragedy is never revealed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Periodically, Pirnot clicks off the computer, picks up the guitar and, still staring at the back wall of the theater, sings in a wan voice a few songs that further express her grief. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s not unusual for artists to pour their pain into their work. But the goal should be to transform that pain into something that’s larger than just one person's experience. Here, however, withholding the details of the trauma and any visceral intimacy with Pirnot, limits the show's ability to do that. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">People should be allowed to grieve in whatever way comforts them and as someone who is also currently in mourning, I sincerely hope this show brings Pirnot and Hnath some solace. But I also wish they had found some way to bring me something too. </span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-5750795964240947072024-02-10T08:48:00.001-05:002024-02-10T08:51:19.838-05:00 "The Connector" Fails to Connect With Me<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_y-1OBBE-K_UX10_Zn7DoXnAE34uBR24rzSbR0VlTLW-m0T1Mf4Y3xnESYLI89kY-DxOJ9T7iHofyaoGgYiqeQ9hscpcK-WWULEUp5BakzXPBKkI7pxs_Gxd25PBqOMOw2nViBFuzUijZkU1bICBzthPSXTu53op1ZaE3VW_jdnbwV7gXDSh_erV7ONI/s6000/Scott%20Bakula%20and%20Ben%20Levi%20Ross%20in%20MCC%20Theater's%202024%20production%20of%20THE%20CONNECTOR%20-%20Photos%20by%20Joan%20Marcus.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="6000" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_y-1OBBE-K_UX10_Zn7DoXnAE34uBR24rzSbR0VlTLW-m0T1Mf4Y3xnESYLI89kY-DxOJ9T7iHofyaoGgYiqeQ9hscpcK-WWULEUp5BakzXPBKkI7pxs_Gxd25PBqOMOw2nViBFuzUijZkU1bICBzthPSXTu53op1ZaE3VW_jdnbwV7gXDSh_erV7ONI/s320/Scott%20Bakula%20and%20Ben%20Levi%20Ross%20in%20MCC%20Theater's%202024%20production%20of%20THE%20CONNECTOR%20-%20Photos%20by%20Joan%20Marcus.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Journalists love stories about journalism. We even love the stories that cast us in a bad light. And I'll admit that’s part of the reason that <i>The Connector, </i>which was inspired by the stories of the notoriously disgraced journalists <a href="https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2024/shattered-glass-movie-hayden-christensen-new-republic/" target="_blank">Stephen Glass </a>and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html" target="_blank">Jayson Blair,</a> ended up on <a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2024/01/a-belatedbut-upbeatspring-preview.html" target="_blank">the list</a> of the four shows I was most excited to see during this spring season.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But that wasn’t the only reason. I also wanted to see <i>The Connector</i> because the show is a new musical by Jason Robert Brown, whose earlier shows <i>Parade </i>and<i> The Bridges of Madison County</i> rank among my all-time favorites. And on top of that, <i>The Connector</i> brings the always-likable Scott Bakula back to the New York stage for the first time in 35 years <a href="https://playbill.com/article/scott-bakula-is-back-singing-on-stage" target="_blank">(click here to read more about him).</a> But alas as it turned out, I ended up not liking <i>The Connector</i> much at all.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Jonathan Marc Sherman' book for the show, which opened at MCC Theater this week, purports to tell the story of the rise and fall of a young journalist named Ethan Dobson who gets his dream job at a New Yorker-style magazine called The Connector and then immediately starts fabricating stories. Ben Levi Ross, one of the replacements in </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Dear Evan Hansen,</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> brings a nebbishy Ben Platt-like intensity to both acting and singing the role of Ethan.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">As Sherman imagines it, Ethan’s boss Conrad, who’s amiably played by Bakula, is totally taken in by the younger man because they both went to Princeton, like the same drinks, share a reverence for the magazine where they work—and are both guys. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">More suspicious of Ethan are three women: Robin, a co-worker (and undeveloped love interest) who is also talented but overlooked and is played by Hannah Cruz; Muriel, the magazine’s no-nonsense fact checker played by Jessica Molaskey; and Mona, a busybody reader who keeps writing in to point out mistakes in <i>The Connector </i>who’s played by Mylinda Hull. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">That’s a lot of story and I haven’t even mentioned the stuff about the venture capitalists buying the magazine or Robin feeling as though she isn’t getting ahead because she’s a Latina. Sherman has a hard time keeping up with all of it too and his pacing is off. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The show runs nearly two hours without intermission but we’re almost halfway through it before the deception narrative really clicks in. And it’s never made clear what’s driving Ethan to lie when it seems that he’s perfectly talented enough to report and write decent stories on his own.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But what disappointed me even more was Brown’s score. The story is set in the ‘90s, a particularly fertile period for the pop music that usually informs his scores. But no grunge, neo-soul, techno or even boy-band sounds pop up in the music for <i>The Connector.</i> Instead what we get is a remix of stuff that Brown’s done before.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The rousing number in which a dubious witness adapts a black style of music to tell his false tale (here it’s rap, and not particularly good rap) was just like the rousing number when a dubious witness adapts a black style of music (there it was gospel) to tell his false tale in <i>Parade</i>. Similarly Robin’s lament about her stalled career reminded me a lot of Cathy's lament about hers in Brown’s <i>The Last Five Years. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Several critics claim to have been moved by the ballad “Proof,” Muriel’s climactic 11 o’clock number, but by the time I got home from the theater, I couldn’t remember its words or melody, or, for that matter, those of any of the tunes in the show. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And I couldn’t figure out why the biggest production numbers centered around minor characters in the show. It’s fun to see Ethan’s fabrications brought to life and Max Crumm and Fergie Phillippe do terrific jobs animating them but some of that time might have been better spent delving deeper into the main story.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In fact my biggest problem with <i>The Connector </i>is that I’m not sure what that main story is or what the show wants to say. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">The idea for <i>The Connector </i>originated with its director Daisy Prince, who has said she first started thinking about it when the Glass and Blair scandals happened back in the ‘90s</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/01/theater/the-connector-jason-robert-brown.html" style="font-family: arial;" target="_blank">(click here to read more about the show’s genesis). </a><span style="font-family: arial;">But times have changed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Our current concerns about journalism are now rightly focused on media companies that knowingly peddle fake news and on disinformation campaigns conducted on social media. And that by comparison can't help making the foibles of an overly ambitious kid—and an overly ambitious show—seem a little trite.</span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-84650101421627741452024-02-03T08:32:00.000-05:002024-02-03T08:32:42.425-05:00Why "Jonah" Isn't the One For Me<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOjmaEExbIXOuo8e6RkILfbCoEmSaNlfx5gUVFba9m3L3-Hmp8qPrpgXQLLx9VWRqFhewcgj8U-7bVIShpWgWNquRTSG5zgUciUjxAKdIusmLHXGVWn76JxGClE66DLLO4UWSZLsYuU7HL6BttfUEAzdUXiUJf5E9fUzc0u01d6vcSscYGLlc-KA0zZ_Q/s5293/jonah%20illo%20solo.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5293" data-original-width="3599" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOjmaEExbIXOuo8e6RkILfbCoEmSaNlfx5gUVFba9m3L3-Hmp8qPrpgXQLLx9VWRqFhewcgj8U-7bVIShpWgWNquRTSG5zgUciUjxAKdIusmLHXGVWn76JxGClE66DLLO4UWSZLsYuU7HL6BttfUEAzdUXiUJf5E9fUzc0u01d6vcSscYGLlc-KA0zZ_Q/s320/jonah%20illo%20solo.jpg" width="218" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Sometimes you just don’t get a show. Maybe its subject triggers you or fails to grab you at all. Maybe the playwright was trying to do too much or the director didn’t do enough. Or maybe you were grumpy because getting to the theater was such a hassle or you were tired because it had been a long week. I’m not sure what the reason is but I’m going to be honest with you: I didn’t get <i>Jonah</i>, the new play that opened at Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre this week. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I got enough to understand that the show centers around a young woman named Ana and her interactions with three men over the course of several years in her life. But this is not an easy play in any sense of the word. Playwright Rachel Bonds clearly wants to explore the different mechanisms people use to cope with trauma. So there are lots of references to domestic violence and self-harm. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And because the narrative shifts back and forth in time, it’s not easy to follow what’s going on either. The male characters keep popping up out of nowhere and falling (sometimes literally) right back into nothingness. The promotional materials try to make a virtue of all of this: “Jonah is not all he seems,” said the press release referring to one of Ana’s three men. The Playbill advises that the action takes place in “The past and the present. But everything is slippery.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Too slippery for me. The play opens with a teenage Ana at a New England boarding school, where she says her mother sent her. But at another point she says that her mother died when she was 11. We're apparently supposed to figure out what's true but after awhile the intentional elusiveness of such an unreliable narrator can become unintentionally alienating.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The lighting and sound designs work hard to clarify the transitions from one reality to another but the set, which is supposed to stand in for three separate locations, seems to have just given up: too large and too anonymous for a boarding school dorm room, a suburban home bedroom or the studio space at the writers' retreat where the adult Ana has taken refuge to work on a book.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But the thing that put me off most was the casting. Now all four of the actors are fantastic. Hagan Oliveras exudes puppyish charm as Ana’s high school crush, the titular Jonah. Samuel H. Levine is brooding but charismatic as her emotionally-damaged stepbrother Danny. And John Zdrojeski brings a sweet goofiness to the role of Steven, Ana’s neighbor at the writers’ retreat. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Ana is played by Gaby Beans, who carries the heaviest load—never leaving the stage during the show’s 100 or so minutes—and she does it with an unflashy finesse. But Beans is Black and that fact is never acknowledged in this production. Which left me confused. All three of the guys are obsessed with Ana. Is that because she’s Black? Or is Beans, proudly sporting long micro-braids, supposed to be playing a white woman? </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There are a few lines that allude to race (“What do you mean, <u>you</u> people,” Ana asks one of the men) but those occasional references are just asides. In a play like this one that pivots around sexual and family tensions, race would surely matter. And if Bonds and director Danya Taymor insist on believing that it doesn’t, why have they cast all the guys with white-presenting actors?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Bonds writes both funny and intense dialog. I can imagine drama students doing </span><span style="font-family: arial;">monologues and dialogs from <i>Jonah</i> for years to come. And I respect her desire not to spoon feed her audience but it's not pandering to suggest which spoon might be most useful for them. If she wants us to go through the pain, then in return shouldn't we get at least the possibility of relief?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Someone at Roundabout seems to have a thing for these kinds of trauma dramas. Last spring, the Laura Pels played host to <i>Primary Trust,</i> another play in which a trauma survivor depends on protective fantasy. But that show offered a satisfying, if incomplete, resolution <a href="https://broadwayradio.com/blog/2023/06/14/stagecraft-eboni-booth-playwright-of-primary-trust/" target="_blank">(click here to listen to an interview I did with its author). </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Jonah</i> doesn’t even try to offer hope or even to make its intentions clear. Which left me unsatisfied. But that apparently is just me. Most critics seem quite taken with <i>Jonah</i> <a href="https://www.show-score.com/off-broadway-shows/jonah" target="_blank">(click here to read some of those reviews)</a> and the New York Times has made the show a Critic’s Pick. So I guess you’ll just have to go see this one and make up your own mind. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-39724078930075976482024-01-27T09:40:00.000-05:002024-01-27T09:40:05.541-05:00Good and Bad Reminders of the Holocaust Are on Show in "Our Class" and "White Rose" <p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPR32obfJelBePMN4kmJY8BKNZZa-itzu3IrHzycjsT0q4TmhVp2aGLlEr-UMLFoQaCAdrRBCwf3-iLz5S6UdNb7KUKR-YJCZ5Mb59F58izLrrqixICu4PiBG2lEfMDXTRj7z5Oefr2upb97DthowB7dgnL-OacCuyjFFbdhC-jO2mjmwBbzJw_PQ88tU/s3900/victims-cropped.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2853" data-original-width="3900" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPR32obfJelBePMN4kmJY8BKNZZa-itzu3IrHzycjsT0q4TmhVp2aGLlEr-UMLFoQaCAdrRBCwf3-iLz5S6UdNb7KUKR-YJCZ5Mb59F58izLrrqixICu4PiBG2lEfMDXTRj7z5Oefr2upb97DthowB7dgnL-OacCuyjFFbdhC-jO2mjmwBbzJw_PQ88tU/s320/victims-cropped.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Today is International Holocaust Memorial Day, which was created to commemorate the six million Jews and others who were systematically slaughtered by the Nazis. But New York theater makers aren’t limiting their remembrances of those horrific events to a single day. For over a year now, stages here have been filled with one production after another recalling the horrors of that time and drawing cautionary parallels to our own time with its rising antisemitism and flirtations with fascism.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The shows have been large and small. Last season’s <i>Leopoldstadt</i>, Tom Stoppard’s semi-autobiographical drama about a wealthy Jewish family nearly annihilated by the Nazis, boasted a cast of 38 and won the Tony, Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk awards. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Joshua Harmon’s similarly-themed <i>Prayer for the French Republic, </i>which tracks the experiences of a Jewish family faced with violent bigotry both during the Holocaust and in present-day France, had a great off-Broadway run in 2022 and moved to Broadway earlier this month with most of its original 11-member cast intact. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And last fall, <i>King of the Jews, </i>Leslie Epstein’s moving adaptation of his 1979 novel about the Jewish leaders in a Polish ghetto forced to decide which of their brethren to send to the death camps, had a successful run downtown at the HERE Arts Center. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Now not everything has worked. Neither Bess Wohl’s <i>Camp Siegfried</i> nor Rita Kalnejais’ <i>This Beautiful Future,</i> both of which centered around young Nazis falling in love, made much headway with critics or audiences. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And the musical <i>Harmony</i>, the longtime dream project of Barry Manilow and his writing partner Bruce Sussman that focused on The Comedian Harmonists, a real-life sextet of Jewish and Gentile performers who were forced apart when Hitler came to power, picked up a slew of awards when it played downtown at the Museum of Jewish Heritage but failed to click on Broadway and is now scheduled to close at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Feb. 4 after just 90 or so performances. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Yet, the shows keep coming and they keep finding different ways to tell stories about the horrors that happened. An all-new immersive production of <i>Cabaret</i> is coming in April and just this week, I saw two new Holocaust-themed shows: <i>White Rose,</i> a musical about the German college students who led a resistance movement against the Nazis; and <i>Our Class,</i> a Brechtian-style drama about how the bonds were savagely broken between Jews and Christians in one small Polish village. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Although there have been other shows about The White Rose movement <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/30/theater/review-theater-white-rose-and-good-germans.html" target="_blank">(click here to read a review of one of them)</a> I didn’t know about the group until I read about it in Ian McEwan’s recent novel “Lessons.” But I was instantly fascinated by those young people who risked—and mainly lost—their lives to speak out against Hitler. So I was curious to see how the story of Hans and Sophie Scholl, the brother and sister who were the group’s leaders, would be brought to the stage. Alas, the answer to that is not well.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The creators and the producers of the musical which opened this week at Theatre Row all seem to be novices and their inexperience shows. Book writer and lyricist Brian Belding, whose Playbill bio describes him as a former high school history teacher, has clearly done his research but he hasn’t figured out how to pace a show, how to create characters with emotional depth or how to write lyrics that go beyond simply stating what’s happening. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Meanwhile Natalie Brice’s music has no distinguishing personality. A score doesn’t have to reflect the historical period it’s musicalizing but it should make you think that all the songs belong to the same world. This one just slides from one tune to another without rhythm or reason. The actors work hard and some are better than others but none of them get enough help from their director Will Nunziata. The Scholls deserve better.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It would have been interesting to see what Tadeusz Slobodzianek, the Polish author of <i>Our Class</i>, and his inventive director Igor Golyak might have done with the Scholls' story because they have turned </span><span style="font-family: arial;">their production, which is now playing in BAM’s Fishman Space, from </span><span style="font-family: arial;">what could have been a fairly predictable story into a powerful meditation on how people act when faced with making truly horrendous choices.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">At the center of their tale are 10 people who take great pride in being members of the same class in their village school. Half of them are Jewish, half Catholic and although they’re aware of their differences, it doesn’t stop them from developing friendships and crushes across faith lines. Until the outside world intervenes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">First the Russians occupy the town and then the Germans take over. Locals take sides that break down along ethnic lines and soon they are informing on one another and beating and raping and killing one another. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The script, adapted into English by Norman Allen, follows these characters over seven decades from their grade school years into their days in nursing homes for the few who survive that long. And yet it manages to make us feel as though we know each of them as real people who are good in some moments, horrible in others and sometimes just trying to make peace with what’s been done to them and what they’ve done to others. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Most of the action is portrayed in an expressionistic style on a nearly bare stage outfitted with ladders, trap doors and a fateful chalkboard. And Golyak sometimes uses video cameras in the way that Ivo van Hove does to create film-style close-ups of his actors, which can be effective but can also be distracting. However he also creates achingly beautiful stage images as when the actors draw simple faces on white balloons and then send them floating into the rafters to symbolize the deaths in a particularly horrific massacre. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The cast made up of both fresh and familiar faces is uniformly excellent. But I couldn’t help focusing on Richard Topol. That’s in part because he’s older by several years than most of his castmates. But it’s also because this is the third time I’ve seen Topol appearing in one of these recent Holocaust plays. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">He has a full career doing other things as well, but I suspect that Topol, who traces his family roots back to shtetls in Eastern Europe <a href="https://www.nbcnewyork.com/entertainment/the-scene/new-york-live/richard-topol-talks-enlightening-play-our-class/5017938/" target="_blank">(click here to hear more about that) </a>keeps taking these parts because he truly believes—as we all should—that unless we acknowledge such history, we are in dire danger of repeating it.</span></p><p><br /></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-85406675160896431302024-01-20T09:32:00.000-05:002024-01-20T09:32:10.186-05:00A Belated—But Upbeat—Spring Preview <p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYvBUeI0zmTgLSI8tKIaSFJAJoy1CIDEgmg2O2eQnpluEBrDerz142M9mjyO4rRSyHeV2cBscij-fsJfqGZINTdbIfqYyOWOFyZARG8XET8HGlfTZJyQRQJqXIioVp_VHaUzFbOu7YSO6taI04rZ9AjDeMeZ4cTigx3k-Hrg7cV_aLOOxzJQzUddjj3uE/s4000/ticket%20illo%20edit.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="4000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYvBUeI0zmTgLSI8tKIaSFJAJoy1CIDEgmg2O2eQnpluEBrDerz142M9mjyO4rRSyHeV2cBscij-fsJfqGZINTdbIfqYyOWOFyZARG8XET8HGlfTZJyQRQJqXIioVp_VHaUzFbOu7YSO6taI04rZ9AjDeMeZ4cTigx3k-Hrg7cV_aLOOxzJQzUddjj3uE/w200-h200/ticket%20illo%20edit.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">Previews are all about the promise of what’s to come so I suppose it’s no surprise that the last time I posted a preview list of the shows I was excited about seeing in an upcoming season was on Jan 11, 2020, nine weeks before the pandemic shutdown theaters here in the city and across the country. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I somehow managed to see most of the shows on that <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5797035092645713329/6730123672637059810" target="_blank">list</a> including Katori Hall’s <i>The Hot Wing King, </i>which won 2021's Pulitzer Prize for Drama; <i>Endlings</i>, a lovely meditation on aging by Celine Song, whose first feature film “Past Lives” may be an Oscar contender this year; and the wonderful revival of Paula Vogel’s <i>How I Learned to Drive,</i> with most of the cast from its original 1997 off-Broadway production.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Theaters opened backed up in the fall of 2021 and I cautiously went back to seeing the new shows. But my enthusiasm fluctuated up and down: I saw some great stuff (Sanaz Toossi’s <i>English,</i> the 2022 Pulitzer winner; Samuel D. Hunter’s <i>A Case for the Existence of God</i>) but I often had to push myself out of the house to see it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I’ve also done a lot of mourning over the past four years: friends lost to Covid like the actress and writer Patti Bosworth; friends lost to old age like my dear dear friend Seymour Red Press, the contractor for some 100 Broadway musicals who left us at 98; iconic figures like Stephen Sondheim, 91, and Sheldon Harnick, 99; and most painfully for me the unexpected loss of my beloved sister and life-long theater companion Joanne. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">So that is why I’m so happy to finally be able to share this preview list of spring shows that I’m truly looking forward to seeing over the next few months. And there’s a lot to get worked up about. Nineteen shows will open on Broadway alone, and at least three—<i>Days of Wine and Roses, Hell’s Kitchen </i>and<i> The Notebook</i>—will be directed by Michael Greif, the mastermind behind such musical masterworks as <i>Rent, Next to Normal </i>and<i> Dear Evan Hansen.</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And a bunch of the shows that aren’t being done by Greif are being helmed by such top-notch female directors as Tina Landau, Lila Neugebauer, Leigh Silverman and Jessica Stone</span><span style="font-family: arial;">. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Meanwhile, many of the musicals have been written by newcomers who are bringing a today sound to the traditional musical and they’re being led by big movie-star names that may bring in new audiences too. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Also, to my great delight, several of the new shows are taking on big state-of-the-world subjects like privacy, free speech and class. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">As I said, there’s a lot to be excited about. Here are just four shows that have me really jazzed: </span></p><p><b style="font-family: arial;">THE ALLY </b><span style="font-family: arial;">Given the recent forced resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, it’s hard to think of a more up-to-the-moment issue than the one at the center of Itamar Moses’ latest work about a college professor who gets entangled in conflicting agendas after he signs a social justice petition. It’s scheduled to open at the Public Theater on Feb. 27 with Josh Radnor as the prof.</span></p><p><b style="font-family: arial;">THE CONNECTOR </b><span style="font-family: arial;"> This new Jason Robert Brown musical is inspired by the case of the disgraced journalist Stephen Glass and focuses on a young reporter who is willing to do anything to make a name for himself and the young female editor who becomes suspicious of his actions. The book is by Jonathan Marc Sherman, the direction by Daisy Prince and the show, which is scheduled to open at MCC on Feb. 6, will bring Scott Bakula back to the New York stage for the first time in 35 years.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>MOTHER PLAY</b> I’m always eager to see anything by the great Paula Vogel, but this new work about a domineering mother and her two near-adult children in the 1960s also comes with the killer cast of Jessica Lange, Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jim Parsons. And when it opens at the Hayes Theater on April 25, it will also mark the first time that a play by the 72-year-old Pulitzer winner will make its world debut on Broadway. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>THE OUTSIDERS</b>. Generations of teens have embraced this story about the conflict between two high school gangs—the working-class Greasers and the more privileged Socs—that S.E. Hinton published in 1967 when she herself was just 18. In 1983, Francis Ford Coppola turned her novel into a film that has become a cult classic and now playwright Adam Rapp has written the book for a musical that is scheduled to open at the Jacobs Theatre on April 11 with a cast of fresh faces and a score by Jamestown Revival, a folk-rock duo who specialize in easy-on-the-ear melodies, all of which make me really hopeful about the future of Broadway. </span></p><p><br /></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-25795159571430432172023-12-23T08:37:00.001-05:002023-12-25T19:00:35.383-05:00 Not the Best Shows in 2023 But Those That Put A Smile on My Face When I Needed One <p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8-l6vb4WGnXXx1KyurSJot8_RHvlqz5L1m2Kwwapuq9qjZ0ZbLPjPURL93Wm5BbWCbf3jfov2JtALRUNi5HXbCxJSvjATwNSGWgLriS-jBl1j5HUFvbMoBpavBbf7WkmEvgYqvHW-B2QePtWR_iiS1Fm5spn6erUCk9XqGkkvtFKkE0Jm0x-b8I3dsKg/s1276/smile%20grid%20edit.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1272" data-original-width="1276" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8-l6vb4WGnXXx1KyurSJot8_RHvlqz5L1m2Kwwapuq9qjZ0ZbLPjPURL93Wm5BbWCbf3jfov2JtALRUNi5HXbCxJSvjATwNSGWgLriS-jBl1j5HUFvbMoBpavBbf7WkmEvgYqvHW-B2QePtWR_iiS1Fm5spn6erUCk9XqGkkvtFKkE0Jm0x-b8I3dsKg/s320/smile%20grid%20edit.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s that time of year when people like me draw up Top 10 lists ranking the cultural experiences they’ve had over the past 12 months but, as some of you know, 2023 hasn’t been a great year for me. Still even in the worst of times, maybe particularly in the worst of times, theater can be a saving grace. So this year I’m not going to try to single out the best shows or performances I saw, instead I’m going to acknowledge with great gratitude 10 shows that managed to reach out in the dark and give me small sparks of hope for better times to come.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show:</b> Theatergoing is a tradition in my family that’s been passed baton-like from one generation to the next so it gave me great joy to be able to share this delightful children’s show with my seven-year-old grandniece Joi, whose name is pronounced “joy.” Inspired by Eric Carle’s beloved series of picture books, the show is a kid-friendly 60-minute production that will tour around the country starting next month. Seeing it when it played at the DR2 Theatre here in New York was the first time that Joi and I went to a show alone together and I’m now looking forward to sharing many more with her in the years to come.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Life of Pi: </b>My sister Joanne loved both the book and movie versions of this metaphysical tale about a young shipwreck survivor who claims he spent 227 days in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. But Lolita Chakrabarti’s theatrical adaptation was my first encounter with the story and I was dazzled by British director Max Weber’s truly imaginative staging that included life-sized puppets, immersive projections and a bravura performance by the actor Hiran Abeysekera. And now that she's no longer here, getting to share all of it with my sister is a memory I will cherish forever. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Parade: </b>Even though many critics were lukewarm about the original 1998 production of this challenging musical, both my mother and I were moved by Alfred Uhry’s retelling of the case of Leo Frank, a Jew who was lynched in Georgia in 1913, and by the gorgeous score that Jason Robert Brown wrote for it. So I was totally gratified by the nearly unanimous raves this revival drew both when it played at Encores! and then when it quickly moved to Broadway. Michael Arden’s staging was simple but elegant and the cast was uniformly excellent, particularly Ben Platt as Leo and Micaela Diamond as his loyal wife Lucille; I couldn’t get their duet “This is Not Over Yet” out of my head and I didn’t want to.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Sweeney Todd: </b>I guess I have a thing for dark musicals because Stephen Sondheim’s masterwork about a deranged barber seeking revenge against the men who unjustly imprisoned him and destroyed his family is my all-time favorite musical. I saw the original 1979 production with Len Cariou as Sweeney and Angela Lansbury as his accomplice Mrs. Lovett and I’ve also seen several terrific revivals (one with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Christine Baranski and another in a simulated pie shop). So I was a little nervous about this new production starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. I needn’t have worried. Groban and Ashford put different spins on their characters but their interpretations work and the score, brilliantly orchestrated by my friend Jonathan Tunick, remains glorious, especially as played by a 26-piece orchestra. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Jaja’s African Hair Braiding:</b> Set in a Harlem hair salon and aided by Whitney White’s smart direction, playwright Jocelyn Bioh’s latest dramedy deftly balanced laugh-out-loud comedy—performed by a crackerjack and almost entirely-female ensemble—with some of the very serious issues that confront immigrant women, particularly those from African countries, as they try to grab hold of some tiny piece of the American dream. So I was grateful to Manhattan Theatre Club for offering such an engaging slice of contemporary life that too seldom gets shown on major stages.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Here Lies Love:</b> Although I pranced around on the dance floor when this immersive musical about the Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda played at the Public Theater in 2014, the now older me sat up in the mezzanine when it moved to the Broadway Theatre earlier this year. But I still had a good time, caught up by the head-bopping music of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, the kinetic staging by Alex Timbers and the spirited performances of Broadway’s first all-Filipino cast. It was a unique experience and I wish more people had seen it before its too-short run ended.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Primary Trust: </b>Whimsey isn’t usually my thing but Eboni Booth’s lovely fable about a lonely misfit and his journey of overcoming a truly traumatic past by taking the risk of connecting with the people in his community won me over. And that was in large part because of a thoroughly charming performance by William Jackson Harper that made me root for the character’s success and even feel a little hopeful about the world outside the theater too.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Uncle Vanya:</b> I'll confess that a large part of the pleasure of seeing this production of Anton Chekhov’s classic was the fact that each performance played to just 40 people in a loft space so intimate that you could almost smell the scent of the actors—who included Will Brill, Bill Irwin and director David Cromer in the title role—as they passed by. But even in a larger space, Marin Ireland’s performance as the lovelorn Sonya would have stood out. It was so heartbreakingly honest that I felt both protective of the character and privileged to see such a master actor at work. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>The Phantom of the Opera: </b>For 35 years I avoided seeing Andrew Lloyd Webber’s retelling of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel about a mysterious figure who lives in the bowels of the Paris Opera House and becomes obsessed with a young singer there. But when I heard that this landmark show was closing, I knew I had to finally see it. And I’m so glad I did. It may have been fraying a bit around the edges but I still got a sense of what all the fuss had been about and I’m not sure if we’ll ever see a production as grand and lavish as this one the late great Hal Prince put together. I already miss seeing the iconic white mask that sat on the Majestic Theater’s marquee and reigned over 44th Street for all those decades. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Shucked:</b> No one was more surprised than I was when this intentionally corny musical turned out to be one of my favorite shows of the year. Here’s the set-up: when the corn crop that is the main livelihood of a secluded community begins to wither and die, a young woman named Maizy (get it?) tries to save her hometown by seeking outside help. A few lessons about tolerance and acceptance are embedded in this tale but for the most part its joke-filled book by Robert Horn and toe-tapping score by country music stars Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally simply aim to entertain, and I left the theater with a big grin on my face. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-66230425333905975582023-10-07T09:53:00.001-05:002023-10-07T09:53:38.817-05:00Reflections on "Melissa Etheridge: My Window"<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqwVPOgKlFyF3HbWWsXLnmx6x4OTo6XSTm-mCWURXW7fB8_-dhyphenhyphenmJm1rOawx7ylDoLuvXBx2YYD3BFR1DWyDlPfanfQ31gcD9mhZyCC9qRzDKWaW-bhIeBRDW3ERkI6vedWHUMFW-cOBpz5e7Ab6QjlbWGswy3z6KeJXmgSwGBfA-oJBc7MS9Navr2O-s/s6917/melissa%20standing.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="6917" data-original-width="4611" height="320" id="id_480e_b233_a1ac_cc8c" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqwVPOgKlFyF3HbWWsXLnmx6x4OTo6XSTm-mCWURXW7fB8_-dhyphenhyphenmJm1rOawx7ylDoLuvXBx2YYD3BFR1DWyDlPfanfQ31gcD9mhZyCC9qRzDKWaW-bhIeBRDW3ERkI6vedWHUMFW-cOBpz5e7Ab6QjlbWGswy3z6KeJXmgSwGBfA-oJBc7MS9Navr2O-s/s320/melissa%20standing.jpg" style="height: auto; width: 213px;" width="213" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">To truly appreciate <i>Melissa Etheridge: My Window</i>, you may need to be a hardcore fan of the singer-songwriter or a member of Generation X, who was born between 1965 and 1980, grew up with Etheridge’s music on the radio and are now nostalgic for the vanishing youth her playlist evokes. I, alas, am neither.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Now that doesn’t mean that I don’t like some of Etheridge’s songs or don’t find her to be an engaging performer but while I read at least two reviews that compare her musical memoir to listening to a quirky but beloved aunt at a Thanksgiving dinner, I felt like the outsider at the table who doesn’t know enough of—or care enough about—family lore to get all the inside jokes and rebukes. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">However there were plenty of people </span><span style="font-family: arial;">who clearly loved every minute of the performance I attended</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> at Circle in the Square, where the show is currently scheduled to run through Nov. 19, </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The show starts with Etheridge’s birth 62 years ago in Leavenworth, Kansas and tracks her career from her childhood fascination with music through playing gigs in local bars during her teens, her aborted time at the Berklee College of Music and the years she spent playing in lesbian bars before getting a record deal and becoming a rock star who now has two Grammys and an Oscar. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">She gets into her personal life too, including the discovery of her interest in girls, the ups and downs of her various love relationships, her bout with cancer and the opioid overdose of her 21-year-old son in 2020. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Etheridge has always traded on her regular-gal vibe but she’s been a star for three decades now and so bits of her privilege peek through as she recalls her tours and name drops celebrity friends, from Rosie O’Donnell to Al Gore.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Her storytelling is very subjective (as the title of the show says it is <i>her</i> window) but this creates a fuzziness that can make it difficult to follow the narrative if you don’t already know the details. For example, in one sentence she’s agreeing to have children because it’s something her then partner wants and in the next, she’s a single mother raising two kids without an explanation of how she ended up with custody instead of the other mom.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But basically, this is a concert filled with greatest hits and extended patter written by Etheridge and her now wife, the TV producer and writer Linda Wallem Etheridge. Changing jackets (leather, denim, sequins) and instruments (piano, drums, the clarinet and various acoustic and electric guitars) Etheridge runs through 19 songs, most of them hers, although she includes the tune “On Broadway” to express her delight in having moved the show there after a two-week off-Broadway tryout at New World Stages last fall.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">An experienced and energetic performer, she frequently leaves the stage and makes her way through the audience, stopping to flirt with both women and men. Although I did feel sorry for the folks who paid $200 for upfront floor seats, only to have to spend a good part of the time craning their necks as she moved past them to a smaller stage set up at the back of that section.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Her only backup are the comedian Kate Owens, who, under the direction of Amy Tinkham, silently, but still amusingly, plays an onstage roadie, and video projections by Olivia Sebesky that run the gamut from homey family photos to psychedelic cat videos.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I’ve read that Etheridge was inspired to do this show after Bruce Springsteen did his. That makes me wonder if these concert confessionals are going to replace bio-musicals. They’re certainly cheaper to put on than full-fledged musical productions and fans get the added thrill of seeing their real idols up close and kind of personal. Who knows maybe come 2024, Beyoncé will be looking back at her life in a show on Broadway.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-72169891728520330042023-09-23T07:35:00.000-05:002023-09-23T07:35:40.787-05:00Thoughts on a New Era in New York Theater<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTOCpCWVjeTJ4ox0xnemNN_iJqk5Wwf75v9uy5E3ozgJnQGXSU8P1T6-wpEEjpSCsPrS_bCTnJXq4aWEJxmi0D5cfV7IOLPZKClR9OV8HetXxrivkvwqQrr9Z9AfMlSjPYyuAZnpmOO4iY7mu_Ha9V3N_PzTWGKb965DlSosMo2gH9hiYeQK9N5INsL6I/s500/Directors%20Grid.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="400" id="id_df51_de70_3cd6_666c" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTOCpCWVjeTJ4ox0xnemNN_iJqk5Wwf75v9uy5E3ozgJnQGXSU8P1T6-wpEEjpSCsPrS_bCTnJXq4aWEJxmi0D5cfV7IOLPZKClR9OV8HetXxrivkvwqQrr9Z9AfMlSjPYyuAZnpmOO4iY7mu_Ha9V3N_PzTWGKb965DlSosMo2gH9hiYeQK9N5INsL6I/w400-h400/Directors%20Grid.jpg" style="height: auto; width: 400px;" width="400" /></a></div><br />The news came this week that two titans of New York theater will be stepping down from the powerful perches on which they’ve long roosted. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/theater/andre-bishop-lincoln-center-theater.html" target="_blank">André Bishop</a> who has lead Lincoln Center Theater since 1992 said he would end his reign there when his current contract runs out after the 2024-2025 season. And <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/20/theater/carole-rothman-second-stage.html?smid=url-share" target="_blank">Carole Rothman,</a> who co-founded Second Stage Theater in 1979, said she will wrap up her 45-year tenure with that company this coming spring. </span></div><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Both Lincoln Center and Second Stage produce both on Broadway and off-Broadway and have small black box theaters that serve as incubators for up-and-coming playwrights. And each has won a slew of awards for the shows they’ve put on over the decades. Their influence has been great, and cherished by us theater lovers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">So these announced moves would be momentous enough on their own. But they follow the deaths within the past year of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/19/theater/todd-haimes-dead.html?smid=url-share" target="_blank">Todd Haimes,</a> who ran the Roundabout Theatre Company for 40 years; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/31/theater/robert-lupone-dead.html" target="_blank">Robert LuPone, </a>the co-founder of MCC Theater who served as its co-artistic director for 36 years, and <a href="https://playbill.com/article/andrew-leynse-artistic-director-of-off-broadways-primary-stages-has-died" target="_blank">Andrew Leynse </a>who lead Primary Stages for 21 years. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">When you factor in the recent departures of <a href="https://www.americantheatre.org/2021/04/16/james-c-nicola-to-step-down-as-leader-of-ny-theatre-workshop/" target="_blank">James Nicola</a> from New York Theatre Workshop after heading it for 34 years; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/theater/sarah-benson-soho-rep.html" target="_blank">Sarah Benson</a> who lead Soho Repertory Theatre for 16 years and <a href="https://playbill.com/article/john-doyle-to-leave-classic-stage-company-in-2022" target="_blank">John Doyle, </a>who served a comparatively short six-year term as the head of Classic Stage Company, it’s clear that the times, as Bob Dylan used to say, are a-changin.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Such long tenures might suggest that the moves should have come sooner. There’s no question that these folks helped shape contemporary American theater with the playwrights and directors they’ve supported and the actors they’ve boosted over the years. But most of them are now Medicare-eligible and they’re no longer the Young Turks who helped the off-Broadway and regional theater movements to make a mark.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">So it will be exciting to get some new butts in those chairs. But it’s going to be scary too. The people who take on those jobs are going to have to navigate a rockier theatrical landscape than we've seen in a long time. And those of us who love theater are going to have to be patient as they attempt to do it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">For starters, audiences are still skittish about returning to the theater after the pandemic and are rejecting the old subscription model that gave nonprofit theaters a financial cushion as they planned their seasons. They also seem to want what I call comfort-food shows: familiar titles, big name stars, happy endings. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Meanwhile, theater makers are calling for more inclusive, </span><span style="font-family: arial;">more diverse</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> and more challenging productions. And they want more comfortable working conditions and better pay too. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The new leaders are going to have to balance those sometimes competing demands at the same time that costs are rising and financial support—be it government funds that helped them through the pandemic or the foundation dollars that got them started—is shrinking. And, of course, they’ll be endlessly compared to their predecessors whose own faults and failings will fade in the glare of nostalgia for the “good old days.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And yet I’m not discouraged. Things weren’t all that great back in the ‘70s when most of the now old-timers were starting out. New York City was a mess. Rising crime had many people scared to go out at night. Several of the theaters almost went under. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But the courageous and creative young visionaries who stepped up to run those places found the money and, more importantly, the talent and the voices to create the theater we have today. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I suspect that a new generation will find its way to do the same for future theater lovers. And maybe they'll not only act differently but, if the people choosing them do their jobs well, some of them will look different too.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-12608152481409953782023-09-02T07:08:00.001-05:002023-09-02T07:08:37.811-05:00A Labor Day Salute to Working-Class Actors<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2JNtcUB9pLVu14ieElN-MJmOBTlua6LPXkgPoKoYjDq1OHVXqbd2G8INEUySVmMr8Gut8knUhjJtZzR00rZaA8vm1ijAZYGNySMaCq15MovpfZ6o-1TXRd7RsaBITSlErIF8X7UpuuSccwRGV9Uf4-V7cru7Y6lJ46Zq5oGELk-d160LoW1LRzkV3l1g/s512/labor%20illo2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2JNtcUB9pLVu14ieElN-MJmOBTlua6LPXkgPoKoYjDq1OHVXqbd2G8INEUySVmMr8Gut8knUhjJtZzR00rZaA8vm1ijAZYGNySMaCq15MovpfZ6o-1TXRd7RsaBITSlErIF8X7UpuuSccwRGV9Uf4-V7cru7Y6lJ46Zq5oGELk-d160LoW1LRzkV3l1g/w400-h400/labor%20illo2.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Somehow the weeks in July and August always seem to fly by more quickly than those during the rest of the year. And so here we are again at the end of the summer and, as I do every Labor Day weekend, I’m taking time out to celebrate some of the people who work in the theater. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Over the past 16 years, I’ve singled out <a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-labor-day-celebration-of-playwrights.html" target="_blank">playwrights</a>, <a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2017/09/a-labor-day-salute-to-drama-teachers.html" target="_blank">drama teachers,</a> <a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2022/09/a-labor-day-salute-to-stage-managers.html" target="_blank">stage managers, </a><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-labor-day-salute-to-real-score-keepers.html" target="_blank">composers, </a><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-labor-day-salute-to-talent-spotters.html" target="_blank">casting directors, </a>l<a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-labor-day-salute-to-theatrical-unions.html" target="_blank">abor union leaders </a>and, of course, actors. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">But as the strikes by screen writers and actors move into their fourth month I couldn’t resist saluting actors again this year. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Now I know that whenever someone says actors, most of us automatically think of the stars whose names appear on the marquee or in big print in the Playbill but most of the people who perform for us aren’t headliners. They’re working-class actors, who’ve trained just as hard and work just as hard but earn far less than the more celebrated names who get the limelight. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The minimum salary for Broadway actors is currently about $2,500 a week. That sounds like a lot of money. At least it does until you consider that agents get part of that. So do the acting teachers, vocal coaches and physical therapists who help those performers stay in shape to deliver the kind of performances we audience members crave. And that’s all before you consider that the average rent for a studio apartment here in the city is now $3,200.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Off-Broadway actors earn even less, with minimums for those working for League of Resident Theaters (or LORT companies) ranging from $800 to $1,800 a week. And since shows come and go, there’s no guarantee that actors on Broadway, off Broadway, in regional theaters or in touring companies will work the entire year. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">So I’m also cheering on the strikers. And it’s not just because so many playwrights and stage actors also find work on movies and TV shows. It’s because those of us who truly love theater want it to be as diverse as possible and if all kinds of people can’t make a living in theater (or in TV and movies) then we might find that we won't get the kind of theater so many of us truly want. </span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-59332305812074892752023-08-12T07:25:00.005-05:002023-08-12T07:25:50.997-05:00"The Shark is Broken" Makes a Soft Splash<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIJLUP4yN-cX8WLssMJ6NA2Lf2gKjaQHS95WrL8UHXGyvPNS_46XcpeXWxAjEQVRv549ZdUk1eM5p_6tB2PX3BDQS6NpyLf1QvSfF1BXyxK2lv2smEGGeqU1PNhk7cr2tIZJVQKJTj8CGrsP4xgsx2_eDY9gYemwwkbBFCh5R6ZYCLsAp9G6_Guz5JD3w/s8192/Alex%20Brightman,%20Ian%20Shaw,%20Colin%20Donnell%20in%20THE%20SHARK%20IS%20BROKEN%20-%20Photo%20by%20Matthew%20Murphy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5464" data-original-width="8192" height="266" id="id_1ee0_d6e7_309d_f0d7" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIJLUP4yN-cX8WLssMJ6NA2Lf2gKjaQHS95WrL8UHXGyvPNS_46XcpeXWxAjEQVRv549ZdUk1eM5p_6tB2PX3BDQS6NpyLf1QvSfF1BXyxK2lv2smEGGeqU1PNhk7cr2tIZJVQKJTj8CGrsP4xgsx2_eDY9gYemwwkbBFCh5R6ZYCLsAp9G6_Guz5JD3w/w400-h266/Alex%20Brightman,%20Ian%20Shaw,%20Colin%20Donnell%20in%20THE%20SHARK%20IS%20BROKEN%20-%20Photo%20by%20Matthew%20Murphy.jpg" style="height: auto; width: 400px;" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Listening to the waves of laughter that greeted the new comedy <i>The Shark is Broken </i>made me wonder if we might be entering the era of jukebox plays that pander to the folks who love particular movies in the way that so many jukebox musicals now do. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">For <i>The Shark is Broken</i>, which opened at the Golden Theatre this week, tells the behind-the-scenes story of the making of Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster “Jaws.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The movie famously chronicles the efforts of a local police chief, a marine biologist and a professional shark hunter to track down a great white shark that has begun attacking beachgoers at a summer resort town on Cape Cod. The play was conceived and co-written by Ian Shaw, the actor son of Robert Shaw who played the Ahab-like shark hunter <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/theater/the-shark-is-broken-shaw.html" target="_blank">(click here to read more about that). </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The younger Shaw was only four years old when the movie came out and his dad would die of a heart attack four years later at the age of just 51. But Ian Shaw and his co-writer playwright Joseph Nixon have clearly poured over the many books, articles and recorded interviews <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg0zzOuR5wE" id="id_76fa_699c_b3ca_e7f4" target="_blank">(click here to see one)</a> that over the years have recounted that famously troubled shoot. Plus as a family member, Ian also had access to a recently discovered drinking journal that Robert Shaw kept during his time filming the movie.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">“Jaws” was originally budgeted at $3.5 million for a 55-day shooting schedule but ended up costing $7 million and shooting for 159 days. That was partly due to unpredictable weather but mainly because the mechanical sharks so central to the movie kept breaking down. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Spielberg, then just 27 years old, feared the movie would sink his still fledgling career. Instead it became a sensation, grossing $475 million, kickstarting the trend of action-oriented blockbusters that still define success in the movie business and creating a fandom that renews itself with each new generation of movie lovers. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">During its 90-minute running time, <i>The Shark is Broken</i> imagines what happened as the movie’s three lead actors sat around waiting for the shark to be fixed and the filming to resume. Poetic license has clearly been taken. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s unlikely that the three stars would have been marooned between takes in the claustrophobically small cabin of the boat that provides the play’s sole set. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Still kudos must go to set designer Duncan Henderson for recreating the exact look and feel of the boat in the movie and to lighting designer Jon Clark and video designer Nina Dunn for the stunning background visuals.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">However too much of the show’s humor derives from having the characters make references to future events. For example, the play’s Shaw scoffs when he hears that Spielberg’s next movie is going to be about aliens and asks ”Whatever next? Dinosaurs?” </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Of course most audience members know that the alien movie (</span><span style="font-family: arial;">“Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) and the dinosaur movie (“Jurassic Park”) </span><span style="font-family: arial;">are going to be equally huge hits for Spielberg, which allows them to get the same self-congratulatory dopamine rush that they get when they hear familiar pop tunes in <i>Moulin Rouge</i> or the Neil Diamond musical </span><i style="font-family: arial;">A Beautiful Noise.</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In fact, there’s a kind of “Behind The Music” vibe rippling through the entire play as it checks off the boxes of the best known stories about “Jaws.” Robert Shaw could be a blustery alcoholic. Check. Richard Dreyfuss, who played the self-assured scientist onscreen, was often annoyingly insecure off-screen. Check. Roy Scheider, who played the police chief, spent lots of time in the sun, burnishing his tan. Check. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And talk about fan service, there's even a scene in which the very fit Colin Donnell strips down to his skivvies so that his Scheider can sunbathe onstage and show off six-pack abbs that draw ooohs.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">If there’s anything more than backstage gossip to this episodic show, which director Guy Masterson prosaically stages with repeated blackouts, it’s probably the theme of the connection, or misconnection, between fathers and sons. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Each of the three characters gets a scene in which he confides his regrets about his relationship with his father. Dreyfuss’ dad had too high expectations for his son. Scheider’s father was violent. Shaw’s drank heavily and committed suicide. The disclosures hint at depth but then skip right over it to the next joke.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">With the help of some clever hair, makeup and costumes, the three stage actors look just like the film actors they’re playing. Donnell isn’t given much to do as Scheider but he still manages to convey the unforced confidence of the actor who died in 2008. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Meanwhile, Alex Brightman brings the manic energy that has become his trademark to the role of the equally manic Dreyfuss; his antics actually had his co-stars struggling not to break character and laugh during the performance my husband K and I attended. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Ironically, it is Ian Shaw’s portrayal of his father that is the show’s weakest link. He bears an almost uncanny resemblance to his dad and there are lovely moments when he recites the Shakespeare they both apparently loved. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">But Shaw too often </span><span style="font-family: arial;">veers into a caricature of the macho personae his father exhibited in the film and he leans so heavily into the elder Shaw’s native Lancastrian accent that it’s sometimes hard to understand what he’s saying.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Yet writing the previous paragraph made me feel like a grinch because this play is so clearly a love letter from a son to a father he primarily got to know through the movies. And you’d have to have a harder heart than mine not to applaud that. </span></p><p><br /></p>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-22462923617365634562023-08-05T07:08:00.000-05:002023-08-05T07:08:31.078-05:00The Dog Emerges as Best in Show in "Toros"<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgS1mD5zudB0Jpz-iE4h5ZkrG3OcBG8PBbvpnHoDnlbBNUaMt9g56_pyI5AlYplvzr2lqKwx21PBsPQkFUmzDsqD02oxR5slDCy-yqXlDQLd4wh221KSkJvmOhwAE0mpgoy4dez6m87YqgaPUVX9d9V2drwn1_b_LyYvkLBPM7V9WOqsoGQ9EN6qLWoNM/s1632/photo-toro.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1170" data-original-width="1632" height="286" id="id_696a_a373_76bf_e9e6" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgS1mD5zudB0Jpz-iE4h5ZkrG3OcBG8PBbvpnHoDnlbBNUaMt9g56_pyI5AlYplvzr2lqKwx21PBsPQkFUmzDsqD02oxR5slDCy-yqXlDQLd4wh221KSkJvmOhwAE0mpgoy4dez6m87YqgaPUVX9d9V2drwn1_b_LyYvkLBPM7V9WOqsoGQ9EN6qLWoNM/w400-h286/photo-toro.jpg" style="height: auto; width: 400px;" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Why is Frank Wood, not just a stalwart of New York theater but a Tony winner, lying on the floor and playing a dying dog? That’s the question I kept asking myself as I sat watching <i>Toros</i>, the new play that opened this week for a brief run through Aug. 13 in Second Stage’s uptown space at the McGinn/Cazale Theater. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And unlike the pooch in A.R. Gurney’s <i>Sylvia</i>, Wood’s dog isn’t even the title character. That honor goes to a twentysomething named Alex who has returned to his native Madrid after a failing attempt to make it in New York. His friends—frenemies really—ironically call him Toro, Spanish for bull, because he’s so meek.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Toro’s supposed bestie is Juan, an obnoxious rich kid who works for his realtor father, lives with his parents and spends most of his time in their cluttered basement. drinking, getting high and putting together lame rap beats that he believes will make him a star d.j.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The two other regulars who hang out in the basement are Andrea, who went to high school with Alex and Juan and isn’t sure which of them she’s now drawn too; and Tica, Juan’s family dog who is on her last legs and dragging herself around the room whenever she can muster up the strength to move at all. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Playwright Danny Tejera clearly wants to say something about the ennui of millennials in his native Spain but he’s better at indicating the fecklessness of his characters (there are repeated episodes of Juan just standing around and bopping to his beats) than he is at digging into what’s caused their stagnation or explaining what brings about the eventual changes in their behavior.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But Tejera does have a flair for natural-sounding dialog, especially the put-downs, repeat phrases and awkward silences that can pass for </span><span style="font-family: arial;">conversation among people who spend too much time together.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">He's also studied with Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and his play exhibits some of the mischievously surreal elements that mark their works. The prime example being Tica, who, at least </span><span style="font-family: arial;">in Wood’s totally committed performance,</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> comes off as the show's most sympathetic character. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Director </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Gaye Taylor Upchurch seems on shakier ground. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">So some of what she and Tejera do together works (an imaginatively mimed sex scene) but some of it doesn’t (the reveal and laborious disassembly of the family car).</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">On the plus side, Abubakr Ali, Juan Castano and the actor who goes by the single lower-cased letter b are all convincing as <i>Toros' </i>anchorless trio. Their characters may remind some theatergoers of the similar threesome in Kenneth Lonergan’s <i>This Is Our Youth.</i> Lonergan’s play may be better, but it doesn’t have Tica. </span></p>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-71810225414884695022023-07-29T06:57:00.000-05:002023-07-29T06:57:29.846-05:00"Flex" Is One of The Summer Season's MVPs <p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6A3d9sBIOncAy7klHp6_JSGiiWbDR0yBpiUKVGPUWIuY7MYif3xK90dM0UL54jDn-x1Xc8vhFF2uYmuZDWFHFLZytZLqI60fNYvthxd_0-PlJo_EfHOvqniZF_GgVQA2ftEs5NOKR8KIZmplosGcfczsG1GlizO0shb0OW6P_79BKlrVxUQQCyKfrphM/s620/photo-flex%20edit.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="617" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6A3d9sBIOncAy7klHp6_JSGiiWbDR0yBpiUKVGPUWIuY7MYif3xK90dM0UL54jDn-x1Xc8vhFF2uYmuZDWFHFLZytZLqI60fNYvthxd_0-PlJo_EfHOvqniZF_GgVQA2ftEs5NOKR8KIZmplosGcfczsG1GlizO0shb0OW6P_79BKlrVxUQQCyKfrphM/s320/photo-flex%20edit.jpg" width="318" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s 1998 and the five starting players for the Lady Train, the all-black girls basketball team in a small Arkansas town, aren’t dirt poor or bougie rich. The problems they’re dealing with aren’t extraordinary either but the kinds of things familiar to teen girls everywhere. And those facts alone make <i>Flex</i>, currently running at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse theater, a standout because its playwright Candrice Jones isn’t leaning into the predictable tropes of black trauma or white guilt that seem to have become almost mandatory these days when plays center around black characters. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This doesn’t mean that Jones and her director Lileana Blain-Cruz are sidestepping the challenging realities of contemporary life. One of the players is pregnant and considering an abortion. Two are secretly in love and trying to navigate their relationship in a church-going community where homosexuality is considered a sin. And each sees her athletic prowess as a way to get a scholarship to a good college or to escape the provincialism of their hometown or to help define the woman she hopes to become.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The pleasure for theatergoers is that Jones, Blain-Cruz and the engaging cast and clever design team they’ve recruited have figured out how to turn all of this into a thought-provoking but often laugh-out-loud funny and thoroughly entertaining time. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The title is based on a basketball strategy in which no player showboats but each one works to support the greater good of the team as a whole. And that same approach works beautifully in this production too. Although a special shout-out has to go to set designer Matt Saunders for not only designing authentic-looking basketball courts but creating a full-size car that, with the assistance of Adam Honoré’s spot-on lighting and a crackerjack stage crew, draws a mid-show ovation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Like many sports narratives, <i>Flex</i> follows its team’s efforts to win a championship. There are, of course, bumps along that journey. For starters, the Lady Train’s coach (Christiana Clark) forbids anyone who gets pregnant from playing, which means that valuable team member April (Brittany Bellizeare) will be benched, which means that the team's prospects will be put at risk. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There’s also the dangerously acrimonious rivalry between a swaggering newcomer named Sidney (Tamera Tomakili) who has just moved to town from Oakland where she was such a hot shot that college scouts have now followed her to the Lady Train’s games; and </span><span style="font-family: arial;">the team’s longtime star player, the perhaps too-aptly named Starra (Erica Matthews) who is desperate to catch the eyes of those scouts. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Jones is still a young playwright (the production of <i>Flex</i> that would have marked her professional debut was scheduled to be done in 2020 at the Humana Festival in Louisville but was canceled when the pandemic shut down theaters everywhere; <a href="https://www.americantheatre.org/2023/07/12/flex-taking-the-lady-train-from-the-arkansas-delta-to-lincoln-center/" target="_blank">click here to read more about that</a>) and she does occasionally venture into melodrama or fall back on coincidence to move her plot along. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But Blain-Cruz, who, like Jones, played basketball in high school, keeps the action moving so that the jokes land and the basketball choreography looks convincing (extra kudos to Matthews who manages to sink basket after basket) without sacrificing the show’s underlying message about the importance of team work on and off the court.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There have been some gripes from the critics but this show is a crowd-pleaser. And I saw far more young people than usual at the performance I attended, including groups of men who I suppose were drawn by the basketball theme. <i>Flex</i> clearly seemed to score for them. And it did for me too.</span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-9103448906996049062023-07-08T06:59:00.001-05:002023-07-08T07:05:24.967-05:00It's His Niece Sonya Who Stands Out in this Very Intimate Production of "Uncle Vanya"<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3v-8W0dAWYRlIir_wsw4h5OpdbwzxpozWz1a36YMoMRjb5ZfQA_0uwaCUPus7sM0pJ6mjtg4ASkvLIAZdG9-xIcDRZM5sP0pZnWAOIRJaoZXOb-L8m0YF10LoxWTAvpeOK3ZiIi-T4StzU8_5nTbzLukUIoO-rjTK8ggTXMkccgAWKizKhBrrp6FNxtQ/s1122/photo-vanya.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="776" data-original-width="1122" height="276" id="id_779f_ce0c_a072_ce6f" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3v-8W0dAWYRlIir_wsw4h5OpdbwzxpozWz1a36YMoMRjb5ZfQA_0uwaCUPus7sM0pJ6mjtg4ASkvLIAZdG9-xIcDRZM5sP0pZnWAOIRJaoZXOb-L8m0YF10LoxWTAvpeOK3ZiIi-T4StzU8_5nTbzLukUIoO-rjTK8ggTXMkccgAWKizKhBrrp6FNxtQ/w400-h276/photo-vanya.jpg" style="height: auto; width: 400px;" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Like most theater obsessives, I take pride in my collection of experiences that give me bragging rights—I saw <i>Hamilton</i> at the Public before it was a hit! I saw <i>Glory Days,</i> which opened and closed on Broadway the same night! I was at the Lincoln Center performance when Patti LuPone reached out and grabbed an audience member’s cell phone!—and I’m always on the lookout for more. Which</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> is why my theatergoing buddy Bill and I ended up in a second-floor loft in the Flatiron District along with just 38 other audience members watching a very intimate production of Anton Chekhov’s </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Uncle Vanya.</i><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It was the cast that drew us there. Actors love Chekhov plays because they teeter on the line between comedy and tragedy and even those in the smaller roles get some moments to show off how they can navigate both. This time out, the director David Cromer steps into the title role of the poor relation who has devoted his life to maintaining the family property so that his brother-in-law, a vain professor, can afford to high-life it in Moscow. But also in the cast are the heavy hitters Marin Ireland as Vanya’s niece Sonya, Bill Irwin as the professor Serebryakov and Will Brill as Astrov, the despairing doctor who drinks too much and visits often.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This is the fifth major production of Uncle Vanya I’ve seen and each has used a different translation of the play, often adapted by a contemporary playwright (Annie Baker, Richard Nelson, Jean-Claude van Itallie) but this one uses the translation done back in the ‘90s by the playwright and Russian language scholar Paul Schmidt. I’m no Chekhov expert but it seemed to me to be different from the others I’ve seen in that the focus is less on Vanya and his disappointments and more on the romantic triangle involving Astrov, Sonya and the professor’s much younger second wife Yelena.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But that changing dynamic could also reflect the performances and the modern-clothes staging by director Jack Serio <a href="https://www.americantheatre.org/2023/06/28/jack-serio-direction-and-misdirection/" target="_blank">(click here to read more about him).</a> Cromer has acted on both stage and screen and it seems that playing Vanya has been a longtime dream of his but he’s made his name—and won a slew of honors—as a director and it can’t have been easy for a 27-year-old newcomer like Serio to direct one of the best stage directors working today. The result is that, at least for me, Cromer’s portrayal of Vanya lacks the animating layers of resentment, ridiculousness and, finally, resignation that I've seen others bring to the role. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Instead, Cromer’s Vanya comes across as just a supporting player in his own story. I suppose that's a valid choice since the others in his family see Vanya that way. But both the comedy and the tragedy here is that the character no longer wants to be a supporting player and is struggling to break out of that role by denouncing the professor as a selfish fraud and declaring his own futile love for Yelena. Cromer evokes that desperation but not vividly enough for me to ache for him as I’ve done for other Vanyas. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Sonya’s story arc is similar to his. But in Ireland’s hands the emotional payoff is different. Sonya too has been left in the country to toil alongside her uncle while her widowed father is off in the city and finding a new wife. The only hope Sonya has for her own happiness is that Astrov might return a bit of the unabashed love she has for him. But Astrov also loves Yelena, who is beautifully played by Julia Chan, a newcomer to me who totally captures the elusive quality that makes everyone so enchanted with Yelena. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Ireland digs deep into Sonya’s disappointment and her awareness that she will never be able to compete with someone like Yelena. And she makes that all so poignantly resonant that you’d be excused for thinking that the play should have been called “Sonya.” I’d urge you to see her marvelous work in this production, whose brief run ends July 16, but tickets sold out within 24-hours of going on sale. So yep, I’m bragging again.</span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-42367476060917383422023-07-01T08:35:00.000-05:002023-07-01T08:35:06.534-05:00 Theater Books for Summer Reading 2023<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEcEWv7MehLmZlGzPaGDb_4dzydZ2KTEtfJvtw7bjAwhZBvwUssb7m7Ce4F5uSsCmx3Y0VcxpteILQamxqxEUI4v5qNEFBH92r_8P78fim4VXZ0XU_9gzB6fGCQBpD-17nD5xTsP_dknrAwseMiG9FbsmG1znJ-7HjCyN7hb3x4dVtrw8NW-z3451B5sw/s1336/book%20illo%20edit.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1264" data-original-width="1336" height="303" id="id_d606_d014_b5bb_acbd" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEcEWv7MehLmZlGzPaGDb_4dzydZ2KTEtfJvtw7bjAwhZBvwUssb7m7Ce4F5uSsCmx3Y0VcxpteILQamxqxEUI4v5qNEFBH92r_8P78fim4VXZ0XU_9gzB6fGCQBpD-17nD5xTsP_dknrAwseMiG9FbsmG1znJ-7HjCyN7hb3x4dVtrw8NW-z3451B5sw/s320/book%20illo%20edit.jpg" style="height: auto; width: 320px;" width="320" /></a></div>Happy Fourth of July Weekend! Time has been so slippery over these past three pandemic years and global warming is now playing such havoc with the weather that on some days just breathing the air is risky. But even so, I’m still able to appreciate when summer arrives. It’s the time when I slow down and worry less, when my beloved husband K sets up my seasonal happy place on our terrace and mixes up cocktails for me to sip out there (old-fashion Vodka Collins this year) and it’s when I get to share my annual summer reading list with those of you who love theater as much as I do. There were so many great choices this year that I really had a hard time whittling the list down but below are 16 of my favorites. two for each of the weeks before Labor Day.<div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>NOVELS</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I’m starting off with novels because I love escaping into other worlds, especially the world of the theater.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cyclorama-Adam-Langer-ebook/dp/B09NCXZXWQ/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1687199676&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Cyclorama by Adam Langer</a> If you read and liked Susan Choi’s “Trust Exercise” (which I recommended back in 2019) then you’ll probably like this new novel about a group of high school kids in the Chicago suburbs and the dangerously charismatic drama teacher they had in the 1980s. But this isn’t just a rip-off of Choi’s National Book Award winner, Langer has a lot to say about current politics, the environment and most especially about how teachers can affect the lives of their students for years after they graduate. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Enter-Ghost/dp/1787334074/ref=sr_1_1?crid=33IVREQPLMLBA&keywords=enter+ghost+a+novel&qid=1687203585&s=books&sprefix=enter+ghost%2Cstripbooks%2C102&sr=1- 1" target="_blank">Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad</a> A company working on a play is a familiar subject for theater-themed novels and this one offers the usual rivalries between actors and the stressful events that threaten to jeopardize the production. But what sets this version apart is that the play, <i>Hamlet</i>, is being readied for a performance in the Israeli-controlled West Bank by an all-Palestinian cast. It’s told through the experience of a British-Palestinian actress who, fleeing London after a bad love affair, tries to reconnect to the homeland she left years before and to the art that defines her true identity.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Someday-Maybe-Novel-Lauren-Graham/dp/0345532740/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1687783541&sr=8-3" target="_blank">Someday, Somewhere, Maybe by Lauren Graham </a> Although she’s now probably best known for starring in the cult TV show “Gilmore Girls,” Graham remembers what it was like trying to break into show business—working low-paying day jobs, sharing cheap apartments, going on endless auditions—and she’s turned all of that into this charming romcom about a young actress who is making one final run at her dreams (including a possible relationship with the hunky movie star in her acting class) before giving up, returning home and settling for marriage to the longtime boyfriend she rarely sees and hardly knows any more. The outcome isn’t really in doubt for attentive readers but Graham makes it fun getting there.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Tender-Thing-Emily-Neuberger/dp/059308487X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1687202664&sr=1-1" target="_blank">A Tender Thing by Emily Neuberger</a> Set in 1959, this novel is another pastiche of familiar tropes: the young heroine’s passion for Broadway and for a talented theater maker is reminiscent of the classic novel “Marjorie Morningstar;” (which I recommended in 2020); the everyone-hates-him-but-he’s-brilliant director is a nod to Jerome Robbins and their musical about an interracial love affair borrows heavily from <i>West Side Story.</i> Even so, I still couldn’t put this one down. But do avoid the audiobook version because Neuberger, who narrates it herself, takes every opportunity she can to sing numbers from her faux musical, which is fine at first but really annoying by the sixth, seventh and eighth time she does it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Twist-Knife-Novel-Anthony-Horowitz/dp/0062938185/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1687199972&sr=8-1" target="_blank">The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz </a> This delightful murder mystery is set in London’s Theaterland. And it has great fun blurring the line between fiction and fact with Horowitz inserting a same-named version of himself into the narrative as the prime suspect when a mean-spirited theater critic is murdered after publishing a savage review of the play he’s just opened. The only hope the fictional Horowitz has of clearing his name is if he can persuade the detective who is supposed to have co-authored his previous books to track down the actual culprit.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Up-Sun-novel-Thomas-Mallon/dp/1524748196/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1687202460&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Up With the Sun by Thomas Mallon </a> The actor Dick Kallman won a Theater World Award for his performance in the 1951 musical <i>Seventeen</i> and he starred in the short-lived TV sitcom “Hank” a decade later but Kallman’s career never really took off, in part because of his abrasive personality. In 1980, he achieved the kind of fame no one wants when he became the victim of a gruesome murder. All of that is compellingly recounted in Mallon’s fictional version of Kallman’s life's story but the best part of the book may be its vivid portrayal of how young Broadway actors came of age in the 1950s and ‘60s. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>MEMOIRS</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I love first-hand accounts of theater history because reading them—or at least the best of them—is like sitting over cool drinks on a hot day while sharing juicy gossip with a good friend.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Algonquin-Kid-Adventures-Growing-Legendary/dp/B06XTT5BXH/ref=sr_1_1?crid=EKM9ZXVEMIIX&keywords=The+Algonquin+Kid%3A+Adventures+Growing+Up+at+New+York%E2%80%99s+Legendary+Hotel+by+Michael+Elihu+Colby.&qid=1687205177&s=books&sprefix=the+algonquin+kid+adventures+growing+up+at+new+york+s+legendary+hotel+by+michael+elihu+colby.+%2Cstripbooks%2C191&sr=1-1" target="_blank">The Algonquin Kid: Adventures Growing Up at New York’s Legendary Hotel by Michael Elihu Colby</a> Who wouldn’t have wanted to be little Mikey Colby? During the Golden Age of Broadway, from 1947 to 1986, his grandparents owned and operated the Algonquin Hotel. Everyone who was anyone in the theater world during those days stayed at the Algonquin, ate at the Algonquin, drank at the Algonquin. And, in some cases, performed at the Algonquin and Colby, the apple of his grandparents’ eyes, had a front-row seat to all of it: meeting celebrities, going to the openings of their shows and eventually, writing some of his own. I’ve been putting this list together for years now and it's hard to think of a better summer read. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Chita-Memoir-Rivera/dp/0063226790/ref=sr_1_1?crid=S9RO6M6SJ31O&keywords=chita+by+chita+rivera&qid=1687783736&sprefix=chita+by+chita+river%2Caps%2C134&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Chita by Chita Rivera with Patrick Pacheco </a> To say that Rivera, now 90, is a living legend is an understatement. She originated the roles of Anita in <i>West Side Story,</i> Velma Kelly in <i>Chicago</i> and the title character in <i>Kiss of the Spider Woman.</i> She’s also a ten-time Tony nominee who has won three of them, including one for Lifetime Achievement; was the first Latina to receive a Kennedy Center Honor and is the namesake of the Chita Rivera Awards that celebrate excellence in dance and choreography on Broadway, off-Broadway and on film. Rivera looks back at all of that in this kind-hearted memoir (she even has nice things to say about the notoriously difficult Jerome Robbins) and although she’s always been a private person, her co-writer, our mutual friend Patrick Pacheco, gets her to talk a bit about some of her past relationships, which include affairs with the legendary Broadway restaurateur Joe Allen and the even more legendary entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shy-Alarmingly-Outspoken-Memoirs-Rodgers/dp/0374298629/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1ZAP1A2V6VNQ1&keywords=Shy%3A+The+Alarmingly+Outspoken+Memoirs+of+Mary+Rodgers&qid=1687783774&sprefix=shy+the+alarmingly+outspoken+memoirs+of+mary+rodgers+%2Caps%2C78&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers and Jesse Green </a>I suppose this is a semi-</span><span style="font-family: arial;">memoir since all of the text was actually written by Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, and most of it was written after the 2014 death of Mary Rodgers, the daughter of Richard Rodgers, the mother of Adam Guettel, the intimate of Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim and an accomplished composer (<i>Once Upon a Mattress</i>) and author (“Freaky Friday”) in her own right. But drawing from taped interviews he conducted with Rodgers before her death, Green has worked hard to capture her gleefully acerbic—and yet often self-deprecating—voice. And, of course it’s hard to beat the story of someone who knew everyone in show business. I know Jesse slightly but even if I didn’t, I’d be recommending this one just as enthusiastically as I am now.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Without-You-Memoir-Love-Musical/dp/0743269772/ref=sr_1_1?crid=Q5XPN23ONKNF&keywords=Without+You%3A+A+Memoir+of+Love%2C+Loss%2C+and+the+Musical+Rent+by+Anthony+Rapp.&qid=1687783823&sprefix=without+you+a+memoir+of+love%2C+loss%2C+and+the+musical+rent+by+anthony+rapp.+%2Caps%2C248&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Without You: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and the Musical Rent</a> by Anthony Rapp. There may not be as much behind-the-scenes gossip about <i>Rent</i> as fans might want in this memoir by the actor who originated the role of Mark in the workshop production of Jonathan Larson’s landmark musical and then went on to play it during the show’s legendary run at New York Theatre Workshop, on Broadway, in the national tour, in the London revival and in the ill-conceived movie. But there’s enough. Rapp has also turned his memories into a one-man show that recently closed in New York but that will soon be touring to other parts of the country. But his book goes even deeper, bravely revealing some of the not-so-pleasant parts of himself as a young man learning to deal with fame and grief, particularly after the death of his beloved mother. </span></p><p><b><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">SOME OTHER GOOD STUFF</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And then there are the theater books that fall into a category all their own.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Blanche-Tennessee-Williamss-Greatest-Creation/dp/0062947176/ref=sr_1_1?crid=HZKMN43GKV3&keywords=Blanche%3A+The+Life+and+Times+of+Tennessee+Williams%27s+Greatest+Creation+by+Nancy+Schoenberger&qid=1687783968&sprefix=blanche+the+life+and+times+of+tennessee+williams%27s+greatest+creation+by+nancy+schoenberger+%2Caps%2C115&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Blanche: The Life and Times of Tennessee Williams's Greatest Creation by Nancy Schoenberger </a>Few characters in any genre are as memorable—or can be evoked by the utterance of just one name—as Blanche DuBois, the tragic heroine of Tennessee Williams’ <i>A Streetcar Named Desire. </i> Schoenberger had the very smart idea of chronicling how playing this iconic role affected six actors, ranging from Jessica Tandy, who created the part in the original 1947 production, to the 2018 staging at the Marines’ Memorial Theatre in San Francisco that gave Jemier Jenkins the chance to be one of the few black actresses to tackle the role in a major production. The book reveals how each woman stepped into the role and how difficult it was for her to leave it behind. It’s a must-read for serious theater lovers.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gays-Broadway-Ethan-Mordden/dp/0190063106/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3F0G23FZN4OOA&keywords=Gays+on+Broadway+by+Ethan+Mordden&qid=1687784003&sprefix=gays+on+broadway+by+ethan+mordden+%2Caps%2C93&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Gays on Broadway by Ethan Mordden</a> In one way or another, Broadway has provided a home and a haven for gay artists and their stories. In his latest book, Mordden, the dean of theater historians, chronicles how those actors and the shows in which they performed both reflected and shaped America’s changing attitude toward gay people, from the days in which queer artists had to maneuver around the Wales Padlock Act, which made it illegal to depict “sex degeneracy, or sex perversion” onstage; to the ways in which plays like <i>As Is, the Normal Heart </i>and<i> Angels in America</i> helped to make the AIDS crisis a part of the national conversation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Broadway-Acclaimed-Designers-Theatre/dp/076248036X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1FDKPOTTEHYMS&keywords=Designing+Broadway%3A+How+Derek+McLane+and+Other+Acclaimed+Set+Designers+Create+the+Visual+World+of+Theatre&qid=1687784063&sprefix=designing+broadway+how+derek+mclane+and+other+acclaimed+set+designers+create+the+visual+world+of+theatre%2Caps%2C207&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Designing Broadway: How Derek McLane and Other Acclaimed Set Designers Create the Visual World of Theatre by Derek McLane and Eila Mell</a> AND <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Transforming-Space-Over-Time-Storytelling/dp/1493064843/ref=pd_bxgy_sccl_1/130-1853708-9267355?pd_rd_w=ThgZY&content-id=amzn1.sym.26a5c67f-1a30-486b-bb90-b523ad38d5a0&pf_rd_p=26a5c67f-1a30-486b-bb90-b523ad38d5a0&pf_rd_r=NABQ6D6X3X1YHEMGT1NW&pd_rd_wg=rtu42&pd_rd_r=9c227b20-3b06-4a8c-b0b4-779d71e952a9&pd_rd_i=1493064843&psc=1" target="_blank">Transforming Space Over Time: Set Design and Visual Storytelling with Broadway’s Legendary Directors by Beowulf Boritt</a> Two of the very best set designers working today—two-time Tony winner McLane and two-time Tony winner Boritt—have turned out terrific books on how they and their peers create the physical worlds in which plays and musical take place. Each tells in-the-room-where-it-happened stories about how they devised such sets as the colorful phantasmagoria McLane designed for <i>Moulin Rouge</i> and the erector-set marvel Boritt created for<i> Act One</i> and they share conversations detailing how they’ve worked with collaborators ranging from Hal Prince to Kenny Leon. Both books offer master classes in scenic design. But if you’re feeling summer-time lazy, the pictures and illustrations alone are worth the price of these books.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Stage-Musicals-Routledge-Guides/dp/0367444410/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2W6607TCHNNT9&keywords=Fifty+Key+Stage+Musicals&qid=1687784226&sprefix=fifty+key+stage+musicals%2Caps%2C88&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.f5122f16-c3e8-4386-bf32-63e904010ad0" target="_blank">Fifty Key Stage Musicals, edited by Robert W. Schneider and Shannon Agnew </a>This invaluable collection of essays not only makes the case for the importance of each of the 50 shows it covers but for the book itself as one of the very best of the attempts to rank the shows that have shaped the musical theater canon. It starts with <i>The Black Crook, </i>which opened in 1866, and so delighted theatergoers with its scantily dressed (for the times) chorus girls that it was revived 15 times over the next 20 years and it moves right up to the contemporary phenomenon of <i>Hamilton</i>. Each show gets its own chapter, written by an expert who provides historical context and defends its right to be on the list. I tried to restrict myself to one chapter a day but failed at that and ended up tearing through the whole thing in just a few sittings.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Musical-Theatre-Dummies-Seth-Rudetsky/dp/1119889502/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1Y0HV241BZSMB&keywords=Musicals+for+Dummies+by+Seth+Rudetsky&qid=1687784300&sprefix=musicals+for+dummies+by+seth+rudetsky%2Caps%2C123&sr=8-1" target="_blank">Musicals for Dummies by Seth Rudetsky</a> Everything anyone could possibly want to know about musical theater (what an orchestrator does, which stars broke out in which Broadway shows, how to get tickets for a hot show, why people should pay attention to community theater) is packed into this book. But even though all of it is told in Rudetsky’s inimitable chatty style, I hadn’t planned to include the book on this list because most people reading this post already know a lot of that stuff. However, the Kindle version of the book includes wonderful links that Rudetsky—and who knows more about musicals than him—has curated to illustrate many of the points he makes and although I don’t much care for watching videos online, I was transported by his selections. This isn’t just a summer read, it’s an all-around-the-year read.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Finally, as always, if you’re looking for even more to read, here are the links to my now over 150 suggestions from previous years:</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2022/07/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2022.html" target="_blank">2022</a></span></p><div><p><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2021/07/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2021.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: arial;">2021</span></a></p><p><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2020/07/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2020.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: arial;">2020:</span></a></p><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2019/07/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2019.html">2019</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2018/06/summer-reading-for-theater-lovers-2018.html">2018</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2017/07/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2017.html">2017</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2016/07/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2016.html">2016</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2015/07/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2015.html">2015</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2014/07/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2014.html">2014</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2013/07/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2013.html">2013</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2012/06/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2012.html">2012</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2011/07/theater-books-for-summer-reading-2011.html">2011</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="http://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2010/06/summer-reading-2010.html">2010</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="http://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2009/07/summer-reading.html">2009</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="http://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2008/07/summer-reading-08.html">2008</a></span><br /><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><br /></span><span face=""arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif"><a href="http://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2007/07/summer-reading.html">2007</a></span></span></div></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><div><br /></div></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-28371421842574563272023-06-10T06:52:00.000-05:002023-06-10T06:52:17.903-05:00How "The Comeuppance" Let Me Down<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpQGaaMV9MN98-tyZ2SgUWud1JB9gTui6iuSytE_dbZhDnv1rYA-bMtgD-YrCQ9BR73m-xOBBE-y__UIP2pMdDb9qFJdlXqdV3WIpXu1vahe1FMQaT8WK3Iol3HZRNXnknJTeYNsjY9IwuZ5pwn6rD9M5Dq1kCQM1UES0CVRZ2S2YNdP3PtfCehsA0/s1200/photo-group.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1200" height="266" id="id_d24_54a8_3915_ec30" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpQGaaMV9MN98-tyZ2SgUWud1JB9gTui6iuSytE_dbZhDnv1rYA-bMtgD-YrCQ9BR73m-xOBBE-y__UIP2pMdDb9qFJdlXqdV3WIpXu1vahe1FMQaT8WK3Iol3HZRNXnknJTeYNsjY9IwuZ5pwn6rD9M5Dq1kCQM1UES0CVRZ2S2YNdP3PtfCehsA0/w400-h266/photo-group.jpg" style="height: auto; width: 400px;" width="400" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and I go back a long way. I saw his first New York show down at P.S. 122 right after its director quit during previews and one of the actors published a piece in The Village Voice calling the play “a piece of crap.” Jacobs-Jenkins had to rally the remaining cast and direct the show himself, which didn’t go so well <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/06/18/disgruntled-cast-member-issues-invite-to-p-s-122s-troubled-octoroon/" target="_blank">(click here to read more about that). </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But four years later in 2014, <i>An Octoroon,</i> that same riff on an old Dion Boucicault melodrama, got a second chance at Soho Rep, where it was brilliantly staged and helped put the playwright on the theatrical map for his bodacious use of conventional tropes to explore uncomfortable truths about race, gender and class <a href="https://broadwayandme.blogspot.com/2014/05/an-oct" target="_blank">(click here to read my review of that one). </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I've been eagerly following Jacobs-Jenkins ever since and cheering most of the work (<i>Appropriate, Everybody, Gloria</i>) that he's done. Until now. <i>The Comeuppance,</i> his rumination on the mid-life disappointments of the Millennial Generation that opened this week at Signature Theatre, disappointed me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The play is centered around the 20th reunion of a group of high school friends. They’re a multi-racial bunch (back in the day, they called themselves “Merge,” a homonym acronym for “Multi-Ethnic Reject Group”) and they dated one another and took pride in being the smartest kids at their Catholic school. But, of course, over the years their lives have gone down different paths. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Emilio is an expat artist whose work has been selected for the Whitney Biennial but who’s a bit mysterious about his family back in Berlin. His former girlfriend Kristina is now a doctor and a mother of five but a not-so-secret alcoholic. Their friend Ursula is barely scraping by and dealing with an aggressive form of diabetes that has blinded her in one eye. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Meanwhile Caitlin, once the smartest of the crew, is now a stay-at-home wife married to an ex-cop and Trump supporter; and her old beau Paco is a vet struggling with severe PTSD after multiple tours in the Middle East. A sixth member who calls in to say he can’t make it to the gathering seems to be a finance bro.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Himself 38, </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Jacobs-Jenkins </span><span style="font-family: arial;">clearly wants to say something profound about how living through such ordeals as the Columbine High School massacre, the 9/11 attacks, the interminable wars that followed, the Great Recession, the rise of Trumpism and the Covid pandemic have affected his generation. But he doesn't seem to know what more to say about those calamities than that they happened. And that they messed people up. That seems to have been enough for some critics (<i>The Comeuppance</i> is a New York Times Critics Pick). But I was left wanting something more.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Jacobs-Jenkins seems aware of the shortfall and he tries to draw some conclusions in wordy but vague speeches at the end of the play. There's also been online chatter about his revising the script substantially during previews. I can't confirm that but I find it believable because actors stumbled repeatedly over lines at the performance I saw a few days before the show opened. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;">And these aren’t the kind of actors who flub lines. In fact, the cast is stacked with such talented performers—Caleb Eberhardt, Brittany Bradford, Susannah Flood, </span><span style="font-family: arial;">Shannon Tyo,</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> and Bobby Moreno—that it’s almost as though the casting notice read “Only the most excellent young actors working in New York need apply.”</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">They are funny and touching and, Moreno in particular is called on to give an intensely physical performance. So it’s easy at first to hang out with them. But the show runs for nearly two-and-a-half hours without intermission and since none of their characters really change, they eventually wore out their welcome with me. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In an apparent effort to give some gravitas to the play, Death has been added as an additional player and speaks directly to the audience in the voices of each of the five onstage characters. We’re clued in that Death has taken over one of them when the lights flicker and that actor's voice is filtered through a synthesizer that often makes it difficult to understand what's being said. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">All of the action takes place on the front porch of Ursula’s modest home where the group has gathered for a pre-party before heading off for the larger class reunion, even though some dialog indicates that it’s chilly outside. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Director Eric Ting does what he can to move the actors around the small space as their characters reminisce, get high and try to settle old disputes or rekindle old romances. But I couldn’t figure out why Jacobs-Jenkins had placed them out there in the first place. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Maybe the setting is supposed to be some kind of metaphor for the characters—and all of us—being on Death’s doorstep. I've come too far with Jacobs-Jenkins and he's too gifted a playwright for me to abandon him but I can't help thinking that <i>The Comeuppance</i> owes us more than that.</span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-39765588255287559632023-05-27T06:51:00.002-05:002023-05-30T09:47:49.188-05:00Delicious Diversity with "Monsoon Wedding," "Bernarda's Daughters" and "Bees & Honey"<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibpJHhsFUSxufuZ_kMgO3CZ0jzfPrmCTzH2atMBZGQQQI23vGyebpPx3-Z0MVKGJyFrSaDobh7KElD9n_75dXQuNHum1GbFwGXR7mlszj66fWTFvnzDysQgrCShGygMXSsH9Ox52g8M7-t9V8sLt8u8fDhVATSAYAfw_YN-XDbauBGYx-mCIjQVhGN/s5810/Photo-Wedding.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3875" data-original-width="5810" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibpJHhsFUSxufuZ_kMgO3CZ0jzfPrmCTzH2atMBZGQQQI23vGyebpPx3-Z0MVKGJyFrSaDobh7KElD9n_75dXQuNHum1GbFwGXR7mlszj66fWTFvnzDysQgrCShGygMXSsH9Ox52g8M7-t9V8sLt8u8fDhVATSAYAfw_YN-XDbauBGYx-mCIjQVhGN/w400-h266/Photo-Wedding.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Diversity is sometimes thought of as the vegetable of theatrical offerings: something that we theater lovers should include in the diet of things we consume because it’s "good" for us. But maybe we should be thinking of it as the spice that can bring some zest to the theatrical mix. At least that’s what I’ve been thinking after seeing three recent shows that have found new flavors in familiar tropes by unabashedly rooting themselves in the customs and language of cultures whose stories we’re only now beginning to see onstage. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Monsoon Wedding. </b>This musical adaptation of Mira Nair’s 2001 film that is now playing at St. Ann’s Warehouse through June 25 puts Indian culture in the spotlight. Its book by Arpita Mukherjee and Sabrina Dhawan sticks close to Nair’s original story about the complications surrounding an arranged marriage between a wealthy New Delhi girl and the American-reared son of an Indian family who live in the U.S. Maybe too close <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2023/05/12/monsoon-wedding-musical-mira-nair/" target="_blank">(click here to read more about the adaptation). </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It might have worked better if Mukherjee and Dhawan had gotten rid of some of the film’s ancillary relatives and their storylines and instead, focused on the main couple, who are here charmingly played by Salena Qureshi and Deven Kolluri. And the score, with music by Vishal Bhardwaj and lyrics by Masi Asare and Susan Birkenhead, is only so-so, a motley mix of show tunes and Bollywood-style bangers that, with the exception of a ballad or two, drift in one ear and out the other.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But Nair, who conceived and directed the show, understands that at its heart <i>Monsoon Wedding</i> is a riff on a Shakespearean comedy, complete with high and low humor and multiple marriages at its end. She makes it her own by leaning into the details that make up modern Indian life, be it the lingering respect for familial ties, the colloquial Hindi that's sprinkled throughout the script or the splashy production numbers reminiscent of those in Bollywood films. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In the end, it’s fun to see a cast of some two dozen Indian actors filling the stage and having such a good time doing so. And it was just as gratifying to see so many South Asian people in the audience with big smiles on their faces.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDlvyFWU0wy8k_j2Es4U1sE6WWWuLPCuP7Iq2qq5cGj2JfrgDK7YEv4lJ2NGcooENiP7X3tcwoVl4mRZAKBTo2VH_WQE1fiijvPEKAVvgk1wZe2oRXrnzhkqx7ShGH0vIlkX0q5-3_494iziWUUZAjvChHBBNRKZanlqOLq2kmxn1sP2zN14PUYR4-/s2400/Photo-Daughters.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="2400" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDlvyFWU0wy8k_j2Es4U1sE6WWWuLPCuP7Iq2qq5cGj2JfrgDK7YEv4lJ2NGcooENiP7X3tcwoVl4mRZAKBTo2VH_WQE1fiijvPEKAVvgk1wZe2oRXrnzhkqx7ShGH0vIlkX0q5-3_494iziWUUZAjvChHBBNRKZanlqOLq2kmxn1sP2zN14PUYR4-/s320/Photo-Daughters.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></div><b>Bernarda’s Daughters. </b>Five Haitian-American sisters in contemporary Flatbush anchor Diane Exavier’s retelling of Spanish playwright Federico Garcia-Lorca’s classic drama <i>The House of Bernarda Alba</i> that is being given a joint production by National Black Theatre and The New Group at the Signature Center through June 4. <p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Exavier peppers her version of this story of frustrated women held back by societal restraints with bits of French and Creole and with references to Brooklyn landmarks and lore. All of it clearly hit home with many members of the audience the night I saw the show. But I have to confess that it didn’t work as well for me. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The show’s set is basically empty, save for some boxes and floor pillows, and so oddly constructed that at times important scenes can only be seen by some portions of the audience. Dominique Rider’s direction was just as poorly focused and the actors came across as though they were performing in different plays, although Pascale Armand and Tamara Tunie do manage to bring some gravitas to the roles of the eldest sister and the girls’ grandmother. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But again, the people sitting around me seemed to delight in the show’s insider jokes, its politics (anti-gentrification) and just in the fact that so many black women were sharing a stage together. It wasn’t just the larger than usual number of black people in the audience enjoying it either. The young white guy sitting in front of me was one of the first to jump up at the end to show his appreciation with a standing ovation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><b></b></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhyk1u1o4eC7ZAFb-l5Q8ubRz4DmuuVzf5V43lnUdEzPzxNSgKPVMseNPk7n-LEjmdmu0smFgZ3jl2ZZwEoIaiNizAt5HXgIdyqGSS7HGWQar-rZimUVqWVFDkomZEd_EtCB_URqpQQ2PzTihQaNFpebzuaQvTuo2JMFc-2dh353ges-UBy-q9AS3y/s400/Photos--Bees.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="267" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhyk1u1o4eC7ZAFb-l5Q8ubRz4DmuuVzf5V43lnUdEzPzxNSgKPVMseNPk7n-LEjmdmu0smFgZ3jl2ZZwEoIaiNizAt5HXgIdyqGSS7HGWQar-rZimUVqWVFDkomZEd_EtCB_URqpQQ2PzTihQaNFpebzuaQvTuo2JMFc-2dh353ges-UBy-q9AS3y/s320/Photos--Bees.jpg" width="214" /></a></b></div><b>Bees & Honey. </b>It’s usually a put-down when you say that a show resembles a romcom but Guadalís Del Carmen’s two-hander about the relationship between a Dominican couple in Washington Heights playing at MCC through June 11 is an endearing delight. <p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">That’s partly because guided by Melissa Crespo’s deft direction, there’s such terrific chemistry between the actors Maribel Martinez and Xavier Pacheco. But the show also works because, Del Carmen has her couple Jahaira and Manuel sidestep the usual stereotypes by making them specific and relatable people. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There's no gangbanging. Or immigration angst. Jahaira is a lawyer rising through the ranks at the D.A.’s office; Manuel owns an auto-repair shop and is successful enough that he’s planning to expand to other boroughs. She reads bell hooks; he relaxes with videogames. They both love eating sancocho and dancing bachata. Each lapses into Spanish when feeling agitated or amorous. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This time, the larger than usual number of audience members at my performance were Latino and they clearly identified with the characters, laughing heartily at jokes the rest of us knew to be funny, even if we weren’t entirely sure why. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But none of these shows made me feel shut out, even when the characters spoke a few words in languages I don’t know. Rather, I felt as though I were being given a chance to share in an experience I hadn’t seen onstage before. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">These aren’t perfect shows. I particularly disliked the serious issues—child sexual abuse in <i>Monsoon Wedding,</i> police shootings of young black men in <i>Bernarda’s Daughters,</i> the legal system’s inadequate response to rape victims in <i>Bees & Honey</i>—that seemed shoehorned into each show, perhaps in misguided attempts to make them relevant to wider audiences. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">We don’t need that kind of pandering. We just need more chances like these to see new stories, or even old ones, reflected through a refreshingly new gaze.</span></p>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-60058594763792916492023-05-20T07:22:00.000-05:002023-05-20T07:22:40.251-05:00Celebrating The 50th Anniversary of TOFT<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVKLDzzbIK_iCYZQMy4kNdT8F5UwnlhIGUsnY2E0YZhyI4_HWREyvRUv8ISLbw3h8O6njYAgxQm74oJa0Aapb99g4AnrdGVanyIpiLs2RwbOUz2sjucdus0x8M8oML-DFOUHEZaobH6mADS4VlHo327eEHGCZWBUNXCQVvm7dPH_BbQu_uvdEqsKqw/s782/toft%20library%20photo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="782" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVKLDzzbIK_iCYZQMy4kNdT8F5UwnlhIGUsnY2E0YZhyI4_HWREyvRUv8ISLbw3h8O6njYAgxQm74oJa0Aapb99g4AnrdGVanyIpiLs2RwbOUz2sjucdus0x8M8oML-DFOUHEZaobH6mADS4VlHo327eEHGCZWBUNXCQVvm7dPH_BbQu_uvdEqsKqw/w400-h246/toft%20library%20photo.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />No review posting today but I’m thrilled to be able to share the news that Patrick Hoffman, the director and curator of The Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at New York's Library for the Performing Arts (TOFT), has invited me to interview him about the archive’s 50th anniversary and the wonderful exhibit that Patrick and his colleagues have put together to celebrate it. This free event will take place on June 1 at 6 p.m. in the library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium. You can register to join us by clicking <a href="https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2023/06/01/50-years-theatre-film-and-tape-archive" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><p></p>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-62943900123672898522023-05-16T17:47:00.001-05:002023-05-17T09:02:07.925-05:00"The Cotillion" Looks at the Very Complex Demands Put on Middle-Class Black Women<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLmSQWXwm0230OsDh2CLmGV0NV1zYkG9hJnTB4KOUsrDSTyp_y7gpKBzhRSuVwM_oR9ikgrvZ6DcmkRD0ITp13Xp84hAa9CCfakAp7iPeFIf5fI7bjiXbYhmVgCjEIhvj2MiyFjxzE4bbFxfft_AKm25oUaEXTwkh8k445WqgEMdbs_8t7JHDgd3jw/s1180/photo-cotillion%20crop.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="664" data-original-width="1180" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLmSQWXwm0230OsDh2CLmGV0NV1zYkG9hJnTB4KOUsrDSTyp_y7gpKBzhRSuVwM_oR9ikgrvZ6DcmkRD0ITp13Xp84hAa9CCfakAp7iPeFIf5fI7bjiXbYhmVgCjEIhvj2MiyFjxzE4bbFxfft_AKm25oUaEXTwkh8k445WqgEMdbs_8t7JHDgd3jw/w400-h225/photo-cotillion%20crop.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br />Regular readers will know that I usually post my reviews on Saturdays but I’m changing things up this week because the show I want to talk about has a short run and the performance I recently saw wasn’t as well-attended as I think it should have been so I want to get the word out about it. That show is <i>The Cotillion, </i>which New Georges and the Movement Theater Company are jointly presenting at A.R.T./New York only through May 27.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The show, whose full official title is <i>The Harriet Holland Social Club Presents the 84th Annual Star-Burst Cotillion in the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel,</i> first drew my attention when I learned that it was centered around the seldom-discussed debutante balls in which young African-American women are introduced into society. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Such ceremonies are usually associated with wealthy, white women in Regency-era novels, which makes sense because the first-ever debutante ball is believed to have been thrown in 1780 by King George III in honor of his wife Charlotte’s birthday (fans of the Netflix series “Bridgerton” can make of that what you will). But black folks here in the U.S. have been conducting similar events since 1895 <a href="https://www.messynessychic.com/2021/09/09/black-debutante-balls-curtsying-with-pride-since-1778/" target="_blank">(click here to read more about that). </a> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">For their champions, these lavish affairs are demonstrations that prove young black women can be as poised and polished as any other girls. For their detractors, these events are a shameful display of class, caste and colorism within the black community. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Now, here’s where I have to admit that I was a debutante</span><span style="font-family: arial;">—albeit a reluctant one—</span><span style="font-family: arial;">in my teens and I still have ambivalent feelings about cotillions. But they offer the kind of story about the black community that still rarely gets told onstage and so I was curious to see what this play would do with the subject. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I’m happy to report that Colette Robert, who both wrote and directed <i>The Cotillion, </i>not only deals fairly with both sides of the debate but has come up with a simultaneously entertaining and thought-provoking way to present it. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The 100-minute play unfolds in 14 scenes that are supposed to represent the sequence of events in a cotillion hosted by the fictional Harriet Holland Social Club, whose members are drawn from the most affluent and successful black people in the local community of a major metropolitan city. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">We in the audience, arrayed around three-quarters of the playing area, have been assigned the role of stand-ins for the family, friends and other supporters attending the affair. As we enter the theater, a terrific female quartet, accompanied by a swinging three-piece combo, is singing Nina Simone’s “Four Women,” a taxonomy of the different kinds of stereotypes to which black women have been subjected over the centuries <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Women_(song)" target="_blank">(click here for more on that).</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">A few more upbeat tunes follow and then there are welcome speeches from two of the social club’s officers. It’s clear from the start that these women, deliciously played by Jehan O. Young and Akyiaa Wilson, don’t see eye to eye but that both are dedicated to the mission of celebrating the accomplishments of the debutantes, giving them that rare moment to feel special and crowning the one who best represents the image they want the rest of the world to appreciate about black women.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The six contestants are introduced and, as one might expect, each represents some aspect of the black middle and upper class. Among them are the legacy who’s afraid she can’t live up to the standards set by her high-achieving family, the daughter of strivers who's determined to succeed but doesn’t have as much financial or social currency as the others and the young lesbian who is trying to honor the traditions of the evening without compromising herself. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There isn't enough time to dig into any of their stories but it's fun to watch as the girls go through the rituals of fixing their hair and stuffing themselves into flouncy white dresses (kudos to </span><span style="font-family: arial;">hair & wig wrangler Nikiya Mathis and </span><span style="font-family: arial;">costume designer Mika Eubanks) and as they perform elaborate curtseys, stumble through the steps of antiquated quadrilles and join their dads in the requisite father-daughter dance (none of the men are shown; instead the actresses mime partnering with them). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But as the evening proceeds, Robert broadens her canvas and deepens her sense of purpose to consider how such rituals echo the ways that black women were treated on the auction block during slavery, by the 19th century quadroon balls in which wealthy white men selected mixed-race women to be their concubines or in the modern-day settings in which black women are required to look and behave in a prescribed way in order to be deemed acceptable (the Crown Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of hairstyle and hair texture such as braids and afros, has only been adapted by 18 of the 50 states). </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Robert doesn’t issue a final verdict on cotillions. Or on the broader issue of respectability politics. But, as she says on the play’s website, <i>The Cotillion</i> reflects “the messy, beautiful, ugly complications of living in this country.” <a href="https://newgeorges.org/the-record-list/the-cotillion/" target="_blank">(Click here to read more of what she had to say.) </a> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I still don’t know how I feel about cotillions but in the final moment of this play I found myself sighing in deep and uncomfortable recognition of the conundrum they raise. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-69966952331285649052023-05-06T06:21:00.001-05:002023-05-06T06:39:07.260-05:00Reveling in the 2022-23 Awards Season <p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0GwiLkuNBwEcJ9SDqdpzauEIQ0hXT_MqOVzX-7eo3Vaos4fFimObS36P3ilnkL6JVEKD9MU72_XqWhIjxF_P7w21edgET-rUTpVQb3T-Z7u_fAWsI2BW9VoO_-0i6dfARh0K9VOGQvq2y3WaP8NzH4T_MCW5uX-9zhUYvEaKk9EehKeVQI79AzTDv/s750/awards%20grid%202023.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="750" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0GwiLkuNBwEcJ9SDqdpzauEIQ0hXT_MqOVzX-7eo3Vaos4fFimObS36P3ilnkL6JVEKD9MU72_XqWhIjxF_P7w21edgET-rUTpVQb3T-Z7u_fAWsI2BW9VoO_-0i6dfARh0K9VOGQvq2y3WaP8NzH4T_MCW5uX-9zhUYvEaKk9EehKeVQI79AzTDv/s320/awards%20grid%202023.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">And so it’s begun. The last show of Broadway’s 2022-23 season—a revival of </span><i style="font-family: arial;">The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,</i><span style="font-family: arial;">Lorraine Hansberry’s 1964 meditation on white allyship</span><span style="font-family: arial;">—opened on April 27. And that's set off a flood of awards nominations, including the ones this week for the Tonys.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Drama League got things going with its nominations for both on and off-Broadway productions <a href="https://dramaleague.org/2023-awards/" target="_blank">(click here to see its choices)</a> and will announce its winners on May 19. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The Outer Critics Circle, for whom I serve as a nominator, announced our slate of on and off-Broadway nominees a couple of days later <a href="https://outercritics.org/2023/04/27/2022-2023-occ-nominations/" target="_blank">(click here to read them)</a>; we’ll announce our winners on May 15 and celebrate them in an awards ceremony at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on May 25. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Then the Drama Desk (I’m a voting member of that one) announced its candidates for the season’s best productions on Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway<a href="https://www.theatermania.com/news/shucked-some-like-it-hot-lead-2023-drama-desk-award-nominations_1700167/" target="_blank"> (click here for those)</a> and it will hand out its prizes on June 6.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The rules and even the eligibility dates vary from group to group but a consensus does seem to have formed around which were the best Broadway shows. Each of the groups put Tom Stoppard’s Holocaust drama <i>Leopoldstadt</i> on their lists and all three nominated the musicals <i>& Juliet, </i>a jukebox musical riff on Shakespeare set to pop songs by Max Martin; <i>Shucked</i>, a comedy about corn with a joke-stoked book by Robert Horn and music by country songwriters Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally; and </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Some Like It Hot, </i><span style="font-family: arial;">Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin’s updating of that classic movie comedy </span><span style="font-family: arial;">with a score by Scott Wittman and Marc Shaiman. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In the revival categories, the awards groups agreed on <i>Ohio State Murders,</i> Adrienne Kennedy’s seldom seen meditation on toxic racism, for best play; and <i>Parade</i>, Jason Robert Brown and Alfred Uhry’s rendering of an antisemitic lynching, as the best musical. And now the Tonys have confirmed those choices, while adding others—including a few surprises.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Joining the already Olivier-honored <i>Leopoldstadt</i> for the Tony honor of best play are three Pulitzer Prize winners that have only now made it to Broadway: Stephen Adly Guirgis’ <i>Between Riverside and Crazy, </i>Martyna Majok’s <i>Cost of Living</i> and James Ijames’ <i>Fat Ham</i>, each of which also snagged nominations for actors in their casts. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Rounding out the best play category is <i>Ain’t No Mo’,</i> a satire about a government program that addresses the race problem by giving every black person in the U.S. a one-way ticket to Africa. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Ain’t No Mo's</i> spot on the list is a bit of a surprise since the show ran for just 23 performances in December but it’s racked up six nominations, including one for its director and a featured acting nod for its 26-year-old playwright Jordan E. Cooper who also appeared in the play as a no-nonsense flight attendant named Peaches.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">For best musical, </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Some Like It Hot, </i><i style="font-family: arial;">Shucked </i><span style="font-family: arial;">and </span><i style="font-family: arial;">& Juliet </i><span style="font-family: arial;">were joined by </span><i style="font-family: arial;">New York, New York,</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> a paean to the city built around numbers from the songbook of 96-year-old John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, with additional lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda; and </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Kimberly Akimbo, </i><span style="font-family: arial;">the musical that Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire adapted from his play about a 16-year-old girl with a rare genetic condition that prematurely ages her. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">That same production of <i>Kimberly Akimbo</i> won the top prize from all the other critics’ groups (including the New York Drama Critics Circle) when it played off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater in the 2021-22 season and it’s been a frontrunner for the Tony since it opened on Broadway last November. But it now looks as though it may have to beat back competition from S<i>ome Like It Hot,</i> which earned 13 Tony nominations, more than any other show this year.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But the hottest races may be in the revival categories. <i>Ohio State Murders </i>didn’t make the cut for the Tonys (although its star Audra McDonald did get a nomination—her 10th—for her performance). Instead, the best play revival contest is between August Wilson’s <i>The Piano Lesson</i>, Suzan-Lori Parks’ <i>Topdog/Underdog</i> (both Pulitzer winners; are you detecting a trend?) and playwright Amy Herzog's new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s classic feminist drama <i>A Doll’s House</i>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And the showdown is even more intense in the revived musicals category with <i>Parade</i> facing off against two beloved Stephen Sondheim shows, <i>Into the Woods </i>and<i> Sweeney Todd: The Demond Barber of Fleet Street;</i> and a new version of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s <i>Camelot</i>, updated by Aaron Sorkin <a href="https://www.tonyawards.com/news/2023-tony-awards-nominees/" target="_blank">(you can check out all the Tony nominations here). </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">As you might imagine, I’ve spent the last few days doing almost nothing but thinking and talking about these awards. I’m delighted to be able to say that I tied for second place on the Gold Derby awards site’s list of theater “experts” who predicted which shows, actors and other creatives would get Tony nominations <a href="https://www.goldderby.com/leaderboard/tony-awards-nominations-2023-predictions/expert/" target="_blank">(click here to see more about that). </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I also spent an hour on Tuesday afternoon talking about the Tony choices with a panel of folks convened by the Theatre Development Fund <a href=" https://twitter.com/TDFNYC/status/1653429200013910021?s=20" target="_blank">(you can listen to that by clicking here).</a> And two days after that, I again joined Adam Feldman of Time Out New York and Helen Shaw of The New Yorker to record an episode on the Tonys for my pal Patrick Pacheco’s show “THEATER: All the Moving Parts,” which will air later this month. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I’m a little talked out right now. But that won’t last long. The one big takeaway I’ve had this week is that the 2022-23 season was a damn good one and I don’t think I’m done with it yet, especially since this year’s Pulitzer awards are scheduled to be announced next week. Plus, believe it or not, I’ve already begun lining up shows to see for the 2023-24 season. So I hope you’ll come back here and join me for all of it.</span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-23469578539956093502023-04-15T07:02:00.000-05:002023-04-15T07:02:16.999-05:00A "Camelot" That's Not the Most Shining Spot <p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinACH0HaymmrLc_yDiF7iAzyv0orm2D30qJjRNBRljXawsrZkZDl8VbDyCYtkXWWC9HijvcwZIBTe41ZiGDYhxQU5YqjVjteVHQrpxAJWQPL-B8j580D1XiJbfuaHyfsBRRWslDXYgjQym0UHnbisRSkhsrxsyFJ74Xr1TFp82Fk0_zF6c15sdWRIY/s8306/photo-camelot-couple.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5537" data-original-width="8306" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinACH0HaymmrLc_yDiF7iAzyv0orm2D30qJjRNBRljXawsrZkZDl8VbDyCYtkXWWC9HijvcwZIBTe41ZiGDYhxQU5YqjVjteVHQrpxAJWQPL-B8j580D1XiJbfuaHyfsBRRWslDXYgjQym0UHnbisRSkhsrxsyFJ74Xr1TFp82Fk0_zF6c15sdWRIY/w400-h266/photo-camelot-couple.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">O.K., so here’s the dilemma: when you revive a classic show that has problematic elements (and which of them doesn’t?) should you keep it the way it was written or update it for modern sensibilities? The new production of <i>Camelot</i>, which opened in Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater this week, chose the latter. And I’m not sure that was a good idea.</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Camelot</i> has always been problematic. Its score by Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner is delightful and filled with gorgeous ballads like “If Ever I Would Leave You” and “I Loved You Once in Silence” but Lerner’s book, adapted from T. H. White's fantasy novel “The Once and Future King” with its story of the love triangle between King Arthur, his queen Guenevere and the cocky knight Sir Lancelot has always been clunky. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">That was in part because Lerner had a mental breakdown during the writing of the show and its director Moss Hart suffered a heart attack during rehearsals, all of that making it even more difficult than usual for the creative team to agree on what to cut, what to add and how to refine the end product. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The reviews were understandably mixed but the appearance of four numbers on TV host Ed Sullivan’s popular variety show caused ticket buyers to line up, resulting in the show’s running for nearly 900 performances and winning five Tonys, including one for Richard Burton’s portrayal of the cuckolded king. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But the show’s greatest claim to fame may be the fact that a week after JFK’s assassination, his widow Jackie Kennedy gave an interview in which she compared his brief time in office with the mythical Arthur’s hopes for a utopian society that would be just for all its inhabitants, or as the title song's lyrics say "Once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot."</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The current problem with the show—no surprise—rests in the book’s treatment of Guenevere. Even though Julie Andrews leant her trademark sparkle to the role in the original production, Guenevere is basically just a trophy wife for the guys to fight over. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">So when the director Bart Sher<i> </i>decided to revive <i>Camelot</i>, he also decided that it need a book that reflected more updated views about women and he drafted his buddy Aaron Sorkin to supply them <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/22/theater/aaron-sorkin-camelot-broadway.html" target="_blank">(click here to read more about that).</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">For his part, Sher has cast the show well and created some beautiful stage pictures. The opening image of the show as Arthur’s knights emerge to greet the arriving Guenevere is spectacular. But the show never hits that height again, not even in the terrific swordplay choreographed by the legendary fight director B.H. Barry </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/fight-director-broadway-camelot-bh-barry-57cfd747e8a0028476be9a457ec8a611" style="font-family: arial;" target="_blank">(click here to read more about him). </a><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And what’s up with Michael Yeargan’s scenery? Why is the tree in which Arthur is supposed to be hiding at the beginning of the play so spindly that it looks unable to support a canary, less than a king? And where is the round table that’s supposed to be the symbol of equality in Arthur’s realm?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Still, I’m afraid most of the blame for this revisal’s failings have to be laid at Sorkin’s door. </span><span style="font-family: arial;">As he’s said in many interviews, Sorkin decided to excise the magical elements that animated the original production. So Merlin is no longer a wizard but simply a wise tutor. Even the story of Arthur’s claiming the throne by drawing the sword Excalibur from a stone is given a rational explanation. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">And this being a Sorkin jam, there’s a lot of West Wing-style talk about good government. Don’t get me wrong, I love his TV series “The West Wing;” but I’m not sure it would make a good musical. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Some of the changes come off as tone-deaf pandering: the character Morgan Le Fey is no longer a sorceress but a scientist (really, a woman scientist in the Early Middle Ages?) and given so little to do that the character’s one song, the lovely ballad “Follow Me,” has been cut, which hardly seems female-friendly.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Just as egregiously, Guenevere now comes off as the kind of smarter-than-everyone-else heroine that turns up in so many YA novels, Meanwhile Arthur is pretty much a nebbish. Lancelot is left largely alone but as a result seems to have wandered in from some other show. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Phillipa Soo looks and sings like a queen but she seems too—how should I say it—modern for the story’s historical setting. Still she fares better than Andrew Burnap, whose Arthur seems like an emo lightweight, until the final few scenes by which time it was too late to get me onboard. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz9H5CgnBRWHZ2hvk632ivJLDWSEwTSHed1MLOCaG-vIrFfotWRFZkH33ZTnNfWUokBftpyDbktieCRaMdb3vHcgWlwzi4e2GW0PHfPimtdiOVVpPgvtu7kt1ZTJCUVPun-VaBvWInSr-GvzBBt3qxs3SdrKcL2OeGqXH0OthgIPsF4baYBJDxbZxc/s5616/photo-camelot-lancelot.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3744" data-original-width="5616" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgz9H5CgnBRWHZ2hvk632ivJLDWSEwTSHed1MLOCaG-vIrFfotWRFZkH33ZTnNfWUokBftpyDbktieCRaMdb3vHcgWlwzi4e2GW0PHfPimtdiOVVpPgvtu7kt1ZTJCUVPun-VaBvWInSr-GvzBBt3qxs3SdrKcL2OeGqXH0OthgIPsF4baYBJDxbZxc/s320/photo-camelot-lancelot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Jordan Donica, tall, hunky and blessed with a marvelous voice, would seem to be a perfect choice for Lancelot <a href="https://playbill.com/article/jordan-donica-on-how-the-camelot-revival-is-more-diverse-and-real" target="_blank">(click here for more about him)</a> but he lacks the knowing humor that Robert Goulet brought to the role. In fact there’s too little humor in this updating. And what there is relies mainly on groaner jokes that someone as skilled as Sorkin shouldn’t have let in. <p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Those determined to put on classic musicals may have more choices than I suggested at the beginning of this review. They can lean into nostalgia as Sher successfully did with his sumptuous productions of <i>South Pacific </i>and<i> The King and I. </i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Or they can go the celebrity route and turn the shows into star vehicles as Jerry Zaks did for Bette Midler in the recent revival of <i>Hello, Dolly</i> and as just about everyone has done with <i>Gypsy</i>. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Or they can take the Shakespeare route, hewing close to the original text and the original songs but finding new ways to frame them as Daniel Fish did with his "sexy "<i>Oklahoma</i>, or Marianne Elliott did with her gender-flipped <i>Company</i> and as even Ivo van Hove did with his controversial production of <i>West Side Story .</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Or—and I’m thinking this may be the best way to go </span><span style="font-family: arial;">so that we don’t have to lose direct access to those golden scores (this time out, the original orchestrations for <i>Camelot’s</i> are terrifically played by a 30-piece orchestra)</span><span style="font-family: arial;">—</span><span style="font-family: arial;">they can just do concert versions of the shows that don’t have to wrestle with the problematic elements, which may require different responses in future days anyway. </span></p><p><br /></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-48267778403160697442023-04-08T07:39:00.000-05:002023-04-08T07:39:02.142-05:00"Life of Pi" Ponders the Mysteries of Faith <p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX7DdNQR8mFOMv7IqXhzvvo-nru_4HZJBJ-NAtUbWFNapO5m95HTeHXTrqPyKt2DH7NZOTbS77KBpfr476qI1Nski3g8AKEb_cNVyYqJOJOKlHexI9WcNElOUfdASmmkrhEUSjP52R-LNTEbQs3Q4EI8UFpyVToKeecAY4lJyAcadqdFZVnartjNhX/s741/photo-pi.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="741" data-original-width="613" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX7DdNQR8mFOMv7IqXhzvvo-nru_4HZJBJ-NAtUbWFNapO5m95HTeHXTrqPyKt2DH7NZOTbS77KBpfr476qI1Nski3g8AKEb_cNVyYqJOJOKlHexI9WcNElOUfdASmmkrhEUSjP52R-LNTEbQs3Q4EI8UFpyVToKeecAY4lJyAcadqdFZVnartjNhX/s320/photo-pi.jpg" width="265" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">It somehow feels appropriate during this Easter-Passover weekend to note that a lot of shows both on and off Broadway have been wrestling with faith this season <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Arts/2023/0316/A-sacred-space-Playwrights-discuss-the-role-religion-plays-on-stage " target="_blank">(click here to read more about some of them).</a> Maybe that’s because the pandemic has pushed thoughts about belief and mortality to centerstage for so many of us. Whatever the reason, I’ve been particularly struck by how New York audiences—almost defiant in their secularism—have received these shows and it’s been particularly interesting to check out the response to </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Life of Pi,</i><span style="font-family: arial;"> which recently opened on Broadway. </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">As you probably know,<i> Life of P</i>i is based on Yann Martel’s metaphysical novel about an Indian zookeeper’s son named Pi who survives a shipwreck after being stranded on a lifeboat for 227 days with, he tells his rescuers, a Bengal tiger as his only companion. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">A precocious teen, Pi had regularly attended a Christian church, a Muslim mosque and a Hindu temple before political unrest in his homeland caused his family to pack their animals onto a cargo ship and head for Canada. But a storm strikes and the boat sinks, drowning everyone, including Pi’s mother, father, sister and most of their menagerie. Left alone, Pi calls on both his faith and his own ingenuity to help him survive—and to fend off that tiger.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">This has proven to be a crowd-pleasing story. The novel sold over 10 million copies and won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2002. A 2012 film directed by Ang Lee grossed over $600 million worldwide and won four Oscars, including for best direction. More recently, this staged production, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti and directed by Max Webster, won five Olivier awards for its run on London’s West End. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But somehow this was my first experience with any version of "Life of Pi" and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Was the whole story going to unfold on the boat? Would the tiger be portrayed by an actor dressed in mufti as Robin Williams did a decade ago when he played the title role in <i>Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo </i>or as a lumbering animatronic creature like the ape in the 2018 production of <i>King Kong</i>? And would the spirituality be overly reverent or ridiculed? The answers turn out to be no, neither and determined to find a middle path.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The show opens in the hospital room where Pi is recuperating and his tale unfolds in a series of flashbacks. The set design by Tim Hartley flows almost cinematically between the sterility of the hospital, the colorful world Pi and his family leave behind and his alternately desolate and ecstatic experiences on the water. Lighting designer Tim Lutkin and video designer Andrzej Goulding provide award-worthy service when it comes to recreating the storm and the subsequent sense of being adrift at sea. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">The animals were designed by master puppet makers Finn Caldwell and Nick Barnes and range from delightful fluttering birds and leaping fish to the menacing life-sized tiger, who, through a series of events too complicated to explain here, is named Robert Parker. Onstage puppeteers skillfully manipulate all these creatures and although the humans are always visible, the effect is often magical <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/21/theater/life-of-pi-tiger-puppet.html" target="_blank">(click here to read more about how they do it).</a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Even critics uncomfortable with the show's religious undertones—most of them—have readily marveled at its stagecraft. But I don’t want to shortchange the actual performances, particularly that of the Sri Lankan actor Hiran Abeysekera, who plays Pi with a combination of wit, physical dexterity and the ability to convincingly play a teen even though the actor, who never leaves the stage, is actually in his late 30s </span><a href="https://www.sundaytimes.lk/220417/magazine/hirans-journey-from-playhouse-kotte-to-coveted-olivier-award-479717.html" style="font-family: arial;" target="_blank">(click here to read more about him).</a></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">All of this has been sensationally orchestrated by Weber, even if he does lean a bit too heavily into the show's humorous moments. Still, the point of <i>Life of Pi</i> is to make the case for faith. My theatergoing buddy Bill tells me that the movie is more overt in its spirituality and I suspect the book probably is too. But theater began as religious ritual and so it seems fitting that this version remind us believers and non-believers alike that we all need stories, myths and gospels to help us survive. Or at least that’s what I believe.</span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5797035092645713329.post-71044458193814533232023-04-01T06:56:00.001-05:002023-04-01T07:00:28.934-05:00Swooning—Once Again—For "Sweeney Todd"<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoV6omhGEfqvoHldqCmj8B2JDYwrB67Lj1oFNYPIMFTstCtjHFDxSit2hlIJrQAIZKCYMs3AS8ot7U9k1JzHHixB6upw8Q_WMIG-lfsmviIGc5euO8kI4y2au6vI3wbVedXaHziAKGdIN9c_oJ05KiGR-j0B6D3nVRPiDKvm97r7aeYsdBOiOpq1B5/s802/photo-sweeney%20crop.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="752" data-original-width="802" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoV6omhGEfqvoHldqCmj8B2JDYwrB67Lj1oFNYPIMFTstCtjHFDxSit2hlIJrQAIZKCYMs3AS8ot7U9k1JzHHixB6upw8Q_WMIG-lfsmviIGc5euO8kI4y2au6vI3wbVedXaHziAKGdIN9c_oJ05KiGR-j0B6D3nVRPiDKvm97r7aeYsdBOiOpq1B5/s320/photo-sweeney%20crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;">People always ask people like me—people who've been blessed with the opportunity to see lots and lots of shows—what our favorites are. I tend to hem and haw when it comes to plays (sometimes it’s <i>How I Learned to Drive</i>; sometimes it’s <i>Joe Turner’s Come and Gone</i>; other times it’s <i>Death of a Salesman</i> or <i>Long Day’s Journey Into Night</i>). But there’s no question when it comes to my favorite musical: it’s <i>Sweeney Todd. </i></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Before its latest revival opened last week, I’d seen five major productions of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s masterful retelling of the tale of the barber who goes on a throat-slitting spree while seeking revenge on the judge who destroyed his life when he sentenced the barber to a penal colony on falsified charges, ravaged his wife and virtually imprisoned their young daughter Johanna under the guise of making her the judge’s ward. It’s melodrama at its best and the score is arguably (or at least I would argue) Sondheim’s greatest. Which, of course, is saying something.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Knowing of my deep love for the show, my dear husband K worried that I might be let down by this new production that stars Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. So I’m both delighted and relieved to be able to say that this <i>Sweeney</i> lived up to, and maybe even surpassed, my expectations.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Now I wasn’t the only one who had worried. Some skeptics had predicted that Groban, an émigré from the pop world who has sold over 25 million records, wouldn’t be up to the challenge of playing such a demanding stage role. But a truly great role—and Sweeny Todd is a great role—can be interpreted in many ways <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/29/1166249500/as-sweeney-todd-returns-to-broadway-4-sweeneys-dish-about-the-difficult-role" target="_blank">(click here to read about how some have done it). </a></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Groban, who studied theater before becoming a pop star <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/josh-groban-and-the-return-of-sweeney-todd/" target="_blank">(click here to learn more about him)</a> doesn’t try to be as wild-eyed or scary as some of his predecessors have played the part. Instead he leans into the disorienting, almost numbing, grief that all the tragic things that have happened might trigger in Sweeney. And for me, it was easier to feel the pain of this more human-sized man. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Plus, there’s Groban’s glorious baritone. He sings the hell out of Sondheim’s almost operatic arias, including "Epiphany," which rivals the famous "Soliloquy" that Sondheim's mentor Oscar Hammerstein and his partner Richard Rodgers wrote for their bad boy Billy Bigelow in </span><i style="font-family: arial;">Carousel</i><span style="font-family: arial;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">On the other hand, almost no one doubted that Annaleigh Ashford would be right for Sweeney’s loony landlady and partner-in-crime Mrs. Lovett, who not only tolerates his butchery of the men who climb into his barber’s chair but comes up with the idea of baking their remains into the pies that she sells in her shop downstairs. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Ashford has been working her way through some of the best comedic roles in the Broadway canon over the past decade and a half and picked up a Tony award along the way. Here she crafts a Mrs. Lovett who is earthier and more antic than the iconic character that Angela Lansbury created in the original 1979 production but one who is just as endearing. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Together, Ashford and Groban make such a symbiotic and sexy pair that you’re almost rooting for them to make it. Which, in turn, makes the end of their relationship all the more poignant. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In fact almost all the principal actors in the cast play the emotions of their characters, rather than broadly portraying them as the stock figures in the cheap 19th century penny dreadfuls in which Sweeney’s story was first told. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">In her Broadway debut, Maria Bilbao uses her soaring soprano to underscore the captive Johanna’s yearning to escape the cage in which the judge has entrapped her. Meanwhile Gaten Matarazzo mines every bit of pathos from the vain promise that Tobias, the boy who works in the pie shop, makes to Mrs. Lovett that nothing will harm her while he’s around. And Ruthie Ann Miles turns the neighborhood Beggar Woman into the haunting presence she was always meant to be.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">But when you get right down to it, the score has always been the true star of <i>Sweeney Todd</i>. And here, it’s performed by a 26-member orchestra, playing the magnificent original orchestrations of Jonathan Tunick (who, in full disclosure, is a family friend but who is also the indisputable dean of Broadway orchestrators). This is a show you could enjoy with your eyes closed.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Of course, you don’t have to and for that I’m going to give props to director Thomas Kail. At a time when so many directors seem hell bent on showing that they're auteurs who can put their distinctive stamp on any show, Kail, whose inventive staging for <i>Hamilton</i> proves that he can stamp with the best of them, has taken an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach here: he isn’t copying Hal Prince’s original concept but he isn’t wiggling away from it either. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Kail roots his <i>Sweeney</i> firmly in Victorian London and he’s brought in Natasha Katz to supply the moody lighting for Mimi Lien’s deceptively simple set and movement master Steven Hoggett to devise some smart choreography for the large ensemble, which has been handsomely dressed by Emilio Sosa. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I could go on and on but I'm going to give the final words to Sondheim himself and if you're a theater lover, you'll heed them: Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd.</span></p><div><br /></div>broadwayandmehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02341306991759322581noreply@blogger.com0