My grandmother liked to say that one man's meat is another man's poison. I often think about that as I read theater reviews. Because critics see a lot more shows than the average theatergoer and what appeals to them isn’t always the same as what might appeal to folks who only get to the theater a few times a year. Most of the critics loved the theater-insidey musical [title of show]; but it lasted only 102 performances. Many of them sneered at the audience-friendly musical Mamma Mia!; it’s still going strong after over 3,100 curtain calls.
I’ve also thought about my Grandma’s saying as I looked over the lists of theater awards that have been announced over the past two weeks. Nowhere has it been more true than in the response to 9 to 5, the new musical version of the 1980 movie about three female office workers who join forces to overcome their sexist boss. The apparently populist-minded theater critics and writers who vote for the Drama Desk Awards gave this latest screen-to-stage makeover 15 nominations. The more theater-establishment folks who make up the Tony nominating committee gave it just four and shut the show out of the race for Best Musical.
I fall somewhere in-between. And so does 9 to 5. Watching it reminded me of one of those holiday dinners that your Aunt Lou cooks every year: all the right dishes are there, and they’re well prepared and they’re tasty enough but, in the end, the whole meal is so predictable and humdrum that you might as well have had a Big Mac. Of course, lots of people love Big Macs. That’s why McDonald’s has so many Golden Arches. The people sitting around my niece Jennifer and me seemed to be eating 9 to 5 right up, swaying to the music, laughing at the jokes and nodding in sympathy with the show’s female empowerment message.
And despite my own response, I’m not really surprised by theirs. From its opening number, the catchy title song from the movie, 9 to 5 works hard to please. (Click here to see excerpts from the production on the show’s equally hard-working website.) A 20-piece orchestra blares out that ode to working stiffs everywhere, as well as 17 other new songs written by Dolly Parton, who starred in the movie with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
Parton is one of the most successful songwriters in the country—and no, I don’t just mean in country music. She may be a Broadway newcomer but her songs have always been miniature stories and she knows how to write a melody. Her songs here are pleasant to hear, fit right in and move the story along, even if none of them really stick in the mind once the show is over.
There’s plenty else to keep a showgoer engaged too. The energetic 30-member cast fills the big stage at the Marquis Theatre with Andy Blankenbuhler’s frenetic choreography. Scott Pask’s constantly-morphing set is almost as busy. And director Joe Mantello and book writer Patricia Resnick, who also co-wrote the original screenplay, keep the gags coming.
The stars go all out too. Allison Janney in the Tomlin role of the office manager, doesn’t really have much of a singing voice but she knows how to hold a stage, to deliver a line and to win over an audience. Stephanie J. Block is somewhat bland in Fonda’s part as a newly divorced woman who is forced into the work world, but she knows how to belt out a show tune. Megan Hilty, as the office’s not-so-dumb blonde, does a great Dolly impersonation. And Marc Kudisch is deliciously hammy as the piggish boss.
Jennifer and I appreciated all the effort that went into pleasing us. But we could also see them sweat. Whether it all adds up to a satisfying evening for you really depends on whether you like your musicals rare, medium or well done.
As soon as I hear about a new jukebox musical, I call my sister Joanne. She loves them. And she’s not ashamed of that. It’s been eight years but I still regret rushing her out of the Winter Garden before she’d finished bopping out to Mamma Mia!’s curtain call reprise of “Dancing Queen.” And I knew Good Vibrations had no chance when she tried to hurry me out of that theater. So it was a no-brainer to ask her to go with me to see Rock of Ages.
Unlike Mamma Mia! (ABBA) or Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys) or All Shook Up (Elvis), Rock of Ages isn’t built around the songbook of one artist. Instead, it’s a kind of three-dimensional tribute album to the arena-rock era of the ‘80s (Pat Benatar, Bon Jovi, Journey, Styx). The musical’s first-time lead producers say they got the idea for the show when they heard a Journey song on the radio and thought it would be great to have a whole theater of people singing along to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” (click here to read a New York Times article about the making of the musical).
I have to confess that I didn’t know the Journey song because it came out during that period of music, between ‘70s folk rock and disco and ‘90s grunge and gangsta rap, that I tuned out entirely. What excited me about seeing Rock of Ages is its policy of in-seat drink service during the performance. Just the idea of that has appalled many traditional theatergoers (“I hope you don’t sit next to some hurling college student,” my husband K said as I was leaving home for the theater that night). But I was willing to take the risk for a chance to kick back and sip a little chardonnay while I watched a show.
The wine ($10 bucks for a big plastic cup that contained very little of the grape) was only so-so. But it was amusing to watch the waiters scoot up and down the aisles in a Grouch Marx crouch as they looked for thirsty customers and tried to stay out of people's sight lines. Somehow they missed the woman sitting in the row in front of Joanne and me, who kept waving and flashing one of the mini-lights the ushers handed out and that our waiter said would summon drink service. It didn’t. She bolted for the bar at intermission.
To my surprise, however, the real fun was on stage. Now let me say it as clearly as I can: this is not a good show. But let me also say this: it’s a totally entertaining show. The boy-meets-girl-boy-loses-girl plot is predictable and silly and the jokes and Kelly Devine’s pole-dancing-centric choreography are cheesy. But Rock of Ages doesn’t pretend to be otherwise. Book writer Chris D’Arienzo and director Kristin Hanggi have made sure that when you laugh, you’re laughing with them, not at them. This is a Xanadu for straight guys.
The action takes place in a soon-to-be demolished rock club on L.A.’s Sunset Strip. The boy, a recent arrival from the Midwest with dreams of rock stardom, is winningly played by Constatine Maroulis, a finalist from the fourth season of TV’s “American Idol,” which is turning out to be quite a farm team for Broadway. The waitress he loves is played by the talented Broadway vet Amy Spanger. The other man, the lead singer of a hit rock band who temporarily lures her away, is James Carpinello, who, as his Playbill bio points out, has become the king of juke box musicals with roles in Saturday Night Fever and Xanadu (although he broke his foot before opening night). The crowd-pleasing role of a Cabaret-style emcee is played by Mitchell Jarvis, who looks like the love child of Jack Black and Norbert Leo Butz and gets extra points from me for one of the funniest Playbill bios I’ve ever read.
The music is LOUD. But the songs are nicely integrated into the flimsy plot. And hearing them is what most of the people who will go to see Rock of Ages will care about. And they won’t all be aging Gen-Xers either. Music video games like “Guitar Hero” have created a whole new audience for rock music and those young fans will get a kick out of this too. The producers (all 25 of them) are doing everything they can to woo both of these groups to Broadway. Instead of holding audience talkbacks, they've invited real arena bands to play after some performances. And in a move that I hope will catch on, they've capped the ticket price at $99. Rock on!
In the weeks before the writers' strike shut down TV production, television execs were patting themselves on the back and boasting that, unlike the movies where a woman over 30 is considered long in the tooth, several TV series were giving older actresses a place to show off their talent. But, out of the women they were talking about—Glenn Close (a ball-busting lawyer on FX's "Damages"), Mary Louise Parker (a middle-class drug dealer on Showtime's "Weeds") Holly Hunter (a dysfunctional cop on TNT's "Saving Grace"), Kyra Sedgwick (a quixotic cop on TNT's "The Closer"), and Vanessa Williams (a narcissistic fashion editor on ABC's "Ugly Betty")—only Close is currently eligible for an AARP card.
Theater is different. One of the reasons I love it is that women of all ages (and sizes, shapes and ethnicities) can—and do—strut their stuff on its stages. Right now, Debra Monk and Karen Ziemba are kicking up their heels in Curtains. Sinéad Cusack is giving two kick-ass performances in Rock 'n' Roll. Phylicia Rashad, who has only come into her own in the past decade even winning the Tony in 2004, is in previews in Cymbeline. And, of course, the whole premise of Mamma Mia! pivots around a boomer-age mom and her pals.
I thought about all of this after watching the hands-down best performance I've seen this year: Elizabeth Franz in Julia Cho's The Piano Teacher. Although some theatergoers will remember her as the original unctuous nun in Christopher Durang's Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You and Franz first knocked me out in her Tony-winning performance as Linda Loman in the 1999 revival of Death of a Salesman, she isn't a big name. But she is a big talent. She's also 66.
And that's fitting because Cho's play tells the story of a retired and widowed piano teacher who, out of loneliness, tries to reconnect with some of her old students to find out why in one particular year so many of them stopped taking lessons. The two who show up—the very good Carmen M. Herlihy and the young and very promising John Boyd—bring with them unsettling answers that force the teacher to confront truths she has spent a lifetime trying to avoid.
Director Kate Whoriskey hits every chord of tension in the piece, which runs just under 90 minutes. She is ably assisted by Derek McLane's cozy, yet slightly creepy, set; and Obadiah Eaves' subtlety unnerving sound design. But it is Franz who makes the show worth a trip down to the Vineyard Theatre on 15th Street, where the run has been extended until Dec. 23. Her Mrs. K, as the piano teacher is called, is a complete person and Franz makes you feel every emotion she experiences.
Many of those feelings are disturbing because the play is intentionally ambiguous, allowing the viewer to bring her or his own nightmares to its mysteries. Cho totters at times on this ambitious tightrope she has set for herself but she is a playwright to be watched and supported. A Korean-American, she includes Asian characters in all of her works and yet race and politics seldom take center stage but, rather, add undertones that accentuate the commonality of human experience. And at just 32, Cho has created a master role that older actresses will treasure for years to come (click here to read an interview in which she discusses the genesis of The Piano Teacher).
Cho isn't the only playwright who has recognized the inherent drama that can be mined from centering plays around such characters. Contemporary writers from Horton Foote to Tom Stoppard have created big, juicy roles for actresses who are mature enough to bring a lifetime’s worth of experience and skill to those parts.The jobs don't pay as well as playing cops and robbers or comic foils on TV but the pay off—for the actors and their audiences—is richer.
