"The Glass Menagerie" Really Does Glitter

From its out-of-town run at The American Repertory Theater in Cambridge last spring right through to the news this week that the Broadway production has recouped its investment, the current revival of The Glass Menagerie has been praised as a revelatory production that will be remembered for the ages.  And you’re going to hear no differently from me.

As regular readers know, Tennessee Williams sits high in my pantheon of great playwrights. And this memory play, based on Williams' own wrenching decision to abandon his overbearing mother and emotionally fragile sister in order to fulfill his artistic destiny, is his most poignant work and one of my favorites in the entire canon. 

 

Then there's my ongoing adoration for the great Cherry Jones, which was only intensified by her interpretation of the mother Amanda. While she's often been portrayed as a hapless harpy, Jones' Amanda is a Mother Courage fighting in the best way she knows for her version of happiness for her children (click here to read a terrific profile of the actress).  

And Jones’ powerhouse performance is equaled by that of Zachary Quinto as the son Tom. Quinto’s day job as a movie star (“Star Trek”) and TV star (most recently in the repertory company of “American Horror Story”) may account for some of the ticket sales but, as he proved in Signature Theatre’s 2010 revival of Angels in America, he is a superb stage actor and his portrayal of Tom limns both the deep love for his family and the desperate need to get away from them that the young Tennessee, still then called Tom, so clearly felt (click here for a Q&A with the actor).

 

Finally, the show is directed by John Tiffany, who with the Tony-winning musical Once and the National Theater of Scotland’s magnificent performance piece Black Watch has shown himself to be one of the most creative directors working in the theater today. 

I’ll confess that I did find some of the stylized gestures choreographed by Tiffany’s frequent collaborator Steven Hoggett to be distracting but the entrance of the sister Laura, affectingly played by Celia Keenan-Bolger, is an amazing coup de theatre. 

Meanwhile, Bob Crowley’s spare set, surrounded by a moat of water, creates a poetic visual metaphor for a family adrift and a playwright forever haunted by his memories of them (click here to read how the designer evoked it all). 

And yet for me, the most memorable thing about this production is the performance of Brian J. Smith in the comparatively small part of Jim O’Connor, the gentleman caller that Tom, in response to Amanda’s relentless urging, brings home as a prospective beau for Laura (click here for a profile of Smith). 

 

The scene between Laura and Jim is the heart of the play. Jim’s a former jock whose glory days are behind him and most actors play him as such a blowhard that it’s instantly clear Laura doesn’t stand a real chance. But Smith finds the humanity in the man, teasing out his disappointments and dreams in a way that make him just as vulnerable as Laura and the tiny animals in the glass collection that gives the play its name.

Despite my having seen the play half a dozen times, Smith made me believe that Jim and Laura might make a good life together. And I felt all the more heartbroken when the spell was shattered (click here for an excellent deconstruction of how he and Keenan-Bolger did that). Smith has appeared in other Broadway productions I’ve seen but I don’t remember him in them. I doubt though that I will ever forget his performance in The Glass Menagerie.

"What's It All About?"

If you’d asked me to name my favorite songwriters, the composer Burt Bacharach and his frequent lyricist Hal David wouldn’t have made the list (in case you’re interested, Cole Porter, George and Ira Gershwin, Stephen Sondheim, Laura Nyro, Carole King, James Taylor and The Beatles would have). But my disregard of the Bacharach-David songbook was before I saw What’s It All About?, the new musical revue that subtitles itself “Bacharach Reimagined.”  

My epiphany occurred as I sat in New York Theatre Workshop swaying to Bacharach’s melodies, silently mouthing the words to the 30 or so songs in the show and smiling at all the memories they evoked. For as I look back, Bacharach provided the “Mad Men” vibe to the soundtrack of my youth.  

 

HIs songs convey a sophistication about love, its disappointments and the cool stoicism necessary to survive them that my younger self longed to have. And those same yearnings are present in What’s It All About?, which Kyle Riabko, a 26-year-old actor-musician with rock-star looks and front-man charisma, has turned into a 90-minute romantic song cycle  for the hipster generation. 

As the story goes, Riabko, who appeared on Broadway in Spring Awakening and the Diane Paulus version of Hair, met the now octogenarian Bacharach at a studio recording session three years ago and eventually persuaded the composer to let him reorchestrate some of his old songs for a more contemporary sound, which basically means no strings, no horns, just acoustic guitar and a thumping rhythm section (click here to read more about the development of the show).   

 

What’s It All About? has no plot. Riabko has simply recruited a multi-culti and multi-talented band of six other young musicians (click here to read about the casting process) and they all take turns—solo, in duets or larger groups—performing the Bacharach tunes.

The playlist includes such pop classics as “Walk on By,” “Anyone Who Had A Heart,” “A House Is Not a Home” and other songs first made famous by Bacharach and David’s favorite interpreter Dionne Warwick, along with tunes like “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” “What’s New Pussycat” and the title song from the movie scores the duo wrote.

 

Some of the singers are stronger than others but they’re all great to look at and each projects a latter-day-Brooklyn-style hipness (pork-pie hats for the guys, vintage tops for the gals) that’s kind of irresistible. 

And director Steven Hoggett augments the aura with his trademark choreographed gestures—the flick of a wrist, a syncopated stomp—to underscore the subtext of each song. 

 

My theatergoing buddy Bill was totally charmed by the show but the overall response has been divided. A few critics were knocked out by What’s It All About?; others simply knocked it (click here to read through some of the reviews).  

I fall in the middle. I'm grateful to the show for reintroducing me to Bacharach and David but I did find parts of it to be a wee bit precious. 

When the audience enters, the performers are already onstage, lounging on chairs and couches that have been suspended—for no discernible reason—on the walls of a set that’s been decked out to resemble a chic thrift shop. I kept worrying someone would fall as they clambered up and down for various numbers.  

Still you’d have to be more of a grouch than I’m willing to be to naysay this affectionate tribute to old-style songwriting.  I'm not sure it delivers on the promise of reimagining Bacharach but that may be because Bacharach's music is fine just as he originally imagined it. 

And there's time for you to make up your own mind about that cause the show has been extended to Feb. 2. And if you go, stick around cause after the show the entire cast races outside (or at least they did before the frigid weather set in) to serenade audience members as they leave the theater.

A Truly Visionary "Midsummer Night’s Dream"

If you've seen the opening number of The Lion King or even some of the outlandish set pieces in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark (which turns off for the final time on Broadway tonight) you know that you don’t go to a show directed by Julie Taymor for the acting or, that matter, for the narrative. You go for the visual splendor and the other wondrous things that pour out of Taymor’s bountiful imagination.  

And they’re all on brilliant display in her production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is playing through Jan. 13 at the shiny new home of Theatre for a New Audience, down the street from BAM in Brooklyn’s growing Cultural District (click here to read about the new building and the changing neighborhood).

 

Shakespeare’s tale about four mismatched lovers who wander into a fairyland forest is the perfect match for the enchantments that Taymor likes to create (click here to listen to her talk about the show). The result is that this Midsummer Night's Dream is a buoyant mix of Commedia dell’Arte meets Cirque du Soleil. 

 

Actors disappear right before the audience’s eyes. Puppet creatures prance across the stage. Yards of gossamer material undulate to the ethereal music composed by Taymor’s husband and frequent collaborator Elliot Goldenthal. A band of 20 youngsters, illuminated by candlelight, serve as the story’s chorus and its fairies.

 

And yes, there is flying.  But instead of the high-tech apparatus that caused so many problems (and a few serious accidents) at Spider-Man, the lifting here is done the old fashion way: with men using muscle power to pull ropes.

 

And while it takes a back seat to the spectacle (special shout-outs to Constance Hoffman for the sexy costumes, Sven Ortel for the mesmerizing video projections and Donald Holder for the nimble lighting) the cast isn’t bad either. Although in typical Taymor fashion, they’re generally more fabulous to look at than to listen to.

 

Tina Benko is a reigning goddess of the downtown theater scene and she’s never been more majestic than she is here as the fairy queen Titania. The British actor David Harewood, best known as the equivocating counterterrorism chief on TV’s “Homeland,” not only speaks his speeches well but is marvelously virile as her husband King Oberon.  

 

Also worth singling out is Max Casella, who brings an hilarious wiseguy sensibility to Bottom, the leader of the workingmen who are preparing a play to entertain the noble people of the realm, and Mandi Masden, amusingly flustered as the lovelorn Helena, who can’t win the affection of the man she loves and then, through fairy mischief, finds herself pursued by him and another suitor.

 

But most invaluable is the pixieish Kathryn Hunter, reminiscent of Linda Hunt in both size and androgyny, who is a classicist (having performed at Shakespeare’s Globe in London) an avant-gardist (having won an Olivier Award for her work with Theatre de Complicite) and an amazing contortionist who is one of the sprightliest (in every sense of the word) Pucks I’ve ever seen (click here to read how the actress and her director devised the character).

 

My theatergoing buddy Bill was totally turned off by Hunter’s idiosyncratic and limb-twisting performance and he didn’t care much more for the rest of the production either.  He and several other critics complain that Taymor was so busy creating her beautiful stage pictures that she paid too little attention to Shakespeare’s equally beautiful language.  

 

Which is true.  But I was still dazzled by everything she concocted for this fantasia.  And I can hardly wait to see what she will come up with next.

Happy New Year!

Not the 10 Best, Just 10 I Really Liked in 2013

Who’s to say what were the best shows of 2013?  Even the august New York Times critics can’t agree on that; only two shows (Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 and Twelfth Night) appeared on both their 10 Bests lists.  (Click here to check out a compilation of the lists from all the top critics.)

So my list this year isn’t going to try to determine which shows were the best, instead it’s just going to focus on the 10 shows I enjoyed the most—the ones that made me laugh out loud, tear up, sigh in wonder or that still linger in my mind no matter how long ago I saw them. And I’m going to share the moments that made me fall in love with each of them.

 

BAD JEWS.  Much praise—and deservedly so—has gone to the talented actress Tracee Chimo for her take-no-prisoners  performance as a young woman who is battling her cousins for a keepsake that helped their adored grandfather survive the horrors of the Holocaust. But underneath her performance and the appreciative laughs it engenders, is a serious meditation on how we define ourselves and how we should honor the memories of those who helped to shape us. 
The moment:  I had a good time but it was the revelation of how far the quietest of the three cousins would go to venerate their grandfather that clinched the play’s place on this list and makes it a show worth seeing regardless of who is in the cast.
You can read my original review by clicking here.

BUYER & CELLAR. The playwright Jonathan Tolins and the actor Michael Urie combined their considerable talents to turn this one-man reverie about a down-on-his-luck actor who gets a job tending the shops that the real-life Barbra Streisand has created in the basement of one of her homes into one of the most enjoyable evenings I’ve had in the theater in years.

The moment: Urie, who plays all the parts, doesn’t impersonate Streisand so much as channel her and he’s at his most affecting when she confesses her insecurities with such poignancy that I actually ached for the woman within the superstar.
You can read my original review by clicking here.

THE (CURIOUS CASE OF THE) WATSON INTELLIGENCE. Playwrights Horizons has offered a slate of smart and innovatively told plays this year. Most critics have favored Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, in which “The Simpsons” sitcom becomes a talismanic text after the apocalypse.  But I prefer this time-shifting piece that links three stories about relationships involving men named Watson—Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant, Sherlock Holmes’ sidekick and a contemporary IT guy—because it deals so honestly with the tension between desire and dependence.

The moment: The IT guy’s attempt to hold on to the woman he loves was the most naked demonstration of unconditional love I’ve seen onstage since Donna Murphy's Fosca declared hers for Giorgio in the original production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Passion.   
You can read my original review by clicking here.   

THE EXPLORERS CLUB. Nell Benjamin’s giddy comedy about the eccentric members of a Victorian-era men’s club and the intrepid woman who wants to join their ranks had nothing more on its mind than good old-fashioned fun and it provided oodles of it for both the actors onstage and the theatergoers in the audience.

The moment:  I’m still giggling about the slapstick choreography in the cocktail hour scene in which drinks were literally flung through the air—and caught without spilling the liquid contents. 
You can read my original review here.

HERE LIES LOVE: Everything about David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s musical biography of Imelda Marcos worked for me. The songs were catchy. The actors were committed.  The story was well told. But best of all was Alex Timbers’ staging, which had the audience on its feet the whole time and moving around in a space outfitted as one of the discos Marcos loved to frequent during her heyday as the First Lady of the Philippines.

The moment: I usually hate audience participation and so I knew this show was something special when I found myself not only dancing but cheering as we audience members were encouraged to play a variety of roles, including the street mobs that supported Marcos and her husband Ferdinand. 
You can read my original review by clicking here.

JULIUS CAESAR. This nod goes to both the Royal Shakespeare Company’s all-black production set in a modern-day African nation that played at BAM’s Harvey Theater and the Donmar Warehouse’s all-female version set in a women’s prison, both of which brought new dynamism to Shakespeare’s political tragedy about friendship, honor and power.  
The moments: When the drums began to beat and a befeathered soothsayer chanted the warning to beware the Ides of March, the RSC production became so viscerally alive that I could hardly wait to see what the high-estrogen version would do with the play. And when Frances Barber’s butch Caesar swaggered onto the stage at St. Ann’s Warehouse and greeted Cush Jumbo’s Mark Antony with an anything-goes kiss, I knew I was in for another great night.

You can read my original reviews by clicking here and here. 

MY NAME IS ASHER LEV. I’m as surprised as you might be to find this one on my list.  For starters, it opened in November 2012 but I didn’t see it until February of this year and so here it is even though it didn’t make the cut on the lists of the major critics for either 2012 or 2013.  But Aaron Posner’s adaptation of the Chaim Potok novel about an Orthodox Jewish boy who breaks from his family’s tradition to fulfill his destiny as an artist touched me deeply.

The moment: The acting was superb but what still lingers in my mind were the way James F. Ingalls’ lighting subtly reflected the transcendence of an artist coming to terms with his own creative power.
You can read my original review by clicking here.

TALLEY'S FOLLY.  Lanford Wilson’s two-hander about the coming together of a middle-aged Jewish accountant and a Protestant spinster won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 but it won my heart with this revival by the Roundabout Theatre Company. 
The moment:  Actually, I fell for it as soon as Danny Burstein walked onstage at the beginning of the play and confided his plan to woo the reluctant object of his desire. The language was simple but eloquent, the acting natural and yet elegant, both reminders that great theater doesn’t always need razzle to dazzle.

You can read my original review by clicking here.

TWELFTH NIGHT. This is the one production that seems to have made it onto everyone’s list. And I'm joining the chorus of praise because it is great fun to see Shakespeare’s beloved comedy performed as it would have been done in his day with men playing the female parts and the stage illuminated by candlelight.  Plus there’s a fabulous pre-show in which the actors come out early to dress and put on their makeup right in front of the audience. 
The moment:  Watching Mark Rylance garb himself in not only the large hooped skirts but the small fluttery mannerisms of the noblewoman Olivia won me over instantly.

I haven’t yet reviewed this one but plan to talk about both it and Richard III, with which it is being performed in repertory.

WAITING FOR GODOT: What could any theater lover want more than to see two of the world’s most acclaimed classic actors in one of the world’s most revered classic plays?  Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart are pitch perfect as Samuel Beckett’s existential vagabonds and it’s a privilege to be able to see them. 
The moment: Their first exchange has all the humor and pathos that the parts demand and signals that the you can just sit back and enjoy because there are masters at work.

I haven’t reviewed this one either but keep an eye out for my post about it and its repertory partner Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land.

Merry Christmas!

 

May your holidays sparkle with peace, love, happiness —and, of course, the great pleasure of live theater. 

How I Unexpectedly Got Slayed by "A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder"

If you’re still looking for a show that will appeal to the entire family—antsy tots, sulky teens, grumpy grandparents and weary everyone else—I have just the thing for you:  A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder, the surprisingly delightful musical that’s playing at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

I say surprising because I wasn’t so sure I was going to like this show. Its poster of a frock-coated gent wearing a top hat and a monocle made me think of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I’d just seen last season and although I’d enjoyed it (click here to read my review) I didn’t feel the need to see another Gilbert and Sullivan-era whodunit.

Of course there’s no mystery about who the culprit is in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder since it’s based on the 1949 British movie “Kind Hearts and Coronets” in which a poor relative systematically murders eight members of an aristocratic family (all eight—the men and the women—played by Alec Guinness) who callously disinherited his mother and now stand between him, a noble title and its accompanying great fortune.  

That movie is a cult classic and an old boyfriend once tried to make me watch it when it came on TV but, as I recall, I fell asleep. And I wasn’t any more excited by the creative team behind the new musical version. 

The book is by Robert L. Freedman and  the score is by Freedman and Steven Lutvak, neither of whom I’d ever heard of.  And the show is directed by Darko Tresnjak and choreographed by Peggy Hickey, both of whom are also new to me, although I’ve since learned that Tresnjak is the artistic director of Hartford Stage, where this show originated.

 

The one thing that did pique my interest is that I knew the marvelous actor Jefferson Mays would be playing all the murder victims. Having seen I Am My Own Wife, the one-person show in which he played nearly three dozen characters, I knew how versatile and entertaining Mays can be (click here for a cheat sheet on all the murder victims he plays in this musical).  

So the biggest surprise for me was discovering that Mays, as deliciously good as he is, wasn’t my favorite thing about the show or even my second or third favorite in what turns out to be a totally charming confection that whips together low-brow slapstick (for the tots and the teens) high-brow wit (for the grown-ups) and a dollop or two of sex farce (to spark some interest in the weary). 

 

The music is just a pastiche of music hall tunes but the lyrics are clever and the singers, particularly the women—Lisa O’Hare and Lauren Worsham—who play the larcenous main character’s two love interests have voices to die for.  

Freedman's book and the staging by Tresnjak come up with hilarious ways to dispatch each of the thoroughly despicable relatives.  And the design team is just as adept. 

 

Alexander Dodge has created a proscenium-within-a-proscenium set that looks as though it comes right off a vintage Christmas card. Meanwhile, costume designer Linda Cho is equally skillful at designing gorgeous and intricately detailed gowns for the women and laugh-out-loud funny costumes for Mays, including my favorite, a bodysuit with bulging biceps for the most ostentatiously macho of the doomed cousins. 

And special kudos for the dressers who get Mays out of and into costumes so fast (12 changes in the first act, according to AP) that the characters he plays—from a bosomy matron to a beaver-toothed parson—almost seem to be appearing onstage together (click here to read about how they do it).

 

But best of all is Bryce Pinkham who plays the murderous title gentleman (click here for a profile of him). The audience needs to root for the guy who is murdering almost everyone in sight for this show to work and Pinkham—who sings well and looks dreamy—is totally winning, particularly in a terrific second-act number that almost stopped the show at the performance my husband K and I saw.

When you add it all up, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder may not be a great show but it is great fun.  And who doesn’t need a little of that during the holidays?