No; it's not my usual posting day but I’ve been away for over a week and I’ve missed you guys. Besides, I just heard something that is too delicious to keep to myself and too big for a tweet.
I got back to the city to find almost everyone, including my fellow bloggers Steve on Broadway and Sarah B at Adventures in the Endless Pursuit of Entertainment, buzzing about how Patti LuPone literally stopped the show during the penultimate performance of Gypsy on Saturday night to yell at someone in the audience who started taking pictures of her as she sang “Rose’s Turn.” My pit musician-husband K who played in the Gypsy orchestra immediately started lamenting the fact that our vacation had kept him away from being there for the historic moment.
Now I hear from an insider who was there that the whole incident was a simple misunderstanding. It seems that Patti had a photographer following her around backstage for several days doing a magazine article about her and the poor fella went around front to document some of her iconic moments in the show. And says my source, “That was the person she had thrown out! She forgot he was there!”
How can you not love Broadway?
There are some theater lovers who will see a show over and over again. I’m not one of them. I always think there are too many other shows out there to see and only so much time—and even less money—with which to see them. And yet, over the past few weeks, I’ve gone back to see two shows that I’m particularly fond of and that were scheduled to close this month, along with so many others during this winter of our economic descent.
Spring Awakening opened in December, 2006, a few months before I started writing this blog and so although I’ve referred to it many times, there has been no one entry that says how much I love this show. Until now. Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater’s adaptation of Frank Wedekind’s 1891 play about German teens coming of age and into their sexuality moved me in a way I hadn’t expected.
After I first saw it, I spent weeks listening to the cast album with the kind of obsession I hadn’t felt since, well, my own high school days. Not only do Sheik and Sater’s songs tell the characters’ story, as all good show tunes should, but they seem to tell the listener’s story too. And I was equally knocked out by Michael Mayer’s staging and Bill T. Jones’ kinetically expressive choreography.
Still, I was a little hesitant about seeing the show again when my theatergoing buddy Bill suggested that we should go back before it closes on Jan. 18. I worried that it wouldn’t be as wonderful as I remembered. It wasn’t (what is?) but it was still deeply satisfying and confirmed my belief that this show deserves a longer run.
It’s tough to beat Jonathan Groff as the original Melchior, and John Gallagher Jr., who won a Tony for his portrayal of his friend Moritz, but I thought Alexandra Socha was splendid as the naive Wendla and Matt Doyle put a delightfully arch spin on Hanschen, the more sophisticated member of the group. And the music continued to haunt me.
There were lots of young people at the performance Bill and I attended. Some of them had probably come to see Hunter Parrish, the teen heartthrob on the Showtime series “Weeds” who is now playing Melchior, but others were clearly there for the show. “I get a feeling this isn’t the first time for most of them,” Bill said as he looked around the audience during intermission. It was a potent reminder that Broadway’s constituency doesn’t have to be restricted to those over 50 and under 12.
My second repeat performance was different. Gerard Alessandrini is always updating Forbidden Broadway, the rev
ue that lovingly parodies Broadway shows, so it is slightly different whenever you go. I went last year and had a good time. But my husband K had never seen any version and when we heard that the show was planning to shut down after 26 years, we ordered tickets.
This latest edition is called Forbidden Broadway Goes to Rehab. Musical numbers aren’t listed in the Playbill because they change according to Alessandrini’s creative whims. The performance we attended included a send-up of Liza's at the Palace, just four days after Minnelli’s new show opened.
Rehab is winningly co-directed as always by Phillip George and credit for the costumes still goes to Alvin Colt, the venerable designer who died this past May at the age of 92. The hardworking quartet of performers—this time out Christina Bianco, James Donegan, Gina Kreiezmar and Michael West—is terrific, doing spot-on imitations of everyone from Patti LuPone to [title of show]’s Jeff Bowen and Hunter Bell. K, a pit musician playing hooky that day from Gypsy, which is closing on Jan.11, got a particular kick out of Kreiezmar’s interpretation of LuPone.
Old fans, and we were seated in a row with a bunch of them, treat Forbidden Broadway the way fans do rock concerts, calling out for their favorite numbers. “I really hope they do Annie,” one man told his friends during intermission. Luckily for him, they did. Luckily for theatergoers in general, Rehab’s close date has been pushed back from Jan. 15 to March 1.
After the show, K and I walked up Broadway and then stopped at Café des Artistes, our favorite spot in the city. Max, the restaurant’s bartender extraordinaire, made our usual cocktails and we sat sipping them, talking theater talk, grateful that shows like these exists and hopeful that despite these tough times, others, equally bold and imaginative, will come to take their place.
Good art provokes a conversation between the person who makes it and the person who sees or hears it. Each dialog is unique and so I can’t really tell you what were the best shows of this past year but I can say that the following 10, listed in alphabetical order, really spoke to me.
Adding Machine Because this adaptation of Elmer Rice’s 1923 play about an everyman accountant who snaps after being replaced by an adding machine not only taps into the zeitgeist of our own scary economic times but shows that chamber musicals can produce real show tunes and not just the ersatz arias that make so many of them a chore to sit through.
The Bacchae Because the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Euripides’s tragedy provided flamboyant proof that a production of classic Greek drama can be simultaneously true to the play’s ancient text and thoroughly entertaining for modern audiences.
Billy Elliot Because this adaptation of the movie about a British miner’s son who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer is one of the most out-and-out entertaining musicals to open on Broadway in years and because, in the tradition of the great Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals like the year's equally splendid revival of South Pacific, it also has something to say.
Black Watch Because the National Theatre of Scotland’s meditation on the war in Iraq was a truly innovative production, superbly acted, marvelously staged and fully reproducible in no medium other than the theater.
A Body of Water Because this mysterious little play about a couple who seem to suffer from joint amnesia ruminates on questions about life and death and love and redemption in such a compelling way that I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind.
Fela! Because newcomer Sahr Ngaujah is phenomenal as Fela Kuti, the Nigerian pop musician and political activist who challenged his country’s corrupt and repressive leaders, and because Afrobeat, the exuberant mix of jazz, funk and traditional African rhythms that Fela helped to create, is irresistible.
Gypsy Because Patti LuPone’s performance as Mama Rose in this classic backstage musical is one of those once-in-a- lifetime performances that people will talk about for years to come and because not only LuPone but her terrific co-stars Laura Benanti and Boyd Gaines stayed with the show right through to the end.
In the Heights Because although it’s not a great show, it’s a really great feel-good show that brings new energy and contemporary sounds to the musical and new audiences to Broadway.
The Seagull Because this production of the Chekhov classic got the mix between the comic and the tragic just right and because the 22-year-old British actress Carey Mulligan gave the most heartbreaking performance of the season.
Top Girls Because Caryl Churchill’s play about what it costs women to succeed was the most soul-nourishing night I had at the theater all year.
I love summer and I try to be outside in the warm weather every minute I can. Which is sometimes a problem when you’re a theater lover. Sure, there are outdoor productions like Shakespeare in the Park and Broadway at the Seaport. But more often than not, you’re heading inside a theater just when the temperature seems to be at the height of its shank-of-the-evening glory. And I’m clearly not the only one who feels this way because the exodus at intermissions in the summer tends to be larger than usual and getting people back into their seats a little more difficult. Still, I found it telling when I looked around outside City Center towards the end of Tuesday night’s mid-performance break of the new Encores! production of Damn Yankees and realized that most of the stragglers were the city’s major theater critics.
Eventually an usher came out to shoo us in and we all trooped back to our seats but I suspect that a good number of us might have preferred sitting at one of the outdoor cafés on the block or maybe even in the bleachers watching the real Yankees play in their final season in their venerable stadium before moving to a new one next year. As you probably know, the Bronx Bombers don’t actually appear in this 1955 musical; the team it celebrates is the old Washington Senators (now the Minnesota Twins) and its protagonist is Joe Boyd, a middle-aged fan so devoted to them that he offers to sell his soul if the Devil will transform him into a gifted young player who can help the losing team win the pennant over its New York nemesis (click here to read Theatermania columnist Peter Filichia's wonderful interview with a now 91 year-old Shannon Bolin, who played Boyd’s wife Meg in the original production).
Damn Yankees was never a classic musical—the book is barely robust enough to make it to second base—but its score is delightful and its performances were nearly all home runs. Especially Gwen Verdon’s star-clinching turn as Lola, the Devil’s femme fatale helpmate who is charged with distracting the young Joe. The show’s choreographer Bob Fosse, who would later marry Verdon, created sensational numbers custom-made to her distinctive and prodigious talent (click here to see her in action). After Damn Yankees was turned into a movie in 1958, with the entire Broadway cast intact except for having Tab Hunter take over the role of young Joe, everyone, including the little-girl me, was vamping around and singing Verdon’s signature song, “Whatever Lola Wants.” Classic or no, the show gives any revival a lot to live up to.
Unlike the staged readings that Encores! usually puts on, the Summer Stars series, now in its second season, is a full sets-and-all affair. The series scored last year with its powerhouse production of Gypsy, which transferred to Broadway and won Tonys for all three of its leads—Patti LuPone, Laura Benanti and Boyd Gaines. So that has given this Damn Yankees revival another set of expectations to meet. And, alas, all those demands prove too tall an order. By intermission, those of us loitering outside City Center had already seen the show’s biggest numbers—“Heart” (you know, as in, “You gotta have…), “Shoeless Joe From Hannibal, Mo” and, of course, “Whatever Lola Wants” and we knew it wasn’t going to be anywhere near as good as either Gypsy or the original 1955 production.
Which isn’t to say it’s bad. Sean Hayes, the flamboyant Jack from TV’s “Will & Grace” who is 
making his New York stage debut as the Devil who uses the pseudonym Mr. Applegate, is a crowd pleaser, although his Satan is more a naughty boy than the diabolical dealmaker of the original’s Ray Walston, whose wry wit would later enliven his own hit sitcom, “My Favorite Martian.” Jane Krakowski, a Tony-winner for the 2003 revival of Nine and now on TV’s “30 Rock,” looks fabulous and gamely tries to master Fosse’s choreography, although even she seems to know that she can’t match Verdon’s virtuosity. Cheyenne Jackson, on furlough from Xanadu, also looks great and is a valiant young Joe. But none of them seem to really get inside their characters and make them their own.
After the show, in between bites of deluxe cheeseburgers at the nearby Brooklyn Diner, my pal Bill suggested that the limited rehearsal period for the three-week run, which ends July 27, might not have given them enough time to develop their performances. And that may be true but, given the same amount of time, Randy Graff managed to find the emotional center of the wife Meg, making her a fully realized person.
My husband K, a pit musician, usually performs in the Encores! orchestra but this time out, he stayed with his steady gig, playing for Gypsy, and so he was even more curious than usual to hear what I’d thought of the show when I got home. “Ah,” he said, after I described it, “sounds like summer stock.” And that’s the perfect description. This production of Damn Yankees is light entertainment for a summer night, the equivalent of watching a Triple-A-Baseball game. Except, of course, that with the game, you'd get to spend the evening outside.
One entire page in the Playbill for Lincoln Center Theater’s sensational new revival of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s South Pacific is devoted to an acknowledgment of the 14 individuals and institutions who put up the extra funds for the production. Now I’m adding my thanks too. Because you can see what a difference their money has made in Michael Yeargan’s idyllic set, Donald Holder’s sensitive lighting, Catherine Zuber’s spot-on costumes and the uniformly brilliant cast of 40.
But nowhere are the extra dollars more evident than in the care that has been given to the music, something that shouldn’t be, but often is, the neglected stepchild in today’s Broadway musicals. It's not the score that usually gets short-shrift, but how it’s played. There are 30 musicians in the South Pacific orchestra, almost twice the current number for a Broadway musical and six times as many as those playing in the mini-orchestra for the current revival of Sunday in the Park with George. This means the South Pacific orchestra is able to play Robert Russell Bennett’s original 1949 orchestrations including a sumptuous, nearly six-minute-long overture that had the audience at the performance my friend Bill and I attended cheering before the show had even begun.
In an extra gracious nod to the players, the front part of the Vivian Beaumont’s thrust stage actually retracts so that you can see the tuxedoed and gowned musicians, beautifully conducted by Ted Sperling, as they play through that opening medley of gorgeous melodies like “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Bali Ha’i”, “Younger than Springtime” and “This Nearly Was Mine.” Every aural detail has been given attention: sound designer Scott Lehrer has somehow managed to make each note and lyric heard clearly without strapping those lumpish cigarette-pack-sized mikes to the actors. This is how the music was meant to be heard and it’s an unbelievable treat to be able to hear it this way.
I’d like to think that this is the start of a new trend. The size of orchestras has been shrinking steadily over the last couple of decades, and virtually disappeared in the recent John Doyle productions of Sweeney Todd and Company that had the actors playing instruments in between saying their lines. But the current revival of Gypsy also has a larger than normal orchestra with 25 musicians, including my husband K. And, seated on stage behind a scrim that rises and falls as the action requires, they, too, get their moments in the spotlight.
The actors rise to the high level that the musicians sets in both Gypsy and South Pacific. And there is no doubt that the hardest decisions for Tony voters will be those categories in which both shows are nominated. Kelli O’Hara has been terrific before in shows such as Sweet Smell of Success, Light in the Piazza, and The Pajama Game but she breaks into the front ranks of musical stars with her performance as the spunky navy nurse Nellie Forbush, a southern girl who falls in love with a French planter on the Polynesian island where she is stationed during WWII but whose racial prejudice causes her to break off their affair when she learns that he had a previous relationship with a native woman. The role was originally written for Mary Martin but O’Hara makes it her own and will give Patti LuPone, also certain to be nominated for her powerhouse performance as Mama Rose in Gypsy, a run for her money for the Best Actress in a Musical award.
Similarly, the Brazilian opera singer Paulo Szot’s lush baritone and virile good looks redefine the role of Emile de Becque, the planter Nellie loves. “He may be the best musical leading man I’ve ever seen,” Bill remarked after the show. And equally good are the also-hunky Matthew Morrison as Lt. Joe Cable, the young officer who falls in love with a native girl but, like Nellie, succumbs to the racial mores of the time; Danny Burstein adding more than just the usual comic relief as the camp fixer Luther Billis; and the Hawaiian actress Loretta Ables Sayre, as the amusing but also self aware Bloody Mary, the native woman who sells souvenirs and other goods to the sailors.
This is the first time South Pacific has been revived on Broadway since its original production opened nearly 60 years ago but K and I saw a concert version at Carnegie Hall in 2005. That casting seemed perfect—Reba McEntire as Nellie, Brian Stokes Mitchell as Emile and Alec Baldwin as Billis—but we were ultimately disappointed. This time around, though, it was, well, a totally enchanted evening.
Every theater lover dreams of seeing a once-in-a- lifetime performance that people will talk about for years to come. And I think I may have just seen one. For Patti LuPone is giving a legendary performance as Mama Rose in the new revival of Gypsy that opened at the St. James Theatre this week.
I confess that’s not the way I felt when LuPone performed in the three week-run for the Encores! series production of Gypsy that played at City Center last summer. “Maybe it’s the heat,” I wrote then, trying to explain why “the hair never stood up on the back up my neck.” Well, this time around, I could give a porcupine a run for its money.
As I did last summer, I still enjoyed Boyd Gaines’ moving portrayal of Herbie, Rose's long-suffering boyfriend; and Laura Benanti’s winning performance as her gawky daughter Louise who blossoms into the swank stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. But it is LuPone who thrilled me. She has slimmed down, both her weight and her trademark Patti ticks, burrowed into the role and come out with a performance that captures all the complexities that make Rose’s archetypal stage mother indomitable and lovable, unbearable and sensual, and ultimately wrenchingly poignant.
Because my husband K is playing in the orchestra, I got to go to the opening night. It wasn’t the fanciest opening I’ve ever been to but it may have been the most emotional. The applause for LuPone was so long and loud when she made her through-the-audience entrance that it threatened to throw off the pace of the scene. By the end of the first act, the cheers were almost ferocious.
LuPone lobbied long and hard to bring her Mama Rose to Broadway. A feud between her and Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book, which originally opened 50 years ago, and who directs this production, famously thwarted her dream for years. But the two finally made up and I felt as though I were witnessing a bit of Broadway lore-in-the-making when LuPone went into the wings during the tumultuous curtain call to bring out Laurents and Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the show’s lyrics to the late Jule Styne’s gloriously brassy score (just listening to the marvelous overture is almost worth the price of your ticket).
After a brief speech, Laurents seemed unsure what to do next. LuPone stuck out her hand, “Arthur, come take a bow with your company,” she told him. And he did. The two of them kept holding hands and after all the bows had been taken, and everyone else had drifted off the stage, they remained, whispering into one another’s ears. Finally they put their arms around one another and strolled off. They’d come through the production together brilliantly. Patti has signed to play for a full year. Laurents, although 90, is making plans for a new revival of West Side Story. And I’m now prepared to follow them wherever they go.
Even people who don’t know anything about theater know that the theatrical event of the summer is the Encores! production of Gypsy starring Patti LuPone as the archetypal stage mother, Mama Rose. It is a role that Patti was born to play and has been waiting a lifetime to do. And almost everyone who has seen her feels that they have witnessed a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Everyone except me. Maybe it’s the heat.
For the first time ever, the popular Encores! series is doing a summer production and running the show, a complete production and not just its usual staged readings, for three weeks. Even so, tickets aren’t easy to get. But my husband K plays in the Encores! orchestra and so my sister Joanne and I went to the invited dress performance. Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book and directed not only this production and the two previous versions with Angela Lansbury [correction from original post thanks to Mondschein of Third Row, Mezzanine] and Tyne Daly and who is now nearly 90, came out before the curtain rose to greet the audience and got a standing ovation. Joanne and I have loved Gypsy since we were kids and she fell in love with it all over again. We went backstage after the show and ran into our friend Red Press, the longtime musical contractor who has been hiring orchestras for Broadway shows for nearly 40 years. The original production of Gypsy was the second Broadway show he ever played as a young saxophonist and his first hit. There’s a photo of him at a rehearsal with Ethel Merman who, of course, created the role of Mama Rose. He told us he thought Patti was better. People posting on chat rooms have competed to come up with superlatives to describe the show. My very hip stepdaughter Anika went to the opening night and called me as soon as it was over to tell me how great she thought it was. So what’s up with me?
I don’t know. Boyd Gaines, who has become one of my favorite actors, brings touching humanity to Herbie, the sad-sack agent in love with Rose. Laura Benanti is alternately winsome and sexy as the awkward tomboy Louise who grows up to be the superstar stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. The trio who play the strippers who mentor the rookie Gypsy literally stop the show. Patti delivers both of her curtain numbers with her usual Patti panache. And, of course, there is the rest of that marvelous score by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim. But what can I say, the hair never stood up on the back up my neck. The last time I felt like this way was at a party where everyone else was happily high from drinking great wine and I was stone-cold sober because I was taking medication to cure a foot fungus and the doctor told me not to drink. I skipped the actual opening night party at the Redeye Grill even though K and Anika called and urged me to meet them there. I felt I didn’t deserve the celebration. But you do, so do what you can to see the show. And even if I didn’t, I hope you get drunk on it.
No; it's not my usual posting day but I’ve been away for over a week and I’ve missed you guys. Besides, I just heard something that is too delicious to keep to myself and too big for a tweet. 
