Is "13" Too Immature for Broadway?

Tweens, that precocious generation between the ages of 8 and 15, have turned “High School Musical” into a cash cow for Disney. They made the Jonas Brothers (ages 17, 16 and 13 when they formed their band in 2005) one of the hottest acts in the music business today. They put 15 year-old Miley Cyrus on the cover of Vanity Fair this year. And they even helped Broadway’s Wicked become the international girl-powerhouse that it is. So as I sat watching the new musical 13 that opened on Sunday at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, I found myself wondering “Why didn’t someone think of this before?

This is a musical about 13 year-olds, starring a cast of 13 in which no one is older than 18 and even the onstage band is composed of players who probably just began to shave and wear bras. Unlike most of the shows aimed at this demographic (Wicked, Legally Blonde, The Little Mermaid), 13 has its eye on the boys who feel they’ve outgrown The Lion King. In fact, Broadway seems to be going a bit boy crazy this season because both the upcoming shows Billy Elliot and Shrek are aiming for the same audience.

Thirteen tells the story of Evan Goldman, a New York kid whose mother moves him to Indiana after his parents divorce and just a few months before he’s due to celebrate his bar mitzvah. The plot centers around Evan’s efforts to fit in with the kids at his new school so that they’ll join the festivities marking his entry into manhood. The book is by Dan Elish (who’s written such kid-friendly novels as “Born Too Short: The Confessions of an Eighth-Grade Basket Case”) and TV writer Robert Horn. And the music and lyrics are by Jason Robert Brown, composer of the Tony Award-winning score for Parade and the critically acclaimed The Last Five Years.

The whole idea is so smart and appealing that I really wanted to like 13. But, alas, I didn’t. It’s not the fault of the kids in the cast, who are, for the most part, talented and comfortable onstage, particularly Graham Phillips, who played Evan at the performance my friend Priscilla and I attended (he’s scheduled to take Saturday nights off). Phillips has the kind of bright, easy, and yes seductive, charm that brings to mind a junior version of the “M*A*S*H”-era mensch Alan Alda.

Other standouts include the clarion-voiced Allie Trimm as Patrice, the nice-but-non-cool girl who lives next door to Evan; and Aaron Simon Gross as Archie, a kid who gets around on crutches and a strong sense of humor. And even the young band plays well, although some of the heavy lifting is done by conductor and keyboardist Tom Kitt, whose last spin on Broadway was as the composer of the short-lived High Fidelity.

But aside from Kitt and director Jeremy Sams, who does a good job with such as young cast, I blame the show’s shortcomings on the grown-ups involved in the production. While its tunes are poppy and its lyrics witty (click here to hear a sampling), 13 struck me as the kind of show that adults think kids will find cool rather than a show that kids actually do find cool.

And I was totally turned off by how it fed into stereotypes. Does Indiana really have to be, as one song calls it, “the lamest place in the world” to live? Does the school jock have to be the predictably dumbest kid in the school? Does the blonde girl have to be the one that all the boys want? Does everyone have to be so thoroughly grossed out when two boys accidentally kiss?

Yeah, I know. I’m no where near the demographic 13 is hoping to draw. And I admit the audience the night I attended, heavily sprinkled with kids, seemed to enjoy the show, which runs just over 90 minutes. Even I got a kick out of seeing each young cast member show off in the joyful finale. And Priscilla, whose youngest is 14, said she's going to go back with her daughter and thinks that kids will like it. So what do I know? I don't even own any Jonas Brothers records.

A Little Reality Check for "Legally Blonde"

The first time I saw an audition for a New York show was right after college when I went to lend support to my actor friend Ellie as she tried out for a part in a showcase production at Equity Library Theater when it was in the basement of an apartment building on Riverside Drive. Now, it seems that anytime I want to see an audition, all I have to do is turn on my TV.

Last year, the producers of Grease used the reality TV show “Grease: You’re the One That I Want” to find the leads for the revival of the musical currently playing on Broadway. Now the Legally Blonde producers are trying to find a replacement for their star Laura Belle Bundy with “Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search for Elle Woods” currently running on MTV. And starting on July 20, the Disney folks will air “High School Musical: Get in the Picture” on ABC; its winner will get a spot in a music video that will be shown in the end credits for “High School Musical 3” and a recording contract for two singles with Walt Disney Records.

I tuned out “You’re the One That I Want” after the first episode but when I saw Grease last fall, it was obvious that whatever one may feel about its leads, the TV show had done its job of drawing a fresh audience to Broadway. The cheers that greeted just the entrance of the contest's winners and Broadway rookies Max Crumm as Danny Zuko and Laura Osnes as Sandy Dumbrowski were almost as loud as those that Patti LuPone received for her showstopping turn as Gypsy’s Mama Rose on the Tonys a couple of weeks ago. So, I set my Tivo to record all eight scheduled episodes of Legally Blonde and now that the show is halfway through its run, I thought I’d catch you up on it in case you haven’t been watching.

While ‘You’re the One That I Want” followed the “American Idol” and “Dancing With The Stars” model, allowing viewers to phone in and vote for their favorites, “The Search for Elle Woods” is taking the “Project Runway” approach with a panel of experts who have total say over which contestants get to stay and which one gets sent home each week. The judges are veteran casting director Bernard Telsey, Legally Blonde’s book writer Heather Hach and cast member Paul Canaan. Legally Blonde director Jerry Mitchell made an appearance on the first episode and is supposed to show up again at the end of the run. That first episode started with a casting call of 50 girls but quickly whittled them down to 10 in less than two hours.

The finalists are a high-energy and appropriately bubbly bunch, ranging in age from 18 to 28 and primarily blonde, be it natural or from a bottle. Following the conventions of reality TV, they live together--here they share a big suite in the Empire Hotel--and the camera follows them as the judges put them through their paces during the day and the girls alternately support and bitch about one another at night.

Unlike “Project Runway” where you can watch the fashion designers create different outfits on the same theme, or “Top Chef” where they whip up different meals using similar ingredients, “The Search for Elle Woods” contestants all perform the exact same scene or musical number and the repetition can get a little monotonous even though the girls are all fairly talented. The producers are smart enough to know this and so they whirl through a montage of the actual auditions and slow down for quarrels between the girls, interviews with cast members from the Broadway show who are called in to help coach the contestants, and filmed excerpts from the musical itself, which is, in effect, a commercial within a commercial.

There are moments when the judges look as though they can’t believe they’ve gotten themselves into this situation and there’s no one they want. But then they rally, find encouraging things to say about the most-likely-to-succeed and cut one contender--or in this week’s case, two. Their choices seem honest; this week, the two who were axed were also the ones providing the most dramatic tension.

Is this any way to cast a Broadway show? Well, maybe. Andrew Lloyd Webber clearly thinks so. He’s already chosen a Maria for The Sound of Music, through the reality television show “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?” which ran on the BBC in 2006, a lead for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on “One's Any Dream Will Do!” in 2007 and recently found a Nancy for an upcoming West End production of Oliver! on “I'd Do Anything.”

Lloyd Webber has appeared as a judge on these shows and everyone involved seems to win. The performers--even those who don’t get the part--get a chance to show what they can do in front of the man himself, and in front of any other producer who just tunes in to watch. (“I wasn't interested at all in a reality TV show, but I gave it a second thought," Celina Carvajal, one of “The Search for Elle Woods” contestants told the Daily News. "In terms of my career, reality TV is basically going to take over musical theater at some point anyhow, so I might as well jump on now while it's still new.”) The networks get relatively low-cost shows to fill their airtime. People who don’t usually think about live theater get exposed to, and are given a rooting interest in, it. And, shows get a chance to run longer than they might have, keeping lots of show folks employed. Last week, Grease played to a healthy 87% capacity.

Still, this approach only works for a certain kind of show. And so one--or at least this one theater lover--hopes that the on-air audition shows won’t keep producers from trying out other kinds of shows as well. In the meantime, although my cheering her on didn't do Ellie any good back at the Equity Library, I'm rooting for Lauren.

Regrets Only for “A Catered Affair”

My regret is that I didn’t like the new musical A Catered Affair more. Its pedigree seemed to promise such great things. The story about a blue collar Bronx couple who decide to throw their daughter a big wedding that she doesn’t want and they can’t afford is based on “The Catered Affair,” a drama the great Paddy Chayefsky wrote for "The Philco Television Playhouse" back in 1955 at the height of The Golden Age of TV. Gore Vidal adapted it for a movie the next year that starred Ernest Borgnine, fresh off his Academy Award-winning portrayal in "Marty", as the taxi driver dad; Bette Davis as his unhappy wife and Debbie Reynolds as their daughter. (My unendingly resourceful friend Bill discovered that Turner Classic Movies is running that version on its On Demand channel through mid-May).

The book for the new musical is written by Harvey Fierstein, a longtime fan of the movie and a four-time Tony winner including for writing Torch Song Trilogy and the book for La Cage aux Folles; and the music is by John Bucchino, the acclaimed cabaret performer and songwriter whose work has been performed by such singers as Deborah Voigt, Liza Minnelli and Audra McDonald, who has become a virtual one-woman bandwagon for the post-Sondheim generation of show composers. The cast is lead by Faith Prince, turning in a sensationally moving performance as the mother; Tom Wopat, almost as good as the father; Leslie Kritzer, a standout as one of the original sorority sister’s in Legally Blonde, as the daughter; and Fierstein, who expanded the part of the family’s bachelor uncle for himself, turning the character from a drunk lady's man into a gay guy. And yet, this may have been the most dour wedding since Miss Havisham got left with her molding cake in Dicken’s “Great Expectations”.

I suppose expectations might be my problem here too. The show’s advertising doesn’t help. Its logo centers around a smiling bridal couple enjoying their first dance. The Catered Affair website (click here to visit) includes a chatty blog by Fierstein, invites readers to write in with their own wedding stories and promotes a “Mother Of The Bridal Shower” that offers ticket holders discounts for lunch at Tavern on the Green and a special Wedding Cupcake at one of the Cupcake Cafés. It all makes the show sound like it’s fun but it isn’t.

The critics have lined up on both sides of the aisle. “This is the saddest show about a wedding that I ever saw. And I can't imagine anybody who would want to see it,” wrote The Journal News’ Jacques le Sourd. "A Catered Affair demands serious attention from an audience, but the effort is worth it," declared the AP’s Michael Kuchwara. The show won 7 San Diego Theatre Critics Circle Awards, including Outstanding New Musical, during its pre-Broadway run there last fall.

I have to say that I’m sitting in the naysayers pew on this one. Musicals obviously don’t have to be light and frothy (as regular readers know, my all time favorite is Sweeney Todd) but they don’t have to be unrelentingly grim either (both Grey Gardens and Spring Awakening deal with some pretty depressing stuff but still manage to allow you a few chuckles). The small amount of humor in A Catered Affair revolves around the anachronistic jokes Fierstein has written for the uncle, who in this version is constantly making “Queer Eye”-style quips at a time when a gay man in a working class family like his would have been burrowing into the closet or leaving home.

And the one thing that every successful musical needs is memorable music. It doesn’t necessarily have to be tunes that you’re humming when you leave the theater (I couldn’t hum the music from Passing Strange if you paid me and yet it fuels that show). There are 16 numbers in A Catered Affair. They’re pleasant but they’re also all so similar that I actually came home thinking there had only been about five. And none of them gave you anything to celebrate.

A Catered Affair runs just 90 intermissionless minutes. Some folks are calling it a chamber musical (minimalism in one way or the other seems to be a trademark of director John Doyle, who had actors playing their own instruments in the recent revivals of Sweeney Todd and Company). And those fans, like my blog colleague Chris at Everything I Know I Learned from Musicals, are calling the show charming. The tickets, however, are full symphony-priced. And my frequent theatergoing companion Bill had a different adjective for it. “Lugubrious,” he said as we walked to the subway after the show. I, with much regret, nodded in total agreement.

"The Little Mermaid" Fails to Make A Splash

Disney was not a bad word when I was growing up. It meant "The Mickey Mouse Club," which I loved watching. It meant Disney World, which I longed to see. And it meant entering the magical worlds of feature-length cartoons like "Cinderella" and "Sleeping Beauty." So, I'm not really quite sure how Disney became a four letter word on Broadway. Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and the restoration of the venerable New Amsterdam Theatre helped rescue Broadway and the Times Square area from the drug pushers, pimps and sex shops that dominated the neighborhood in the ‘70s. But sophisticated musical lovers complain that Disney's later shows—Aida, Tarzan, Mary Poppins—have been too bland and too mechanical. Broadway insiders gripe that the Disney corporation refuses to play by the rules, throwing its weight around in contract negotiations and its money around to buy up talent. And now, this week, nearly every major theater critic has joined in, harpooning Disney's latest show, The Little Mermaid. “Loved the shoes. Loathed the show,” wrote the New York Times’ Ben Brantley.

Alas, I have to swim with the tide on this last one. I don't think The Little Mermaid is as terrible as Brantley says but there certainly isn't anything magical about it. And it's magic you want from a fairy tale and from the imagineers of Disney. Raised expectations might be part of the problem. There have been few more magical moments on the stage than the opening of The Lion King. The Disney folks hired the experimental theater director Julie Taymor and she transformed that beloved cartoon into a wondrous theatrical experience that set a high bar for other Disney shows. For Mermaid, Disney hired the internationally acclaimed opera director Francesca Zambello, clearly hoping that she would create a similarly transformative production. I've never seen Zambello's work before but if The Little Mermaid is any indication, I don't get what the fuss is about.

The show still tells the story of the mermaid princess Ariel (the pleasant Sierra Boggess) who falls for a human prince (the equally pleasant Sean Palmer), and then defies her father (the very buff and therefore particularly pleasant-to-look-at Norm Lewis) and almost sacrifices her life for love. But the book by Doug Wright (yes, the same award winning creator of I Am My Own Wife and the book for Grey Gardens) pads the tale so much that what was once a brisk 83-minute movie is now a somewhat bloated 2 ½-hour show. All of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's songs from the original cartoon are still there and they still delight but the new ones by Menken and Glenn Slater aren't up to the same level. Most of the imagination seems to have gone into creating an underwater world, which set designer George Tsypin and costume designer Tatiana Noginova do primarily with lots of plastic to simulate water and by having actors glide around on sneakers with wheels in their heels to affect the movement of swimming.

I went to the show with my niece Jennifer, who is now 28 but who, like me, grew up on Disney cartoons and still has the DVDs of every show that came out during the company’s second golden era of animation, which began with the release of “The Little Mermaid” in 1989. We tried to get into the mood of the evening by stopping for a quick bite before the show at Blue Fin, the seafood restaurant around the corner from the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre where The Little Mermaid is playing. But the service was spotty and the tab was ridiculously high for the salad and appetizers we ordered. Jennifer wasn't any more pleased with the show, perking up only for familiar songs like "Part of Your World," "Kiss the Girl" and, the always-buoyant "Under the Sea." "Well," she said at the end, damning the show with faint praise, "it was better than Tarzan."

The kids in the audience, and there were oodles of them at the performance we attended, seemed to enjoy the show more than we did. But they didn't display the excitement that I saw in the young theatergoers at Wicked or Legally Blonde. Maybe kids today are too jaded for the PG-attractions of a traditional Disney show. But maybe it’s just time for Disney to move on from adaptations of its old animated hits. The company seems to think so too. It is currently developing musicals based on "The Man in the Ceiling," Jules Feiffer's children's book about a boy who yearns to become a cartoonist; and "Peter and the Starcatchers," a prequel to Peter Pan by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. Maybe they can help restore Disney's good name.

"Grease" Isn't Slick Enough

There's a reoccurring dream that I have: I'm back in my old high school and no matter what I do or where I go, I can't get out. That's kind of how I've felt the last couple of weeks after seeing the totally sophomoric off-off Broadway show Idol: The Musical, both versions of the Disney Channel’s High School Musical and now the new revival of Grease that opened at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Sunday. Broadway seems obsessed with high school too. There are the socially conscious high schoolers in Hairspray, the sexually repressed ones in Spring Awakening, the overachieving bunch in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, the slightly older sorority sisters of Legally Blonde and those witchy schoolmates in Wicked. Who says Broadway isn't trying to reach out to the youth market?

As anyone who has been to high school knows, popularity is the prime currency for success. And this production of Grease arrives with a built-in clique. Its stars were chosen by viewers who tuned into the NBC reality show, "You're the One That I Want" and phoned in votes for their favorites. "You're the One.." wasn't a big hit, as TV shows go, but it was big enough that the stage show now has a reported $15 million advance. Audience members at the performance my sister, niece and I attended reveled in being part of the in-crowed, mouthing the words to the songs and mobbing the souvenir shop, where T shirts went for $25 a pop—cash only, no credit cards.

The 21 year-olds who won the talent contest—Max Crumm and Laura Osnes—aren't bad. He has a goofy charm that doesn't really fit the character of the sexy greaser Danny Zuko but is nonetheless winning. She is appropriately sweet as goody girl Sandy Dumbrowski and nails her songs. But neither is ready to anchor a show and even though their castmates are more experienced (Kirsten Wyatt as Frenchy, the ditzy beauty-school dropout, and Jeb Brown as the lecherous radio DJ Vince Fontaine are particularly good) and nearly everyone on the creative team headed by director Kathleen Marshall has won, or at least been nominated for, a Tony Award, this Grease has an amateur feel about it. The best part for me was watching conductor Kimberly [not Karen as originally posted] Grigsby lead the onstage orchestra. Grigsby has a lithe swagger that even Rizzo, the show's bad girl, would envy and she danced and rocked her way through the entire evening. My husband K, the pit musician, has never played with Grigsby but some of our friends have and a few have been put off by what they call her show-off antics but she brought a sizzle to Grease that everyone else on stage lacked.

Truth is, I've always been so-so about Grease. But it was the object of my sister Joanne's first crush on Broadway. She saw the original production the fall she turned 16 and couldn't stop talking about it and or singing the songs in the weeks that followed. Good big sister that I was, I gave her the original cast album for Christmas, which she played and played and played. Her passion didn't fade with time; in fact, it revved up with the 1978 movie version starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. And though Joanne has seen scores of Broadway shows over the years, Grease, like all first loves, continues to hold a special place in her heart. She wasn't thrilled by what she saw at the Brooks Atkinson. But my niece—her daughter—Jennifer was. It won't surprise you to learn that Jennifer was a faithful viewer of "You’re the One That I Want". Of course, at 27, she's also one of the ones that Broadway wants. And so, although critics and traditionalists have decried it, this probably won't be the last time American TV viewers get to play casting director for a Broadway show.

Supporting the Troops with "Beyond Glory"

Souvenir shops have become almost as common as Playbills at Broadway and off-Broadway theaters. So much so that I actually know some people who have skipped the show that's playing and just run into the lobby to pick up a CD, a T-shirt, or a keychain. The Roundabout's Laura Pels Theatre doesn't usually host that kind of goodie-bag show. And so as the audience filed out of the performance I attended of Beyond Glory, Stephen Lang's one-man tribute to men who have received the Medal of Honor, we found a young woman standing next to a pile of books simply stacked on the floor. "Buy the book on which the show is based," she called out. "Only $20 and signed by the author." Several men, some of them visibly wiping tears from their eyes, snapped up copies.

Broadway has begun playing the niche market game, targeting different shows to different audiences—Wicked and Legally Blonde for tween and teen girls, Spamalot for their big brothers, The Color Purple for black church ladies and Xanadu for camp-loving show queens—but there's been little aimed at the "Saving Private Ryan" set. In fact, there’s been little entertainment for them period. Even Clint Eastwood is making rueful war movies these days. After four years in Iraq, Americans are fed up with war. But even the most diehard opponents of the war in Iraq, determined not to repeat at least one mistake of the Vietnam War, bookend their harangues with statements of support for the troops. In that, Beyond Glory, which Lang adapted from the oral histories in journalist Larry Smith’s book of the same title, is a play of its time.

I hadn't planned to see it. I've never been a big fan of Lang's (he's always seemed to overpower his roles) and I'm tired of war talk too. But the reviews were so strong that curiosity got the best of me. And I'm glad it did. Director Robert Falls has crafted a production that is elegant in its simplicity. And Lang, in total control of how to best use his natural aggression, is superb. Aided only by assorted pieces of military uniforms that he pulls from an old trunk, he transforms himself into eight very different men, most of them ordinary joes, who showed extraordinary valor under extreme circumstances in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. His co-stars are the show's design team (including lighting designer Dan Covey, sound designer Cecil Averett, projection designer John Boesche, and original music composers Rober Kessler and Ethan Neuberg) each of whom has contributed work that is non-intrusive but powerfully effective.

There was none of the usual coughing and no restless moving in seats at the performance I attended. The only sound was grateful laughter during the 80-minute show's few humorous moments. The New York run, which ends on Aug. 19, is only the latest stop on a tour that has taken the show to American military bases around the world and the floor of the U.S. Congress. Lang has insisted in interviews that the show isn't making a political statement. But it is unabashedly patriotic. Only 3,463 medals have been given the nation's highest award for military service since Abraham Lincoln signed the law establishing the honor in 1861; just two have been granted to soldiers involved in the Iraq War. Beyond Glory honors all of those who are serving.

Broadway Goes Technoculture

If you're reading this blog, I know two things about you: (1) you're interested in Broadway and (2) you feel at least some comfort online. What I wondered was how comfortable Broadway felt not only online but with all the new technology from cellphones to social networking websites that are defining modern life. The big challenge for all the old traditional art forms and institutions—books, museums, opera, theater—is to find new ways to connect to media-savvy audiences, particularly the tweens, teens and twentysomethings who can give them the infusion of fresh blood they'll need to thrive in the 21st century. So I poked around, asked some friends, trolled some sites and found to my delight that Broadway is beginning to get its high-tech act together.

Just this week, the New York Times ran an article on how the folks over at Spring Awakening are inviting audience members to compete for the prize of a backstage tour by sending text messages via their cellphones (click here to read the article). I know some of my fellow bloggers hate this idea because they worry it will lead to more phones going off during the show but I say let's get the kids into the theater and then teach them how to behave once they're there. Avenue Q is trying to lure them in with a series of podcasts that will be downloadable at iTunes. Legally Blonde and the recently departed The Pirate Queen launched extravagant multi-media websites. Rent and other shows offer ringtone versions of their songs. It's all good.

Broadway producers in the past embraced the new technology of their day too—from the first cast album of Oklahoma in 1943 to scores of cast performances on the old Ed Sullivan TV show to D. A. Pennebaker’s now-classic documentary on the cast recording of Company. So I applaud Curtains for joining more obviously youth-friendly shows like Spring Awakening and Legally Blonde and setting up its own page on MySpace. More producers should put video clips on YouTube too. There are already a few, placed there mainly by fans who seem to have sneaked cameras into theaters and made bootleg videos but productions ought to be uploading their own highlights. It's free advertising and costly production values like those for TV spots aren't necessary since the rough, homemade quality of the videos is consider cool on YouTube. But more than anything a MySpace page or a YouTube clip signals that Broadway is up to date and makes the shows seem as though they want the people who are interested in these sites to be interested in them too.

I think it would be really great if Broadway annexed some space on Second Life, the online site that simulates the real world. Companies like Nike have set up shop there. Politicians like Barack Obama are campaigning there (click here to see him in action and to get a sense of how 2nd Life works). The Louvre has opened a virtual branch. Heck, even the country of Sweden set up a virtual embassy "to promote its image and culture." Now doesn't that sound like exactly what Broadway should be doing?

Sympathy for "Coram Boy"

Coram Boy would seem to have had everything going for it to become one of those must-sees for every highbrow theatergoer. It's based on an award winning British novel, albeit one for teens. It is directed by a wildly inventive director who taps into the story theater techniques that combine drama, music, dance and narrative recitations that were the rage when I was in school and many of today's theater critics were also coming of age. It is infused with Handel's majestic music, most notably "The Messiah". It was a huge hit in London. And my former actress friend Ellie, who would rather run naked through Times Square than sit through even half an hour of a show like Legally Blonde, loved it so much that she began calling and emailing friends as soon as she got home from the Imperial Theater where the show is playing and urging all of us to see it.

Yet about a third of the way into the first act, I noticed that my 26 year-old stepdaughter Anika, a trained dancer who now promotes music concerts and would rather run naked through Times Square than sit through even half an hour of a show like Legally Blonde, had her head in her hands and her shoulders were heaving up and down. I thought she was overcome with emotion. And she was, but not the emotion I had assumed. “I'm sorry,” she whispered. “ I just can't take any more” and then she subsided back into silent laughter.

The critics are as divided in their opinions of Coram Boy as Ellie and Anika are. And me? I fall somewhere in the middle. The ghost of Charles Dickens stalks this play. Jamila Gavin’s young adult novel is the story of orphaned boys in 18th century England (click here to read about the real-life Coram boys and girls) who encounter an assortment of colorful highborn and lowborn characters who challenge their innocence and ultimately reinforce their humanity. The production, adapted by Helen Edmundson and directed by Melly Still, evokes the celebrated stagecraft of Trevor Nunn's 1981 epic version of Nicholas Nickelby. I couldn’t afford the $100 ticket for Nickelby back then and so have no comparison but, like Ellie, I was dazzled by moments of Still's staging; I hope I don't spoil it for anyone who is going to see it by saying that a drowning sequence is one of the most stunning images I've ever seen on a stage. I did read "David Copperfield" when I was 12 and although Dickens isn't fashionable these days, I have remained a Dickens fan and so Coram Boy's melodramatic plot and one-dimensional characters didn't bother me the way they did Anika. But I can't say Coram Boy ever really touched me either.

Still, I admire big ambition, even when if falls short. And the creators of Coram Boy aimed high. The cast includes a 20-member chorus. The themes range from the plight of unwanted children and the cruelty of the slave trade to the glories of music and the redemptive powers of love. I can imagine my 12 year-old self seeing this show and swooning with all kinds of emotions. And so if you know a bright, sensitive tween or teen this just might be the show for him or her. The producers seem to think so too. They've initiated "The Under 18 Project," which offers half price tickets for kids. If there's one you want to take, click www.broadwayoffers.com and type in the code, CBFAMPK.