Where There's A Will...

It's been a month since I last posted here. With theaters everywhere closed, there's been too little to say. But today is Shakespeare's birthday and I'm taking comfort from the fact that he made it through the plague of the Black Death in his day. So here's hoping we all make it through this one in ours. In the meantime, Happy Birthday Will!

Theater Life in these Uncertain Times

We’re all longing for moments of clarity, sanity and even a little levity during these days of social distancing and self-isolating.  But while there may be no live performances on Broadway, off-Broadway or in regional or community theaters right now, theater folks are finding other ways for the show to go on. They’re:

 ●livestreaming performances, like Andrew Barth Feldman’s “Living Room Concert” series that features Broadway stars performing favorite songs from their own homes (click here for it)

●creating theater GIFs; like the hard-to-beat one featuring a dog-ear-wearing Judi Dench (which you can find by clicking here)

●moving the annual 24-Hours Play Festival to Instagram, with monologues from such New York theater faves as Patrick Wilson, Richard Kind and Marin Ireland (for that click here)

●giving school kids who won’t get the chance to do their senior class shows an online audience with Laura Benanti’s "Sunshine Songs" project (found here)

●offering online instruction, such as Debbie Allen’s joy-filled dance classes (find out more about them by clicking here)  

●lobbying for government assistance to help everyone from ushers and dressers to actors and musicians who've been put out of work by the crisis (read more about that here)

●raising money to help people in the community who lost their jobs when shows closed, as Rosie O'Donnell is doing with her videothon that is scheduled to feature just about every Broadway star you've ever heard of this Sunday night starting at 7 p.m. (you can find out more about it here.) 

●celebrating Stephen Sondheim who turns 90 on March 22 with all kinds of tributes including this really superb one by Jesse Green that was part of a New York Times collection of them (which you can read by clicking here) 

My colleagues at BroadwayRadio—Matt Tamanini, Ashley Steves and James Marino—are doing their part with daily podcasts that update the latest news from the theater world along with some feel-good recommendations to lift your spirits too (find that here).

I’m trying to do my little part by prospecting for interesting articles about how the theater community is dealing with this truly unprecedented global health crisis and posting them in a new Flipboard magazine I'm calling “Theater in the Season of the Coronavirus."  I'd advise reading just a few pieces at a time but you can find them all by clicking here. 

One big comfort in these uncertain times is knowing that we’re all in this together and that there’s no finer company with whom to see the tough times through than the people who make and love theater. May you and yours stay healthy.

The Coronavirus Forces All of New York Theater to Turn on the Ghost Light

I had planned to post a review this week but it was a pan of a play that I really didn’t like and that seems somehow wrong at this time when concerns about the spread of the COVID-19 virus have prompted the unprecedented closing of most Broadway and off-Broadway shows for at least a month.

That will be a hardship for the hundreds of people who make their living from the New York theater (some shows have prematurely ended their runs; others may now never open) and for those of us who love the work they do. But, as New York magazine critic Justin Davidson explained in his clarion call for the theaters to close, it is the right thing to do for the health of the people who put on shows and the health of those who go to see them (click here to read his full piece).

So the theaters are now scheduled to stay dark until April 12. Here’s hoping that by that time, the virus will have been brought under control, the fewest possible lives lost and the ghost lights in theaters here and around the country can be turned off and the shows allowed to go on again. In the meantime, I hope you and yours stay healthy.

Dragging Out the Ghost Light

Spring doesn’t officially arrive this year until week after next but the spring theater season is already here, with new shows opening almost every day. And I’m already running behind as I try to see as many of them as I can in addition to tending to the other obligations in my life. That's left me too little time to write my regular weekly post. So I am—reluctantly—turning on the ghost light that theaters set up when they’re temporarily empty. But I’m hoping that it won’t be here for too long. 

The Clever Mysteries of “The Headlands”

Christopher Chen’s intriguing memory play The Headlands works on so many levels that it’s hard for me to keep track of all of them.

It starts out as a crime procedural centered around an investigation into a long ago murder in San Francisco’s Chinese community. Then it cloaks itself in the film-noirish moodiness of illicit love and shady financial dealings. And ultimately it becomes a meditation on assimilation, identity and the narratives that we and others weave around ourselves.

The play bounces back and forth between the present as a young armchair sleuth named Henry tries to figure out what caused the mysterious shooting death of his father, an earlier period of the 1970s when Henry’s parents—his father a poor immigrant to this country and his mother the daughter of one of the city’s wealthy families—met and fell in love and a bit later when the child Henry fears they may be falling apart.

The result is a kaleidoscope of a play that shifts constantly as new information is added, reinterpreted, viewed from different angles. The tone is jokey at first but gradually becomes more pensive as Chen and director Knud Adams peel away the layers of the stories that Henry's investigation reveals.

They’re ably assisted by a top-notch cast, whose first among equals is Johnny Wu who, with just a subtle alteration of voice and posture, convincingly plays the father at several periods in the character’s life, from an almost nebbishy immigrant dishwasher to a seemingly confident businessman.

But everyone is terrific and it’s particularly wonderful to see Asian actors getting to explore a full spectrum of emotions that range from the romantic to the malevolent. And what a pleasure it must be for them to be in a play that doesn't shy away from the issues of race and otherness but that doesn't wallow in them either. 

Still, the production’s true MVP is its video projections, which may be the best I’ve ever seen. The stage of LCT3’s Clair Tow Theater, where the show is running through March 22, is almost bare except for white scrims on which projection designer Ruey Horng Sun displays images of mid-century San Francisco that provide a perfect backdrop for the slight but still glamorous seediness of the story (click here to read more about how they were assembled).

The title borrows its name from the often foggy promontory across the bay from the city and it made me nostalgic for the time I spent in San Francisco before the tech bros took it over. The Headlands only runs 90 minutes but I would have happily stayed longer.

Joyfully Celebrating 13 Years of B&Me

© maksum iliasin | Dreamstime.com

Time flies. And this year it’s whizzing by so quickly that I almost forgot to take some time out to celebrate the 13th anniversary of Broadway & Me. But although I’m a week or so late, I'm no less exuberant about having survived, and even thrived, for this long.

Thirteen, my birth date, has always been a lucky number for me and this past year has been filled with all kinds of happy-making events. At the top of the list, of course, was seeing lots of shows and discovering some fine new playwrights, several of whom were kind enough to talk with me about their plays for the “Stagecraft” podcast I continue to do for BroadwayRadio (you can check out those interviews by clicking here).

I also got to talk to other theater makers for stories I wrote for other theater-related sites from a Q&A with playwright Jeremy O. Harris and director Robert O’Hara for their much-talked about production of Slave Play (click here to read that) to a profile of the young actor Will Hochman who made his Broadway debut opposite Mary-Louise Parker in Adam Rapp’s wonderful The Sound Inside (you can read it by clicking here). 

Another highlight of the year was accepting an Emmy on behalf of an episode I co-hosted for the still-much missed TV show "Theater Talk," created and produced by my pal Susan Haskins-Doloff. A few weeks later, I joined Susan and a panel of other theater critics to talk about the season for a reunion episode of "Theater Talk" that was filmed at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and later broadcast on stations across the country (we’re scheduled to get together again this May 5, so I hope you’ll keep an eye out for that.)

And just a month ago, I produced a panel for this year’s BroadwayCon to kick off the 70th anniversary celebration of the Outer Critics Circle. The panel was moderated by my fellow OCC board member Broadway World’s Richard Ridge and featured a super talented panel of playwrights that included Ming Peiffer (Usual Girls) Donja R. Love (Sugar in Our Wounds, One in Two) and Bess Wohl (Small Mouth Sounds, Grand Horizons).

As I said, really happy-making stuff. But it all began here, when I published my first blog post on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, 2007. And writing here and sharing theater with you all remains the thing closest to my heart.

I am endlessly grateful to those of you who have stuck with me over the years —and to those of you who may have just stumbled onto this post for the first time today. The 2020 spring season is heating up so I’m already looking forward to another terrific year of theatergoing and I hope you’ll share it with me.

Question: What Makes a Modern Musical? Replies From: "Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice," "Romeo & Bernadette" & "Darling Grenadine"

Wither the musical? Not the jukebox musical or the ones that strap themselves to popular movies like a shipwreck victim clinging to a lifeboat or even those with rock scores whose songs self-consciously comment on a show instead of embedding themselves within it. I’m talking about the traditional musical with a book, original tunes that move the plot along, tell us about the character and even have lines that rhyme, the kind of show written for people who are no longer in high school. Does that kind of musical have a future? Three shows I’ve seen over the past couple of weeks try to answer that question. Their responses—and mine to them—are mixed.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The New Group production that is running at the Pershing Square Signature Center through March 22, is based on Paul Mazursky’s 1969 movie about two affluent white couples who flirt with the idea of open marriage and wife swapping. It's certainly adult but it's also as old-fashioned as they come. So old-fashioned in fact that it seems dug out of some early ‘60s time capsule. 

The costumes (mini-skirts, Nehru jackets) are cute and colorful and the actors are equally perky but B&C&T&A has a book by Jonathan Marc Sherman that mimics the wink-wink coyness of those old Doris Day-Rock Hudson movies that were all pillow talk and no action when it came to sex.

The musical's characters talk about their extra-marital liaisons and there’s the iconic scene where the four of them climb into bed together but Sherman doesn’t seem to have anything meaningful to say about their doings, that period or its relation to the present when love stories now routinely include second marriages, same-sex couples and transgender partners.

Meanwhile, the show’s score with music by the now ubiquitous Duncan Sheik (this is his third show in less than a year) and overworked lyrics by Amanda Green so intentionally evokes the songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David that you’re almost waiting for a cameo appearance by their muse Dionne Warwick. If only. It would be sad if too many other musicals followed down this shaky path.

Romeo & Bernadette, the AMAS Musical Theatre production, looks back to the ‘60s too.  But it’s more self-aware and surefooted about it. Mark Saltzman who wrote the book and lyrics, which he set to what the program calls “Classical Italian Melodies,” moves Shakespeare’s story of young lovers from warring clans in 16th century Verona to 1960’s Brooklyn.

In this telling of the tale, the poison that Romeo drank didn’t kill him but put him to sleep for 400 years. When he awakes in midcentury Verona he spots an American tourist who is—pardon the expression—a dead ringer for his beloved Juliet and he sets out to reclaim her heart.

As it turns out the tourist, whose name is Bernadette, is the daughter or an American mobster (more Guys and Dolls’ Big Jule than Tony Soprano) and she’s engaged to marry a young hotheaded mafioso. When Romeo makes his way to America, he’s taken under the wing of the rival gang, despite being dressed in a poet’s shirt, tights and a codpiece and displaying the courtly gestures of his era.

The narrative is grown-up but it makes no sense and the humor is divided between jokes about Romeo’s anachronisms and the stereotypical behavior of the other characters (everyone, except Romeo, speaks with exaggerated Brooklyn accents, Bernadette is the kind of entitled princess who would fit right in with the Kardashians and her bridal florist is the kind of flamboyant gay guy who keeps fluttering his hands) but it’s all played with such jolly affection that it’s almost hard to take offense. 

The show’s songs are distinctive and spring from moments of genuine emotion. They aren’t afraid of metaphor either and their lyrics are delightfully clever. People familiar with opera or the Dean Martin songbook will have the extra pleasure of being able to identify the original melodies that Saltzman has recruited for his tunes. My theatergoing buddy Bill couldn’t resist humming a few as we walked to a restaurant for dinner after the show.

Romeo & Bernadette closes at A.R.T./New York Theatres this weekend but is already scheduled to reopen for an unlimited run on Theatre Row starting March 17. It’s a fun show, the kind the whole family might enjoy but it too looks to the past rather than to the future.

Darling Grenadine, currently playing a sold-out run at the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Black Box Theatre, seems to be heading in the right direction. The show, which was entirely written by, Daniel Zaitchik, is an original modern-day romcom, leavened with just enough darkness to give it some of the edge that modern theatergoers seem to favor.

Its main character is a songwriter named Harry who’s made a small fortune from writing a jingle for a hamburger chain but can’t seem to write anything else. He falls for a girl named Louise who’s in the ensemble of a hit Broadway musical and the understudy for its star. 

Given a setup like that, you think you know where the show is going but it doesn’t go there.  Instead, it slowly reveals that Harry has a seriously grown-up problem that threatens his relationship with Louise, as well as the ones he has with his brother, with his beloved dog, both of whom are named Paul, and with his past.

The songs, written and sung with exquisite care, are reminiscent of Golden Age showtunes but firmly rooted in today’s sensibilities. This isn’t a perfect show.  It’s too long and some of the numbers seem as though they were pulled randomly out of a trunk. But the show has been deftly staged by Michael Berresse and it offers some hope that modern-day musicals can cater to theater lovers who don't need to depend on their parents' health insurance coverage.