David Finkle2013-05-20T21:33:36-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=david-finkleCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for David FinkleGood old fashioned elbow grease.First Nighter: "Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812" Doesn't Quite Zoom Across the Tuner Skytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32889342013-05-16T19:09:45-04:002013-05-18T07:55:20-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812--the musical now transferred from Ars Nova to the Meatpacking District's three times as large pop-up-like Kazino--can most accurately be categorized as that often derided night-out pastime: dinner theater.
Yes, tuner followers, though many advocates of this War and Peace adaptation-redaction are greeting it as a refreshing and exciting new direction for the American musical comedy, it's hardly that. The Transport Group's 2011 revival of Michael John LaChiusa's Hello Again in a Soho walk-up outfitted like a cabaret room was much the same thing--only better.
Okay, there is one significant difference between the two. At Natasha..., an actual theme-oriented dinner is served--and it's a tasty one--whereas at Hello Again, only chocolates were put on the tables, and I can't remember whether they were even meant for the patrons as well as the performers.
But what about the work itself, which swirls around the audience as dizzily as Natasha (pretty, sweet-singing Phillipa Soo) is whirled around during the ball where that bounder Anatole (Lucas Steele, more than convincing as a cad) makes his play for her while her intended, Andrey (the good but underused Blake Delong)?
For the couple of hours Natasha... unfolds, it's sorta, kinda fun while focusing less on the war aspects of Leo Tolstoy's classic novel of early 19th-century Russia than on the peace sections. Or maybe they should be called the "piece" sections, since the attention here is beamed on innocent Moscow-newcomer Natasha's undoing by Anatole, who regards the dear girl as nothing much more than a living-breathing piece of sexual pleasure.
Granted, there's nothing wrong with librettist-songwriter-orchestrator-instrumentalist Dave Malloy of Three Pianos--who also appears as depressed and scruffy Pierre--and 360-degree-directing Rachel Chavkin extracting what entices them of the 1215-page opus. (That's as of the relatively recent Richard Pevear-Larissa Volokhonsky translation.) Many of the thick volume's deeply examined themes (the lecture on the meaning of history, the long slog against invading Napoleon) aren't the stuff of rousing entertainment.
So happily, there are several moments when Malloy and Chavkin succeed in theatricalizing War and Peace incidents. The pivotal ball is one for its evocation of the swoony atmosphere in which an impressionable young woman can spiral romantically. (Sam Pinkleton is the choreographer.) The visit to a theater for a strange performance has a welcome surreal effect. The floor shakes during the second-act interlude called "Balaga"--named after the troika driver transporting what seems like the entire troupe to some hotsy-totsy destination.
And that hard-working bunch--members of whom in Paloma Young's Empire costumes are often asked to deal directly with the dinner-theater-goers--earns commendation. (On the actor-patron front, I was handed a note during a love-letter-writing sequence and was going to hand it back with my phone number added but wasn't allowed the opportunity.)
Of the ensemble, my favorites were Brittain Ashford as Natasha's concerned BFF Sonya and Gelsey Bell, who didn't have enough to do as Andrey's solemn, father-pecked spinster sister Mary. But even those who were overacting had the advantage of seeming to be Russians of the era behaving in their famously excessive manner. And my apologies to those thesps who by bad luck had to interact with audience curmudgeons like me, the fogeys who want to be left alone at events like these.
But what was the cause of my abiding curmudgeonliness? I can explain it in nine words: Malloy's music played by musicians deployed about the room. Evidently, times are changing, but I'm from that generation of musical comedy lovers who attended shows to hear songs. Sad to say, Natasha... has none. Check that. It may have four. There's one sung by Natasha, one by Sonya, the finale item sung by Pierre, and the "Balaga" group number. Of them, only the last truly hits the mark Malloy intends.
The remainder of the not-quite-sung-through, oom-pah-pah-rock score is nothing more than expositional lyrics riding clumsily on endless strings of uninteresting notes. When the height of lyric expression to which Malloy reaches in an ardent love song is "I will love you, Anatole/I'll do anything for you," serious trouble is brewing.
I'm not complaining that there isn't a single rhyme heard throughout. Even Stephen Sondheim's compulsive rhyming sometimes backfires. But were Malloy to field the occasional rhyme, he might find himself forced to turn the recalcitrantly prosaic into the helpfully poetic. Hold it. Perhaps he does attempt one rhyme, which is, however, an off-rhyme. It's couched in the couplet "If you wish to be my friend/Never speak of that again."
But about the music being uninteresting, check that, too. There is something interesting--but not favorably--about Malloy's melodies. They're not exactly lifted from Andrew Lloyd Webber, but they repeatedly bring the English countryside billionaire's composing to mind. In particular, Natasha's "Lost Natasha" ruminations about Andrey as opposed to Anatole keep suggesting the lovely Soo is about to break into "I Don't Know How to Love Him"--and/or snippets of "High Flying Adored."
No one's begging for 'Ochi Chernye" here--which is played over speakers during the intermission--but still. Imagine someone consciously or unconsciously cribbing from Lloyd Webber, who's already widely mocked for his Giacomo Puccini appropriations. But that's what you get. It's up to you to take it or leave it.
Reviewer's final note: During the intermission I ordered tea. Delivered to the table by a saucy waitperson with whom I was glad to interact were a cup of hot water and a tea bag. What?! This is a "Prevyet (Hello), Russia" occasion. Where was any evidence of a working samovar?]]>First Nighter: James Graham's Politically Enthralling "This House" Gets the National Theatre HD Treatmenttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32805772013-05-15T14:29:56-04:002013-05-15T16:29:58-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/This House, which ends its highly successful run at the National Theatre's Olivier tomorrow (Thursday, May 16) with a celebratory world-wide HD broadcast under the National Theatre Live auspices.
(See below for partial schedule of viewings.)
My unmitigated enthusiasm for the screenings comes from sitting in the Olivier this past February with a largely British audience and sharing the thrill of unexpected insights into the usually obscure, if not entirely hidden, Houses of Parliament workings. I admit I may not have the same patriotic interests that my fellow spectators brought with them but that may have even heightened my eventually satisfied curiosity.
What you need to know about This House is that playwright Graham (b. 1982) focuses his keen eye and ear on the virtually unfamiliar group of Tory and Labor Party whips during the 1970s. It's their job, perhaps needless to say, to get their respective MPs rounded up from wherever they are and whatever laudatory or salacious things they're up to for an impending vote, particularly any that might be potentially history-changing. Graham takes great glee in showing the determined, sometimes desperate and/or devious, methods to which they resort.
Because Graham is presenting theater-goers with an insider's view--he did much of his research with some of the very whips whom he puts on stage--he includes a generous number of inside terms. There's even a glossary in the Olivier program. But if some of the terms are self-explanatory and some sail over heads, the one truly necessary to know is "pairing." It's pertinent to a major plot development.
So here goes: "Pairing" simply means that if, say, a Tory MP is known to be unable to appear for a vote on a given day, a Labor member agrees by gentleman's--or gentlewoman's--agreement not to attend the session and therefore sit out the vote. And oh yes, it's good to know that MPs aren't identified by name in This House, but by the constituencies they represent, i. e., Margaret Thatcher, although rising to Prime Minister in 1979, is only mentioned as "Finchley."
The person to fill in any perspective big screen patron on the production's formative aspects is Graham himself. In a program note, he writes that his work "is inspired by real events, but it should not be understood as a biography or historical record. While trying to remain true to the events, this is, of course, a fictional account."
Graham threw more light on his remarkable commissioned piece in a telephone interview he gave me from his (south-of-Thames) Kennington flat, which, handy for him, is within walking distance of the National--where, incidentally, he owes his next NT commissioned piece by September.
Asked why he writes about politics (I saw another outstanding play of his, Tory Boyz, at the Soho Theatre a few years back). he said, "I wanted to write an exposé in a journalistic sense. I wanted to get behind the pretensions and barriers between government and the rest of us, to get beyond the political to the human beings, to humanize the situation. I knew I wanted to write about people. I find the ideas in this play quite moving--how to negotiate your principals with your party."
Mentioning he received his This House commission when he was 27 ("a kid who looks 12 years old"), he acknowledged he obviously hadn't been around during the period he chose to illuminate. He needed to research the subject matter. "I had to do a whole heap," he said. "It's not just history to me, it's history to the public. It's not in the front stage, it's the back stage. I had to start from scratch. It was going to meet people for coffee, drinks."
Of his main protagonists, he reports that "only two or three were living at the time. The main person is [Labor whip] Walter Harrison, a legend in the corridors of Westminster. He had letters, photographs, hand-written notes. I had no idea why no one else before me had wanted to write about it. It was such a drama."
Unforeseeable for Graham was how many of those whom depicted on stage have turned up in the audience and then supplied him with additional information he's been able to incorporate since his opening. One informed audience member told Graham he'd been too kind about her. She gave him a quote now in the dialog that, he said, "I never would have written." She relayed that when she was told bringing an ill colleague in for a vote could kill him, she replied, "Well, at least he'll die happy!"
Yes, it's that kind of shocking, totally rewarding play.
For your viewing pleasure:
_ NYU Skirball Center for the Arts (New York, NY) - May 23 at 7pm
_ Symphony Space (New York, NY) - June 2 at 2pm; June 16 at 7pm; and June 25 at 7pm
_ Cinemas 123 (New York, NY) - May 16 at 7pm and May 19 at 2pm
_ BAM (The Brooklyn Academy of Music - Brooklyn, NY) - June 1 at 10am
_ Kew Gardens Cinema (Queens, NY) - May 16 at 2pm and 7pm
_ James Bridges Theater, UCLA (Los Angeles, CA) - May 26 at 4pm
_ Downtown Independent (Los Angeles, CA) - May 16 at 11am; May 26 at 2:30pm; June 9 at 2:30pm; and June 23 at 2:30pm
_ Rialto Cinemas Elmwood (Berkeley, CA) - May 21 at 7pm; May 23 at 7pm; and June 13 at 7pm
_ Kabuki Cinemas (San Francisco, CA) - June 3 at 7:15pm and June 8 at 12:30pm
_ Shakespeare Theatre Company (Washington, DC) - June 24 at 7:30pm
_ SIFF Cinema (Seattle, WA) - June 15 at 1pm; June 17 at 7pm; June 22 at 1pm; and June 24 at 7pm
_ Coolidge Corner Theatre (Brookline, MA) - May 16 at 7pm
_ Josephine Louis Theatre, Northwestern University (Chicago, IL) - May 31 at 7pm
_ Phoenix Art Museum (Phoenix, AZ) - May 31 at 2pm; June 1 at 1pm; and June 2 at 2pm
_ Angelika Film Center & Café (Houston, TX) - May 30 at 7pm and June 1 at 2pm
_ Sundance Cinemas Houston (Houston, TX) - June 3 at 7:15pm and June 8 at 12:30pm]]>First Nighter: Workplace Woes Scrutinized in Three Plays, One Musicaltag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32570822013-05-11T00:06:47-04:002013-05-11T00:08:31-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/Bull at 59E59, which is quite clearly a companion piece to last season's Cock, which wasn't about working.
Whereas in the latter 90-minuter, a focal man is confronted by a male and female lover and then his estranged father, the former 90-minuter has a worried male taunted by two sleeker co-workers over his inevitably unfortunate outcome in the imminent disclosure about who will retain jobs when the boss arrives.
For the parallel plays, Bartlett puts a specific conceit in gear, dictated by his title. Cock unfolds in an arena, and Bull--you get it: he's having fun with the phrase "cock and bull stories"--takes place in what resembles a boxing ring rather than a bull ring. It's designer Soutra Gilmour's square where the participants square off, with only a water cooler as furnishing. Rhetorical question: Is there anything that symbolizes the workplace more than a water cooler?
In Bull, the contentious colleagues are Tony (Adam James), Isobel (Eleanor Matsuura), Carter (Neil Stuke) and boss Thomas (Sam Troughton), all extremely well directed by Clare Lizzimore. But the problem with the material is that as the tough Bartlett clings to his metaphor, the survival-of-the-fittest encounters that occur eventually become doggedly schematic.
Those who've seen Cock will fight déja vu, although those who haven't will likely respond more readily to its harsh depiction of employment at a moment in the history of finance when being fired is especially dire.
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The 2008 downturn also infuses Steven Levenson's Core Values at Ars Nova. This one unfolds not in a symbolic space but in an actual conference room (Lauren Helpern's set), where (again) four co-workers are involved. They're having a retreat there rather than at a fancy hotel--or even Miami, as has happened in the past.
The boss is Richard (the ubiquitous and always terrific Reed Birney), who--rather than being the kind of unforgiving executive Bartlett unleashes--is clumsily trying to hold his failing travel agency together. He's aided more or less by reliable top assistant Nancy (Susan Kelechi Watson), office technician and ineptly aspiring agent Todd (Paul Thureen) and uncertain Eliot (Erin Wilhelmi), who's just been hired, despite her having little experience in any field. Yes, Eliot is a young, very young woman.
Levenson sees to it--in what could be described as a nervous comedy--that in a series of short scenes covering the retreat's Saturday and Sunday, Richard's attempts to boost company morale through various games becomes increasingly despairing. For instance, he forces Todd and Eliot to hold mock agent-client telephone conversations that confer on neither of them any acquired expertise. The segment is funny while being sorrowfully downbeat.
Carolyn Cantor directs Core Values with a deft and understanding hand. She does especially well, as do Birney and Watson, with a scene where Nancy, a mother concerned about her son, tries to express her loyalty to Richard, but he mistakes her outpouring as a romantic advance and reacts awkwardly.
At 90 minutes, Core Values is probably longer than it needs to be, but--like Bull--it captures the tormenting dynamics of the work environment in troubled times.
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The Ayub Khan Din (book, lyrics)-Paul Bogaev-Ayub Khan Din (co-composers) musical Bunty Berman Presents... is mostly centered in a Bombay movie studio. If you've guessed that it's a Bollywood send-up, go to the head of the class.
The title character--played by Khan Din, taking over the role when the initial actor was injured--has built his company by featuring leading-man Raj Dharam (Sorab Wadia) in a series of epics (i. e., Gandhi of the Ganges). But Raj has gotten older and wider and has become box-office poison at Indian movie palaces.
So, as with Core Values, a failing business in a uneasy workplace is the setting. This offering, however, is going for a heartier brand of laughs, where Bunty-Ji--along with adoring executive assistant Dolly (Gayton Scott) and script writer Nizwar (Sevan Greene)--eventually subordinate themselves to shady Shankar Dass (Alok Tewari), who sees his nasty son Chandra (Raja Burrows) as a star. All this while imperious leading lady Shambervi (Lipica Shah) and ex-boyfriend and studio tea boy Saleem (Nick Choksi) play at romance--and everyone cavorts in properly garish William Ivey Long costumes.
As inexorably guided by director Scott Elliott and choreographer Josh Prince, that's a lot of story. Unfortunately, aside from the occasional production notion (the revealed papier maché hind quarters of an elephant is one), the dialogue and the songs aren't up to much. Bunty Berman Presents... doesn't turn out to be the vast improvement on previous India-based musical hopeful Bombay Dreams that tuner fans may be awaiting. It does, however, include the lyric "Your lingam'll be swing'un once again." And don't expect the definition of "lingam" to be included here.
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If you think the returning-from-retirement Richard Foreman is being direct with the title of Old-Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance), at the Public, you might be assuming working girls are the subject matter. But in his 40-year-plus career, Foreman has never been direct about anything.
So the two women (Stephanie Hayes, Alenka Kraigher) adorning the typically cluttered set Foreman designed (in place, the taut signature strings at stage front) could be gaudily clad hookers, or not.
That's not the point. The point is: First-time patrons need to understand that trying to decipher what Foreman is saying is futile. Furthermore, objecting to the obscurity is playing into his hands. Beyond noticing he's got a befuddled protagonist (Rocco Sisto in white suit with cropped trousers) questioning his existence, spectators shouldn't addle their brains a minute more.
What Foreman has been doing all along with the works he writes, directs and designs is plumbing his own labyrinthine psyche. He's incorporating his wide range of personal symbols into a career-long play by adding one act after one act. Those unwilling to go along should avoid the farrago. Others are invited to wallow.]]>First Nighter: City Center's Encores! Series On Your Toes Lives Up to Its Nametag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32474132013-05-09T15:06:20-04:002013-05-10T15:47:18-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/On Your Toes, the current Encores! series entry at City Center. Those who know the show may already have guessed it's the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart-George Abbott musical's famous Slaughter on Tenth Avenue ballet.
That's the iconic dance originally staged by George Balanchine in 1936 and recreated by him for the New York City Ballet in 1968 and again for the 1983 revival of the musical comedy.
Yes, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue is a good guess but wrong. The biggest ovation-getter of the welcome event is the revival director-choreographer Warren Carlyle's staging of the tuner's title number. In it a troupe of tappers -- meant to represent music students whom protagonist Phil Dolan III (Shonn Wiley) is guiding -- are joined by eight ballet dancers who've been invited to the classroom.
Dreamed up for the 1983 version by the producer and musical director John Mauceri, it could be called a dance-off between the two factions. Nevertheless, it finishes as a riotous blend that builds and builds until it seems it can build no more and then does. It's one of those theatrical concoctions that has a spectator's jaw dropping by increments and only my concern for the participants' health keeps me from wishing it had lasted a couple of hours longer -- or was still unfolding.
This isn't to say that Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, restaged by one-time Balanchine dancer and now New York City Ballet teacher Susan Pilarre, isn't an eye-popper. The haunting themes Rodgers poured out for it and were then so brilliantly orchestrated by Hans Spialek for the 1936 opus maintain their heart-stopping, bass-oboe-inclusive power, certainly as conducted with all shifting tempi honored by Rob Fisher.
Danced originally by Ray Bolger and Tamara Geva, who was long divorced from Balanchine but ready to work for him, it remains the melodramatic tale of a honky-tonk Strip Tease Girl dominated by her boss who becomes attracted to a "Hoofer" -- with unfortunate results for all three. Here, Irina Dvorovenko, playing fiery ballerina Vera Baronova, turns the lines of her stunning body into a living Slinky, whereas the generally appealing Wiley as her persistent suitor doesn't quite have the street savoir faire to match.
But wait, there's more good news. La Princesse Zenobia, Balanchine's spoof of Ballets Russes' Scheherazade exotica that ends the first act with genuine laughs -- especially for balletomanes with long memories -- gets many of its yuks thanks to Wiley. His clowning as a last-minute substitute dancing slave fulfills Carlyle's requirements. Dvorovenko is hilariously imperious as the princess in question.
The embarrassment of terpsichorean riches begins with the On Your Toes kick-off involving the young Phil (Dalton Harrod) tapping like gangbusters through the routine that he and parents Phil Dolan II (Randy Skinner, a top-notch tapper and choreographer in his own right) and Lil Dolan (the always skillful Karen Ziemba) have turned into vaudeville's most successful act. The way the three go at it leaves no doubt why the Dolans are where they are.
So, yes, this is an imposing dance extravaganza, but never forget this is a Rodgers and Hart musical first and foremost, at least that's what audiences expected -- and what they got -- at a time when the collaborators were at the peak of their game.
But in 2013 we've reached a point when musicals don't have break-out tunes, when dance bands across the land can't wait to intro ditties from the newest show, when everyone listening to the radio knows Broadway's latest. Now it's a jolt to be reminded that There's a Small Hotel, Glad to Be Unhappy and It's Got To Be Love were written for the hot occasion.
Lesser-known but every bit as mesmerizing for the way Hart lavished words on Rodgers's melodies are the sultry Quiet Night (originally a 2/4 dance number), the acerbic comedy numbers The Heart is Quicker Than the Eye and Too Good for the Average Man, and the irresistible title item.
With all the song and dance and song-and-dance material gloriously at hand, opportunities abound for the God-given-talented, and this On Your Toes abounds with them. To start, there's Dvorovenko, who's as on her toes with the comic moments (and in costume consultant Amy Clark's filmy togs) as she is on her actual toes. And there's the likable Wiley, who hoofs and spoofs admirably.
Impossible to overestimate is the seasoned agility brought to the gaiety by Christine Baranski as determined arts patron Peggy Porterfield and Walter Bobbie as impresario Sergei Alexandrovitch. She's so familiar now for non-singing television assignments like her current The Good Wife that her musical comedy expertise is easily overlooked. It shouldn't be. And what about the great Walter Bobbie, whose accomplishments as a director (and former Encores! artistic director) overshadow his on-stage acumen? Whatever he does in front of the footlights is always a stitch.
Then count in Kelli Barrett as Phil's student and love interest(!) Frankie Frayne, Joaquin De Luz as narcissistic premier danseur Konstantine Morrosine and Jeremy Cohen as Sidney Cohn, the purported composer of the "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue" jazz ballet. They're all, as the Hart lyric goes, "top of the crop."
The story this troupe's caught up in is something else again. Even librettist Abbott, one of the Great White Way's savviest creators ever, is on record as calling it "lousy." What goes on as an excuse for the sung and danced music? Dolan, having left vaudeville (or did it leave him?), believes student Cohn's score deserves Alexandrovitch's producing attention and while courting the great man, is seduced by rapacious Vera and menacingly resented by her lover Konstantine. Aside from knowing this upsets Frankie for a few minutes, nothing more need by disclosed.
No one's going to On Your Toes for the plot. Everyone should be going for everything else.]]>First Nighter: Richard Nelson's "Nikolai and the Others" Dances In on Fleet Feettag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.32302432013-05-07T11:42:30-04:002013-05-07T11:42:32-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/Mary Stuart and others have done since, Richard Nelson has juggled the facts for Nikolai and the Others at Lincoln Center's Mitzi E. Newhouse. The comparisons will stop here, which isn't at all to imply that the playwright's new work is anything less than a formidable piece of theater. Part of that formidability is due to David Cromer, who directs the demanding production with an authoritative hand.
Also, just as Christopher Hampton scrutinized the German expatriate community in Tales From Hollywood 30 years ago, Nelson sets forth a spring 1948 Westport, Connecticut reunion of celebrated Russian emigrés.
The hostess is George Balanchine's good friend Lucia Davidova (Haviland Morris), and the guests include Balanchine (Michael Cerveris), his new bride and prima ballerina Maria Tallchief (Natalia Alonso), Igor Stravinsky (John Glover), his wife Vera (Blair Brown), actor Vladimir Sokoloff (John Procaccino) and maestro Serge Koussevitsky (Dale Place) as well as several gabby, opinionated relatives and chums.
They've collected to celebrate the name day of the ailing Sergey Sudeikin (Alvin Epstein), who's older than the others by several decades. The hitch is that, after having been a highly successful set designer and Vera Stravinsky's first husband, he's now nearly a forgotten man, and those in attendance are eager to cheer him up.
Nelson--whose sizable bibliography is inserted in the program--mentions only the name "Nikolai" in his title because he's chosen to make Nikolai "Nicky" Nabokov (Stephen Kunken) his pivotal character. Nicky is a composer who hasn't written any new music for some time--as the others bunched together in the title know--because he's become what appears to be an unofficial CIA go-between for the recently established agency and Russian artists making a name for themselves in their new country at a time when fearful belief in the Red Threat was intensifying.
During Nelson's two acts--constructed along Chekhovian lines for obvious reasons--Nicky's plight is that he's declined in his friends' estimation of him as an artist, while remaining someone who do can favors for them with the government. Several scenes are given over to just those kind of revealingly embarrassed entreaties.
Even worse, he's declined in his own estimation. One late scene on Marsha Ginsberg's capacious set involves Nicky's heated importunings with sometime state department official Charles "Chip" Bohlen (Gareth Saxe), whom Koussevitsky has brought to the gathering unannounced. He's something of an American counterpart to Nicky and a man who speaks fluent Russian. As drawn, he also speaks fluent obfuscating officialese.
By this point in the review, it has to have become clear that Nelson has taken on a huge topic--well, "topics" is more the word. For one thing, the Sudeikin event shows any number of accomplished people in a situation where they don't find that their accomplishments are guarantees of political safety. (By the way, when alone together they're meant to be speaking Russian. When the non-Russian speakers enter the proceedings, the English they speak is heavily accented. The dialect coach is Deborah Hecht.)
Perhaps Nelson's primary concern is the elusive, preoccupying art-life connection. It's certainly a (dis)connect that gnaws at Nikolai as well as the others., but it has its definite upside here. One of the gifts planned for Sudeikin is a preview of "Orpheus," the new ballet Balanchine is choreographing to Stravinsky's music. It's the reason Balanchine has invited Tallchief, his current wife, and Nicholas Magallanes (Michael Rosen)--neither of whom speak Russian.
Therefore, a good segment of the late first act is devoted to the dancers performing sections of the work while Balanchine coaches them, Stravinsky adjusts his score to their needs and the others watch. That Rosemary Dunleavy's restaging of George Balanchine's 1948 ballet is exquisite comes as no surprise.
Although taking time for such a lengthy excerpt may be unusual in a drama, the "Orpheus" excerpt isn't the only time Nelson pauses the action for another discipline. Thinking to brighten Sudeikin's arrival, Balanchine instructs his rehearsal pianist and Sudeikin's nephew Kolya (Alan Schmuckler) to put on a recording of Sergei Taneyev's spell-binding choral piece, "Dawn." When the strains reach the party participants, they stop their conversations and raptly listen for a minute or two. The emotional effect of this display of attentiveness to music can't be overestimated.
Nelson is a playwright who gives the strong impression that he doesn't like repeating himself. On the other hand, one theme that does recur is an interest in people who find themselves out of their initial element. Some Americans Abroad, Two Shakespearean Actors, The General From America take up a subject that also serves as a metaphor for anyone's feeling uncertain wherever they realized they've landed.
The playwright also has a knack for dialog that can be naturalistic at times and epigrammatic at others. Stravinsky, depicted as waspish and self-involved, quips, "I can always remember my friends' failures." At another juncture, Balanchine remarks on their woodsy Connecticut surroundings that "Today there are more Russians in Westport than in Moscow." Whether Nelson found the amusing observation in the books he perused for background material isn't relayed.
During the badinage, someone brings up The Red Shoes, which was released that year, and Balanchine pooh-poohs the movie for its portrayal of the Serge Diaghilev substitute Lermontov as forbidding the romance between his composer and principal dancer. In the play, Balanchine says Diaghilev would have encouraged such a liaison. Again, if the sentiment was truly George Balanchine's, it's a disclosure fans of both the film and Balanchine will relish.
Incidentally, don't fail to notice that Nikolai and the Others calls for a cast of 18. Not mentioned so far are Betsy Aidem, Kathryn Erbe, Anthony Cochrane, Katie Kreisler, Jennifer Grace and Lauren Culpepper. Attempting to select a first among the equals in this classy ensemble is a total waste of time. They're all top-notch. But consider this theater query: How recently have the members of a straight-play cast outnumbered the producers?]]>First Nighter: Tom Hanks, Other Talkative Tony 2013 Nominees Spark Their Press Brunchtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31955752013-05-01T16:29:09-04:002013-05-01T16:30:47-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/
Yes, but where was it that he especially needed those multi-colored, kinky New Bals. It was at the annual "Meet the Nominees Press Junket," held today in the Millennium Broadway Hotel Times Square, That's where he was a nominee for his Kinky Boots libretto.
And that's where on the seventh floor members of the theater press are assigned places at long tables to which press agents were leading this year's Tony nominees for brief and amiable chats and, of course congratulations--and for which the anointed ones remain smiling and camera-ready.
My M. O. at this affair isn't however, to wait for them to come to me. I go to them, i. e., I keep circulating to see whom I can catch on the fly and get to make a comment or two.
What follows is a handful of the fly-by-day remarks I got--pointing out immediately that I didn't speak to Tom Hanks, best actor nom for Lucky Guy and who didn't stay long but appeared to be totally Tom-Hanks affable; or Nathan Lane, best actor nom for The Nance and who was giving other interviewers that smile of his where the mouth goes up while the eyes seem to go down; or Cicely Tyson, best actress nom for Horton Foote's timeless A Trip to Bountiful and who was looking mighty fine in a tailored black outfit.
Cyndi Lauper (Kinky Boots score): Asked if this was a day when girls were having fun, she said without hesitation, "Yes!"
Laura Osnes (Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella best actress in a musical): She informed me she uses not one but four pairs of Swarovski crystal-encrusted Stuart Weitzman "glass" slippers at different times through the show--one, for instance, to dance in, one for handing the prince when she's descended the broad palace staircase, et cetera.
David Rockwell (nominated for both his Kinky Boots and Lucky Guy sets): As a designer known for his restaurants, he told me what few people know about him is that the theater is his initial love. Then he remarked that restaurants are theatrical not because of how they look but because, for one thing, they're also an "ephemeral" experience.
Richard Greenberg and Judith Light (he for his play The Assembled Parties, she for her supporting performance in it): We talked about Trenton, New Jersey from where she and I come. Not pertinent to the proceedings, I admit, but amusing to us. Light, by the way, was one nominee having a great time. She remained on hand as long as, maybe longer than, anyone else and hugged just about everyone she saw--every hug coming across as absolutely genuine.
Diane Paulus (Pippin director): She talked about a cast in which acrobats from around the world do their derring-do. Where did she find some of them? "YouTube."
Andy Blankenbuehler (Bring It On choreographer): He said he loves research. So for the cheerleaders musical he went to myriad competitions and noticed the participants were always "laughing or in tears." It was that "emotionalism" he decided he had to get into his routines.
Condola Rashad (supporting actress A Trip to Bountiful): She said she's learned plenty from working with Tyson, but particularly "just how she is physically on stage." From her mother, Phylicia Rashad, she's learned "honesty."
Andre Bishop (producer Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike): Always the reticent fellow, he said, 'These events are for the artists, not producers."
Peter DuBois (special citation for the Huntington Theatre Company, where he's artistic director): The good news from him is the emphasis he's placing on new writers. Having worked in London a good deal recently, he also said he appreciated English audiences for being "supportive of theater."
Roger Berlind: (producer Lucky Guy and Annie and who's already got 17, or is it 18 or more?, Tonys): What's next? "I'm working on a couple projects, but you never know what's going to happen." About marquee name Hanks, he said, "He's the same guy on stage,in his dressing room or on the street." And you know what a compliment he means by that.
Missing from action: Of course, there are those who weren't nominated or cited--Bette Midler, Fiona Shaw, Alan Cumming, Scarlett Johansson to mention a few of this year's shockers. Of those who were cited but were no-shows--at least according to my scoping--are the four young girls playing the title smartie in the 10-times-nominated Matilda. They're receiving the "Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre" and are Sophia Gennusa, Oona Lawrence, Bailey Ryon and Milly Shapiro. Since they're getting their nod for playing a very smart girl, they must be four very smart girls. What they might have said would certainly have been worth hearing.]]>First Nighter: Diane Paulus's Pippin Flies Through the Air With the Greatest of Easetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31584192013-04-25T20:26:20-04:002013-04-25T20:26:29-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/A Midsummer Night's Dream into The Donkey Show and transferred it from Cambridge to New York City's and West Chelsea's Gogo Nightclub, and when she lifted Karen Armitage on board her Hair revival to galvanize the acting tribe. Granted she tightened the strings on her tricks bag for last year's Porgy and Bess -- make that, The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, although many would say the Gershwins didn't have enough to do with it.
All the same, she's now looked at the Bob Fosse-Stephen Schwartz-Roger O. Hirson Pippin and concluded that if she teamed with ex-Fosse dancer Chet Walker to choreograph as well as joined with circus-trained Broadway vets and circus performers hot to trot across Broadway stages, she could fashion a doozy of a circus-centric enterprise.
And don't you know, she's made her mid-spring night's dream come true with the invaluable help of Scott Pask's big-tent set, Dominique Lemieux's electric rainbow costumes, Kenneth Posner's kaleidoscope lighting, the Jonathan Deans-Garth Helm sound design, Paul Kieve's illusions, ZFX, Inc.'s flying rigs and Chic Silber's fire effects.
In Chicago, Fosse had Fred Ebb and John Kander explain the power of giving 'em the old razzle-dazzle, and Paulus has taken that dictum to heart with her American Repertory Theater production -- at least for the length of her first act, if not her second, about which more later.
For those who don't know -- and many of us don't or have forgotten -- Pippin (Matthew James Thomas) is a semi-historical figure, the son of Charlemagne, here called Charles (Terrence Mann). As Hirson imagines the young lad, who's the hero of a tale told by this circus's Leading Player (Patina Miller), he's uncertain what he wants to do with his life while being fairly certain he doesn't want to follow in his father's footsteps. Pippin also doesn't much care that stepmother Fastrada (Charlotte d'Amboise) is pushing Hotspur-like son Lewis (Erik Altemus) to fill the throne he's turned up his nose at.
The premise -- which allows for a series of vignettes during which Pippin tries out various happy-making schemes that don't make him happy -- plays right into Paulus's humming-bird-swift hands. Just as she did in treating Shakespeare's comedy any old way she pleased, she uses Hirson's lay-out simply as a series of opportunities for staging exhilarating circus number after exhilarating circus number.
And choreographer Baker likewise seizes the chance to elaborate fancifully and eye-poppingly on the Fosse signature steps and gestures. One turn he keeps intact is Fosse's "Manson Trio" in the middle of the "Glory" sequence, and how wise he is to do so. Oh, how the American musical misses Bob Fosse!
The manner in which all the three-ring stuff plays out is infinitely rewarding during the first-act, although maybe the highpoint of the colorful gymnastics -- balancing acts, leaps through hoops, you-name-it -- is the one involving Andrea Martin. She's in the role of advice-giving grandma Berthe that Irene Ryan did so memorably. After singing "No Time at All," wherein she advises Pippin to live in the moment, Martin tears off her royal shmatta and, in glamorous tights, becomes part of an aerial performance that Ryan was never asked to do. It's a wowser, and the audience treats it as such.
Sad to say, those infinitely rewarding first-act moments become thuddingly finite in the second act, when Hirson didn't really know where to send Pippin on his finding-himself mission. This is also where Paulus finally reaches into that commodious tote and comes up empty-handed.
What transpires during part of this stretch is that Pippin meets widow Catherine (Rachel Bay Jones) and her acting-up nine-year-old son Theo (Andrew Cekala, also played by Ashton Woerz). Their interplay, carried out amid other flailing forays by Pippin, has Hirson eventually resorting to the stale notion that happiness lies in one's own backyard -- or, in this case, in a down-home backyard where one has had some quiet loving exchanges. To make Pippin recognize this, the creators, following Hirson's script, must turn on their circus metaphor. Suddenly, it's the mad, distracting world, and the Leading Player is its Lucifer.
Good grief, why did Hirson, Fosse et al strain for a moral lesson when so much of what's going on has been sheer fun? Certainly, it is here. Thomas's Pippin not only sings with a young man's heart but also shows off unexpected terpsichorean skills. Miller's abilities are repeatedly unfurled, especially when she's asked to carry out those instantly recognizable Fosse contractions?
D'Amboise is mesmerizing when intoning the cynical "Spread a Little Sunshine" and backing up her advice with sizzling movement. Mann supplements his amusingly demented monarch by juggling. Jones floats her boop-a-doop voice seductively. Acrobats like wedge-haired Philip Rosenberg flip and flap like pancakes tossed hot off the griddle.
The ending Paulus doesn't choose to futz with, as is her frequent wont, is the one now recognized as official and slightly different from the 1972 fade-out. This one does include a final twist that won't be revealed here but maybe adds -- though not for me -- some forgiving irony, a hint of cynicism. Also, note that the original production played without intermission. Perhaps this one, if tightened, should, too.
Schwartz's lark-y score deserves further comment. The composer-lyricist -- who at one time had three shows running simultaneously on Broadway (Pippin, Godspell, The Magic Show) -- introduced a number of clever tunes for the Fosse project. He was immensely helped in establishing them by the original cast album, which was the first released by Motown, when label founder Berry Gordy Jr. decided he needed to diversify.
Investing in the show in order to land the LP, Gordy went about protecting his investment by having Michael Jackson record "Corner of the Sky" and The Supremes wax "I Guess I'll Miss the Man," which isn't reprised in Paulus's version. By the way, not a one of Schwartz's ditties is included a block north in Motown: The Musical.
But hey, here the musical is, sufficiently gussied up to speak, sing, dance and soar through the air for itself.]]>First Nighter: Bette Midler Divine in I'll Eat You Last, Cicely Tyson's Beautiful Bountiful, Tristan Sturrock's Mayday Maydaytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31509482013-04-25T08:23:50-04:002013-04-25T08:23:56-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/
That's to say, the iconic Bette Midler playing the iconic Hollywood agent Sue Mengers in John Logan's I'll Eat You Last at the Booth is so devilishly entertaining as the performance whizzes by, only an old theater fogey would point out that what's described as "a chat with Sue Mengers" is just that: a chat and nowhere near being a play.
It can be said safely enough that the 80-minute exchange is a character study, although its intermittent pokes at emotional depth register as contrivances and render this particular study of character about as deep as the nail polish on the Midler/Mergers finger nails -- those fingers often twirling a cigarette or even two at a time.
During the course of the talk that Midler's Mengers offers ticket buyers -- as if they're (more or less) welcome guests in her sumptuous living room (Scott Pask designed it) -- the hostess covers her rise from emigré German girl to unprecedented prominence in her field, but mostly she regales the spectators with obscenity-sugared opinions of the many people she represented. Until, that is, they quit her, and then her lonely-at-the-top condition is not too subtly underlined.
The Divine Miss Mengers is firing her stinging verbal confetti on the day in 1981 when she's received word through lawyers that she's no longer working with Barbra Streisand, whom she's known since the sublime singer still had the middle "a" in her given name. Told she'll be getting an explanatory ting-a-ling from the star herself, Mengers whiles away the time gabbing about landing Gene Hackman his award-winning French Connection role, attempting to pry Ali MacGraw free of Steve McQueen's abusive clutches, relaying her rules for successful agenting and hurling too many other zingy anecdotes to enumerate.
Directed creatively by Joe Mantello, Midler does all her blabbing while shifting positions on a long, cushion-covered sofa and wearing a sparkling caftan (Ann Roth's bow to Mengers's preferences). She never leaves her perch, even twice summoning an audience member (who doesn't look like a plant) to fetch for her. But although Midler is deprived of her signature fast-footed shuffle and an opportunity to sing even one chorus of "(You Gotta Have) Friends," she still has her ebullience -- the attribute on which she and director Bill Hennessey built the Divine Miss M in the first place. Unsurprisingly, it works like a charm.
Note to militant Midler fans: Anyone acquainted with Midler's wheelchair-bound mermaid may wonder if perhaps that sofa will turn out to be motorized. It doesn't. Note to Julie Harris fans, who fear the great actress's astounding six-Tony career is fading from memories: Mengers's first client was Harris, whom she adored and about whom she tells one of her more poignant tales. Should Harris catch the merry show, she'll undoubtedly be more pleased than will be Streisand, who's also being held up to some additional ridicule in downtown's current Buyer & Cellar.
The Trip to Bountiful, Horton Foote's beautiful and profoundly moving play about aging Carrie Watts longing for one last look at her family home -- is there any stronger human desire? -- was first presented 60 years ago on NBC's Philco Television Playhouse with Lillian Gish and Eva Marie Saint and was expanded for Broadway and Henry Miller's Theatre with Gish and Saint repeating their roles. Since then Geraldine Page won an Oscar as Carrie in the 1985 film and Lois Smith won plaudits for the 2005 off-Broadway revival.
There's no mystery surrounding the acclaim for Foote's work, only one of the many he turned out in his deliberately low-key yet dazzling career. Miss Watts's determination to make a journey adamantly discouraged by her caring son Ludie and self-absorbed daughter-in-law Jessie Mae is the stuff of primal dreams with which only the rare observer would fail to sympathize. Look at it this way: Heroes and heroines ranging from Ithaca's Odysseus to Kansas's Dorothy share the deep-seated feeling.
Now The Trip to Bountiful is revived at the Stephen Sondheim (on the site of the demolished -- save the façade -- Henry Miller's) in a thoroughly lovely production, directed by Michael Wilson with all the sensitivity the play requires. It stars a radiantly feisty Cicely Tyson as Carrie, Cuba Gooding Jr. as Ludie, Vanessa Williams as Jessie Mae, Condola Rashad as the young bride Carrie meets on her interrupted trip and Tom Wopat as a sheriff who comes to Carrie's rescue.
Of the play -- enhanced by Jeff Cowie's shifting set that includes the younger Watts's cramped, even imprisoning apartment and Carrie's tumble-down homestead -- it should be noted that in stretching his script beyond the hour-long television length, Foote padded it unnecessarily. While the comedy-drama is presented here in two acts running more than two hours, the Smith-led revival had no intermission and ran for 90 minutes or thereabouts, At a time when too many plays lasting only an hour and a half could and often should be longer, The Trip to Bountiful isn't one of them.
On the other hand, this cast is so strong -- Gooding Jr. in a fully assured professional stage bow -- a satisfied customer might not want it any shorter. Watching the 88-year-old Tyson arc her rainbow of moods is especially rewarding because it's simultaneously heart-breaking and heart-warming. Her final scene alone is exquisite.
Tristan Sturrock--so effective playing the Trevor Howard role when the Kneehigh Theatre spoofed Noel Coward's 1945 movie Brief Encounter--has returned to St. Ann's Warehouse in Mayday Mayday. This time he's alone on stage recounting a 2004 fall he took that resulted in a broken neck.
Introducing the solo outing, he confides that he was reluctant to talk about the accident for some time but finally realized he must. As he unfolds the history -- employing any number of props to help illustrate his plight -- he makes it plain that the one-man show has been meaningfully therapeutic for him. What he doesn't make entirely clear is an urgency on the audience's part to share it with him. On the other hand, he's a personable fellow, someone whom you're eager to see returned to complete health and whom you hope to enjoy in another Kneehigh production.]]>First Nighter: Fiona Shaw's Miraculous Testament of Mary William Christie's Marvelous David et Jonathastag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31348162013-04-23T15:39:59-04:002013-04-23T15:40:08-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/The Last Temptation of Christ, Colm Toibin has done for the Madonna in The Testament of Mary -- with, predictably, the some outraged response from various Catholic Church officials. Who'd think the reaction could be otherwise when, among other revelations in the 80-minute monologue, the immaculate conception is denied outright? Certainly not at a time when Francis I is traditionally conservative.
All the same, Toibin's New Testament revision -- which in a cynical age has effect of a scorching modern poem -- is the occasion of a bravura performance by Fiona Shaw, whom the audience, on entering the Walter Kerr, is invited to view garbed as the Virgin Mary. She sits silently in a tall, transparent box as if she's merely another of the thousands (millions?) of Madonna representations crowding the history of art -- right up to and beyond Chris Ofili's controversial image.
Once the curious have left the stage, Shaw -- beginning the performance proper -- removes the live vulture perched not far from her among the other props (buckets, nails, a tree trunk) scattered on Tom Pye's barren set. Then she removes Mary's more familiar garments to reveal a loose shift, her dressing down symbolizing Toibin's jettisoning the posthumous attributes accorded the historical figure.
Toibin's Mary -- the program says the time is "Now" -- presents herself as a woman living alone on what could be a deserted farm. She reports being regularly hounded by a pair of guards who recount the life that's been ascribed to her, particularly before, during and after the crucifixion. Not only does Mary contradict their accounts, she explicitly insists that. Unable to watch her son dying on the cross, she paid closer attention to a man feeding rabbits into a cage sheltering a carnivorous bird. That diversion ceasing to absorb her, she confesses she stole away with companion Mary (Magdalene? -- it isn't made clear) before Jesus expired.
In addition to disavowing the myths clinging to her, she tells of New Testament events she did witness -- not necessarily on the best terms with her boy. Claiming he didn't speak to her during the wedding at Cana, she goes on to cast doubt on Jesus's having turned water into wine. Prior to that, she criticizes the event involving the deceased Lazarus -- an occurrence at which she also didn't say much to Jesus, although she'd have liked to. Toibin has her remember, "I wanted to tell him that healing the sick belonged to others but that raising the dead belonged to no one. And though others saw it as a miracle, I saw it as the end of everything. They would come for him."
According to a program note, The Testament of Mary marks the 25th anniversary of Shaw's collaboration with director Deborah Warner, a teaming recognized as one of contemporary theater's most important partnerships. Shaw and Warner enhance each other's fearlessness -- and fearlessness is definitely at the angry heart of this piece.
There's nothing Shaw seems reluctant to do while portraying this Biblical mother courage. She's keen-eyed portraying Mary's rejection of any celestial implications of her life and ascension. More blatantly, she waves away the notion of Jesus's being the son of God and outright sloughs off the notion of her son's saving the world.
Not only doesn't Shaw's furious Mary stop short of trying to drive six-inch (or thereabouts) nails into her side -- after compulsively recalling the nails driven into Jesus's wrists -- but in the aftermath of the crucifixion she strips naked to show Mary's eagerness to cleanse herself. Perhaps it's a baptism. If so, it's not one to establish faith in the unexplained but to disavow it, to opt for reality, to come down on the side of what's real, what's tangible, what's in the actual flesh and blood.
(Shaw doesn't have to be working with Warner to get down to the buff. She did a bit of it under Tom Cairns's direction during her appearance last year at London's National in Scenes From an Execution.)
Incidentally, though anyone would think the titles The Testament of Mary and The Book of Mormon aren't ever likely to be linked in the same sentence, they're going to be here. Both are send-ups of how religious beliefs come into being, how they're created by people needing either to provide themselves with balm for life's complexities or to develop strategies to wield power over others. Or both.
Reviewer's note: A spokesperson for the production says the vulture working with Shaw is a "sweet" bird and will eat nothing living, only dead -- like most vultures, apparently. There's no evidence it's included in the proceedings as a comment on critics.
During an interview preceding Sunday's final performance of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's David et Jonathas at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Les Arts Florissants artistic director William Christie indicated that he and the composer are collaborators. He said this without arrogance but simply to define the work he's done solving the puzzle of the Baroque scores he's sought out. For instance, he said some of them often yield only melody lines--not even instruments specified. In other words, what he does is informed guesswork.
The implication is that there's really no way to ascertain whether he's accurately or inaccurately conducting the scores he's restored -- no matter whether composed by Charpentier, Lully, Rameau or Monteverdi. As collaborator, he conducts them so they sound as close as possible to his impressions of how they might have sounded.
Therefore, a reviewer can only state that Christie's orchestra (including recorders and a theorbo) and the characters David and Jonathas, as sung by, respectively, Pascal Charbonneau and Ana Quintans, are a joy to hear. The overall effect is also disturbing in its depiction of the Old Testament friends attempting to keep pure their (physical) love when Jonathas' father, Saul (Neal Davies, also singing with passion), has grown wary of David's presence at court.
But if this David et Jonathas is a joy to hear, it's not much of a joy to behold. Paul Zoller's confining set can be described as a huge pine coffin or an out-sized sauna with the heat turned off. Costume designer Gideon Davey has almost everyone wearing drab clothes that makes them appear to be 1930s-'40s kibbutzniks. Perhaps the point being made is that Jews are as imperiled today as they were then, but it's not an especially illuminating point.]]>First Nighter: Richard Greenberg's The Assembled Parties Well Assembled by Manhattan Theatre Clubtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31040832013-04-19T16:33:05-04:002013-04-19T16:33:14-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/Anna Karenina. What he could have no way of foreseeing is that he was also issuing a challenge to American playwrights.
And they've eagerly responded over the decades with works depicting every possible particular they could draw from experience -- or cook up -- having to do with chronically cranky family units.
It needs pointing out, however, that the Russian novelist also had his much-quoted observation slightly wrong. He failed to point out that unhappy families actually tend to be unhappy in similar ways -- betrayals, secrets, illnesses, mendacity, deaths, internecine manipulations, power struggles, jealousies, repressed or blatantly open resentments and the occasional shared joy.
The specificity of how these play out is what makes each unhappy family unhappy in its own way. That brings us to the specificities of this week's addition to The Annals of Dysfunctional American Families, Middle-Class Jewish Division: Richard Greenberg's The Assembled Parties, adroitly directed by Lynne Meadow at the Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman.
It's a strongly recommended drama that takes place on Manhattan's Central Park West in a beautifully furnished 14-room apartment, the confusing layout of which eventually becomes a metaphor for all the lost souls trying to find their way in a perplexing, disappointing life.
The primary inhabitant is Julie (Jessica Hecht, looking lovely but giving her vocal mannerisms more of a work-out than needed). The lady of the house is a former movie star -- but only in four films when an adolescent -- and the daughter of a dress designer, which means she often wears absolutely stunning items designed by 17-time-Tony-nominated-no-wins (what gives?) Jane Greenwood.
Surrounding Julie in Greenberg's first act, which takes place on Christmas Day 1980, are her apparently philandering husband Ben (Jonathan Walker, effective but coming across a tad young for the role), her handsome and promising son Scotty (Jake Silbermann, dominating his brief turns nicely) and young son Timmy (Alex Dreier, another of the talented kids on Broadway these days).
A skilled cook, Julie is habitual holiday hostess to Ben's sister Faye (Judith Light, as commanding here as she always is), Faye's shady but evidently faithful husband Mort (the always on-the-mark Mark Blum) and their dim-witted daughter Shelley (Lauren Blumenfeld, playing low IQ extremely well). The guest in the house, developing a crush on Julie, is Scotty's college roommate Jeff (Jeremy Shamos, appearing to be a tad too old for his role, but wait for act two).
For this Christmas, the action is effectively divided into several Chekhovian scenes made extremely effective by the turning of Santo Loquasto's ingenious set. As it revolves and the characters mix and mingle, the audience learns plenty about intra-family conflicts, some of which the members themselves know and some of which they conveniently -- or inconveniently -- don't.
Perhaps the most significant line spoken during these sequences -- a few of which Greenberg and Meadow make clear occur simultaneously -- is a line Jeff overhears while walking through a hallway. "A fucking string of phony rubies" is how it goes. Greenberg sees that the outburst is heard again in its context during a subsequent heated Ben-Mort exchange.
While the first act is used to introduce the characters and their interplay, the second act -- which unfolds 20 years later on Christmas Day 2000 -- another tree, even more laden with trinkets this time -- reveals what's befallen the two families and the one outsider as a result of who they were then and how their expectations have been foiled.
To begin with, Ben and Mort are among the missing, as is Shelley, who's married a Puerto Rican man and thrown Faye aside (this affirmed during an unpleasant phone call). Scotty has succumbed to AIDS, and it's made plain he wasn't homosexual, though show-wise patrons may wonder whether he was in earlier drafts.
Present for this bittersweet gathering are Julie, still radiant and possessed of her tempered positive outlook, and the plain-speaking -- but with accent -- Faye. Also on hand is now long-time family friend Jeff, who's made enough money lawyering in Chicago to give it up. Timmy, now Tim, also comes and goes dramatically. His secrets are the ones that emerge, while others that concern (spoiler alert!) the supposedly phony rubies don't entirely come to light.
Though Greenberg leaves loose ends lying about -- the least of them being why this apparently proud Jewish family celebrates Christmas so devotedly -- the writing is mostly at the level of his best work (Take Me Out, The Violet Hour, Three Days of Rain). Indeed, this play would be worth the time If only for the pair of act-two monologues he hands Julie and Faye. The former talks dreamily about the relationship with her designing mother, and the latter recounts the tale of those phony rubies -- i. e., what she's certain she knows of it.
The dialogue -- handled with finesse by the entire ensemble (okay, Hecht is intermittently too self-serving with it) -- is spot-on for these Jews who may have made some assimilation gains but haven't abandoned many of their pithier Yiddishisms. The most touching lines, especially during the play's second half, belong to the health-compromised Julie.
Luckily for Light, the funniest lines -- yes, there's abundant humor here -- are Faye's. The temptation is to quote them all, but two will suffice. Faye, insisting she's apolitical, quips about the first President George Bush that he "always felt to me like middle management in a Fluffernutter factory." Talking about family recollections, she suggests that "old people boil down to a handful of fables."
For playwright Greenberg, who's been absent the last few years, this is a busy time. His adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's wasn't welcomed with open arms by critics, although I consider it superior to the version a different author dropped on London three years ago. (It closes this weekend.) He has his libretto for the musical adaptation of the movie Far From Heaven due shortly at Playwrights Horizons. And now, there's The Assembled Parties, certainly the highlight of a season when most of the new plays have been lowlights.]]>First Nighter: Jekyll & Hyde, Orphans, Collapse Bow to Mixed Resultstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31129632013-04-19T08:12:20-04:002013-04-19T12:49:26-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/Jekyll & Hyde revival at the Marquis scream until your eardrums are ready to burst, but not only do most of the spectators put up with the din, they can't wait to leap to their feet at the curtain call.
Maybe they think they're at a rock concert. Maybe they are.
Anyway, the main noise polluters are Constantine Maroulis, who plays alter egos Henry Jekyll and Edward Hyde, and Deborah Cox, the brothel prostitute of his living nightmares. Granted, neither one caterwauls throughout all of Frank Wildhorn's each-song-sounds-like-the-preceding-one score. What they and their steel-pipe colleagues frequently do is begin the redundant power ballads softly and then slowly up the decibels to roof-cracking levels -- with music director Steven Landau encouraging his orchestra to battle the singers for prominence.
By now, everyone knows or should be acquainted with The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 response to the way repressed sexual instincts in Victorian England caused many in the populace to feel as if they harbored within themselves two warring personalities. Freud called the battling interior fraternal twins the id and the superego.
In Stevenson's notion, Dr. Jekyll -- having been rejected by a scientific board in his bid to conduct experiments on humans to alter their dualities for the better -- decides to experiment on himself, The attempt goes don't-fool-with-Mother-Nature awry and leads to complications of his engagement to socialite Emma Carew (Teal Wicks) and to the demise of numerous unwitting citizens.
Searching for victims, as the uncontrollably marauding Hyde, Maroulis repeatedly stalks across Tobin Ost's panels-laden set under Jeff Croiter's tenebrous lighting and prompts a foolish question. It's foolish because it asks for logical developments in a script not overly concerned with logic. (Director-choreographer Jeff Calhoun isn't either.)
The foolish query: If the five board members who gave Jekyll his thumbs-down are all done in, why doesn't the London police force look into anyone holding a grudge against the hypocritical quintet? Indeed, where is even a single police detective? Indisposed while looking for Jack the Ripper? Surely not. When the rich are targets, the poor get dropped in a snap of the fingers.
Although Lyle Kessler's Orphans is strongly associated with the 1985 Steppenwolf production starring John Mahoney, Terry Kinney and Kevin Anderson -- directed by Gary Sinise -- it premiered in Los Angeles's Matrix Theater with Joe Pantoliano, Lane Smith and Paul Leiber. The movie starred Albert Finney. It adds up to several talented thesps getting mileage from the endeavor.
And now it's revived in Manhattan with Daniel Sullivan directing and Alec Baldwin, Ben Foster and Tom Sturridge acting. You know why the latter three signed on: Any actor would sacrifice eye-teeth to be in it. Not much more than a slick spin on Harold Pinter's three-hander, The Caretaker, the play offers great opportunities for showing off. So much so that you wonder why, no matter what was going on during director Daniel Sullivan's rehearsals, Shia LaBeouf chose to take his much publicized premature powder.
As in Pinter's Caretaker, an older man -- this one called Harold, no less (in homage?) -- arrives at a sinister home (ubiquitous John Lee Beatty's tall, greyish set) where one menacing brother and one apparently troubled brother, reside in a weirdly synergistic state. Also as in the role-model drama, it looks as if the intruder is at the mercy of the residents until it doesn't look quite so much that way and the interaction among the trio takes on the appearance of a surrogate father-surrogate sons situation.
At the outset, the showiest role is Sturridge's Phillip, because he gets to behave like a feral animal. He spends his ample downtime jumping from staircase banister to couch to window-sill and back. Sturridge's athleticism is something to behold -- a blatant Tony nomination set-up. But so are the somewhat less flamboyant character twists that Baldwin as Harold and Foster as Ben get to chew on and spit out -- often literally. And maybe this is the place to say that celebrated as he is for 30 Rock, et cetera, Baldwin remains an underrated Broadway figure.
With all the mesmerizing histrionics, it's no mystery why so many Orphans adherents don't bother to notice there's not much original play here -- just a fancy-pants actors exercise.
There is something of a play going on in Allison Moore's Collapse at the Women's Project City Center Stage II, but it's ultimately undone by too much heavy-handed symbolism.
Initially, Hannah (Hannah Cabell and David (Elliot Villar) look as if they have a handle on their marriage and that the accident David had in the not too distant past -- his car fell into deep waters during a bridge collapse -- is no longer as much a psychological set-back as it has been. Even the unexpected arrival in Minneapolis of Hannah's wacky sister Susan (Nadia Bowers), newly evicted from her West Coast home, doesn't instantly loom as radically disruptive.
But Moore believes people erect facades about their situations, and that's what transpires among these three. Eventually, Hannah -- exasperated at David's stay-at-home drinking -- sneaks out to an AA meeting for guidance and reassurance. Lacking the resolve to enter, however, she lurks outside and encounters the exiting Ted (Maurice McRae), who invites her to a one-on-one meeting and then makes a play for her. Or does he, since he confesses to being impotent?
This encounter, which does lead somewhere, becomes a thorn in the Hannah-David side, and an outcome is that David decides the thing he needs to do is prove he's recovered by climbing what's left of that partially destroyed bridge.
He's able to do this -- but ludicrously -- since set designer Lee Savage has accommodatingly erected a bridge section that hovers upstage. Why playwright Moore figured she needed to play on the idea of collapse to cover both the accident and the foundering marriage is anyone's guess, But the result is her ultimately turning the play, directed by Jackson Gay, into an unfortunate sight gag.]]>First Nighter: Nathan Lane First-Rate, as Usual, in Douglas Carter Beane's New Play, The Nancetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30880772013-04-15T20:01:06-04:002013-04-15T20:01:09-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/The Nance, and what's revealed is the Hopper-like replica of a Horn & Hardart restaurant with its bank of small windows (ubiquitous John Lee Beatty is the set designer) and a few men sporting fedoras at separate tables.
The one whose face has been hidden lowers the paper he's reading and turns out to be Nathan Lane. He's Chauncey Miles, the nance of the title, who shortly explains to young, new-to-the-city Ned (Jonny Orsini) that the downtown branch of the famous Philadelphia-created automats they're in is a gay pick-up spot where patrons must be circumspect since raids (very much pre-Stonewall) are common.
Their initial exchange is the start of a love affair that audiences might assume will be the focus of Douglas Carter Beane's Lincoln Center production at the Lyceum. That's if they don't already suspect that, given the burden of Lane's character, the drama's emphasis will be on Miles's dangerous life as a homosexual courting laughs in the guise of a swishy burlesque figure.
Sure enough, once Ned and Mile s- -despite his unyielding compulsion to seek anonymous sex -- set up light house-keeping, the attention shifts to the now-demolished but once popular Irving Place Theatre in which Miles performs with sidekick Efram (Lewis J. Stadlen, Lane's frequent sidekick over the years). They're supported in their routines by meet-ya-round-the-corner-in-a-half-an-hour stripper-comediennes Sylvie (Cady Huffman, Lane's Producers supporting player Ulla), Carmen (Andrea Burns) and Joan (Jenni Barber).
Jarringly shifting gears, Beane now concerns himself with society's aggressive and intolerant pursuit of homosexual men during the period. Since not only cruising zones like the Greenwich Village Horn & Hardart were at risk for police action but burlesque houses were as well, Miles -- a fictional character Beane has dreamed up based on real-life entertainers -- is a perfect target. He's all the more vulnerable because of his convictions that, like Alban in La Cage Aux Folles, he is what he is and won't give in to the potential perils of persecution.
Since Miles remains inflexible, he eventually taunts an official he knows is in the audience one night. He does so rather than follow Efram's advice to switch for that performance into comic-Italian mode. His provocative stand gets him arrested and seated before a judge's bench where he gives an effective, though not entirely exonerating, speech about the use of language. He describes his deployment of double entendres to point out that what he's doing for a living isn't in any form incriminating.
All would be fine with Beane's intentions were he more brutal in his attack on repressive behavior in the past -- and by implication in many quarters today -- but though he shows and tells spectators a good deal about Miles, he hasn't completely figured who Miles really is.
For instance, he has Miles declare more than once his loyalty to the Republican Party. He never explains why, however -- something he certainly needs to do in the context. Neither does he probe why Miles insists on playing the nance when he knows he's not only putting himself at risk but that he's endangering his colleagues as well. Where is the scene, an observer might ask, during which Efram as his best friend and colleague confronts him with his decision? Or if not Efram, someone else.
Furthermore, whatever happened to life with Ned -- other than the young fellow's becoming a neophyte performer at the burlesque house? The answer to that question is offered towards the end of Beane's script, where he abruptly goes back without much ado to the co-habiting same-sex couple and their threatened future.
As if he's thinking The Nance, which is directed by Jack O'Brien with his usual firm hand, could be turned into a Fred Ebb-John Kander-type musical -- or pass for one in its current state -- Beane inserts several burlesque-influenced numbers between the scenes. Sometimes they seem to be commenting obliquely but pointedly on the action. Sometimes, they don't seem to be.
But as played by Lane and Stadlen, they're consistently rib-tickling. They're certainly an informative survey of burlesque jokes and situations that audiences perhaps not old enough to recall burlesque but perhaps able to pull up images of Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater will recognize. Appearing in skits with the pair or without then, Huffman, Burns and Barber vivaciously go about their comically provocative business. The choreographer for them all is clever Joey Pizzi, and the costumer with the sense of humor and sense of period is Ann Roth..
But if Beane's work is a character study calling for further study on the author's part (he's certainly accomplished more here than he does in his current Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella) libretto), Lane's three-dimensional portrait of Chauncey Miles -- named after George Chauncey, whose 1994 Gay New York Beane consulted for background info -- is never a let-down.
Possibly Broadway's one legitimate box-office name (in contrast to movie stars sojourning on the fabled turf), Lane has played versions of Chauncey Miles before. (That's to say, he himself is something of a stage nance.) As he's previously demonstrated, he has the uncanny ability to make audiences laugh while tugging at their heartstrings -- the gift indicating more than a spark of genius.
His portly physique and his use of it contribute to his noteworthy effects. (Jackie Gleason, anyone? Zero Mostel?) His voice is also a significant factor. But it's really the round face that does it. His thin-lipped mouth turns up, his eyes turn down and his eyebrows look as if they're about to slide off. The combo imbues him with a sophisticated sadness that suggests he's aware of something about life that is both comical and so fathomlessly disillusioned that anything approaching happiness is thoroughly out of the question.
Lane's stance, his expresssion at the final curtain -- the cause of the despair won't be revealed here -- may not be earned by Beane's play, but at that moment the actor beautifully compensates for anything and everything that up until then might have been missing.]]>First Nighter: Motown: The Musical Gives the Customers What They Came Fortag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30820852013-04-15T08:39:45-04:002013-04-15T08:39:53-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/Motown: The Musical, Diana Ross (Valisia LeKae), having just finished her first performance as a soloist, remarks to manager-boyfriend Berry Gordy Jr. (Brandon Victor Dixon) that she hopes the audience got its money's worth. He replies, "They did."
He can say that again. There's no question that patrons at the Lunt-Fontaine Theatre -- certainly longtime "Motown sound" lovers -- are getting their money's worth. That's because too much about the production is visually and aurally pluperfect to raise much doubt. Okay, maybe a little doubt -- and what there is will be discussed farther down.
For the moment, however, there's a heap of praise to pass around, starting, of course, with the Motown music and moving on to the slick Charles Randolph-Wright direction and rousing Patricia Wilcox and Warren Adams choreography, the fluid David Korins sets, augmented by Daniel Brodie's classy video design, and Esosa's flashy costumes.
Add to those Natasha Katz's explosive lighting, Peter Hylenski's meticulous sound, Charles G. LaPointe's fabbo hair and wigs and a cast of ebullient singers and dancers -- many of whom play multiple roles (as, for instance, impersonating at various moments the Four Tops, the Commodores, the Contours, the Vandellas, the Marvelettes, Gladys Knight and the Pips).
Speaking of performances: Dixon's as the founder of Motown Records is outstanding. The actor's got passion, determination and a strong voice to project Gordy's beliefs, especially when they're expressed in song. Needless to say, they wouldn't have been sung in real life, but they're chanted here in new anthems to which Gordy has set words on Michael Lovesmith's music.
In the other pivotal turn, there's LeKae as Diana, known to close childhood friends like Mary Wilson (Ariana DeBose) as Diane. Motown fans -- particularly partisans of The Supremes -- will wonder where the producers and casting mavens found someone with what up to now has been the singular Ross smile and the singular Ross LP-thin body. Plus, LeKae's got the pipes and acting chops with which to back up her convincing recreation.
There are any number of equally startling turns -- Charl Brown as a devoted Smokey Robinson, Bryan Terrell Clark as an increasingly activist Marvin Gaye, Eric LaJuan Summers as a dynamic Jackie Wilson, N'Kenge as an electric Mary Wells, Ryan Shaw as the adult Stevie Wonder. A special shoutout to Raymond Luke Jr., who plays the young Berry Gordy, the young Stevie Wonder and (wow!) the young Michael Jackson. (Jibreel Mawry alternates in the role.)
There's no way to watch Motown: The Musical without marveling at the bushels of catalog items that hit the '60s-'70s-'80s charts -- 50-plus of them in this line-up by staff writers like Lamont Dozier (Julius Thomas III here), Edward Holland (Daniel J. Watts) and Brian Holland (Summers). These seeming effortlessly, irresistibly catchy numbers brought an easily identifiable lilting and fervent new sound to the national and international airwaves.
As these Top 10 releases, all originally recorded by the company's incomparable house band, roll by, the changes in them following the '60s social unrest -- particularly the protest numbers like "War," "What's Going On" and "Love Child" -- are reminders of the undeniable cultural force Motown has been.
So there are sufficient elements in the jukebox tuner to please any Motown advocate, and no one will argue the show hasn't been aimed towards that contingent. But what of the Gordy libretto? Truth to tell, it's somewhat unsatisfying as adapted by Gordy -- working with consultants David Goldsmith and Dick Scanlan -- from his 1994 autobiography, To Be Loved: The Music, The Magic, The Memories of Motown.
Motown: The Musical is framed by NBC's 1983 25th birthday celebration, which brought together many, of not all, of the labels' acts. There's one significant participant missing at the festivities, and it isn't Tammi Terrell, who goes unmentioned throughout the hyperkinetic proceedings. It's Gordy himself. He's initially revealed at home, nursing hurt feelings about having been abandoned for other labels by many of the discoveries who've reunited for the broadcast.
While longtime associate and the variety-hour's producer Suzanne de Passe (Andrea Dora) beseeches him to forgive and forget, he thinks back to his childhood dream of being someone. Then he reviews chronologically the history of the successful company he established and the recording artists that became an indispensable part of it.
As the reverie unfolds, Motown: The Musical is certainly Gordy's homage to the sound he created and his roster of soloists and groups. But mostly it's an exercise in honoring himself. including his developing and unraveling relationship with Ross. Perhaps for the sake of balance, he remembers a bedroom encounter when he was unable to perform, and she reassures him.
He recalls other developments along the way for which he notes no wrong-doing on his part, such as Mary Wells's departure (she was the first of his stable to defect) and his eventual decision to move his headquarters from Detroit to Hollywood. He revisits obstacles faced like resistance from white music purveyors who labeled his product "race music" and therefore unplayable on pop stations. Indeed, the white characters in Motown: The Musical come across as stereotypes, but, oddly enough, so do some of the black characters.
Perhaps the problem is that too many of the book scenes are sketchy, cartoon-ish, diluted versions of what must have really occurred. Complicating matters is the obvious indication that to accommodate these scenes just about every one of the Motown memorable chart-toppers included has been trimmed. Putting aside the fact that for this reviewer the absence of The Supremes's "Baby Love" with its heart-stopping mid-way modulation is a major disappointment, Motown die-hards are likely to find the abbreviations frustrating.
At one point in Gordy's recollections, he fixes on the first Motortown Revue sent around the country and the potential trouble it encountered in the South when white and black fans mingled. While it's unfolding, an observer can't be blamed for thinking that maybe Motown: The Musical would have been best off not as part reality-show Dreamgirls but as a straight-out Motortown Revue 2013, which it almost is anyway.
A closing word on Emilio Sosa's costumes: He's done his research, but it doesn't look as if he's gone about reconstructing the vast Motown wardrobe. As an actual witness, I can report that the gossamer gowns worn by Diana Rose, Mary Wilson and Florence Ballard at their 1965 Copacabana opening were different from what LeKae, DeBose and and Dionne Figgis as Florence Ballard gyrate in for the Motown: The Musical reprise. Needless to say, this isn't criticism. It's a devoted fan's cherished memory.]]>First Nighter: Matilda Teaches Broadway a Thing or Twotag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30648112013-04-12T11:57:36-04:002013-04-15T12:59:25-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/reviewed Matilda from London in February 2012, I began my over-the-moon remarks this way: "You read it here first: Although producers are currently wrangling over who will prevail in the campaign to bring Matilda -- the hit British musical at the Cambridge -- to Broadway, whoever prevails and whenever the transfer happens, it'll win the best musical Tony for whatever season in which it bows."
Okay, Matilda is now at the Shubert, as produced by original commissioning outfit, The Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Dodgers -- with Playbill title-page thanks to abundant money-raising parties. And guess what. This time I'm over the moon -- even higher and on trajectory to Pluto and beyond. The reason is that the terrific show is even better here than it was/is there.
I'll explain how that's occurred only after I quote more extensively from my initial coverage to underline the tuner's superiority. "Yes," I went on to rave, "the adaptation of Roald Dahl's children's story of the same name -- about a young girl who loves to read but is called a hopeless bookworm by her low-IQ parents -- is that good. Good, nothing. It's delicious, delightful and delirious from first to last and has the power to affect adults as thoroughly as it does children. That'll extend to children and adults everywhere, though there's some silly talk circulating about the tuner's being "too British" to travel. Phooey on that.
Not unlike other stories of its type, Matilda depicts many of the grown-ups -- if that's what they can be called -- as close to irredeemably evil, but it also has plenty to say about misbehaving kids, as two of the songs, "The Smell of Rebellion," and the final "Revolting Children" attest.
From beginning to end, Matilda is so chockful of surprises and a polished and eager-to-be-foolish cast that this dazzled adult -- tempted to abandon his critical faculties from the kick-off ditty about youngsters constantly told what miracles they are by their elders -- doesn't know where to begin the praise-phrases. The hilarious, but also deeply smart, libretto from Dennis Kelly, who's London-based, and Australian Tim Minchin's score -- which may not include break-out songs but which works like a charm within the show's framework -- is as appropriate a place as any.
As if constructing a voluminous cotton-candy cone, Kelly and Minchin spin the story of put-upon, persevering Matilda as she contends with dance-crazed, exploding-blond-wig mom Mrs. Wormwood, brains-challenged, shady-dealing dad Mr. Wormwood and Miss Trunchbull. She's the tyrannical school headmistress averse to any sort of actual learning.
While Matilda contends with these unrelenting adversaries but in the end proves too resilient for them -- with the help of her sweetly understanding teacher, Miss Honey (Lauren Ward) -- the book writers also have no end of fun with the other preteens acting up whenever they have the opportunity, which is constant. Chief among them is fat kid Bruce, who shows his mettle in a cake-eating contest so beautifully rigged its conclusion instantly reaps an ovation.
Nothing misfires as Minchin's tunes whiz by, either. Highlights abound, the best of which is an imaginatively choreographed number with swings, "When I Grow Up," and the irresistibly gymnastic movement supplied for "The Smell of Rebellion." Peter Darling -- who also handled a five-footers-and-under contingent in Billy Elliot -- stages these work-outs, as he does all the dancing, including a laugh-packed mock tango. His patterns throughout can't be all that easy to negotiate, since he incorporates the choppy, propulsive gesticulations recognizably common to the Ritalin crowd. All participants are drilled like adorable automatons, and it's a hoot to watch.
Rob Howell's Matilda set is framed by seemingly innumerable out-sized Scrabble tiles -- some of them spelling words like "tragedy" and "silence" -- and features tall, shifting bookshelves. His costumes boast garish rainbow colors. Furthermore, enough can't be said about Hugh Vanstone's lighting and Simon Baker's sound.
Last, add the enterprise to director Matthew Warchus's list of productions both artistically and commercially triumphant. Does he ever miss? Doesn't seem that way. He certainly doesn't with this humungous winner.
Okay, now how do you raise those greatly elevated levels? Not by a better cast, although this one is every spoken word, every sung note and every danced step as good as the London ensemble I saw. Bertie Carvel as Miss Trunchbull repeats his performance, committing one of the best cross-dressing turns since Alastair Sim let loose in the St. Trinian's flicks. Lauren Ward nicely repeats her turn as unsticky sweet Miss Holly and with Ted Wilson is as hilarious as big-voiced Eric as he was.
The rest of the cast members are stateside replacements who have, for only one outstanding accomplishment, gotten accents down as if they were all born across the sea. The enchanting Matilda I saw was Milly Shapiro, whose rendition of the song "Quiet" is especially poignant. (The Matilda role is shared by Sophia Gennusa, Oona Laurence and Bailey Ryon, and most of the to-die-for children's roles are also played by four young performers.)
Getting in the spirit of things and making them more spirited are Gabriel Ebert as cruelly simple Mr. Wormwood, Lesli Margherita as equally cruelly simple Mrs. Wormwood and Taylor Trensch as television-watching teen Michael Wormwood. Mrs. Wormwood's dancing partner Rudolpho (Phillip Spaeth), who apparently doesn't have a bone in his sinuous body, is more hot stuff.
But if the cast members -- superb as they are in Howell's fine and fancy costumes -- don't account for the Matilda bar-hiking, what does? It's the Shubert Theater. The configuration of its orchestra seating arrangement has encouraged Warchus to send his players into the audience for several additional delicious, delightful and delirious surprises.
And now back to my previous review where I closed by saying, "A final word: At a time and in a culture when dumbing-down is the dismaying order of the day, Matilda is unabashedly about smartening up and the rewards doing so brings. It's a lesson in living that could come across as preachy but not as presented here with all the inspiration the best stage craftsmen and craftswomen can muster.
"And the 2013 Tony for Best Musical goes to...whatdya think?"]]>First Nighter: Barbra Streisand, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, Jack and Madeline Lee Gilford Get Theater Treatmentstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30301062013-04-07T12:44:21-04:002013-04-08T18:36:46-04:00David Finklehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-finkle/
At that time their son Joe Gilford was born. As he was growing up with both parents black-list-implicated, the shameful times were what he heard regularly and heatedly discussed. The talk had to have been about the scarcity of work for anyone with a Red Channels listing or fellow traveler designation. He knew about family friends called in for HUAC grilling where some excoriated the committee to their eventual detriment, some took shelter under the Fifth Amendment and some named names.
So perhaps it's no surprise that when writing a play about what he knows, Gilford has come up with the impassioned, autobiographical Finks at the Ensemble Studio Theatre and first produced in 2008 by the New York Stage and Film Company. In it, his parents are Mickey Dobbs (Aaron Serotsky) and Natalie (Miriam Silverman). Mickey is doing so well in his gigs at Barney Josephson's Café Society that he lands a television series suddenly thrown into doubt over his supposed political affiliations. Natalie doesn't quite understand why the husband she loves is more reticent than she about publicly proclaiming their beliefs in artistic freedom -- and in all threatened freedoms -- no matter the consequences.
Constructing his play intricately, such that the Dobbs home and Café Society scenes are intertwined with HUAC interviews conducted by Representative Walters (Michael Cullen), Gilford also prominently includes close friends Fred Lang (Ned Eisenberg), who's modeled at least in part on Philip Loeb, and Bobby (Leo Ash Evens), who's clearly modeled after Jerome Robbins and who does a hot Lindy with Miriam (choreographed by Greg Graham). (Bobby is also glimpsed rehearsing other signature Robbins moves.) Among names-namers depicted whose identities aren't veiled is Elia Kazan.
It's hard to think that the fervor with which Gilford writes -- as well as the humor innate to both Mickey and Miriam that's frequently expressed -- hasn't been blended into his DNA. The work -- directed with concomitant fervor by Giovanna Sardelli and dressed with period accuracy by Sydney Maresca -- is a testament to the parents who managed to maintain their indomitable spirit throughout the ordeal.
*****
At the opposite end of a spectrum of enterprises conjuring public figures is Jonathan Tolins' Buyer & Cellar at the Rattlestick, which is, in its coy and campy way, about Barbra Streisand.
A one-man intermissionless 90-minuter showcasing an extremely adroit Michael Urie, the comedy could easily be dismissed as a merely silly time-killer for La Streisand fans. Yet. In a larger sense, it inadvertently implies a reality about the American obsession with fame and the famous. It's an example of the embarrassing need too many people have to create idols through whose successes they can live vicariously -- and then the eventual petty need to knock the famous off the pedestals recently erected. The practice is a from of nation-wide schadenfreude.
Specifically, Buyer & Cellar is Tolins' fantasy spun on the pages in Streisand's best-selling coffee-table book My Passion for Design that describe the row of shops she's had built in the basement of the main house on her three-acre estate where she houses various collections.
It's Tolins' notion that once she completed it, she wanted a salesperson to tend to customers -- that is, to the one customer who'd patronize the premises: herself. New employee and sometime actor Alex recounts his experiences in the odd situ -- under Stephen Brackett's empathetic direction and on Andrew Boyce's set depicting a hallway in which sits the kind of table with tea things on it Streisand is known to favor.
Although Streisand apparently encourages guests to visit the outre mall and often picks items from it for gifts, that's not how Tolins presents her. That would dilute his satire. Instead, the gossipy Alex scoffs at Streisand, while simultaneously longing for her to recognize his charms. (This is a recognizable conflicted attitude that die-hard fans often manifest.) So Alex gabs about his gradual acceptance by Barbra as a friend (at least temporarily) and even as acting coach while she prepares her film adaptation of Gypsy.
Alex courts her, despite joking about her being in Gypsy as a 70-year-old with a five-year-old daughter. When not dissing or glorifying her, he's running into trouble with nattering boyfriend Barry, who's jealous of the time his paramour spends with the diva of many moods.
Oh, well, for people who need Streisand both to idolize and kick around, Buyer & Cellar fills the bill. People who need people who don't need to get their kicks knocking Streisand can look elsewhere.
*****
Julius Caesar and much younger seductress Cleopatra are the celebrities composer George Frideric Handel and librettist Nicola Francesco Haym goad and glamorize in the 1724 Giulio Cesare, which David McVicar is giving a remarkable, even reputation-changing, twist at the Metropolitan Opera House under conductor Harry Bicket.
It appears that McVicar is taking severe objection to Handel's opera -- any Handel opera -- habitually being categorized as immutably static. The director has made it his mission to prove the four-hour-plus opus is anything but static.
To get his wide-ranging point unequivocally across, he's enlisted David Daniels (voice troubled early, stronger later, as Caesar), Natalie Dessay (manifesting superb vocal control as Cleopatra), Alice Coote (especially strong in the pants-suit role, Sextus), Patricia Bardon (vocally persuasive as Cornelia), Christophe Dumaux (making the most of conniving Ptolemy), Guido Loconsolo (a robust Achillas), choreographer Andrew George (doing yeoman work throughout), set designer Robert Jones, costume designer Brigitte Reiffenstuel and lighting designer Paule Constable.
The strategy takes. Moving the period from ancient Rome and Egypt to the 20th century, McVicar guesses that were Handel and Haym writing then, they might very well have made Cleopatra a flapper. The very word implies movement, and that conceit prevails throughout this colorful and elegant new production.]]>