Archive for category: Theater

Dead Outlaw   (9)
An outrageous true story of a mummy brought to life by a superb ensemble cast and a catchy country rock score played live onstage. The stagecraft was everything, as each excellent actor rotated through a variety of roles at a breakneck pace that drew you in and, amazingly, made you care. Andrew Durand was good as the not-so-good outlaw but more impressive as the mummy; bandleader Jeb Brown was a commanding presence; and Julia Knitel, the only female, was a treat.

Pirates of Penzance Musical  (8)
A totally fun take on a classic G&S operetta, with everyone having a hoot, most notably Ramin Karimloo as the Pirate King and David Hyde Pierce as Major-General Stanley. The transfer to a New Orleans locale contributes to a sloppy, less satisfying ending, but any who quibble about messing with the original shouldn’t bother coming to this production.

Maybe Happy Ending   (7)
A cute simple love story with elegantly futuristic staging. On the plus side, lyrics and dialogue were easy to understand and the plot, until the ending, was easy to follow.  The technological gap between HelperBot 3 (Darren Criss, excellent) and HelperBot 5 (Helen Shen, also) seemed enormous, but nothing that love couldn’t bridge.

John Proctor is the Villain     (7)
A Me-Too Era take on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, as studied by a group of Georgia high-schoolers under the tutelage of John Proctor – I mean Mr. Smith. How the analogy fit, or didn’t, gave me a lot to think about, having re-read the play the day before . The problems, undoubtedly related, were that too often I couldn’t understand the dialogue (despite the audience laughter after lines I missed), and only four of the seven students were played by good actors (as defined by the comfort and enjoyment level I had when they were in the spotlight). There was also a plethora of 2018 pop culture references that I recognized but didn’t resonate with–Lorde, Twilight, Taylor Swift, Beyonce–and an ending that left me cold rather than exhilarated. Judging from my wife’s reaction, I’d say this was a play written by, about and for women. For me, the high point was re-reading The Crucible.

Smash    (9)
I went in with no expectations or even a recollection of what the play was about and left having thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the musical about a musical about Marilyn Monroe. Robyn Hurder was a convincing Marilyn, but “Karen” and “Chloe” also performed show-stopping diva numbers in the role. Best of all was Brooks Ashmanskas as the gay Broadway veteran director Nigel, who despite age and girth showed off all the hip-grinding dance moves he was giving the dancers. And they were uniformly great. The 21 numbers by Marc Shaiman, mostly diegetic, left hardly a moment to catch one’s breath, and I can’t think of one I didn’t enjoy. The supporting cast–shoutout to Krysta Rodriguez as the song-writing Tracy–were another delight. This was Broadway as entertainment, quite enough for me.

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes    (9)
A cliche of a plot only underscores the brilliance of performance by Hugh Jackman as the horny middle-aged English professor temted/abetted by the coyly diffident Ella Beatty as his 19-year-old student in Hannah Moscovitch’s unerring play. Like much of  great art, the end left me scratching my head,  causing me to think more deeply, if confusedly, about what I had just seen. In any case, it was great theater (at the intimate Minetta Lane Theater) and the chance to watch Jackman perform in three dimensions was priceless and, after Gypsy, restorative.

Gypsy     (4)
Having never seen this classic American musical before, I can’t judge whether Audra McDonald’s portrayal of Madam Rose as an insufferably neurotic, egotistical harridan was par for the course; knowing that Ethel Merman originated the role I’m not sure that McDonald’s overmiked vocals that veered on screeching were unusual, but her operatic vibrato that seemed out of place on Broadway exaggerated the problem. She gave it her all, I will say, but all for what? I had had a hard time watching “Rose’s Turn,” her let-it-all-out finale, and put my hands over my ears to turn down the sound. I had always considered “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” a cheerfully optimistic number and “Small World” a sweet romance, but in McDonald’s hands they were songs of desperation. The other familiar number, “Together, Wherever We Go,” came across better, but only because Herbie (Daniel Burstein) and Louise (the excellent Joy Woods) were so devoid of ego they together balanced the self-centered Rose.
In short, I hated almost every minute of the production, with the notable exception of the three strippers singing “You Gotta Get a Gimmick.” The mood so lightened and I found myself smiling when Rose was nowhere to be seen. The dance numbers were fine, but they are almost a given in Broadway productions these days, and this clearly was a Broadway production. But “the great American musical”? I don’t think so.

The Last Laugh    (7)
A thoroughly enjoyable riff on British music-hall comedy, familiar to me from the Benny Hill TV show, imported from the Edinburgh Festival to Brits on Broadway at 59E59. Three aging comedians with different trademark styles exchange reminiscences, witticisms and bon mots in the final dressing room, adding a serious twist of triste to their routines.

In Dig, by Theresa Rebeck at 59E59 Theaters, every line of dialogue is a speech, illuminating the speaker or advancing the plot. The actions are often loaded metaphors too: Roger’s repotting a damaged plant in the opening scene, giving it food, attention and room to grow, previews the main course of the play, a repotting of the damaged Megan. A lot is thrown at the viewer over several days in the plant shop, and we don’t always know if the business is failing or coming back. There are possibly more plot twists than the play’s single set can contain; but for the most part the play’s careful construction holds things together. Both leads had multifaceted personalities, to say the least, but were ultimately sympathetic, which left us with a good feeling.

By contrast, the lines in Annie Baker’s Infinite Life could have been taken from real life. There wasn’t much plot to advance, nor were characters hot one moment, cold the next. Lines, in fact, were short and few, but many brought a chuckle or a smile of recognition. With great economy, we felt we knew the characters, and each was a more believable, relatable person than anyone in Dig. If there was a moral or message, I missed it. But none was really needed. Yes, there were thoughts on pain, and even sharper ones on sex; but I mainly found myself entranced by Christina Kirk as Sofi as she spent her week at the spa.

Without any intent, a large majority of our theater-going this fall took us to musicals, of very different stripe. The most traditional by far was a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s  Merrily We Roll Along, which has been better received than it was in 1981. The production is superb, and the leading performances of Jonathan Groff and Daniel Radcliffe are excellent; I wasn’t wild about the third, Lindsay Mendez, but that could be due to the role as written. The story is the opposite of uplifting, as it stars a talented songwriter who sells his art for commerce, his wife for glitz, and soul, apparently, to the Hollywood devil. The score, I’m told, is among Sondheim’s best, which for my ear meant the songs were pleasant but not memorable. Ultimately, the whole thing felt dated, like an exquisitely produced Broadway musical of 1981.

In another musical that we enjoyed the action took place in 1976-77, but the feeling was very “now.” Stereophonic recounted the making of a follow-up album by a mixed rock group (three men, two women; three Yanks, two Brits) with two recording engineers as the Greek chorus. We were back in the world of Almost Famous or Spinal Tap, a world I loved in absentia: sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. The songs weren’t part of the plot; they were being recorded for release by this band and, written by Will Butler of Arcade Fire, they were all very good. The actors, amazingly, were as convincing in their music-making as their acting. Each performer got to fully develop their character, including the uncool engineer who ultimately held it all together.

I know Gutenberg! The Musical was a musical because it said so in the title. It wasn’t like it had songs listed in the program, though. I’m too young for Vaudeville, but this is my idea of what Vaudeville was like: two hams making funny faces, corny jokes and surprisingly deft moves around the stage. Josh Gad’s performance was worth the price of admission, and the play’s premise–Gutenberg transposed his wine press to a printing press, thereby creating people’s ability to read–was clever enough. For one act, at least. You got the jokes, and they were funny; but when intermission came it wasn’t clear why they needed a second act. To sell expensive tickets, I guess.

Here Lies Love, conversely, felt like all music all the time, with dancers running through the balcony aisles, the DJ getting us on our feet, and a general disco vibe running from start to finish (and there was a dance party after that). The real life story of Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos and Ninoy Aquino gave the show historical heft and even offered political parallels to our world today, but it was the creative vision of David Byrne that made this show stand out from anything we’ve seen before. The performers were all great, led by Arielle Jacobs as Imelda.

Poor Yella Rednecks was the weakest of the bunch, the stage equivalent of a comic novel. Maureen Sebastian (Tong) was superb, singing, acting and moving, but the other actors came across as cartoon characters, except for Little Man, who was a puppet.

A Beautiful Noise offered a counterpoint to Merrily: in both a talented songwriter gets a boost from someone in the business, becomes fabulously successful, is carried away by the glamor and glitz, losing wives and children, and ends up in a bad place. Being an authorized biography of Neil Diamond, however, he finds himself at the end: “I Am, I Said.” I’m not a Diamond fan (my 2,500-song playlist contains nothing by him), but the music worked, thanks to exhilarating dance numbers by a marvelously diverse chorus, a little help from the wives, and a cleverly caricaturish Diamond impression by Will Swenson.

 

Three tremendous acting performances anchor this study of friendship, homophobia, team chemistry and baseball. Surprisingly, the baseball references didn’t bother a purist like me. As for the homophobia, it’s sad that there are no more openly gay Major Leaguers now than when the play was first performed twenty years ago. But most intriguing was the question implicit in every relationship: how well do we really know someone, even our best friend? Jesse Tyler Ferguson deserves his Tony for his funny, lovable portrayal of Darren’s business manager, and Bill Heck was  smart and sexy as the shortstop/narrator around whom the action pivoted. But most intriguing was Jesse Williams’s Darren Lemming. I don’t know if the character was modeled on Derek Jeter, but the parallels were obvious: best player, mixed heritage, emotionally distant and just enough attitude to make a Yankee-hater like me dislike him. There was a lot of action, and it all made sense–if you can believe that a team with so little harmony can win a World Series. That’s the team chemistry issue.

Everything we hope to find in the theater, as most commonly found Off-Broadway: thought-provoking subject, great ensemble acting, honest dialogue, gripping story and tragic, but not sad, ending. The subject was how the American justice system treats convicted sex offenders: it presented the raw deal they get, while acknowledging the pain they cause. But regardless of the subject, the play’s strength was the ensemble acting of the four offenders forced to share a home: a white man in a wheelchair, a repressed Latino, a sensitive gay Black and a smooth-talking Black hustler. Each was excellent, and their four-way dynamic made the stage of Leopoldstadt seem that much more crowded. Coming off productions in Chicago (Steppenwolf) and London (National Theatre), they were at the top of their game. I loved every minute.

A deeply personal play–and he wants you to know it–by Tom Stoppard, an apologia for not knowing until late in life that he is (100%) Jewish and most of his family died in and around the Holocaust. By honoring so many of his ancestors he assembles a cast of characters that challenges the audience’s understanding (“Aunt! – Why no, she’s my sister-in-law’s sister-in-law”), at the expense of identifying deeply with anyone. In fact, I found the play a much better read than a performance. Except for the two British imports (Gretl and Fritz/Leo), the actors disappointed. It felt they were reciting their lines, not inhabiting them, and the ensemble never flowed. (The child actors didn’t help.) I wonder if sitting in the third row hurt. There is drama and emotion, but some of it comes from the Holocaust, more than Stoppard.