Broadway 2015

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We have spent five weeks in New York going more to the theater than movies – especially since we were shut out of the Apu Trilogy on Memorial Day – so I thought I could use this space for a brief recap of what we’ve seen on the boards in a variety of venues: Broadway, Lincoln Center, Public Theater, Circle in the Square, Playwrights Horizons, New World Stages – four musicals, three dramas, all worthy, only one disappointment (Grounded, with Anne Hathaway).

Far and away our favorite was Hand to God, the story of a repressed Texas boy and his sock puppet. Every moment was hysterical, the acting was uniformly stellar, and we were overwhelmed by the creativity of the puppetry. It was a little like Ted, if it were live and Mark Wahlberg played Seth MacFarlane’s part as well as his own.

More conventional but just as funny was Qualms, Bruce Norris’s new play just about to open. Jeremy plays the odd-man-out in a get-together of swingers at the beach. It recalled a Terence McNally ensemble piece, with sex the only topic on the agenda.

As for the musicals, Fun Home deserves all the accolades it is getting, but I was only 3/4 engaged, maybe because of the unfamiliarity of the music, the staginess of the production in the round, or the lead character’s announcing the ending at the play’s start. The King and I was a total delight. Perhaps no one could have matched Kelli O’Hara’s brilliance, but Ken Watanabe was a puzzlement: he had great stage presence but came up short in the acting, singing and speaking English departments.

An American In Paris featured extraordinary dancing, but a little dancing goes a long way with me, and the story – never a strong point – reminded me too often of the movie, which I saw recently and didn’t like. The familiar Gershwin songs were wonderful; the less familiar ones not so much. We also saw Clinton The Musical, which I would describe as a hoot. Written by an Australian Ph.D student living in England, it felt more like a Hasty Pudding theatrical than Broadway production, but the songs were cute and the portrayal of a bouncy, perky, power-hungry Hillary was charming.

The only disappointment was Grounded, Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of a fighter pilot reduced to running a drone at an Air Force base in Las Vegas. Her performance was a tour-de-force; the problem was the play. I never figured out what its point was. It was better, in any event, than The Heidi Chronicles with Elisabeth Moss, which was the other play of this season we saw on our previous visit.

In honor of the recent, rather boring Tony broadcast, I will herewith hand out my awards for the above shows, which don’t vary much from the official results.

Best Actress in a Musical: Kelli O’Hara was transcendent. I melted every time she sang, above all on “Hello, Young Lovers.”

Best Actor in a Musical: Robert Fairchild’s effortless dancing, fine singing and pleasant personality made me forget Gene Kelly’s smarmy original.

Best Actor in a Play: Steven Boyer gave the most moving performance we saw, and the performance of his hand puppet Tyrone was not far behind.

Best Actress in a Play: Geneva Carr gave a performance beyond her years as Boyer’s mother, expressing a gamut of emotions as widow, mother, teacher, lover, confused Texas blonde.

Best Featured Actress in a Musical: Sydney Lucas and Emily Skeggs were nuanced, age-appropriate Alison Bechdels.

Best Featured Actor in a Musical: Brandon Uranowitz did well with the sympathetic underdog role in American in Paris.

Best Featured Actress in a Play: Sarah Stiles made homely beautiful and had the season’s best sex scene.

Best Featured Actor in a Play: Jeremy Shamos and John Procaccino stood out, but not too much, in the wonderful ensemble cast of The Qualms.

Best Set Design: The ship in The King and I.

Hamlet – 4

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Britain’s National Theatre production starring Rory Kinnear was broadcast in Hahn Hall as part of UCSB’s Arts and Lectures series and disappointed for two reasons. One was that I couldn’t understand half the dialogue and Hamlet’s s’s and f’s sounded like lisps. One is more forgiving of live theater, but when it is a prerecorded presentation going around the world one would hope to concentrate on the performances rather than constantly be thinking, what did he say?
The second disappointment was Nicholas Hytner’s conception, dressing the characters in contemporary clothing and setting the play in a modern police state. Yes, there are numerous references to spying and “informing” in Shakespeare’s text, but what did this transposition gain us? The dialogue remained Elizabethan, so there was always a disconnect between speaker and what was spoken. Nor did the police-state allusion illuminate. If anything, it was distracting to have the Secret Service men speaking into their headphones and Ophelia hiding a microphone in her bible.
Ironically, it is easier to draw contemporary lessons when Hamlet is presented of its own time, just as the human figure can be sexier when scantily clothed than when shown nude.

Theater: A View from the Bridge

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The contrast, on back-to-back nights, between Donald Margulies’ new play, Time Stands Still, and a revival of the Arthur Miller chestnut, A View from the Bridge, made me reflect that a golden age of drama, like the Greeks experienced or like the Rodgers and Hammerstein era of the musical, has passed. Margulies’ work was facile and shallow, presenting issues and emotions scattershot, at sound-bite length; while Miller set a simple table and let it play out at length, without diversion, into tragedy.
Both plays were set in a Brooklyn living room; both were animated by an arrival from overseas; and, for my purposes, both starred actors famous from film (viz. Scarlett Johannson and Laura Linney). Maybe because the 1950s were a simpler time, it was easier to write a play with timeless punch. The inclusion of lawyer Alfieri in the role of Greek chorus added as well to the timelessness of the play. More likely, it is Miller’s brilliance as a dramatist that has not been replicated. I think of Tom Stoppard as a living author whose work may still be shown fifty years hence. No one else.
And after paying $117 plus Ticketron charge for the evening, I am reminded again how superior a value a good movie is.