West Side Story

I always thought that I liked West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein's once-revolutionary retelling of Romeo and Juliet amongst the gangs of 1950s lower Manhattan. I relished the highly stylized film adaptation as a child, and understood how jarring the original stage production (which starred Chita Rivera, Carol Lawrence and the late Larry Kert--quite the team) was to Broadway audiences at the time. The new production at the Palace Theatre--directed by the original bookwriter, Arthur Laurents, with Joey McKneely recreating Jerome Robbins' landmark choreography--has a strong sterility to it, and I had the feeling that someone unfamiliar with the history of this musical would view this current staging and not understand why the show has become the classic that it is. Part of the reason has to do with some major pieces of miscasting--Matt Cavenaugh is far too old and vocally wrong for Tony, while Cody Green's Riff is about as threatening as a midwestern Sunday School teacher. Even Karen Olivo, who won the Tony Award for her performance as Anita, failed to convey her character's fiery spirit throughout the performance. Only Josefina Scaglione, an ideal Maria, found the perfect balance of beautiful singing and intense acting that this particular show requires. In her hands, the devastating final scene offered the only semblance of the kind of emotion that should permeate an entire production of this musical.

Vanities

Photo: Joan Marcus

What differentiates a period piece from a dated work? At first glance, quality might seem to be the main difference, but it’s not. For example, Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road is an excellent show but it is definitely dated. Lack of universality might lend itself to datedness, but the while Moon for the Misbegotten is not universal, it is also not dated. Perhaps being too contemporary is a problem, since some of the most cutting-edge pieces are the most quickly dated, as time blunts their edges. I suspect the answer to the period-vs.-dated question is probably a complex formula along the lines of

“breadth of the moment examined” + “deepness of the examination” - “level of reliance on contemporary signifiers (brands, TV shows, etc)” x “talent and insight of the creator(s)” + "number of years from the present time"

For example, Getting My Act Together examined a particular moment in feminism, and feminism‘s success is one of the main reasons it is now dated, yet A Doll‘s House isn‘t--perhaps because of its underlying themes of loyalty and trust. Also, the Ibsen play is over a hundred years old, allowing the audience distance, while Getting My Act Together is only 30 years old.

The new musical version of Vanities, adapted by Jack Heifner from his 1976 play, is dated. While the ins and outs of friendship and loyalty are universal, this particular story depends on now-cliché tropes that limit its story to a tiny time and place. The new version has nothing new to say, which might be okay if it said the old things better. The three actresses give it their all, and there are moments that work, but mostly it just isn’t particularly interesting. The songs add little to the mix.

Tin Pan Alley Rag

Photo: Joan Marcus

There's not much to say about Tin Pan Alley Rag, written by Mark Saltzman and directed by Stafford Armina. A fictional bio, it suffers from all of the weaknesses of the genre. In particular, there is no plot and no conflict, just Saltzman's idea of what Irving Berlin (Michael Therriault) and Scott Joplin (Michael Boatman) might have said to each other if they had ever met and if they shared the habit of occasionally speaking in blocks of awkward exposition. There are some pleasant moments, particularly when the songs take over, and the highlight is the surprisingly good-sized ensemble performing excerpts from Joplin's opera Treemonisha.

The Europeans

Photo: Stan Barouh

The reliable and important PTP/NYC is currently presenting an excellent production of Howard Barker's The Europeans in rep with Thérèse Raquin. This small epic (not as oxymoronic as it sounds) takes place in Vienna in the late 1600s, following a Turkish invasion and war between Christians and Muslims. Barker practices a "Theatre of Catastrophe" depicting human beings in their most extreme and elemental states following violence, war, and other terrible life-changing events. Well-directed by Richard Romagnoli, The Europeans clearly fits this description, as desperate and deeply damaged people try to find sanity and connection in the ruins of their former lives. (While there is much pain in this play, there is much humor and sexuality as well.) The excellent cast, led by Brent Langdon as the emperor and Aidan Sullivan as a woman who has experienced deep physical and psychological horrors, has only a weak link or two. Mark Evancho's scenery and Hallie Zieselman's evocative lighting manage the miracle of turning a small nondescript performance area into a convent, a palace, and anything else it needs to be, giving the production the sense of space(s) it needs and often delighting the eye.

West Side Story

Photo: Joan Marcus

The production of West Side Story currently playing at The Palace is a mixed bag at best. The concept of having some of the characters speak Spanish some of the time is excellent in theory, but distancing and distracting in practice. (When Light in the Piazza used Italian, it was more or less clear what the people were saying; here, even though I know West Side Story fairly well, it was not.) The casting of Matt Cavenaugh is an astonishing miscalculation; he is wrong for the part in looks, acting chops, and voice (he sounds like he's still playing a Kennedy, as he did in Gray Gardens). When he sings Maria, he seems unaware that Tony is bursting with love and joy. Josefina Scaglione as Maria is much better, but her performance is too small to carry to row T in the orchestra (I can't imagine what people in the sky-high Palace balcony think of her). Director Arthur Laurents' odd choices and sluggish pacing give the audience plenty of time to ponder just how flimsy the storyline is. Boy meets girl, boy kisses girl, boy woos girl, boy kills girl's brother, girl sleeps with boy anyway, boy dies. This supposedly major romance is little more than about a day and a half of hormones, and I don't believe that Anita would agree with Maria that "when love comes so strong, there is no right or wrong"--her boyfriend was just murdered after all. So, what does this West Side Story have going for it? The amazing score, of course, and the choreography, which remains fresh, evocative, and astonishingly beautiful over 50 years after its creation. In clips I've seen on TV, the original dancers come across as more perfectly in sync, but even without Jerome Robbins to abuse them to perfection, the current dancers are still quite good. The scenery (James Youmans) and lighting (Howell Binkley) are beautiful. And Karen Olivo, in her Tony Award-winning turn as Anita, brings energy, charisma, and sheer talent to the show. One final complaint: The sound was uneven, with much of the orchestra coming across indistinct and electronic. Also, remember when you used to be able to tell who was speaking? Well, maybe you don't--you may well be too young.

Tin Pan Alley Rag

photo: Joan Marcus

The situation, which has "The King of Ragtime" Scott Joplin paying an initially desperate but ultimately inspirational visit to songsmith Irving Berlin, is contrived and the dialogue is often clunky. (Here's one groaner: "Maybe you can turn that Tin Pan Alley tin into something greater than gold!") Yet, when he's not heavy-handedly making the case for art over commerce, playwright Mark Saltzman is on to a theme that is hard to resist: art lives longer than the artist. I got a bit misty-eyed at the moment when the play makes clear that Joplin's opera Treemonisha, rejected in the composer's lifetime, finally got its due; I wasn't the only one, judging from the chorus of sniffles all around me. The play's essential argument, that Berlin wasn't a serious artist because he worked within the confines of the marketplace, rings false; it's rather like saying that Hitchcock wasn't a serious filmmaker because he worked in the studio system. Whenever we hear one of Berlin's tunes the man's genius is evident. The play is packed with Joplin rags and Berlin songs, a not inconsiderable pleasure, and the lead actors are hugely engaging. Michael Boatman brings an almost regal dignity to Joplin, as if the strength of the composer's artistic vision has lifted him to a higher consciousness. Michael Therriault brings a gentleness and a likability to flesh out Berlin who, on the page, often comes close to being cold and one-note.

Grease

I caught an understudy-heavy performance of the Grease national tour in Philadelphia and was surprised to find it much more enjoyable than the recent Broadway revival, where the actors seemed forbidden to connect to their crotches. I still mourn the fun, slightly raunchy slice of nostalgia that the show used to be before the phenomenon of the movie - the revised, oppressively "family friendly" book wastes time shoehorning in songs from the movie, and the further the 1950's recede the more the characters are typically played like types rather than like people - but at least the guys I saw in the tour (Mark Raumaker as Kenickie, and David Ruffin as Danny) generated some genuine oool. Other cast stand-outs were Bridie Carroll and Will Blum (as Jan and Roger respectively) and Brian Crum who, as Doody, sings flawlessly and dances like it's opening night. Sorry to say that Taylor Hicks, doing not only his one number as Teen Angel but also, after curtain call, something from his new CD (on sale in the lobby, of course) looked bored out of his wits.

Lavaman

Photo: Kalli Newman

The title character of Lavaman, Casey Wimpee's literally visceral new play, is an animated monster created by Arnie (Michael Mason) for his comic book—or, as he insists, "graphic novel." The live action is interspersed with a number of amusing Lavaman animations, but the one it opens with is the most telling: Lavaman's cartoon bout of painful, multicolored flatulence and diarrhea turns out to presage the play's logorrhea. Told in a series of flashbacks, the story zeroes in on the events leading up to the protracted, violent end of one of the story's three former punk rockers. But unlike the songs the characters listen to and talk about, the play lacks a hook, for all its vehement verbosity and claustrophobic fury. In trying so hard to be provocative, this much too long effort ends up provoking only exhaustion and a mild nausea. Read the full review.

Bird House

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Next Fall

Photo: Francesco Carrrozzini

Writing a play of ideas that features believable characters seems to be one of the more difficult challenges in playwrighting. All too often, the ideas are presented didactically and the characters are reduced to wind-up points of view. In Next Fall, Geoffrey Nauffts manages to avoid these pitfalls, examining a fascinating array of ideas (religion, homophobia, family) through the depiction of authentic complicated people dealing with love, sex, and loss. At the beginning of Next Fall, a few people sit in a hospital waiting room in varying states of stress and fear. As others join them, their relationships to each other--and to the hospitalized person--gradually become clear to us, but not necessarily to each other. Flashbacks introduce us to the central characters--a gay couple composed of a young religious Christian who is not out to his parents and an older atheist who has little patience for closets. Naufft and director Sheryl Kaller are remarkably even-handed in their presentation of the various personalities, allowing each deep humanity and labeling no one as hero or villain. The excellent performances by, in particular, Patrick Breen and Cotter Smith, reveal the characters in all the flawed beauty of real people.

Twisted

Photo: David Anthony

Twisted is an evening of five short and often funny one-acts. In Matt Hanf's Teddy Knows Too Much, the most substantial and ambitious of the plays, the hefty Peter Aguero hilariously deadpans the role of three-year-old Billy, whose toys—a plush bear, a Dick Cheney mask, a rubber duckie—are his only confidantes. The only way he can fight back against his comically insensitive parents is through ever-intensifying mischief. A garden shears, lots of pastries, and a tragicomically misunderstood Salome (the droll Lindsay Beecher) highlight the skit-like pieces that follow. Unfortunately the evening closes with its weakest entry, but overall it's a diverting anthology. Read the full review.

Thérèse Raquin

Photo: Stan Barouh

A woman sits and stares. She is trying to see the river, she explains. We quickly realize that what she is trying to see is something, anything, other than the unexciting life in which she feels trapped. Her cousin, then husband, Camille is sweet but ineffectual. Her aunt is kind but boring. Thérèse feels buried alive. And then she meets Laurent--dashing and sexy Laurent. Based on Emile Zola's novel, Thérèse Raquin combines the sexuality of a potboiler, the eeriness of an Edgar Allan Poe story, and the morality of an old movie, sometimes movingly and sometimes awkwardly. In the small Atlantic 2 theatre, the audience is intimately involved with the dreams, nightmares, and fervid couplings of Thérèse and Laurent. Sometimes Jim Petosa's staging seems hokey, but often it is vividly evocative and emotional. In the second act in particular, the inventive, almost-over-the-top direction uses simple yet intense theatricality to pull the audience into the story. Lily Balsen as Thérèse is always fascinating if occasionally overwrought, and her amazing looks (Frieda Kahlo meets Lena Olin) bring much to her portrayal. Scott Janes is attractive and smoothly charming. Willie Orbison comes across as being as much in love with Laurent as he is with Therese. This is an interesting approach, but it could have and should have been more subtly handled. Overall, it is wonderful that this production of Thérèse Raquin exists. How lucky we theatre-goers are that incredibly talented people are willing to work their butts off for little or no money and little or no acclaim, giving us intense, exhausting, often exhilarating performances for the sheer love of doing theatre.

Perfect Wedding

Photo: Sun Productions, Inc.

No one does bedroom farce like the British, and a fine example just blustered onto the New York stage with the Vital Theatre Company's sharp new production of Robin Hawdon's Perfect Wedding. Bill (the excellent, elastic-faced Matt Johnson) wakes up on his wedding morning in the hotel's bridal suite with a naked woman he doesn't know. Hilarity ensues, and a touching love story too. The effervescent Dayna Graber threatens to steal the show as the wisecracking, mint-popping hotel housekeeper who gets caught up in the proceedings. But Tom (Fabio Pires in a very promising Off-Broadway debut) distracts us with his finely tuned fury upon discovering that Bill's best man is by no means the only role he's destined to play in this careening plot. Teresa K. Pond's sure-handed direction shapes Hawdon's snappy dialogue, slapstick humor, and blurry maze of plot twists into a cheery evening of laughs and good feeling.

The Europeans

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Thérèse Raquin

Photo/Stan Barouh

Neal Bell's brilliant adaptation of Émile Zola's 1867 novel Thérèse Raquin puts a stake through the heart of dry naturalism. With a sense of Ibsen's modernism, he focuses on the stark apathy Raquin feels toward marrying her cousin, Camille ("I can't be frightened to death; I'm already dead and this is hell"), which is all the better for showing her sexual awakening at the hands of the roguish Laurent. Adding to this is Jim Petosa's romantic direction, which finds clever ways to mix such morbidity with dashes of sweetness: ravenous passion, indeed. Much credit to the cast, too: as Raquin, Lily Balsen (like a younger, more innocent Helena Bonham Carter) is haunted by an actual ghost, but what moves us is the way she is haunted by genuine regret. It's a shame that Scott Janes isn't allowed such range, but his Laurent is nonetheless solid, as are the terrific turns of Willie Orbison (Camille) and Helen-Jean Arthur (Camille's mother), both of whom are sharpened by a different sort of passion: rage. It's easy to be poetic, but hard to justify such language, as Thérèse Raquin has done. That's easy to say, but not at all hard to believe for those who have seen it.

[Read on]

Euan Morton at Castle On The Hudson

photo: Juan Jose Ibarra

I’ve been nursing a mad man crush on Euan Morton’s voice ever since he starred as Boy George in Taboo, so I was especially pleased that he opened his delightful set at Castle On The Hudson with that show’s “Pretty Lies”. (Bonus for Taboo fans: Liz McCartney in the audience. See picture.) Accompanied by a single piano, Morton sailed through an eclectic set of songs – the Nat King Cole standard “Smile”, “Danny Boy”, Roy Orbinson’s “You Got It”, the Eurythmics’ “Why”, a song from the musical Caligula - with assured seamlessness, partly thanks to the easy, unpretentious charm of his banter but also thanks to the depth of feeling in each interpretation. I laughed, I cried, I got wood. His voice may be smooth and pretty and his tone sweet but what is especially outstanding about his singing is how much emotion he puts into his interpretations while judiciously maintaining a vocal restraint and a gorgeous tone; it’s not for nothing that he counts Karen Carpenter among his vocal influences. I’m not often a cabaret person, but this was bliss.

Archbishop Supreme Tartuffe

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Telethon

Photo: Carl Skutsch

Three residents and two staffers of a group home for the disabled coalesce into a bickering but affectionate "family" in this witty and entertaining one-act. On some level, as playwright Kristin Newbom demonstrates, the disabled and the staffers aren't so different. The cast shines, Ken Rus Schmol directs smoothly, and Kirche Leigh Zeile's costumes are hilarious. But the real star of this show is the sparkling script. Ms. Newbom has a surefire sense of rhythm. Watching this Clubbed Thumb production is like listening to a brilliant piece of music executed with precision and filled with surprises, funny, touching, and sometimes both.

Arcadia

Tom Stoppard can be a problematic playwright. While his brilliance is undeniable, his shows can be tough slogs through encyclopedic swamps of (not always compelling) information. However, Arcadia, arguably his masterpiece, boasts a perfect balance of math, history, satire, love, sex, compassion, humor, ego, and witty repartee. It demonstrates, in a fascinating, funny, and heartbreaking three hours, that humans' ability to understand anything (particularly each other) can be severely limited by their circumstances, prejudgments, and, well, humanity.

The plot can't really be done justice in less than a few hundred words, but, in brief: Arcadia takes place in the same room in the early 1800s and the late 1900s. In the early 1800s, the gawky, insatiably curious, child genius, Lady Thomasina, is being tutored by Septimus Hodges, who is smart enough to recognize her genius but not quite smart enough to understand her discoveries. In the 20th century, academicians are trying to understand the people in the 19th through the clues/detritus they left behind: notebooks, poetry, blueprints, letters. Multiple assignations are carried out, much plotting is done, discoveries--correct and incorrect--are made, and enough funny lines are said to fill a dozen plays written by ordinary mortals (for example: "Her chief renown is for a readiness that keeps her in a state of tropical humidity as would grow orchards in her drawers in January").

The recent production of Arcada at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, did full justice to this wondrous work. It would be lovely if someone brought it to New York.

Paved Paradise Redux

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Twelfth Night

Sign me up as a member of the Twelfth Night fan club. It's a magical evening in a magical setting.

Nothing Like a Dame

Photo: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd

The yearly benefit for the Phyllis Newman Women's Health Initiative, Nothing Like a Dame, hit a new high this year. In the past, Nothing Like a Dame featured dozens of women; this year, the focus was on only six, but what a wonderful six! Stephanie J. Block, Betty Buckley, Andrea McArdle, Audra McDonald, Bebe Neuwirth, and Kelli O'Hara were interviewed by the always-funny Seth Rudetsky, who knows how to listen (a surprisingly rare trait among interviewers). Each woman then sang a song or two. In an evening made up almost totally of highlights, the staggeringly talented Audra McDonald stole the show with her effortlessly lovely rendition of "Bill." Keep an eye out for this wonderful yearly event--rarely in life can one have such a great time while supporting a good cause.

Things of Dry Hours

Photo: Joan Marcus

The plot of Naomi Wallace's Things of Dry Hours does not stand up to examination--actually, the word "flimsy" comes to mind. The characters are odd amalgams of traits, inconsistencies, and political stances. But the plot and characters are sturdy enough to support Wallace's beautiful language and thought-provoking ideas, Ruben Santiago-Hudson's pleasingly theatrical direction, and a couple of superb performances. In brief: a white man with dubious motives forces an African-American father (the superb Delroy Lindo) and daughter (the equally superb Roslyn Ruff) to take him in after he (maybe) commits a serious crime. The father is a Communist and uses the forced proximity to the white man to try to win him over to the cause. The daughter is smart and angry and at loose ends. The white man is lonely. Stir in some magic realism, racial tensions, a few not-terribly-convincing plot points, and genuine emotion, and you have a deeply flawed but excellent evening in the theatre.

Twelfth Night

Though only a week into previews, Daniel Sullivan's fun, fluid and refreshingly traditional production of Twelfth Night, or What You Will stands as one of New York Shakespeare Festival's most satisfying productions of the past decade. It may come as a surprise to some that Anne Hathaway, playing the lovelorn lady-in-disguise Viola, has stage presence to spare, but she makes one of the most assured Shakespearean debuts I've ever seen. It will come as no surprise that Audra McDonald is an ideal Olivia--her aloofness opening up into positive glee upon meeting Viola, dressed as the page Cesario--or that Raul Esparza registers deeply in the usually one-note role of Duke Orsino. The heart and soul of the production, however, are the brilliant comedians: Julie White's lacerating Maria; Jay O. Sanders' uproarious Toby Belch; David Pittu's hilarious (and remarkably sung) Feste the Fool; and, in what may be the comic performance of the season, Hamish Linklater as the blithering, clueless Sir Andrew Aguecheek. A word to the wise: if you want tickets, I'd start queueing at the crack of dawn. This is going to be a huge hit.

The Wiz

photo: Robert J. Saferstein

The tornado-sized vacuum at the center of this Wiz is pop star Ashanti, a pretty, pleasing-toned singer who has been pitilessly stunt-cast as Dorothy. From her first scene you slump in your seat and settle in for a long evening - she doesn't have the training to even make calling after Toto believable. It isn't that the role absolutely requires a skilled actress - undertrained teens have done all right by it with little more than thoughtful pretending in the past - but it does need energy and heart, and Ashanti hasn't been urged in that wide-eyed direction. (An understatement; after The Wiz rewards Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man but comes up empty for Dororthy, Ashanti has been directed to plead "What about me?" with the outraged indignation of an entitled teen rather than with the fragile anxiety of a child.) With a void where its heart should be the musical, one slice after another of 70's black-tastic retro, can't amount to more than concert and dance pageant. As such it has two enormous virtues in its favor - the strength of the City Center Encores orchestra, and Andy Blackenbuehler's electrifying, often thrillingly inventive choreography. To my mind, Blackenbuehler is one of the most interesting and exciting of the newer choreographers and a lot of his work here wows. Not all, however - the production, with a playing area cramped by the on-stage orchestra and a not especially useful unit set, relies almost entirely on Blackenbuehler for its spectacle and "less is more" comes to mind. I assume that Blackenbuehler is responsible for having the performers repeatedly "Ease On Down The Road" mostly up and down the stage rather than across, a very curious choice that halts any illusion of an ongoing journey.

Stunning

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Musicals in Mufti

With the spring 2009 edition, the York Theatre's Musicals in Mufti series continues to delight and amaze. The Muftis are five-performance staged readings of forgotten and/or neglected musicals. In the tiny York Theatre, with no scenery, minimal costumes, one piano (occasionally two), wonderful unmiked voices (occasional exceptions), and superb casts somewhere between on-book and off-book, the Muftis are intimate adventures in raw talent. Past highlights include 70 Girls, 70 (with Jane Powell, Helen Gallagher, Mimi Hines, George S. Irving, and Charlotte Rae!), Cyrano, Enter Laughing, Lucky Stiff, and my particular favorite, Carmen Jones. This season started with The Grand Tour, Jerry Herman's stab at a serious musical, in which life-threatening events are bizarrely alternated with the usual, generic, cheery Jerry Herman songs. Jason Graae's wonderful performance made it well worth seeing, and hearing James Barbour sing unmiked in a small theatre was a treat. The second show, High Spirits, was a total delight, with Howard McGillan, Veanne Cox, Carol Kane, Kristen Wyatt, and, in particular, Janine LaManna as good a cast as one could ask for. Coming up is Knickerbocker Holiday.

Someone In Florida Loves Me

photo: Sue Kessler

A short-notice reunion between two somewhat estranged friends - Annie (Lisa Louttit), living in depressing squalor in a Brooklyn boarding house, and Nicole (Ana Perea), a chatty flight attendant on a layover - brings tensions slowly to the surface in this low-key but mostly credible play by Jane Pickett. Although the playwright (who also directs) means for Annie to be shut down - she even has Nicole sprawl "Annie-body home?" on the bathroom mirror - the character is a bit too blank on the page, and an essential, late-in-the-play interaction with an unnamed third character (played by T.M. Bergman) isn't convincingly written. But the bulk of the play, in which the two women slowly recognize their distance from one another, is involving and sometimes affecting. Ana Perea is attention-getting as the fully fleshed-out Nicole, and especially scores with her tightly written exit monologue.