Tootsie

There are plenty of pleasures to be had at the Marquis Theater, where Tootsie is running and probably will be for a while. The show is often quite funny; the cast is solid; David Yazbeck's score is strong and occasionally boosted by some truly impressive lyrics. I was pleased with the way a handful of the more outdated aspects of the film plot have been reworked and updated for Broadway. Sandy, here played by Sarah Stiles and in the film by Teri Garr, was at least for me easily the most problematic character: in her original iteration, she was a relentlessly neurotic, irritating obstacle whose sole purpose seemed to be to ruin Michael's best-laid plans. A particularly fun musical number with increasingly tongue-twisty lyrics, performed exceptionally well, will do a whole lot for a gal, I guess. As will an actual character arc, replete with a resolution.

A very big deal, though, has been made about how the Broadway version has addressed contemporary cultural concerns, and on this point I'm not as convinced. Yeah, sure, Michael's schlubby roommate Jeff (Andy Grotelueschen)--a hilariously deadpan voice of reason here, as he was when Bill Murray played him--now strenuously assails Michael for stealing work from women, at least for a few seconds. There are some other attempts at updating with an eye toward contemporary gender roles: Julie (Lilli Cooper) is no longer sleeping with her sleazy director Ron Carlisle (Reg Rogers) as she was when she was Jessica Lange; here, she handles his sexism with aplomb. Later, when Michael-as-Dorothy forgets himself and kisses her, she eventually decides to roll with the times, and suggests they give romance a go anyway.

This is all well and good, but it's also all very much on the surface. One of the strengths of the film that the adaptation seems to have overlooked entirely is that back in 1982, Michael-as-Dorothy had to put up with a whole lot more in the way of condescending--and sometimes downright icky, scary, predatory--sexist bullshit from just about every man he worked with, talked to, or met. He also had to negotiate the very genuine feelings--and, eventually, break the heart--of Julie's father, Les (Charles Durning), who falls in love with Dorothy and who here has been completely rewritten as a younger, dumber, admittedly much funnier character named Max Van Horn (Jon Behlmann). But the constant barrage of sexism that Michael had to contend with in the film ultimately made the character's arc more meaningful: having walked in women's shoes, the character ends up Learning Some Valuable Lessons About Himself and Others. The final scene--in which he admits to Julie that he "was a better man with [her] as a woman than [he] ever was with a woman as a man"--thus feels more like a genuine realization, a heartfelt apology, and a serious attempt to move beyond a monstrous deceit that ended up hurting a great many people.

Of course, a Broadway musical has to make way for stuff a comedy film doesn't have to contend with, so there's much more singing and dancing, a speedier pace, and more frequent one-liners, but I was a little disappointed by how totally they replaced any real character development. Santino Fontana hits all his marks as both Michael and Dorothy, and sure, his character is still a self-centered blowhard who is exceedingly hard to work with. But Michael has no clear learning curve here. Instead, the Broadway Tootsie shows us a really talented straight, white dude who dresses like a woman, whereupon all the qualities that alienated people when he was a straight, white dude pretty much immediately get resolved. This is where I got a little confused: Maybe Tootsie was supposed to be set in a magical fairy world where everyone is totally cool about negative personality traits when middle-aged women exhibit them, but can't deal at all when dudes do? I don't get that part, having never in my life experienced such a thing, but maybe the all-male production team of the musical knows better?

Anyway, you know the drill: Michael-as-Dorothy lands a great role, puts up with Ron Carlisle's sexist remarks for about three seconds, bonds with Julie over how hard it is to be a professional woman in a man's world, teaches Max to be a better actor (or something), reveals his deception....and everything ends up pretty okay, anyway. He doesn't really need to do much in the way of penance, the supporting characters pair off (or don't), and it's pretty clear that Julie will come around in time, just like in the movie.

I say this all not to ruin your time seeing what is, in the end, a solidly produced and impressively-performed musical with some genuine laughs, and a few songs I fully admit I'll want to listen to repeatedly when the cast recording comes out. Go see it if the gender politics aren't going to bug the shit out of you. It's a charming, enjoyable show. But aspects of it irked me a lot more than I wish they had, largely because I've grown exceedingly weary of lip service to social causes, and to bandaids that blithely get slapped over deep wounds in the name of mass entertainment. If the prospect of a straight white guy who puts on a dress and thereby manages to succeed in all the ways straight white guys tend to succeed anyway doesn't jibe you at all, by all means, go, have fun, take your visiting relatives. Otherwise, though, maybe skip this one. Believe me when I tell you that you won't be missing anything you didn't know was already going to happen, anyway.

King Kong

While I appreciate it as a landmark in both film making and scoring, I've otherwise never much understood the appeal of King Kong. Sure, there's incredibly cool stop-motion animation and over-the-top Max Steiner aural grooviness, both of which are even more admirable since this is 1933 we're talking about. But otherwise, the movie has always seemed strongest as a genuinely depressing racist allegory, garnished with enormous doses of sexism and greed. The plot itself is hogwash: mercenary film director Carl Denham takes wannabe starlet Ann Darrow to the mysterious Skull Island to film a picture. There, they encounter deeply offensive "native" stereotypes, some prehistoric creatures, and the titular ape, who lusts after and kidnaps Ann. She screams endlessly, gets rescued, and then Kong is drugged and brought back to New York for Denham to put on display. In New York, the ape completely loses his shit, destroys large amounts of Manhattan, recaptures Ann, climbs the Empire State Building with her, and then gets shot down, surely crushing many innocent onlookers as he plummets to his death. In the film's final moments, Denham, who started all the mayhem in the first place, gets all faux-philosophical but reveals he's totally incapable of self-reflection or personal growth: he blames everything on Ann with a famous last line that makes no sense considering everything that's just happened. Come on, Carl, you dumbass: beauty didn't do shit. You did.

Special effects seem to dominate all remakes of the film; they are, I suppose, the point of revisiting King Kong in the first place. An awful lot of people, it seems, will tolerate steaming mountains of racist, sexist crap if they get to watch enough shit blowing other shit up in the process.

Joan Marcus

Spectacle certainly dominates the stage version of King Kong, which may not be the most well-balanced or wholly satisfying production, but is not without its pleasures and small victories. I appreciate the production for trying to rid the plot of at least some of its most offensive parts. Gone, in this iteration, are the grunting, monosyllabic, dark-skinned natives of Skull Island, and with them at least some of the stereotypes the movie played on. Gone too is the stupid line at the end about how beauty killed the beast. There's more of an attempt at moral trajectory: Denham (Eric William Morris, doing what he can), it's implied, will suffer economic ruin and isolation for his actions. Also, he doesn't blame everything on Ann; his famous "'tis beauty killed the beast" line is referenced in one of the show's exceptionally forgettable songs (songs are by Eddie Perfect; the persistent and weirdly porny electronic score is by Marius De Vries). But it no longer serves as the last line.

While the image of Kong being shackled and shipped far from his home will never not reference both the slave trade and the vilest of persistent racist tropes, some of the sting of the latter is offset in the production by Christiani Pitts, who plays Ann. Pitts is black, and thus not the traditional pale-blond, uber-Caucasian Ann of previous Kong iterations (Fay Wray; Jessica Lange; Naomi Watts). The choice works to temper at least a few layers of racist assumption that can be inferred in what was previously an allegory about primal, predatory black men and their insatiable lust for pure, helpless white women; the musical tries instead to paint Ann as smart, independent and headstrong--a modern woman before her time. Her connection with Kong, it is suggested, becomes a knowing friendship between two lost, misunderstood, disenfranchised fellow travelers.

Any attempt to expose and excise stereotypes is noble, but in addressing King Kong's problem areas as superficially as it does, the production opens up newer, bigger holes in a plot already full of them. Pitts does as much as any human can with the role as it's been rewritten, but hers is a thankless task. If Ann is now so insightful and level-headed and wise, what the hell convinced her that getting on a boat for months on end with a penny-ante director she talks with for five minutes in a diner is a good life choice? Yeah, sure, whatever, she's hungry and desperate for work. Get a fucking grip, all-male creative team: you can't have a modern, independent heroine who occasionally doubles as a shrieking damsel in distress. Pitts' Ann doesn't scream and play helpless as convincingly (or as endlessly) as Fay Wray did, but she is no more nuanced or developed a character, either: here, Ann bonds with Kong, then immediately sells him out, then feels remorse, then sings a song about how She Has Learned Something About Herself and Others. But what has she learned, exactly? That directors who hang out in diners are not to be trusted? That the world is cruel? That love is blind? That nature abhors a vacuum? That crime does not pay? Where's the build, the conflict, the cohesive story?

Anyway, whatever, story schmory; clearly, we're here to see spectacle. In this iteration, as in all iterations past, Kong is truly the star of the show, and while it's a shame he has to die, he at least gets the final bow here. The production's Kong is impressive: he's about the size of the stage and is operated by ten black-clad puppeteers who yank pulleys, manipulate the ape's body, and see to it that its hands and feet land correctly lest some poor cast member be crushed beneath its truly impressive weight. Another three dudes operate the facial expressions and the sounds Kong makes from a booth at the back of the theater. If you are solely interested in watching the puppet, and go to see King Kong with no other expectations at all, I suspect you won't be disappointed.

But heat? Conflict? Tension? Emotion? Forget it. The show, like the film, left me cold. Oh, except for two moments: in one scene depicting Kong's captivity in New York, his facial expressions were so real and so sad that I felt genuine pity for the character, stuck as he was in yet another exploitative entertainment that didn't do him justice. There was a smaller, more profound moment, as well, during which one of the puppeteers took exceptional care in placing Kong's left hand on the floor of the stage. It was the gentle, lovingly tender act of someone who has bonded deeply with the character they're responsible for giving life to. It was beautiful and one of the sweetest moments in the show for me. If only the company had been able to figure out how to extend such genuine sentiment throughout the entire musical.

Aladdin and Long Day's Journey Into Night: A Comparison

It's not atypical for me to see more than one play or musical over the course of the week, but it is rare that I see two shows back-to-back that are as different as Long Day's Journey Into Night and Aladdin, both of which I caught two weeks ago.

Or......ARE they so different after all?

Maybe I have too much time on my hands. Maybe I'm procrastinating, just a little, in the week leading up to a much-needed family vacation. Or maybe I've just got too much time on my hands and no real desire to fill it up by thinking about the news of the world. But for whatever reason, the more I think about these productions, the more they end up having more in common than one might assume. Both, for example, have actors and are performed before an audience on a stage in a theater. But wait! There's more!

Long Day has closed, so in lieu of a formal review, I offer you instead a brief comparison of these two Broadway gems:

Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions

1) Both shows are incredibly strenuous.
I read an interview with Jessica Lange recently during which she noted that she needed an exceptional amount of rest in order to perform the role of Mary Tyrone. No surprise, there: Mary is a meaty, challenging character who is onstage for most of a meaty, challenging (and very long) play, and Broadway shows typically run eight times a week.

The production of Aladdin is half as long, if that, but that doesn't mean it's a walk in the fucking park. Sure, Lange worked hard, but did she even once have to spin up from beneath the stage in a magical, whimsical poof of Disney smoke? Did she have to do cartwheels? No, she did not. You know who does, all the damn time? Tony Award© winner James Monroe Iglehart, who, as the Genie, has been doing that shit nearly every damn day, sometimes twice in a row, for the last two-plus years. Don't get me started on the wacky dancing he does, or the way he whips up the crowd. Lange is luminous and wonderful and knows how to work a crowd, too, but she would never have been able to pull off what Iglehart does--especially after her second or third trip up to the Tyrones' infamous spare bedroom.