The Alchemist

Robert Frost once said, "Poetry is what gets lost in translation." To this I add, theatre is what gets lost in streaming. Please don't misunderstand: I am totally grateful for all the theatre-related material available during the covid-induced shutdown. I loved, eg, the Sondheim 90th birthday celebration, the plays that The Mint shared, and new work such as PCP/NYC's Standing on the Edge of Time and MasterVoices Myths and Hymns. And I don't know what the ticket price would have been if Meryl Streep, Audra McDonald, and Christine Baranski sang "Ladies in Lunch" in person, though I do know I couldn't afford it.

Manoel Felciano, Reg Rogers
Photo: Carol Rosegg

But: theatre is about being there, in the moment, with those wonderful living people on stage in front of you, sharing their talents and working their butts off. Eight performances a week they are shot out of a cannon and expected to be perfect--every time, with no pauses, pratfalls, or do-overs. Live performance is in many ways the bravest of arts, and perhaps the most human. It's all of us, in a room, interacting in real time, having an experience that will never be--can never be--repeated.

All this leads me to the rollicking Red Bull Production of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, as adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and directed by Jesse Berger. It is that most theatrical form of theatre, the farce, full of schemes and changing identities and bawdy humor and pointed satire and greed and hypocrisy and, yes, doors swinging open and closed as near-miss follows near-miss. 

Hatcher's adaptation is first-rate--clear, funny, and witty. In one aspect I think he actually improves on the original (it would be a spoiler to say anything more). There are some disappointing facets to his work. For example, there is no good reason why one female character spends much of the first scene wearing so little clothing that she is in danger of flashing the audience. For another example, having the one Black character, a full-out fop, suddenly spew a "Goddamn motherfuckers!" is, if not racist, at least racially uncomfortable and cheap. But the play's strengths far outweigh its weaknesses (which actually makes the disappointments that much more disappointing).

Berger's direction is as madcap, quick, and fluid as one could wish. And, oh, that cast. Reg Rogers as the alchemist delights with a performance that boasts the stamina, speed, and reflexes of an Olympian. Also delightful are, well, everyone else: Nathan Christopher, Stephen DeRosa, Carson Elrod, Manoel Felciano, Teresa Avia Lim, Jacob Ming-Trent, Louis Mustillo, Jennifer Sánchez, and Allen Tedder.

The design elements are attractive, appropriate, and hard-working. Alexis Distler provided the handsome, clever set, Tilly Grimes the splendid costumes. Cha See and Greg Pliska (lighting and sound design, respectively) also contributed richly.

The Alchemist was the second show I saw after that long, painful covid entertainment desert, but the first one was mediocre, and this one was so  much fun, and so thoroughly theatrical, that I consider it my real first time back. Thank you, Red Bull. Missed you a lot.

Wendy Caster

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.