Gypsy

When the curtain came down on Act 1 of Gypsy, my friend Susan said, "She's so wrong and she's so good." Excellent summation!

I was one of those who greeted Audra's casting with, she's miscast, her voice is miscast. And I was also one of those who said, it's Audra, we gotta go. Having seen the show, I still think she is miscast, and her voice is definitely wrong for the show. But she was amazing. Mesmerizing. Honest, real, raw. In my pantheon of Roses I've seen in person (Angela, Tyne, Sally Mayes, Bernadette, Patti, and now Audra), I'd put her second only to Tyne. Her "Rose's Turn" was scalding, even ugly, and thrilling. 

Photo: Julieta Cervantes

Unfortunately, the rest of the production is mediocre. I don't expect a cast on Audra's level, but better singing and acting would be welcome. The performers are not helped by George C. Wolfe's anti-subtle direction. He has Rose's troupe perform so atrociously that no one would have booked them ever. Nor would T.T. Grantziger see promise in June, as both Junes screeched their way through the show. (After seeing this and Show/Boat: A River close together, I'm beginning to wonder if acting badly well is a lost art.)

In addition to his direction of the acting, I think Wolfe got a lot of the show wrong in tone and timing. And little-but-important moments are missed. For example, having Gypsy face the audience rather than a mirror when she says, "I'm a pretty girl, Mama" dissipates the impact. 

And why would anyone replace Jerome Robbins' choreography in this show (and in West Side Story)? Isn't that just saying that you want choreography that isn't as good, theatrical, or organic? Two of the best choreographed numbers in the history of musical theatre are from Gypsy. When the chorus of dancers grow from kids to young adults while dancing, using a strobe, it's theatricality at its best. Similarly, Robbins' choreography for Gypsy going from shy neophyte to star is smooth and evocative and impressive and meaningful. In this Gypsy, both numbers are, well, okay. (No insult to this choreographer, btw. Trying to replace something perfect is a thankless assignment.)

Interestingly, the mediocrity of this production allows Gypsy's few imperfections to come to the fore. The most important one is, I think, that there is too little opportunity to see Rose's charm in the first act. If there were an earlier song like "Together," it would be easier to see Rose as a person rather than a monster. (Though I must note that a huge chunk of the audience gasped a couple of times at Rose's behavior. I've never seen the show with so many first-timers. It was fun.)

But this production is about Audra! And she's amazing!

Wendy Caster

A Moon For the Misbegotten

photo: T. Charles Erickson

Audra McDonald cemented her living legend status in 2014, when she won her sixth competitive Tony, becoming not only the first actor to achieve that feat but also the first to win an award in each of the four major acting categories. She's excelled in musicals and opera, in Shakespeare and contemporary drama, in concert and on television -- to put it simply, she has nothing to prove. And yet, she continues to dazzle with her seemingly limitless range, which is currently on view in Gordon Edelstein's somewhat lopsided production of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon For the Misbegotten, playing through Sunday at Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.

Anyone familiar with the play will know that the character of Josie Hogan is written as Irish American. McDonald, of course, is black, as are the excellent Glynn Turman and Howard W. Overshown, who play her father and brother. Having the Hogans played by actors of color offers two benefits: it strips the roles -- particularly that of Phil, the patriarch -- of their blarney, and dissuades the actors from playing them as drunken shanty stereotypes; further, it accentuates the class distinction between Josie and Jim Tyrone (played here by Will Swenson, who is white), the landlord of the farm the Hogans tend, for whom Josie secretly pines.

Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill

When one monstrously talented person impersonates another monstrously talented person, the desire to resort to cliches doubles in intensity. And since seeing Audra McDonald in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill on Tuesday evening, I admit I've been struggling with ways to talk about the show that don't resort to trite blathering about how incredible and heartbreaking Holiday was, or how incredible and heartbreaking McDonald's portrayal of her is.

But believe me when I tell you that every single blathery, trite, cliched superlative I can come up with applies here. At least when it comes to McDonald's performance, which is brilliant, sublime, superb, extraordinary.

The show itself is not quite as superlative, but I don't think that matters, at least not in this case. There have been other productions that I can't speak to: Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill premiered in Atlanta in 1986 and opened Off Broadway at the Vineyard in the same year (S. Epatha Merkerson, later of Law & Order fame, took over for Lonette McKee as Holiday during that year-long run). It has been bouncing around the country in regional productions ever since. I can understand why--Lady Day is small and easily staged, and it allows for black, female actresses to take on a challenging, interesting character.

After all, Billie Holiday is, in the end, just the leading character of this show--a fictionalized one based closely on the real woman. What we see of Holiday in Lady Day is playwright Lanie Robertson's reimagining of a concert she gave to seven audience members at a rundown bar in South Philadelphia in March 1959. A few months later, Holiday would die at 44 of cirrhosis of the liver and heart disease, both the result of excessive drinking and heroin use. It has been pointed out by other critics that at this point in her life, Holiday probably would have been completely unintelligible, totally ravaged, impossible to listen to. It has also been pointed out that the real Holiday was a famously private performer who suffered recurring bouts of stage fright, and that she certainly wouldn't have chatted amicably and at great length between songs as she does here. 

The Sound of Music....LIVE!

Hi, all. It's been a very long semester and I've seen very little theater, and I've missed blogging a bunch. I plan to rectify that starting....now:

Last night, along with, um, everyone, I got to watch the live broadcast of The Sound of Music, starring Carrie Underwood and a lot of other people. It wasn't great--just ask the entire population of the planet, which was busily hate-tweeting the broadcast at about forty million tweets per nanosecond. Then again, there were some sublime moments: Laura Benanti making dramatic entrances or exits; Carrie Underwood dropping her wooden facade as an actor to snuggle into her happy place as a singer; that shrieking Nazi who kept wandering in and out and giving orders to everyone near the end. And regardless of what you thought of the show as a whole, I think we have, all of us, to a musical-theater-loving (wo)man, concluded that we can now all die happily having heard a habit-draped Audra McDonald sing this to a clearly moved Carrie Underwood: