Cabaret

Joan Marcus

It's one thing to enter the canon; it's another to do so while simultaneously bucking just about everything the canon dictates in the first place.

I've been thinking a lot about Cabaret since I saw the Mendes revival (of the revival) last week. I've been thinking that a big part of what makes Cabaret such a masterpiece is its central dichotomy: it is an incredibly compelling, brilliantly scored stage musical that goes against everything we have been conditioned to assume we're going to get from a stage musical. Cabaret is the most ingenious, inspired, total bummer of a musical I can think of, and certainly that I have ever seen.

Yeah, I know musicals are varied and that there's no one type and that it's hard to generalize them, and all that. But still, an awful lot of American stage musicals rely on structures and tropes and trajectories that we see over and over and over again: boy meets girl, loses girl, wins girl back. Love saves the day even in times of despair. The community prevails even when terrible things happen. In the saddest musicals I can think of--Carousel, West Side Story, Fiddler, Hedwig and the Angry Inch--people die, love is denied, families and neighborhoods are torn apart, bad things happen to beloved characters. But then, audiences are always left with hope, even if just the teeniest ray of it: Billy gives his lonely, outcast daughter a star, and the whole community sings a song of strength. Maria tells everyone off after Tony dies, and the gangs imply that things will improve, or at least that they heard what she said and will take it seriously. Tevye and his neighbors are driven from their homes, but he grudgingly wishes his intermarried daughter well, and takes his traditions with him to the new world where, we presume, he'll be safe. Hedwig releases Yitzhak from bondage and gets the audience to wave their hands in solidarity with him as he sings a big rock anthem. There's always hope. Always. Even if it's very far off in the distance.

But Cabaret? Not a goddamned glimmer. The musical is set at the dawn of Nazi Germany, for chrissakes, so all there is for the characters is certain misery, angst, and fear. And Totalitarianism. Also, for many of them, suffering, torture, and death. No hope--not even, as Sally Bowles would say, an inkling. Cabaret is a musical that dangles dread in your face from the second the lights go down and the first notes of the opening number sound. Wilkommen? Bienvenue? Welcome, my ass. The music sounds great and the Emcee is beckoning, but we all already know that he's the embodiment of a country gone insane. We're in for two-plus hours with a group of characters who are manically forcing themselves to go gleefully through the motions as the city around them teeters on the brink of hell. Sure, they all get to drink, do drugs and have increasingly unsettling sex while the decline is happening, which is some small comfort for them and for us: It's nice to self-medicate in times of crisis. Anyway, it keeps the terror and the hunger at bay. 

Donogoo

It's easy to see why The Mint might choose to revive Jules Romains' comedy Donogoo. In its sarcastic skewering of business and ambition, it is as pertinent now as it was in the 1920s. However, in its careless sexism and racism, it is badly outdated. I imagine there might be a way to direct Donogoo that enhances its strengths and mitigates its weaknesses--or at least puts them in context. However, director Gus Kaikkonen (who also translated the play from its original French) did not find it. In fact, his direction is cheap, gimmicky, and inconsistent, and the production is mediocre at best.

The show begins with our protagonist Lamendin (the woefully miscast James Riordan) on a bridge considering suicide. A friend sees him, convinces him to stay alive, and sends him to a physician who will cure him--as long as Lamendin does exactly what the physician says. Lamendin does and ends up on a trek that leads him deep into the jungles of South Africa, following a silly scam that has developed a life of its own.

Is Lamendin a passive--and lucky--naif? Is he a born salesman who accidentally finds his calling? Is he a megalomaniac-in-waiting? I suspect that he might be a bit of all three, but his moments of confidence and fear do not add up to a character or an arc.

Along the way, Lamendin meets dozens of people, many with their eyes on the main chance. They are played with various levels of humor and competence by 15 performers, some of whom deserve much better. (It's always a pleasure to see George Morfogen, and I suspect Mitch Greenberg might make a more creditable Lamendin.)

Side Show

Watching the revised version of Side Show (book and lyrics by Bill Russell, music by Henry Krieger) at the Kennedy Center is a multilayered experience to fans of the original, particularly those who know the CD, and even the show, by heart. It's difficult to be totally immersed when part of you is doing a running compare-and-contrast. Hmm, I like the costumes a lot. Hmm, great set. Hmm, they're not Alice and Emily , but they're pretty good. Hmm, interesting to have the "freaks" actually depicted rather than left mostly to the imagination. Oh, wait, great lyric change. Hey, where did that song go? Hmm, that new song is a really good idea.

Emily Padgett, Erin Davie
Photo: Cade Martin

Little by little, however, the show entices you in, and little by little Erin Davie and Emily Padgett win you over on their own terms, and pretty soon, you realize, wow, this is good! Wow, this is very good! And by the time the final curtain goes down, you're completely involved. Bottom line: this revision is pretty darn wonderful.

Side Show is the story of Daisy (Padgett) and Violet (Davie) Hilton, conjoined twins who spent most of their lives on display, from side shows to vaudeville to the movies. They made a great deal of money but ended up working in a supermarket in Charlotte, NC, and died very close to penniless. Side Show follows--and somewhat fictionalizes--their lives from childhood to the beginning of their movie career.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Photo: Yoshi Kametani

The original production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, which ran Off Broadway at the Jane Street Theater from February 1998 to April 2000, was a show I followed more closely than any other I can think of. Hedwig opened at around the time I began work on my dissertation, which was on rock musicals (and which later became my book, The Theatre Will Rock). Because I happened to be friendly with the show's press agents, I saw the show a whole bunch of times with a bunch of different people in the title role. I also interviewed people involved with the show, crashed the album release party and an MTV promo shoot, and, in the process, grew very fond of the production, which I thought about, troubled over, and wrote about a lot.
 
When news broke that Hedwig was being revived on Broadway--with Neil Patrick Harris in the title role, no less--my immediate reaction was to decide not to see it. This was not only because I felt way too connected to the original production to be kind or patient with the revival, but because the original production was sixteen fucking years ago--when, as Hedwig would say, I was in my early late twenties--and I have a long history of falling prey to nostalgia. Where did the time go, and all that. It didn't help matters that, frankly, I can be an oppositional, overly-critical asshole for no good reason. But friends, colleagues, and my grad students all gently told me that my refusal to see the show was absolute bullshit, so I relented and bought tickets. 

As usual, I was wrong and they were right. Of course the show was worth seeing again, not only because the revival is a very good production that has changed (matured?) for the better in some significant ways, but also because seeing Hedwig after all these years was less traumatic than I'd imagined. Yes, the revival made me wistful and a little sad, but then again, I expected that. In the end, even though I've heard all his jokes before, it sure was nice to catch up with such a dear old friend after so many years. Especially since he's grown up to be Neil Patrick Harris.

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 68th Annual Tony Awards

See Hugh Jackman hop. See Hugh Jackman hop some more. Watch minutes pass that could have been devoted to a number from Bridges of Madison County. Wonder why Jackman is stealing a not-interesting bit from a movie. Remember last year's fabulous opening number. Wish Neil Patrick Harris could be in two places at one time.

Be really bored by the gay jokes. Wonder why Jackman, a man whose facial hair is possibly not his only beard, would tell quite so many.

Be really glad at the open same-sex affection.

See After Midnight's number be ruined by random camera work. See Aladdin be simultaneously overenergetic and underinteresting. See Rocky be the same. See Les Miz land like a second-rate middle-school production. Feel pummeled when Nikki James sings. See Violet's number fail to express its essential (and wonderful) Violet-ness.

See Hugh Jackman do something annoying. See Hugh Jackman do something else annoying. See Hugh Jackman fail to understand that it is not the Hugh Jackman show.