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.

Post-Tony Snark

The Tony Awards are always my favorite awards ceremony, but this year they really pissed me off. And while I am the first to argue that the Tonys are never an accurate barometer of the broader state of commercial theater in New York or anywhere, I was nevertheless dismayed by the direction last night's broadcast chose to take.

Generally speaking, Broadway has been in a weird place for the past, oh, near-century or so. Once an epicenter for popular culture in this country, Broadway has been struggling to reclaim its legitimacy since at least the 1950s, when rock and roll came along and sent Tin Pan Alley packing. I sympathize--it's tough to be made to feel like you're past your prime. Thus, while I can be snarky and loudly critical sometimes, I'm nevertheless fairly supportive of whatever the theater industry chooses to do to keep musicals alive and relevant, not only because I love and believe in the theater (commercial and otherwise), but because, selfishly, I want to patronize it as much as I possibly can and would have to find something else to do with my life were it to go away.

That being said, last night's ceremony seemed to be imitating the bigger ceremonies--the Academy Awards, specifically--in ways that it shouldn't. I hope that next year's broadcast doesn't think these things were worth revisiting:

Much Ado About Nothing

The many productions of Much Ado About Nothing I have seen boasted wonderful Beatrices or wonderful Benedicks, but not since Sam Waterson and Kathleen Widdoes in the glorious AJ Antoon version (available on DVD) have I seen a wonderful Beatrice-Benedick pair.

Hamish Linklater, Lily Rabe
Photo: Tammy Shell

Last night, I went into the New York Shakespeare Festival production at the Delacorte, starring Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater, with optimism. Both performers are excellent, funny, likeable, and comfortable with Shakespearean language. Would they make the sexy, smart, evenly matched couple I've been hoping for since the 1970s?

Yes! They are everything I hoped for. Add to that smooth direction by Jack O'Brien, gorgeous design by John Lee Beatty, and nice acting by a largely strong cast, and this is a Much Ado to see.

Since I saw the third performance, it would be premature to give a full review, particularly in terms of any weaknesses (which were minimal). But it's not too early to say: get thee to the Delacorte.

And, speaking of the Delacorte--what a magical place it is! I've seen over a dozen shows there, some more than once, and every single time I walk up the stairs and into the theatre, my heart says Wow!

(won tickets in the lottery; row U, extreme audience right)

Song of Spider-Man

Song of Spider-Man--or, as it is more fully know in these post-colon-crazy days: Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History--is a must-read for anyone who is interested in musical theatre. Not because it's brilliant (it isn't) or incredibly insightful (ditto), but because it's engrossing and it exists. (For a long and thoughtful review by Liz Wollman, click here.)

I wish there were "making of" books or documentaries for dozens, if not hundreds, of shows, and I'm always grateful when one appears. In addition, Song of Spider-Man has the great advantage of being straight from one of the horse's mouths. Author Glen Berger cowrote Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark with director-creator Julie Taymor.

On the other hand, the glaring limit of any book like this--any memoir, really--is not knowing whether the writer is a reliable narrator of her or his own life. As recent research on memory has shown, even the most honest writer will still be wrong part of the time. Add to the weakness of human memory the strength of human ego, and all memoirs-autobiographies must be taken with Gibralter-sized grains of salt. My guess, and obviously it's a just a guess, is that Berger works extremely hard to be as honest as possible, and that his stories are nevertheless just as prey to the whims of memory as anybody else's.

The Tonys are coming! The Tonys are coming!

Oh, my heart is filled with joy!

This year, more than perhaps any other, the race is wide open, just about every Tony award is up for grabs, and no one knows what the hell is going on.  Nevertheless, the good people at Oxford University Press asked me to write about the awards for their blog, so I did. You can link to the post RIGHT HERE. 

And remember what I said: don't give professed experts, futurists, or mind-readers any money, or let them set up a Tony pool for you. Unless it has something to do with NPH winning an award or Hugh Jackman being fabulous. Everybody loves those dudes.

A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder

When it opened in November, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder got some of the best reviews of the season. Which is especially nice because it is a small, old-fashioned musical with no shit blowing other shit up, and no big names associated with it (unless you count Hugh Jackman's wife, who is one of the producers). It is not based on a well-known film, television show or book, and its original score is not even remotely based in contemporary pop song (it pays propers to Gilbert and Sullivan).

I say "especially nice" not because I am particularly partial to small shows in which no shit gets blown up by other shit, but because we are repeatedly being told that there is no longer room on Broadway for small, solid, non-branded, original shows that seem to come out of nowhere. So every time one opens--to raves, no less!--I can't help but cheer for the little guy.

That being said, this little guy has struggled pretty hard since it opened and got raved about in the press. Gentleman's Guide flew under the radar for months, (usually) grossing just enough to stay open. Apparently, through much of the run, there was no small amount of anxiety among performers who couldn't help but notice that they were playing to an awful lot of half-empty houses.

This has all changed in recent weeks. When the Tony nominations came out in April, Gentleman's Guide had been chugging along so quietly and so modestly for so long that there was real surprise about the fact that it got the most nods (ten) of any musical to open all year. Less surprising was the almost immediate box office bump: not 24 hours after the nominations were announced, tickets for the musical, previously abundant on all the discount sites, were suddenly hot and hard to come by. Within a week, Gentleman's Guide was reporting its highest grosses, ever. I know this because I'd assumed I'd just waltz in to see it a week or so before the Tony broadcast this Sunday. Oops.

Kvelertak, Gojira, and Mastodon

No, motherfuckers, I'm not kidding. A show's a show, and I saw this one, so I'm writing it up.

A little background before I explain why I just called you a motherfucker: I've never self-identified as a metalhead, but I've known plenty in my life, and the one I've been closest to for longest is my husband. During the twenty-plus years that we've been together, he has introduced me--either directly or by osmosis due to repeated playings in our various abodes--to music that is far more aggressive than the stuff I typically seek out on my own. Our tastes have always been pretty distinct: as kids, long before we met, I was memorizing every Joni Mitchell album I could get my hands on, while he was feuding with his big sister because she needed an emergency appendectomy and still wouldn't let him have her Iron Maiden ticket.

Because we respect each other's tastes in entertainment enough not to mock one another openly (at least, not regularly), and because we actually dig hanging out together, my husband and I have accompanied one another to plenty of things we otherwise wouldn't have bothered with: he's sat through a lot of rock musicals, for example, and I've been to my share of concerts featuring screaming guitars played by long-haired men (and the occasional woman) who regularly use "motherfucker" as a term of endearment with which to address the audience (Do you understand now.....motherfuckers?). At home, he (usually) tolerates the earnest hippie crap I listen to while I cook dinner, and I (usually) tolerate the squealing, grinding crap he listens to while he does the dishes and makes the kids' school lunches. He has even come to like some of my music, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that over the years I've developed a genuine affection for many songs by bands whose logos include lightning bolts, umlauts, and the occasional bloody fang.

Violet

Few people look directly at Violet (Sutton Foster), and those who do tend to react in unsettling, unsubtle ways. Badly scarred as a child by an axehead that flew off its handle, Violet has grown as used to carefully averted eyes as she has to taunts and lightning-fast reactions that reflect pity or disgust. The ugly, jagged scar the accident left on her face matches the emotional scarring she has subsequently sustained. At 25, Violet is sad about or angry at just about everything: at her mother for dying and leaving her and her father (Alexander Gemignani) alone in their poor, rural, southern home; at her doting father, who was using the offending axe and who, like Violet, can't forgive himself; at the people she meets who mock her openly; at the people she meets who attempt to be kind.

After a lifetime of wishing the scar away, Violet is damaged and desperate and, despite her cynicism, prone to magical thinking. Hence her decision to take herself and a lot of money on a Greyhound bus all the way to Tulsa to seek out a televangelist she's convinced herself can heal her. On her pilgrimage, Violet meets two servicemen: Monty (Colin Donnell), a white, womanizing partyboy, and Flick (Joshua Henry), an African-American reform-school survivor who wants to make as much of his adult life as he can. This won't be easy, of course: Violet is set in the deep south in 1964. While no longer relegated to the back of the bus, Flick is nevertheless made endlessly aware of the fact that his future won't be as free or as easy as Monty's. Like Violet, he's grown as used to not being looked at as he has to being looked at but not really seen.

Jane the Plain

The characters are familiar high school archetypes. Lexi the Sexy. Scotty the Hotty (quarterback on the football team, natch). Betty the Pretty (head cheerleader, natch). Leeson the Decent. Leonard the Awkward (nerdy but sensitive). And, of course, Jane the Plain. Their situations are also familiar: Scotty is big man on campus, with a love life to prove it. Leonard is the only one who appreciates Jane for who she is, but Jane falls for Scotty. Betty is a scheming blonde. And so on.

At this point, you might feel that you can predict what comes next. However, Jane the Plain is by the amazing August Schulenburg, so, no, you can't. Schulenburg takes these well-known types where no hot girl, quarterback, cheerleader, sidekick, boy nerd, and plain girl have gone before. What a trip it is, full of magic, love, and lessons learned--not to mention pulsars, miracles, and exploding pom poms--all to the soundtrack of the audience's nonstop laughter. And while Jane the Plain is indeed a comedy, it's also edgy, insightful, and even a little profound.

Having now seen Schulenburg's The Lesser Seductions of History, Jacob's House, DEINDE, Honey Fist, and Jane the Plain (all productions of the remarkable Flux Theatre Ensemble), I have come to the conclusion that Schulenburg is a writer of extraordinary compassion. Like Walt Whitman, he contains multitudes, and also like Whitman, he loves them all. Add to this his eloquence, intelligence, and unique point of view, and you have a truly original, top-level playwright who's funny as hell.

Red-Eye to Havre de Grace

Red-Eye to Havre de Grace submerges us in the paranoid fever dream of Edgar Allen Poe's last days. Using Poe's poetry and prose, other people's memories (real and fictional), and a prodigious serving of imagination, the show combines music, dance, and rueful humor to evoke the sad unraveling of the drug-addled author.

This is a wonderful show, and I'm reluctant to write more about it, since pretty much anything I could say would be a spoiler. But: If you are interested in Poe, you should see Red-Eye to Havre de Grace. If you are interested in theatre that sneaks into your heart and psyche, you should see Red-Eye to Havre de Grace. If you are interested in dance-as-symbol-and-acting-and-being, you should see Red-Eye to Havre de Grace. If you are interested in the sort of magic that is exclusive to live performance, you should see Red-Eye to Havre de Grace.

The impressive cast is Ean Sheehy, Alessandra L. Larson, David Wilhelm, and Jeremy Wilhelm. The show was created by Thaddeus Phillips, the two Wilhelms, Geoff Sobelle, and Sophie Bortolussi, with Sheehy. The direction and stage design is by Phillips, the choreography is by Bortolussi, the lighting design is by Drew Billiau, the sound design is by Rob Kaplowitz, and the costume design is by Rosemarie McKelvy. The music is by Wilhelm Bros. & Co. Everyone contributes brilliantly.

(7th row on the aisle, press ticket)

Annapurna

In Sharr White's Annapurna, a by-the-numbers but diverting two-hander, Emma shows up in ex-husband Ulysses's dilapidated trailer 20 years after she took their son and disappeared while he slept off a major drunk. Now Ulysses is dying, and Emma has just left her (second) husband of 20 years. Why is she there? Does she want to mend fences? Take care of Ulysses? Is she still angry? Does she still love him? These questions, and more, will be answered over the next 95 minutes.

Nick Offerman brings full life to the hurt, puzzled, and gruff semi-hermit and poet Ulysses, a porcupine of a character, full of quills. Ulysses is not quite able to protect his soft underbelly, particularly since it sports a huge post-surgery bandage. He also carries an oxygen tank and is so weak that putting on a shirt is an effort. But his emotional pain is larger, and more important to him, than the physical.

Megan Mullally is not quite Offerman's equal. Her thin voice undercuts her power, and she has a leaning toward whiny. Also, she wears glasses, and they block part of her performance from the audience. She and Offerman also have less chemistry than one might expect, since they are a couple in real life.

The Rivals

Decades ago, the brilliant and beloved acting couple Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were doing a play together. Lunt was surprised and pleased when his line asking for a cup of tea received a large laugh. Over time, however, the laugh disappeared. Lunt asked Fontanne if she had any idea why, and she said, "You've been asking for a laugh. Before you were asking for a cup of tea."

It's possible that this story is apocryphal, but that doesn't matter. Its point is absolutely true. Asking for a laugh is almost never the way to get one. The better choice is to play the character's reality, want what the character wants, do what the character does, and let the laughs take care of themselves

.

In the Pearl Theatre Company's current production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's classic play, The Rivals, the performers don't ask for laughs--they demand them. And the harder they demand, the less funny and more tedious they become. Since many of the actors have previously given multifaceted, beautifully timed, wonderful performances, I have to assume that it was director Hal Brooks who led (or pushed) them into the vast vats of shtick on display. (Oh, and since it's 2014, I think the Pearl could have done better than to cast only one person of color and then have him play a servant.)

The flaws of this production underline the flaws of the play. The plot is familiar: person A loves person B but doesn't have enough money to suit person B's guardian (person C), but person A is secretly rich, and person C is disguising herself in letters to person D as person B, and so on. Parts of it are wonderful satire, but parts are simply boring, particularly in this production where it is impossible to care about anyone. An even bigger problem is that the silly, neurotic jealousy of 1775 reads nowadays as creepy possessive borderline-stalking. And while Mrs. Malaprop is the Ur word-mangler, we've seen so many of her descendants in so many plays, movies, and TV shows that her humor seems almost cliche.

Of course, there are reasons that The Rivals is still performed in 2014. But this production, far below the Pearl's usual high quality, does it no favors.

(sixth row center; press ticket)

(Other People's) Musings on The Tony Nominations

It's that time of year again. No, not quite time for the Tony Awards ceremony itself--that won't be broadcast until Sunday, June 8th. Rather, it's the time of year where everyone celebrates the Tony nominees, gets their underpants in a bunch over the shows and performers who got the shaft, and opines on what the hell the annual list of nominations says about the state of Broadway in the broader sense.

Full disclosure, which has nothing at all to do with underpants: I have absolutely no idea what the hell the annual list of nominations might say about the state of Broadway in the broader sense. I used to think I did, but then I realized that (a) every time I came to some grand conclusion about the state of Broadway as it relates to the Tonys, I turned out to be totally wrong, and that, ergo, (b) clearly, I'm sort of a dope, at least when it comes to reading the minds of Tony voters.

So while I am quite sure I'll have plenty of opinions about the Tony broadcast itself, I plan to spend the weeks leading up to it seeing as much theater as I can, entering as many Tony pools as I can (none that requires me to bet big money on the outcome, though, because of item b above), and reading up on what other, smarter people think about what the Tony nominations say about Broadway at present.

Luckily, an awful lot of people are weighing in on the distinctive weirdness of this year's list of nominees, which you can link to here.   And some of the writing has been very interesting, informative, and lively.

DonJuan, or Wages of Debauchery

The often delightful (but too frequently slow) DonJuan, or Wages of Debauchery, adapted from a Czech classic, is conceived and directed by Vit Horejs and presented by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre. This Don Juan is not a charmer. His seductions often veer into molestation territory, and he's not above a murder or two. It doesn't help that Horejs plays him in an endless monotone that manages to remove all traces of charisma and warmth. Luckily, however, Don Juan is only the titular lead.

Kasparek
Photo: Jonathan Slaff

The true star is Don Juan's servant, Kasparek, performed with wry humor and great panache by Theresa Linniham. Kasparek is a familiar type, kind of dumb yet brilliant when it comes to self-protection. Linniham provides him with warmth and humanity, and it's a pleasure to root for his passive-aggressive silliness. The hoariest humor is somehow fresh in Linniham's capable hands. The press release refers to her work as "a comic tour-de-force," and you'll get no argument from me.

The humans are visible and interact throughout Don Juan, and on the whole they are pretty wonderful. (The rest of the cast includes Deborah Beshaw-Farrell, Otis Cotton, and Tess Wonson.) The costumes are endearingly ragtag, the scenery the same. The puppets range from fairly stiff to multifaceted, but they are all animated by the cast's joy and energy. Some of them are stunning.

DonJuan, or Wages of Debauchery has an appealing "let's-put-on-a-show" vibe. If it were 15 minutes shorter, and if Horejs gave Don Juan even the glimmer of a personality, it would be a complete success. As it stands, it is still a lovely evening in the theatre.

(press ticket, first row)

A new post on an old favorite

Hi, all:

It's mid/late semester for me, which is why I've been largely absent from this blog of late. But I've missed you all dearly, and I promise to be back in full force in late spring and summer, which is when I catch up on a lot of the shows I don't get the chance to see during the school year.

Meanwhile, I wanted alert anyone who is interested to a blog post I did for the Society for Ethnomusicology's new Sound Matters blog, which came out beautifully, thanks in large part to its fearless, brilliant editor, Jim Cowdery. You can link to it here. Be sure to check out the clips embedded in the essay!

The Most Deserving

Catherine Trieschmann's new play, The Most Deserving, aspires to be both entertaining and significant. It is completely successful in the former regard, and not so much in the latter.

Kristin Griffith, Veanne Cox

A small arts council in Kansas has a $20,000 grant to bestow to an artist who "must demonstrate both artistic excellence and financial need and should preferably be an underrepresented American voice." Jolene, the founder and fierce protector of the arts council, wants the grant to go to a local artist who is one eighth Native American--or is it one sixteenth? Liz, an assistant professor of art, wants the grant to go to Everett, a paraplegic African-American who makes art out of garbage--but Everett hasn't applied, and the deadline has passed. Edie, who funded the grant from her late husband's fortune, turns out to be surprisingly slippery as Jolene and Liz vie for her vote. Ted, Jolene's husband, is mostly interested in getting Liz's attention. Dwayne, unemployed and in desperate need of cash, wants to receive the grant himself, despite fitting none of the requirements.

The show's lively 90 minutes are stuffed with broken allegiances, revealed secrets, and bad behavior. Is the play trying to show us the parochialism of the Mid West? Perhaps, but the setup is a bit by the numbers, and the characters aren't convincing as actual people. The one point the show does make brilliantly, however, is never to think that grants (or jobs, for that matter) are bestowed to "the most deserving"--or that the logic behind the ultimate decision has anything to do with, well, logic.

Trieschmann is well-served by efficient direction by Shelley Butler and a talented and game cast, led by the wonderful Veanne Cox, who gives the best massage you are ever likely to see in a play. The cast navigates the play's twists and turns with aplomb and makes the most of Trieschmann's genuinely funny situations and dialogue. Whatever its flaws, The Most Deserving is a great deal of fun.

(8th row, press ticket)

The Ted & Lo Show – This May Hurt a Bit

You can credit Ted and Lo for truth in advertising; their show does hurt a bit. It also entertains, charms, and delights. I'm not sure that it gels overall, but what can you expect from a song list that covers love, insecurity, evil, mass murder, suicide, the media, and a boy who only says, "I Don't Care"?

Ted (Tad Stafford) plays guitar and sings. His musicianship is unquestionable, and he can be quite charming. (There was general consensus among my friends, however, that his curtain of gray hair blocks his communication with the audience.)

Lo (Lorinda Lisitza) is amazing. (For an earlier, equally enthusiastic review of her work, click here.) She's the real deal, singing and acting brilliantly in a wide range of styles and moods. Her voice is gorgeous when she wants it to be and rough when that's her goal. She also plays a mean harmonica.

Lisitza has the talent and charisma of a star, and I would gladly, gratefully, go to see her in, oh, Next to Normal, Happy End, Beautiful, 42nd Street, the Addams Family, Chicago, Anyone Can Whistle, Sweeney Todd, Gypsy--well, you get the idea. Until producers wise up and cast her, I'll make sure to see whatever it is she does do.

National Theatre Live @ Symphony Space: War Horse

 
True confession: I love Joey.  The horse, that is.  Well...the puppet horse.

Thanks to the National Theatre Live's encore screening at Symphony Space on Monday night, I got to see the play for the fifth time.  Yes, I saw it four times in New York.  No, I didn't pay full price because of TDF, LincTix (for theatre patrons ages 21 to 35), and Student Rush.

The story itself is a mix between a romance and a period piece, just with a boy and horse instead of a boy and girl.  Sixteen year old Albert falls in love with Joey the horse.  Albert loses Joey to the war effort.  Albert joins army in order to find Joey.  It's a sweet and heartwarming story, but pretty predictable. 

So why go see it so many times?  Why not just watch the Spielberg film?  The puppets.  They are the heart and soul and magic of this piece.  The amazing thing about the puppets is that the puppeteers are in plain sight.  Yet, no matter how hard you try to focus on the puppeteers (and believe me, I have), they bring Joey and Topthorn, Joey's army horse friend, to life in such a way that you just stop seeing them.  There are several moments where the puppets' choreography takes my breath away. 

The National Theatre production is slightly different from the Broadway one.  The text is altered for one.  Captain Nichols has a heroic and nationalistic speech before the first cavalry charge in Act I that was cut from the Broadway production, probably because it wouldn't resonate in the same way.  In addition, this production has several small parts spoken in French and German.  In the Broadway production, these were spoken in English with exaggerated accents.  I personally think the comedy worked better in French and German, especially during the No Man's Land scene.  I think the assumption is that British audiences are more likely to know some conversational German and French, whereas American audiences aren't.  Things like this make me think that Brits are just naturally smarter.  

The performances were quite good.  Sion Young's (Albert) performance was adorable in the first act but really took off in the second act.  Ian Shaw (Friedrich) was also quite good once he decided to stop shouting so much.  The ensemble member singing lead in the folk songs had a particularly poignant and beautiful voice.  All three of the horse teams were brilliant, but I loved the team performing Topthorn.  Their performance was wonderfully spirited.

I think NTLive might need to readjust lighting design for these live streamed productions though.  Several scenes were quite dark on film, which makes me think that they didn't adjust anything for the live stream.  That's a small quibble, however.   

There are three more encore performances this month at Symphony Space on April 3, 11, and 16.  I highly recommend that you see this if you didn't see it when it was in New York.  General admission tickets are $23 (regular), $21 (students and seniors), and $19 (Symphony Space members).  If you're not in New York, performances near you can be found here.

And if you need some convincing first, see the videos below.

TED Talk featuring Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones (Handspring Puppet Company).

Joey in action at Sandown Park, Esher Park.

But seriously...go see the show.  You won't regret it. 

If/Then

If/Then, an original musical by the Next to Normal writer/composer team of Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt, has a great deal going for it: a dynamite cast headed up by the bona-fide Broadway star Idina Menzel; a strong supporting cast featuring talents like LaChanze, Anthony Rapp, and Jerry Dixon; the Rent and Next to Normal director Michael Greif at the helm. The score, which bears some strong similarities to that for Normal, reflects real growth by Kitt--whose bouncy, contemporary melodies are perfectly suited to Menzel's distinctive brass--and especially by Yorkey, whose lyrics for Normal felt a titch too obvious a titch too often, and whose lyrics here are, for the most part, sharper, savvier, and more organic. And the musical's "road not taken" concept is, if not entirely original (Robert Frost, Frank Capra, and Gwyneth Paltrow got to it before Yorkey and Kitt did), certainly fresher and more challenging than, say, taking a classic movie about a boxer who slurps raw eggs and punches meat and plunking it onto the stage. If/Then has a lot of imagination and a lot of talent behind it. It thus pains me to say that I found it to be an overcooked, ponderous, frustrating musical. 

If/Then has two simultaneous plot-lines, both of which feature the same characters doing slightly different things, so it's easy enough to lose track of what's going on sometimes, especially in the long, overstuffed second act. The gist: A brilliant urban planner named Elizabeth, pushing 40 and recently divorced, returns to New York City after a decade of unhappy marriage in Phoenix. During the musical's first scene, Elizabeth goes to Central Park to meet up with two of her old friends, who do not know one another: Kate (LaChanze) is a kindergarten teacher; Lucas (Anthony Rapp) is a community organizer and activist. When they meet and the introductions are made, Kate announces that Elizabeth should start referring to herself as "Liz" in celebration of her new life, and then suggests that they spend the rest of the afternoon in the park. Lucas, on the other hand, calls Elizabeth "Beth,"which is how he knew her back when they were in college together. He suggests that they leave the park and attend a fair housing rally in Brooklyn.

The rest of the show follows Liz, who remains in the park with Kate and meets a man who becomes her husband, and Beth, who leaves the park with Lucas, runs into another college friend who gives her a job in the city planner's office, and becomes a respected career woman. While the two paths Elizabeth takes have significant overlaps, there are divergent outcomes: Liz and Beth both get pregnant, but by different men, to different ends and with different consequences. Liz and Beth both make compromises--the former chooses work over family, the latter marries and has kids, and demeans herself professionally by taking what we all know is a fate worse than death: an academic job. I like to think that in New York City in 2014, a woman like Elizabeth could have a successful, satisfying career and a fulfilling family life, but I guess if this were the case, there'd be no point to If/Then at all.

Is It Too Much to Ask?

Okay, they were both previews. Okay, maybe they'll fix the problems (if they even perceive them as problems). But in one week I have experienced not being able to see and not being able to hear in high-profile professional productions.

(I'm not reviewing these because that would be premature. I'm only discussing problems that seriously compromised the enjoyment of each show.)

Sutton Foster (who was the most
intelligible person on stage)

Thursday night, very early preview of The Library. Perhaps it was director Steven Soderbergh's decision; perhaps it was lighting designer David Lander's; perhaps they made the decision together. Whoever is responsible, it's a bad idea to light a show so darkly that people's faces are barely visible--or not visible at all. It wasn't until well into the play that I could even see that Michael O'Keefe was Michael O'Keefe. Obviously, previews are the time to try out ideas, and I hope they realize that this one has a negative cost (clarity)/benefit (atmosphere) ratio. (I also don't understand why they didn't sneak in more light after establishing the mood. Isn't that Lighting 101?)

Friday night, first preview of Violet, and the band frequently overpowered the singers. This is fixable, and I hope they realize it's a problem and fix it. (I was in the back of the balcony, and I don't know if the sound people ever pop up there to listen.) But even if they do fix it, there are still some serious enunciation issues. Violet is a wonderful show; it deserves to be heard.

Sir Patient Fancy

Sir Patient Fancy is a humorous yet serious look at the effect money--or lack of money!--has on romantic relationships. Written in 1678 by Aphra Behn, England's first female professional playwright, Sir Patient Fancy uses farce to make serious points--points that are, unfortunately, still relevant today.

Cast of the Queen's Company production of Sir Patient Fancy
Photo: Bob Pileggi

The Queen's Company uses all-female casts to give women more opportunity to do the classics. This is carried out straightforwardly; the women play men without compromising the characters or play or winking at the audience. (They do occasionally compromise the play in other ways, however, as in the unnecessary and flat-out dumb use of a cell phone in the production.)

The plot line of Sir Patient Fancy is Farce 101. This person loves that person but is supposed to marry a third person. The third person loves a fourth person who loves her back but is betrothed to a fifth person. Add mistaken identities, tricks and deceit, and much frantic coming and going. It is familiar territory. But Behn mines it well, and the play is entertaining.

The Queen's Company production of Sir Patient Fancy is a mixed bag, however. On one hand, there are some excellent performances, and most of the actors are able to speak 17th-century English comfortably and clearly. On the other hand, the modern touches--in particular the lip-synched contemporary songs at the beginning and end of the show--are intrusive, annoying, and time-consuming. When a show  runs 2:40, it's important to justify every minute, but the lip-synching comes across as a cutesy in-joke, adding nothing and taking away much. Sir Patient Fancy can stand on its own, without schtick, and should be given that opportunity.

Luckily, the good outweighs the bad, and this production is a welcome opportunity to experience Behn's work.

(4th row on the aisle)

And the Winner Is . . .

Kyle Nesbit. Congratulations, Kyle. You have won the copy of Nothing Like a Dame.

Here are the correct answers:

Angela Lansbury: 4 Audra McDonald: 2 Bebe Neuwirth: 10 Betty Buckley: 3 Carol Channing: 18 Chita Rivera: 14 Debra Monk: 8

Donna McKechnie: 16 Donna Murphy:21 Elaine Stritch: 5 Idina Menzel: 6 Judy Kaye: 1 Karen Ziemba: 15 Kristin Chenoweth: 7

Laura Benanti: 11 Leslie Uggams: 17 Lillias White: 9 Patti LuPone: 13 Sutton Foster: 19 Tonya Pinkins: 20 Victoria Clark: 12