2018 Tonys: How'd We Do?

Well, we didn't do too badly this year, although we're not going to win any prizes for theatrical prescience. It was very nice to be wrong about Ari’el Stachel and Lindsay Mendez! They both truly deserve their prizes. And as for my own two seemingly smartest predictions (Once on This Island and Tony Shalhoub), both were complete guesses. Wendy

	Liz Wollman	Sandra Mardenfeld	Wendy Caster
Musical The Band’s Visit	X	X	X
Leading Actress in a Musical Katrina Lenk, The Band’s Visit	X	X	X
Leading Actor in a Musical Tony Shalhoub, The Band’s Visit			X
Revival of a Musical Once on This Island			X
Revival of a Play Angels in America	X	X	X
Play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child		X	X
Original Score The Band’s Visit, Music and Lyrics: David Yazbek	X	X	X
Direction of a Play John Tiffany, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child	X		X
Direction of a Musical David Cromer, The Band’s Visit		X
Sound Design in a Play Gareth Fry, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child	X	X	X
Sound Design in a Musical Kai Harada, The Band’s Visit		X	X
Leading Actress in a Play: Glenda Jackson, Three Tall Women	X	X	X
Scenic Design for a Musical: David Zinn, SpongeBob SquarePants	X		X
Scenic Design for a Play: Christine Jones, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child	X	X	X
Featured Actor in a Musical Ari’el Stachel, The Band’s Visit
Featured Actor in a Play Nathan Lane, Angels in America	X	X	X
Book of a Musical The Band’s Visit, Itamar Moses
Featured Actress in a Musical Lindsay Mendez, Carousel
Choreography Justin Peck, Carousel	X	X	X
Featured Actress in a Play Laurie Metcalf, Three Tall Women		X	X
Orchestrations Jamshied Sharifi, The Band’s Visit	X	X
Performance by a Lead Actor in a Play Andrew Garfield, Angels in America	X	X	X
Costume Design of a Play Katrina Lindsay, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child	X	X	X
Costume Design of a Musical Catherine Zuber, My Fair Lady		X
Lighting Design of a Play Neil Austin, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child	X	X	X
Lighting Design of a Musical Tyler Micoleau, The Band’s Visit
TOTALS	15	18	19

Spring roundup: Mean Girls, Our Lady of 121st Street, Paradise Blue, Dance Nation

Mean Girls
Mean Girls is cute and funny, well-staged, a little too long for what it is, occasionally miked too loud, and ultimately better than getting a cavity filled. I wish I'd been thrilled by it, but again, it was hardly an ordeal. Some of my tepid reaction has to do with my own preferences, one of which is not to shell out serious buckage to see something from the rear balcony that I saw from a better seat in a movie theater fifteen years ago. I also didn't dig the score, which struck me weirdly as a thin interpretation of Broadway musicals in some vague generic sense but without a real grasp of the blood and guts that make some representations of the genre work way better than others do. And honestly, some of it was just that I was knee-deep in the end of my semester when I saw it, and thus even more overwhelmed and grumpy than I usually am, especially when it comes to encountering such sweet, well-meaning baubles.

The performers were game and some of them were really terrific. The audience I saw it with seemed to love it. It's apparently selling very, very well. And truly, whatever, it was fine, I've never written a film or adapted one into a Broadway show, so what the hell do I know? I can't help but wonder how it would have fared had Fey and her husband not been behind it, but we'll never know, and anyway, that's just not how show biz works.


Our Lady of 121st Street
Stephen Adly Guirgis's Our Lady of 121st Street, in colorful revival at Signature Theater, is an imbalanced work, but ultimately its strengths win out over its weaknesses. I wish like hell I'd known before I'd seen it that it's wonderful when it comes to affectionate, deft character analysis, but that it doesn't tie up all its loose plot threads in nice little bows by the end of the swift two hours. Or maybe I'm just a moron for having expected such a sprawling piece to resolve so completely in the final minutes. Either way, I felt momentarily disoriented when the play just kind of ended.

So I'm doing you the favor I wish someone had done me, whether you want it or not: Go. See it. Enjoy the very fine production and the numerous three-dimensional characters (as well as a few two- and one-dimensional ones who are still worthy of your time and consideration). This is a very good episodic, day-in-the-life play. It is well acted, insightful, and often genuinely hilarious. Enjoy the ride, don't expect resolution, and you'll have a wonderful time.

Desperate Measures

I love meaningful musical theatre. I adore Sondheim. Caroline, Or Change is one of my favorite shows. But sometimes an old-fashioned, well-done, energetic, deeply silly musical is the perfect way to spend an evening. As in: Desperate Measures.

Joseph Wallace, Lauren Molina, Justin Rothberg
Photo: Carol Rosegg

Desperate Measures is sorta, kinda based on Shakespeare's Measure by Measure. Most of the plot is gone. It takes place in a Old Western world of saloon girls and handsome, rugged sheriffs. All the characters have different names. In fact, it's so little like the original that I suspect that the creators just wanted an excuse to use iambic-pentameter couplets. And that's fine with me: they are extremely funny iambic-pentameter couplets (book and lyrics by Peter Kellogg; the listener-friendly music is by David Friedman).

Shows of this sort live and die by the direction and performances, and both are swell. Director Bill Castellino paces the show perfectly, and the cast throw themselves whole-heartedly into the crazy goings-on. I recently learned the phrase "commit to the bit": these performers commit to every single bit with fervor and skill. They are Gary Marachek, Lauren Molina (particularly fabulous), Sarah Parnicky, Conor Ryan, Peter Saide, and Nick Wyman; beside their comic talents, they all sing beautifully. The wonderful musicians are Anthony Festa, Celia Hottenstein, and Tom Souhrada.

As a woman in the lobby after the show summed up Desperate Measures, "You may get here grumpy, but you won't leave grumpy."

Wendy Caster
(discount ticket; 7th row)
Show-Score: 95

This Is Modern Art

As a reviewer, I get invited to dozens of shows each month, and it can be difficult to decide which to see. Sometimes the choice is almost random. I picked This Is Modern Art because (1) it was called “irresponsible” and “potentially damaging” by Hedy Weiss of the Chicago Sun-Times, and (2) I wanted to see the new theatre space being used by "Next Door  at NYTW."

Clockwise from top left:
Andrew Gonzalez, Landon G. Woodson,
Nancy McArthur, Shakur Tolliver
Photo: Maria Baranova

I really lucked out on this one. This Is Modern Art is compelling, thought-provoking, sometimes funny, and often sweet. The writing (Idris Goodwin and Kevin Coval) is subtle and smart; the direction (Jessica Burr) is creative and smooth; and the acting (J. Stephen Brantley,  Andrew Gonzalez, Ashley N. Hildreth, Nancy McArthur, Shakur Tolliver, and Landon G. Woodson) is excellent. I found it neither irresponsible or potentially damaging. In fact, I found it necessary and important.

the hollower

I saw Liza Birkenmeier's the hollower three days ago and I have been avoiding writing a review because I don't know what to say. Well, yes, I know that the cast is excellent. And, yes, I know that the writing is often wonderful. But I can't figure out what the damn thing is about, and that's even after reading the script. However, I need to write a review, so here goes.

Patrena Murray, Reyna de Courcy
Photo: Hunter Canning

The show starts with a middle-aged African-American woman staring into a window and maybe talking to herself. This is Otto (Patrena Murray) who is sweet, forgetful, and strangely passive. In totters Bit (Reyna de Courcy), on insanely high heels. Bit lives with Otto. She is white, 16, creative, needy, and damaged; she dresses in bright and odd combinations of clothing and wears candy-colored wigs. The relationship between Otto and Bit is unclear. What is clear is that Bit needs Otto's attention desperately and that Otto gives her as much as she can, in her foggy way. It is not enough for Bit.

Hello Dolly

About 15 minutes into Hello Dolly, I thought, "I love this stupid show." By the end of the first act, I had eliminated "stupid." Hello Dolly has a silly plot, yes, and some of the songs come out of nowhere, yes, but, damn, it is an unstoppable joy machine. And while I don't think that musicals must have instantly hummable melodies, it is great fun when the audience comes out singing and, yes, humming the songs. There were a lot of women not letting the parade pass them by while in line for the ladies room.

Photo: Julieta Cervantes

And then there is Bernadette Peters. When I saw the show with Bette Midler, I enjoyed it immensely, but Midler didn't even make believe she was playing Dolly (link to my review here). Bernadette Peters plays Dolly, and it raises the show a whole level up. I don't think she's a great actress, but she's warm and likable, and I love her voice, and she's Bernadette Peters. (In a scrapbook I have from my early teen years, I have an interview with her from 1969. I've been a fan for nearly half a century.)

Peace for Mary Frances

Lily Thorne treads familiar ground in her new play, Peace for Mary Frances. Estranged members of a family gather due to the death of a parent. Old grudges are revisited, old wounds are reopened, and, well, you know. In this case, however, instead of assembling after the death (e.g., as in August, Osage County, Crimes of the Heart, and many more) they come to care for Mary Frances while she's still alive. Mary Frances, tired and in pain, is ready to die; she has decided to refuse further treatment. The family accept her decision, but they don't accept much of anything else.

Johanna Day, J. Smith-Cameron, Heather Burns 
Photo: Monique Carboni

One daughter, Fanny--the official fuck-up and ex-heroin user--has been living with Mary Frances but supposedly not taking good care of her. The other daughter, Alice--the quirky, angry one, who works as an astrologist--is jealous of the Fanny's relationship with their mother and neither trusts nor likes Fanny in general. The son, Eddie, who charges Mary Frances for helping with her paperwork, is largely oblivious. Alice's adult daughters are there too: one, a mother, is loving and able to push herself to do uncomfortable care tasks; the other, a famous actress, spends more time crying than helping.

Tony Award Predictions 2018

LIZ: Were I to take awards seasons seriously, I’d join with the city’s professional theater critics in wringing my hands over the purported death of Broadway at the end of this weirdly inconsistent and ultimately disappointing season. But I don’t take them seriously, and I’m not a professional theater critic. Yay for me! Also, since critics have been bitching off and on for at least a century over the imminent death of Broadway, I can leave the histrionics to them. Sure, whatever, it’s not been the most thrilling season, but then, it still beats the daylights out of reality lately, so there’s that. I’m just as eager as I always am to watch the awards, and to catch up on shows I’ve missed—whether on, Off, or Off Off Broadway—this summer. While I haven’t seen as much on Broadway as I usually have by this point in the year, I’ll venture my most educated guesses below.

SANDRA: The Tony Awards are fun to watch, and they do recognize theatrical talent ... but not every person who deserves a Tony wins one. Laura Linney, Victor Garber and Judy Kuhn are statue-less (all nominated four times!). So, here are my predictions/preferences for the prize ... submitted with me wishing that occasionally you could have two individuals win the same category.

WENDY: When people argue about who will win an award, they often leave out a tricky wild card: math. If you have five nominees, someone could win with as little as 25% of the votes—far from a majority. Is it likely? No, but it’s absolutely possible. And this is an interesting year, in that a number of categories have no shoo-in winner.

League of Professional Theatre Woman presents Chita Rivera in conversation with Richard Ridge

Richard Ridge and Chita Rivera

Chita Rivera may be known primarily as an actress and a dancer, but she knows how to choreograph a punchline. She provided plenty of laughs as she spoke about her career with Richard Ridge, the lead correspondent for Broadway World--where he hosts "Backstage with Richard Ridge"--at an event presented in collaboration with the League of Professional Theatre Women on May 7 at The Bruno Walter Auditorium inside the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

In an hour, Ridge did a remarkable job steering the conversation to hit all the high points of Rivera's career. From her start as a student for Doris Jones to her audition for choreographer/ballet master George Balanchine to her Broadway career. Rivera mixed wit with insight throughout the presentation. She recounted being scared at her Balanchine audition: my teacher [Jones] said, "Just stay in your lane, Chita." To this day, she tells people she meets that, "You find out who you are by being who you are."

Rivera also spoke about how learning comes from observing the greats. In Call Me Madam, she remembers watching Elaine Stritch, in Can-Can - Gwen Verdon. "I lived in the wings of every show and learned so much that way," she said.

Playing Anita in West Side Story also taught her - "suddenly we had words," she remembered. She enjoyed working with composer Leonard Bernstein, learning her songs with him in his apartment. "It's kind of fun to say 'Lennie." She liked nicknames - choreographer/director Jerome Robbins was dubbed, "Big Daddy," because "he had all the answers," Rivera said. The show tested her but "there's nothing better than working hard and finding out you can do it."

Observing Dick Van Dyke, when she originated the role of Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie, also became a career highlight - "If you watch, you learn," Rivera said, who referred to many theatre greats by first names. When discussing Chicago she spoke about composer John Kander's talent: "John wrote great vamps," she said. In her head, she kept wishing for a vamp ... and you got what she wanted with "Cell Block Tango."

Aurora in Kiss of the Spider Woman was a hard character for her to find because she showed in fragments through the show. Rivera also "did a lot of climbing during the show, but my name's Chita."

Rivera expressed gratitude about her opportunity to work with talented colleagues. She said that the reason she her tango electrified in Nine had everything to do with her leading man  - "You would be able to do that, too, if you were standing next to Antonio Banderas." In The Visit, a show she commented was about love not revenge "even though a few people die," she adored working with actor Roger Rees.

Ridge, an obvious fan, balanced his admiration with questions that gave insight to Rivera's career and showed the audience her grit, determination and sense of humor. "Every single day you are different," Rivera commented on injuries and aging. "You accept it as it is and you keep going."

Rivera will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2018 Tony ceremony.

The Sea Concerto

Before the Internet, daily-newspaper theater critics would see shows on opening night and write their reviews immediately after. Although these reviews often determined the fate of the show, the critics barely had time to think about what they had seen before their deadlines.

Morgan McGuire, Corey Allen
Photo: Isaiah Tanenbaum Theatrical Photography

This is on my mind because I saw Flux Theatre Ensemble's new play, The Sea Concerto, last week, and I'm still not 100% sure what I think about it. I've considered it at length, and I've read the script as well, but I'm still not sure. Also, it's possible I didn't understand everything.

Follies (second viewing)

When I wrote my first review of  the fabulous APAC production of Follies, I was short on details. Then someone on the often-infuriating but also often-invaluable All That Chat asked for more details (shout out to lordofspeech), and I wrote a long answer to his post. Here it is, with a bit of polishing and updating.

I loved Tina Stafford. I thought she nailed Sally's complexity: yearning, angry, disappointed, hopeful, and sadly aware that she's at least a little silly. She wears her heart on her sleeve even though she knows it isn't a great idea. Her "In Buddy's Eyes" and "Losing My Mind" were both excellent. 

Happy Birthday, Wanda June

While the city's theater critics revive the century-old debate about the death of Broadway at the tail end of a reasonably disappointing commercial season, reassurance can be found in a visit to the tiny Gene Frankel: a musty, impossibly crowded blackbox theater that is home to a remarkable revival of Kurt Vonnegut's 1971 Happy Birthday, Wanda June. I've been hearing about this production for a while, beginning when Wendy Caster raved about it early in its run, so when the run was extended and I stumbled into press tickets, I jumped. I'm so glad I did.

Jeremy Daniel

A scathing case-study of toxic masculinity written long before "toxic masculinity" was a common phrase, Happy Birthday, Wanda June subverts Homer's Odyssey and relocates it in a strange, ridiculous dreamland that boomerangs between reality and some droll netherworld, which could just as easily be the late Vietnam era in the US as it could be purgatory. The revival remains rooted in the American past--those groovy, polyester costumes!--while simultaneously reflecting the frustrating fever-dream state of the nation right now. Therein lies both Wanda June's powerful appeal and the heartbreak of it: must a strange, dusty old piece that so efficiently bottled the darkness of the edgy, moody past have to be so damned apt again?

Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America's Past (book review)

After all that's been written about Hamilton, one might think that there's nothing left to say. Turns out there's at least 400 pages' worth, as shown in Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America's Past (edited by Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter; see table of contents, below). The book should be of interest to people who love theatre, more interest to people who love history, and a treat for those (myself included) who love both. (For the record, three of the people who contributed to Historians on Hamilton specialize in theatre, rather than history. One of them, Elizabeth Wollman, writes for this blog.)

Some of the questions discussed in Historians on Hamilton: Who was Alexander Hamilton? How true is Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton to the real man? How much historical accuracy should we expect from art? Is Hamilton doing good work by getting young people engaged with history? Or is it doing bad work by getting young people engaged with inaccurate history? How has Hamilton managed to have a significant effect on thousands of people who will likely never see the show? How has Hamilton managed to win over people on both the left and the right? What is the role of race in Hamilton? Does it matter that none of the characters are actual people of color? Does Hamilton represent a revolution or the next step in theatre's evolution?

Follies

How much did I enjoy the APAC production of Follies? I've already purchased my ticket to see it again.

APAC (Astoria Performing Arts Center) has an excellent reputation and many awards, as well it should. Even with limited resources, APAC provides top-notch productions again and again. (See my review of Merrily We Roll Again here.)
How do they do it? I think a big part of the answer has to be Artistic Director Dev Bondarin.

Nailing "The Mirror Number":
Andrea McCullough, Victoria Bundonis,
Tina Stafford, LaDonna Burns,
Marcie Henderson, Denise DeMars,
Rusty Riegelman.
Photo: Michael Dekker

In this production, as the other shows she has directed, Bondarin honors and trusts the work. This Follies has plenty of flaws, as might be expected with an Off-Off-Broadway group choosing such an ambitious project, but that's okay: the important thing is that Bondarin has nailed the show's true Follies-ness. She is a smart director who eagerly serves the work, and this production is full of her smart decisions. The result is more excellent theatre than we the audience have any right to expect for a ticket price of $18! ($12 if you're a student or senior.)

So, yes, this isn't a star-studded production. The production values could be higher. Some performers aren't quite up to the task (though many others are quite good). But this Follies sings, it dances, it feels. It's Follies. If those two words have any meaning to you, make sure to catch this show. Tickets are available here. You'll rarely in your life get such value for your money.

Wendy Caster
(press ticket, 5th row)
Show-Score Score: 90

Cast: Denali Bennett, Victoria Bundonis, LaDonna Burns, Denise DeMars, Tia DeShazor, Susan Cohen DeStefano, Christine Donnelly, Andrea Dotto, Dan Entriken, Jonathan Fluck, Spencer Hansen, James Harter, Marcie Henderson, Greg Horton, Kathleen LaMagna, Andrea McCullough, Sharaé Moultrie, Ben Northrup, Rusty Riegelman, Bruce Sabath, Carolyn Seiff, Cliff Sellers, Lauren Alice Smith, Tina Stafford, Noah M. Virgile, Mandarin Wu.

Production Staff: Director: Dev Bondarin; Musical Director: James Higgins; Choreographer: Sara Brians; Set Design: Ann Beyersdorfer; Costume Design: Jennifer Jacob; Lighting Design: Annie Wiegand; Sound Design: Caroline Eng; Prop Design: Andrew Short; Production Manager: Annie Jacobs; Production Stage Manager: Jessica McIlquham; Assistant Stage Manager: Robert Peatman.

Summer: The Donna Summer Musical

Sometimes, it's genuinely unfair when shows on Broadway flop. Countless worthwhile productions close in debt due to poor timing, a few weak links, material that's too dark or sophisticated or sad to lure mainstream audiences, not enough money to attract audiences in the first place. These poor, innocent, not-all-bad flops are somehow even more heartbreaking when compared with shows that are totally, astoundingly, mesmerizingly terrible in so many ways you lose count--especially when such shows do surprisingly well, at least at the outset. Which brings me to Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, the title of which, now that I think about it, says a lot about the production. What the hell does summer have to do with anything, or are we not referencing the season? If we aren't, why bother to mention the woman's stage name twice? Couldn't anyone have come up with a more creative, less repetitive title--maybe one that draws on her songs or legacy? The Queen of Disco? Or Hot Stuff, or Bad Girls, or, hell, Dim All the Lights Sweet Darling 'Cause Tonight It's All About Reenacting Donna Summer's Life in the Dumbest Ways Possible, But At Least the Songs Are Catchy? Because I'm on a roll here, I'm going to toss one out that I think fits the show best: Someone Left the Cake in the Rain. You know, cuz it's a soggy mess. Get it? Get it? Get it?

Kevin Berne

Look, I know, slamming an entertainment product that people work hard on for a long time is cheap and easy. And truly, I'd hold back and be a lot nicer about this one, but Summer was created by a group of very accomplished, ludicrously established dudes who know from Broadway--Des McAnuff, Sergio Trujillo, the effing Dodgers, for pity's sake--and who, I assume, will live to see another day and better shows. I don't feel terribly bad for them for having spawned this disaster, especially since it's just so insulting in its half-assedness. Also, the show appears to be raking it in for now; to me, this implies that plenty of gullible people will shell out enormous buckage to sit for just over ninety minutes in a big shiny theater and come away impressed because some familiar songs are performed by a cast that, as a group, is curiously moving in its ability to look like they give a flying fuck about what the hell they're doing up on the stage eight times a week. It's not easy, I imagine: the only thing the creative team seems to have agreed on with this show is that a musical about Donna Summer really, really needs lots of blue lighting and the excessive use of hydraulic lifts.

Summer is in many ways derivative of McAnuff's more creative, compelling, and uncondescending Jersey Boys. The creative team seems here to have decided to borrow amply from that show in terms of structure, look, and design, but the result is less smart and sharp, and more like someone took a lot of pasta, dyed it a variety of cool blue hues, threw it against a sleekly-lit wall, and then moved it around on platforms that sank below the stage and back up again, as if constant movement would maybe trick the audience into believing that this production actually works. 

Good ideas abound, sure, but something--or a lot of things--seem to have gotten lost between page and stage. There are, for example, three perfectly fine actors portraying Donna Summer at various points in her life. But what the hell with the names and who is playing whom at any given time? Storm Lever plays Summer as a child--she's listed in the program as "Duckling Donna," I think because there was some conversation about the ugly duckling story in the show, but whatever, I wasn't paying attention at that point. Ariana DeBose plays "Disco Donna," which I guess would be Donna in the 1970s. This was confusing, though, because for some reason, many of the '70s scenes are aesthetically reminiscent of the '80s, which makes me feel incredibly old, and also pissed off that no one on the creative team could bother to remember that neon lighting and Robert Palmer videos were '80s phenomena, not '70s phenomena, for fuck's sake. Anyway, the great LaChanze, who deserves way better than this, is "Diva Donna," because I suppose "Born-Again Christian Donna Who Gives a Farewell Concert and Looks Back on Her Life Before She Dies, or Maybe It's Supposed to Be After She's Dead But Either Way, There's More Hydraulic Lifting" is way too wordy. Whatever; the names of the three Donnas at different ages is consistent with the fact that nothing at any age seems remotely clear, consistent, or well-developed. Sometimes La Chanze plays Summer; sometimes she plays her mother; sometimes Storm Lever plays Donna's daughter. You'd think the creators would give the poor women a break and hire more people so Donna Summer wouldn't have to play her own mom and/or kid all the damn time.

Among the many other things that are frustrating about this musical is that Donna Summer actually seems to have lived a pretty interesting life, which I genuinely would have liked to know more about. As it stands, fleeting, thin scenes touch very superficially on the fact that she was, at various points, sexually abused by her priest, the witness to a murder, a wild bohemian expat in Germany, an abused girlfriend, a drug addict, a disco queen, an ardent feminist, an open-minded embracer of difference who reigned supreme at Studio 54, a born-again Christian, a homophobe, a painter, a devoted wife, a loving mother. Any one of those things, really, could be enough for a musical. But so much of her life story is here told through fleeting narration in place of action or nuanced scene work, and the result feels flat and forced for all the effort. There's no depth or exploration to anything presented onstage, which makes the whole show seem manipulative and cheap. Worst of all, notwithstanding the manipulative and bullshitty scene excusing Summer's homophobic comments as misunderstood jokes, is the decision by the all-male creative team to capitalize on the current women's movement by featuring an almost-but-not-quite-all-female cast, which makes no sense at all. Why are chicks playing dudes sometimes, but not at other times, and why are there dudes in the cast at all, and who the hell came up with the idea that Donna Summer's one late-career hit about women's work made her some kind of ardent feminist warrior? Are you kidding me? And truly, how dare you?

Again, the songs are fine. It was nice to hear them again, even if some of them are remarkably stupidly staged. It's an example of how half-assed this show is that "Dim All the Lights" is re-envisioned as a funeral dirge for Neil Bogart, and that this is nowhere near the worst idea. I'd vote for the car chase as even dumber, but then, I just don't have the energy to revisit the musical ever again to assess all the dumbness more carefully.

I've been chided in the past by friends in the business for expressing any pity at all for working actors, but truly, I feel for this cast, I hope they're paid well, and I hope something better comes along and hires them all away from this mess. They're clearly....um....working hard for the money.

Unexpected Joy

No doubt: the York Theatre Company is on a roll. Its last show, Desperate Measures, received a bouquet of nominations for best musical (Drama Desk, Lucille Lortel, etc.) and will soon open at New World Stages. And now the York is presenting the lovely Unexpected Joy.

The fabulous Courtney Balan, Celeste Rose,
Luba Mason, and Allyson Kaye Daniel
Photo: Carol Rosegg

Joy is a singer best known as half of the successful duo Jump and Joy. Jump died a year ago, and Joy is organizing a concert in his memory. She hopes to get her daughter, Rachel, and granddaughter, Tamara, to participate. Joy is a committed hippie (when someone is asked if Joy still smokes weed, she answers, "Only when she's awake") for whom protest is as important as breathing. Rachel has gone completely in the other direction; she is married to a TV preacher and lives a rule-bound life. Tamara is more like her grandmother, chaffing against restrictions and boundaries. The three women try to use this occasion to make peace. As you might imagine, it doesn't exactly go smoothly.

Chess

I have identified the problem with the musical Chess. It's bad.

You've got Florence, who loves bad boy chess player Freddie and has probably been his lover in the past. Does the show do anything--and I mean anything--to show their connection or give us one reason why anyone would like Freddie? No.

Florence then falls in love with Freddie's opponent Anatoly.* Does the show do anything to show their growing connection? Nope. (At least Anatoly isn't as thoroughly obnoxious as Freddie, so it's a little easier to buy Florence's love for him.)

The Metromaniacs

So, I could rave about the writing (joyfully wonderful and silly rhymes by David Ives) or the acting (from a strong, talented, attractive ensemble) or the design (charming) or the direction (calibrated perfectly by Michael Kahn). But what I want to say is this: If you're looking for a thoroughly entertaining and satisfying evening in the theater, go see The Metromaniacs at the Red Bull Theater (currently housed at the Duke on 42nd St).

Amelia Pedlow, Dina Thomas
Photo: Carol Rosegg

The plot: A thinks B is C, who thinks B is X, or something. And there's a mystery poetess. And, oh, who cares? The plot is a fun-delivery system--and it delivers! Also, Ives is smart enough to provide clear road signs and recaps along the way, so we know what we need to know. The time: 18th century, with a soupçon of meta and a smattering of zany anachronisms. The source: La Metromanie (it means "The Poetry Craze"), a French comedy by Alexis Piron. The presentation: excellent, and every performer enunciates beautifully so you can actually hear all those wonderful rhymes.

Adam Green, Dina Thomas, Adam LaFevre,
Christian Conn, Amelia Pedlow, Noah Averbach-Katz
Photo: Carol Rosegg

What else do you need to know? Nothing, really, except that The Metromaniacs is a total treat, start to finish.

(The cast comprises Noah Averbach-Katz, Christian Conn, Adam Green, Peter Kybart,  Adam LeFevre, Amelia Pedlow, and Dina Thomas. Scenic design by James Noone, costume design by Murell Horton, lighting design by Betsy Adams, music composed by  Adam Wernick, sound design by Matt Stine. Runs through May 26. For more information, click here.)

Wendy Caster
(press ticket; third row)

Carousel

Among the many ways Rodgers and Hammerstein helped innovate the American stage musical was through depth of character. Their musicals, after all, featured some particularly memorable ones, many of them women, with nuanced inner lives that they expressed to audiences through increasingly sophisticated song, dance, and dialogue. The anxious Laurie manipulated her suitors and then had psychosexual nightmares about them in the form of a lengthy, absorbing, and downright creepy ballet. Nellie Forbush casually tossed off some lame excuses about her own racism, but then struggled to overcome it so that she could live happily ever after with Emile DeBecque. Maria, a terrible nun with no direction in her life, slowly realized her potential as a governess, music educator, mom, and Nazi-evader once she ended up getting saddled with a bunch of neglected, unruly kids.

But depth of character somehow evades poor Julie Jordan, which is a problem because her paramour, Billy Bigelow, is a hot mess who also just happens to be endlessly fascinating: smarter, deeper, and more philosophical than he seems at the outset, with a restless mean streak and oceans of bitter agita beneath his easy charm. Bigelow is fire and brimstone; Jordan is merely a "queer one" (not remotely in the contemporary sense of the word), at least as she's described by her way better-developed and more interesting friend, Carrie Pipperidge. I've long struggled with Carousel in this particular respect, because the imbalance disrupts a show that might otherwise be perfect: dazzling to look at, ravishing to listen to, so far ahead of its time in particular ways, so extraordinarily weird as a piece.

The dark midcentury musical adaptation of an even darker early-20th-century play (Liliom by Ferenc Molnar), Carousel touches on themes that certainly weren't considered musical theater-fodder at the time, and that still come off as reasonably edgy today: "Hey, Oscar! How about we adapt that Hungarian flop into a musical about America's cruel and random class system, maybe with a side-serving of spiritual nihilism?" "I like what I'm hearing, Richard. But can there be a botched robbery that becomes a messy suicide and some domestic abuse? Also--stay with me--a clambake? If so, you got yourself a deal!"

Happy Birthday, Wanda June

If there is an afterlife, I hope Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., has had the opportunity to look down and watch the Wheelhouse Theater Company's excellent production of his hilarious, incisive farce, Happy Birthday, Wanda June (directed by Jeff Wise with vitality, creativity, and respect). I'm sure Vonnegut would be thrilled with the show, although he would likely also be depressed at how timely it remains.

Kareem Lucas, Matt Harrington,
Kate MacCluggage, Jason O'Connell,
Craig Wesley Divino, Finn Faulconer
(not pictured: Charlotte Wise)
Photo: Jeremy Daniel 

Harold Ryan, a man's-man's man's-man, has been missing for eight years. His wife, Penelope, and son, Paul, have kept the living room the way he left it--full of animal heads and jungle rot. (The fabulous set was designed by Brittany Vasta). Harold has been declared dead, and Penelope has finally moved on. She is engaged to a pacifist obstetrician named Norbert. Paul still believes Harold is alive, even though Penelope tells him, "Not even Mutual of Omaha thinks so anymore." However, Paul is right.

Harold comes home, full of bravado and raging masculinity, bragging of all the humans and "other animals" he has killed and all the women he has bedded. ("If I'd ever been to the South Pole," he says, "there'd be a hell of a lot of penguins who look like me.") He's horrified to find that Penelope not only doesn't want him, but that she is engaged to Norbert, about whom he says, "I could carve a better man out of a banana."

The plot is not the thing in Wanda June; it's all about the characters and their interactions. Other characters include Colonel Looseleaf Harper, the pilot who dropped the bomb on Nagasaki,  missing with Harold for those long eight years; he is overwhelmed by life and constantly uncertain. Herb Shuttle, another beau of Penelope's, is a vacuum cleaner salesman thrilled to meet Harold, who he sees as a mythic hero. Major Siegfried von Konigswald, a Nazi killed by Harold during the war, brags that he killed ten times as many people as Harold did. He acknowledges that Looseleaf killed many more but says, "Harold and me--we was doing it the hard way."

Harold is a gigantic-er-than-life character and a horrible man. In order for Wanda June to work, he also has to be charming and sexually attractive. Jason O'Connell manages all of Harold's dimensions in a tour de force performance that would merit a Tony if the show happened to be on Broadway. Kate MacCluggage as Penelope, in a less showy role, is every bit as good. Both actors do that fabulous juggling act of being farcical while also inhabiting three-dimensional humans with real dreams and feelings.

It helps that Vonnegut, whose life was permanently marked by his experiences in WWII, wrote such an open-hearted, textured farce. Every character is ridiculous; every character is sympathetic; no one is a complete hero or villain. Wanda June is a delayed-release show, where you laugh nonstop while watching it yet remain genuinely moved by it afterward.

Wendy Caster
(press ticket; 4th row center)

Three Tall Women

Edward Albee was not exactly fond of his mother. The headmaster of a boarding school Albee attended was quoted in the New Yorker as saying, “[He] dislikes his mother with a cordial and eloquent dislike which I consider entirely justifiable .... I can think of no other boy who ...  has been so fully the victim of an unsympathetic home background ...” Albee's feelings about his mother show up in many of his plays, nowhere more overtly than in Three Tall Women. 

In the first act, character A, based on Albee's mother, is an old infirm woman with control of neither her mind or her bladder. B is her aide; C is her lawyer. In the second act, A, B, and C are all character A, at different ages. 

In the current, elegant Broadway production, directed by Joe Montello, the three women are played--superbly--by Glenda Jackson (A), Laurie Metcalf (B), and Alison Pill (C). Their costumes, by Ann Roth, add texture to the characterizations and are often beautiful (I particularly love Glenda Jackson's dress in Act 2). The scenery, designed by Miriam Buether, is both attractive and fascinating, using a mirror (or mirrors?) to give a sense of a full but split milieu, perhaps representing A's mind as well as her location. The lighting, by Brian MacDevitt, embraces and enhances the play and design elements.

Being an Albee play, Three Tall Women is both devastating and funny as it examines love, motherhood, marriage, life, and death. The show is surprisingly compassionate. Three Tall Women could easily have been Albee's revenge on his mother, yet he takes a kinder, more complex approach. I believe it is this compassion that makes the play as hard-hitting and excellent as it is.

(For an amazingly different take of Three Tall Women, check out Hilton Als' review in the New Yorker. It's hard to believe that he saw the same play I saw, but I guess, ultimately, he didn't.)

Wendy Caster
(full price $49 ticket, second-to-last row in the mezzanine)

Jesus Christ Superstar

To stage Jesus Christ Superstar, I've long been convinced, is to set yourself up to fail. I'm not just being crabby, here; I love the piece very much. But it was not conceived for the stage in the first place, so putting it on one tends not to work very well. 

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice initially hoped to develop it for the West End, but after every theater producer laughed the young men out of their office for the very idea of rock-operafying the days leading up to Jesus's crucifixion, Superstar was instead composed and released in 1970 as a remarkably popular concept album. The studio setting arguably contributed to the rock opera's worldwide success: recording happened over many weeks, so vocalists could take breaks whenever they needed to rest their shredded vocal cords; flaws detected in playbacks could be nipped and spliced or recorded anew. And unlike West End producers, executives at Decca--flush from the recent success of the Who's Tommy, which had almost singlehandedly revived the dying label--were all too happy to market the daylights out of the finished product. To that end, the Murray Head recording of "Superstar" was released a full year before the album was; the BBC teaser, in which Head wanders earnestly around some church ruins while sporting a mullet and a cloth choker, is awesome. 

The album version of Jesus Christ Superstar went platinum in the US, and sold incredibly well in many European and South American countries. Its success--compounded by reports of numerous amateur stage and concert versions taking place across the US--finally convinced theater producers that a rock opera about Jesus's last days wasn't such a stupid idea after all. But among the many problems people encountered when trying to launch one: fans had already bonded deeply with the album and expected live versions to sound just like it; voices straining through full productions multiple times a week couldn't hold a candle to ones that could shriek for an hour and then rest for a few days, probably at a spa paid for by Decca; it's more interesting to listen to people thinking about things than it is to watch them wander in circles, however purposefully, scratching their chins or wringing their hands as they wonder "what then to do about Jesus of Nazareth." Directors have pulled out all kinds of stops to counter what is ultimately a pretty stagnant show: tiered, obstacle course-like sets; groovy laser Floyd-inspired lighting; gaudy makeup, day-glo costumes, an insect-inspired subtext. And yet I've never seen or studied a stage production of Superstar that has managed to triumph over a lack of dramatic build. 

James Dimmock

A "live in concert" televised event, however, is a different story, especially when it's been staged in a venue the size of an airplane hangar (an armory, actually, which is close) before an audience that sounds like it's having a collective orgasm for two-and-a-half hours. The spectators helped galvanize a production that drew almost immediately from a frequently overlooked ingredient that makes the sound recording as powerful as it is: its instrumentals. The son of a composer and organist (dad) and a violinist and pianist (mom), Lloyd Webber knows way more about music than his haters like to acknowledge; of all his pieces, Superstar is paced particularly beautifully. Beneath and between the voices, the score builds from those first distinctive licks on electric guitar into what eventually becomes deeply satisfying epic Wagnerian hugeness. This production not only took note of that fact, but milked it: following the first sweeping shots of Brooklyn, the armory exterior, and the audience of superfreaks within, cameras lingered lovingly on the large, multiply tiered, beautifully diverse orchestra, and then on four of its string players, who jammed together onstage in a tight circle before ushering in the cast. Yay, huge orchestra! You rocked!!

The production continued to deliver throughout, which is not to say that it didn't have its problems. There will always be a pacing issue with Superstar due to its tendency to dwell on chatty ruminations; the frequent commercial breaks sucked a little of the energy, too. But for the most part, jump-cuts, whizzing cameras, closeups, oceans of glitter, and a big giant cross that floats into an even bigger cross before being swallowed up in a beacon of light kept the action moving, even when the audience needed to pause to keep from hyperventilating. The sharp, active choreography by the exceptionally talented Camille A. Brown helped a hell of a lot, too; I can't say I've ever seen a Superstar with more dance than this one had, and it turns out that the stage production was crying out for it all along. Who knew? Not me.

People are already weighing in on the actors' interpretations, so here's what I think: they were all fine, though some certainly strayed from the original recording in ways that took some getting used to. The most noticable in this case was John Legend's Jesus. Whatever, the man's not a heavy metal screamer, and while I missed the dramatic, shouting-Jesus moments that occur through the piece, Legend's not nearly as petulant or whiny as Ian Gillan's Jesus was. This was a fair trade for me, especially since Jesus is not really the most interesting character in Lloyd Webber and Rice's retelling, anyway. As the second-least interesting character, Sara Bareilles's Mary was terrific, especially with her sweet and plaintive "Could We Start Again, Please?"

I have enough riding on Alice Cooper's aura that I could overlook the fact that he can barely move at this point in what has been an exceedingly excessive life (while not as iconic as JCS, Alice Cooper's Billion Dollar Babies is a brilliant concept album from the 1970s that is a favorite of mine, too). The supporting cast was beautiful, committed, terrific sounding, and diverse enough to remind anyone who cared to watch that the very point of world religions is that they are followed by lots of different people everywhere, and not just blonde Caucasians in the American midwest and south. And while I suspect it didn't enter into consideration, since it kind of never does, the multicultural ensemble helped negate the not-so-subtle implication that one particular group of people (mine, in fact!) killed Jesus; if you view this piece as inherently anti-Semitic, this production just might make you feel a little less alienated from it, though I can't promise you anything. Anyway, for what it's worth, I appreciated Norm Lewis and Jin Ha's chilly, Matrix-like takes on Caiaphas and Annas.

And, like everyone else, I was thrilled by Brandon Victor Dixon's intense, muscular Judas. Not afraid to experiment vocally while doing a fair amount of scenery-chewing in a role that pretty much requires it, Dixon owned the piece. He has long been a dedicated Broadway performer; I hope this thrillingly successful live-tv event makes him a household name. Christ, he deserves it.