Our Leading Lady

photo: Joan Marcus

The first act of Charles Busch's new play, in which grand, self-centered actress Laura Keene behaves despicably to her fellow actors as they prepare to perform An American Cousin for President Lincoln, is meant to be a comedy, but it's merely busy rather than funny. The second act, in which Keene undergoes a reality check after Lincoln is assassinated, is more interesting and successful but it doesn't succeed at bringing the play into focus. Does Busch mean this to be a valentine to the theatre and its ability to create truth and illusion? I couldn't be sure. In the title role, Kate Mulgrew works her ass off to sell the first act but sweat is the last thing we want to be aware of watching a comedy that depends on the appearance of effortlessness. She's wonderful in the second act - the play's best scenes are the quiet moments between her and Ann Duquesnay as her attendant and confidante - but it's not enough to shake the feeling that the play's themes are muted and its higher aims unclear.

Magpie

Magpie is something of a cross between the operatic stretches of The Light in the Piazza and (probably) the Latin-inspired themes of In the Heights. I didn't love the former, and I haven't seen the latter, but Magpie is a cute little show that bursts through the small space of The Players Theatre. The latest in a series of shows that seem branded more for a younger audience, Magpie succeeds with the bouncy up-tempo numbers and the story of two young, medicated (but otherwise star-crossed) lovers whose racially divided parents would rather tear them apart. But it's a lot more The Fantasticks than West Side Story, with cheesy numbers set aside for the parents, and lots of developmentally awkward side-songs to establish the auxiliary cast (in this case, a trio of bike messengers with attitude and their thuggish boss). Generally, Magpie is a fun show, but it's limited by technical difficulties in the sound, a predictable (even for musicals) book, and a score that, after a few bouncy beats, succumbs to the same old ballads we've heard a million times before.

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Particularly In The Heartland

*

The TEAM

What a horrible, chalkboard-scratching, aluminum-chewing mess! As you enter the theater, the cast is yelling- no, screeching out "American!" songs ("Glory, Glory Hallelujah", "...Tis Of Thee", etc). As they chat with the audience members, they encourage everyone to SING ALONG!!!!!!!!! Come on! SING!! When the lights go down, the yelling (in this claustrophobic brick-walled echo chamber at PS122) doesn't stop. It just gets louder and more annoying. Premise: three Kansas siblings loose Mommy and Daddy to the rapture and they are left to fend for themselves and also ponder the benefits and disadvantages of living in modern America. Or something like that. I don't know. It was all so confusing, disorienting and bombastic. I felt trapped in this intermissionless theatrical purgatory. It reminded me of when I worked in day care and the 4 year olds just WOULDN'T SHUT UP! The crowd went crazy at the end of it and a few even gave it a standing ovation. Show's what I know.

Tea And Sympathy

photo: Dan Cordle

Robert Anderson's 1953 drama is pre-tolerance: the two characters who defend the sissyboy protagonist from widespread bullying do so only because they are sure he isn't "a queer." The play, thought to be intended as a cautionary tale about McCarthyism, doesn't let us believe for long that the lad in question is anything but a painfully sensitive hetero wallflower who is being tormented based on lurid gossip. The drama's omnipresent homophobia is a product of its time, and the most interesting thing that the Keen Company have done with it is to put it on without irony for today's audiences, affording us an interesting peek at the sensibilities of yesteryear. Even on those terms, the production doesn't fully engage: the staging is often counterproductive, and the actors don't seem to have been guided toward creating the needed atmosphere of stiff formality. Excepting that, I thought the three main performances (by Dan McCabe, Heidi Armbruster and Mark Setlock) were all at least quite good and that one supporting performance (by Brandon Espinoza, as girlyboy Tom's star athlete roommate) was best of all.

Les Miserables

photo: Michael LePoer Trench

You really have to work hard to make Les Miz fail outright but this revival, which uses the scaled-down touring sets, the no-time-to-breathe edited book, and some new re-orchestrations thoroughly inferior to the originals, has managed it. There's nothing wrong with the staging, which stays close to the modern masterpiece of music theatre that was Trevor Nunn's original, but almost none of the principals in this revival cast are playing high-stakes enough. Alexander Gemignani is too young and too lightweight with no urgency in his Valjean - not only does he fail to depict a man with inner demons, he fails to depict a man with an inner life at all. Norm Lewis, who naturally projects sunniness and good cheer, makes a decent attempt at dark Javert, but a decent attempt is all it amounts to. Gary Beach's flying leap off the cute end as Thernardier is not even that, it's just a mistake. I do have two nice things to say: Lea Salonga is a very fine Fantine - she sings beautifully and with a depth of feeling that is otherwise missing here - and Aaron Lazar, in the brief and usually thankless role of Enroljas, steals all attention whenever he's on stage.

Fugue

Based on the first day of previews, I think there's promise for Lee Thuna's script and the strong lead performance of Deirdre O'Connell, who plays an amnesiac trapped in a fugue state (i.e., on the run from a memory she cannot deal with). Unfortunately, there's little chance of cutting the show down to a more manageable one-act, and even less of a chance of replacing her inquisitive doctor, currently played by an unflinchingly bland Rick Stear. The play's direction by Judith Ivey is modest: the way in which the memories invade our heroine's present is interesting, but it grows a bit old, which is yet another reason to pare down. Too much of the show is currently exposition, and too much time is spent developing red herrings. To find that the stereotypical mother, annoyingly awkward love interest, and exuberantly false "friend," are all superfluous to the story makes the otherwise effective climax rather manipulative: there's no reason O'Connell can't confront her memories earlier in the show. Despite all the middling, muddling performances (especially the loose accents), there's a star and a story gripping enough to interest me.

Also blogged by: [David]