Deuce

***
Broadway

How do I put this delicately? Okay, here goes... I was actually quite charmed by these two very big actresses (Marian Seldes and Angela Landsbury) in this little play. After Chris's review I was expecting a theatrical implosion of black hole proportions where not even Armageddon can escape. At the performance I attended this did not happen. Yes, this is less of a play and more of a 100 minute polite conversation. Yes, there were some memorization problems, though from what I hear it's becoming less and less of an issue. If the only merit of this production is the novelty of seeing these two legends onstage together then it's a pretty substantial novelty. Both of these handsome, elegant women's personalities shone through and I was very glad I got to spend some time with them. They received a (partial though substantial) standing ovation at curtain call and I felt like they deserved it.
Also blogged by [Patrick]

Deuce

Conventional wisdom says that Deuce exempted itself this season from any awards consideration to avoid the embarrassment of not being nominated. But what of its legendary actresses, Marian Seldes and Angela Lansbury, who have to embarrass themselves on stage eight times a week regardless? Lansbury doesn't know her lines, loses her place, and gets a look on her face that anyone in the audience will recognize as momentary desperation. Seldes, hypervigilant and visibly in compassionate-actor mode, spends a lot of time cleaning up the mess: she narrows her eyes on her co-star as if to telepathically will her to remember her lines. If this isn't sad enough, the play they are struggling to remember is entirely forgettable, a mild piffle about two aged tennis star legends who while away 105 minutes with superficial rememberances of the "things ain't what they used to be" variety. Audience walkouts began at the half hour mark; I counted a total of twelve downstairs by the end. At one point in the play another character, an adoring tennis fan, addresses the audience and tells us to look at these two women, because we'll never see their kind again. The audience responds not to the underwritten, unconvincing characters but to the theatre royalty on stage before us. It's true, we will never see their kind again, but if this crass, squirm-inducing embarrassment is the best we can do in the way of homage, then we probably don't deserve to.

Also blogged by: [David]

Essential Self-Defense

photo: Richard Termine

After most of the critics dismissed it, I wanted to have another look at Adam Rapp's Essential Self-Defense: had I been too generous in my enthusiasm when I initially praised it in previews? Nope; I think "wildly surprising" "wonderfully offbeat" and "genuinely contemporary" just about covered it.

110 in the Shade

It's never a good sign when you leave a musical without the scantest trace of a tune in your head. The Rainmaker worked best as a straight show, adding the townspeople and showing us Jim's little-red-hatted love, Snookie, only dilutes N. Richard Nash's sweet little story. As for Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones, their score here is far from Fantastick, and everything from Santo Loquasto's minimal staging to Lonny Price's formulaic direction calls for a smaller stage. The script is all intimacy, and no spectacle (which is why the sun is bigger than anything else in the show), so what were the producers thinking to stage this at Studio 54? So far as dramatic acting goes, Audra McDonald's Lizzie is the center of this show, and her interactions with Bobby Steggert's brilliantly daft Jim and John Cullum's steadfast H.C. go over pretty well. But Steve Kazee's Starbuck is an energy-draining disappointment (as is Christopher Innvar's bland File), and the romance of this play winds up being an old maid, no matter what angle you look at it from. "Raunchy" is the only number with enough life in it for McDonald to sing through; the rest of her songs are breathy, overly vibrating numbers in search of some heart. It's not that I don't believe McDonald in "Old Maid"; it's that I believe her more when she's straight. The music is suffering a mighty heavy drought, and I don't think this cast has enough magic to make it rain.

Also blogged by: [Christopher]

The View From K Street Steak

Yowsa. A lot of the political satire went over my head, and I only caught brief glimpses of story in the references to the "Inner Loop," but the attitude of the show, written by Walt Stepp, is the type of nightclub amateur hour that's too irrepressible to hate. John and Al, a ventriloquist act (played by Brad Thomason and the perky, hyperactive Samantha Wynn) serve as the interlocutors for the evening, in etween old-school Jerry Lewis humor, they pull open the curtain onto exaggerated "insider" scenes at a bipartisan retreat. The vignettes are all short and rough, but a few make valid, coherent points: "Mimeo" deals with getting a senator out of the closet in private so that it doesn't hurt the party in public, "Snake" says the things about the God Lobby that everyone else is too terrified to mention, and "Take a Number" looks at the real story of competitive bidding. Politics is an act, and K Street does well to dress it up as such, but Tom Herman needs to tighten the technical cues, the cast's tendency for killing the jokes with their own exuberance, and the slipshod feel of it all if he wants this production to really stand up and be something more than a repetitious diversion.

Pippin

CAP21 productions, cast with second year music-theatre students at NYU, are a good place to see raw young talent in an intimate setting. Although often entertaining and smartly staged on a shoestring, these threadbare productions are more about giving the students a chance to put their training to use than about production value; they aren't open for review and I'm going to honor that. Still, I have to say that braving the rainstorm to drop in on the promising young people in Pippin was a pleasure and that one Larkin Bogan, who confidently fleshed out every moment as Pippin, is on my "To Watch For" list.