Cymbeline

photo: Keith Pattison

Fresh, inventive, and distinctively elegant, Cheek by Jowl's production of Shakespeare's Cymbeline (currently at BAM) is a stunner; it's one of those uncommon, anachronistic presentations of Shakespeare in which style never gets in the way of substance, and its strong directorial imprint is always in service of telling the story clearly and effectively. The play is considered somewhat problematic - it's categorized as a comedy, yet it's loaded with devices that anticipate tragedy - but this production, guided by Declan Donnellan's insightful direction, moves assuredly to a fully realized, potently moving climax. The cast is excellent but Tom Hiddleston, in the dual role of the naive lover Posthumus and of the arrogant prince Cloten, deserves special attention for driving the play with his two superbly delineated performances.

Coram Boy

photo: Joan Marcus

Imported from London and based on the book for teenagers, Coram Boy is entertaining, brilliantly staged, overwrought crap. It's the stage equivalent of a page-turner - one sensationalized event after another at dizzying speed - but it lacks thematic substance and weight; in the end it's just a series of melodramatic, pulped-up moments, a cheesey soap opera in Masterpiece Theatre dress. For what it is, it's fun and ocassionally snortworthy - you'll hiss the baby-snatching villians, you'll ooh and aah the Flying By Foy, and you may even find you're misty-eyed (I wasn't) at the big eleventh hour emotional moment when some measure of happiness is found after nearly three hours of faux-Dickensian injustices - but you'll leave humming the stagecraft.

Mr. Broadway: A Benefit For The Ali Forney Center

****

Dodger Stages

"We have seen some wonderfully dangerous acts", announced the hysterically brittle Tovah Feldshuh after the talent competition which included song, dance, and an attempt to break a Guiness world record for consecutive number of toe-touches. This fun, faggy, spectacle to find the hottest chorus boy on Broadway was an absolute blast! Talent, interview and swimsuit competitions were enlivened with hysterical judge banter offered up by catty Seth Rudesky, perpetually drooling Scott Nevins and the brilliant Nancy Opel (Dear God. Please let her be the next Drowsy Chaperone. Amen). Frankie James Grande (pictured) from Mamma Mia!, by vote of the audience won. How could he not have after his talent presentation: playing Gollum from LOTR auditioning for Danny in Grease on You're The One That I Want. My precious!

Meet John Doe

photo: T. Charles Erickson

I liked the musical version of Frank Capra's Meet John Doe - currently playing Ford's Theatre in Washington D.C. - more than most of the musicals that opened on Broadway this year. Endearingly square and loyal to the spirit (if not the letter) of the 1941 film, the musical Depression-era drama has been crafted with integrity and solid storytelling skill; as long as you can buy the melodramatic conventions of the source material, and you don't object (if you've seen the film) to the simplifications of Capra's themes about political corruption and capitalism, the show is a double pleasure - an intimate romantic musical framed by overarching social comment, and a love letter to the morally uncomplicated, high-style cinema of yesteryear. As an ambitious fast-talking gal reporter who fabricates a phoney suicide note for her column, Heidi Blickenstaff is vibrant, exciting, immediate. Despite the title, it's her show (the musical's one major, fixable weakness is that it takes too long to define the other main character, John Doe) and she soars with it: this is a perfect match of performer to role, a genuine star performance.

Lovemusik

***

Broadway

TONY AWARD COMMITTEE (or whatever wonderful and appropriate thing you call yourself): Please do not forget David Pittu as "Bertolt Brecht" (pictured) for Best Featured Actor in a Musical®. There was an enormous, nuanced character presented there and every time he sang it sounded as though one of those old scratchy vintage records from the 30's had come to life. Bravo David Pittu whoever you are! Sweet Donna and sweet Michael should be nommed as well for their beautiful, heartfelt work soaked with elbow-grease but I trust you guys already know that. Beyond that I wasn't too crazy about this musical about Kurt Weill's relationship with Lotte Lenya that never really took flight beyond a few bright moments offered up by the aforementioned stars. This production seemed more like a screenplay than a Broadway musical and I never quite felt like I was allowed to feel the raw, in-your-face theatricality that the original Weil/Brecht would have wanted us to feel in a piece such as this. P.S. Judith Blazer has such big beautiful eyes!

Saving Aimee

photo: Scott Suchman

Short of throwing nearly the whole thing out and starting over again, I don't think Saving Aimee is saveable. No doubt a good musical could be made about Aimee Semple McPherson, the evangelist-faith healer-entertainer whose wild popularity in the first quarter of the last century was halted by scandal, but this isn't it. Dully chronological, and lacking a strong point of view and a tangible dramatic conflict, the musical mostly eschews the most compelling themes one might imagine for a musicalization of McPherson's life (religion as entertainment, for instance) and instead depicts its heroine as - stop the presses! - a pioneering career woman. The conflict remains internal and it rings false at every turn - the character's well-documented frauds, hypocrisies and lofty ambitions are glossed over to emphasize her religious fervor and her success. The opportunity for an era-appopriate score is squandered in favor of would-be Wildhorn that ranges from bland to unacceptable. E. Faye Butler does wonders with a generic "oldest profession" number, and Ed Dixon (in a wig that brings Jerry Falwell to mind) gives the evening some much-needed levity. Otherwise, the show's biggest asset is Carolee Carmello in the title role: she's convincing even in the scenes when the character is seventeen, and she gives the adult Aimee the inner light of a driven, visionary woman compelled by a higher calling. She's sensational - blazingly sensual, fiercely unbending; if someone revives Carrie anytime soon, here's a perfect Margreat White.