Tully (In No Particular Order)

photo: Jaisen Crockett

Tully, the main character of this new NYMF musical, falls for a rich bitch socialite and then goes ballistic when she dumps him, stalking her around town when he's not burying his rage with a gay affair. It's like something you'd see in a glossy made for cable movie, so it's a surprise to learn that the character is meant to be based on Roman poet Catullus (1st century BCE): we're right on the line here between ambitious and pretentious. The book has lofty aims that are kept earth-bound by the melodramatic plot and (perhaps because it is trying to do too many things at once) it defines its main character less sufficiently than all its others. What Tully has going for it, besides a solid cast (I especially liked Kate Rockwell and Austin Miller), is its school-of-Sondheim score and that's a very substantial something: of the dozen NYMF shows I've seen so far this month, this one has the music I would most want to hear again.

Love Kills

photo: Sarah Sloboda

To be filed under "What Spring Awakening Has Wrought", this new (NYMF) musical has its characters stepping up to microphones to express themselves in emo songs. Since two of the characters are Charlie Starkweather and Caril Fugate, the two Nebraskan teenagers whose killing spree horrified the country in the mid 1950's (most memorably dramatized in the movie Badlands starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek) the style seems bizarre - why are they singing emo rather than the rock and roll that defined their time? The other two characters in the musical are a sheriff and his wife (Deidre O'Connell, the show's standout performance) who aim to get confessions out of the kids before lawyers arrive - turns out that they express themselves into microphones with emo songs too. It took me a while to accept the style of the show, but I never did accept the substance: the kids are romanticized, without irony or much regard for fact, as victims suffering for their deep binding love. The actual victims - the eleven people who died at their hands, including Caril's two year old sister - are listed in the show's playbill but are not suitably acknowledged in the show; Love Kills is an insulting cheat.

Blind Mouth Singing

Photo/Zack Brown

Visually, director Ruben Polendo manages to focus the wide and sparse stage (classic yet industrial) onto a single metaphor, a strip of life (seen as a horizontal well). But textually, Jorge Ignacio Cortinas's script is narrowly focused on the metaphorical coming of age, and is cluttered with repetitious scenes. These two styles clash, and though Polendo fills the dead space with stylized movement (dashes set to drum beats, knife-sharpening jerks) and distracts us with a Foley artist, the play is neither jarringly magical nor beautifully mundane. The all Asian American cast is pretty good, but adds nothing to play, especially not what Blind Mouth Singing really needs: clarity about the mental-made-physical struggle of the second act between Reiderico (Jon Norman Schneider) and his well-dwelling "twin," Lucero (Alexis Camins). Polendo has the magic to conjure up a storm on stage (among many other interesting visuals), but the plot, slippery like water, eludes him.

Look What A Wonder Jesus Has Done

photo: Julian Rad

Walter Robinson wrote the book, music and lyrics for this new (NYMF) musical loosely based on the true story of Denmark Vesey, an African-American whose plan to lead a slave uprising was thwarted by his capture and execution in 1822. Robinson's score is heavy on gospel, with a handful of roof-raising ensemble numbers (a couple of which are thrillingly sung a capella) that soar to the heavens: apart from the ocassional rough patch of awkward recitative, Robinson's music is richly evocative. Robinson's book, however, is as flatfooted as his score is accomplished: partly because of the device of having Vesey narrate his story, it falls into the "too much tell not enough show" trap right at the start and takes too long to break free. Robinson gives us a glimpse in the opening scene of the story's triangle, when a plantation owner buys Vesey's wife and children inspired by what he claims is love for her, but Robinson doesn't sufficiently pick up on it again until the last (and best) twenty minutes of the show.

Iphigenia 2.0

Photo/Carol Rosegg

Charles Mee's physical and political reinterpretation of Iphigenia in Aulis doesn't provide as firm a foundation for director Tina Landau as Moliere's The Misanthrope does for Ivo Van Hove, but this Signature Theater production, cheaply ticketed ($20), is a great cross between downtown experiments and uptown sensibility. The plot, which focuses on the necessary self-sacrifice of a leader, is easily accessible, even if the staging (which involves dance breaks, symbolically sparse settings, and highly athletic transitions) is not. However, Mee's style is to collage his work, and the various threads he finds (many of which resemble alienating lists from a chorus of soldiers or pair of bridesmaids) don't help enforce an emotional connection. We get that from some of the actors, mainly in the innocence Louisa Krause gives to Iphigenia, or in the thoughtful grief Tom Nelis lends to Agamemnon, but on whole, the production dazzled me a lot more than it moved me.

[Read on] [Also blogged by: Patrick]

I See London I See France

photo: Karen Wise/Vid Guerrerio

There's a fun and fun-lovin' couple putting some groove in the subplot of this new (NYMF) musical: both he and she are "knowing when to leave" types, not looking for anything more than quick hot hook-up sex. Their first duet spells it out: it's not meant to last more than "Two Weeks Max". It doesn't matter that it's easy to predict that they get stuck on each other: their material is breezy and clever and both performers (David Rossmer and Ronica Reddick) are game and amusing. But ironically (considering the characters' personalities) they overstay their welcome, as does the slight, rambling show. The main story - which concerns a recently-dumped uptight "smart girl" ad exec whose hormones go bonkers over a ripped but dimwitted underwear model - doesn't deliver on its seeming promise to send-up our sex-soaked culture, and it curiously forgets to give us a reason to care about our heroine. (We're set up for her lust to morph her into one of the lingerie-clad bimbos who follow her around like a hallucinated Greek chorus, but instead she goes from prudish to obnoxious and entitled: why should we care?) There are some very enjoyable, attractively catchy songs in the score (the title song is especially hard to get out of your head) and I liked the performers: Jordan Gelber (as an ad boss) ably and energetically carries a lot more of the show than a plot synopsis would lead you to expect, and Nicholas Ardell (who spends almost all of the show in nothing but boxer-briefs) manages a good deal of sweetness as the skin-deep underwear model. Is it wrong to be disappointed that the show isn't any deeper than his character?