Emma

The score is pleasing and appropriate, with melodic lines and instrumentations that fit the time and place, and the book's events have been condensed judiciously while remaining faithful to the story. Yes, a lot of skill and intelligence have gone into this musicalization of Jane Austen's classic novel. What hasn't gone into this production is trust in the material: too often Austen's observational humor has been turned into buffoonery, with a couple of the supporting actors encouraged to ham it up shamelessly. The audience for a Jane Austen musical is not the sort that takes kindly to being underestimated.

Sympathy Jones

File it under "The Show Must Go On": Kate Shindle limped out on stage during the pre-show announcement to explain that she'd sprained her ankle the night before in Legally Blonde and that she'd be playing the karate-kickin' secretary-turned-spy lead in this final performance of Sympathy Jones while safely seated downstage. The rest of the cast would pretend she was where she usually was on stage. I have a feeling that this may have been the most fun performance of the whole run: everytime Shindle would mime karate chops from her seat and someone ten feet away had to react, the audience cracked up anew. It never got old. Since this was a highly unusual performance, I'm not comfortable saying so much about the show and the performances, except that the material is cute (more TV's Batman than Modesty Blaise), there are certainly some nifty era-appropriate songs in the mix here (I especially liked the Shirley Bassey-like opener) and Kate Shindle is more than a trouper: she's a star.

The Children Of Vonderly

photo: Matt Zugale

Most of this play's characters are "special needs" - no, make that *all* of the characters, since the matriach (Lynn Cohen, excellent) qualifies by dint of her mental breakdown near the top of the play. The playwright (Lloyd Suh) finds a good deal of mitigating humor in the "special"ness, but he's never condascending. The play, peopled with intriguing characters brought to vivid life by an exceptonal ensemble, begins as the newly widowed matriach calls a family meeting with the (adopted, adult-aged) children to declare, with angry exasperation, that they are now going to have to fend for themselves. It seems almost absurd and cruel, given their mental and physical handicaps. With Mom clearly unable to caregive, it soon falls on Jerry, the wheelchair-bound son, to hold the family together. As expertly and sensitively played by William Jackson Harper, Jerry is the play's compelling center, a convincing contradiction of anger and tenderness. I'm not sure if The Children Of Vonderly ends with a triumph or a defeat for him (and additionally, I'm not sure if the play aims for more thematically than it makes apparent) but I am sure of this: I found Jerry's story completely absorbing and Harper's performance outstanding.

Such Good Friends

photo: Donyale Werle

This (NYMF) musical mostly takes place behind the scenes of a television variety show before and during the Red Scare in the McCarthy era '50's: the close friends who work on the program spend the jovial first act laughing off the threat, and the far more serious second act giving (and reeling from) their testimonies at the HUAC hearings. It's a dramatically sound idea for a musical but this one (despite an excellent cast) has less punch than it could: it loses coherence (not to mention a moral center) when the tv star shuns one friend for turning traitor and then encourages another friend to name names. The show is further bogged down by too many musical numbers: if there were half a dozen less, the remaining ones would count for a lot more.

The Overwhelming

***
Roundabout- Laura Pels

This is most definitely a political play. Its agenda is exposing the volatile and oppressive political atmosphere in Rwanda just months before the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi's by the rival extremist Hutus. To this extent the play succeeds tremendously as human rights violations are revealed and the looming sense of impending evil is firmly established. Theatricality and depth of character, however, have become less of a priority as much of the dialogue has been earmarked for didactic explanation and relationships don't quite evolve in a dramatically satiating manner. And though it is billed as a thriller, the fact that the biggest twist is revealed in an interview with the playwright J.T. Rogers in the Playbill suggests that the twist is not vital to the intended M.O. of the play. In spite of the aforementioned and some clumsy stabs at comedy, we do indeed have fascinating, often shocking subject matter well presented by almighty Roundabout's top notch production machine. I have been educated, and for that I am glad I went.

The Children of Vonderly

Photo/Matt Zugale

The cheesy tag line I came up with for this is that I Can't Believe It's Not Butter should contact Ma-Yi about doing some cross-promotional copy: that's how smooth yet tasty Lloyd Suh's new play, The Children of Vonderly, is. What rough bumps there are with the few repetitious scenes are smoothed over with the knife-sharp sense of the fantastic cast (led by William Jackson Harper, whom I raved about in Neglect), and the whole production has an elegant finish thanks to director Ralph B. Pena, who tastefully inserts silent interludes that establish the good times alluded to in the midst of the play's chaos. You forget that everyone in this adopted family has a disability on account of how spry and enabling the play is: and that's a reward in of itself.

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