Urinetown

Although the show is not open for review (a policy I'm going to honor as I did last year at their Pippin) I dropped in on the NYU/CAP21 college production of Urinetown, one of my favorite musicals of recent years. What knocks me out when I see their musicals is the abundance of fresh, eager music theatre talent; some of these folks will doubtlessly go on to careers in musicals and I'll be able to say that I saw them when.

Speech and Debate

Photo/Joan Marcus

It's not debatable, though you're more than welcome to make a speech in the comments box below: Speech and Debate is the funniest topical drama of the year. Where else can you find the story of a queenie time-traveler accidentally getting Abel killed by outing him alongside the very real dramas of gender identity, sexual molestation, and the psychological damage of being closeted? It's all framed by the different topics of an actual Speech and Debate event, which allows young playwright Stephen Karam to give us extemporaneous thought in a video blog or to use cross examination as a narrative thrust. It also allows an easy transition from light and open-minded to critical and dramatic, something that's very well done by director Jason Moore, who knows a thing or two (from Avenue Q) about indulging quirks while still being truthful. The only thing that rings a bit false is the acting, which is so exaggerated at times by Sarah Steele's eyebrows of Jason Fuchs's face-pulling (he should be in 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee) that it seems a little too self-aware and glib to stay serious. But they're so committed to it, so seriously "hopeless" that even these meta-moments become endearing, and only serve to further connect us (already pretty close, given the intimacy of the Black Box Theater). Some nitpicking seems de rigueur for a show that boldly traverses comedy and drama so well, but I wouldn't want to risk discouraging anyone from seeing this delightful show. This is good, topical theater, done professionally, and ticketed cheaply ($20), so get going!

[Read on] [Also blogged by: David]

Young Frankenstein

photo: Paul Kolnik

A staging of movie scenes faithful enough to make the audience laugh before the punchlines, Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein more resembles Spamalot than The Producers. But unlike the hit Monty Python show, the musical numbers in Brooks' show are mostly time-wasters, and not a single one of them builds to the delerious lunacy of the best numbers in Spamalot. While the show is diverting and colorful (and all design elements are top-notch: no one will ever accuse this team of doing the show on the cheap) its combination of Borscht Belt humor and ho-hum stagings make it generally unexciting. Andrea Martin is the cast standout, but there's nothing wrong with any of the performers that sharper material wouldn't cure.

The Brothers Size

Tarell Alvin McCraney is the phenomenal backlash to the backlash: while MTV and BET are busy recontextualizing classics as "hip-hoperas" or thinly veiled Shakespeare revivals ("O"), he's taken the modern, urban story of two brothers -- think Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog -- and written it with tribal African rhythms. Jonathan M. Pratt, off-stage but visible, provides a percussive heartbeat to the already throbbing text; in the center, Oshoosi Size (Brian Tyree Henry) sleeps on a uncomfortable cairn, hiding in sleep from his do-good brother, Ogun (Gilbert Owuor). One of the possible subjects of his nightmares, the leonine Elegba (Elliot Villar), stomps around him, imprisoning him within a circle of white powder. Literal and metaphorical, immediate and foreboding, poetic and brash, this simple element of staging is all the show needs (and director Tea Alagic doesn't waste our time with anything else). The rest of the show is as graceful in movement as it is abrasive in tone, like watching animals in a sumo match. McCraney has a real voice, and for all the spiritual masks, the metadramatic slips into third-person stage directions, and the borrowed songs, it is unmistakably fresh. When these brothers call out or at one another, it is with a truth polished so razor sharp that it bleeds on their tongues.

Xanadu

photo: Paul Kolnik

I spent ninety minutes at Xanadu with a big goofy smile on my face; I'd be surprised if anything opens on Broadway this season that can match it for silly gleeful fun and campy laughs. I'm no fan of the movie on which the stage show is based - a loopy fantasy in which a muse springs from a chalk drawing to inspire our hero to open a roller disco, it may well be the most inept and insipid movie musical I have ever seen - and I haven't given dance-rock band ELO (who wrote the movie's songs) a second thought since high school. But the stage musical, which is less an adaptation of the screenplay and more a happy, party-vibed satire of it, is ridiculously entertaining: Douglas Carter Beane's book plays like the comic strip spoofs of movies you'd find in Mad magazine circa its salad days: smart, punchy, and sarcastic. I had seen an early preview of the show back in May, before Cheyenne Jackson took over the male lead and before the show opened to raves, and I'm happy to say that I enjoyed it even more this second time. Jackson has the deer-in-headlights dreamboat schtick down pat and is well-matched to leading lady Kerry Butler, whose contagiously fun, winning performance makes the hard job of comedy (on roller skates, no less) look effortless. Tony Roberts has comfortably settled into his straight-man duties, while Jackie Hoffman and Mary Testa continue to clown around the proceedings likes deliciously seasoned vaudevillians. And Curtis Holbrook still delights doing that tap dance atop a desk. I don't know which pleased me more: watching his hot hoofing, or watching the lit-up faces of the two dozen on-stage audience members watching him do it.

Pygmalion

Photo/Joan Marcus

David Grindley is following on the heels of Journey's End with another excellent revival, Pygmalion. And while the focus has changed from crass war to high etiquette, the shows have much in common: save for a wide-open scene that's inaudibly set in the middle of a rainstorm, Jonathan Fensom's sliding shoebox sets are as claustrophobic as ever and, thanks to Jason Taylor's lighting, either dimly lit (in Mr. Higgins's study) or blindingly bright (his mother's drawing room). Not to mention returning stars Jefferson Mays and Boyd Gaines, who play the intellectual naifs who tamper so unwittingly with a young woman's character and soul. Mays is the ideal choice to play this dialectic and didactic dialect coach, given his strong TONY winning performance in I Am My Own Wife, and Gaines (as in Gypsy, earlier this year) provides an upright balance for that petulant youth. Claire Daines is in tough company, but she acquits herself well -- I only wish that her accents didn't seem to stifle her physical freedom. The far better example of cockney transformation comes from Doolittle's moralizing father, played here by Jay O. Sanders (the exaggeratedly straight man, as he was in A Midsummer Night's Dream). The production really makes the most of Shaw's use of language, especially given such hummers of lines like "What is life but a series of inspired follies?" or "Do any of us understand what we're doing? If we did, would we do it?" Grindley's direction makes for a realized life that is inspired (but not folly), and one need only look closely at Mays's flash of realization at the close of the play to see how true it is that we never truly understand ourselves.