Substitution

photo: T. Charles Erickson

In a role written for her, Jan Maxwell sounds notes of believable anguish and despair playing a suburban mom mourning her son, recently killed along with many of his classmates in a freak accident. As good as Maxwell is, as always, she can't rescue the play, which tries to quirk up its destination to the land of Hallmark by pairing the grieving mom with a kooky, full-of-life substitute teacher whose eccentricities (such as exercising in the classroom in his underwear upon their first meeting) are meant to be endearing but mostly register as incoherent and bizarre. (Not at all the blame of Kieran Campion, who does all that anyone could reasonably be expected to do with the part). The play is further dragged down by flashback scenes of two students who also died in the accident: their scenes don't flow into the narrative and quickly sink the show's pace.

Cry Baby

** (...out of five stars)

Broadway

Completely abominable? No, not at all. A run-of-the-mill, business-as-usual, generally forgettable big musical farce seems more like it. Everyone from the creative team to the performers are courageously bending over backwards to sell this ersatz Grease to the back of the Marquis, but the book and score are giving them little to work with. With no real secondary story to round out this musical (there are definitely secondary characters whose journeys each begin and wrap up in perhaps 6 lines throughout but that's different), we are left to follow our one-dimensional, mildly likable romantic leads from scene to scene to their obvious conclusion. And the journey along the way is littered with forgettable rockabilly songs and ballads that are both less delicious vintage Waters trashiness and more cutesy feigning as naughty. I want to be Harriet Harris's life-partner but not even her brilliance could make the ten mile long eleven o'clock "Let me explain everything!" monologue listenable. Not everything was forgettable though: Best. Choreography. Of. The. Year. Cheers Mr. Ashford! You certainly know your way around a posse of Drapes...(or is that a drape of Posses...?)

Also blogged by: [Patrick]

Stretch (a fantasia)

Reviewed for Theatermania

The 1959 Songbook

****
92 Street Y

What a great year from which to glean some of the greatest showtunes in Broadway history. A snapshot of everything running on Broadway in 1959 -including Gypsy, West Side Story, The Sound Of Music, Fiorello, My Fair Lady, The Music Man, among others- this was a heartfelt tribute to the golden age of American theater. Starring the über-talented Broadway stars David Burnham, Sarah Uriarte Berry, Sally Mayes and Donna McKechnie (all of whom were spot on in the final dress rehearsal I attended), they all tore through many of the more popular showtunes and also numbers from lesser known scores like Jamaica and Bells Are Ringing. This is a very fun evening exclamation point! One quibble: In a presumable effort to fit in as much as they could, the production was very cut and paste medley heavy. It should be ILLEGAL to only sing one verse of "One Hand, One Heart"... especially when you have the glorious David Burham and the glorious Sarah Uriarte Berry on hand to sing it. The same goes for glorious Sally Mayes' one verse of"Rose's Turn". "Blasphemy!" cries the showtune junkie!

Vengeance Can Wait

Yukiko Motoya's Vengeance Can Wait didn't convince me that the wait was worth it. Paul H. Juhn has a marvelous deadpan, and his voice delivers not just one-liners, but one-worders. And his happy victim, Jennifer Lim, is talented enough to be verbally and physically self-effacing, an embodiment of the baggy clothes she wears. But beyond this stiflingly dry style -- a style that is absurd simply because of how laid-back the straight comedy is -- there's nowhere to go, and so the actors simply go there again, and again, and again. If you think that's funny, then this is the play you've been waiting for.

[Read on]

Rafta, Rafta

I'd rather see an original show struggle and fail, like Chuck Mee's cultural smörgåsbord Queens Boulevard, than to see something like Rafta, Rafta succeed at mediocrity. For me, Ayub Khan-Din's done little more than make an ethnic adaptation of Bill Naughton's All in Good Time, and much of the comedy, not to mention drama, feels forced. Scott Elliott does his best to dress things up with bright lights, cultural knickknacks, and his use of Derek McLane's two-story set, but the story isn't big enough to fill the house, nor is the acting firm enough to make it seem lively. What we want to see -- more of the rambling but chaotically lively wedding party, or more ruminations from the father-figure's proud and troubled past -- is covered up with cheap sexual distractions and farce: no wonder the main character is impotent.

[Read on]