On The Town

photo: Joan Marcus

Guys in crisp white sailor suits are leaping through the air once more and New York New York is once again a helluva town. This Encores! production is an effervescent shot of music-theatre bliss, thanks to its full lush orchestra playing that flawless score, and a just-about-perfect cast having a ball with that sparkling book and dancing those tremendously expressive Robbins dances (supplemented here by Warren Carlyle). Is it possible to love old-school musical comedy and not be smitten with this production of On The Town? I doubt it. I don't know of a performer right now who is more suited to play lovesick romantic leading man Gabey than Tony Yazbeck, who sings and dances like a dream and whose "Lonely Town" is as heartfelt and evocative as I have ever heard. Also standing out, in a thoroughly outstanding cast, are Christian Borle and Jennifer Laura Thompson, whose comic chemistry together is the kind that slaps a smile on your face just to look at them, and Andrea Martin, who mugs and hams with such delicious shamelessness as a boozing voice teacher that she has an aerial view of over-the-top. Now for the bad news: the unusual staging, which puts the orchestra dead center dividing the playing area between the book scenes downstage and the dance scenes upstage on an elevation, is a smashing success downstairs but apparently a huge sightline nightmare from the Gallery, where even in the best of circumstances one longs for a seatbelt for fear of tumbling to one's death.

Love Dr. Mueller

Baltimore bad girl, Haight-Ashbury hippie, punk-era downtown scene-maker: the chapters in Cookie Mueller's life may be varied and colorful but they're all evidence of an adventurer who lived by her own rules. One of the shrewdest ideas in this new play, directed and co-adapted from Mueller's writings by Kareem Fahmy, is to break the rules and have the three actresses in the cast of six take turns playing her in successive scenes. Each brings a distinct characterization, and yet each is valid: the conceit makes the show less about who Cookie Mueller was, and more about what her life was about. Most of the episodes are both era-evoking and funny - the snappiest one freezes the goings-on in a seedy Jersey strip club while Mueller deadpans her mixed feelings to us about doing "floor work" - and even the weaker ones - such as the too-brief peek behind the scenes of John Waters' underground cult classic Pink Flamingos - are entertaining.

Streamers

photo: Joan Marcus

David Rabe's excellent 1976 play, in which Vietnam-era soldiers just out of Basic Training are thrown into intense, escalating social conflict with each other while holed up in their barracks, seems to have been revived for, and directed with a focus on, its gays-in-the-military content. On that score, the production is engaging as a time-capsule that invites contemplation about what has and has not changed. Unfortunately the play's other themes are shortchanged, which drains the production of dramatic tension. Two of the actors seem to have been misdirected: Ato Essandoh disastrously so as Carlyle - the character comes off as a psycho the minute he bounds through the door, so the audience isn't forced to sit with the discomforting suspicion that racial stereotyping is behind the hostility he gets from most of the other guys. Brad Fleischer, as Billy, is asked to play so unimpeachably straight that there's no sexual tension with Richie, whose longing for him now looks masochistic. Still, it's great to hear Rabe's dialogue again, and two of the performances - by Hale Appelman and J.D. Williams - are exactly right.

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Reviewed for Theatermania.

Catalpa

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Farragut North

Photo/Jacqueline Mia Foster

From the moment Stephen (John Gallagher, Jr.) appears onstage as a successful, 25-year-old press secretary who somehow still has morals, it's obvious that Beau Willimon can't wait to knock him down in Farragut North. Willimon plays politics in the same backrooms as Aaron Sorkin, but rather than pace around, he internalizes the gears, taking the focus off the Democratic primary in Iowa and putting the emphasis on what's underneath all off Stephen's gloss and spin. The result is rather Machiavellian: his enemy, Tom (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) undoes him with kindness; his friend, Paul (Chris Noth) undoes him with contempt; his lover, Molly (Oliva Thirlby) undoes him with compassion; and he completes the destruction with his own arrogance. Director Doug Hughes is accustomed to dealing with characters having a crisis of faith, as well as with addressing monsters who come clad in good deeds, which results in a well-oiled production that also manages to dip below the surface of politics.

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