Pal Joey

photo: Joan Marcus

Bothered and bewildered but not a bit bewitched am I by Roundabout's botched revival of this Rodgers-Hart musical (in its last days of previews). Stockard Channing can not sing, and her otherwise sharp performance sags everytime she shifts from snappy dialogue delivery to meek emote-on-pitch mode. The production has far more pressing problems, such as the revised book that creates as many problems as it solves, and depressing on-the-cheap production values. (The set is horrendous - you'll get the idea if you imagine the roller coaster track from Assassins and the staircase from Nine competing with a mirrored crescent-shaped pylon - and the costumes are worse.) The musical, edgy in its day, is problematic even now to put on - it centers on an ambitious, scumbag ladykiller who behaves badly but who we, like the women in the story, are meant to find magnetic. Jersey Boys' Christian Hoff departed the role after about a week of previews under his belt, defaulting the role to his understudy Matthew Risch. (Under the circumstances, I'll say only that Risch, at this late point in previews, is at least headed in the right direction and, although only a serviceable singer, seems in striking distance of nailing the role before opening night.) The production is fatally short on both pizazz and sex appeal: everyone is so busy over-emphasizing the darkness in the material and mining it for contemporary psychological truth that concerns about entertainment value seems to have been forgotten. There are two mitigating factors though: Martha Plimpton proves a delightful musical performer, and easily steals the evening with her rendition of "Zip". Also, the females in the chorus are spot-on: in general, each looks appropriate to the period and each is deliciously individuated in the dance numbers.

Shrek

Photo/Joan Marcus

Well, at least they didn't use any Smash Mouth for the curtain call in Shrek. However, just as David Lindsay-Abaire seems to have written the book by watching the film over and over again, Jeanine Tesori must have been listening to those songs as she wrote the music, for it's largely redundant pop. In fact, sometimes it seems like watching a Disney week on American Idol--the jokes are certainly dumbed down for that crowd. (Cleverest lyric: "This ass o' mine is asinine.") But while it seems derivative (a parody of a parody that uses parody as a device), there are some great moments in Act I, and both Christopher Sieber and Daniel Breaker are outstanding as Lord Farquaad and Donkey. Sutton Foster, as Fiona, isn't bad either, especially when going slightly crazy as she sings "I Know It's Today" from her tower prison--but the tap-dancing "Morning Person" is too Millie for my tastes: the play is better when it gets a little gross, as in the farting duet "I Think I Got You Beat" (Shrek and Fiona) or midget Farquaad's "dance" number in "What's Up, Duloc?" Or, say, any time Donkey gets to sing, as in the excellent "Travel Song" (in which director Jason Moore is able to bust out Avenue Q-level sight gags that mock, among other things, The Lion King On Broadway) or his Stevie Wonder R&B number with the Three Blind Mice, "Make a Move." As we all learn in the movie and now the musical, beauty ain't always pretty--but what the creators of Shrek have forgotten is that pretty ain't always beautiful.

Opening Night

photo: Jan Versweyweld

The script is by way of John Cassavettes' screenplay of his same-named 1977 film which centers on a stage actress who has what seems like a nervous breakdown while in search of the character she's rehearsing. This multi-media stage adaptation, directed by the brilliant Ivo van Hove, is miraculously even more compelling than the film: the near-constant use of video screens retains the intensely intimate Cassavettes close-up style. while theatrical devices depict the actress' forays into the hallucinatory more effectively than the original film, where they seemed stilted. The playing space may seem at first like a mad meta playground - we're backstage, on the stage, and in the wings, with live cameras ever hunting and gathering as Neil Young songs are cued in and out as if supplying a film soundtrack - but it's all disciplined, effective and involving rather than distancing and pretentious. The director has zeroed in on Cassavettes' love of the danger of theatre, and more specifically his insight into the actor's process, and has transformed the screenplay into a riveting theatrical triumph which explores the paradox that performance is both real and unreal. The cast is uniformly superb but special mention must be made of Elsie de Brauw, whose central performance is so fully realized and engrossing that she did what I would have thought impossible and chased all memory away of Gena Rowlands in the original film. In Dutch with English subtitles and, fair warning, two hours and twenty minutes with no intermission. Don't let that stop you from making the trip to BAM this weekend for this; it's one of the best shows of the year.

The Uncanny Appearance of Sherlock Holmes

Photo/Jim Baldassare

Brad Krumholz’s play, The Uncanny Appearance of Sherlock Holmes, wonders what would happen to the world's greatest sleuth if the signs he relies upon turned out to be false. He does so by introducing Jacquline Derrida (Sarah Dey Hirshan) as a rival for Holmes (Brett Keyser), and by murdering Nietzsche and Freud. However, Krumholz, in adapting his own short story, relies so much upon theatrical trickery that the show never reaches the "deep, inner complexity" promised at the play's opening by a sexually ambiguous Dr. John Watson (played by Tannis Kowalchuk).

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The Only Tribe

Photo/Sheree Hovsepian

How does such a simple concept get so conceited? There hardly seems the room for so much stuffiness given the plain stage, gray one-piece outfits, and white minimalist masks (each with a pixilated Katamari Damacy-like cut-out that gives it a “personality”). But sure enough, there’s a trademark in The Only Tribe’s logo. The “simple” stage actually houses 3LD’s Eyeliner technology, which lets Reid Farrington clutter it with commercial images and dancing holograms. Roland Gebhardt’s masked modernity is well-matched by Peter Kyle’s geometric choreography, and they move nicely to Stephen Barber’s chic electronica, but all this conjures is a high-brow Alexander movement class. Perhaps most damning is that Rebecca Bannor-Addae is credited as a writer for this silent piece: you can read her “story” at www.theonlytribe.com, but why bother? A few pretty moments and a solid back-beat can’t mask The Only Tribe’s flaw: after all, what is pretension but the meaningless grasp for importance?

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Out Cry

Photo/Czerton Lim

While performing Two-Person Play, the play within Tennessee William's metadramatic cry for help, Out Cry, the "audience" walks out, leaving Felice (Eduardo Machado) and his sister, Clare (Mia Katigbak) alone, lost in their own world. That’s no surprise: after all, Felice reveals early on that their company has left them: “Your sister and you are—insane!” reads the charming letter. What is surprising is that nobody walks out on NAATCO’s revival of this troubled play. As it happens, the second act is much better: having dispensed with the circumstances, it brushes the madness of “artists [who] put so much into their work that they’ve got little left over for acting like other people.” It is not enough, however, to excuse Machado’s atonal line readings, Thom Semsa’s listless, restless, and senseless blocking, or the constant textual stumbling.

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