TOMMY 15th Anniversary Reunion Concert

The 2-LP set by The Who, the hypervisual film version, the 2-LP soundtrack album starring Ann-Margret: in my flood of fond childhood Tommy memories I'd forgotten one thing: I didn't like it as a Broadway musical. I only remembered this during the first minutes of the Original Broadway Cast reunion concert, fearing a long night of chair-bound performers and weakened classic rock. I needn't have feared: the concert (a one night only benefit for Rockers On Broadway) quickly took on its own resonance. So many performers well known to us now - Sherie Rene Scott, Norm Lewis, Alice Ripley, Christian Hoff - laboring away in the chorus again, just as they had when Tommy was first on the boards. Others we haven't seen enough of since - like Cheryl Freeman, the Acid Queen - blowing the roof off the place one more time as if not a day had passed. And at the center Michael Cerveris, now a full-out Tony-winning Broadway star, bringing credible rock vocal chops to the title role. The concert, which included video projections which on numerous occasions displayed scenes of the original Broadway production, became less about the material and more about watching virtually everyone involved step up and hit the mark, turning a decade and a half into the blink of an eye.

Women Beware Women

Photo/Carol Rosegg

Women Beware Women is an explosively clear rendition of a classic Jacobean love story. No wonder the company is called Red Bull--like the drink, you can mix Jesse Berger with any drama and the results will be eye-opening, dizzying, and thrilling. In Thomas Middleton's play, the drama is a deftly staged game of love in which "vengeance [meets] vengeance like a chess match," and the Queen is Kathryn Meisle. As Livia, she hooks her niece up with her brother, breaks up a marriage between newlyweds, and buys the love of a younger man, all because she can . . . and, in this powerful production, because she has to, for she is driven by desires as well. There are big banquet scenes and bigger masques, and the whole width, depth, and height of the appropriately classic church theater is used, too. The whole production comes together so well that even fans of modern musicals will feel at home with this straight 1700s tragedy: each line sings, and the themes of empowerment and jealousy are crystal clear.

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Improbable Frequency

Photo/Carol Rosegg

Improbable indeed, that strained puns and cloying songs should be this fun, yet Improbable Frequency manages to cross the right signals, sending up the retro-kitsch of the '40s in everything from Alan Farquaharson's noirish set to Arthur Riordan's "everyone's a spy" plot, and from Bell Helicopter's jaunty jigs to Lynne Parker's hammy direction. Even the hero, Tristram Faraday (Peter Hanly) is a joke: he's a cruciverbalist, not a spy, as is his surprise rival, his former flame and now dancing double-agent, Agent Green (Cathy White). The romance is sweet, but also comedic, with sweet Philomena O'Shea (Sarah-Jane Drummey) looking to share "The Inner Specialness of Me" in what amounts to a very tuneful sex duet, "The Bedtime Jig." Once you accept that the world is being rewritten for laughs, it's easier to get behind songs like "Ready for the Wurst" or "Don't You Wave Your Particles at Me" (in which a lecherous Schrodinger is told off). The whole thing is still thirty minutes too long and the white-faced actors are distractingly surreal, but any show that makes a character eat feathers out of a newspaper (to illustrate that the chips are down) is at least novel enough to warrant a look and merit a listen.

Women Beware Wome

Reviewed for Theatermania.

ReWrite

Photo/Alex Koch

If you buy the meta-shtick of Joe Iconis’s ReWrite (he is writing a musical to deadline, and so writes about himself, and the one who got away) then you have to accept that Joe is writing music for selfish reasons: for his friends and for the warm glow of the afterparty. If you don’t buy the three one-acts structure, loosely connected by a melody and a character, then the show is an after-school special about confidence (“Nelson Rocks!”), a musical twist on Durang-style loneliness (“Miss Marzipan”), and a self-aware but fatuous look at musicals—[title of show] without the honesty (“The Process”). The end result is charmingly underwhelming: only as a character in his own play, The Writer (Jason Williams), does Iconis succeeds at having an emotional breakthrough.

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The Truth About Santa

***1/2 (out of five stars)

Kraine

Christmas annoy the fuck out of you? Yeah, me too. Which is why I so wholly connected with this slappy, mean-spirited, Santa-bashing stocking-stuffer of a musical downtown at the Kraine. This Greg Kotis joint features him and his real wife and two lovely real children (the von Kotis family singers!.........the family von Kotis!...). The story is simple and dumb and fun. The wife and kids run off to the North Pole with Santa who is basically a big, old, fat slut. Ms. Claus wants to destroy the world and the elves well.... they're not right. Revenge. Booze. Sex. It's what Christmas ought to be (and often is). Production-wise this is a pretty tight package. The pace is speedy, the sets/costumes are thrown together and fabulously crappy and the cast is hilarious. Note to Luisa Struss (aka Ms. Claus): With your gravely voice you sound exactly like Eileen Heckart. You should play her sometime.