Hairspray

It was snowing understudy slips from playbills as we settled in to see Hairspray one last time before it closes on January 4th: Matthew Morgan on as Seaweed, Curt Hansen as Link, Daniel Robinson as Corny Collins. (All were seamless, and I especially liked Robinson's subdued snarled-lip take on Corny; I'd never have guessed these three weren't doing these roles daily.) The show is in remarkably great shape for its final weeks, with both Harvey Fierstein and Marissa Jaret Winokur back to reprise their Tony winning performances, and I spent the first act with the wildly enthusiastic audience marveling at how feelgood a well-directed, delightfully choreographed and terrificly scored big Broadway musical can be when everyone is on their game. Winokur didn't make it to the second act - Annie Funke took over after intermission, and we later heard whispers of a sprained ankle - but the highly rare mid-show switch in the already understudy-heavy perf just seemed to galvanize the performers anew to bring the goods. Hairspray's had a sensational seven year run; nonetheless, I'm sorry to see it go.

The Cripple of Inishmaan

photo: Keith Pattison

With only half a month left in the year I thought it was safe last week to finalize a list of the best shows I saw in 2008. Then came this superbly realized, thrillingly acted Druid Theatre production of one of Martin McDonagh's earlier plays and said list is obsolete. To those who saw this play a decade ago at the Public, with a mostly American cast misdirected by Jerry Zaks: expect a revelation. Here, as helmed by Gary Hynes, McDonagh's ironic, often bitter comedy plays out with an ensemble whose flawless performances succeed at credibly depicting a community. It's 1934, on the Irish isle of Inishmaan where Billy, a young adult cripple, yearns to escape to the neighboring isle where a Hollywood film is being shot and locals are being cast as extras. The narrative is solid but it's less important than what McDonagh uses it for - the play is a dark comedy about Irish values that finds perverse humor in the everyday cruelties of its characters. The play's funniest line may be one delivered by the town gossip, who lives with his mother and makes no secret of his plan to get her to drink herself to death: "We Irish are the friendliest people in the world".

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.

[Read on]

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.