Liza's At The Palace

photo: Lucas Jackson

They stood at the sight of her silhouette before she sang a single note, they stood after three numbers in the first act and three more in the second, they screamed "I love you!" and "You're the best!" between songs. To see Liza Minnelli's much-acclaimed engagement at The Palace is to find yourself at a temple where the crowds, who've come ready to worship, are whipped up into a frenzy of adoration. I'm not a fan, apart from Cabaret and Liza With A Z which were both directed by Bob Fosse, and this show - one of the hottest tickets in town - unfortunately didn't convert me. However I can well understand why so many are thrilled by it. For one thing, it's yet another seemingly miraculous resurrection after a decade that included much-publicized personal turmoil and two disastrous engagements in New York. For another, Liza's style by now summons a nostalgia not only for her own artistic history but also for a brand of entertaining that we will never see the likes of again.

Home

Photo/Richard Termine

I suspect part of the reason I see so much theater is that I dislike being at home; both of these things end up working against the all-too-ordinary production of Home being done by the Negro Ensemble Company as part of Signature's 2009-2010 season. I don't like Samm-Art Williams's artificial narrative anymore than I liked Albee's interrogatory facade in Occupant: both focus more on the telling of history than on his story. In 1979, that may have been a crucial factor: the end of providing an outlet for all-too-often glossed over story justifies the means. But this revival substitutes chaos for urgency, turning January LaVoy and Tracey Bonner into whirling dervishes that spin their 25 characters around a sedentary Cephus Miles (Kevin T. Carroll). In the quietest moments, those that tell the love story of Miles and Pattie Mae Wells (LaVoy), the play is dizzying. However, these moments are undermined by those loud ones that follow, ones where Miles is suddenly a slick factory worker pretending that he's from Philidelphia instead of North Carolina, or where Miles shouts at a God who he believes to be vacationing in Florida. There's so much going on that this sort of broad emoting is a necessary shortcut, but it's also a mistake. Just because Miles gets back to where he started doesn't make Home any less empty.

Patrick's Year-End Review

1 The Year's Twelve Best
2 Three Dozen Outstanding Performances
3 Twelve Fresh Faces

A Light Lunch

Photo/Richard Termine

(Once again, it's time for a "the difference between a blog and a review" post! Happy holidays.)

Dear A. R. Gurney:

Please stop writing plays. It is hard enough to write a political play, let alone a comedic one, let alone one that also aims to question the morality of Bush bashing, and to do this all while being smug enough to reference "anagnorisis" and talk about your own WASP-centered past, or to attempt to sculpt something out of your shallow expectations of agents and lawyers. Do not assume that because you have people on stage talking that you have created characters. It may be easy for you to be produced at The Flea, especially when you name-check Jim Simpson in the script, but do not therefore take action for granted: you must still do something in your play. Just because you have pointed out all the exposition in your script does not mean that you have the right to use it, and do not assume that we are laughing with you, and not at you. Paul Auster can talk about Truffaut-type endings, and he can quote from The Bridge Over the River Kwai: get him to write your next metadramatic play. (No, scratch that: see the first line.) Finally, if you are going to preach about theater, please take your own advice: an "interesting" idea is "the kiss of death."

- Aaron Riccio

PS. Next time, offer fries so that I can die a little faster.

[Don't read on]

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".