Music in the Air

Photo: Joan Marcus

Watching the weak and silly Music in the Air, the 1930s Kern-Hammerstein operetta at Encores!, affords a great opportunity to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the modern musical. On one hand, we have the joy of the grown-up musical. Just the past few years have brought us Caroline, or Change, Light in the Piazza, Spring Awakening, See What I Wanna See, Next to Normal, and Grey Gardens. How amazing and thrilling that these works of art have grown out of a lineage that includes Music in the Air, with its dumb plot, pointless conflicts, boring ingenue and juvenile, and long stretches of nothing happening. (Yes, Kern and Hammerstein also brought us Showboat, probably the more direct progenitor of the musicals just listed, but Music in the Air is no Showboat, even though, strangely enough, it was written afterward.)

On the other hand, we have an amazing array of profoundly talented performers who are being terribly, terribly underutilized. Kristin Chenoweth and Douglas Sills are the best of the best. They have charisma, endless creativity, impeccable comic timing, and singing voices that range from excellent (his) to gorgeous (hers). Why don’t they work more???? For that matter, why doesn’t Donna Murphy work more? Victoria Clark? Christine Ebersole? Marc Kudisch? Brian Stokes Mitchell? I know the answer, of course: musicals are expensive. But just imagine a theatre world where we could see these amazing performers in a never-ending flow of new works by Sondheim, La Chuisa, Finn, Tesori, Guettel, and others we haven't even heard from yet.

The American Plan

photo: Carol Rosegg

The character that Lily Rabe portrays in this revival of Richard Greenberg's play is "special", the kind of fragile wallflower who says whatever pops into her head and who we're meant to find beguiling. Rabe is miscast and doesn't convince as a hypersensitive girl-woman, which makes for a slow-going first act, but the role itself is more than a little precious, a combination of The Heiress and Laura from The Glass Menagerie. The play itself, one of Greenberg's earliest, is far from his best, and except for some business in the second act that I won't reveal here, it's baffling why the care has been taken to give it a Broadway revival. But care has clearly been taken: the production is handsome, the production values high, and most of the performances quite good.

Becky Shaw

Photo: Joan Marcus

All hail Annie Parisse. As the title character in Gina Gionfriddo’s Becky Shaw, who doesn’t appear until well into the first act, she manages to accomplish something that the others couldn’t do: make it seem as though something of note is going on. By the time she appears, there’s been much ado about a lot: a lost fortune, a semi-incestuous one-night stand, a Vegas marriage, and dozens of one liners, many quite funny. But somehow the much ado doesn’t add up to anything—other than whining and squabbling—until Parisse appears as the female half of an ill-advised blind date. She’s one of those performers who seem to bring their own spotlight with them, and her every word and movement as the surprising (inconsistent?) Becky fascinate and intrigue. However, even she cannot make Becky Shaw really work. While the play has much to say about love and deceit and how people interact, its point of view seems random since Gionfriddo consistently sacrifices clarity and character to get a laugh. The first act in particular wanders hither and yon without getting anywhere; the second act is entertaining enough that its lack of meaning is less apparent. But, on leaving, I had the same question I had with Prayer for My Enemy and The American Plan: What was this play really about?

Great Hymn of Thanskgiving/Conversation Storm

Although the ability to ignore reality over a luxurious dinner and the knack for using torture are unfortunately unoriginal things in this country, the Nonsense Company's duet of one-acts is still terrifyingly original. They put the "fun" back in "fungible," first with "Great Hymn of Thanksgiving," a work for "three speaking percussionists" and then, without pause--for when are there breaks in life--with "Conversation Storm," a lightning-quick extrapolation--using theatrical techniques--of what torture inevitably leads to. It's political theater, but at times it is unrecognizably so, which is to its credit.

[Read on]

Flyovers

photo: Carol Rosegg

The dialogue in Jeffrey Sweet's play, set following a high school reunion, tells us why the successful celebrity film critic (Richard Kind) elects to spend an evening with the blue collar bum (Kevin Greer) who bullied him all through high school, but after a certain point the situation strains credibility. The bully isn't especially contrite, and his antisemitism and bitter hostility toward the liberal elite are so obvious that the critic seems like he's asking for trouble by hanging around. Trouble comes, on cue, when fellow ex-classmate Iris (Michelle Pawk) drops in and rekindles the critic's long-held torch. The ensuing business comes as no surprise, since the playwright has oversold the veiled menace in the bully's dialogue right from the start. Still, Kind and Pawk give terrific, well-judged naturalistic performances, expertly scaled for the intimacy of the tiny 78th Street Theater Lab.

The Third Story

photo: Joan Marcus

Kathleen Turner has rarely seemed above sending herself up. Her casting opposite Charles Busch in his new play would seem to promise a lip-smacking treat - a match made in camp heaven between a drag icon who adores Hollywood screen women and a game, one-time real-life Hollywood siren. One of The Third Story's many disappointments is that it confines Turner almost entirely to a (relatively straight) framing story where her grand theatricality is a liability rather than an asset: her throaty voice and broad delivery are at odds with what's needed to put over her material. The play is almost entirely divided between scenes where Turner plays a screenwriter collaborating on a script with her son (Jonathan Walker), and scenes from the movie the two are writing, circa 1949, which often feature Busch in lady mob boss drag. The Busch scenes are more lively than the Turner ones, and the supporting cast has the right arched eyebrow style for them, but the play's structure forbids comic momentum.