Next To Normal

**** (out of 5 stars)

Broadway

This show fucking rocks. This ultra-modern pop/rock musical about a family dealing with mental illness is funny, moving, engaging, happy, sad,.... i could go on... edgy, cool, heartbreaking, uplifting. Tom Kitt's score is so fresh and straight-up listenable. It's dead on when having to musicalize an emotional breakdown or an argument or a memory. The cast is uniformly ideal. Beyond the obligatory kick-ass voices, they're all acting the hell out of the material. Alice Ripley just may snag her first Best Actress Tony (registered trademark!) for her beautiful work as sick mommy. I kept thinking about Falsettos as I was watching this production. Though their respective core issues are somewhat specific (homosexuality and AIDS/mental illness) both productions, through the depth of the characters and relationships, and the bright, succinct personality of their scores, transcend into that layer of universality where any audience member can find a great deal to relate to. If you haven't noticed, I've got lots of good things to say about Next To Normal. GO.

Rock of Ages

Photo/Sara Krulwich

There's more at the heart of Rock of Ages than just the tried-and-true love story of a would-be rocker, Drew aka Wolfgang Von Colt (Constantine Maroulis), and the aspiring actress from the Midwest, Sherrie (Amy Spanger, who despite playing innocent, is still sultrifying). Or rather, what makes the blood pump is its homage both to the soul of rock 'n' roll on the Sunset Strip and to the Broadway house it now occupies ("We Built This City" indeed). Far more accessible than Xanadu (though still campy, thanks to Mitchell Jarvis's turn as the delightfully unhumble Narrator), Rock of Ages samples liberally from its 30+ songs to draw its crowds, while Chris D'Arienzo's book makes fun of the artificiality required to pull it all together. Director Kristin Hanggi forcefully embraces the good and bad of such a production, coming up with such creative staging (or comic sight gags) that we can forgive the few awkwardly placed numbers. Rock of Ages certainly isn't a show for the ages, but it is one for all ages, and it's certainly the right show for now: after all, we wanna rock (and laugh).

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The Toxic Avenger Musical

photo: Carol Rosegg

When a nerd gets dunked in a vat of toxic waste he's transformed into a fugly superhuman vigilante out to rid New Jersey of pollution. Like the Evil Dead movie, the Toxic Avenger flick quickly attained cult status for its mix of gross-out gore and jokey cheesiness, but the Evil Dead stage musical, seen a couple of seasons ago, doesn't come anywhere near the zany, boundlessly enjoyable thrill of The Toxic Avenger Musical. The show, which sends itself up with (often irreverent) jokes and gags that fly at Family Guy speed, is moved from the mere over-the-top to the camp stratosphere thanks to never-a-dull-moment direction and the outrageous comic talents of its cast (of five, each ridiculously spot-on funny). Nancy Opel is especially wild as both a corrupt, toxic sewage dumping politician and the Toxic Avenger's long-suffering mom: the show's most deliciously wacky moment comes when she has to play both at the same time. The songs are fun and witty and never put a drag on the show's locomotive momentum: this is the kind of high-quality camp delight that you round up all your Adult Swim-watching friends to see, a guaranteed laugh-packed party.

Macbeth

Photo courtesy of David Gibbs/DARR Publicity

Patrick Stewart is a tough act to follow, but Hipgnosis isn't afraid: they've plunged into the roughened seas of the Lower East Side with one of New York's first Macbeths since Rupert Goold brought Mr. Stewart and Kate Fleetwood to our fair city for a brief reign of terror. This is also probably the first Manhattan Macbeth since another foul, bloody reign ended and a new, unusually dark-skinned thane became the hopeful leader of a violent nation. Color-neutral, with the great Julian Rozzell in the title role, it seems especially appropriate today. We tend to think of the play as being about lust for and corruption of power, about tyranny, cruelty and comeuppance, but this production seems to stress the fate of Scotland as much as it does those of its individual characters. The Hipgnosis team has tapped Mr. Rozzell, a founding member and an actor of great range, magnetism, and subtlety, as Macbeth. Lanky and sinewy, he prowls and arches over the stage, which is actually a brightly lit pit like a wrestling ring. Under John Castro's straightforward direction the characters march simply from scene to scene, stolidly pushing Shakespeare's inexorable story towards its fated conclusion. Avoiding any temptation to bend Shakespeare out of shape for the sake of originality, the Hipgnosis group has realized a stirring, straight-up Macbeth.

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Hair

photo: Joan Marcus

It's been more than four decades since the self-described "American tribal love rock musical" Hair became an instant cultural sensation, so it's astounding that this new production (transferred from its run last Summer in Central Park and staged more like a happening than a traditional musical) feels so urgent and newly powerful. Director Diane Paulus doesn't condescend to the material and treat it as cute mostalgia; instead, the production seems guided by a deep respect for briefly-mainstreamed hippie sensibilities and tinged with an underlying sadness that the intervening years have so drastically changed our cultural values. The members of the talented cast (now including Gavin Creel, whose goofy-sweet charm and vulnerability make him an ideal Claude) effectively create a microcosm of a community rather than compete with one another for attention. This isn't a production where you are left to note how well this one sings "Easy To Be Hard" or "Aquarius", it's one where the larger purpose of the whole piece informs each song and vignette, and in which the final cumulative effect is as exhilarating as it is emotionally devastating. Vital, thrilling, unmissable.

Why Torture Is Wrong, And The People Who Love Them

Photo/Joan Marcus

The panties of one of Christopher Durang's characters best describe his new play, Why Torture Is Wrong, And The People Who Love Them: all that stretched-out elastic causes her underwear to keep dropping. When she’s called on it (“They’re down about your ankles like some insane shoe accessory”), she replies, “I’m not doing it on purpose. Just ignore it. You should be looking at my face anyway.” Well, Durang’s not going off on all these riffs on purpose either—it’s just the manic way he writes. And this is the problem: his lack of focus undercuts his attempts to use political absurdity. We don't care enough for Felicity (Laura Benanti) or Zamir (Amir Arison) to care about them (flat actors in addition to flat characters), and though we'll always laugh in the hands of experts like Kristine Nielsen, who plays Felicity’s ditzy, theater-obsessed mother, there's not enough bite out of her counterpart, Richard Poe, the Felicity's opinion-crazed conservative father, to help project out of the one-dimensional box everyone's locked in. The result comes across like David Mamet's November (which will be good news to some), but at least David Korins's spinning set gives it a pretty face!

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