Chasing Manet

Reviewed for Theatermania.

Rock of Ages

Photo by Joan Marcus

After successful runs in Los Angeles and off-Broadway, Rock of Ages has crash-landed at the Brooks Atkinson -- noisy, flashy, and most of all, funny. '80s rock, with its hair bands, codpieced lead singers, and rainbow-bright guitar heroes, was all about excess and pomp. The creators of the show smartly decided to play it entirely for laughs, and the result is an evening of pure escapist fun. The book, by Chris D'Arienzo, tells a story so self-consciously cliched it can't help bursting out of its boy-meets-girl envelope and turning on itself with in-jokes and outrageous mugging. There's nothing substantial going on beneath the music and dancing and horsing around, but the action and the fun never stop, and they're all we need. This show is pure visceral experience. What it's about is the music. The cast sings extremely well, and the band is kickass. This was undoubtedly the first and only time I'll ever actually enjoy hearing Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," and never has REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" been so perfectly apropos as here, dramatizing a new-found gay love.
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Rock Of Ages

Reviewed for Theatermania.

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.