Broadway for a New America

Photo: Peter James Zielinski

The recent Broadway for a New America benefit at Symphony Space felt like a classic case of bait and switch. I was there to see Judy Kaye and Ann Hampton Callaway, both of whom were mentioned in all the press releases and both of whom did not show up. Oh well, that's the nature of benefits. And this was for a good cause: in support of same-sex marriage. So I settled in to enjoy those performers who did show up.

Unfortunately, Broadway for a New America managed to be a case study of how not to do a benefit. First of all, don't run three and a half hours. It's just too long. Second, don't feature people who aren't any good or are inappropriate or both (eg, the terrible Jolson imitator singing Swanee at a benefit for equal rights--fortunately he spared us the blackface). Third, keep things moving. There should be very very little time between acts. Fourth, don't leave six non-celebs to make speeches late in the evening, one right after the other. God bless 'em for the excellent political work they've done, but six political speeches when the evening is already three hours old is not a good idea! And fifth, don't injure the audience's ears. I understand that yelling is a popular contemporary form of singing, and I often enjoy it, but having to put my fingers in my ears (I wasn't the only one!) did not add to my enjoyment.

The evening did have moments: Robert Klein being quite funny, Christine Pedi purring as Eartha Kitt, Seth Rudetsky's deconstruction of the Brady Bunch Hour, Nellie McKay singing, Alice Playten (pictured above) nailing "The Boy From," and a handful of others. It would have made a kickass 90-minute benefit.

reasons to be pretty

photo: Robert J. Saferstein

Downtown a few months ago, this latest Neil LaBute seemed to be the playwright's attempt to break his mold and write about a more emotionally mature male. Now that the play has transferred uptown, minus a quartet of its monologues, it's more than an attempt - it's an unqualified success. Two of the play's four roles have been recast, and the new performers (Stephen Pasquale and Marin Ireland) are more in scale with the other actors than their predecessors were: everyone now seems to be in the same play, and the result is far more convincing and emotionally powerful than it was downtown. The play's focus is more securely now on the role played by Thomas Sadowski, an average Joe whose careless remark about his girlfriend's face instantly destroys the four year relationship and forces him to man up in the aftermath. Sadowski's performance seems entirely effortless and yet it's rich and finely nuanced; he's almost always on stage and yet you never catch him working.

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.
Read the full review.

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.