Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

Photo: Gili Getz

Some forty years after its premiere, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead continues to amuse, perplex, and screw with the audience's mind. Sort of Hamlet-meets-Waiting for Godot, R&G ponders probability, reality, art, free will, and the meaning of life--or, at least, the meaning of the lives of two peripheral characters from Hamlet. Simpler and more streamlined than Stoppard's latest opuses (did Coast of Utopia really justify all those hours?), R&G nevertheless sets the tone for many later Stoppard plays with its brilliance, word play, and provoking of thoughts. The current production of R&G at the T. Shreiber Studio does full justice to the work, from Cat Parker's clear direction and clever use of the small theatre space to the top-notch cast led by Eric Percival as Rosencrantz and Julian Elfer as Guildenstern. Of particular note is the performance of the Player by Erik Jonsun, who brings a level of ruefulness, melancholy, and emotion that inflates a potentially one-dimensional character to full humanity. The show is nicely designed by George Allison (scenic designer), Karen Ledger (costumes), and Eric Cope (lighting). (However, using a ghost light through much of the first act, while effective symbolically, is distracting and actually painful to the audience.) Compliments too to whoever chose to include R&G-related trivia and quotes in the program. The T. Schreiber Studio was not previously on my radar, but from the quality of this production, I definitely plan to go back.

Broadway Close Up: John Kander

If you are interested in musical theatre and you are unaware of the yearly Broadway Close Up series at Merken Concert Hall at the Kaufman Center, I strongly urge you to check it out. The series honors the past, present, and future of musical theatre, including evenings devoted to particular lyricists and/or composers. The structure of these evenings combines interviews with the honoree(s), who remain(s) on stage throughout, and performances of his, her, or their songs. Last Monday's show honoring John Kander (and by definition Fred Ebb) featured David Hyde Pierce, Marin Mazzie, Chita Rivera, Debra Monk, Karen Ziemba, Heidi Blickenstaff, Jason Daniely, and David Margulies. Nearly all of Kander & Ebb's musicals were represented, including the upcoming The Scottsboro Boys and the I-hope-someday-upcoming The Visit. Highlights included Rivera (may she live and perform forever!) singing "All That Jazz" and a song from The Visit, Mazzie singing "Ring Them Bells" (with her husband Daniely ringing them bells), Rivera and Monk singing "Class," and Debra Monk singing "Everybody's Girl." Gerard Alessandrini of Forbidden Broadway will be honored December 7. Broadway Up Close also features a yearly Bound for Broadway evening, which introduces upcoming musicals and works in progress. The evening is emceed by the charming and funny Liz Callaway; past years have included Next to Normal, Avenue Q, and Musical of Musicals: The Musical. This year's event is November 16.

Brighton Beach Memoirs

photo: Joan Marcus

Fluid, beautiful and incredibly acted, David Cromer's staging of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs is easily the best Broadway revival of an American play since 2006's Awake and Sing. Those who read this blog know that I was one of the few who despised Cromer's deconstruction of Thorton Wilder's Our Town (also currently playing, at The Barrow Street Theatre), but he managed to convert me to his stripped-down style within minutes of the curtain rising at The Nederlander Theatre. What he does is more than merely simplifying Simon's manic text--which is, at times, everything from schticky to starkly dramatic--but also universalizing; anyone who views this production will be able to see their own family in the faces of the Jeromes. There's nary a weak link in the entire cast, but two particularly exquisite performances do manage to stick out: Laurie Metcalf infuses the role of Kate with all of the passion you'd expect from an operatic heroine, while still keeping her grounded and sympathetic (Tony, please); and, in his Broadway debut, Noah Robbins is unforgettable as the narrator and Simon stand-in, Eugene. In less than two weeks, Broadway Bound will begin to play in repertory--I simply cannot wait.

ETA: I'm very sad to report that, as of 8:30PM tonight, Brighton Beach Memoirs will close this coming Sunday, and Broadway Bound will not open. I am proud that I saw it and will remember it forever.

Brighton Beach Memoirs

photo: Joan Marcus

Mining Neil "yukfest" Simon for depth might seems like folly, but David Cromer's production of the playwright's semi-autobiographical coming of age story is a revelation. Guiding the actors away from broad caricature, the director almost always scales the bittersweet memory play for emotional honesty rather than for sentimentality and easy laughs, giving the material added weight. You're likely to leave feeling that you've spent your time with flesh and blood characters rather than types. The kitchen sink approach is more successful in the play's first act than its second - the confrontation between the two sisters (played to Laurie Metcalfe and Jessica Hecht with nuance and fine detail) isn't big enough to trigger what follows - and some in the audience would have a valid point if they felt that the cast erred on the goy side. Nonetheless, the production's merits are substantial and many including a pitch-perfect supporting turn by Santino Fontana and a surprising and surprisingly effective out-there characterization from Jessica Hecht that reads like Sandy Dennis playing Edith Bunker.

Creating Illusion

Photo: Zack Brown

In this solo show Jeff Grow quickly establishes his warm, witty personality along with his sleight-of-hand skills. The tricks are old ones, but when done well they still work, no matter that Houdini was performing and improving upon the same types of illusions a century ago. In any case this act isn't about a succession of magic tricks; it's more of a meta-magic show. Between Mr. Grow's impressive demonstrations of manual dexterity and mental skill, we're treated to stories about classic street scams, peppered with topical references and swayed (and slowed) by plenty of audience participation. The ultimate payoff is a real showstopper. Along the way, though, things periodically bog down. I found it hard to tell how much of his seeming distraction and his rather scattershot presentation was shtick, intended to charm and distract the audience. Magicians' stock in trade, after all, is to make us focus on one thing and thus completely miss something else. But some of the hemming and hawing occurred not in the context of an illusion or trick, but of a story. With a show that requires so much audience involvement, there's always going to be some variation, and perhaps this was an unusually slow-paced night. But I couldn't help feeling that tautening the show up would have significantly improved it. In the end it all does go somewhere, though, and I'm glad I attended.

Memphis

photo: Joan Marcus

A perfect litmus test for those who value sensation and production over substance in a Broadway musical, Memphis is an often thrillingly staged, excitingly choreographed gloss job on thin material. The 1950's-set story - of the interracial romance between a porkpie hat-wearing disc jockey (Chad Kimball) and a Beale Street blues singer (Montego Glover) - is strictly by-the-numbers on the page: it traffics in music theatre cliches so well-worn you've already seen them spoofed on The Simpsons. There's nothing surprising about the book, except for a surprisingly misjudged key moment in the second act that brings all belief in the story to a halt. All that said, the big production numbers in Memphis are dazzling thanks to choreography (by Sergio Trujillo) that has all the flavor, personality and inspiration that the show otherwise lacks.