Beautiful Girls

Marin Mazzie

A revue of songs about women, written by Stephen Sondheim and sung by Marin Mazzie, Donna McKechnie, Jenn Colella, and Zoe Caldwell--what could possibly go wrong? Here's what: Lonnie Price could direct and write the "continuity." Price is a master of schlock, and he did not miss an opportunity to insert a stupid joke or an annoying bit of business. His decision to interrupt a lovely overture of songs from Follies (beautifully played by the Manhattan School of Music Chamber Sinfonia) with a truly embarrassing bit about three of the performers not knowing when the show started revealed immediately that he was more interested in displaying his (far-from-prodigious) imagination than the genius of Sondheim and the great talent of the performers. His two running gags--age jokes and bitchy competition between women--were not only dated and puerile, but they also were insulting to the intelligence and professionalism of the performers and really tiresome to the audience (not to mention arguably sexist). For the time he devoted to his directorial/writing schtick, there could have been three or four more songs--and we were there for the songs. Luckily, Price's tastelessness was not enough to completely ruin the evening. Any occasion to hear Sondheim's work with a full orchestra is a special occasion--after all, if you pay $135 to see A Little Night Music on Broadway you only get to hear a small band. Many of the performances were wonderful--for example, Donna McKechnie's "I'm Still Here," Jenn Colella's "Anyone Can Whistle," and Zoe Caldwell's "Liaisons." The highlight of the show was anything and everything by Marin Mazzie, from her angry "Not a Day Goes By" to her heartfelt "Every Day a Little Death" to her best-I've-ever-heard "Miller's Son." (An unexpected treat occurred when Mazzie's mike died and her voice rang out, unamplified, clear as a bell, gorgeous. I was sad when they fixed it.) Someone needs to write that woman a show!

The Good Negro (Boston Premiere)

I can't think of too many better ways to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we observe this weekend, than to attend a performance of Tracey Scott Wilson's critically acclaimed The Good Negro. This also happens to be the opening weekend of the play's Boston premiere. It's the first play I've seen in Boston since my time here in the dimly remembered 1980s, but if it's characteristic of the quality of the city's homegrown theater, I have a lot to look forward to during my stay here in 2010. This is a solid production of a very good play, brought to life by an excellent cast. It succeeds in humanizing the civil rights leaders who too often appear in history books as pure angels of perseverance and moral clarity. Read the full review.

Ernest In Love

photo: Carol Rosegg

I wouldn't go so far as to say that this musicalization of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is a lost gem found, but it certainly has its charms. To its credit it's true to the spirit of Wilde's delicious comedy of manners, and its songs are well-placed and musically pleasing. This revival (at Irish Rep) is not ideal - for one thing it's cheap-looking to a distracting degree - but most of the cast is terrific and make the most of the lively, amusing material. I especially liked male leads Noah Racey and Ian Holcomb - the former gets a moment to give his tap shoe leather a workout, and the latter rides a fun line between carnal and dandy. The always-great Beth Fowler has still-lipped fun with the patter song "A Handbag Is Not A Proper Mother".

10. Teaser Cow

Using a teaser cow's artificial vagina to capture prime bull semen may seem like a good idea at the time (well, an efficient idea), but in actuality, it's just a way for everyone to get fucked faster. Clay MacLeod Chapman's collaboration with the Greek-centric company One Year Lease rushes to mash-up Crete and Fast Food Nation, and the result compromises much of what made them good in the first place. When focused on the Minos family--Minos (Gregory Waller), bull-fucking wife Pasiphae (Sarah-Jane Casey), and outcast teenage daughter Ariadne (Christina Bennett Lind)--his monologues work, particularly in relation to the tragic theme: "We treat our meat like family!" (Yes, but how do you treat your family?) But the corporate bits fall flat: though Daedalus (Nick Flint) has mad cow, he shouldn't be singing an explanation of steroidal farming, and Theseus (Danny Bernardy) abruptly shifts from Ariadne's beau to a minotaur "slaying" wage-slave. To get corporate for a moment, what's missing is the synergy: you can't just herd a bunch of talent together and expect something fresh.

[Read on]

Little Gem

The lovely and well-named Little Gem introduces us to three generations of women in an Irish family: Kay (Anita Reeves), on the "far side of sixty" and caring for her beloved husband, who has had a stroke; Lorraine (Hilda Fay), her daughter, who tries to keep her anxiety and unhappiness in check by keeping things very neat and clean; and Amber (Sarah Greene), Lorraine's teenaged daughter, in love with a young man who is not quite in love with her. Through alternating monologues, they tell us of their lives, loves, fears, and adventures, including Kay's foray into the land of sex toys, Lorraine's quest to do "one nice thing for herself," and Amber's unexpected but not necessarily unwanted pregnancy. Seeing Little Gem is like spending an hour and a half with three wonderful women who you wish didn't talk quite so much. (Personally, I would have much preferred a series of scenes with the women interacting--perhaps supplemented with monologues--rather than the turn-taking, straight-to-the-audience, no-variety approach.) The cast is top-notch: Sarah Greene completely captures Amber's unsureness and growing maturity (although her accent was more than occasionally indecipherable), Anita Reeves beautifully combines the heartbreak of having a seriously ill husband with deep gratitude for every day she has had with him, and Hilda Fay depicts Lorraine's love-inspired transition with a performance so total and so genuine that by the end of the play she looks like a completely different--happy!--person.

Smudge

Photo: Carol Rosegg

The ultrasound showed only a smudge, and now the real baby is no better defined--a large head, one eye, one leg, probably a girl. Her mother cannot even look at her; her father dotes on her or perhaps on an image of her in his mind. Written by Emmy-winner Rachel Axler and directed by Pam MacKinnon, Smudge attempts to combine comedy and tragedy, surrealism and realism, but it lacks the delicate touch necessary to make that combination work. The audience I saw it with fell silent after the first 10 minutes or so following some awkward guffawing from a handful of people. If Axler wants to examine women's fear of not bonding with their child and/or of having an unhealthy child, it might have been more effective to write a baby with at least a few human attributes to anchor the story to reality. And the pseudo-Exorcist touches add little but confusion. The cast, particularly Cassie Beck, is excellent and gets as much out of the uneven script as is there to be gotten.