Broadway Musicals By The Year 1927

photos: Maryann Lopinto

I'd never been to one of the Broadway By The Year revues at Town Hall before. After seeing this latest edition, which kicked off the tenth year of the series, I'm suitably ashamed. Are these shows always as elegantly presented and as thrillingly performed? Is there always as captivating a mix of ballads, comedy songs, and dance pieces? If so, I've been missing out on the most polished, most enjoyable Broadway concerts in town.

The concept of the series is to spotlight Broadway numbers from a particular calendar year (1927 this time, when more than 200 shows opened on Broadway according to our warm, welcoming host/producer Scott Siegel). This was the year of the watershed musical Show Boat, represented in this revue by 6 numbers from a gorgeous, "unplugged" (unamplified) performance of "You Are Love" (Alexander Gemignani and Kate Baldwin) to a lovely take on "Make Believe" (sung by Ragtime revival castmates Quentin Earl Darrington and Christiane Noll). The Show Boat highlights were undoubtedly "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", sung with great feeling and superb skill by new cabaret sensation Carole Bufford, and "Bill", nothing short of sublime as sung by Baldwin. Only "Ol' Man River" disappointed in comparison with Darrington, otherwise splendid all evening, too heavy-handed.

Besides other American Songbook standards that first appeared in 1927's Broadway shows - for instance "S'Wonderful" (charmingly put over by Bobby Steggert), "My Blue Heaven" (Chad Kimball), and the title song from Funny Face (a delightful duet for Bufford and Christopher Fitzgerald) - there were a couple of little-known gems, such as the yearning, lilting ballad "Just A Memory" from Manhattan Mary, flawlessly delivered by Fitzgerald. An essential component of the Broadway By The Year shows, I've come to learn, is the inclusion of dance numbers. Here, Jeffry Denman and Noah Racey totally killed with the Gene Kelly-Fred Astaire tap duet "The Babbitt and the Bromide" from Funny Face. Another dance highlight: Kendrick Jones and Melinda Sullivan paired up for "The Varisty Drag" from Good News. Throughout all this variety, Ross Patterson leads his versatile Little Big Band combo with unerring taste and sensitivity.



One of the revue's great joys is the chance to see the performers of today so convincingly slip into and sell the styles of yesteryear, including operetta (Ron Bohmer, sensational with a piece from The White Eagle and novelty vaudeville numbers (Marc Kudisch, bringing impeccable comedic timing and musical skill to "She Don't Wanna" from The Ziegfeld Follies of 1927). He and Denman, each with a ukulele, had all of Town Hall in their pocket with their fun take on "He Loves and She Loves" from Funny Face. Sign me up to see their club act should they ever reprise it. And definitely put me down for more Broadway By The Year - one shot, and I'm hopelessly hooked.

Mr. and Mrs. Fitch

photo: Joan Marcus

Intermittently funny and often annoying, Douglas Carter Beane's latest contemporary comedy of manners explores the lengths to which people will go in order to stay famous. The titular couple (John Lithgow and Jennifer Ehle) are a pair of married gossip columnists who haven't had a major scoop in ages; their heard-but-not-seen boss (voiced cantankerously in a series of voice messages by Philip Bosco) is breathing down their necks to either deliver or disappear. Faced with this scenario, what is there to do? Unfortunately, Carter Beane takes what could have been an interesting dissection of journalistic ethics and uses it as nothing more than an excuse for his two stars to trade varying degrees of bon mots for nearly two hours. Some are very funny; others land with a thud, and anyone without a vast repertoire of pop culture allusions will be bored out of their skulls within the first ten minutes. It doesn't help that neither Lithgow nor Ehle is particularly well-cast: he's far too earnest to convince as a bitchy, disillusioned gossipmonger, while she cannot overcome the simple fact that she's not a comedienne. They try valiantly, but there's not a moment when you don't see them sweat.

Clybourne Park

photo: Joan Marcus

The two acts of Bruce Norris' often caustic, provocative comedy take place 50 years apart in the same house. (We've heard of the place already - it's the very one that the Younger family buys in A Raisin In The Sun.) In the stylized first act, set in 1959, "white flight" is about to alter the neighborhood when a superficially sunny homemaker (Christina Kirk, excellent) and her brooding husband (Frank Wood, ditto) pack their things after a personal tragedy. In the second act, set in 2009, the same house has been sold to a white couple (Annie Parisse and Jeremy Shamos, both deliciously transparent) whose plans for the property offend the black neighbors (Crystal A. Dickinson and Damon Gupton, both wonderful and adept at subtext). With wicked humor Norris contrasts the then and now of how we talk about race - in the first act with a veneer of politeness that masks ignorance and bigotry, and in the second act with a veneer of correctness that masks distrust and resentment. By the time the present-day liberal characters sink to sandbox level and start throwing mud at each other (think God of Carnage only smarter and funnier) the oft-outrageous comedy has made its point that the more things change the more things stay the same. What's especially striking about the play, despite what may seem a cynical message about our supposedly post-racial America, is that it's spiked with moments of genuine poignancy. Even its most bracing element, the first act's back story of the white couple's son (Brendan Griffin, precise and detailed), delivers its stinging message with a mournful compassion. Highly recommended.

Clybourne Park

photo: Joan Marcus

Several recent productions have dealt with the always-sensitive issue of race relations in America, but few have been as nuanced and well-constructed as Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park, which opens tonight at Playwrights Horizons. Set in two contrasting eras--segregated 1959 and the supposedly post-racial present--the play navigates the changing dynamics that both mid-century white flight and contemporary gentrification have proferred. In the first act, a white couple (Christina Kirk and Frank Wood) decide to quit their urban neighborhood in the wake of a personal cataclysm. The sale of their house (to an African American family) opens up a can of worms for the rest of the community, who cannot shake their deeply-rooted racism. Fifty years later, the neighborhood is now predominately black, and the plans for a white couple (Annie Parisse and Jeremy Shamos) to level the house that broke the color barrier causes longtime residents to question their sense of society. Norris, riffing well on Lorraine Hansbury's A Raisin in the Sun, manages to capture every aspect of both debates with aplomb; alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, he allows all of the characters to search the depths of their souls and discover things that they might have wanted left untouched. The cast is practically flawless, but special mention goes to Wood, quietly brilliant as a father who cannot overcome a horrific tragedy.

Forgotten

photo: Patrick Redmond

I was surprised by the emotional power and the striking theatricality of this solo show, in which writer-performer Pat Kinevane alternates flawlessly between 4 characters 80 years and older. The people he plays are living out their sunsets in Ireland, but Kinevane has punctuated the piece with some conventions of Japanese theatre. The juxtaposition of more naturalistic monologues with scenes of stylized Eastern movement proves to be both thematically valid and theatrically dynamic; it also frames the collection of stories in a way that allows them to gather a greater emotional resonance than they might on their own. Given the show's title, it's not surprising that the elderly characters are linked by loneliness; what is surprising given the theme is that Kinevane's writing is often as unsentimental as his characterizations are captivating. The piece plays like a ritual to honor the forgotten elderly that does, in fact, truly honor them.

Forgotten

Every now and then you see something truly unique, and Pat Kinevane's one-man show qualifies. A blend of Irish character studies and Japanese Kabuki theater, it is a superb showcase for this exceptionally warm and generous performer. The beauty of the Kabuki movements Mr. Kinevane uses to transition between scenes doesn't seem quite enough to explain their existence, but the happy temptation is to always give this work the benefit of the doubt, swept up as one is in its imaginative evocations of the lives of four aged survivors, now confined to nursing homes. More than a play, it's poetry, and an immersive experience. That's no mean trick for one performer to pull off. Read the full review.