Sondheim! The Birthday Concert (DVD Review)

Wow!

Last March a few thousand people were lucky enough to experience the truly staggering Sondheim birthday celebration at the New York Philharmonic. Many who saw it (most?) judged it one of the most thrilling evenings they had ever spent in a theatre (I was one of those fortunate people). And now, through the miracle of modern technology, that amazing event can be revisited, over and over again, forever.

I was a tad nervous putting the disc in the DVD player. Could the recording possibly live up to my memory of the event? No. But yes. No, because live is live, and there is nothing like it. But yes, because the pictures and sound are clear and vivid, because the beauty of the performances has been captured, and because I am so grateful that this wonderful record of this wonderful evening exists! I am old enough to remember life before DVDs, before video recordings, before cable. I remember setting my alarm clock for two in the morning to catch a show or movie that might never be on again. I remember trying to memorize live performances, knowing that there might not even be an album. I do not take this DVD for granted.

If forced at gunpoint to identify my favorite performances, I might be able to get it down to a handful:

• Marin Mazzie: "Losing My Mind."
• John McMartin: "The Road You Didn't Take."
• Bernadette Peters: "Not a Day Goes By."
• Mandy Patinkin: "Finishing the Hat."
• Scores of Broadway performers: "Sunday."

But how could I leave out Donna Murphy singing "Could I Leave You?", or Audra McDonald singing "The Glamorous Life," or McDonald and Nathan Gunn singing "Too Many Mornings"? How could I exclude Patti LuPone's "Ladies Who Lunch" or Elaine Stritch jumping up and down while declaring that she is, indeed, still here? What about Peters and Patinkin recreating "Move On"? It was evening of highlight after highlight, or, as a friend of mine put it, an evening of 11:00 numbers.

Of course, the event wasn't, and the DVD isn't, perfect. Producer-director-writer Lonnie Price, as he always does, littered the show with juvenile, downright-painful gags and running "jokes." And some of his editing choices are flat-out annoying, as when he cuts to the orchestra during "Losing My Mind," a delicate song of subtle build during which Mazzie's nonsinging moments are as important as her singing ones. Or when he interrupts the flow of the dancing in "America" with odd and awkward and all-too-frequent cuts. But if Price's weaknesses are the price (pun unintended?) of getting to enjoy an event and a DVD this wonderful, they are a small enough price (hmm) to pay.

Thanks are owed to producers Ellen M. Krass Productions and Thirteen, in association with WNET.org, for giving us this precious DVD. It would be nice if there were some extras, but, really, it's a treasure.

Oh, and I did I mention that that Sondheim guy is brilliant?

One Night With Joan

Photo: Holly Caster

Joan Collins is a force to be reckoned with. She turned down Darryl Zanuck's (staggeringly coarse) sexual advances, even though she knew she might be risking her career. She responded to a Joan Crawford snub by mentioning that Collins' mother was such a Crawford fan that she named Joan after her. When her then-husband lost his job, she went back to performing to support the family (they had a total of six children), starring in such classics as The Stud and The Bitch. She wore her hair with bangs and did so many nude scenes that Oscar Levant commented that the only part of her he hadn't seen was her forehead. Oh, and her first husband tried to sell her to a sheik.

These are only some of the many stories that the effervescent Collins shares in her night of reminiscences at Feinstein's at the Regency. Still glamorous in her late 70s (and married to a man in his 40s), she is entertaining and in her own way a role model: she began fashioning her life to her own design in the days when women were supposed to force themselves into society's pre-assigned template, and she still lives life on her own terms.

On Tuesday Collins clearly had opening night jitters, and she would do well to tell her stories rather than act them. She also might get more laughs by underplaying rather than overplaying her punch lines. But, hey, she's Joan Collins. And if you're a fan, you'll have a great time.

All the Things You Are: Jerome Kern

The Broadway Close Up series at Merkin Hall presented a lovely evening of Jerome Kern songs last Monday. There was no patter--just luscious singing. Director Denis Jones set up some of the songs as entertaining or touching vignettes (never letting his ideas overshadow the lyricists' intent) and had the show moving like clockwork (fluid, graceful clockwork). Kate Baldwin, Heidi Blickenstaff, Colin Donnell, Rebecca Luker, Graham Rohat, and Matthew Scott presented over 30 of Kern's songs, from his biggest hits to some little-known wonders. And they sang unmiked! The evening wasn't perfect. There were some songs that could have been sung better--or louder--and some of the interpretations didn't quite work. The singers sometimes spent too much time looking at each other, rather than the audience, probably making it difficult for people in the rear of the theatre to hear. But the positives far, far, far outweighed the negatives, and the overall effect was magical. Kudos to director Jones, musical director David Loud, artistic director Sean Hartley, and particularly to pianist Jihwan Kim, who played nonstop--and beautifully--for 90 intermissionless minutes.

The Libertine

Photo: DfxDen

Stephen Jeffreys' comedy-drama is a delicious throwback to Restoration times. With Cromwellian Puritanism a thing of the past, the return of the monarchy was an optimal time for an omnisexual, charismatic, downright outrageous character like John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester, to barrel into the history books. Eric Tucker fleetly directs a nimble cast of well-drawn characters, vividly evoking the scramble that goes on backstage at a theater, the clash of wits at the public house, and carefree rutting in a dark prostitutes' alley.

Patricia Duran is wonderful as a proto-feminist Mrs. Barry; Tom O'Keefe is superbly in-the-moment in the dual roles of Rochester's wry friend Charles Sackville and the smug star actor Harry Harris; and the fine Libby Arnold as the prostitute Jane has a lovely scene battling an annoying inclination to actually care about her client the Earl. The production's flaw arises from the Earl's complexity. Not having seen the play before—not even the movie version with Johnny Depp—I can't say how others have approached the lead role, but Joseph W. Rodriguez fails to entirely convince, because his Rochester lacks the charm the real Earl must have oozed.

The same cannot be said of the overall production. Rambunctious and clever, it has many virtues. Above all, the play transports us to a lofty realm of wit and ribaldry very few modern playwrights even attempt,

Excerpted from Theater Review (NYC): The Libertine on Blogcritics.

Ghosts in the Cottonwoods

Photo: Annie Parisse

As The Amoralists' production of Ghosts in the Cottonwoods begins, we see Bean Scully sucking venom out of her son Pointer's leech bites. He is 18 years old and nude, and author-director Adam Rapp has served us vivid notice that this is no ordinary mother-son relationship. Bean's treatment of Pointer occupies an uncomfortable area somewhere between seduction and abuse, and she disparages any chance of romance or improving himself that Pointer may aspire to.

Living in the backwoods, the Scullys have no TV set and no phone, and they supply their own electricity thru a hand-cranked generator. Their one-room house is rickety and cobbled together. It contains a large noose to anchor the building to a tree stump during mud slides.

Tonight Bean and Pointer are waiting for Bean's older son Jeff to come home; Jeff has broken out of prison after six years. But before he arrives, the Scullys receive two unexpected visitors: a repo man with a bullet wound and a young woman with a suitcase. While Ghosts in the Cottonwoods has some funny moments, it is generally a story of loss, violence, grudges, and revenge. The characters cannot communicate, although they try everything from attempting to learn how to read to rapping to clicking to book-writing to literally eating their words. The three Scullys are deeply damaged, and they share a willingness to kill if they feel it is necessary.

Ghosts in the Cottonwoods is deeply disturbing. However, it is extremely well-written, -directed, and -acted; consistently interesting; and sometimes fascinating. The always-brilliant Sarah Lemp shines as Bean, and the other actors (Nick Lawson, William Apps, Mandy Nicole Moore, James Kautz, and Matthew Pilieci) are also excellent. (Lawson, however, is frequently difficult to understand.)

Mistakes Were Made

Photo: Michael Brosilow

It is a theatre season of prodigious feats of memory. Mark Rylance in La Bete. Belle Caplis is Balm in Gilead. Bill Camp in Notes From Underground. And now Michael Shannon in Craig Wright's Mistakes Were Made (directed by Dexter Bullard). Shannon plays a theatrical producer who is juggling a moody movie star, a stubborn playwright, an unraveling business venture, and deep personal problems, all via an office phone that never stops ringing. Shannon is onstage alone for virtually the entire 90 minutes, yelling, cajoling, and pleading into the phone; chatting with his obese fish; and periodically melting down. Mistakes Were Made is generally lightweight, with occasional moments of extreme tone-deafness, as when a distant tragedy only matters to the extent that it affects the producer. However, there is much that is funny here, and Shannon's multifaceted, beautifully timed performance is well worth seeing. (Designer Tom Burch's set is a treat--make sure to check out the posters of the producer's previous shows, including one for Roseanne Barr and Erik Estrada in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.)