She Loves Him (Kate Baldwin at Feinstein's)

If you look up the word lovely in the dictionary, there she is: Kate Baldwin, with her sweet, pure voice, beautiful smile, and great charm. In her current show at Feinstein's, She Loves Him, Baldwin devotes her copious gifts to the songs of the great Sheldon Harnick, who sings a few duets with her (and one solo). The whole show is a treat as they wander through Harnick's early novelty songs, Fiorello, She Loves Me, Fiddler, and the Rothschilds. The evening has many highlights, including Baldwin's gorgeous "When Did I Fall in Love?," excellent "A Trip to the Library," and superb "Gorgeous." Harnick's voice is strong and gravelly and contrasts perfectly with Baldwin's. I particularly enjoyed their duets on "In My Own Lifetime" and "Sunrise, Sunset." Harnick sat on stage for a couple of Baldwin's solos, and if I had to pick one best moment of the evening, it would be watching him kvell while Baldwin sings his songs. Baldwin's patter is often funny, and her backup band is superb (Scott Cady, piano/musical director; John Beale, bass; and Andrew Sterman on a truly impressive range of wind instruments).

(Press ticket, table audience left.)

Spider-Man

Photo: Annie Leibovitz

Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, which has been in previews since late November, has blown through at least $65 million dollars and three lead producers. Four actors have been injured. The opening has been delayed five times, and there is talk that the latest planned opening night, March 15, will be put off yet again.

The creative team has shrugged off these setbacks with fatuous excuses. Director Julie Taymor has explained that Spider-Man is less a mere “musical” than a “circus rock-‘n’-roll drama” that celebrates one of the most important myths of our time. Bono, who composed the music with U2 bandmate the Edge, told the Times that Spider-Man has been delayed as much as it has been because They Will Sell No Wine Before Its Time: “We’re wrestling with the same stuff as Rilke, Blake, ‘Wings of Desire,’ Roy Lichtenstein, the Ramones—the cost of feeling feelings, the desire for connections when you’re separate from others.” The producers are more candid, saying the delays are necessary to let the creative team focus in on the more deficient aspects of the show: the plot and score. Details, details.

The mere presence of a pricey musical that barely functions properly or makes any sense while patrons are asked to fork over more than $200 for some seats has prompted debates about consumer rights, worker safety and the ethics of reviewing a show before it officially opens. Does Broadway need a $65 million show to begin with?

Not this one.

Even the worst Broadway flops can have bright spots. Lost in the drab muddle of Paul Simon's The Capeman, for example, were a couple of great doo-wop numbers and a near-perfect starry rooftop scene. In Spider-Man, these shining moments come at the beginning of the show, which starts in the middle of the action: Mary Jane (a hard-working Jennifer Damiano) is dangling from a bridge! Will Spidey (a dazed Reeve Carney) leap from the Chrysler Building to save her in time?

Nothing after that is nearly as good. In her exploration of legend, Greek drama, aerial stunts, and how one actually Turns Off the aforementioned Dark, Taymor forgets that the Marvel Comics Spider-Man was an awkward, working-class kid from Queens whose peculiar physical gifts enabled him to kick ass and save lives, but not make many friends. For all the visual set-pieces and lengthy exposition, not a single character in this production—including, heartbreakingly, Peter Parker and Mary Jane—has any development, trajectory or motivation. Taymor’s contribution to the story, the spider-goddess-nemesis-whatever Arachne, contributes nothing save more confusion and one truly bizarre number involving a kickline of chorines dressed as spiders in tawdry underwear, singing something about sex and shoes.

In Spider-Man, Taymor can't tell a story (her greatest successes are adaptations of a Disney movie and Shakespeare plays) and she can't stage a scene unless her actors are swaddled in elaborate costumes, draped in scenery or hiding behind enormous masks. Even more distracting than some of the cheap-looking sets are the abrupt transitions between scenes in which monsters, villains and multiple Spider-Men bring the show to something approaching life, and those in which plain old people, devoid of camouflage, stand around spouting wooden exposition and sounding alternately like they are trapped in a bad screwball comedy, a John Hughes film, a grindhouse horror flick, or a cheesy sex-ed filmstrip about how, as Peter’s uncle puts it, “Puberty can be hard.”

The "Geek Chorus" (get it?) of four comic-book readers may be writing the story. Or maybe they are part of the story. Either way, they are neither interesting nor amusing enough for us to care about them. Same goes for all the villains save Patrick Page's gleeful Green Goblin, who seems like he’s in another show entirely. All the other villains are introduced early in act II. As they strut down a catwalk, a guy in dreadlocks sings about them in an insultingly thick Jamaican accent while accompanying himself on an empty pickle tub. After the number, the drummer disappears, and eventually, so do all the villains. Who were they, where did they come from, and where did they go?

The sound design is good and the orchestra is excellent. Too bad about the songs. At root, U2 is a post-punk band that made itself into an arena darling by matching swagger with introspection. U2 works with layers of sound that repeat, slowly entwine and build gradually in volume and density into petulant, anthemic proclamations. But what works well in front of 40,000 screaming fans at a stadium quickly becomes tedious in a theater. Each song develops in the same way, robbing the show of energy and surprise. The only time the music serves the drama is during the wordless chase scenes—such as a black-and-white sequence with bad guys in giant masks hauling bags of money—when the repetition and layering convey a sense of urgency.

Near the end of Act I the night I went, a stuntman playing Spider-Man (Stunter-Man? Stuntey?) got trapped on the balcony and the show stopped—to raucous applause. Was the audience, deprived thus far of much that could be called entertainment, hoping for a clever ad lib or a fatal plunge into the orchestra seats? Both?

Theater is theater until it ceases to be live, and the second act of Spider-Man is as dead as dead can be. At one point, Taymor puts Spidey alone on stage to pantomime a fight with cartoon images projected on the screen behind him. Wii Broadway.

Even at its prettiest and most interesting moments, and there were a few, this show got no emotional response from me except the fear that it would never end, trapping me forever in front of a huge projection of cartoon bad guys. This is not what Aristotle had in mind when he discussed catharsis. Nor is the pity I felt for the artists and theater-goers whose time this musical has wasted. There is no saving Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, no matter how many more times opening night is put off. This broken project needs to open and close, so that all involved can lick their wounds and get back to putting on shows worth watching.

(seen Wednesday evening, March 2; BroadwayBox special offer; row W on the aisle.)

That Championship Season

If Broadway is a museum, the mediocrities depicted in Jason Miller’s 1972 play That Championship Season (in previews at the Bernie Jacobs Theater) are dinosaurs. In the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, five men “somewhere in the Lackawanna Valley” gather to reminisce about the 1952 state high school basketball title they won by a single point at the buzzer. Championship contemplates aging, mythmaking and the ways middle-aged, middle-class men view masculinity and success.

These days, a Broadway production of a middle-aged retread with household names in the cast comes as no surprise. The structure of the show is not much of a surprise, either: Give a bunch of middle-aged, not-especially-happy guys a bucket of chicken and unlimited booze, and it’s only a matter of time before tensions rise, secrets spill and long-harbored disappointments and resentments boil over. Then, bust out some old fight songs to make everything all better again by the end of the night.

Nevertheless, the characters–rather than director Gregory Mosher’s somewhat pedestrian staging or the predictable, confessional trajectory of the plot–carry the show. Each man is bitter in his own particular way. These are not especially likeable men–they don’t hesitate to voice their hatreds of Jews and Blacks, and all seem to have a pathological disrespect of women—but they are always honestly rendered by the playwright, who could have been a lot nastier and more condescending to them had he wanted to be.

Although the actors mostly disappear into their roles, here, their real lives add unexpected dimension to the events. Jason Patric (who plays the nihilistic alcoholic Tom Daley) is the son of the playwright, who died in 2001; his role as court jester for the evening evokes his late father’s function as the scene-setter. Kiefer Sutherland, another son of a famous father, has struggled publicly and often humiliatingly with his own alcoholism and is practically unrecognizable here as Tom’s slouched, buttoned-down brother James, whose conservative demeanor disguises profound anxiety, resentment, and disillusionment. Chris Noth brings a touch of the ingratiating Mr. Big of “Sex and the City” to his portrayal of the coldly amoral, unapologetically materialistic Phil Romano. Jim Gaffigan—better known as a stand-up comedian—plays the inept town mayor, George Sikowski, with equal amounts of obtuse, stuffed-shirt swagger and crippling doubt.

As the coach that refuses to see them as anything but glorious heroes, Brian Cox occasionally tends toward the histrionic, and sometimes forgets to suppress his British accent. But usually, he shrinks beautifully into himself. It’s clear here that for all the swaggering bravado and insistence that he’s on the mend from a ridiculously downplayed illness, Coach is dying. Offstage, Cox may be a Commander of the British Empire, but for the duration of this revival, he, like the rest of the characters, is a sad man clinging desperately to a fading, mythical past. When Coach gamely pulls his shirt up to show off the enormous scar that runs down his belly, he inadvertently reveals himself to his “boys” to be small, disoriented, and old.

The show, advertised as a “strictly limited run,” may have legs, opening as it does in the shadow of the surprise hit Lombardi. Audiences looking for the darker side of sports and a more jaundiced view of what manhood meant in the second half of the last century might want to take a look at Championship before the season ends.

TDF purchase; 2pm on 2/23/11; row G24, mezzanine.

Introduction

Hi. My name is Liz, and I'm an assistant professor of music at Baruch College, CUNY. I specialize in the American musical, and focus for the most part on late-20th and early 21st century productions. I am the author of The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, From Hair to Hedwig (2006). The Show Showdown has long been one of my favorite blogs, and I thank its creators for having me as an occasional contributor.

The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller

Anthropologist Krystal D'Costa was my companion for The Man Who Ate Michael Rockefeller. For her insightful take on the show, click here.

The Wooster Group's Version of Tennessee Williams' Vieux Carré

While watching the Wooster Group's pretentious, pointless, and ham-handed production of Vieux Carré, a question occurred to me: What if it's not that the emperor has no clothes but rather that the emperor has only one outfit? One tattered outfit that the emperor trots out again and again?

The first Wooster Group production I saw was House/Lights. It was mesmerizing--I had never seen anything like it. I had no idea what it was supposed to be, but it didn't matter. It was fascinating and stimulating with its video and stylized acting, and Kate Valk was amazing. My second Wooster Group production was the Emperor Jones, which I found bizarre and arguably racist and which relied on many of the same tricks used in House/Lights. However, Kate Valk's brilliance saved the evening. Next came the recreation of the Richard Burton Hamlet, which brought nothing to the table but the same old bag of tricks but took a great deal away. It reminded me of those abstract paintings that are one line or one big splash of one color--a somewhat interesting exercise presented as a finished work of art.

And now there is The Wooster Group's Version of Tennessee Williams' Vieux Carré (yes, that's the title). The Wooster Group drowns Williams' odd and gentle work in a murky sea of electronics, peculiar sounds, repetitive videos, and marked disrespect for the text. In Williams' version there is a lonely, dying, elderly homosexual who seduces the main character (called "The Writer") in an act that is simultaneously predatory and generous, meaningless and meaningful. In the Wooster Group version, that same character is reduced to a flaming queen in an Asian robe with a constantly visible, constantly erect phallus; for a cheap visual gag, the Wooster Group gives up all that is complex and humane in the character. Two elderly women who are slowly starving to death become an ugly vision of a man with a bad wig on a flat screen. The Writer hammers away at his anachronistic keyboard as though he is creating rather than recording the events of the play, a conceit that works no better here than it did in the Roundabout's recent version of The Glass Menagerie. And the production isn't even semi-rescued by Kate Valk, who is one-dimensional as the society woman desperately in love with a bouncer at a strip club and annoying and unintelligible as the nasty, needy landlady.

(It didn't help that the Jerome Robbins Theater at the Baryshnikov Arts Center is possibly the single most uncomfortable theatre that has ever had the nerve to charge up to $65. Chiropractors should be provided when the two-hour, intermission-less show finally ends each night.)

Considering the four productions I've seen, I would have to say that the Wooster Group is like a bad jazz band who thinks everything is about them--and who makes every song sound the same.

(Paid $34, sat first-row balcony.)