Company: The Movie

When you have a chance to hear the New York Philharmonic play a Stephen Sondheim score, you just go. Whatever else happens, you will hear the songs differently, more fully, willingly drown as the music washes over you, and you will not regret a note. When the Philharmonic is performing under the direction of Paul Gemignani, Poseidon himself is commanding the waves. Get wet, even if you have to occasionally hold your nose and even if the production is Company.

Company is a mess of a show. I've never particularly cared for it. Few of Sondheim's songs, brilliant as some might be, move the story along; and it's a story that needs to be moved along already. Of course, George Furth's scenes are hard to move. They're all spokes and no wheel. So, the benefits of a staging are obvious--focus on the essentials, make it an event instead of a production, and secure a cast that will blow your mind. Unfortunately, Bobby's birthday candles got a better blowing than my mind, and he couldn't even earn a wish.

This staging has a lot going for it, much to enjoy; but it isn't a satisfying feast overall. It is more of a tasting menu of marshmallows, each a delicious treat on its own but as a meal, not easy to get through, not a particularly good idea, and you won't be able to take another bite but you'll still be hungry. And, ultimately, it's all just fluff.

Now, some of that fluff is absolutely delicious. Christina Hendricks is perfection as a not-so-bright lay-over. She alone could drive a person crazy (were that she had--I've never heard that song sung worse). Usually, baby-doll voiced singing makes my ears bleed, but Hendricks not only makes a beautiful sound, she makes sense. Martha Plimpton proves again to be a reliable pinch hitter--hitting all the right notes, the right jokes, and the right balance. Katie Finneran does what she always does, no surprises, but she does it so well, you don't even care that you've seen the same performance every time she's taken the stage.

Neil Patrick Harris, as Bobby, has the difficult task of playing host and narrator for two and a half hours. He had thrilled me just three nights earlier on the Tonys--hosting, narrating, singing, entertaining, dancing, and delighting for over 3 hours. He's good at the joke, the snark, and the charm. He's less interesting playing angst, conflict, and insobriety. He sang nicely, though occasionally flat. He did everything nicely, though occasionally flat.

The women, in general, fared better than the men. Stephen Colbert deserves a really big, thanks-for-coming, participant ribbon (he shows the signs of someone who could really tear loose were he a bit more comfortable which may say more about the reheasal schedule than his abilities, and I am certainly ready to see him in whatever he attempts next); Jon Cryer did little with the little he had to do; and Aaron Lazar brought the yin of boredom to the yang of Craig Bierko's weirdom. Jim Walton was a pleasure.

In addition to the women above, Jennifer Laura Thompson stood out as a charmingly controlled wife enjoying a few uncontrolled moments. Jill Paice was an insconsistently southern belle, but she sopranoed the hell out of the thankless parts of Not Getting Married Today. Anika Noni Rose was surprisingly average. Chryssie Whitehead has very interesting feet. Patti LuPone can be amazing. I saw her sing The Ladies Who Lunch live at Sondheim's birthday celebration, right in front of Elaine Stritch. That takes balls. No problem, Patti has balls. I think they're Andrew Lloyd Webber's. It was a powerful performance. In this staging, she once again delivered a powerful performance of the song, but she lost the character, why she sings it, to whom she sings it, the death of it. And when did she start singing like Popeye? I couldn't tell if she was trying to give a blow job to a right angle or having a stroke.

The costumes were the perfect hint of the period without becoming silly. The singing set movers managed both without hiccup.

If Lonny Price, the reigning King of stagings, were directing a lab rat through a maze, history tells me they'd both get lost, which is pretty surprising for two such connoisseurs of cheese. He is a graduate of the revolving door school of directing--all entrances and exits and going round in circles. This time he's added more furniture than usual but little else. If Sondheim ever writes a musical that takes place in Raymour and Flanigan, Lonny Price should be his first call.

Elegant Songs from a Handsome Woman: Ana Gasteyer at Feinstein's

A good cabaret act often includes a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Ballads. Anthems. Standards. Novelties. Anecdotes. Audience participation. Shtick. Piano player-performer repartee. Reminiscing. And so on. With the proper recipe, these bits add up to brilliance. Without the proper recipe, they can seem scattered and random and even dull.

Ana Gasteyer's recipe needs work.

This is not to say that she doesn't have her moments. Some of her stories are quite funny, and her tale of how she met her husband is sweet. She's strong with novelty songs such as "Proper Cup of Coffee," and her choice of songs is interesting and unusual, including "Titwillow," an updated version of "I'm Hip" (with lyrics such as "James Franco is my Facebook Friend"), "The Book of Love," Chuck E's in Love," "Slap That Bass," and "Valley of the Dolls." She uses the mike well (a rarity in younger performers) and makes sure to play to everyone in the room. She is extremely likeable.

But . . .

Her voice is surprisingly thin for someone who played Elphaba in Wicked. Her interpretations have a sameness to them. Some of her stories drag on too long. Most importantly, despite hard preparation, good will, and the expenditure of a great deal of energy, she lacks that spark that makes an evening shine. Rather than a glorious meal, she presents a few good dishes.

(press ticket, nice seats to audience left)

War Horse

Okay, I am late to the rodeo. Nevertheless. . .

Imagine how much more brilliant Lion King could have been if Julie Taymor had spent even a fraction of her time during the development period focusing on what the actors behind the masks were doing. War Horse offers a powerful argument for equal time on both sides of the mask, all credit to directors Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris and the designers at the Handspring Puppet Company. Both represent thrilling concepts that enliven otherwise scant scripts, masking the deficiencies therein literally. Only War Horse forces the actors to inhabit the masks and not just relying on the masks to inhabit the stage.

The actors inhabiting the horses at the Lincoln Center Theater at the Vivian Beaumont are working as hard and providing performances as good as any I have seen on Broadway this season, and they end up not humanizing the horses but humanizing the humans who share the stage. I grew up around horses, was nearly thrown from one at a young age, and haven't had a lot of use for them since. My sister, however, speaks a language with her horses I will never understand and shares a bond, a deep connection and compassion she does not share with most strangers and reserves for relatively few whose names she knows. (If I and her horse had a broken leg and she were left with one bullet and a choice, the only thing I am certain about is she'll shed more tears over the horse's pain and whichever one she doesn't put out of its misery gets a visit from the vet.) I haven't seen a lot of that loyalty since I left the farm, but this production captures the flinches and whinnies and shadowing I've observed from a cantered distance in real life. The relationships created on stage were simultaneously true and real and theatrical.

But War Horse is as much about war as it is about horses--pro the latter and anti the former. It makes tangible that the damage of war is not collateral but brutal and personal. Without preaching, War Horse demonstrates that we are all beasts, discardable and dangerous in the eyes of an enemy. War is in some ways about blind allegiance, to country, to cause, and to comrades. Joey, the title horse, serves loyally, with the immediacy battle demands and, just like any soldier, may walk away from war wounded wanting no more reward than home and security with loved ones. War Horse is not anti warrior, just anti war.

The production transcends personal beliefs. It isn't trying to change your mind about war. Like all great theatre, it is most invested in taking you on a journey. And what a splendid journey it is. From the set and lighting design to the best use of a turntable I've seen in ages, if ever, to the haunting music and stellar cast, especially Peter Hermann, Alyssa Bresnahan, and Boris McGiver as humans and all of the actors who horsed around on stage (at the performance I attended: Stephen James Anthony, David Pegram, Leenya Rideout, Joby Earle, Ariel Heller, Enrico D. Wey, Joel Reuben ganz, Tom Lee, and Jude Sandy who did double duty as the best Goose since Top Gun).

I am now officially on board to see anything the Handspring Puppet Company mounts.

(Loge, audience right, full price ticket )

One Arm

Claybourne Elder, Todd Lawson
(photo: Monique Carboni)

The New Group & Tectonic Theater Project's ponderous production of Tennessee Williams' One Arm, adapted from his unproduced screenplay and directed for the stage by Moisés Kaufman, does little to demonstrate Williams' genius, compassion, and humor. Granted, this is far from Williams' best work, and the genius and humor are in fairly short supply. But the story does feature compassion, along with some interesting characters and a reasonably interesting story--theoretically, anyway. Here they are hidden by an uninteresting, unnecessarily one-dimensional darkness.

Ollie Olsen (Claybourne Elder) is a boxer. It fact, he is light-heavyweight champion of the Pacific Fleet, as he mentions frequently. Ollie loses his arm in a gallingly stupid accident and finds himself without both his trade and his sense of self. Having few options, Ollie becomes a street corner hustler. He believes that some of his Johns are turned on by his injury, which infuriates him. Whether he is homosexual or not is left unspecified and is probably unimportant. What is important is that he is a ticking time bomb, detached from his kinder feelings and seething with anger.

In directing One Arm, Kaufman has chosen to retain the film structure. A narrator (Noah Bean) reads scenery descriptions and stage directions, and hanging lamps play the role of Klieg lights on a set. The narrator and the rest of the cast share a flat, affect-less tone, which keeps the audience at arm's length. Few scenes are emotionally compelling. Ollie is so cold and whiny that one can't help but occasionally think, "Okay, you've had a tough time--get over it!" As for the other characters, most do not come across as distinct, believable people, and the prison guard and the porn director are both out of a bad B movie. Only the Johns have genuine humanity, revealed in their fear of approaching the beautiful Ollie and their heartbreaking gratitude at being able to touch him.

Overall, One Arm doesn't work as anything other than an uncompelling museum piece. Kaufman's odd direction is clearly an artistic decision, but not, I think, an effective one. Stylization is one thing; freezing out the audience is another.

(press ticket, 6th row on the aisle)

Jerusalem

As a playwright, Jez Butterworth seems to be keenly interested in the implied. The words that he puts in his characters' mouths are often meant to signify something that's three steps removed from what was actually said. This worked to varying degrees in Butterworth's 2007 play Parlour Song, in which a man tries to understand why his wife begins stealing everyday items from their home and storing them in their shed. It works less well in his newest play, Jerusalem, which is currently bowing on Broadway after a successful London run in 2009. The difference here is that the former play was a Pinteresque chamber drama; this new work is an overstuffed epic in the vein of O'Neill or August Wilson. The extreme ambiguity of much of the language and the banality of the actual work itself leave the audience wondering what they've spent three hours watching was supposed to mean.

On the morning of St. George's Day, "Rooster" Johnny Byron (Mark Rylance) is being evicted from his home. The term "home," in the literal sense, could be an exaggeration--he has been squatting in the forest that surrounds the village of Flintock for twenty-nine years, surviving on a steady diet of drugs, booze and debauchery. Now that a new development of mini-mansions has been erected in spitting distance from Rooster's lean-to, the borough has finally taken action to remove him from his bacchanalian post. The actual play revolves around the hours leading up to the eviction, where he and his cohorts (performed by acclaimed British actor Mackenzie Crook and Tony-winner John Gallagher Jr, among others) continue to live life their own way, with the prospect of dire consequences always looming.

The play's title is taken from William Blake's 1804 poem "And did those feet in ancient time," which was set to music during World War I and is colloquially known as "The Jerusalem Hymn." According to a program note from director Ian Rickson, this hymn holds strong significance to the English people, and "has been claimed both by workers' groups and The Conservative Party." Therefore, it holds meaning to every English citizen, no matter how they identify themselves. Butterworth's play seems to represent this--the McMansions that force Rooster's eviction obviously stand in for the "dark Satanic mills" that Blake used to represent the Industrial Revolution, while the conservative village people who want to cut Rooster loose believe that they are doing so in order to "build Jerusalem / In England's green and pleasant land." Unfortunately, neither makes a particularly compelling case.

It doesn't help that Rooster is one of the most unsympathetic characters in recent memory. Much like another "lovable" character in an acclaimed British play--Hector, the handsy schoolmaster in Alan Bennett's worthless History Boys--the audience is supposed to be transfixed and beguiled by a waster who benefits from manipulation and the lowered expectations of others. Rooster provides drugs and has sex with teenagers, while neglecting his own six-year-old son (who appears briefly, accompanied by his mother, played by the fine Irish actress Geraldine Hughes). It doesn't help that Rylance's performance is Master Thespian to the hilt--which seems to be what we've come to expect from this particular actor. The halting speech, the kinetic movements, the constantly shifting voice modulation...it's all there. The audience I attended with leapt to their feet at curtain; I simply groaned.

I am not the ideal customer for this play. As noted, I'm not the hugest fan of Rylance's bag of tricks, nor am I an Anglophile. I'd never heard of St. George's Day, and despite holding a master's degree in poetry, my only experience with William Blake was in a poetry survey my freshman year of college. Still, I cannot imagine why so many people have fallen over themselves to rave about a play that is both overstuffed and undercooked.

I also want to note the trouble I had hearing most of the cast throughout the performance. Rylance has stated in interviews that he is passionate performing without amplification; this is a noble goal, but it only works if every member of the cast is able to achieve sustained projection that feels natural. When I saw Rylance in La Bete six months ago--in the same theatre, from roughly the same seat--I had no problem hearing him or any of the cast. Yesterday, the company ranged from consistently audible (Rylance, Hughes, Alan David) to patchy (Gallagher, Max Baker) to completely inaudible throughout (Crook, Molly Ranson, Aimee-Ffion Edwards). Projection is a hallmark of the theatre, where the use of body microphones has only been standard for roughly twenty years. If you cannot project, you shouldn't be on stage.


(Seen at the matinee performance on June 8. TDF tickets; Orchestra M4).

You Make Me Feel So Young: Barbara Cook at Feinstein's

Photo: Mike Martin

Barbara Cook. What do you think of when you hear that name? A pure soprano? Glitter and Be Gay? The queen of cabaret singers? The Music Man? Sondheim? An unparalleled interpreter of the American Songbook? Delightful raconteur? All of the above?

One phrase I never would have thought of is jazz singer! Until last night.

Cook's new show, You Make Me Feel So Young, at Feinstein's through June 18, includes 13 songs she has never sung before, along with some familiar favorites. Cook pointed out that 13 songs are a lot to learn and asked that we "be kind." But no kindness was necessary. Aside from a couple of messed-up lyrics, which she made charming, Cook was comfortable, assured, and, oh yeah, brilliant. She went new places (new to me at least), including extended scatting and surprising jazz phrasing.

Her set ranged from the slow, thoughtful, and heartfelt to swinging. In the first category were "I've Grown Accustomed to His Face," sung with piano only, and a yearning "I've Got You Under My Skin" with a gorgeous clarinet-centered arrangement by Cook and her music director, Lee Musiker. On the other end of the spectrum was a delightful, jazzy "The Frim Fram Sauce" and a wry "Wait 'Til You're Sixty-Five," sung with amused recognition that, for Cook, 65 was some time ago. Other highlights included "You Make Me Feel So Young," "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?", and "Live Alone and Like It."

As an added bonus, Cook's patter is great fun. She knows how to tell a story, and she has  funny stories to tell. I particularly enjoyed her tale of how she discovered the song "Love Is Good For Anything That Ails You." I'll only say that it includes the phrase "cat house."

And Cook's band--Lee Musiker on piano, Warren Odze on percussion, Jay Leonhart on bass, and Steve Kenyon on woodwinds--is fabulous.

Were there some missteps? One or two. "When I Look Into Your Eyes" was less than compelling, and I flat out dislike the song, "I'm a Fool to Want You."

But, who cares? It's Barbara Cook, still challenging herself, still surprising, always wonderful.

(press tix, nice seats behind the piano)