Traces versus Zarkana

There’s something in the water in Montreal. They pump out body-defying acrobatics wrapped in tongue-in-cheek excess like a virus. Despite the shared core, two Canadian exports leaped into town, and they couldn’t be more different. Traces, at the Union Square Theatre, makes Zarkana, at Radio City Music Hall, look like Cirque du So What?

Zarkana is like a bad online date. The poster is attractive, but what meets you at the door is bloated, obnoxious, and several inches short of promise. There’s a lot of heavy breathing, but I just sat there wishing they’d finish already so I could go home.

Traces is a cigarette short of a seal-the-deal first date. It is intimate, sexy, breathtaking, and sweaty. And the hotties on the poster actually showed up. There wasn’t enough body fat on the stage to cook up a 2 piece and a biscuit.

Traces isn’t an evening of never-before-seen tricks. As a matter of fact, there is very little that’s unexpected. What makes the show special is that each performer participates in every act. Many body circus acts show up for 10 minutes, flip physics the bird, and disappear into the wings. The seven artists in Traces weave in and out of the spotlight for 90 minutes, mastering multiple acrobatic styles (poles, chairs, skateboards, tumbling, and jumping) and multiple artistic styles (everyone plays the piano, several sing, and all display comedic charm).

The second, special treat of the evening is that you get to meet the people behind the tricks. They introduce themselves, give you peeks at their individual personalities, and we even get to see baby pictures. That may sound a bit saccharine, but Traces is a full-octane adult beverage. The whole affair gets a little loud occasionally, but it is completely appropriate and expected.

Finally, the show delivers on its promise. The performers execute 100% of the tricks planned. That is not to say they get it right the first time, every time; but you get to see every trick, no cheats. Zarkana, with all its gaudy excesses and endless, overproduced caterwauling, was a disappointment start to finish. At the Union Square Theater, there wasn’t a Trace of disappointment.

If I Had a Time Machine, What Shows Would I See?

Where do I start? Okay, here's where I start:

The record-breaking performance of A Chorus Line. This review/description by Frank Rich will tell you why. I get goosebumps just reading about it.

Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie. Because when I was in my teens, I'd always ask older people what was the best performance they'd ever seen. And all but one said, "Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie."

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet. Because the one person who didn't say "Laurette Taylor in The Glass Menagerie" said "Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet." I was 19; he was in his 90s; I felt connected to history.

Ethel Merman in Gypsy. Because, uh, it's Ethel Merman in Gypsy!

The original Follies. Could it possibly live up to the hype?

Arcadia at Lincoln Center with the original cast.  Because I love Arcadia.

Arcadia in London with the original cast. Because I love Arcadia.

A Streetcar Named Desire in London with Rachel Weisz. Because I'm sure she was wonderful.

Penny Arcade with James Cagney and Joan Blondell in 1930. Because they're James Cagney and Joan Blondell.

Fred and Adele Astaire in anything! Was she really the better dancer?

Bill Bojangles Robinson in anything! Was he really the better dancer?

Edwin Booth as Hamlet. Would he seem hammy or wonderful or both?

Christine Sarry in Rodeo. Okay, it's ballet, not theatre, but I'd still love to go.


And then there are the shows I would see again (and again!):

Colleen Dewhurst in Moon for the Misbegotten. Because if I had to pick one single best performance I've ever seen, this would be it.

Cloud Nine, first with the original cast and then when Michael Jeter was in it. I saw this show three times and would gladly see it once a year for the rest of my life.

A Little Night Music with the original cast. Another show I would gladly see once a year for the rest of my life (if not more often).

A Streetcar Named Desire with Rosemary Harris. Because she broke my heart.

Happy End with Meryl Streep and Christopher Lloyd. Because it was so much fun.


And I could go on and on and on.

(Do you suppose the time machine would have a TKTS booth?)

Shows I Wish I'd Seen

There are so many shows I wish I'd seen, either because I missed brilliant performances by actors I admire (thus, just last season, The Merchant of Venice) or shows I've been told I would have adored (thus, from many years ago, A Delicate Balance). As a historian, I wish like hell, all the time, that I had had the chance to see just about every musical that I have researched, reconstructed, and written about, but that ran before I was born, or before I was old enough to see them: every single rock musical to run in New York before, say, the late 80s; every adult musical to open in New York through the 1970s.

But really, on a personal level, the show I most regret not having had the chance to see was Carrie, which remains so near and dear to so many who got the chance to see it. By all accounts, Carrie was an absolute trainwreck that nevertheless had some moments of absolute brilliance; if you don't believe me, please read Ken Mandelbaum's wonderful description of the show in the intro to his aptly titled 1991 book Not Since Carrie: 40 Years of Broadway Musical Flops. I've sat through many a disastrous production in the past few decades of regular theatergoing (for example, see my review of the first incarnation of Spider-Man on this very blog), but something tells me that Carrie still remains the megaflop that has yet to be beat.

Someone I know who saw Carrie once made a quip about it that I will always remember, and that remains one of my favorite theater stories of all time. She said that she saw the show in previews, and that it was, indeed, truly, astoundingly, wonderfully awful. "Really?" I asked. "So, when the curtain call came, was the cast booed off the stage?" "Oh, no," my friend replied, with a beatific smile and a glaze in her eyes that still haunts me. "The show got a standing ovation the night I saw it. It was JUST THAT BAD."

Seriously, how could anything top that?

Question: If You Had a Time Machine, What Show(s) Would You See?

Some of the Show Showdowners, myself included, are going to answer this question. We'd love to hear your answers too. Just click on "comments" below. Thanks!

Arias With a Twist

Photo: Steven Menendez

The four musicians are elegant and graceful. The bass player is cool and contained. The piano and drum players banter with the singer. The trumpet player may be her lover.

The four musicians are puppets, just a few of the dozens of magical Basil Twist creations playing, floating, threatening, dancing, slithering, and screwing their way through Arias With a Twist (developed by Twist and Joey Arias). Twist's puppets include aliens, Busby Berkley showgirls, hyper-well-hung devils, an octopus, and versions of Joey Arias ranging from minute to gigantic. Twist also designed the scenery, giving us a jungle, hell, outer space, and the New York City Skyline, each a cornucopia of detailed delights. You could examine the jungle backdrop for an hour and not see everything. In Arias With a Twist, the sets and puppets--and puppeteers Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith, Chris DeVille, Kirsten Kammermeyer, Matt Leabo, Jamie Moore, and Amanda Villalobos--rate five gold lamé stars.

The sole non-puppet performer, Joey Arias, sings like Billy Holiday and does physical humor like the "demented diva" he is famous for being. His faux tap dancing is great fun. I found him cold, however, and often unengaging (however, I'm not his target audience).

A bigger problem I had with the show is that too much of the humor is the same tired and predictable sex jokes that drag queens have been beating to death for decades. Granted, the audience, mostly gay men, loved the humor. They started whooping and cheering and howling before the jokes were even told, which makes sense--in many ways, the show is a huge in-joke gay party. But I'm not a gay man, and I am disappointed that Twist and Arias did not use their prodigious imaginations to come up with writing more original than the usual bitchy humor and penis and penetration jokes. (I'm also not clear why the sound had to be eardrum-destroyingly loud.)

I feel as though I saw two shows. One was tiresome. One I loved.

(press ticket, eighth row on the aisle)

Man and Boy

DISCLAIMER:Man and Boy is in previews and opens officially on October 9.

One of my favorite things about attending Roundabout theater productions is that I never have any idea what the shows are about, so I go in with no expectations or prejudices. Sometimes, as with last year's production of Brief Encounter, this works well, and I end up seeing a fantastic show that hits every emotional note perfectly and leaves me wishing I could see a show every night. Other times, it means that I end up sitting through a show that I have no interest in and can't connect to, and leaves me wishing I had known what it was about so I could avoid it.

Which brings me to last night. Terence Rattigan's play should have resonated, at least a little, since the cultural environment is similar to our own; it's the story of a father and son, meeting for the first time in five years on the eve of a global financial collapse. The father, Gregor Antonescu (Frank Langella), is being hounded by the press. He seeks refuge in his son Basil's (Adam Driver) Greenwich Village apartment. Heated words are exchanged, secrets are revealed, and lives are forever changed.

The problem with this play lies not in the individual performances, but in the source material. The first act drags on and on, with no real direction or any hint of the urgency of the situation. It ends with a series of misunderstandings that might be played for laughs in a different show, but here just makes everyone uncomfortable. The repercussions of these misunderstandings are promptly forgotten in the second act, leaving the viewer wondering why they were brought up at all.

The second act is no better. Emotional bombs are dropped left and right, but the emotional climax feels unearned. By the final scene, I didn't care whether or not Basil and his father made amends. I did wonder where his girlfriend had gone, though; she disappears sometime in the first act and is never mentioned again.

The small cast does the best they can with dreary material. Frank Langella bounces between genteel world financier and kindly if clueless father so smoothly that I believed Basil's deep angst at how to deal with him. Similarly, Driver's Basil was so shaken by his father's reappearance that I wanted to give him a hug. Still, this entire story could have been told in one 90-minute act instead of two acts and over two hours. Unless the show is considerably streamlined in the three weeks between now and the official open, this is probably a show you can skip.