Barbara Cook at Feinstein's

Reviewing Barbara Cook is as easy as one, two, three.

1. Barbara Cook is an incomparable interpreter of the American Songbook.

2. Barbara Cook lives her songs as freshly and honestly the hundreth time she sings them as the first.

3. Barbara Cook is a charming raconteur.

Okay, I guess maybe one, two, three isn't enough. Maybe ten?

4. Barbara Cook is a master at wielding a mike so that it doesn't block her face and the sound is always just right.

5. Barbara Cook is also a master at working a room, embracing people in the furthest nooks and crannies.

6. Barbara Cook is a generous, giving brilliant master classes and nurturing the next generation--and the next and the next.

7. Barbara Cook is open to all sorts of music, from discovering a song on Cathouse: The Series to admiring Lady Gaga's intelligence and voice.

8. Barbara Cook is a master class in aging gracefully.

9. Barbara Cook is funny.

10. Barbara Cook is cool.

Mind you, I know that Cook is not everyone's cup of tea. In fact, I'm not a huge fan of her CDs. But there's something amazing about seeing her in person in a small room: you realize that you are in the presence of greatness--human, confident, self-deprecating greatness.

Cook is currently appearing at Feinstein's with Michael Feinstein (she'll be back solo in April). The night I saw her, Feinstein wasn't there. The first half of the show was similar to the last show she did at Feinstein’s, but with new patter (including a lovely tale of winning the Kennedy Center Honors) and one or two new songs. Highlights included a sensitive "I Got Lost in His Arms," a yearning "I've Grown Accustomed to His Face," and a light and lovely "This Can't Be Love."

And then she announced that she had a surprise for us, and a wonderful surprise indeed: Euan Morton was there to sing a few songs--some solo, some with her. She extolled his rare and amazing natural voice, and Morton is indeed impressively talented. His version of "What'll I Do" (one of my all-time favorite songs) was one of the best I've ever heard. He also sang "Danny Boy" and Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" (wonderful!). His mike handling was some of the best I've seen among under-50 singers; I wonder if Cook gave him some pointers.

Then Cook sang some more solos. The highlight was Molinary and Butler's "Here's to Life," which could be Cook's theme song. She lives that song when she sings it and even when she doesn't.

The show ended with Cook and Morton singing "White Christmas" and then with the whole room joining them. I spend much of December muttering angrily about having Christmas Carols shoved down my throat, but this was pure joy.

If you have never seen Cook, try to do so. She’s really something. 

(Press ticket, very nice seats.)

SNOW WHITE

Gracie White as Snow White, Ashley Handel, and Laura Careless as the Evil Queen

Photo: Steven Schreiber

With two big-budget Snow White films coming out in 2012, the porcelain-faced ingénue seems poised to become the queen of the fairytale princess set. Yet, it seems unfathomable that either of Hollywood’s versions could surpass the sweetness and magic of watching Company XIV’s current revival of their 2009 production of Snow White. The spare set (designed by Zane Pihlstrom) insinuates the familiar setting: a forest (a gilded tree where the branches suspend from wires never fully attaching to the trunk) and a castle (marked by twin crystal chandeliers). But this telling of the story offers no singing dwarves. Instead, Snow White (Gracie White) lives in a world where she’s part circus performer and the Evil Queen (Laura Careless) morphs into a dancer, equally able in ballet, Russian Folk, or ballroom.

Conceived, directed and choreographed by the company founder Austin McCormick, a 2006 Juilliard graduate, with new text by Jeff Takacs (who moonlights as the MC/Narrator and Huntsman), the show combines a collection of genres, including Cirque du Soleil like acts, with dance, video, and a song catalog containing everything from Ella Fitzgerald to Vivaldi to The Rolling Stones. Yet, the myriad of styles never overwhelms; each segment eases into another. Our heroine, Snow White, more naïf here than fool, impresses with her athleticism and the ease that she rests in the circle of her protective tree even as she gullibly accepts the Evil Queen’s disguises despite multiple assignation attempts. As in the Grimm telling of the tale, Snow White’s stepmother anoints the girl as the provocateur of her distress after the magic mirror declares the child rather than herself as “fairest in the land.” The Evil Queen asks a huntsman to kill the beautiful princess and, like the familiar story, he cannot. A terrified Snow White runs through the woods—as snowflakes fall, long white ribbons release from the ceiling and Sam Hilbelink, a performer from Circus Juventas (the show features several members, including Snow White and the Prince) wrestles, twists and spins in its lengths as he embodies the storm. Snow White joins him briefly as she’s caught up in the tempest, finally sliding down the cloth’s widths onto the ground.

Here, the narrative deviates from the one we all know, and Snow White becomes a forest nymph, sitting cross-legged in a suspended circle that serves as an extension of the tree. The Evil Queen discovers the Huntsman’s double-crossing and sets off to do her own dirty work. Three times she tempts Snow White with items that could potentially kill her; each sequence feels like a ride on Disneyland’s “It’s A Small World,” with nationality specific inspired-production numbers, including one where the Evil Queen and her henchmen visit as part of a Parisian Clothier cart, clad like can-can dancers in a Baz Luhrmann film.

The costumes (Olivera Gajic), while visually stimulating with their emphasis on red, black, and white, lean toward the dominatrix side and mix black leather bustiers with high heels—for both the women and the men. In a rare dissolution of the fourth wall, costume racks sit in view of the audience, just behind the seating—and one can occasionally see actors seeking their next outfit. This adds an unexpected intimacy to the production and when Snow White skips guilelessly across the facility to reach her perch at the end of intermission, you don’t miss the signaling of a second act with the rise of a lush velvet curtain at all.

Snow White’s main flaw still resides in the character herself. Rather than learning from her lessons, Snow White repeatedly trusts the strange visitors in her woods, requiring saving from various forest friends (shown through inventive lighting and projection by Gina Scherr and Corey Tatarczuk) and finally the Prince (Joseph McEachern). Still, White manages to infuse wariness in her expression as Slavic Folk Dancers tempt her with their frolicking movements and glowingly red apples (Wait, hasn’t she been here before?) before succumbing to their charms—at least, here, she shows a slow recognition to the dangers that walk in the world. Careless plays the Evil Queen as a deliciously vain, self-indulgent bully who pushes and mocks those that serve her, while still showing vulnerability as the Queen sobs brokenly on the floor when Snow White’s beauty triumphs her own.

While, most of the circus tricks thrill, occasionally, the awkwardness of setting up a balancing act interrupts the beauty of the moment. For instance, when the Prince spies a poisoned Snow White, inert in her tree, he precariously climbs into her circle with more exertion than the dreamlike seamlessness expected. This dissipates as soon as he settles in, kisses her gently and they both ease from the perch—once more returning you to this magical version of Snow White.

The show runs from December 2 to January at the 303 Bond Street Theatre (303 Bond St.) in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. (General seating, press tickets)

Boom! (CD Review)

What happens when jazz and musical theatre singers and siblings Ann Hampton Callaway (Swing) and Liz Callaway (Baby) decide to explore the music of the sixties and early seventies? You get their entertaining new live CD Boom! 

If you are a fan of the music of that fascinating decade, the song list will probably delight you, as it delighted me: "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me," "A Case of You," "Joy to the World," "Blowin' in the Wind,""These Boots Are Made for Walking," and many more.

As people who follow the Callaways' work already know, Liz's soprano and Ann's huskier voice work together beautifully, offering both blend and contrast, and their connection and love for one another adds an extra layer to their wonderful duets. The sisters nail "Got to Get You Into My Life" and "Happy Together," and their version of "The Way We Were" is haunting and evocative. The Stevie Wonder medley is a great finale, and their sweet, loving, simple rendition of "You've Got a Friend" is a perfect encore.

Liz's solos work well. Her mini-medley of "I Know a Place" and "Downtown" is particularly successful; she captures the wistful joy and sweetness of the originals while adding her own lovely sound. On the other hand, I can't decide what I think/feel about Ann's solos. Ann can do balls-to-the-wall like no one's business; her version of "Blues in the Night" from Swing! is nothing short of thrilling. But some songs don't profit from that level of intensity, and I think Ann oversells/oversings "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," "Blowin' in the Wind," and "A Case of You." I've listened to the CD many times, and sometimes these solos strike me as, well, kinda silly. However, other times, damned if they're not flat-out impressive. I'd be fascinated to know how these interpretations strike the songs' writers, Barry Mann, Phil Spector and Cynthia Weil ("You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'), Bob Dylan ("Blowin' in the Wind"), and Joni Mitchell ("A Case of You").

On a whole, Boom! is a charming trip back in time with excellent hosts.

Thanks as always to PS Classics for separating the patter tracks from the song tracks. Good songs can be enjoyed a million times; even the best patter is ephemeral.

(press copy)

Once

Once in a while, you get to have an experience in the theatre that is thoroughly satisfying. Every now and then, the experience is completely original. Occasionally, a movie is transplanted to the stage and works.

Once, now playing at the New York Theatre Workshop, is that infrequent experience.

It isn’t a revolutionary script. It isn’t much of a story at all. It is not merely a some-enchanted-evening, nor the magical onceness of serendipity that sustains the evening. Once is about wants, the pure human desires and regrets and promises unfulfilled that plague and paralyze each of us. That is why the music haunts instead of whines. The subtext is Shakespearean, the text is fragile.

Steve Karzee, as the Guy, doesn’t act. He inhabits the aching. He broods without petulance. He is so effortlessly believable and vulnerable that he kills softly, strumming our pain and other cliches without cliche. And the words, that could easily have descended into complaint rock, bleed and break as truly as the heartiest among us.

Cristin Milioti, the Girl who breathes life into a stranger and whose honesty arrests then paroles the Guy’s heart, is amazing in a role that could have been 2 hours of nails on a chalkboard. She has the mystique to make you fall in love with your kidnapper—and her lushious voice cradles every break in your spirit.

The large cast, integral though only loosely integrated, are multi-talented, playing multiple instruments and roles and creating vital environment to a piece that is largely environmental. The Director, John Tiffany, is smart enough to showcase them for nearly a half-hour before curtain as they take the stage singing a series of bar songs on the stage that has been converted into a bar—functioning and serving alcoholic beverages before the show and at intermission. They set a perfect tone of fun and exuberance that makes the subtle strip into the full exposure of the opening number all the more gripping.

Fitting that the empty bar, the symbol of drowning in wants on the rocks, frames the open stage where the action can move through time and space unencumbered. This cinematic flow befits a film turned stage production, but more importantly it befits this production. Once hits every note beautifully.

There is talk of Once moving to Broadway, but it is so perfectly realized at NYTW that you should catch it there before the towering bar loses its majesty in a more majestic house. Something this good only comes along once and a while. I already have my ticket to see it again. Once was not enough.

Ch'inglish

The first word that came to my mind after seeing David Henry Hwang's Ch'inglish, currently running at the Longacre, was "solid." I meant it, I thought to myself, in only the most satisfying, positive way: the play, its players, the direction, lighting, scenery, sound design and costumes balanced one another beautifully; the show was entertaining and engaging; I had a good time. In one word, then: "solid."

But then the inner dialogue began, and with it, doubts about my choice of words, and thus my initial reaction. Because really, if you think about it, "solid," at least the way it's often used in mainstream American parlance, is not necessarily the kindest or most effusive descriptor one might have come up with. "Solid?" my inner doubts began to nag at me. "SOLID? Not 'excellent'? Not 'brilliant'? Not 'sublime'? Merely 'solid'--as in 'good,' or 'reliable' but nothing more than that?"

By the time I got home from the theater, I was almost angry at myself for allowing the word "solid" to have even entered my mind.
Admittedly, I don't always obsess over a single word the way I did after leaving the Longacre theater last week, but then again, Ch'inglish is a show that's all about language. And how language contributes not only to understanding--cross-cultural and otherwise--but also how it adds to the absolute mess that is culture, let alone cross-culture, in the first place. If you think about it--and I have, a lot, since seeing the show--language not only influences gender, class, and racial politics, but it also allows us to cultivate both the masks we wear for others and the characters we convince ourselves that we are. Less obvious, perhaps, is the fact that language can actually hinder communication as often as it can aid it.

As a playwright, Hwang is no stranger to themes relating to culture, persona, and the fluidity of identity--he wrestled with them all in M. Butterfly, the show that put him on the map in 1988, and in Face Value, which I saw in previews in 1993, and which, alas, never managed to open. Ch'inglish revisits all of these themes, but places them in a broader, transglobal perspective.

I read some review, somewhere, that likened Ch'inglish to a wacky sitcom, and in some ways, it is--but only on the very surface: A naive American businessman named Daniel Cavanaugh (Gary Wilmes) decides to expand his Ohio-based sign-making company, and thus attempts to make inroads by branching out into the "small" city of Guiyang (4 million), China. He hires an interpreter, Peter Timms (Stephen Pucci), and begins to negotiate with the minister of culture, Cai Guoliang (Larry Lei Zhang). Initially raising fierce opposition to Cavanaugh's very presence is the assistant culture minister, Xi Yan (Jennifer Lim, in hands-down one of the most extraordinary, fascinating performances I've seen in, like, forever), who, soon enough, grows closer to Cavanaugh than anyone else involved in the negotiations. Nothing is quite what it seems; wackiness ensues. Hence the sitcom comparisons.

Yet the show wrestles with so many tangled, confusing, fascinating themes that it's likely to burrow its way into your psyche in ways that a vast majority of wacky sitcoms can't. It's funny, yes, but it also questions language and cultural constructs, and shines new light on the ways in which these things help and hinder communication and understanding--of both ourselves and others.

Alas, Ch'inglish has no big stars or pyrotechnics, and thus is not likely to last as long as it deserves to. When I saw it, the refreshingly multicultural house was not-so-refreshingly half-empty. So see it soon, if you can--it deserves your attention, and demands that you doubt the ways you think about it long after you've exited the theater.

The Cherry Orchard

Anton Chekhov considered The Cherry Orchard to be a comedy. Its first director, Stanislavski, believed it was a tragedy. Since its first production over a hundred years ago, directors have been striving to find the perfect balance for this great-granddaddy of dramedies. While director Andrei Belgrader writes that he is "firmly in Chekhov's corner," he fails to mine the deeper levels of humor in his worthy but uninspiring production at the Classic Stage Company. The obviously comic moments are there--the pratfalls, the insults, the nodding off midsentence. But the deeper comedy, the rueful sense of human limitations, is lost, arguably because the production tries too hard.

Take the scene in which Varya (the wonderful Juliet Rylance) believes--as does the audience--that Lopakhin (John Turturro) is about to propose to her. This scene is a master class in subtext. Romance and marriage are never referred to; instead, the characters discuss their plans for the immediate future and, yes, the weather. Without context, their dialogue has no weight at all; with context, it is heartbreaking, and, potentially, heartbreakingly funny. The last thing it needs is Lopakhin getting down on one knee again and again, drowning the delicate humor with blatant signifying. Belgrader also has the characters directly address the audience, with one actually sitting in the first row and offering the woman next to her a bite of a pickle. While this decision adds a little immediacy and a couple of (cheap) laughs, it ruins the sense of time and place.

Overall, however, this production does well by The Cherry Orchard. The themes of class differences, societal changes, passivity in the face of disaster, luck versus hard work, and the price of loving the wrong person are all well-delineated, and parts are quite moving.

Josh Hamilton strikes the perfect tone as the perennial student; Daniel Davis is sweet and touching as the befuddled brother; Alvin Epstein is perfect as the ancient servant; and Roberta Maxwell nails the strange role of the assistant-slash-magician. I did not buy Dianne Wiest as a Russian at the turn of the 20th century; her voice, look, and carriage all signify late 20th, early 21st century. In addition, her relatively small eyes don't read well without the benefit of closeups (I am a huge fan of hers in film). Elisabeth Waterston does well as the younger daughter; Katherine Waterston seems to me miscast. (When I saw that two of Sam Waterston's daughters were in the cast, my first thought was that the Gummers must have been busy.)

The scenic design by Santo Loquasto is beautiful. The costumes by Marco Piemontese are quite nice, but I wish that the CSC had the budget to allow the characters more outfits.

All in all, this is a solid production of the Cherry Orchard, with its strengths outweighing its weaknesses.

(Press ticket, first row center)