Much Ado About Nothing

The many productions of Much Ado About Nothing I have seen boasted wonderful Beatrices or wonderful Benedicks, but not since Sam Waterson and Kathleen Widdoes in the glorious AJ Antoon version (available on DVD) have I seen a wonderful Beatrice-Benedick pair.

Hamish Linklater, Lily Rabe
Photo: Tammy Shell

Last night, I went into the New York Shakespeare Festival production at the Delacorte, starring Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater, with optimism. Both performers are excellent, funny, likeable, and comfortable with Shakespearean language. Would they make the sexy, smart, evenly matched couple I've been hoping for since the 1970s?

Yes! They are everything I hoped for. Add to that smooth direction by Jack O'Brien, gorgeous design by John Lee Beatty, and nice acting by a largely strong cast, and this is a Much Ado to see.

Since I saw the third performance, it would be premature to give a full review, particularly in terms of any weaknesses (which were minimal). But it's not too early to say: get thee to the Delacorte.

And, speaking of the Delacorte--what a magical place it is! I've seen over a dozen shows there, some more than once, and every single time I walk up the stairs and into the theatre, my heart says Wow!

(won tickets in the lottery; row U, extreme audience right)

Song of Spider-Man

Song of Spider-Man--or, as it is more fully know in these post-colon-crazy days: Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History--is a must-read for anyone who is interested in musical theatre. Not because it's brilliant (it isn't) or incredibly insightful (ditto), but because it's engrossing and it exists. (For a long and thoughtful review by Liz Wollman, click here.)

I wish there were "making of" books or documentaries for dozens, if not hundreds, of shows, and I'm always grateful when one appears. In addition, Song of Spider-Man has the great advantage of being straight from one of the horse's mouths. Author Glen Berger cowrote Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark with director-creator Julie Taymor.

On the other hand, the glaring limit of any book like this--any memoir, really--is not knowing whether the writer is a reliable narrator of her or his own life. As recent research on memory has shown, even the most honest writer will still be wrong part of the time. Add to the weakness of human memory the strength of human ego, and all memoirs-autobiographies must be taken with Gibralter-sized grains of salt. My guess, and obviously it's a just a guess, is that Berger works extremely hard to be as honest as possible, and that his stories are nevertheless just as prey to the whims of memory as anybody else's.

The Tonys are coming! The Tonys are coming!

Oh, my heart is filled with joy!

This year, more than perhaps any other, the race is wide open, just about every Tony award is up for grabs, and no one knows what the hell is going on.  Nevertheless, the good people at Oxford University Press asked me to write about the awards for their blog, so I did. You can link to the post RIGHT HERE. 

And remember what I said: don't give professed experts, futurists, or mind-readers any money, or let them set up a Tony pool for you. Unless it has something to do with NPH winning an award or Hugh Jackman being fabulous. Everybody loves those dudes.

A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder

When it opened in November, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder got some of the best reviews of the season. Which is especially nice because it is a small, old-fashioned musical with no shit blowing other shit up, and no big names associated with it (unless you count Hugh Jackman's wife, who is one of the producers). It is not based on a well-known film, television show or book, and its original score is not even remotely based in contemporary pop song (it pays propers to Gilbert and Sullivan).

I say "especially nice" not because I am particularly partial to small shows in which no shit gets blown up by other shit, but because we are repeatedly being told that there is no longer room on Broadway for small, solid, non-branded, original shows that seem to come out of nowhere. So every time one opens--to raves, no less!--I can't help but cheer for the little guy.

That being said, this little guy has struggled pretty hard since it opened and got raved about in the press. Gentleman's Guide flew under the radar for months, (usually) grossing just enough to stay open. Apparently, through much of the run, there was no small amount of anxiety among performers who couldn't help but notice that they were playing to an awful lot of half-empty houses.

This has all changed in recent weeks. When the Tony nominations came out in April, Gentleman's Guide had been chugging along so quietly and so modestly for so long that there was real surprise about the fact that it got the most nods (ten) of any musical to open all year. Less surprising was the almost immediate box office bump: not 24 hours after the nominations were announced, tickets for the musical, previously abundant on all the discount sites, were suddenly hot and hard to come by. Within a week, Gentleman's Guide was reporting its highest grosses, ever. I know this because I'd assumed I'd just waltz in to see it a week or so before the Tony broadcast this Sunday. Oops.

Kvelertak, Gojira, and Mastodon

No, motherfuckers, I'm not kidding. A show's a show, and I saw this one, so I'm writing it up.

A little background before I explain why I just called you a motherfucker: I've never self-identified as a metalhead, but I've known plenty in my life, and the one I've been closest to for longest is my husband. During the twenty-plus years that we've been together, he has introduced me--either directly or by osmosis due to repeated playings in our various abodes--to music that is far more aggressive than the stuff I typically seek out on my own. Our tastes have always been pretty distinct: as kids, long before we met, I was memorizing every Joni Mitchell album I could get my hands on, while he was feuding with his big sister because she needed an emergency appendectomy and still wouldn't let him have her Iron Maiden ticket.

Because we respect each other's tastes in entertainment enough not to mock one another openly (at least, not regularly), and because we actually dig hanging out together, my husband and I have accompanied one another to plenty of things we otherwise wouldn't have bothered with: he's sat through a lot of rock musicals, for example, and I've been to my share of concerts featuring screaming guitars played by long-haired men (and the occasional woman) who regularly use "motherfucker" as a term of endearment with which to address the audience (Do you understand now.....motherfuckers?). At home, he (usually) tolerates the earnest hippie crap I listen to while I cook dinner, and I (usually) tolerate the squealing, grinding crap he listens to while he does the dishes and makes the kids' school lunches. He has even come to like some of my music, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that over the years I've developed a genuine affection for many songs by bands whose logos include lightning bolts, umlauts, and the occasional bloody fang.

Violet

Few people look directly at Violet (Sutton Foster), and those who do tend to react in unsettling, unsubtle ways. Badly scarred as a child by an axehead that flew off its handle, Violet has grown as used to carefully averted eyes as she has to taunts and lightning-fast reactions that reflect pity or disgust. The ugly, jagged scar the accident left on her face matches the emotional scarring she has subsequently sustained. At 25, Violet is sad about or angry at just about everything: at her mother for dying and leaving her and her father (Alexander Gemignani) alone in their poor, rural, southern home; at her doting father, who was using the offending axe and who, like Violet, can't forgive himself; at the people she meets who mock her openly; at the people she meets who attempt to be kind.

After a lifetime of wishing the scar away, Violet is damaged and desperate and, despite her cynicism, prone to magical thinking. Hence her decision to take herself and a lot of money on a Greyhound bus all the way to Tulsa to seek out a televangelist she's convinced herself can heal her. On her pilgrimage, Violet meets two servicemen: Monty (Colin Donnell), a white, womanizing partyboy, and Flick (Joshua Henry), an African-American reform-school survivor who wants to make as much of his adult life as he can. This won't be easy, of course: Violet is set in the deep south in 1964. While no longer relegated to the back of the bus, Flick is nevertheless made endlessly aware of the fact that his future won't be as free or as easy as Monty's. Like Violet, he's grown as used to not being looked at as he has to being looked at but not really seen.