Happiness

photo: Paul Kolnik

What one moment of your life would you pick to live in for eternity? That's the question put to a subway car full of the newly dead in this weak, dramatically pat new musical directed by Susan Stroman. One of the show's first segments isn't bad - an elderly woman rises from her wheelchair to replace a vision of her younger self dancing with her first love - but any hopes of Follies-like resonance or thematic complexity are soon dashed by the superficial, often saccharine vignettes that follow. Of course the married couple pick the same moment (awww!) and of course the self-loathing conservative radio host decides to live eternally in her free love hippie past: the show's book traffics in predictable pedantic cliches rather than insight, and isn't helped by an uninteresting pastiche score. The material may be lifeless but the cast, which includes Jenny Powers, Joanna Gleason, and Sebastian Arcules, is to die for. Hunter Foster, playing a kind of civil servant Emcee of the underworld, is especially sensational: he commits so fully to, and throws his considerable know-how and charisma behind, his big song and dance number that he puts a pulse in this dead-on-arrival musical.

Finian's Rainbow

Photo: Joan Marcus

The best Encores! production of the past few years, Finian's Rainbow was two and a half hours of pure delight. Virtually the whole cast shone, and oh! the voices! and oh! the dancing! The show is a well-meaning hodgepodge with some pointed--and funny--things to say about racism and about money, but it is Burton Lane's music and E.Y. Harburg's lyrics that soar. For me, the discovery of the evening was the fabulous Kate Baldwin. Her "How Are Things In Glocca Morra" was clear and sweet and lovely and yearning and beautiful. Beside having that stunning voice, Baldwin can do comedy, drama, and romance and is quite pretty. Speaking of pretty, Cheyenne Jackson was a total charmer, as usual. Their "Old Devil Moon" was a sexy treat. To name a few other standout performances, Terri White did a kickass "Necessity," and Ruben Santiago-Hudson was quite effective as a white racist turned black. It was also a treat to see Encores! regular J.D. Webster play two small but fun parts; I first noticed him as a dancer years ago, and it's nice to see him get speaking roles as well.

Impressionism

photo: Joan Marcus

There's tinkly tasteful piano music in the interminable interludes during scene changes, as either Joan Allen or Jeremy Irons mopes around a desk looking thoughtful: is Jack O'Brien's directorial strategy to put the audience to sleep? The play, cut during previews to an eighty-minute one-act, could be cut even further to its final two scenes since it isn't until those that the play has dramatic interest. The two stars seem listless as art dealers who reveal themselves to each other by talking about the works hung in their gallery: their performances are thoughtful, naturalistic, scaled for intimacy, and as fatally unsurprising as the play. Andre de Shields does best of those in the (overqualified) supporting cast as a kindly stooped-over shopkeep who comes in at the eleventh hour with more plain-spoken, no-nonsense insight into one of the paintings than either of the smartypants in the room. It's a groanworthy role with a cheap purpose, but we care more about him in five minutes than we do about the art dealers all night.

Miss Evers' Boys

Photo: Nathan Johnson

David Feldshuh's Miss Evers' Boys, about the infamous Tuskegee Experiment in which a group of African-American men were deliberately denied treatment for syphilis, has been around for 17 years, most notably in its 1997 Emmy-winning TV adaptation. But in the current production by the Red Fern Theatre Company it still feels as fresh as a spring rain. The stars seem to have aligned for this production: excellent actors perfectly cast, with a director who knows just how to seize on the strengths of the script. Feldshuh's central insight was to focus on the character of Eunice Evers, a selfless nurse who, believing she is doing her best for the men, wins their trust and cares for them through their years of illness and suffering. Played with the utmost grace by Nedra McClyde, who was excellent in Victor Woo and TBA and gets a well-deserved central role here, Nurse Evers is so strongly animated by her calling that she never starts a family of her own; the men become her charges, and she comes to love them dearly. But as Nurse Evers loses faith and the anguish of her inner conflict grows, Ms. McClyde makes us feel both utter sorrow and powerful admiration for the character. Meanwhile the men she cares for make a terrific ensemble, and each has beautifully-played individual scenes as well.

Henri Gabler

Hedda Gabler is arguably theatre's most enigmatic classic character, but it's generally agreed that her cruelty and destructiveness are partly a rebellion against the societal constrictions placed on her. In Exigent Theatre's modern-day, gender-changed adaptation the character, now Henri, doesn't seem to have societal constrictions: he's a famous member of the gay cultural elite, a blogger whose popularity rivals The Huffington Post and whose recent gay marriage is entirely state legal. The playwright (Alexander Burns) scores best when he steers the play into baldly political territory - there's an especially provocative speech in which one character vows to live "old school" and avoid marriage entirely - but he's constricted by a faithfulness to the blueprint of Ibsen's play that sometimes obscures the message of his adaptation. Additionally there are some odd choices that one doesn't know how to interpret- one might expect the Lovborg character to be a passionate free thinking modern artist rather than the moeneyed square in a suit that he is here, for instance. Nonetheless, there is a good deal of wicked fun in this "queer" revision and an exceptional performance - by Vince Nappo, playing the role based on Tesman - among some very good ones. Nappo, brilliant last Summer in Other Bodies at The Fringe, is the kind of actor who seems to make nothing but intelligent choices in his approach to a character and who fills up every moment on stage.

West Side Story

photo: Joan Marcus

You watch the dancing in this revival - skirt hems being lifted, men leaping through the air with one arm up and the other out - and marvel at the brilliance of Jerome Robbins' craft, but you don't feel the tension that the dances used to convey; the choreography of West Side Story has dated in a way that the moves in On The Town have not, perhaps because we've seen so much dance in the intervening years to express urban danger and bravado. Still, aside from hearing the glorious score, the dancing is the best reason to see this mostly unexciting revival in which none in the principal cast - apart from Karen Olivo, very good as Anita - are up to the task. (Josefina Scaglione does well as Maria in the first act - she's remarkably credible at sincerity and innocence - but she lacks the dramatic heft to be effective in the second.) The much-discussed infrequent use of Spanish for select scenes turns out to be nothing more than decorative: sometimes it's contrary to common sense, such as when Anita and Maria don't want the policeman to know what they're planning but speak in English, after having sung all of "A Boy Like That/I Have A Love" in Spanish.