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What do you get when you take a porn classic, take out the nudity, and add music? Good campy fun.
In 2005 I raved about Steven Epps' and Dominique Serrand's interpretation of Moliere's The Miser. Their current collaboration, The Deception, is based on 18th century writer Pierre Marivaux's La Fausse Suivante, which has been freely translated as, The False Servant or Companion or Follower or Confidante. All are equally fitting. However, their choice of "The Deception" is certainly most appropriate.
I watched Rob Becker's 90-minute stand-up routine about the differences between men and women -- especially husbands and wives -- with constantly conflicting emotions. One moment my inner voice said, "How familiar, how old hat," the next it shut up and I found myself laughing. Never uproariously, never out of some kind of shock of recognition as at early Lenny Bruce / Richard Pryor. Becker isn't that bold or original; his cutting-edge is about as keen as a butter knife.
A shoo-in for any Milwaukee critic's Top 10 list is the current Milwaukee Repertory Theater production of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance. In a production that borders on perfection, director Edward Morgan slices through the gauze of a seemingly well-ordered suburban lifestyle. Though the play won a Pulitzer Prize in 1966, it remains remarkably fresh and funny. (Clearly, Albee was ahead of his time.)
Marge, a woman who obviously rules the local social scene, pushes her way through a row of patrons, down the center aisle, and takes full command of the stage. The stage is hidden by sheer white satiny cloth, a not-quite-opaque "show curtain." This is definitely a woman you do not want to tangle with -- ever!
Thus, she sets the style for Guillermo Reyes' Deporting The Divas at Diversionary Theater. The forth wall is broken and far beyond repair. Marge is pompously played by Jason Waller, who is also responsible for four other characters.
Sitting through Mac Wellman's pedantically titled Description Beggared; or the Allegory of WHITENESS, (the caps and punctuation are his) commissioned by Actors Theatre of Louisville for this year's Humana Festival of New American Plays, is a trying experience. Trying to make sense of it, to figure out what is going on and why, yields slim results. Yet the play's visual and verbal effects are striking, even as they confound us.
Mac Wellman has been an Off-Broadway mainstay for 20 years, producing a steady stream of poetic plays that joyously joust with language, impishly flirt with American mass culture, and triumphantly elude all meaning. Description Beggared, currently running in the cozy Black Box studio theater in the catacombs of Children's Theater, is wedded to songs composed by longtime musical accomplice Michael Roth. Or it was -- until the young banshees of the Farm Theater Company got hold of it.
Here, through the imagination of playwright Paula Vogel, is what Shakespeare didn't show us in Othello: Desdemona, the doomed wife of the Moor general; Emilia, the equally doomed wife of the lethally conniving Iago; and Bianca, the courtesan with a thing for the pawn Cassio, dishing and dissing the men in their lives. In this telling, they've had way more men than Shakespeare ever let on. Here, though, the deceit and treachery the women visit on each other are center stage.
Desire under the Elms is definitely not for the weak of heart. Eugene O'Neill's story is placed in a remote New England farm. Ephraim Cabot (Jim Chovick), 70-something, brings his much younger bride, Abbie (Jessica John), home to meet his family of three boys. Youngest son, Eben (Francis Gercke), steals Ephraim's rainy-day money to stake older brothers Peter and Simon (John Garcia and Craig Huisenga) for their quest to California. Eben is determined to hate Abbie, but the young man ends up lusting for her.
Devon Tramore (Jo Anne Glover) is one of the first female jockeys, a winning jockey, but horse owners think she's just a fluke. She has won on Devil Dog Six, but when the big race comes, it is a male jockey in the saddle even though the previous Preakness had been won with a female astride.
There doesn't seem to be a great need for another new stage version of Jane Austin's most beloved novel, but Geva's Pride and Prejudice is a handsome, well-produced and smartly repackaged one, and Austen's period romances seem to be oddly in vogue now that they seem entirely foreign to our society. They are, of course, women's novels, entirely concerned with who should marry whom and what each should wear and the glories of moving up in a rigidly class-conscious society.
Much was riding on Stratford's opening-night production of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in the great Canadian Festival's landmark Festival Theater. The 2008 season had been chosen by three artistic directors under the general direction of Antoni Cimolino; but a few months before it opened, Marti Maraden and Don Shipley resigned as artistic directors, citing interference by Cimolino and favoritism toward the ideas of artistic director #3, Des McAnuff.
The Shaw Festival in beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, has established such an impressive tradition of top-level theater, mixing modern classics with newly discovered or rediscovered thought-provoking plays and musicals in impeccable productions, that expectations always run high for each season. Canada's best actors join, return to, or continue in Shawfest's superb ensemble. So the accomplished new offerings of their 2008 opening week had no productions to absolutely avoid, but, unfortunately, only one that was memorably thrilling, The Stepmother.
Although there are textual and character cuts, The Players' version of The Tempest also adds modern magic to the play's "rough magic" with rocking music and spinning lighting. And oh, yes, the hero's a heroine: Prospera (played with full authority by Linda MacCluggage, done up in spun gold right down to her sandals).
Janet Reno wants me to do a makeover. She wants me to bring out her hidden femininity, says Dame Edna candidly and with a sincerity that could serve as a lesson in misplaced diplomacy. Notwithstanding this endearingly egotistical superstar's illusions of being a renowned "beauty consultant, investigative journalist, chanteuse, swami, adviser to British royalty, grief counselor, spin-doctor and icon," Dame Edna is to be seriously considered as a force for the millennium.
In Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance!, creator/performer Barry Humphries, the world- class lively transvestite and master comedian pours out brilliant quips. He's a great actor in a great role, and it's all laugh after laugh with amazing timing. His audience interaction, which is a good part of the show, is as good as it gets, and far superior to most comedians I have seen - and and I've only seen 2026 of them. It's insightful, good natured, and hilarious.
I had managed to steer almost totally clear of Dame Edna before my first live dose, reading lightly about Australian actor Barry Humphries' creation and skimming exactly one interview with milady. So I enjoyed myself immensely during my first exposure. The tacky glasses, the silky lavender hair, and the dopey gladiolas were all new to me. These would all probably become less amusing if I had to swallow them nightly. But I love Dame Edna's magnanimous, patronizing cruelty, showered with equal glee upon President Bush and the clueless electorate who keep him in office.
Think of Edgar and Alice as the Swedish Al and Peg Bundy, trading barbs and dirty tricks up until the very last moment when they realize that despite everything, they can't live without each other. By treating August Strindberg's play more as wickedly dark comedy than viciously Bergmanesque drama, director Sean Mathias gives the estimable Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren much to play with, even if they can't quite make the underplotted, repetitious first act and occasionally off-the-wall second act turn into some kind of powerful statement about codependency.
New York audiences and press have been unkind to gothic rock and roll spoofs, from goofy sleepers like Zombie Prom and Zombies from the Beyond to the truly zany Bat Boy. That's not likely to change with Dance of the Vampires, a gigantic cauldron of puns, kitsch, heavy satire and shameless Mel Brooksian mugging that would be a lot more fun were it not so long and so aggravatingly LOUD (even non-musical dialogue is miked at teeth-rattling levels).
Dance of the Vampires is a cheery cartoon with happy dancing and trivial songs. It's an unsophisticated, entertaining, harmless fairy tale, all tongue-in-cheek, with a cast of fine voices and real dancers and acrobats -- sort of a humorous tale by Grimm, for the whole family. The music by Jim Steinman seems like lesser Lloyd Webber, with a little Gilbert and Sullivan on occasion. But when Michael Crawford opens up his pipes, there's a show.
The world must have been a more gracious place thirty years ago. How else to explain the cause celebre Peter Nichols' dark comedy, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, became, all because a tired middle-class couple made jokes about raising a severely retarded and paraplegic daughter. Maybe Joe Egg opened the way for Timmy in "South Park," but there's little else to recommend the piece now - especially judging from the long, tedious, low-voltage revival now at the American Airlines Theater.
Some subjects are timeless, and Peter Nichols' 1967 play, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, about the complexities of being a parent to a severely handicapped child, will never seem dated. But don't expect a profound, heart-wrenching play about the tragedy of Joe Egg, the ten-year-old Josephine, nicknamed by her doting parents who, long ago, decided against institutionalizing or euthanasia.
It's not easy to impersonate a terminally handicapped child, but Madeleine Martin does very well with this role. Eddie Izzard and Victoria Hamilton also excel in the roles of Bri & Sheila, her despairing parents, who devise endless games to conceal their heartbreak. Dana Ivey is outrageous as Bri's interfering mother. Michael Gaston & Margaret Colin are amusing as clueless do-gooders. Laurence Boswell staged.
Eddie Izzard gives a star turn in Peter Nichols' A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, bringing a gentleness to the very stylized character of the husband in a couple who have a totally disabled daughter whom they care for. It's an odd play which unconventionally breaks the convention of the "fourth wall," and each character addresses the audience directly. Izzard gives great Fuddy Duddy as he shows us various doctors or a vicar and keeps his performance underplayed in what is actually full-out broad comedy, making this very heavy play humorous.
The first thing I knew I had to do before I went to Def Poetry Jam was to try and put out of my head whatever pre-conceived notions and prejudices I have about the current street culture, how it does nothing for me and why it doesn't speak to me, including hip-hop music and rap. (I do remember when rap used to be called patter and Gilbert and Sullivan had the market.) So I was completely unprepared for the exhilarating experience I ended up having courtesy of hip-hop mogul/entrepreneur Russell Simmons and his collaborator and director, Stan Lathan.
Def Poetry Jam on Broadway is a poetic outpouring of ethnic frustration and rage -- the pain of the poor. The darker people (black, Latin, Asian, Arabic and various mixtures) and their working-class neighbor express their inner turbulence and anger -- for people in high-priced Broadway seats. It's made up of very inventive poems of protest, life, love, all parallel to or tangential from the main stream, performed by their creators, including a teeny Puerto Rican woman (Mayda Del Valle) who is very heavy and a big heavy guy (Poetri) who is the lightness in the show.
Harvesting the creme de la crème of the burgeoning poetry slam circuit, producer Russell Simmons and director Stan Lathan have honed a new theatrical format that uses rap and performance art as its twin launching pads. The result is nothing like a musical.
So much of what's on Broadway is opulent to the point of being over-produced, it's invariably nice to come across a down-dressed, lower-key evening of intelligent comedy. Rob Becker's Defending The Caveman fits the bill in many ways; Becker's monologue offers a lot of amusing material about the basic differences between men and women, and he has a malleable face that can go from couch potato to Cro-magnon in seconds flat.
Okay, maybe I saw a different show. Ben Brantley of the New York Times feels that Michael Frayn's Democracy is one of the greatest dramas of our time. I found it a colossal bore. In this view of German leader Willy Brandt and his rise to power, of the intricacies of the spy system between East and West Germany, and of interlocking loyalties, the political machinations are interesting, but the endless exposition gets dull. Director Michael Blakemore keeps the actors moving physically; there much motion on the creatively-designed, two-level set by Peter J.
Michael Frayn's theater accomplishments are truly amazing. With his two previous signature works, Noises Off and Copenhagen, the playwright ranged from backstage farce to nuclear fission and uncertainty theory. Now with Democracy, he has veered off into high-stakes Cold War politics, spiced with the machinations of party infighting and the deviousness of embedded spies. Yet there isn't a full act of honest-to-God stage dialogue in the three works put together!
This attractive, nicely appointed revival of Noel Coward's 1933 gemstone seems designed not for living, but for loathing of critics who will sneer at its embellishments. Director Joe Mantello (The Vagina Monologues) heightens the homosexual current that was already run through it (including a more-than-friendly smooch between leads Alan Cumming and Dominic West) and Robert Brill's seductive, massive sets suggest a tour of Europe via Larger-Than-Life Land.
Joe Mantello's revival of Noel Coward's most envelope-pushing work starts as strong drama, meanders into mildy amusing comedy and ends as sour farce. Alan Cumming's adorable until he turns into a hammy transvestite freak; Jennifer Ehle's Gilda would be more at home in a Lillian Hellman potboiler than here. By the time Gilda ditches upright Ernest for her desperate friends, we're ready to take out the menage a trash.
In Terrence McNally's Deuce, we have two old Acting Monuments, Angela Lansbury and Marian Seldes, playing two old Tennis Monuments watching a tennis match. Early in the play, when these two are on, it doesn't matter what they say; it's interesting as these wonderful antiques watch the game. When we cut to the booth where the commentators are, it goes banal. Direction of the commentators by Michael Blakemore is poor, without a believable word from them. Also, a strange, odd-looking autograph hunter is introduced, I can't figure out for what.
After a first scene that's as dull and expository as only openers of American comedies from yesteryear can be, Dinner at Eight quickly reaffirms its status as a classic by layering character quirks and tangled relationships into a story both funny and still satirically stinging. As soon as preening Carlotta Vance (the ever-treasurable Marian Seldes) arrives at her old beau's office seeking financial advice, the machinations click into high gear and stay there till the slightly deflated ending.
A failure to recall details of the movie enhanced my enjoyment of this musical about con men enjoying the Riviera courtesy of rich women. Lawrence (smooth John Lithgow), aided by local official Andre (cosmopolitan, handsome Gregory Jbara), fleece the bored rich, like romance-starved Muriel (smart-talking Joanna Gleason). On a train where small-time hustler Freddy (dizzying, quick-quipping Norbert Leo Butz) meets Lawrence, they make a huge bet that whoever clips the next rich pigeon also gets the territory.
The musical Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, book by Jeffrey Lane, music and lyrics by David Yazbek, is not the movie of the same name, so don't expect to root for the older, more suave con man, played by John Lithgow, as we did for Michael Caine. This show tilts the other way - we root for the intruder Freddy, performed brilliantly by Norbert Leo Butz. Lithgow's Jameson is a smarmy wise-ass of a roue; Butz is the comic everyman, and his absurd portrayal of Lithgow's demented brother is so hilarious, it will probably win him the Tony.
The Dracula story is already a satire because of its familiarity, and in Dracula, The Musical, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and music by Frank Wildhorn, they do start off with familiar references and jokes like, "She is of good blood," which get laughs. But that's about it. The rest of the show is stiff and clunky, with derivative songs that mostly hold up the action. However, the design team gives us amazing visuals that never quit.
Regina Taylor's Drowning Crow is a mess based on Chekhov's The Seagull. Set on South Carolina's Gullah Islands, with a black cast, it's a good idea gone blooey. Two things are necessary in theater: communicate and entertain. Poor direction by Marion McClinton undercuts the simple communication of the content -- jumping around while talking breaks our empathy with the characters, especially in the case of the very handsome Anthony Mackie playing a troubled writer, whose histrionic antics distance us from the story.
(see Criticopia listing under "How The Grinch Stole Christmas")
With An Inspector Calls so successful as refurbished with astonishing scene design and attention to social message, no wonder similar treatment is being lavished on J. B. Priestley's Dangerous Corner. Though neither the play nor the staging is as good, Priestley's experiment (for his day) with realism and time affords isn't bad to look at or listen to.
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