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Matthew Barber's Enchanted April is a fine English play done beautifully -- a domestic drama that peeks into a pre-feminist time as four women rent a chateau in Italy to get away from their London lives.
So how's Bernadette? That question has surely taken on more meanings than the producers of the current Gypsy revival intended. Of course, everyone wants to know how Bernadette Peters stands up to the memories of Merman and Lansbury (and, for some, Tyne Daly). But Peters' numerous health-related absences ended up giving the question a more urgent slant -- will she be playing tonight or will her understudy be offering "Rose's Turn," "Some People," and the numerous other classics Mama Rose belts as she fights for her daughters' careers?
Bernadette Peters herself is a great theatrical experience, and in the current Gypsy on Broadway she brings a vulnerability as well as the strength and power of Mama Rose to her performance. Directed by Sam Mendes, it's a very entertaining, imaginative production, a tuneful treat with strong dramatic content, lively Sondheim lyrics, hummable music by Jule Styne, book by Arthur Laurents.
Too many recent stagings of Eugene O'Neill's greatest play - arguably the greatest of all American plays - have tried to rush the actors, cut the script, or take other desperate measures to shave the show's outsized running time. Granted, the current Broadway revival's 255-minute journey does make us wonder if a few of the repetitious arguments could be tightened here and there.
This American Masterpiece is the dark side of O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!. Long Day's Journey needs no commentary, but this new production - staged by Robert Falls - is Magisterial! Vanessa Redgrave is heart-breaking as the tragically addicted Mary Tyrone. [This did not prevent a Jewish critic sitting next to me from observing that "Redgrave supports the Arabs!"] Brian Dennehy is wonderfully self-pitying-Irish as the miserly husband & father - and ruined actor - James Tyrone, for whom drink is a Good Man's Failing.
More like the look of chintz and the sound of yawns. Just when off-Broadway's Hank Williams: Lost Highway came along to show how a musical revue could be smart, affecting and even sometimes thrilling, Broadway dredges up this reminder of just how dreary a pastiche can be. Oh sure, the first fifteen minutes are amiable enough, as good, personable singers like Liz Callaway, Janine LaManna and the capacious Capathia Jennings sing some hit tunes by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
Subtitled, "The Songs of Burt Bacharach & Hal David," this show is definitely not a musical, nor yet quite a revue. The songs are not block-busters, or even that memorable, unless you came of age when they were hot. The cast is able, without being compelling - or especially attractive. The sets look like perambulating rabbit-cages and the costumes seem from Daffy's rather than H & M. Astonishing - and depressing - that the lackluster choreography is credited to Ann Reinking. Scott Ellis directed, but he has certainly had better nights than this one.
The Look of Love: The Songs of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, is one of the most ill-conceived musicals I've ever seen. From an unimaginative start (how can you sing "Don't Ever Go" with an unending smile?) to choreography from some long-ago book of moves with some physical actions at inappropriate moments, crude costumes, meaningless scenery of cages and chain link fences, it's all tedious, with no humor, and is basically tasteless. They have the rhythm but do not delve into the content of the songs.
The reading is a neglected and under-rated form; it's too often seen as a half-created production, as if it should be something it doesn't want to be. Now the form has been commercially elevated to Broadway in Salome: The Reading, with Al Pacino.
The only thing I remember about the previous Broadway go-`round for Al Pacino's pet project, Salome, was its camp star lisping "Dance for me, Salome!" in a manner so effeminate, one wondered whether Herod wouldn't rather have John the Baptist waltz for him instead. Well, Pacino's mugging madly again, this time without scenery but also, mercifully, without the swishiness. As such, his natural command of a stage fascinates, and we do stay awake to see how he'll deliver every line of Oscar Wilde's thuddingly repetitious script.
Freed from the constraints of network television, bolstered by a crowd of left-leaning New York theatergoers, comedian Bill Maher should have all the reason in the world to come out with both guns blazing, shooting satirical bullets through Democrats and Republicans with equal gusto. He should score as many "boos" as "yays" by being politically (and scabrously) incorrect yet truthful and gut-funny. Certainly, Victory Begins at Home has its zingers and its "Did he really say that?"s.
He is compact, tough, definitely cocky and only likeable after you've gotten to appreciate the intelligence behind the loopy logic with which he attacks our knee-jerk responses to the propaganda fed us daily. Defying classification, Bill Maher is equally critical of both political parties. Such is his perspicacity that in one sentence, he lumps them all together.
Bill Maher has the distinction of being the First American To Be Threatened By The Bush Administration! The President's censorious Press Secretary, Ari Fleischer, responded to one of Maher's Politically Incorrect quips about the current White House Reign of Terror - to combat Global Terrorism - with a warning that people had better be careful about what they say. This show will do nothing to reassure John Ashcroft that Maher has mended his ways.
Bill Maher is the Mort Sahl of today: a political commentator/comedian who tickles our anti-establishment sensibilities. His Victory Begins at Home at the Virginia Theater is a wonderfully entertaining slanted view of the contemporary world, full of laughs. Like Sahl, he's not vicious -- he's incisive, insightful, may offend the far right, and it's a pleasure to be in the presence of an actual mind that works as he analyzes and skewers the outlandish world we live in, finding humor in events of the day. If political satire is your cup of rhetoric, don't miss Maher.
A small Philadelphia company has produced a rendition of Bat Boy that surpasses the excellent New York version. Where the earlier production stressed the melodrama, director Jennifer Child's concept is surreal comedy. Her cast carries it off superbly. No one can equal Deven May's wistful interpretation of the title role in New York and Los Angeles, made inimitable by May's small-boyish physique, but the tall Ben Dibble gives us an endearingly goofy protagonist that fits right into the comic tone here.
There are 1,259,874 bartenders working in the United States today. This is a show about six of them. That's the official-line on Lou Mustillo's Bartenders. I have no idea who did the counting: Can this million-plus number have been derived from Bartenders Union records? Living a simple and abstemious life, I have no familiarity with sitting at bars and chatting with bartenders.
Queen Elizabeth doesn't appear until more than a half hour into the play, but Juliet Mills, with properly pasty-white cheeks and red hair, has a grand time with her three scenes, in one of which she herself is posited as the author of The Taming of the Shrew.
Richard Chambers has come up with nicely changeable sets, and Janine Marie McCabe has furnished the colorful costumes.
Tom Key has brought his off-Broadway blue-grass musical, Cotton Patch Gospel, back to Dallas Theater Center after a 20-year absence, and the audiences seem as enthralled as ever.
Based on biblical scholar/political activist Clarence Jordan's book, "The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John," the piece was adapted by Tom Key and Russell Treyz. With music by Harry Chapin, Cotton Patch transports the Gospels of Matthew and John to late 20th century Valdosta, Georgia.
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.
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.
Chamber Theater concludes its current season with an excellent production of Donald Margulies' Pulitzer Prize-winning Dinner with Friends.
The magnificent Blue Man Group notwithstanding, experimental theater just isn't my thing, with De La Guarda a case in point. I finally caught up with this audience favorite a few weeks before its final flight and tolerated its not-brief-enough 70 minutes with a mix of bemusement, annoyance and, too rarely, pleasure. The opening sequence, which involves "painting" the white-sheet ceiling with fluorescent colors, water and pennies, has charm and a sense of wonder.
Subtitled "Wages of Debauchery," this Czech-American Marionette Theater production of the legend of Don Juan as a kind of Central European Folk-Tale, was finally agony to sit through. But as there was a scanty audience in the tiny LaMaMa Theater and no intermission, it was impossible to make a graceful escape. Some of the puppets and scenic-concepts were clever-to-impressive, but the production as a whole was leaden, determined, and somewhat amateurish. Pieces even fell off the set, to the consternation of the puppeteers.
Byron Jennings was a terminally effete Don Juan in Christopher Hampton's adaptation of Moliere's version of Tirso de Molina's tale. Because this was a Theater-for-a-New-Audience production, the staging and character-interpretations were also resolutely new and trendy. John Simon condemned it roundly, but the show was not without insight or interest. In addition to Jennings, Nicholas Kepros was admirable as the Don's furious father. Best of all, however, was John Christopher Jones as Sganarelle, or Leporello to opera-lovers. Bartlett Sher staged.
Perhaps my strong pro-Israel, pro-Zionist bias predisposes me to like William Gibson's drama on the life of Israel's most beloved Prime Minister. But political leanings aside, Gibson has crafted one of the more tautly constructed and dramatic solos in recent memory. Yes, like most monologues about famous people, the elderly Golda Meir (played by the estimable Tovah Feldshuh) looks back and speaks in retrospect.
Only one thing is missing from Yasmina Reza's otherwise dazzling acerbic comedy - but it's a biggie. Reza constructs a dinner party from hell, wherein a semi-happy couple (Helen Hunt and John Turturro) are surprised by the arrival of Hubert and Ines -- guests they didn't expect until the next evening. Henri bows and scrapes before Hubert (Brent Spiner), hoping the latter's connections will advance his scientific career, even as smarmy Hubert undermines his friend's emotional stability.
As with Yasmina Reza's Art - in which there are three "takes" by three male friends on the extravagant purchase of an abstract artwork - her new piece re-plays the same awkward scene three times. Important guests arrive an evening too soon: not exactly a new idea in drama. And it requires an immense Suspension of Disbelief to equate the suppressed hysteria of John Turturro with the behavior of an insecure and very minor French Astrophysicist.
Life (X) 3 starts as a light domestic comedy, long on a crying child for the first 30 minutes and short on brilliance as a couple comes to the home of another for dinner a day early. This leads to much domestic bickering and an occasional funny line. Then the same night is played again, with a different slant, and it becomes more interesting, and then, once again, a third time, with other mood, character and plot implications. This includes some French inter-couple flirtatious moofky-foofky, with pretentious scientific horseshit thrown in.
One of the best bio-musical revues to come down the road in years, Hank Williams: Lost Highway captures not only the bounciness of the singer-songwriter's jaunty ditties (including the genius-touched "Lovesick Blues") but the heartbreak underlying classics like, "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Jason Petty, as Hank, invests the latter tune with so much ache, and Randal Myler's play-with-music contextualizes it so well, "Cry" actually has more emotional pull than Williams' own classic version. We're also treated to -- rarity of rarities!
Whereas most other musicals currently on the boards are, for better and worse, cartoonish and relentless, Nine is sophisticated and dreamlike.
I loved The Lion King and The Producers, but I have never been invited back to see how they look now. Most new musical productions -- however ingenious and attractive -- I'm not desperate to see a second time. But even after such long runs, I'd still love to see Lion King and Producers. And now I can add Nine to that list.
Fun, yes; but why wasn't it funny? A farce that wore its ridiculousness on its sleeve, its sight gags on its bum and its wordplay on its nose, The Play What I Wrote should have been the raucous laugh-riot it kept straining to be. Granted, the second-act Mystery Guest on the night I attended was Sir Roger Moore, who proved a good sport but had all the comic timing of an azalea bush. No knock on the other players, though, with Toby Jones winning a couple of huge laughs during a drawn-out story about his ailing mum.
Rubber-legged Sean Foley is a joy to watch, with his repertoire of John Cleese-like Silly Walks. Hamish McColl makes a good foil. But their act is either the epitome - or the nadir - of British Music Hall comedy. It is what killed Variety over there and Vaudeville over here. Some routines are so bad you cannot help laughing: How can they do this stuff with straight-faces? If you want sophisticated British male comedy-duos, try Hinge & Bracket or Kit and the Widow.
Some people love old-time Vaudeville: Smith & Dale in "The Doctor Sketch" on "The Ed Sullivan Show," The Three Stooges, British knockabout comedy and eccentric dancing. If you're one of them, you'll love the ridiculous, slapstick, corny, very British comedy revue, The Play What I Wrote. Sean Foley, Hamish McColl and Toby Jones recreate the antique shtick with flair, falls, and fol-de-rol. Foley takes John Cleese's physicality to new heights of dementia with a rubber body like they don't make any more.
To judge by audience reaction, you'd never know Urban Cowboy: The Musical, was a critic-drubbed flop that nearly closed two nights after opening. Does the crowd mind that the central conflict of the musical version of the popular John Travolta-Debra Winger flick was weak to the point of operetta? Or that the lead's momentous decision to ride the fabled mechanical bull is about as ridiculous as the lovable aunt and uncle (Sally Mayes - always a pro - and a tepid Leo Burmester) are obligatory?
Country & Western is not very high on the Cultural Event Lists of most New Yorkers. Nor are trips to Branson, MO, to eat dinner at Dolly Parton's Horse-Show. But, for those who grew up - as I did - on the Grand Ol' Opry and Alka-Seltzer's National Barn Dance on Saturday nights, there's a real appeal in this music and its often plaintively lonesome lyrics. Adapting the John Travolta movie for the musical-stage may not have seemed a bright idea, but the results are not disappointing. In fact, this is a high-energy show with a very attractive cast.
Urban Cowboy is a really good Country-Western musical with the sexiest, most gorgeous chorus on Broadway -- all great, energetic dancers and singers, costumed, men and women, as eye-candy by Ellis Tillman, choreographed with great originality and joy by Melinda Roy in the most sensuous, colorful leaps and wriggles in town. With a pastiche of old hits, the music jumps and flows.
To call A Year with Frog and Toad sweet-natured, charming, simple and satisfying is, for some, to damn it with faint praise. Indeed, most critics have called the show delightful - for children's theater - and added the caveat that top tickets run a galling $91. I'm afraid I can't disagree with that assessment, much as the show truly won me over.
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