Godspell At Circle-in-the-Square

It’s a simple image framed for the ages – the boy/man, garbed in white, his arms extended in agony, rising from ground to pay for man’s sins.   Of course you have to wait until the very end for this striking image in the jazzy new production of Godspell now playing at Circle-in-the-Square.  But its worth the wait, and very indicative of the hyper-creative imagery and imagination brought to bear on this 40 year old high school theater standby.

You know all the songs whether you want to or not– Day by Day, We Beseech Thee, Stand Back Old Man – and it’s a pleasure to watch the young, talented cast perform them with vigor.  And as directed by Daniel Goldstein making his Broadway debut, they are given lots of toys to play with.  The circular stage is basically bare but trap doors open, water (to be walked on of course) appears, mist is summoned, trampolines get bounced on, and an endless supply of props seem to be summoned from the cast’s imaginations.   Mr. Goldstein’s creativity is particularly on display with the excellent and surprising staging of “All for the Best.”

It’s all very energetic, but sometimes the gimmicks overwhelm the message.  Does Godspell really need references to Donald Trump, Gone With the Wind, Wicked AND the Occupy Wall Street movement?

It’s the rare quiet moments that ring the truest – Judas (Wallace Smith) singing “On The Willows” bathed in a simple white light, ensemble-member Telly Leung performing “All Good Gifts” with a spiritual conviction that reminds us of the old adage that all men of faith have courage.  And that ending image of Jesus hanging from the cross is not to be forgotten – and Mr. Goldstein gives us a good 30 seconds of silence to take it all in.

Hunter Parrish (of Showtime’s “WEEDS” fame) has the singing voice, looks, and stamina to play Jesus, although his smile seemed cloying after about an hour. He’d fit right in with the chorus line of Mormon schoolboys down the block.  The ensemble is the usual modern “one of each” – diverse in both ethnicity and gender (and probably sexual preference).  No surprises here.  Standouts include Mr. Leung, who is a quadruple threat – dancer, singer, actor AND pianist, and understudy Julia Mattison who leads us through a rousingly comical and improvisational Stand Back Old Man.

Godspell made quite an impression when it first premiered 40 years ago.  With its rock-based score and book composed of passages from the New Testament, it belongs with HAIR and early Sondheim in dragging (kicking and screaming) the musical theater art form into a post-Rodgers & Hammerstein era.   Like any great piece of art, in 2011 it surprisingly still seems fresh and new…its messages of love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek more relevant than ever.  Sometimes, though, simpler is better.  I just wish someone should have told Mr. Goldstein to rein it in a bit.  

House of Blue Leaves

It isn't everyday the Pope visits New York.  And in 1965, when Pope Paul came to speak to the UN and, "end the war in Viet Nam," it was a very exciting time in the Shaughnessy home in Sunnyside, Queens as portrayed in "House of Blue Leaves," now in revival at The Walter Kerr Theater.

Artie Shaughnessey, zookeeper by day, songwriter by night, is having an open affair with his downstairs neighbor Bunny.  You can't really blame him.  His wife, Ronnie...aka Bananas...isn't all there.  Bunny is constantly pestering him to check Bananas into the nearest looney boon, and run off together to Hollywood, where Artie's childhood best friend Billy is a big-time Director.  This all unfolds between 5 and 6AM the day the Pope is flying into Idlewild.

By the time Pope does his Sunnyside drive by, Artie's grown son has returned home, AWOL from the army, a gaggle of nuns is perched in his living room, Billy's girlfriend has dropped by and lost the transistors to her hearing aid, and a plot to kill the Pontiff has gone awry.

Reality?  Theater of the absurd?  Period piece?  All of the above, and as directed by David Cromer, this creaky revival by John Guare originally staged in 1986, has a tired, dated feeling.  Its only the superb performances of Ben Stiller, Edie Falco and Jennifer Jason Leigh that saves this mediocre play from obscurity.

Ben Stiller played the son in the original production, and one gets the feeling he called in all his celebrity buddies to have some fun on Broadway.  With Alison Pill, Thomas Sadoski, and Mary Beth Hurt thrown into the affair in small roles, the play gets more star power than the weak writing deserves.  Act I is all explanatory and the timing seems off.  A running gag about Bunny's previous jobs gets tired really fast, and Bananas' psychological problems seem cliched.  It would be comical, if not for the stunning performance of Edie Falco.

The play picks up steam, pace and timing in Act II, and there are some great surprising plot twists, but this is never Guare at his best.  With the exception of Artie, the characters aren't real enough for you to care about, and the plot isn't absurd enough not to take literally.

Ben Stiller is formidable as Artie.  His layered performance as the loser who knows deep down he's never going to be anything more than he is, the conflict he feels over committing Bunny, the exhilaration he experiences when Bunny props him up, makes this play worth seeing.  Edie Falco is haunting as Bananas, with every movement and nuance deliberate and precise.  Any drama in the piece comes from her fear of being incarcerated, but her knowing that's probably where she belongs.  Jennifer Jason Leigh, making her Broadway debut, puts on a great Queens accent and energetically does her best with a cliched role.

The title refers to a tree Artie saw outside the hospital where he plans on committing Bananas.  It was a tree full of blue leaves, and when he stood under it, the blue leaves all blew away together in a burst of wind.  They were actually birds, migrating to places unknown.  There is poetry in this imagery, and glimpses of genius in this play.  If only it could match the acting talent on display.

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures

Tony Kushner, he who gave us the modern classic Angels in America, has authored a long title and a very long play --  clocking in at 3 hours, 50 minutes with two intermissions.

The plot goes something like this -- Gus Marcantonio, former longshoreman, union organizer, union boss and dedicated Communist,  has called his three children, their assorted partners, and sister to the family   townhouse in Brooklyn with the intention of committing suicide.  He can only go through with it if the immediate family reaches a consensus -- not a majority, a consensus -- on his decision.  No one wants dad to die, and the drama unfolds as they attempt to argue, cajole and humor dad back into gaining a will to live.

But Gus is very depressed.  He is convinced he has Alzheimer’s, although we see little proof of that.  He is haunted by an agreement he negotiated years ago that guaranteed income for longshoreman with seniority, but cost the jobs of many younger workers who never recovered.  He feels his world has deserted him, when true liberals are forced to vote for John Kerry.  Still, he keeps busy translating the epistles into Latin.

To fill approximately 250 minutes of stage time, we need lots of subplots, and Kushner provides plenty.

Empty, Gus's daughter, is expecting a child with her wife Sooze.  V is the father.  While it was assumed that V impregnated Sooze through artificial insemination, we learn that he did it the old fashioned way.  Empty isn't digging that.

Meanwhile, Pill, Gus's oldest son and a high school teacher, had an ongoing affair with a Eli, a Yale-graduate  hustler, and borrowed $30,000 from Sooze to pay for it.  Now Sooze needs the money to support her newborn but he doesn't have it.  Pill and Eli desperately want to continue the affair as a sort-of threesome with Paul, Pill's partner, but Paul isn't digging that.

Adam, Empty's ex-husband and Gus's basement tenant,  has purchased the townhouse without the children's knowledge and everyone feels betrayed.

Gus's sister Clio (the formidable Brenda Wehle) has been staying in Brooklyn with her brother for the last year since returning from Peru where she might, or might not, have fought with the Shining Path.

Oh the drama.  Or lack of believability thereof.

Like his more robust piece Angels in America, there are lots of themes running through The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide...societal change through incrementalism vs nihilism, the failure of the American industrial economy and the human toll it has taken, the nature of relationships, fluidity of sexuality, the right to euthanasia.

But for the intelligent theater-goer, I suggest The Pretentious Gay Playwright's Guide to My Inability to Edit Myself is a more descriptive title.  This is Kushner self-absorbed to the extreme.

Still, the play has its moments.  The end of Act II is a stunner, where all the various subplots come together and 12-odd characters are fighting and talking over each other.  This is how family dynamics work and is deftly directed by Michael Grief. We somehow are able to follow the story and the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.  If the play had ended there, you might leave feeling you got your money's worth but the it nosedives in Act Three with three more long scenes that lead neither plot nor motivation forward.

Steven Pasquale, from the TV drama Rescue Me, as V is the most real and intriguing of the characters.  An aside informs us that his mother died in childbirth, and of all Gus's children he is the one who stayed closest to home.  The betrayal we see in him when Gus announces his intention to leave -- for the second time -- is moving and real.  Pasquale appeared in last season's Reasons to Be Pretty and is building a nice reputation for himself as a solid New York stage actor.  Michael Cristoffer, as Gus, does the best he can with what he has been given.  We all get depressed, but his depression doesn't seem to be more than a healthy dose of Zoloft couldn't fix.

The Motherf**ker With The Hat

I recently met a Dutch psychiatrist who runs a $800  a day addiction rehabilitation clinic/spa in the Carribbean.  The psychiatrist has a theory that addicts are filled with too many emotions and use them in the wrong ways.  In his program he teaches addicts how subdue their emotions, which in his theory is as important will have the greatest effect on getting them to stop drinking drink.

I thought of my Dutch friend while watching Stephen Adly Guigus's (Jesus Takes the A Train)  The Motherf**ker With the Hat at the Schoenfeld Theater.

Jackie has just been released from prison.  He is doing well.  He's found a job, an AA sponsor,  works a serious AA program, has a girlfriend he loves, and seems to be on a path to rehabilitation and joining the lower middle class.  All this goes awry in scene one, when he discovers that his girlfriend has been cheating on with... the Motherf**ker With The Hat.

For the rest of the 135 minutes, intermission-less play we meet Jackie's cousin, his AA sponsor and his AA sponsor's wife.  We learn a lot about the AA program, gather that its not a hot bed of mental health, and watch

But more than anything else, the play is a masterclass in watching magnificent actors hone their craft.

In his second Broadway performance, Bobby Cannavale (he garnered a Tony Nomination for playing another down and out toughguy in Theresa Rhebeck's Mauritius) is a powerhouse as Jackie.  He goes from calm to calamity in a nano-second, and every emotion is raw and true.  With a vein in his neck pulsating, he violently confronts his addict girlfriend and it takes every once of control this control-less man can muster not to physically strike her.

Later, in scenes with his Ralph D (Chris Rock), his AA Sponsor, and his cousin Julio,  Yul Vazgquez, we see Jackie's softer side as he is forced to reconcile some painful truths about himself.  This is a man who desperately wants to change, and Ralph D. and Julio will help him, but it will cost. For Julio, its payback for years of slight, and Mr Vazquez gives a layered, tender performance of the gay man in ghetto.  For Ralph D., well, I don't want to give it away.  Jackie takes it with a universal bitterness and acceptance.

Annabella Sciorra and Elizabeth Rodriguez round out the cast as Victoria,  Ralph D.'s wife and Veronica, Jackie's girlfriend.  Both are miserable, trapped in lives they did not ask for and do not want, with only the vaguest idea of how to get out.

Victoria's refuses to see how her own addiction is a spiral downward, and in the final moments the lights go down as she prepares to take her mother to a rehab.  There is a motel with a pool across the street where she will stay.  What Ms. Rodriguez, all bluster in the beginning, can say with only a look at the end is heartbreaking.

Ms. Sciorra vainly tries to seduce Jackie in a desperate plea for escape and its testament to this beautiful actress how Jackie can resist.

That leaves comedy icon Chris Rock as Ralph D.  Miscast, with a high squeeky voice and lithe, thin body that seems out of place in this world, we never truly believe he is inhabiting his character.  This is most evident when Jackie and Ralph get into fist-a-cuffs.  I've seen high school productions that seemed more real.

Which brings me back to my friend the Dutch psychiatrist.  Ralph has significant years of abstinence and shows very little emotion even when he is doing horribly wrong things.  Is that one definition of true sobriety?

This is playwright Adly Guigus Broadway premier after a string of off-Broadway successes.  The characters might not sit right or relevant to a traditional Broadway audience, but as tightly directed by veteran Anna D. Shapiro, they belong uptown and given the wide stage they deserve.

Marie and Bruce at The New Group

As a regular theater goer in the New York area, every year at about this time I start getting brochures from, it seems, every subscription theater group in the tri-state area.  A few years ago I finally broke down and bought my first, to Second Stage.  I enjoyed four very good years of theater at reasonable prices (although usually the same reasonable price that I will know doubt get in a post card or e-mail after the show opens) and then hit a dud.  I don't remember particularly why I didn't care for the season except that one entry was a one women show featuring Anna Deveare Smith that even for all her immense talent could not create a satisfying theatrical experience.  Down went Second Stage and up went Playwrights Horizon. Playwrights Horizon went the way of The Public, and The Public to The Atlantic.   I've cycled like this with five or six companies over the years.

Still, the thrill of seeing something new before everyone else overweighs the fear of tge inevitable clunker and I was an early fan of Next to Normal,  Putnam County Spelling Bee and Suburbia at Second Stage, secured great seats to the Stoppard tribute to Chekhov because of my Lincoln Center subscription and dug Mauritius through an MCC "4-Pack" deal.

This year I added The New Group, a red hot off-Broadway company of the moment.  Noted for their very physical, risk-taking productions, home is a small venue on the 42nd Street theater row so when they get a hit it tends to sell out quickly leaving poor souls like me on the outside looking in (and I really hate that!).  No Aunt Dan and Lemon for Evan.  After really enjoying a revival of Hurlyburly last year, I took the plunge and once again had the privilege of seeing Ethan Hawke's ass crack (that caused a big stir in Hurlyburly, nigh a whisper from the critics about it in 2010) in Blood From A Stone, the first production of the season.  Since Blood From a Stone was so well cast, well written and exceptionally well directed, I had great hopes for what would be my third New Group production.  After all, with Marissa Tomei starring, and Wallace Shawn writing, what could be wrong with Marie and Bruce?

EVERYTHING and nothing it turns out, is wrong with Marie and Bruce, currently in production at 410 W 42nd street, because after the first fifteen minutes you are so tuned out to anything going on up there you start making mental checklists of everything you have to do the next day, which can be very productive.  About the time I was considering where to make lunch reservations, the scenery changed and Marie and Bruce (fyi...we hear that Marie and Bruce are married and Marie really, really hates Bruce a lot before you finally tune out) went to party where everyone smoked, wore seventies clothes, and talked about boring things.  By the time the party was over, I had mentally mapped out a work project.  I glanced at creepy characters doing a set change while checking my e-mails (I know, I know...but I took great pains to cover the light) and when they were finally done yammering up there was all ready for bed.

See this play ONLY if you need some quiet time for free thought, because this show offers nothing to think about.    I have no idea what it is trying say and don't really want to put the effort in to find out.  This is a dud, plain and simple and given the tepid applause at the end (with the exception of obvious Marissa Tomei fans in the mid-section) I think the rest of the audience agreed.  There wasn't even -- shocking! -- a standing ovation.

I hear Signature is doing a neat season next year -- any up for a sub?

The Book of Mormon

The next time I start on my rant on how live theater is dead as an art form, remind me of The Book of Mormon.  Matt Stone and Trey Parker, of South Park fame, have enough entertainment clout to have chosen any medium they wanted for their next project.  When they decided to desecrate the Mormon Church with the same incredible wit, satire, and filthy (and I mean filthy!) language that they bring to their television show, they teamed up with co-creator Robert Lopez of Avenue Q fame and chose live theater as their medium.  

Thank you.  What a funny, relevant, filthy, extraordinary show is playing at the Eugene O”Niell Theater and a very welcome entry to a rather lame season.

The ludicrous plot of The Book of Mormon tells the story of Elders Price and Cunningham, two teenage missionaries sent to Uganda to spread the word.  Price is the winner of the two, all Donny Osmond smile and white teeth, expected to do great things.  His companion, Arnold Cunningham, is a sort of mission-school dropout.  As played by the energetic Josh Gad, he’s an overweight kid with a lying problem, thrilled to be going on a mission so he will finally have a friend.  No one expects him to amount to anything.

When Price and Cunningham reach Uganda, the natives don’t want anything to do with either of them.  What with AIDS, war, bugs on their…uhm…private parts and the constant threat of their women being circumcised by a menacing General named Buttfu**innaked, they have enough to worry, and sing, and dance about.  

Price and Cunningham’s fellow missionaries in Uganda aren’t in much better shape than the natives and in a hilarious, show-stopping number Rory O’Malley almost steals the show with “Turn It Off,” leading a chorus of missionary boys in describing how they deal with feelings that aren’t authorized by the Church.

It is all too much for wonder boy Price, who flees, hoping The Church will reassign him to where he has always dreamed Heavenly Father would lead him – the magical world of Orlando.  Instead, he has “Creepy Hell Dream” a hilarious musical number where Satan joins with all that is evil (including dancing Starbucks coffee cups) in scaring Price back to the mission. 

But he is too late.  In his absence, Cunningham was alone winning over the natives.  Since he’s never read the book of Mormon, and thinks it’s boring anyway, he creates his own story of deliverance featuring Jedi and Deathstars.  The man, who no expected anything from, has single-handedly converted more natives than any mission in Africa.

And he did it with a story that seems as plausible as the official Morman story, we are told, of ancient Israelis sailing to the New World burying messages on gold plates dug up millennia later by Joseph Smith. 

In the second act the heathens find happiness, Cunningham finds his calling, Price is back in the fold, and no matter how bizarre your beliefs, as long as you have faith you are a winner. 

I know I’ve devoted a lot of space to plot, but that really isn’t the point of The Book of Mormon; it’s all really a conceit for a cutting parody of all things Mormon, and all things Julie Taymor. Stone and Parker have done their homework and created a very traditional musical, with a story arc, an underdog, a love interest, an obstacle that must be overcome and a finish that wraps it all up in a nice pretty bow.  Songs and lyrics move the plot along, and borrow frequently from other musicals and musical styles, with big Broadway, rock, and lullabies all layered into a musical that moves.  Perhaps the highlight of a show that never stops topping itself is a takeoff on the Uncle John’s cabin scene from The King and I, where the natives perform the Book of Mormon (as described by Arnold Cunningham) to an audience of Mormon elders.  Like The King, they are not amused.

This being a musical parody set in Africa, Stone and Parker can’t help themselves from taking frequent swipes at The Lion King and Julie Taymor, whose Spider-Man disaster is playing down the street.  The biggest laugh of the night comes after the native performance, where one native asks about the Elders “Do they know we are in previews?”

The show is exceptionally well cast and choreographed.  Andrew Rannells, as Elder Price, brings innocence and leading man authority to the role.  Josh Gad, as Elder Cunningham, does what he did in Putnam County Spelling Bee, make you root for the fat, unpopular underdog.  Here he gets to show off his considerable singing and dancing talents (still, I couldn’t help but think what Norbert Leo Butz would bring to the role).  Nikki James, as Nabalungi, the female love interest, does what she can with a non-funny role in a very funny play. 

This may be the hardest working ensemble on Broadway.  Working with just enough electronic wizardry to set the scene, the audience is focused on the people on stage and they never miss a step.

I heard someone on line at intermission say that he was a missionary 21 years ago and it wasn’t all that different from what they were describing on stage.  Between Book of Mormon and Big Love, can we really trust the judgement of Mormon Mitt Romney as President?  I know what Stone and Parker would have to say.

WHAT IT MEANS TO "SETTLE" - KIN AT PLAWRIGHTS HORIZON

It is a deflating day that when adult children realize their parents are just human --  mere mortals, part saint and sinner.  Every child feels they have a right to pursue their dream of happiness, but when it comes to their  parents if it doesn't fit the idea of the perfect nuclear family in Bathsheba Doran's new play, KIN, currently in production at Playwrights Horizon, it's a reason for pain and petulance.

Broadly, KIN is about the courtship of Anna and Sean, a Columbia English Professor and physical trainer, respectively.  Two kids trying to make it in the big city.  We meet their parents and friends, and in episodic vignettes (the theatrical shortcut equivalent to looking directly at the camera to comment on the action, that is so cheap and prevalent on comic television right now) watch their relationship form.

Sean is from Ireland, Anna from Texas. Anna is distant from her father, but puts on a good show until discovering that her dead mother wanted to divorce him before she died.  Sean's mother was raped when he was 8...abandoned by Church and husband, she retreated into the safety of her home, not to walk out again until the exotic American Anna, arrives Xanax in hand some 20 years later.  Sean's reaction to his mother's agoraphobia was to move halfway around the world, as we keep being told by everyone except Sean.

Neither Sean nor Anna confess to be in love, and yet  with no other alternatives on the horizon, we watch them become willing to "settle."

The best moments of the play are with the older characters who conquered their settling issues a long time ago.  A poignant moment has Kay's father visiting the deathbed of a women he had an affair with for many years, played by the arresting Kit Flannigan.  When she holds Anna's voluminous new book, we see what can only be described as motherly pride.  Suzanne Bertish plays Sean's damaged, non-apologetic mother Linda.  One can only imagine what growing up in that house was like, but in his weekly phone calls home we don't see any bitterness from Sean and its through Ms. Bertish's layered performance that we understand why.

The set, designed by Paul Steinberg, is a big frame that moves as we change locales and continents.  With the notable exception of a very effective wedding scene set on the cliffs on the Ireland, it neither contributes or deters from the action.

Sam Gold's direction is hopscotch and his choices are not always clear.  Why, for the last 15 minutes, are all the characters on stage?  Nothing has really changed.  A side plot has Anna's best friend meditating in the woods with a realistic backdrop -- the only one we see during the course of the 1:45 hour, no intermission piece.  Why the need for trees?

KIN, I hope, is a work in progress with lots of potential.  Clearer direction and more focus on the main characters who define KIN will create a sharper, more lasting theatrical experience.

Speed The Plow in Summit

When my friend Robert Barwick told me he was to play Bobby Gould in Speed The Plow, I let out a silent moan.  I had seen two Broadway productions and both left me looking at my watch most of the time.  Once with Joe Mategna, Ron Silver and Madonna, the other with Bill Macy, Raul Esperanza and Elizabeth Moss.  If star power couldn't help this weak David Mamet piece, I doubted the good folks at The Summit Playhouse could invigorate it.  I knew I had to go support my friend, but was dreading it.

Well, I was wrong and it's testament to a great director and ensemble cast who played the difficult rhythms and staccatos of Mamet like a great Stradivarius.  

The 3-person, no intermission, play is set in Hollywood in the late 80s.  Bobby has just been promoted to head of production of a major studio, and his old friend Charlie brings him a script that will make them both rich.  The fix is in, a meeting with the studio head is set, and they have Bobby's temporary assistant arrange a lunch table.

Of course it's not set, and later that night the assistant convinces Bobby to ditch the commercial piece and make a "meaningful "piece instead.

I won't ruin the ending, but will say no one does desperation like Mamet.  Like his other works American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross,  in Speed The Plow Mamet plumbs the depth of how far an individual  is willing to go to get what he wants.  His characters are spiritually and morally bankrupt, if not occasionally very, very funny.

As played by James Ryan Sloan, Charlie Fox is a wonder to behold.  Driven and by years of watching other people make it in Hollywood (including his friend Bobby), he knows this deal could be his last chance at fortune and he throws himself into selling it with the force of a Category 4 storm.  Mr. Sloan's comic timing is perfection, if not once in a while a bit over-the-top.  But you don't mind.  All movement and motivation, he will get what he wants and when does, will get his revenge.

Danielle Pennisi as Karen, the temp., leads us down a circuitous path of ethical conviction and you believe every word.  Robert Barwick is the consummate straight man.  He's kept his head down, played by the rules, and is now reaping the rewards.   Watching him make the agonizing choice between right and wrong, between moral and immoral, is like watching a parent who smoked pot in college find dope in their teenagers room.  What to do, what to do.  Sex, greed, ethics -- Bobby Gould is just trying to make it by other people's rules until he is in a position to make his own rules.

As directed by Trey Compton, who has a number of professional directing and assistant director credits to his name, the play moves like speeding freight train.  Making movies and lunching at the right restaurant are serious business, and his characters inhabit the entire stage, turn their backs to the audience, throw art, smoke, talk over and subtly (and not so subtly) seduce each other, to get what they want. These are Hollywood brats at their most brattiness, and Mr. Compton's direction is spot on.

A couple of needling points -- in image-obsessed Hollywood no one would ever walk around in a suit that was too big for them, and the costumes were distracting.  Ms. Pennisi's hair was a bit overwrought (she's a double for Jane Kusak in Shameless) and while the set was imaginative, I doubt Bobby would live in a such a traditional setting.

But these are small points.  I often wonder what playwrights and pieces will still be produced fifty years from now.  Who will be our modern equivalents to Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller?  Their plays are still produced because while set in a different time, their universal themes are so well explored -- lust, regret, loss.  Thank you Trey et. al. for making me rethink David Mamet and hoping that when I turn 95 there might be another Broadway revival of Speed The Plow that so adeptly captures the greed, desperation, and comedy that inhabit us all.

One Squashed Spidey

There is a moment towards the end of Act 1 of Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark where it all comes together.  You forget the costumes are plastic, don’t mind the insipid lyrics, and willingly suspend belief as The Green Hornet and Spiderman do battle 100 feet above you at The Foxwoods Theater.  These are some of the best aerial gymnastics this side of Circque de Soleil.  You and the five year old next to you are equally dazzled. 

Unfortunately it is only a moment and you are quickly snapped back to the reality of this over produced, over-the-top, over-hyped, vacuous musical. 

What little story there is revolves around a group of teenagers creating a Spiderman comic book.  They seemed chosen for the target audience, one of each: The nerd, the cool kid, the every kid and the smarter Asian-American girl who wants to play with the boys.  Spider-Man comes to life through their imaginations.  A school trip to a gene-splicing lab features an environment- crazed scientist, and, you guessed it – a spider bite.   Peter Parker, the kid everyone loves to pick on (and the inspiration for a particularly ridiculous musical number "Bullying By Numbers") is transformed into Spider-Man!  For the rest of Act I Spiderman fights the scientist who is transformed into the Green Goblin, and a confusing Act II sees him splitting his attention between fighting bad guys and choosing between his two loves – a human and a spider.  I am not kidding. 

Bono and the Edge from the rock group U2 did the music and lyrics.

Rock musicals have a hit or miss history on Broadway.  They sell seats and bring a non-traditional audience to live theater, but too often the music and story don’t match.   That is forgivable when the musical itself is celebrating and exploring the body of work of an artist in a new and different way – Billy Joel and Moving Out, for example, or Green Day and American Idiot. 

But Spiderman: Turn off the Dark has much bigger aspirations which fail miserably. Original unmemorable music, coupled with ridiculous lyrics (“You can change your mind, but you can’t change your heart”) neither move the story along nor live on after the curtain descends. 

The performances are across the board excellent and you feel for them as they forced to sing and dance in ultra-confining costumes and flying apparatus.  Rock performer Reeve Carney in his Broadway debut as Spiderman has the right look and voice.  I particularly enjoyed watching theater veteran Patrick Page as The Green Hornet – this is a once-in-a-lifetime part and he looked like he was having tons of fun. 

The musical reportedly is the most expensive ever mounted on Broadway, costing approximately $60 million.  What does that buy you these days?  Lots of electronics and paper mache.  In the Lion King director Julie Taymor used elaborate sets and costumes to create effects that transcended the effects themselves.  Live theater only becomes magic when all the parts are working together to create something greater than its individual parts.  Here, we have dazzling effects, but without the heart and soul coming from story and performance that make you care. 

And that is the real problem with Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark.  It has no soul and for all the money spent, very little magic.  So instead of caring about the characters, you focus on the eight different sets of shoes each of the chorus of dancing arachnoids are wearing.  You wonder mystically at what era the action is supposed to be taking place, and why while the sets are cartoon cutouts, Peter Parker’s jacket, featuring, yes, an embroidered spider, is ultra-2011 hip.

With all these miss matching elements, this is one lofty spider that deserves to be the on the receiving end of a rolled up newspaper.

NOTE: There has been a lot of controversy over the extended preview period and a group of prominent critics decided to violate theater convention and print their reviews before opening night.  Given the complexity of the staging and the expense an out of town preview period would have entailed, I understand the producers decision to keep delaying the opening.   The effects in the performance I saw were flawlessly executed, and I disagree with the decision of the New York Times, et. al. However, it did allow for this really funny video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPH7vZ3Rev8

Three Sisters

The first lines Chekhov writes in Three Sisters, currently being staged by The Williamstown Theater Festival, Olga Prozorov, the eldest sister, tells us that it is one year ago to the day that their father died, but now everything is fine. It is Irina’s, the youngest sister, birthday and today there is to be a celebration. Then there was snow and despair, but today there are flowers and happiness. Soon Olga and Irina will be leaving their provincial home and moving to Moscow, where they will enjoy the sophisticated life and meet the men of their dreams.

But it is not to be. For the next two and half hours we are presented with a montage of misery and despair piled high and deep as snow in a Siberian February, as each of the Prozorov sisters and their coterie discovers that with age comes disappointment. Marriages fail, family and friends disappoint, wealth departs, and life is a continuous exercise in existential nothingness.

Cheery huh. Well, that’s not the point. What has always fascinated me about Chekhov’s plays is the time when he was writing them. Russia was collapsing under the weight of a serf based land system akin to slavery, with an indolent upper class that could barely communicate with their own servants. The servants spoke Russian, the nobles spoke French.

While industrialization was changing the face of America and Western Europe, Russia was still mired in an aguarian based system where labor -- or any sort of work -- was considered low. Of all the plays in the Chekhovian cannon, Three Sisters is probably the one that modern audience must most appreciate in the context and times in which it was written. While the central story line of The Cherry Orchard concerns the loss of property and the downward spiral of the upper class, Three Sisters is about the personal feelings and longings associated with such dramatic societal change. These are specific people in a time and place, and to understand them it is important to understand the times in which they are living.

Is their plight universal? Perhaps, but not so self consciously.

So we have Olga, Masha, and Irina. Three Sisters who live in provincial capital and dream of escape – Olga and Irina to Moscow, Masha into the arms of the Army Commandant and away from her failed marriage. We have Andrei, their brother, who once had a promising career as a scientist, but winds up mortgaging the family estate to support his gambling habit and trapped in loveless marriage to a shrieking virago. We have Ivan, an elderly friend and border who once loved the sister’s mother, but has now escaped into the bottle to forget his loneliness. And we have Vershinin, the Army Commandant, whose second wife has gone mad and longs for the very married but very vivacious Masha.

While each of Chekhov’s characters has their dreams, they are all stuck; stuck in time and place, with their feelings and desires descending into endless longing.

This is a bold production full of choices. Jessica Hecht play Olga with the giddy nervousness of a women who has spent far too many years bottling up her feelings and seems about to go mad. Jonathon Fried gives an over-the-top performance as Kulygin, Masha’s husband, a high school teacher content with his life, who can only watch as his beloved wife drifts farther and farther away. Rebecca De Witt, as Masha, is full of rage that quickly turns to passion in the arms of her forbidden lover. Natasha, Andrei’s wife, as performed by Cassie Beck, is every bit the evil monster she is meant to be.

One wonders why Director Michael Grief chose to place the Act One dining table in the back of the set, where key lines must be screamed to be heard; or why the Act Two finale set consists of a long ramp where characters must turn their back to the audience to see who is entering. It all seems a bit of jumbled mess, much like the characters on stage.

As the curtain descends, Irina repeats “Why must we suffer, if only we knew…if only we knew.” If you want a Russian history lesson and don’t mind watching lots of suffering in the process, Three Sisters is just the ticket.

--- July 26, 2008

The Understudy

Here’s the setup – a big action movie star has taken a role on Broadway opposite an even bigger action movie star. A nobody shows up to rehearse the understudy role for a big action movie star. It turns out that the stage manager and the nobody were once engaged. The action star doesn’t really want to work with the nobody, but eventually sees that he brings a talent to the role that is sorely lacking. The bigger action star (cleverly referred to as “Bruce”) winds up stealing a role from the smaller action star adding more dramatic tension. Throw in some references to Franz Kafka, and you have a pleasant 90 minutes in the theater courtesy of up-and-coming playwright Theresa Rebeck.

None of it is really outloud funny, and the actors do the best with the material they have to work with. Reg Rogers plays the title character and has the moments in the play. When he is rehearsing the Kafka scenes, he brings the stage alive. The action star is played by Bradley Cooper, is all tan muscle and sunstreaked hair. He never really rises above the stereotypical “movie star.” Kristen Johnston, of 3rd Rock fame, rounds out the small cast as The Stage Manager, where she screams a lot.

Ms. Rebeck likes to work in the world of motives – I greatly enjoyed the MTC production of her play Mauritius last season, where her characters see and seize opportunity. They were in control of their world, and the drama came from the clash of these individual motives. In The Understudy, her characters are not in control of their destinies and “stuff” just happens to them. A cell phone rings, and it could be doom or bliss. An assistant might or might not turn the lights on. They all have reasons and motives for being there, but they effect each other to a minimal degree. All in all, it makes for not particularly interesting – or funny – theater.

Williamstown Theater Festival - Early July, 2008

This is my sixth season at The Williamstown Theater Festival and the axiom that I like to use -- I've never seen a bad show there (except for an unfortunate production of Anything Goes in 2006) still rings true. It really is summer camp for the fabulously talented, albeit under new Artistic Director Nicholas Martin, change is in the air on campus.


Beyond Therapy
First up was Beyond Therapy. A light period piece from the 80s, the show revolves around two hapless souls and their very, very bad therapists. It helped establish author Christopher Durang as one of a new breed of outspoken, dare-to-say it playwrights; a flip-side of Andrew Lloyd Weber's ascent into shlockdom. While Sister Mary Ignatius..., another Durang farce from the 80s, stands the test of time better, the Williamstown production was flawless in its timing, delivery and casting. Kate Burton and Darrell Hammond play the therapists and are given the best lines of the show. She's as spacey as he is creepy, and it was great to see Ms. Burton test her range. Matt McGrath, whose career I have been following for a number of years, plays the aggrieved gay lover of one of the patients, with the understated style that is his hallmark. Perhaps the finest performance of the hour went to Bryce Pinkham as the waiter who comes out of nowhere in the final scenes to steal the show proving there are no small parts. All-in-all, an absolute gem.
She Loves Me

She Loves Me Comes from a time (1961) when you could walk down Broadway and 10 or 15 musicals would be playing simultaneously. You didn't have to mortgage your house to go to the theater, and Broadway music was the popular music of the day. Therefore, it didn't have to be perfect, but just good enough. That's what I thought of She Loves Me -- light, unmemorable score, silly book, rather long, but an enjoyable evening in the theater.
The story revolves around a parfumerie in Budapest in 1934 and the crossed love between the manager of the store and a new employee. Brooks Ashmanskas and Kate Baldwin play the lovers...Brooks seems to have been the replacement for every male lead on Broadway. While he played his part with enthusiasm and certainly had the vocal range for it, I couldn't understand why she would fall for this schlep. In his stand alone moment, "She Loves Me," he seemed to be groping for things to do, and while certainly commanding on the stage, he lacked the confidence to really break out of the moment. He was safe throughout. As for Ms. Baldwin, I melted at her version of "Ice Cream." She is someone to watch.
Dick Latessa is always great to see on stage and relative newcomer Jeremy Beck, as a delivery boy who longs to be a sales clerk, stops the show with his version of "Try Me." His dancing is fluid and every move is sharp and intense. As Mr. Ashmanskas plays it safe, Mr. Beck goes for the gold.
It was the performances around Mr Ashmanskas that made She Loves Me a treat. Just don't look for too much in this second rate musical from the 60s.
The Atheist


As a boy, Augustine Early burned down the trailer he and his mother lived in so that they could go to the head of the line for Section 8 housing. It worked. So starts the winding tale of this boy from meager means who "made good" in a career of journalism. Through the course of two hours Campbell Scott, in a one man tour-de-farce, breaks the biggest story of his life, and takes the audience inside the workings of today's media ecosystem, where stories are designed to have long, long shelf lives. There is love, suicide, corruption, lots of drinking, but what the show is really about is what celebrity is, how it is exploited, and how the exploited can become the exploiter.
Mr. Scott, whose work I am not familiar with, is a fine actor handed the role of a lifetime. With the understated, controlled movements of a fine craftsman, he weaves the tale so you are breathlessly waiting for the next twist and turn. While I've never been a fan of the one-person genre (see the overrated Vannessa Redgrave in The Year of Magical Thinking), The Atheist breaks the mold and leaves you with a lot of questions.
Broke-Ology
Mom died 10 years ago. Her two sons took different paths -- Ennis stayed in the 'hood, got married, and has spent years working at a bar-b-que place to provide for his wife and now, new born son. Malcom went off to the University of Connecticut, and just graduated with a degree in environmental science and microeconomics. He has returned for a summer internship at the EPA ("What do they do?" asks Dad and Ennis) to find the dad he left behind is sick and getting sicker. Ennis is his primary caretaker, and is ready to hand the reigns to Malcom, who has been accepted to grad school back East. Should Malcom stay or go? That is the surface dilemma facing the characters in Nathan Louis Jackson's haunting new play receiving its world premier at The Festival.
But more than that it is about getting stuck. Through a series of flashbacks...and we are never sure whether they are the delusions of Dad's sickness or dreams...we see how mom and dad came to live in the shabby section of Kansas City, and their dreams of moving on that never quite came together. We see dad's dreams to make his wife happy, and how is wife puts on a good show, but never really got over a life of lost dreams. We see Ennis's frustration at his lot, how much he loves his wife and child and how he is coming to accept that a life of hard work at a menial job is the hand fate dealt him. And we see Malcom, taking it all in, struggling with his decision.
Broke-ology is what theater is supposed to be. It is moving and changes you. It raises universal issues, all in the confines of a small story about small, insignificant people who loom large. And it is done with wit. Some of the best moments of the play are the funniest. When Ennis says the "n" word (which he describes as "the crack cocaine of language") at the insistence of wife he has the repeat "I love Black people" five times. This makes for some very funny, poignant moments. Mr. Lane is not afraid to make fun of blacks to an audience of whites for his themes are universal. When a box of old memorabilia is discovered, dad winces at the black figurines that dangled from their long-forgotton Xmas tree -- reminded him of Ku Klux Klan Christmas he reminisces.
Fine performance abound with honesty and intensity. As Wendell Pierce (William King; dad) retreats further and further from reality, we see that he may not have been stuck at all, but gotton everything he ever wanted from life. April Yvette Thompson (Sonia King; mom) is all air, light and spirit, as if she had a place, but was never really there. Gaius Charles as Malcom King, the boy with the big decision, plays it straight. Four years in CT have definitely changed him, and he seems as though he can't fit in anywhere -- his new life or back in the neighborhood.
But the play belongs to Francois Battiste as Ennis King -- the most interesting character -- who sports the role with a spirit that refuses to be tamed by conditions. Mr. Lane has handed him the best lines of the play, and as he tries to convince Malcom to stay, we see the anguish in him as he questions his own motives. If Ennis could get out, why couldn't he? But did he really want to get out? Ennis is living the life his parents led, which was a pretty damn good one if you believe the flashbacks. The one thing that was missing was money and opportunity. Ennis won't have a lot of opportunity, and in his frantic, angry, pleading conversations with his brother, the depth of his frustration shines through.
Broke-ology is not a perfect play. Malcom's role seems a bit sterotyped. A long monolouge by mom about her dreams and aspirations seems to come out of nowhere. A surprise ending is not really a surprise and a few transitions need to be smoothed out. But under the superb direction of In The Heights director Thomas Kail, and a marvelous set designed by Donyale Werle, these slights are easily overlooked.
Broke-ology packs a whallop and one can only hope that the 29-year old voice of Mr. Lane is one we are going to hear a lot more from in the future.
A Few Words About the Cabaret
As I said earlier, change is in the air at Williamstown. First off, the whole first part of the season seems to have been developed -- or come directly from -- The Huntington Stage Company in Boston, Mr. Martin's old stomping ground. That's fine, but I hope that as the season progresses we see a bit more work that originated elsewhere. This isn't Tanglewood, the summer home of The Boston Pops, and for the festival to become the summer home of a Boston-based theatrical group would violate, at least to me, the spirit of what it is trying to accomplish.
Secondly, The Late Night Cabaret has been moved from The Nikos stage to Orchards Hotel. Albeit I went on opening night of the first of three weekends, but a lot has been lost in the move. The show did not start until 11:35, giving the cast members in the never-ending She Loves Me a chance to get to the hotel, I guess. That's fine, but advertise it as such. The waiters running around asking for food and drink orders did not help, and it was painful to watch the performers get on and off the small, overcrowded stage. I guess they were looking for more of a "cabaret" feel, but if live theater is a dieing art (and I am not going to debate that here), when was the last time you trotted over to The Algonquin to catch Judy Wilson?
In my previous experiences with The Cabaret, it was a great mix of apprentices strutting their stuff, and more established performers in a venue you would never see them in (I will never forget Beth Fowler's Send in the Clowns; or Kathleen Turner singing an off-tune lullaby for that matter). This format seems to be scrapped in favor of giving only the apprentices and fellows their turn. I guess that's fine, but this year's crop was singularly unimpressive. With the exception of Rosie Hunter and an up-and-coming songwriter's hillarious version of Letters from Ted Haggert, those on stage picked material that was wrong for their range, seemed to have cornered the market in hair gel, and struggled with a lack of rehearsal. I won't be going again, and that is shame. The Cabaret was one of my most favorite parts of the festival.