For Theatergoers, New York Is A Summer Festival

Broadway or Off-Broadway:  The Theater Capital of the World!

Summertime is supposed to be a down time for New York theater-going, but this summer has been offering up a lot of unexpected treats.  Certainly, there has been plenty to keep me busy so that it doesn’t feel like the doldrums at all.   

Two of this summer’s big openers on Broadway are the excellent revival of Master Class, starring Tyne Daley in what is likely to be a Tony-nominated performance as opera diva Maria Callas, and the upcoming revival of Follies, with a cast that includes Bernadette Peters, Elaine Paige, and Jan Maxwell.  Not so shabby!  I’ve already seen (and written about) Master Class, and I’ve got my Follies ticket for a couple of weeks from now. 

There’s also the opportunity to partake of the “summer of love” that is Hair, making a short return to Broadway following a 20-city tour.  If you failed to catch Diane Paulus’ Tony-winning revival, now would be the time to do so.  I speak as one who saw the original Broadway company in1968, and found the current production to be as energetic, exciting, and fun, with a great ensemble cast.   I’m seeing it again next week, as it happens.  Who knows?  Maybe this time I’ll join the end-of-show onstage dance party! 

If you want to see a Broadway show but don’t want to pay full Broadway prices for your tickets, I have noticed that the August heat and humidity have been accompanied by shorter lines at the Times Square TKTS discount tickets booth. 


Yesterday (for a Saturday matinee), I walked right up to the window and snagged a half-price ticket to Anything Goes, splendidly directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall.  The Tony-winning production boasts a top-notch cast and a truckload of marvelous Cole Porter tunes.  Even if you feel you are overly familiar with the show and the score, there are surprises and delights to be found in the de-lovely dance numbers and in the comic timing displayed by John McMartin, Adam Godley, and Jessica Stone in supporting roles. 


The names over the title, Sutton Foster and Joel Grey, are no slouches either.  She is a dynamo, and he is teddy bear adorable, and the newly refurbished and renamed Stephen Sondheim Theatre (formerly Henry Miller’s Theatre) is an inviting and comfortable venue, with good sight lines throughout.  

Moving to Off-Broadway, I’m looking forward to seeing Elysian Fields, set for a short run at the Kraine Theater in the East Village (August 22-26) as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. The playwright, Chris Phillips, has come up with an intriguing concept, to create a play around characters who are discussed but not seen in three Tennessee Williams plays:  Allen from A Streetcar Named Desire, Sebastian from Suddenly Last Summer, and Skipper from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.   


This being the centenary year of Tennessee Williams' birth, there have been quite a few opportunities to see revivals of both his well-known and lesser-known plays. Elysian Fields sounds like an interesting addition and tribute to the mix, which has included the recent One Arm (an unproduced screenplay written by Willams and adapted for the stage by Moisés Kaufman) and the current production of The Pretty Trap, an early one-act version of The Glass Menagerie at Theatre Row’s Acorn Theatre, starring Katharine Houghton in the pivotal role of Amanda Wingfield. 

And as long as we are taking a stroll along West 42^nd Street, I look forward to paying a visit to Playwrights Horizons and its latest production, Completeness, a new comedy about romance and sexual politics written by Itamar Moses and directed by Pam MacKinnon.   Playwrights Horizons continues its policy of offering discounted tickets through this blog.  Regular priced tickets are $70, but discounts are available for $40 for performances from August 19-September 4, and then for $50 through September 25.  For more information, go to www.playwrightshorizons.org or call 212-279-4200.  When ordering, use the discount code COMPBLOG. 


I've got my summer tickets lined up.  What are you waiting for? 

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A Masterful 'Master Class' Brightens the Post-Tony Season

Tyne Daly.  Photo by Joan Marcus

Normally, the weeks following the Tony Awards are a down time for new productions on Broadway, a space in which to catch up with shows you haven’t gotten around to as yet or to make a return visit to ones you’ve already seen.

So how amazing is it that we are being gifted this summer with not just one, but with two likely candidates for Tony nominations for 2011-2112—one for best revival of a play, the other for best revival of a musical!

I speak of the masterful production of Terrence McNally’s Master Class, now in previews at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, and the forthcoming production of the iconic Stephen Sondheim musical, Follies, set to open later this summer at the Marquis. Both of these are arriving in New York after successful runs at the Kennedy Center.

It is too soon to say much about Follies, especially since casting has yet to be solidified, but I do want to sing the praises of whomever it was who decided to give New York theatergoers the opportunity to see and hear it performed with a full 28-member orchestra and with Jonathan Tunick’s original orchestrations. No tuba-totin’ Sally in this production!

Meanwhile, there is Master Class, starring the über-talented Tyne Daly as the operatic über-diva Maria Callas in McNally’s Tony-winning play, which he based on a series of actual master classes that Callas conducted for opera students at Juilliard in the 1970s (closing in on the end of her life, as it happens, lending the play some extra poignancy.)

On the face of it, Ms. Daly is not an obvious choice to play the role of the famous—some would say infamous—jet-setting, self-promoting, and, at least as depicted in Master Class, well-past-her-singing-prime soprano.

“I’m not glamorous, I don’t have a look, I don’t know anything about opera, I have no Italian, and I’m too old,” Ms. Daly is quoted as saying of herself in a recent New York Times Magazine profile.

Assuming all of these things not to be merely a matter of false modesty, then it must have taken a lot of mut (German for “courage” or “guts,” a word the character of Callas—who certainly had a lot of mut herself—says is the only thing German she is partial to) for Ms. Daly to take on the role.

The pants suit and scarf created for her by Martin Pakledinaz and the wig by Paul Huntley take care of the glamor; wonderful acting takes care of the rest.

When the original production of Master Class opened on Broadway in 1995, it won a ton of praise for its star Zoe Caldwell as well as for the then 25-year-old Audra McDonald as one of the young students who face Callas’s critical review of their singing. That production ran for just shy of 600 performances, with Patti LuPone (and later, Dixie Carter) stepping into the lead role after Caldwell's departure.  It was Ms. LuPone whom I saw in the role, and what I recall is a Maria Callas with a load of arrogance, a vicious tongue, and a dismissive attitude toward the young and vulnerable vocal students who paraded before her.

Ms. Daly’s take is far different and rather more complex.  For one thing, her Callas has a real sense of humor--laced with sarcasm, yes, but a gentle sarcasm that is actually quite funny.

When she speaks of Joan Sutherland, for instance, she pauses as if trying to find a way to be kind, before finally settling on “she did her best.”  


That line, and similar put-downs, would have been delivered by Ms. LuPone as if she truly meant them to stab; instead Ms. Daly gives us an experienced crowd-pleaser who knows how to play to a gathering of admirers.

Indeed, the early lines of the play are directed straight to the audience, as if we were actually there to observe these master classes. We’re told, for example, that we have no “look,” and that if we are unable to hear everything she has to say, “it’s your fault; you’re not concentrating.” Again, as you might imagine, these lines could be delivered as if spewed forth by a harridan.

But Ms. Daly’s Callas is no Nazi bitch from hell; rather she is audience-savvy, intelligent, and insightful about her craft.  And—despite her occasional lapses into reverie and at least one moment where she forgets to contract her claws—she provides what sounds to this amateur opera-goer to be good advice to the students.

By the way, the three students, played by Sierra Boggess, Alexandra Silber, and Garrett Sorenson, are wonderfully cast and—to the extent we are allowed to hear them sing without interruption—have lovely voices.  Jeremy Cohen as the accompanist Manny and Clinton Brandhagen as the unimpressed stagehand also do excellent work. It is a pleasure to see an entire company of actors so in sync.  


Bravo as well to director Stephen Wadsworth and to scenic designer Thomas Lynch, who makes us feel as though we were in a studio or small auditorium where a real master class would be taking place.

I’d be remiss if I were to suggest that Master Class is utter perfection. It could use some editing, and surely little would be lost if the near schizophrenic “conversations” Callas has with Aristotle Onassis, the long-time lover who discarded her for the even more glamorous Jacqueline Kennedy, were to be excised. I wonder, too, about Ms. Daly’s shifting accent (vaguely Greco-Roman, mixed with traces of German), but all in all, this is a splendid production that should garner at least a couple of Tony nominations (revival of a play, leading actress) when the time comes.


A masterful kickoff to the new theater year!

Feel free to tell your friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.