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!

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Idle Thoughts About the 2011 Tony Awards Show

Frances McDormand: Dressed for the Red Carpet?

Whoopi Goldberg as Guinan?

I generally do not indulge in the annual folly of predicting Tony Award winners, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy indulging in the morning-after folly of commenting on the event itself.

So, if you are interested, here are my random notes from the 2011 Tony Awards ceremonies that I watched on television from the living room sofa, just as most of you probably did.   

To begin with, I liked that the venue was changed from Radio City Music Hall to the Beacon Theater, regardless of whatever problems were caused by its smaller size (2894 seats as opposed to RCMH’s 5,933). The huge stage of Radio City, which had a prior booking by Cirque du Soleil, has always seemed too big for the production numbers, both visually and in the way it swallowed the sound.  Last night, all the numbers had an equal chance to try to sell themselves.

Neil Patrick Harris was a charming and congenial host.  I liked his opening and closing numbers, as well as his banter with Hugh (“I only play the big rooms”) Jackman, himself a charming and congenial four-time host who was given a spot just for the banter (“Any show you can host, I can host better…”)

The clever opening number, written by David Javerbaum and Adam Schlesinger, who wrote the score for Cry-Baby, made gentle fun of the notion that Broadway attracts only a small segment of the population: 

It’s not just for gays…for gays and the Jews,

And cousins in from out of town you have to amuse,

The sad and bitter malcontents who write the reviews

And, at the close, we were treated to Harris’s performance of a quickly-penned “insta-rap” summation of the evening, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator and star of In The Heights.  Sample line, referencing a performance by one of the stars of The Book of Mormon:

            Andrew Rannells sang “I Believe” and he landed it

So well now he’s Mitt Romney’s V.P. candidate

Before I discuss the production numbers and the awards, do allow me a Joan Rivers Red Carpet moment by asking of Frances McDormand and Whoopi Goldberg:  What were they wearing?  And why?

Ms. McDormand, who picked up what was certainly a well-deserved Tony for lead actress in a play (Good People), came out on stage wearing a most unflattering red and black-striped shmata, over which she wore a cheap denim jacket.  And Whoopi Goldberg, who introduced the number from Sister Act, the musical for which is producer, wore an outfit that looked as if it belonged in the closet of Guinan, the futuristic character she played in Star Trek:  The Next Generation.  Not that it really matters.  Just sayin’.

Good to see Larry Kramer up there on stage as his play, The Normal Heart, took the Tony for best revival (along with acting awards for featured performances by Ellen Barkin and John Benjamin Hickey).  Too bad Joe Mantello didn’t win for best actor in a leading role.  That honor went to Mark Rylance for his work in Jerusalem, a play I found tedious to sit through.  For his acceptance speech, in keeping with the anti-establishment character he plays in Jerusalem, Rylance chose to recite an oddball piece, a "prose poem" by Louis Jenkins titled Walking Through A Wall.  It begins: 


               Unlike flying or astral projection, walking through 
               walls is a totally earth-related craft, but a lot more  
               interesting than pot making or driftwood lamps...

Make of it what you will.


As for the the musical production numbers, they all made for good advertising plugs for their respective shows.  The best of these was the title song from Anything Goes, which showed off as much as anything choreographer Kathleen Marshall’s brilliant work, so that it seemed right for both the show and Ms. Marshall to pick up top honors.  A close second was the song “I Believe” from The Book of Mormon, thanks to the terrific performance by one of the show’s stars, Andrew Rannells. 

Even the much ridiculed Spiderman:  Turn Off The Dark (Neil Patrick Harris allotted 30 seconds for some lame Spiderman jokes, though a couple more slipped through during the course of the evening) had its moment in the sun with a well-produced tender little tune from the yet-to-officially-open show. 

And even though The Scottsboro Boys was honored only through its many nominations (trounced pretty much at every turn by The Book of Mormon), it does seem that a national tour is in the cards—at least according to Don Cheadle, who introduced the medley of upbeat and winningly performed numbers from the show.  That few minutes of air time ought to sell some tickets for a show that deserves to be seen by many more than caught it during its short Broadway run.  

And you gotta hand it to Norbert Leo Butz, who picked up the Tony for best performance by a lead actor in a musical for his role in Catch Me If You Can.  Butz always gives 110% and would carry any show solely on his back if he could.  (Did you happen to see him in the otherwise tepid Enron last year?)  He sold the number from Catch Me If You Can as well as anyone ever could, although I have to confess I preferred the few moments of singing by Aaron Tveit that preceded the main number. 

Speaking of Mr. Butz, his acceptance speech was one of the more gracious and humble ones I’ve heard in a long time, and it made for an emotional moment when he paid tribute to his sister, without playing up the fact that she was murdered in what was deemed to be a homophobic hate crime at the time when her brother was in the midst of rehearsals for Catch Me If You Can.

There were, of course, some other moments that I could have lived without—some long-winded or under-prepared acceptance speeches, some bits of entertainment that weren’t so entertaining, and a repeat performance of a number from last year’s winning musical—but on a whole, this was one of the better Tony Awards shows in recent years, with more Broadway show people and fewer drop-ins from Hollywood, better timing, better acoustics, and good solid hosting. 

Nice way to wrap up a year of Broadway theater-going.  Bravo!


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Welcome to the Magical World of Tony Kushner's 'The Illusion'

Amanda Quaid, Peter Bartlett, and Finn Wittrock

Here’s a trivia question for you.

What do these two plays have in common: A Free Man of Color, John Guare’s off-kilter take on US history that played last fall at the Vivian Beaumont, and Tony Kushner’s The Illusion, now on display at the Signature Theatre Company’s Peter Norton Space?

The answer is, they both give a nod to a 17th century French playwright by the name of Pierre Corneille, prolific and successful in his time but rather less well-known nowadays than his contemporaries Molière and Racine.

In Guare’s play, Corneille is the supposed father of the title character, Jacques Cornet. For his part, Kushner based The Illusion on Corneille’s L’Illusion Comique, in which Corneille wove elements of classicism and commedia del’arte into a kind of tragi-comedy along the lines of one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” say Measure for Measure or A Winter’s Tale. (Come to think of it, that tragi-comedy motif does seem to run through Guare’s work as well.)

The Illusion is the third and last of Kushner’s plays being presented by Signature this season (following Angels in America and The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key to the Scriptures.) Originally produced in 1988, three years before Angels was unveiled, The Illusion is unlike pretty much everything that Kushner has written since, a work that owes as much to Shakespeare as to Corneille (I detected references to Hamlet, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Tempest) and one that uses heightened language, poetry, and romantic imagery, while throwing in a mix of modernism, all to great effect.

Being unfamiliar with L’Illusion Comique, I can only discuss The Illusion based on its own merits, of which there are plenty, despite Kushner’s seeming unwillingness to acknowledge that pencils have erasers as well as points (which is to say the play, which does sag occasionally, could stand a 20-minute trim).

The Illusion opens very dramatically and spookily in the dark (the spookiness is splendidly aided and abetted by Bray Poor’s just-right sound design that includes creepy echoes and hawk screeches). The elderly Pridamant of Avignon (depicted here most magnificently by David Margulies, one of the production’s three terrific stage veterans) has entered the grotto of the magician Alcandre.

Pridamant is desirous of finding out what has become of long-estranged son, whom he kicked out of his home 15 years previously. It seems that time has softened some of the edges, and Pridament wants to bring about some sort of reconciliation before he dies. Alcandre (the resplendent Lois Smith, veteran actor #2, in a role usually played by a man) agrees to help, and as the play unfolds, Alcandre shows Pridamant various scenes from the son’s life.

In the three scenes, which shift in style and mood, the son’s personality runs the gamut from callow romantic to callous womanizer. Finn Wittrock does a fine job in the shifting roles, as do Sean Dugan as his chief rival, and Amanda Quaid and Merritt Wever as the women in his life. Wever plays a spunky maid of the type often found in a Molière play, though I must confess she is so modern in her outlook that at one point I half expected her to start singing  "The Miller’s Son" from Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music.

Peter Bartlett, veteran actor #3, does a laugh-out-loud star turn in the wildly comic role of Matamore, another would-be rival, who transforms over time into a dreamy and lost soul seeking to find his way to a life of solitude...on the moon, no less


While I am handing out praise, I want to recognize the splendid original music by Nico Muhly, the costume design by Susan Hilferty, the set design by Christine Jones, and the best swordplay I have seen in a very long time, thanks to fight director Rick Sordelet. All of the strange and powerful proceedings are well-directed by Michel Mayer.

On many different levels, this lovely play is infused with magic, in which Alcandre is assisted by her (sometimes) deaf and mute servant (the excellent Henry Stram), who offers his own touch of strangeness and shape-shifting to the goings-on.

But ultimately, it is the magic of theater that prevails—a wonderful message for any dedicated theater buff to walk away with, and a splendid way to bid adieu to the old Peter Norton Space as the Signature Theatre Company prepares to move to its new home (designed by architect Frank Gehry) down the street. 

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And the Envelope, Please: Announcing the 2011 ProfMiller Kudos Awards

In the spirit of the theater community’s annual awards season, I bid you welcome to our own ProfMiller Kudos Awards for Outstanding Theatrical Achievement, 2010-2011.

Once again, I am please to report that as a committee of one, I was able to reach unanimous decisions in all of the categories.  Needless to say, the selection criteria I have employed reflect my personal biases and judgments, and ties are not unheard of when I deem them to be appropriate.  As I am an equal opportunity theatergoer, these awards encompass both Broadway and Off Broadway productions.

And so, without further ado, the envelope, please:

We begin with a special award, for the Most Underappreciated Show, which goes to The Scottsboro Boys.  While I imagine the Kander and Ebb trunk holds more songs that may yet see the light of day, this was the team’s final fully realized musical following lyricist Fred Ebb’s death in 2004.  But no sentiment need be attached.  This simply was an excellent show, an edgy retelling of the true story of a group of African American teenage boys who were falsely accused of raping two white women in segregated Alabama in the 1930s.  This was one of the few transfers from Off Broadway to Broadway that made a fitting transition to the big stage, with a first-rate cast and strong directing and choreography by Susan Stroman.  It’s nice that it received 12 Tony nominations, but it is likely to be squashed under the juggernaut that is The Book of Mormon.   

 

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In the category of Best Revival of a Play on Broadway, we declare a tie between The Merchant of Venice and The Normal Heart—the former, exquisitely directed by Daniel Sullivan, the latter by Joel Grey and George C. Wolfe.  At the performance of Merchant that I attended, the audience, many of whom had quite probably come to see Al Pacino and had little prior knowledge of the play itself, audibly gasped at a couple of key plot turns.  When is the last time Shakespeare was able to garner such a reaction?  As for The Normal Heart, it could easily have come off as mired in yesterday’s headlines.  Instead, it resonates deeply with today’s audiences and reminds us of the potential for theater to fully envelop viewers in both powerful drama and emotional intensity.  When is the last time a speech given by a character in a play (in this instance, by Ellen Barkin) stopped the show by drawing waves of sustained applause? 

In a similar vein, we declare a tie for Best Revival of a Play Off Broadway.  The Kudos Award goes to the Atlantic Theater Company’s production of a double bill of one-act plays by Harold Pinter, The Collection and A Kind of Alaska, and to the Signature Theatre Company’s brilliant production of Tony Kushner’s masterwork, Angels in America.  The Pinter plays, under the direction of Karen Kohlhaas, were a revelation of flawless style and splendid acting. Angels in America, stunningly directed by Michael Greif, managed to juggle all of Kushner’s deeply complex ideas without once dropping a ball, and boasted a cast that poured themselves into layered and emotionally honest performances.   

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For his performance in The Normal Heart, the Kudos Award for Best Actor in a Play goes to Joe Mantello. This has been quite a season for Mantello.  In addition to his tour de force performance in Larry Kramer’s drama about the early days of the AIDS crisis, he directed two terrific productions—Other  Desert Cities at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse Theater, and The Other Place at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Other Desert Cities, a family drama steeped in politics, takes the Kudos Award for Best New Play, while The Other Place serves as the vehicle for Laurie Metcalf’s outstanding performance as a mentally and emotionally fragile medical researcher, a portrayal that earns her the Kudos Award for Best Actress in a Play.

For Best Featured Actress in a Play, the Kudos Award goes to Estelle Parsons, for her turn as a busybody landlady in Good People.  It’s unfortunate she was not nominated for a Tony for this funny, quirky, and compelling performance. 

For Best Featured Actor in a Play, the winner of the Kudos Award is Christian Borle, who did outstanding work in both Peter and the Starcatcher and Angels in America.   Watch for him in Steven Spielberg’s new NBC TV show, Smash, which depicts the efforts of a group of people to put on a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe.

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Moving on to the musicals, we’ll start with the Kudos Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The winner is Laura Benanti, for her wigged out performance in Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.  She’s likely to win a Tony for the same role, but in the category of Best Actress in a Featured Role.  I’m not bound by the Tony rules, and thought hers was the one truly outstanding performance in this mishmash of a musical. 

For Best Actor in a Musical, the winner is Rob McClure, for his  funny and charming performance in Where’s Charley? Mr. McClure played the title role in the Encores! production of Frank Loesser’s lighter-than-air musical, and was outstanding in taking on the mantle that has been indelibly associated with Ray (“Once in Love With Amy”) Bolger.  

Both Mr. McClure’s performance and the show itself were a real treat, earning Where’s Charley? the Kudos Award for Best Musical Revival.  A sheer delight, thanks to a stellar cast, sharp directing by John Doyle, and brilliant musicianship of the orchestra, under the baton of Rob Berman.  

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Finally, in the category of Best New Musical, the Kudos Award goes to The Book of Mormon.  Likewise, the show’s directors Casey Nicholaw and Trey Parker win for Best Director of a New Musical. This odds-on-favorite to win the Tony Award for best musical deserves all of its accolades.    

And that’s a wrap. Cue the music and call it a night!

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An Obscure Rock Band with Mythic Roots Becomes the Stuff of Compelling Musical Theater

As the decade of the 1960s was coming to a close, an oddball rock group known as The Shaggs briefly appeared on the scene. By most accounts, the band—consisting of three sisters from the small town of Fremont, New Hampshire—displayed little talent for songwriting, musicianship, or singing. The group's one album, The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World, came and went in a flash and the band sank into obscurity.

Except…inexplicably…long after the sisters, Helen, Betty, and Dot Wiggin, had happily pushed the entire experience behind them, The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World continued to cling to life by being passed around among outsider music aficionados, drawn to the band’s uniquely unpolished and unaffected style.

And now, forty years on, the outré yet compelling Wiggin sisters find themselves the subjects of a outré yet compelling theatrical work, a musical titled—what else?—The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World, currently on view at Playwrights Horizons.

The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World, the musical, is the story behind the recording—a story that, if the Shaggs were coming on the scene now, would surely be on display as a reality TV show.

So, who are the Wiggins, and why are they deserving of a musical about them? And why, like The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World (the album), has The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World (the show) kept popping up in productions since its inception eight years ago: Los Angeles (2003), Chicago (2004), and New York (2005 and now)?

I’ll leave it to you to decide what to make of The Shaggs’ music. You can hear samples on YouTube, or you can buy a copy of a limited edition of the band's album through the run of the show, now scheduled to end July 3. You can also hear snippets of the band’s actual music in the show, although the bulk of the tunes are original numbers penned by Gunnar Madsen (with co-lyricist, Joy Gregory), a composer whose eclectic career has encompassed writing music for television, movies, the Minnesota Opera, and the National Beef Council.

As for the tale itself, its complicated, disturbed, and self-deluding heart lies not within the would-be rock star Wiggin sisters, but within their father, Austin, a textile worker with a dream born of some inner need to raise his family’s name out of the mundane world it inhabited into the rarer air of fame and fortune.

Austin, a strict paterfamilias who was no fan of rock-era music and kept his children (there were six in all) under tight rein,  got it into his head one day that he was destined to turn Helen, Betty, and Dot into rock stars.

Austin’s near mythic conviction—which he connected with a prediction made by his late and sorely-missed mother—was so strong that he dragged everyone along, including his loyal if confused wife Annie, plunging the family into debt and pulling the girls out of school so they could rehearse under his always watchful eye. It was Austin who named the group The Shaggs, coerced the local community hall to hire them to perform on a regular basis, and paid to record and press their album—of which perhaps 100 copies ever saw the light of day. Despite a total failure through every phase of this enterprise, Austin kept his daughters performing until 1975, when he died and the spell was finally lifted. The story lived on through the cultish devotion of a handful of followers, an occasional re-release of the album, and an article about the band written by Susan Orlean that appeared in The New Yorker magazine in 1999.

And, eventually, that is the story that became the musical, The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World.

Madsen and Gregory have written songs that serve the story well, and that nicely blend touches of humor, irony, and earnestness. The performances throughout are strong. Peter Friedman, a better actor than singer, brings a real sense of fervor to the role of Austin, and Annie Golden, a better singer (actually, a terrific singer) than actor, shows us both devotion and doubt as his wife. Sarah Sokolovic (Betty), Emily Walton (Helen), and Jamey Hood (Dot) do well as the sisters, overwhelmed by their father's demands and expectations of them, but also showing healthy signs of rebellion. Kevin Cahoon, Corey Michael Smith, and Steve Routman round out the cast, and John Langs does a sold job of directing.

I’ve got to say, the true story behind the show is so compelling that it is difficult to even guess whether the musical would be nearly as interesting if it has been completely invented. Since seeing it last weekend, I have spent a lot of time reading about the Wiggin family and the Shaggs, and listening to their music. I cannot separate the experience of seeing the musical from the rest of these activities.

If you brush off The Shaggs as simply another wannabe rock band, this is not the show for you. If, on the other hand, you are intrigued by the real life story of the Wiggins, then I encourage you to get to Playwrights Horizons for a performance of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World before it, too, becomes a piece of The Shaggs' underground cult.

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

Tonys, Yes, But Don’t Forget About Off-Broadway

Now that the Tony Award nominees have been announced and everyone else is busy picking at the list and making their predictions, I thought I might use this time to talk about some of the Off Broadway offerings from this season.

I recently gushed about a little gem of a downtown show called Peter and the Starcatcher, a clever, funny, charming, and delightful prequel to Peter Pan.   If you missed it but wish you hadn’t, the buzz is that a move uptown, possibly to a Broadway theater, may be in the offing.  Since the play was commissioned by Disney Theatrical Productions, there may be some real money behind the buzz. So keep your eyes open and don’t let the grass grow beneath your feet should the transfer happen.

Another “second chance” show you should be looking out for is Other Desert Cities by playwright Jon Robin Baitz.  This is a smart, sharply drawn family drama with political undertones, directed by the multi-talented and ubiquitous Joe Mantello.  Montello just came off directing Laurie Metcalf’s Obie-worthy performance as a mentally damaged woman in Sharr White’s The Other Place (sorry, that one’s closed, too), and he is now knocking them dead as an actor in the lead and Tony-nominated role of Ned Weeks in the revival of Larry Kramer’s masterful The Normal Heart on Broadway.  Other Desert Cities had a sold out run at Lincoln Center and boasted a stellar cast that included Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach, and Linda Lavin.  Ideally, a Broadway transfer would keep director and cast intact.   My advice: don’t miss it this time!

Or course, you haven’t missed everything.  So here are some Off Broadway shows you might want to see before they, too, are gone.

High on my list is By The Way, Meet Vera Stark, now on view at the Second Stage.  The play, by Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage (for Ruined) is a funny and satirical look at the life and career of an African American actress whose claim to fame was her featured role as a maid in the fictional but authentic-seeming 1933 film, “The Belle of New Orleans.”  Nottage takes jabs at Hollywood racism, both then and now, and also at the over-intellectualizing of serious questions of race in America.  Act I is presented as a very funny screwball comedy that, in Act II, segues into rich satire. If you need more convincing, go to the website www.meetverastark.com for a video glimpse of a mockumentary about “The Belle of New Orleans” and Vera Stark’s place in cinematic history.

This is also a big year for playwright Tony Kushner, who hit the headlines this week when the City University of New York Board of Trustees chopped his name from a list of intended recipients of honorary degrees.  The brouhaha was triggered when one trustee challenged Kushner’s alleged criticism of the State of Israel over its treatment of Palestinians.  I’ll confine my comments here to my view that the decision was a pretty foolish one that makes the trustees look like a bunch of idiots, and turn instead to Kushner’s current season in the sun as the focus of the Signature Theatre Company's annual single-playwright showcase.

To begin with, we had a glorious revival of Angels in America, one of the great American plays of the twentieth century, given a grand production in the small confines of the Peter Norton Space.  I’ve already praised it to the skies in a previous blog entry, so let’s turn to the second of the season’s three Kushner plays, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, now on view at the Public Theater. 

“IHO,” as the lengthy title is sometimes abbreviated, lacks the cohesion of Angels, but it does contain a spinning array of plots and subplots, fine acting, and brilliant discourse about politics, unionism, Marxism, theology, suicide, fidelity, family ties, birth order, same-sex marriage, prostitution, and more--often told with humor (an early line about cell phone users in the theater draw a hearty laugh and a round of applause) or sharp-tongued sarcasm ("I came here to tweeze your head off and spit in the stump!" is one memorable line). Kushner will say whatever is on his mind when he is writing a new play, and this one, coming in at nearly four hours, could use some editing.  Still, it is well worth a visit and beats the heck out of the pretentiousness that is Jerusalem. 

Finally, I'd like to tell you about three new Off Broadway shows that are about to open. 

Now in previews at the Little Shubert Theatre is Lucky Guy, a campy romp of a musical featuring Leslie Jordan, best known for his role as Beverley Leslie on the TV sitcom "Will and Grace," and Varla Jean Merman (aka Jeffery Roberson), a very talented drag performer.   Willard Beckham provides the book, lyrics, and music, which ranges from country to rockabilly to novelty numbers to ballads. The story line, such as it is, centers on a plot to steal a song from the winner of a talent contest. If you go, expect a lot of burlesque-type humor, but also take note that within all the silliness, Kyle Dean Massey, who sings the lovely title song, emerges as a star to be reckoned with.  

If you long for more tales of Neverland while you await another opportunity to see Peter and the Starcatcher, you should head on out to the New Victory Theater for the return engagement of Mabou Mines' wistfully poignant production of Peter and Wendy (yes, another Peter Pan play, this one adhering close to J. M. Barrie's original story).  Peter and Wendy features the always brilliant Basil Twist doing duty here as the lead puppeteer, and Karen Kandel as the storyteller, a role for which she has earned a truckload of highly deserved awards.  This is a short run that began yesterday and is scheduled to end on May 22.  Hesitate and you become one of the Lost Boys!

Also something to look forward to is a co-production of the New York Theatre Workshop and Playwrights Horizons of the musical The Shaggs:  Philosophy of the World, based on the true story of a working class father who is determined to find fame and fortune by promoting his not-particularly-talented daughters as a great rock band in the late 1960s. 

Playwrights Horizons, where The Shaggs will be performed, is offering discount tickets of $40 (for performances between May 12 and May 19) and $60 for the rest of the run, through July 3.  You can order online at www.ticketcentral.com, using the code SHAGGLOG, or by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 between the hours of noon and 8 p.m. dailty, or by presenting a printout of this blog post to the Ticket Central box office at 416 West 42^nd street at the hours listed above.   

So there you have it, a reminder that Broadway alone does not make New York the greatest theater city in the world.  Catch an Off Broadway show today!

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

PETER and ALICE: Reconnecting With My Inner Child

Adam Chanler-Bedrat (Peter) and Christian Borle (Black Stache)

When I wrote recently about the highly acclaimed production of War Horse at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, I mentioned that my less than enthusiastic response was perhaps tied to my inability to tap  into my inner 12-year-old self, who—had he accompanied me—would surely have led to my being swept away by the grand spectacle of it all.

I feared we had lost touch altogether or that I had contracted a fatal case of curmudgeonness. But I am happy to report that my inner child and I had a happy reunion last weekend at productions of Peter and the Starcatcher and Wonderland. Both shows succeeded in reminding me of the magical power of storytelling that had captivated me as a youngster.

Let’s start with Peter and the Starcatcher, a delightful romp of a show. I haven’t read the book of (nearly) the same title by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, so I can’t speak to how well Peter and the Starcatcher sticks to its source material. But anyone who grew up with the story of Peter Pan—as a book, the Mary Martin musical, or the Disney animated version—would certainly recognize the show as a prequel, addressing the origin of the Boy-Who-Would-Not-Grow-Up, the Lost Boys, Captain Hook, Tinker Bell and even the clock-eating Crocodile.

The play, adapted by Rick Elice (co-writer of Jersey Boys and The Addams Family) and directed by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers, represents theatrical imagination and creativity at their very best. A fine cast, a handful of simple props, and a shipload of whimsy and silliness—including a chorus line of singing and dancing mermaids, conversations in Dodo language, and more puns than should ever be allowed to be expressed in a single evening—combine in such a glorious way as to please anyone’s inner or outer child.

Of the acting company, I would like to single out Christian Borle for high praise for his performance as the wicked and wickedly funny pirate captain, Black Stache, the precursor to Captain Hook. For the role, he became the embodiment of a young and totally wigged-out Groucho Marx, with maybe a dollop of Cyril Richard, who starred as Captain Hook opposite Mary Martin’s Peter Pan. Every moment Borle was onstage was sheer delight, and how nice to see him having what seemed to be a ton of fun after his recent excellent performance in the decidedly un-fun role of the AIDS-infected Prior Walter in the revival of Angels In America.

Alas, Peter and the Starcatcher has ended its run at the New York Theatre Workshop, but surely it will return there or to another venue.  Clap your hands if you believe!. 

Janet Dacal (center) and the cast of Wonderland

From Neverland, we move on to Wonderland, a full-scale tuneful Broadway musical, now on view at the Marquis Theatre.

Wonderland had me even before the curtain rose, with its use of projected images of iconic drawings by John Tenniel from the original Alice in Wonderland book that serves as the musical’s inspiration. But it wasn’t just the drawings that put the smile on my face; it was the accompanying projections of quotes from the book that meandered snake-like across the curtain. The twisting lines were reminiscent of "The Mouse’s Tale," a short segment in an early chapter of Alice in Wonderland, in which the words are typeset so as to follow the curves of a mouse’s tail (pun intended by Lewis Carroll). Someone knows their “Alice,” I thought, as I happily awaited the unfolding of the musical.

Wonderland is hardly the perfect show, but it has enough going for it to make the visit worthwhile, especially if you happen to be an admirer of Lewis Carroll’s off-kilter nuttiness. The well-known characters are all there and cleverly portrayed, with uniformly strong performances. Noteworthy are Janet Dacal as Alice, Kate Shindle as the Mad Hatter, Karen Mason as the Queen of Hearts, and E. Clayton Cornelious as the Caterpillar, but no one is miscast or is a weak link.  Director Gregory Boyd (who is also the book writer, along with Jack Murphy) and choreographer Marguerite Derricks keep things hopping.  

Frank Wildhorn, a generally underappreciated tunesmith, has come up with a batch of catchy, bouncy, and entertaining songs (lyrics by Mr. Murphy)—even if at times it feels as if you were in the audience at a Las Vegas revue (lots of amplification and wall-of-sound orchestrations). Terrific, Tony-worthy costumes by Susan Hilferty and video projections by Sven Ortel add tremendously both to the Las Vegas effect and to the production itself. 

I feel obliged to note that my take on Wonderland veers sharply from that of many of the professional critics, who have brushed it off as trite and inconsequential. For me, though, Wonderland shows a real strength in its ability to tap into the spirit of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the plot of which, if I may be so bold as to mention, is no less inane the one whipped up by Boyd and Murphy.  The old don himself even makes an appearance in a scene that is perhaps tangential but is also charming and heart-warming.

If you are not a fan of Alice in Wonderland, as I have been lo these many years, you should consider this to be a caveat. 

I think Wonderland is a worthy entrant to the Broadway scene.  Time and box office receipts will tell if it will become the next Wicked, another show based on a classic children's  book that failed to thrill the critics when it opened in 2003 and yet is still playing to capacity crowds.

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Jerusalem: Into the Woods with Mark Rylance

Mark Rylance as "Rooster" Byron

If you decide to check out the production of Jerusalem, the ponderous and meandering showcase for Mark Rylance’s not inconsiderable talents now on view at The Music Box, you may find your mind wandering upon occasion as you strain to sort out accents and try to figure out if there is anything like a plot that runs through the three-hour event. 

Here’s one mental game you can play with yourself.  Who does Rylance’s character, Johnny “Rooster” Byron remind you of?  Here is my own partial list:

·      Falstaff—perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest creation—charismatic and repulsive in equal measure. 

·      The Pied Piper, leading the village children astray.

·      Pan, the amoral seducer.

·      Peter Pan, the boy who refused to grow up.

·      Ed Bloom, the character played by Albert Finney in the movie “Big Fish,” a weaver of magical tales that proved, in the end, to have a basis in reality.

·      Big John, the pedophile played by Brian Cox in the film “L. I. E.”

·      Archie Rice, the burned-out vaudevillian portrayed so memorably by Laurence Olivier in John Osbourne’s “The Entertainer.” 

You can’t go wrong.  Rylance gives us all of them and more as he roars his way through Jerusalem, written by Jez Butterworth and coming to us by way of an acclaimed production at the Royal Court Theatre in London. 

Look—you either love Rylance or you think of him as too much of a good thing.  I’m in the latter camp.  I admired his exquisite farcical timing in Boeing Boeing a couple of seasons back, but I avoided La Bête, even though I am told I missed the greatest comic monologue ever in the history of theater.  Now, with Jerusalem, I found myself once again appreciating his ability to completely take over a role and dominate every single moment of the play, but I also found his portrayal of “Rooster” Byron to fall into the “sound and fury” category, all surface and lacking any of the subtlety that would truly bring the character to life. 

I much preferred some of the smaller performances, particularly those of Alan David as The Professor, but also Mackenzie Crook as Ginger and John Gallagher, Jr. as Lee.  All of their characters—sidekicks and hangers-on though they may be—drew  me in far more than did Rylance. 

Rylance’s “Rooster” Byron is a rooster indeed, a crowing, self-inflating supplier of drugs and alcohol and dreams to young teenagers who serve as an audience for his tall tales, in which he evokes a kind of Shakespearean Forest of Arden or an Arcadia or a Shangri-La or some other mystical, mythical place.   His kingdom is the mobile home he has parked for years just outside of a suburban tract, and his neighbors—at least the adults among them—would just as soon send him packing.  The opening scene, which might make you think you have wandered into a performance of American Idiot by mistake, will tell you all you need to know about why he is not considered to be adding value to the community. 

Of the three acts that comprise Jerusalem, only Act II seems to be going somewhere, with our “Falstaff” appearing to be moving along the path toward rejection and self-destruction.  But that potential movement of plot fades and we are left with what amounts to a character study.  That the character is both larger-than-life and a scourge on society does not, in my view, make the trip worth the effort—even if Jerusalem winds up walking away with a Tony Award for best play and another for best performance by a leading actor. 

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The People in the Picture: The Wrong Music and Messy Storytelling Mar a Potentially Moving Story

A tender moment from 'The People in the Picture'

Here’s a quick quiz:

Say you were putting together a musical about a Yiddish theater troupe in 1930s Poland.  In order to capture the flavor of the times, you would:

A.  Use authentic period Yiddish music.
B. Hire a klezmer band to write and perform original pieces.
C. Turn the job over to the guy who wrote “Hound Dog,” “Jailhouse Rock,”and “Love Potion #9.”  

If you answered C, congratulations!  You have the honor of knowing you are in synch with the folks behind The People in the Picture, an earnest if klutzy take on the recollections of a Jewish woman haunted forever by memories of a life upturned by the rise of Naziism.   

Don’t get me wrong.  I am a big fan of Mike Stoller’s rock era songs, written with his partner Jerry Leiber—the soundtrack of my youth.  Mr. Stoller is responsible for half of the music in the show.  The rest of the songs were written by Artie Butler, the music arranger for Joe Cocker’s “Feelin’ Alright,” among other hits.  I have no doubt that both are talented songwriters, but, please, not for this show, and, do pardon me if I say “oy vey!”  

The People in the Picture stars Donna Murphy (undoubtedly the first name that pops into your head when you think of a Yiddishe mama), who jumps back and forth in time portraying an elderly bubbe in 1970s New York and her younger self in Warsaw during the Nazi years.  Remember, though, this is Donna Murphy we’re talking about here; to her credit, the two-time Tony Award winner gives it her all against the ineffective music and messy book and lyrics by novelist Iris Rainer Dart, best known as the author of Beaches.

The premise of the show is that a grandmother, Bubbe Raisel, is passing on the story of her life to her granddaughter.  As she speaks, her earlier years as a star of Yiddish theater unfold on the stage.  Ms. Murphy does a fine job of moving between the two roles so that the transitions are clear.  But the potentially compelling storyline, which might have worked with more appropriate music, is further lost when the framing device encompasses a separate plot about the stormy relationship between Raisel and her daughter. 

The single truly authentic moment in the show occurs when the songwriters step aside, and Ms. Murphy sings a tender and popular Yiddish children’s song (Oyfen Pripitchik, written in the 19^th century by Mark Warshavsky) a tune you might recognize from its use in the movie Schindler’s List.  I could hear members of the audience, who undoubtedly remembered the song from their own childhoods, quietly singing along.

Of the rest of the performers, I would like to tip my hat to some old favorites:  Chip Zien, Lewis J. Stadlen, and Joyce Van Patten as members of Raisel’s Polish acting company.  Victims of the Holocaust, their spirits surround Raisel in her old age and offer peace and comfort against a troubled heart. 

These few effective elements suggest lost possibilities and make one wish for a better showcase for this story.  As it stands, the People in the Picture fades quickly from memory—the exact opposite of what Raisel would want to see happen.

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