ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: A Home Run For Roundabout and a Grand Slam for Kristin Chenoweth

Move over, Helen Mirren, and prepare to be deposed. It’s true you are doing a lovely job portraying Queen Elizabeth over on 45^th Street, but look out for upstart Queen Kristin Chenoweth, the glittering star of the Roundabout Theatre Company’s sublime revival of the Comden and Green/Cy Coleman screwball musical comedy On The Twentieth Century at the American Airlines Theatre in the heart of Times Square.

Ms. Chenoweth is riveting in a role that fits her talents as if it had been created for her, though she was but 10 years old and living in her native Oklahoma when On The Twentieth Century opened on Broadway in 1978. Its star, Madeline Kahn, unfortunately withdrew after a couple of months into the run, citing damage to her vocal cords.

Heaven forefend such a fate befalling Chenoweth, an operatically-trained coloratura soprano whose singing is put to grand use with Coleman’s score, one that pays tribute to comic operas and the operetta style associated with the likes of Sigmund Romberg. On The Twentieth Century allows Chenoweth to combine her ability to knock off those High Cs—as she amply demonstrated in her performance in the New York Philharmonic’s concert version of Candide in 2004—with her keen sense of physical comedy, on great display in The Apple Tree, another Roundabout production in which she starred two years later.

So it’s Cunégonde meets Passionella, a combo punch that results, to borrow a quote from Candide, in creating the best of all possible worlds for anyone who longs for that magical blend of star power and production values that makes for a perfect Broadway musical. 

Chenoweth plays a 1930s Hollywood superstar at the top of her game, who meets her egomaniacal match in Oscar Jaffee (Peter Gallagher). Jaffee is the theatrical impresario who discovered her when she was barely eking out a living as a rehearsal pianist, a moment we visit in flashback. Goodbye Mildred Plotka; hello Lily Garland.

Together, the pair embarked on a whirlwind of theatrical successes and a torrid love affair, both of which ended when Lily jumped ship and headed out to Tinseltown. Now Jaffee is down on his luck.  With four flops in a row and facing a mountain of debts, he is fleeing aboard the train known as the Twentieth Century Limited. Much can happen in the 16 hours it takes to get from Chicago to New York, and Jaffee intends to make things happen. It seems he has arranged to be ensconced in the stateroom next to the one in which Lily Garland is staying. His troubles will be over if only he can get her to sign a contract with him.

This is the basic set-up that encompasses Act I. Not only do we get to know Oscar and Lily, we meet the show’s significant supporting players as well. There are Oliver (Mark Linn-Baker) and Owen (Michael McGrath), Oscar’s loyal managerial team; Bruce (Andy Karl), Lily’s hunka-hunka plaything, whose slim movie career is dependent on his good looks and on keeping Lily interested in him; Letitia Peabody Primrose (Mary Louise Wilson), an eccentric and evangelical woman of wealth who offers to back Oscar’s next production, an epic about Mary Magdalene in which he hopes to star Lily; and a show-stopping quartet of tap dancing porters (Rick Faugno, Richard Riaz Yoder, Phillip Attmore, and Drew King) who undoubtedly will have their own fan base as the run continues.

All of the elements come together in the grand meteor shower that is Act II. No plot spoilers here, but kudos to the book’s writers, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who found a way to bring every wild tangent back to the central story of Oscar and Lily. The writing partners adapted the musical from the 1934 Howard Hawk film (titled Twentieth Century), which starred John Barrymore and Carole Lombard as Oscar and Lily. But even before that, there was a play of the same title by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht. As it happens, Hecht also penned some of the Marx Brothers movies; that is the kind of madcap mentality we can see at work here.

Although this is not a show that is filled with hummable hit tunes, Cy Coleman has given us multiple musical highlights, where the songs themselves join in glorious harmony with the performances and with director Scott Ellis’s inspired staging. A couple of highlights from Act I are the catchy title song, the splashy “Veronique,” performed by Lily in her very first musical as Oscar’s protégée, and “Repent,” sung by Ms. Wilson’s character with a twinkle in her eye as she relishes a sinful past that predated her current religious fervor. 

In Act II, almost every song is a winner—from the dancing porters’ opener “Life Is Like A Train,” to an ode to Letitia Primrose'’s money (“Five Zeros”), to a number about trying to get Lily to sign a contract (“Sign Lily Sign”). There is also a hilarious chase through the train (“She’s A Nut”), a grand production number that has Lily debating with herself over what kind of role she should take in order to further her career (“Babette”), and the final duet between the crazed couple when Oscar is pretending to be on his death bed (“Lily/Oscar”). 

And while Kristin Chenoweth is the undisputed top banana, everyone else more than rises to the occasion. Peter Gallagher, who suffered from a voice-damaging infection through much of the preview period, is in fine fettle, giving a John Barrymore-worthy performance as Oscar. Andy Karl shows great comic chops as Lily’s boy toy, and Mary Louise Wilson is splendid as the kooky Letitia Primrose. The production is blessed as well with David Rockwell’s art deco set design and William Ivey Long’s period costumes. The only quibble: the orchestra is rather scaled back for such a full-throttled production.     

Somewhere in Broadway Heaven, Betty Comden and Adolph Green are grinning from ear to ear, with two of their shows delighting audiences in theaters residing on the same block of 42^nd Street – On The Town at the Lyric and On The Twentieth Century at the American Airlines. There could not be a happier coming together of great American Broadway musicals at their best.     

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'Machinal': Stunning Revival by Roundabout Theatre Company

Resurrecting old theatrical treasures is a real art. Far too many efforts at reviving early twentieth century works turn out to be lost causes—with presentations of plays that are painfully dated and creaky despite their respected place in drama history. Without naming names, let’s just say there have been an unfortunate number of these on view in the past few years.    

So it’s decidedly hats-off time in salute to the Roundabout Theatre Company and its artistic director, Todd Haimes, who have thus far this season given us two absolutely first-rate revivals at the American Airlines Theatre.

We had thought we had struck a lucky vein of gold this past October with Terence Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy, featuring a marvelous cast headed up by Roger Rees under the razor sharp direction of Lindsay Posner.

But as good as that was, it is the current production of Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 masterpiece, Machinal, that raises the ante and exchanges gold for diamonds.

Machinal, which hitherto had not been seen on Broadway since its initial run 85 years ago, is a powerhouse work that takes us inside of the mind of a sadly disturbed young woman accused of committing a cold-blooded murder. 

Sophie Treadwell, a successful playwright and journalist, based the play on an actual incident. But instead of merely recounting the facts, she turned the story into a stunning expressionistic drama about her protagonist, Helen, brilliantly portrayed in this production by British actress Rebecca Hall.

It is quite possible to view Machinal as a cautionary tale about a woman trapped within the very limited options allowed by social norms. Like Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Helen has tried to fit into the tightly bound life she feels is her only option—in this case taking care of her mother, holding down a job as a clerk/typist, marrying the boss, and having a child.  But the more she tries to conform, the more anxious and panicky she feels, so that by the time we get to know her, she is the living embodiment of Edvard Munch’s famous painting, The Scream.

But Ms. Treadwell is not Ibsen, nor does she seek to be. She is more interested in examining Helen’s psyche than in laying blame on her significant others or Society. Yes, her mother (Suzanne Bertish) is annoying and her husband (Michael Cumpsty) is oblivious, but neither of them is particularly monstrous. Yet Helen is disgusted beyond endurance by both of them, and, as well, she feels no bond whatsoever with her daughter. 

To contemporary eyes, Helen suffers from a range of psychiatric disorders for which there now exist treatments and therapies: clinical depression, generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, bipolar disorder, attachment disorder.  Unfortunately, she is forced to pull herself through day after day without any support, and the play is at least as much an indictment of the society’s lack of attention to mental illness as it is about the stifling of women. 

For Helen, the only time she finds even a glimmer of relief is when she meets a man (Morgan Spector) in a pick-up bar and has her first and only romantic and sexual fling.  She endows in him her long repressed dreams of her imagined rescuer, though their relationship is short-lived and he moves on. With all hope gone, the act of violence that leads Helen to her fate is pretty much inevitable.  And even as we sympathize with her, we do so with the understanding that her plight has extended to envelop others, including her mother, husband, and child. 

The entire cast of Machinal is excellent, with several of the actors taking on multiple and distinct roles. And Lyndsey Turner’s direction, Es Devlin’s set design, and Jane Cox’s lighting design are truly inspired. Together, they give Helen’s psyche a physical and nightmarish presence. The opening scene hits us smack on by perfectly encapsulating Helen’s emotional state without a word being spoken—the personification of New York anxiety.   

The could turn out to be a banner year for Roundabout, what with the upcoming productions of Cabaret, Violet, and The Real Thing, and the pair of winners at the American Airlines Theater, not to mention the splendid array of works at the Laura Pels, where a revival of David Margulies’ Pulitzer Prize winner Dinner With Friends is about to open.

Kudos to Machinal.  And kudos to Roundabout and to all involved!

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'The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin:' Portrait of a Callous Narcissist

“Everybody’s laying all their shit on me!”

That’s the voice of the title character in playwright Steven Levenson’s (The Language of Trees) latest work, The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, now on view at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre. 

Depending on the line reading, this could be a cry of self-pity, or it might be a determined declaration of independence.  Coming from the mouth of David Morse, the splendid actor playing the role, it is neither.  It is just another attempt at manipulating everyone around him into doing exactly what he wants them to do—the very sort of tactic that landed him a five-year stint in federal prison for securities fraud and insider trading.    

Now he is out, not the least bit remorseful, and bound and determined to insinuate himself back into the lives of his family as if it were his due.

In brief, Tom is the perfect a-hole, a man who would shame his son (Christopher Denham) into letting him move in, who would blackmail his son-in-law (Rich Sommer) into helping him get rehired at the firm where they both had worked until Tom was arrested, and who would stalk his ex-wife (Lisa Emery).  Where is their loyalty to him, he demands repeatedly. 

The play is at its best when it demonstrates the impact of a callous narcissist on those around him.  Mr. Morse owns the stage whenever he is on it, and he plays the role to the hilt.  His Tom Durnin is a most hiss-worthy villain; at the performance I attended, I was surrounded by any number of audience members who kept muttering nasty things about the character.  I’ll confess to having cursed him myself once or twice. 

It’s not hard to understand why Tom’s daughter and wife want nothing to do with him, but it’s also not that difficult to understand why his son James takes him in, albeit reluctantly. 

James is going through some tough times himself.   He is a lost soul, still reeling from a difficult breakup, stuck in a stultifying job, and unsure of what to do with his life. Taking in his father means he does not have to come home to an empty house day after day.    

With the financial support of his mother, James has quit his job and is now taking a writing course at the local community college and is attempting to write a novel.  At the college, he befriends Katie (Sarah Goldberg), who has her own problems with trust.  The two of them are starting to build a relationship, which James nearly derails when he starts to fall into his father’s pattern of lying and misleading. 

Under the direction of Scott Ellis, the cast does a fine job all around.  I was particularly taken with Ms. Emery’s portrayal of Tom’s ex-wife in their confrontational scene. But the play truly belongs to Mr. Morse, who sinks his teeth into the powerful title role like a junkyard dog.  His interactions with his son, his son-in-law, his ex-wife, and with Katie are most discomfiting, and by the time Tom “unavoidably disappears,” it is clear he has left much damage in his wake.  We can only hope he stays away.

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