Upstage-Downstage

Monday, March 16, 2020

BEST OF THE BROADWAY SEASON SO FAR: Revivals and Transfers

While holed up against the coronavirus invasion, as we await a return to whatever it is that passes for normalcy around here, let's continue our look at the Broadway season's highlights thus far.

Here is my take on the best of the revivals and transfers from Off Broadway of plays and musicals that have appeared on Broadway since the start of the 2019-2020 theater year.

BEST PLAY REVIVALS/TRANSFERS THUS FAR

It's couples' therapy for interracial couples in this standout play, a transfer from Off Broadway's New York Theatre Workshop, that is both funny in a do-we-dare-laugh sort of way, and a smartly constructed satire that preaches without being preachy and teaches without being condescending.

You can read my complete review by linking here.

This pairing of plays, each of them a solo work, is a matter of both life and death for the men whose stories emerge. Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal worked diligently to deepen their performances since the initial run at the Public Theater downtown, and it made the Broadway production a breathtaking experience. You can read my complete review by linking here.

A rock solid cast, featuring David Alan Grier and Blair Underwood, along with an overall spit-shine production made for a gripping and altogether outstanding revival and first-time Broadway outing of Charles Fuller's 1982 Pulitzer Prize winner. You can read my complete review by linking here.

BEST MUSICAL REVIVALS/TRANSFERS THUS FAR

Two flawed but intriguing and well-performed musicals have been the standouts for the season thus far.

The tissue-thin plotting has faded away to near invisibility in the transfer from the Public Theater to Broadway, but the performances and the reimagining of Bob Dylan's songbook are first-rate all the way. You can read my complete review by linking here.

Director Ivo van Hove loves to tinker with long-established plays and etch his mark on them. Now he is doing it with his first Broadway musical. But even his heavy-handed use of video cameras and projections cannot wrest this much-loved show from its originators: Bernstein, Sondheim, and Robbins. The young cast is exquisite, especially Isaac Powell and Shereen Pimentel as Tony and Maria. You can read my complete review by linking here.

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Feel free to share this blog with your friends, and to offer up your own theater stories by posting a comment. I also invite you to check out the website Show-Score.Com, where you will find capsule reviews of current Broadway and Off Broadway plays from Yours Truly and many other New York critics and theatergoers.

BEST OF THE BROADWAY SEASON SO FAR: New Plays and Musicals

While we're awaiting the reopening of Broadway theaters, this might be a good time to take a look at the season's highlights thus far.

Recognizing that it's a matter of personal taste, here is my perspective on the best of the new plays and musicals that have appeared on Broadway since the start of the 2019-2020 theater year.

I have identified two new plays and two new musicals. I will consider revivals and transfers from Off Broadway to Broadway next.

BEST NEW BROADWAY PLAYS THUS FAR

Full of meaningful ambiguity and featuring two of the great actors of the English-speaking world (Eileen Atkins and Jonathan Pryce), playwright Florian Zeller's The Height of the Storm was an original and endlessly fascinating blend of ghost story and a deep dive into the unreliable memories of one or both of its lead characters -- depending on how you interpret things. You can read my complete review by linking here.

Adam Rapp's enigmatic play featured a thoroughly outstanding performance by Mary-Louise Parker as a creative writing professor whose life is most meaningful when it is surrounded by literature. Watching this was like going through a recently-discovered, long-forgotten box filled with photos, stories, diaries, and poems from your college days. You can read my complete review by linking here.

BEST NEW BROADWAY MUSICALS THUS FAR

These two shows offered up a new direction for what is often sneeringly referred to as the "jukebox musical," one that gathers and recycles songs that were never intended to be put together in order to tell a single story.

Moulin Rouge is flashy, colorful, and loud, with an approach to storytelling that leaps unabashedly across genres, from romance to melodrama to burlesque to circus to farce to self-referencing spoof. It's also entertaining as all get out, filled with clever and not-so-clever remixes of a gazillion pop tunes. You can read my complete review by linking here.

Jagged Little Pill does a great job of using Alanis Morissette's 1995 megahit album of the same title in order to tell an emotionally honest story about the real-life problems of its characters. If it is overly inflated with plot lines, it still hits the mark on so many points. You can read my complete review by linking here.

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Monday, March 2, 2020

FEBRUARY 2020 - 8 Broadway and Off-Broadway Shows

These are the 8 shows I saw in February - on Broadway, and Off Broadway.

I reviewed 6 of them and have included links to those reviews if you are interested in checking them out.

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Feb 1, 2020

Fun little musical based on the 1969 satirical film about self-actualization in the age of the "sexual revolution." Here, the satire is muted in favor of focusing more closely on its two middle aged couples who are alternately puzzled, intrigued, and jealous of the youth-oriented free love movement. Duncan Sheik and Amanda Green provide appropriately low-keyed songs that are reminiscent of Bert Bacharach/Hal David tunes of the era. Fans of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" will enjoy seeing Michael Zegen, who plays Joel in that popular Amazon Prime series, while singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega does a nice turn as the narrator. Gotta put in a special mention to Jeff Mashie, who provides the perfect costumes that manage nicely to straddle the line between lampoon and nostalgia.

Feb 5, 2020

Adaptations of short stories by two Russian literary giants are more of an educational curiosity than a successful page-to-stage production.

Review link - https://bit.ly/38glFMv

Feb 15, 2020

Without masks or costumes, four actors bravely portray 28 different characters in this edgy adaptation of George Orwell’s political satire, Animal Farm.

Review link - https://bit.ly/2wiQMZs

Feb 16, 2020

New Broadway revival of West Side Story shines most brightly when it is at its least gimmicky, when the actors are allowed to act, the singers to sing, the dancers to dance.

Review link - https://bit.ly/2SZSpmJ

Feb 19, 2020

Encores! at New York City Center is back on top, doing what it does best with this first-class production of Jerry Herman’s

foray into darkness.

Review link - https://bit.ly/37MUh7s

Feb 21, 2020

The Headlands is a noirish and inventive mix of gradually darkening humor, family drama, and the vicissitudes of memory.

Review link - https://bit.ly/39U9e9s

Feb 25, 2020

A metaphysical monolog of a play that is most fortunate in having the skillful and charming Javier Muñoz on deck as solo performer.

Review link - https://bit.ly/3ceNK9g

Feb 27, 2020

A short concert of a show that is better suited to a cabaret setting. A celebration of -- you guessed it -- the fact that we're all gonna die eventually.

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Friday, January 31, 2020

JANUARY 2020 - 7 Broadway and Off Broadway Shows

These are the 7 shows I saw in January - 4 on Broadway, and 3 Off Broadway.

I reviewed 5 of them and have included links to those reviews if you are interested in checking them out.

* * * * * * * * *

Jan 2, 2020

Forget anything you may have read that compares Matthew Lopez's two-play work to Tony Kushner's Angels in America. Whatever publicist thought to suggest that is doing The Inheritance a disservice. I will confess to having seen only Part I thus far (each part is treated as a separate play, though the story is a continuous one). If you are sitting on the fence, do what I did and give Part I a shot; it can easily stand on its own. It manages to be both expansive and intimate in scope as it considers the lives of older and younger gay men. It is sometimes a bit messy in its construction, but it is nevertheless thoroughly engaging and often quite moving.

Jan 8, 2020

A quirky yet moving story about the vulnerability of the human heart and the universal need for connection.

Review link - https://bit.ly/31nNKil

Jan 10, 2020

Laura Linney gives a lovely, polished performance in this very literary adaptation of a bestselling novel.

Review link - https://bit.ly/2RptcBa

Jan 15, 2020

An auspicious premiere of a sometimes comic, sometimes serious, and always compelling docudrama about the world of Revolutionary War and Civil War reenactors.

Review link - https://bit.ly/3ah51h5

Jan 18, 2020

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

A rock solid cast and a spit-shine production, with stand-out performances by David Alan Grier and Blair Underwood!

Review link - https://bit.ly/37hCJRG

Jan 21, 2020

A treat to see Jane Alexander and James Cromwell

performing together on Broadway!

Review link - https://bit.ly/2RQWER4

Jan 25, 2020

Paris, written by actress/playwright Eboni Booth, is a fine addition to the growing number of plays that depict the lives of blue collar workers who lead lives of quiet desperation. Here, the setting is a Wal-Mart-like big box store where a group of $5-an-hour employees struggle to make ends meet.

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Wednesday, December 25, 2019

2019 - A YEAR OF THEATER GOING

Did you ever wonder what a year of theater going looks like for someone who self-describes as "an inveterate and always-hopeful theater buff?"

Here, in chronological order, is a list of the 108 shows I saw in 2019, on and off Broadway.

The ones marked with an asterisk are those that I reviewed, either for this blog or elsewhere.

The ones in red are those that I enjoyed most for whatever quirky reasons that keep me going back show after show after show. I'll leave it to you to discern a pattern.

Choir Boy*

True West*

Eddie and Dave

To Kill A Mockingbird

The Other Josh Cohen

Call Me Madam*

God Shows Up*

Sea Wall/A Life*

Fidler Afn Dakh (Fiddler On The Roof, Yiddish)*

By the Way, Meet Vera Stark

Merrily We Roll Along*

Daddy

Shadow of a Gunman

Be More Chill*

Kiss Me Kate*

Nantucket Sleigh Ride*

Boesman and Lena

Ain’t Too Proud*

White Noise*

Cake

I Married an Angel

Smart Blonde*

Ain’t No ‘Mo*

The Mother

What the Constitution Means to Me*

King Lear*

Fleabag

Oklahoma*

Burn This*

The Ferryman*

Hadestown*

Hillary and Clinton*

All My Sons*

Beetlejuice*

Tootsie*

The Poor of New York*

Do You Feel Anger

Lady in the Dark*

INK

Caroline’s Kitchen*

Gary

Accidentally Brave

High Button Shoes*

Happy Talk*

The Plough and the Stars

Mary Mary

Feral*

Curse of the Starving Class

Juno and the Paycock

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune*

Octet

Handbagged*

Square Go*

Julie Madly Deeply*

Long Lost

We’re Only Alive for a Short Amount of Time*

In the Green*

The Secret Life of Bees

Working*

Promenade*

The Rolling Stone*

Mojada*

Moulin Rouge*

Road Show*

Coriolanus*

Life Sucks

Little Gem

Make Believe

Bat Out of Hell*

Make Believe

Hercules*

Dust*

Betrayal*

Only Yesterday*

Derren Brown: Secret*

Fern Hill*

Eureka Day

The Height of the Storm*

The Great Society*

Freestyle Love Supreme*

Slave Play*

Linda Vista*

Sunday

The Rose Tattoo*

Soft Power*

The Lightning Thief*

The Sound Inside*

David Byrne’s American Utopia*

Dublin Carol

Little Shop of Horrors

Molly Sweeney

One Discordant Violin*

Tina: The Tina Turner Musical*

Bella Bella

The Michaels

A Christmas Carol*

Einstein’s Dreams*

A Bright Room Called Day*

Jagged Little Pill*

MsTRIAL*

Fires in the Mirror

Greater Clements*

The Wild Parrots of Campbell*

Harry Townsend’s Last Stand

Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven

one in two

Sing Street

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