A Sucker Born Every Minute

You might remember one of the memorable episodes in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn—the stunt pulled by the characters known as “the Duke” and “the King,” scam artists Huck runs into while rafting on the Mississippi.  

The pair rent out a theater and then advertise a performance of a show they call "The Royal Nonesuch," to which women and children are not to be admitted. Naturally, all of the men in town—expecting some X-rated action—buy up the tickets, only to learn they have been hoodwinked when all they get for their money is the sight of “the King” prancing in his birthday suit across the stage. 

Tonight, I felt like one of Mr. Twain’s suckers. 

I attended what was advertised to be a performance of Tennessee Williams’ seldom-produced play, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel, at the New World Stages.  I am a long-time admirer of Williams’ work and welcomed the opportunity to see this play about an artist barely clinging to his sanity.   

So…the audience is sitting there 15 minutes past curtain time, with nothing but a makeshift set suggestive of a bar to look at, when out bounces someone who introduces herself as Maria Torres, the director/choreographer. 

Ms. Torres announces that they will be unable to perform the play because a member of the cast was not able to go on (whether due to sickness or injury was unclear, at least to me).  However, she didn’t want us to leave empty-handed; instead she wanted to share with us a bit of what it was we would have seen if we had, indeed, seen it. 

She awkwardly read aloud a couple of paragraphs from the program and explained how they had intended to embellish the play with bits of choreography and works of art to make the production more multi-dimensional (as if Tennessee Williams were incapable of accomplishing this through his use of language).  She then brought out a couple of performers who gave us two very brief segments of under-rehearsed (improvised?) choreographed movement. 

The whole thing lasted perhaps ten minutes, including a very lengthy pause between the first and second fragment. 

And that was it.  Ms. Torres sent us on our merry way, expressing the hope that we had been sufficiently intrigued to come back when things were up and running. 

Members of the audience were dumbfounded.  And no one on the staff at New World Stages would take any responsibility for this fiasco, which they were surely aware of long before we all showed up. One couple I spoke with said they had understood the actors would be performing with scripts in hand.  I also overheard someone else saying some ticketholders had been contacted earlier in the day about the pending cancellation.  

In any event, we were marched out to the exit without so much as a sheepish apology—much less the offer of a refund or rain check. 

I must say, in over fifty years of theatergoing, I’ve never experienced anything like this.  Yes, there have been canceled shows, but these have always been accompanied with apologies and refunds or tickets for another performance.   

Not this time. 

Caveat Emptor, everyone!

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

Slow and Uninspired Start to the Fall Theater Season...But Let Us Be Hopeful

I'm back after a lengthy break precipitated in part by an onslaught of work-related demands on my time, and in part by the lackluster start to the fall theater season.  I'll not bore you with the details of the former, but let's do talk about the latter.

Late summer and early fall are generally slow times for New York theater, but this season is getting off to a particularly lurching and sluggish beginning, with little yet to excite the heart and soul of this intrepid theatergoer. 

At least in the summer, you’ve got the opportunity to take some exploratory risks by attending any of the dozens of new and potentially exciting works that are showcased in the various Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway fringe events.

I was happy to venture a bit off the beaten track on the off chance of discovering a new voice or acting talent, without the downside of having to spoon out buckets of money to do so.  I rather admired Hadrian’s Wall by Dani Vetere, Pieces by Chris Phillips, and June and Nancy by Michelle Ramoni.  All three works offered interesting, honest, and unexpected perspectives on LGBT themes.  On the lighter side, I also thoroughly enjoyed the musical How Deep Is the Ocean by the brother/sister team of Peter and Pia Cincotti. I hope all of these will live long and prosper in future productions.

But summer is over.  It’s October.  There is a chill in the air.  And I wait.

Maybe I was spoiled by last year’s kickoff to the fall season, when we were blessed early on with two amazing productions that got things rolling with a bang.  First there was the revival of Terrence McNally’s Master Class, starring Tyne Daly in a Tony-worthy performance as opera diva Maria Callas.  Then came the magnificent full-scale and starry production of Stephen Sondheim’s masterwork, Follies.  We were also privileged to see a mesmerizing  performance by Frank Langella in a revival of Terrence Rattigan’s Man and Boy, a production of a seldom-seen early Lanford Wilson play (Lemon Sky), and new and interesting works by rising playwrights Itamar Moses (Completeness) and Kirsten Greenidge (Milk Like Sugar). 

But this fall, the season seems to be dragging itself forward in a particularly uninspired and awkward manner.  The biggest news thus far has been the still-unraveling cautionary tale of intrigue and possible fraud surrounding the efforts to finance the on-again, off-again production of the musical version of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. 

I just can’t get myself worked up to see the truncated version of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, or the tepidly-reviewed Chaplin (even though I think its star, Rob McClure, is tremendously talented), or even the fiftieth anniversary production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (didn’t we see a fine production of this, like ten minutes ago, with Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin?).

So what have I liked lately?  Off Broadway does have some good options.  Detroit, The Exonerated, and If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet are all well worth seeing.  

And despite my current lack of enthusiasm, I am looking forward to several forthcoming shows, including The Heiress (with Jessica Chastain and Downton Abbey heartthrob Dan Stevens), The Anarchist (David Mamet's new play, starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (with Chita Rivera, Will Chase, Jim Norton), and a production of Tennessee Williams's In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel. 

Hey, I'm getting excited just writing about it.  

Who knows? Maybe it will turn out to be a great fall season after all!

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

FringeNYC, Week 1: "I Heart Revolution" and "Hadrian's Wall"

FringeNYC Begins:  187 Shows in 16 Days

Are you suffering from Olympics withdrawal? 

Here’s a cure for you:  Tackle the theater marathon that is FringeNYC, the International Fringe Festival.  187 shows, 19 venues, 16 days. Winner take all!

There is no way this couch potato is going to even try to see more than a few of the offerings (for one thing, my fulltime day job tends to get annoyingly in the way), but I did get to see a couple of the shows during the opening week.

Let’s begin with an offbeat comedy called I Heart Revolution, on view at the Living Theatre, with several more performances scheduled up to the festival’s final day, August 26.

I Heart Revolution is a gentle satire that takes aim at the “Occupy” movement; young revolutionaries, it would seem, have short attention spans and are easily distracted. 

In this case, the young revolutionaries are three BFFs—20-something children of privilege named Alexandra (the ditzy one), Tara (the belligerent one), and Alice (the sometime-peacemaker, sometime-pouty member of the triumvirate).  Back in the 1960s, we used to call them “Bonwit Teller hippies,” engaging in anti-war demonstrations and railing against the government during the week, while living off their trust funds and spending weekends with their families in the Hamptons. 

In I Heart Revolution, we are the proverbial “captive audience,” being held hostage by the trio. They surround us with police tape and hold us at bay with staple guns while they fill our heads with the not-quite-coherent beliefs they latched onto as students of a feminist professor at Brown University, a woman they refer to reverently as “Mother.”  

In what appears to be a semi-improvised event (though I Heart Revolution dates to 2008 and the aforementioned Brown University), the trio launches into a combination of diatribe, Power-Point presentations, threats, and New Age rituals aimed at getting us to succumb to Stockholm Syndrome.  That’s the phenomenon that occurs when hostages begin to empathize with their captors (à la Patty Hearst, the heiress and socialite who turned bank-robber after being taken hostage—a very real and non-satirical event). 

The (possibly unintended) irony is, you probably can empathize with the anger and frustration, of which there is a lot going around these days.  But, like a character in a Samuel Beckett play, the rage dissipates when our captors—given a forum to air their grievances—are unable to articulate exactly what it is they are enraged about or what they want to see happen. 

This is the point, it would seem, of I Heart Revolution, and, in the end, it is not surprising that things fall apart over an argument in which one of the characters is deeply offended at an off-hand remark about the singer Beyoncé.

Throughout the performance, the trio is aided and abetted in their efforts by a game Chris Lowell (“dumb as a bag of bricks but cute in shorts,” as one of the women describes him).  Lowell plays Michael, their put-upon gofer who is just happy to have even a tiny moment before an audience, even a captive one.  (In a funny bit that occurs when the three women have momentarily left the room, Michael auditions for us as Biff in a scene from Death Of A Salesman).

The tacky staging and cheap props are most appropriate for a fringe production, and the three playwright/performers—Alexandra Panzer, Tara Schuster, and Alice Winslow—are on to something here.  With a bit more satirical bite, more in-your-face scariness aimed at the audience (hey, they are performing at The Living Theatre after all), and perhaps the excising of 15 minutes or so, I Heart Revolution could very well have an afterlife. 

                        *                      *                                           

The second fringe show I saw last week is called Hadrian’s Wall (playing at the Connelly Theatre, with a last performance scheduled for this Sunday).  Unlike I Heart Revolution, this is a more fully realized play, written by Dani Vetere and directed by Stephen Cedars. 

Hadrian’s Wall is a three-character study about a brilliant yet reclusive archeologist named Ramona (Laura Siner).  Ramona has spent the last fifteen years holed up in her apartment after being accused of stealing an important artifact—a block of stone containing a tantalizing yet nearly indecipherable inscription she believes will lead to a significant breakthrough regarding the very real Roman Ninth Legion, about which a mystery remains to this day. 

Ramona is somewhat of a mystery herself, and the playwright slowly and carefully unearths fragments of her story and reveals them to us as an archeologist might, by dusting off the past and allowing us to learn about her life through her interactions with David (Eric Rolland), her attorney, friend, and former lover, and with a student at the university, Amy (Rebecca White), who is gradually supplanting David in Ramona's life.  

This is an intriguing play that leaves many questions unanswered, challenging us to interpret events for ourselves.  Taken at face value, Hadrian’s Wall is a straight-forward psychological mystery.  But its real strength is in what is left unrevealed.  There is more than a bit of Harold Pinter in the script; we are not meant to know everything, but we are invited to interpret. 

Perhaps the title is meant to suggest the self-protective wall that Ramona has built around herself since leaving the university.  Perhaps David and Amy exist only in Ramona’s memory, or perhaps she has invented one or both of them to keep her company in her self-imposed solitude.  One thing for sure, there is something about her that sticks in the mind and leaves you wanting to know more. 

I suspect that Hadrian’s Wall will have a further life, and that Dani Vetere will have an interesting future as a playwright.  But if you want to catch it now, you’ve only got until this Sunday. FringeNYC waits for no one!

If you crave more of ProfMiller, check out ProfMiller@The Theater at BroadwayShowBiz.com.  Most recent review posted there:  "Richard III."

  

'Gore Vidal's The Best Man' Is a Fitting Tribute to Its Playwright

The candidates face off in 'Gore Vidal's The Best Man'

I am writing this review shortly after the lights of Broadway were dimmed in a salute to the late Gore Vidal—author, playwright, and raconteur—who passed away earlier this week at the age of 86. 

As it happens, I had a ticket to see the Broadway revival of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man the day after he died. The performance, under the able hand of director Michael Wilson, was dedicated to the playwright, and I am pleased to report that this production is a most fitting tribute to the Mr. Vidal’s memory and to his talent.  

Any play that is tied to a specific era will carry with it a bit of stale air, but the current cast, which includes several replacements since the show’s opening four months ago, burnishes every corner of this 1960 political melodrama so that it fairly gleams. 

The Best Man takes place during a presidential nominating convention, at a time when the selection of the party’s candidate was not the foregone conclusion it has become through the well-oiled primary election system. 

Enter the Schoenfeld Theatre, and it is as if you were a delegate to that convention.  As ushers wearing red, white, and blue beribboned straw hats lead you to your seat, you can see that the walls are festooned with bunting, placards, and posters, and there are television monitors suspended from the ceiling showing black-and-white images of the goings-on.

The audience can hear the sounds of speeches and of clapping and cheering that draw us in even before the play begins.  The convention takes place over three days, and at the start of each of the three acts, the sounds grow louder and more excited, helping us to feel the suspense of the battle among the three leading candidates.

The actual 1960 Democratic Convention—in which John Fitzgerald Kennedy emerged as the winner—is the first one that I can recall.  I was a young teenager at the time, and I remember being glued to the television, utterly fascinated with the entire process.  Vidal (who anointed himself a member of the Kennedy clan through a stepfather he had in common with Jacqueline Kennedy) clearly drew some of his plot elements from that convention, and it is the mix of history and an unfortunately prophetic vision of what the system has become in the years since then that continues to keep the play interesting. 

On the one hand, you have characters who bring to mind the charismatic Kennedy and the intellectual Adlai Stevenson, along with specific references to President Eisenhower, to his wife Mamie Eisenhower and even to Grace Coolidge, wife of President Calvin Coolidge.   These references, among others, remind us of the place and time the play inhabits.  But there is also a great deal of political gamesmanship, deal brokering, backstabbing, mudslinging, and dirty tricks, all of which will be very familiar even to those who are too young to recall the “good old days.”

The assumption we are handed is that the nomination will go to one of two candidates, the young, dashing, and ambitious Senator Joseph Cantwell (John Stamos) for whom the ends always justify the means, or the former Secretary of State William Russell (John Larroquette), a serious statesman who is a reluctant player in the game of politics. 

Each of the two bears a piece of information about the other that may be enough to break the stalemate.  Cantwell has learned of his opponent’s one-time bout with mental illness, and Russell has information that the Senator may have had a homosexual relationship while serving in the military.  The difference here is that Cantwell relishes his weapon and has already prepared copies of the medical report to distribute to the delegates, while Russell really wants nothing to do with raising potential destructive personal information. 

As the two circle one another, a third major player is on hand—former President Art Hockstader (magnificently portrayed by James Earl Jones), whose endorsement both candidates are seeking. Hockstader, presumably modeled on Harry Truman, is gravely ill, but he will not give up one moment of the spotlight he is enjoying as long as he withholds his endorsement, and his glee is palpable during his meetings with the two frontrunners, even after he can no longer manage to stand up. 

These three gentlemen are fascinating to watch.  John Stamos and John Larroquette embrace their roles nearly as gloriously as Mr. Jones.  But this is not a three-character play;  there are 22 characters, each of whom contributes mightily to keeping things jumping, forestalling any mustiness that might otherwise have crept in. 

Mr. Stamos only recently stepped into the part of Senator Cantwell (replacing Eric McCormack), and he has made it his own by supplying equal parts of boyish charm and Machiavellian underhandedness.  He is joined by three other newcomers:  Kristin Davis, replacing Kerry Butler and making an auspicious Broadway debut, as Cantwell’s ebullient wife; Cybill Shepherd, replacing Candice Bergen as Russell’s estranged wife and reluctant political partner; and Elizabeth Ashley as Sue-Ellen Gamadge, leader of the Women’s Division. 

Ms. Shepherd has quickly found her way into an underwritten part as a politico wife who gradually comes to embrace her public duties, and Ms. Davis and Ms. Ashley (who has the daunting privilege of following Angela Lansbury), absolutely shine in their respective roles.  Ms. Ashley, in particular, seems to have been born to play the role of the honey-toned yet razor-sharp piece of work that is Sue-Ellen Gamadge, who greets Cybill Shepherd’s character (who, after all, may wind up being First Lady) with these charming words:     

You…couldn’t…look…better!  I mean it!  
 I like the whole thing…especially the 
 naturally gray hair.

Even in the smaller roles, you get to see such talented actors as Mark Blum as Russell’s frustrated campaign manager, Dakin Matthews as a backslapping Southern senator, and the always-wonderful Jefferson Mays as the craven supplier of the gossip about Senator Cantwell’s alleged sexual misconduct. 

I’m not going to argue that The Best Man is the find of the century, but there is nothing also-ran about its Tony nomination for Best Revival of a Play (it lost to Death of a Salesman).  Smart directing by Michael Wilson and a top-notch company of actors makes it a sure-fire audience pleaser that I am happy to recommend without reservation.  

If you crave more of ProfMiller, check out the column, ProfMiller@The Theater, at BroadwayShowBiz.com.  Recent reviews include "How Deep Is The Ocean?," "Triassic Parq The Musical," and "Closer Than Ever." 

‘Black Milk’: From Russia with Loathing

Move over, Chekhov.  There’s another Russian playwright in town. 

His name is Vassily Sigarev, and, at the tender age of 35, he is raising a lot of ruckus in Europe (and picking up admirers like Tom Stoppard along the way) for his brutal plays about the brutality of life in post-Soviet Russia. 

If you have seen one or both of the well-received productions of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya (the Sydney Theater Company’s version which just closed at City Center and the still-running and all-but-sold-out production at the Soho Rep), you may be interested in expanding your horizons by going to see Sigarev’s Black Milk, a nasty little taste of home-brewed vodka that is on display at the 13^th Street Theatre. 

I’ve got to warn you, though, that this production is considerably overwrought and pretty much unrelenting in its foul-mouthed, rage-filled portrayal of the ugly side of life.  Chances are you are not going to enjoy it much, but you still might want to go just to get a sense of this rising star of a writer, whom Stoppard has likened to Dostoevsky and in whose work I saw more than a few hints of Chekhov himself, even if they are nearly lost under the heavy-handed direction of Michel Hausmann. 

Hausmann, who is a theatrical director in his native Venezuela, recently came to Sigarev’s work as a graduate student in directing at Columbia University.  This does have the feel of an exuberant student production, in which every outrageous moment is exploited to its fullest.  Unfortunately, the play’s not inconsiderable humor—and thus its balance—is virtually lost.

Black Milk centers its tale on a married couple, a pair of hustlers from the big city who have descended on a backwater town in the middle of nowhere in order to fleece the gullible locals by selling them electrical appliances (in this case toasters, a nod, perhaps, to the toaster thief in Sam Shepherd’s True West) that they neither need nor can afford.   The action takes place in a shabby train station, where the pair, Lyovchik and his very pregnant chain-smoking, vodka-swilling wife Poppet, are forced to wait for the rare passenger train to come along so they can escape back to “civilization.” 

In the right hands, Lyovchik and Poppet could be viewed as distorted, foul-mouthed versions of Didi and Gogo from Waiting for Godot.  But here, as directed by Mr. Hausmann and portrayed by Josh Marcantel and Liba Vaynberg, they start out as shrill and vicious and get increasingly so as the play progresses, save for an interlude during Act II in which Poppet decides she is “tired of being bitch” and wants to give up their world where it is “trendy to be hateful.”  (Not to worry though; with some ugly prodding from her husband, she gets over it.)

The comic moments, such as they exist, come from some of the other characters in the play:  the vodka brewing ticket agent (Anna Wilson); the town’s own homegrown hustler and rival vodka seller (Emily Ward); and a madman of a townie (John Brambery) who comes tearing after Lyovchik and Poppet with a shotgun, wearing only a flapping jacket that fails even remotely to cover up the fact that he is naked. 

That encounter, which everyone survives owing to the fact that the shotgun is loaded with blanks, is enough to send Poppet into labor. 

It is during the interlude, in which the kind-hearted if overbearing Auntie Pasha (Rachel Murdy) cares for Poppet through the birth and postpartum period, that Poppet “finds God” and decides she wants to stay—a suggestion that does not sit well with the scornful Lyovchik, who reminds his wife of the power he has over her (she is called “Poppet,” after all).   And so it’s back to the big city.  Good riddance!

So what to make of all of this unpleasantness?  I still say there is a lot of Chekhov to be found in Black Milk. There’s the clash that occurs when city dwellers and country folk come together, the tension between religion and atheism, and even the gun-toting madman—who, save for the gun toter’s state of undress, comes straight out of Uncle Vanya. 

Some of this is potentially quite funny, something the Sydney Theatre Company played up royally (perhaps overplayed to the point of slapstick; balance, please!) in its production of Uncle Vanya.  There is a line in that production, in which the nanny reacts to all the brouhaha:  “All that shooting and shouting.  It’s something for the stage.”  


Indeed it is, which is why I think Vassily Sigarev is on to something that is worth cultivating.  Meanwhile, Black Milk is the only production of his work in town, which alone makes it worth the visit.

If you crave more of ProfMiller, check out the column, ProfMiller@The Theater, at BroadwayShowBiz.com.  Recent reviews include "How Deep Is The Ocean?," "Triassic Parq The Musical," and "Closer Than Ever." 

‘Bullet for Adolf’: Snack Food for the Mind, But Great Fun

Bullet for Adolf, the new play by Woody Harrelson and Frankie Hyman, is a screwball buddy comedy in which the pair of novice playwrights have thrown everything but the kitchen sink into relating a tale from the heady days of their youth, when the two became friends while working as part of a construction crew in Houston in the summer of 1983  

Who knows the truth of it, but Harrelson, best known as a television and movie star, has said he had always wanted to find a way to tell the story of this time in his life.  One day, during an appearance on The Tonight Show, Harrelson mentioned Hyman’s name, and shortly thereafter the two reconnected.  The result is Bullet for Adolf, now in previews at the New World Stages following a run in Toronto last year. 

To be honest, there is not much that resembles a coherent plot, but if you can get past that, you are likely to find yourself caught up in in the steady stream of one-liners and gags, as well as in the performances by a well-tuned ensemble of actors, all but two of whom are new to the New York production.

Mr. Harrelson has maintained a personal hand in the play, which he directs with a rapid-fire pacing aimed at keeping the audience constantly entertained. He keeps the action pumping with upbeat dance music of the era (Billy Joel, Elton John, Donna Summer), video images (shots of President Reagan and iconic TV shows like M*A*S*H and, of course, Cheers), homages to Sammy Davis, Jr. and Judy Garland, plus a couple of filmed sequences, including a very funny one that takes place in the backseat of a police car.    

The plot, such as it is, involves the theft of a luger that allegedly had been used in an unsuccessful effort to assassinate Hitler.  But that’s really only a gimmick to give the play some sort of purpose—what Alfred Hitchcock used to call a “MacGuffin,” the thing that is being pursued by everyone but which really serves the purpose of setting the action in motion. 

What Bullet for Adolf really is about is the relationships among a group of friends. To begin with, there are Zach (Brandon Coffey) and Clint (David Coomber), for whom the summer in Houston serves as a stopping off point to earn some money towards a planned acting career in New York. 

Coffey, as Zach, is the slacker’s slacker, seemingly serving as stand-in for Harrelson, while Coomber’s Clint is a deliciously neurotic extrovert.  Coomber embraces the role with manic intensity, running around like a headless chicken, often clad only in his underpants.  He and Coffey, who originated these roles, play off each other like Abbott and Costello, with great comic timing.

The pair is joined by Frankie (Tyler Jacob Rollinson, presumably the surrogate for Frankie Hyman), a street-wise transplant from New York’s Harlem, who finds himself a tad lost in the culture of life in Houston. 

All three work under the watchful eye of Jurgen (Nick Wyman), master mason, Hitler admirer, and owner of the stolen gun.   They are joined at various points in the proceedings by Dwight (a very quirky Lee Osorio), who calls himself “Dago-Czech” and considers his whiteness to be a mere inconvenient mismatch with his inner [N-word].   The men have their counterparts in Jackie (Shamika Cotton), who is gradually won over by Frankie’s not-inconsiderable charms; her friend Shareeta (Marsha Stephanie Blake), whom Zach is most attracted to; and Batina, Jergen’s 18-year-old daughter who used to be Zach’s girlfriend but who is now interested in Clint. 

As you might surmise, the play finds its humor among topics that are not exactly politically-correct or appropriate for family audiences.  Among the subjects of jokes are race, sexual orientation, gender, Nazis, pedophiles, and placentas, and all of the gags and jokes are fueled by beer, pot, and endless teasing.

In the hands of another playwright (e. g. David Adjmi, whose play 3C has been deemed off-putting by many viewers for its deliberately offensive jokes), Bullet for Adolf might have taken a dark turn, indeed.  Yet it is not within Harrelson and Hyman to treat any of their characters with anything but affection, and while they set up some potentially serious moments, these quickly dissipate. 

Call it snack food for the mind if you wish, but all told, Bullet for Adolf is a romp, offering up zany characters, a great ensemble cast, and Mr. Harrelson’s whomp ‘em stomp ‘em directing.  In short, the perfect mid-summer’s fare!

If you crave more of ProfMiller, check out the column, ProfMiller@The Theater, at BroadwayShowBiz.com.  Recent reviews include "Triassic Parq The Musical," "Closer Than Ever," and "An Ideal Husband."  

A Sublime Production of 'The Most Happy Fella'

Imagine going into the attic and finding a box of old photos you haven’t looked at in many years.  You open it, and even though everything inside is familiar, this time you see them through different eyes and recognize them for the treasures they always were. 

That’s how it felt for me the other day as I sat, watched, and fell in love with the Dicapo Opera Theatre’s exquisite production of Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella.

I was only nine years old when The Most Happy Fella opened on Broadway in 1956, the same year, by the way, as My Fair Lady, Bells Are Ringing, Candide, and Li'l Abner.    Some time would pass before I would see any of these on stage, but the music from the original cast albums quickly became part of the background sounds that surrounded me from the radio, the television, and the phonograph in the living room. 

For a pre-teen, even one who enjoyed listening to show tunes, The Most Happy Fella boiled down to a couple of catchy songs:  “Big D” and “Standing On The Corner.”  And over the years, I came to think of Frank Loesser essentially as the composer of two popular hit shows—Guys and Dolls and How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. 

Then, last year, I was fortunate enough to see the Encores! production of Where’s Charley?, Loesser’s first full-length musical, and found it to be an absolute treat from start to end.  This was followed by the recent revival of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. 

And now we have The Most Happy Fella, performed by a talented and blessedly unamplified cast (helmed by the glorious baritone Michael Corvino in the title role), backed by a 33-piece orchestra, and presented in a cozy, comfortable, attractive 200-seat theater in the basement of St. Jean Baptiste Church rather north and east of Broadway. 

Who knew?  (Well, I suppose a lot of people knew, but I wasn’t one of them!)

Let me tell you, tears welled up in my eyes through much of the performance—not due to the story The Most Happy Fella relates (though a sweet and touching story it is), but in response to wave after wave of the beautiful music that Loesser composed for this masterwork—not just Broadway rousers, but solos, duets, trios, quartets, and choral work (“Song of a Summer Night” is every bit as moving as Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday” or Leonard Bernstein’s “Make Our Garden Grow.”) There’s not a dud in the bunch. 

So, is The Most Happy Fella a musical or is it an opera?   No one has ever given a definitive answer to that question, and there is no way I am going to try to resolve it.  Let’s just say that there are elements of both, with straight-out show tunes and music that would fit in just fine in an “official” opera by Puccini, including the delightful Italian language numbers such as “Abbondanza,” performed by a winning trio of chefs, Paolo Buffagni, Brian Carter, and Neil Darling.

Of course, it’s not easy to find singers who can deliver both styles.  What director Michael Capasso has done is to make sure that each cast member is allowed to play to her or his strengths. 

The principal roles of Tony, Rosabella, Joe, and Marie are given over to strong operatic performers:  Mr. Corvino (magnificent as Tony); Molly Mustonen as his “mail order bride,” whom he dubs Rosabella; Peter Kendall Clark as the foreman Joe whom Rosabella significantly mistakes for Tony; and Lisa Chavez, in the thankless role of Marie, Tony’s sister and the thwarter of all things good. 

The director also has found two terrific musical comedy personalities in Lauren Hoffmeier (somewhat reminiscent, I thought, of Patti LuPone in style and mannerisms) as Rosabella’s waitress friend Cleo (“Ooh!  My Feet”), and Brance Cornelius, a real charmer as Cleo’s happy-go-lucky beau Herman (“I Like Everybody”). Their numbers together, especially “Big D,” are crowd pleasing showstoppers.

The on-stage orchestra, under the baton of Pacien Mazzagatti, does a fine job of backing the singers without ever drowning out the voices, and the choreography by Francine Harman and set design by John Farrell are just right for the relatively small performance space.  

If you are at all interested in seeing this production, you’ve got to shake a leg, as it closes on July 8. 

Meanwhile, mark your calendars for next May 16-19, when the company is performing Robert Wright and George Forrest’s Kismet.  I intend to be there!

If you can't get enough of ProfMiller, check out his column, ProfMiller@The Theater, at BroadwayShowBiz.com.  Recent reviews include "Triassic Parq The Musical" and "Closer Than Ever."  

'3C': The Characters May Seem Familiar, But...

Cast of '3C.'  Photo by Walter McBride

By any chance, are you a fan of Bizarro World, DC Comics’ twisted version of the Superman universe?

If so, you may be able to relate to the very bizarre world inhabited by the characters in 3C, a scary new comedy by David Adjmi, currently on view at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. 

To begin with, there is something definitely familiar about the characters, and even the set strikes a bell.  Let’s see…hmm…

Oh, right.  Connie (Anna Chlumsky), the one wearing the baby doll nightie, looks kind of like Chrissy.  And Linda (Hannah Cabell) sort of reminds me of Janet.  And Brad (Jake Silbermann) resembles Jack.  Terry (Eddie Cahill) is Larry; Mr. Wicker (Bill Buell) is Mr. Roper; and Mrs. Wicker (Kate Buddeke) is Mrs. Roper.

I get it.  3C is short for "Three’s Company," the lightweight but long-lived comedy that ran on ABC TV back in the late 1970s and early ‘80s.

So what has Mr. Adjmi done with his source material to make it his own—apart from changing the characters’ names? 

Mostly, he has turned it into a creepy comedy about a group of deeply disturbed inhabitants of a Santa Monica apartment complex, who say things like “I love when I match the furniture; it gives me a sense of belonging” and “I’ve never been to Vietnam.  Was it nice?”

In the right context, these could be funny lines, but here all of the jokes are either deliberately designed to fall flat or take on darker shades of meaning.  Instead of the kind of silliness that drew audiences to "Three’s Company," 3C gives us psychological basket cases edging toward annihilation as they teeter through life. 

Connie sleeps around in a never-ending search for affectionate acceptance.  Linda flies into paranoid rages.  Terry is a disco womanizer.  Mr. Wicker is a sleazeball homophobe and sexual predator.  Mrs. Wicker is a spaced-out bundle of assorted anxieties. 

All have their moments in the spotlight, but the central character is Brad, a recent Vietnam War vet and a cooking school student.  Like Jack Tripper in "Three’s Company," Brad pretends to be gay in order to be acceptable to the landlords as a potential roommate for Connie and Linda. 

The thing is, Brad really is gay and is trying to survive in a 1970s world that is decidedly unfriendly. His parents have suggested that he kill himself; Mr. Wicker regales him with jokes regarding the questionable hygiene of unprotected anal sex; and Brad’s one sincere effort to come out is met with incredulous laughter from everyone.  Even Linda, who, when she’s not ranting, comes off as relatively sympathetic, is more prepared to believe that people are having nasal intercourse than that anyone she knows could actually be gay.

As Sartre wrote in No Exit:  “Hell is other people.” 

Veteran stage actors Bill Buell and Kate Buddeke as Mr. and Mrs. Wicker bring an experienced professional quality to their performances, and the rest of the cast does fine with roles that are essentially caricatures from an alternative cartoon world.

Director Jackson Gay keeps things moving at a steady clip along an unsteady path, and John McDermott’s stage design eerily captures the set of "Three’s Company." The disco-era music is giddily choreographed by Deney Terrio, whose claim to fame is having taught John Travolta how to move in the film Saturday Night Fever. 

There is no doubt that David Adjmi, the playwright, is a smart and clever writer.  He is the recipient of a number of awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and his previous plays, Elective Affinities and Stunning, drew a lot of excited buzz.  It will be interesting to see where his mind will take him next, though I would love to see him create characters who are more human and less reflections of his cleverness.

Feel free to tell your friends about this blog, and to share your own theater stories by posting a comment.  And if you can't get enough of ProfMiller, check out his column, ProfMiller@The Theater, at BroadwayShowBiz.com.