The Nance (Lyceum Theater)
In Douglas Carter Beane's new play with music, Nathan Lane plays the
titular role. It proves to be quite a teaming for one of America's most
talented actors in a memorable role (another peak in a history of peaks)
in a funnily sad play.
The Nance is for those who have steadfastly waited for the
talented Beane to write a really provocative, dramatically rich and
fulfilling play, following such laudable teasers as As Bees in Honey Drown and The Little Dog Laughed.
Beane is in top form. His instinct for wit delivered with a sting is
matched in this instance by an unconventional story based on a legacy of
injustice that is as emotionally affecting as it is rigorously
entertaining.
For those who think they know what to expect from Lane, he gives the
kind of outstanding performance that challenges for supremacy the iconic
award-winning roles he played in The Producers, Guys and Dolls and Love! Valour! Compassion!.
As the Nance, Lane allows us to see into the heart-breaking core of a
disconsolate man who is compelled to endure the slings and arrows of an
unforgiving society, even as he remains a mere comical adjunct to the
more provocatively demonstrative undulations of others in his
profession.
The theater in New York City in 1937, like the rest of the country, may
have been in a state of recovery from the economic ravages of the Great
Depression, but burlesque was definitely on the endangered list. Often
commonly referred to in print as "burlesk houses," such venues such as
the Irving Place Theater where much of the play takes place, were being
given severe fines and the threat of being closed down by Mayor
LaGuardia's newly enforced morality. This morality also extended to a
crackdown on openly homosexual activity, even the potential for it.
It's a kind of double indemnity for Chauncey Miles (Lane) who may be a
popular "nancy" headliner in the innocently bawdy skits at the Irving
Place Theatre, but is also a not-so-innocent homosexual in real life.
His after work digression to seek out sexual encounters with men serve
as our introduction to a poignantly reckless character. One such
encounter, however, proves that love may be found in the most unlikely
place and provides the basis for making this a very moving play.
As splendidly directed by Jack O'Brien, The Nance begins at an
automat which is evidently a popular cruising spot at the time and
where Chauncey surreptitiously picks-up Ned (Jonny Orsini), a tall,
good-looking, if insupportably, naive country bumpkin down on his luck.
In an untypical gesture to feed his curiosity and also fuel his
attraction to this rather personable young man newly arrived in the
city, Chauncey brings him home to his apartment where Ned takes a bath
(the obligatory male nude scene). Having been invited to spend the
night, Ned discloses his preference for men and also the failure of his
marriage before he knew the score. In his Broadway debut, Orsini does
more than hold his own against a master scene stealer and exists as an
extraordinary character.
Ned's genuine and generous display of affection and sincerity is hard
for Chauncey to accept and is the heartbreaking core of the play.
Chauncey may be a cornucopia of flippant and funny remarks, such as
alluding to the decor in his cluttered-with-Orientalia apartment as
"Anna Mae Wong's wet dream," yet his cautious acceptance of Ned as a
live-in lover is allowed to blossom for a while.
The relationship becomes complicated when Ned is given a job of
straight man at the theater. Even with no stage experience, Ned is
welcomed to the generally harmonious company, except tby understandably
worry-wart top banana Efram (a terrific performance by Lewis J. Stadlen)
whose fears that Chauncey's nancy act will bring in the vice squad.
Playing queer in drag is evidently acceptable.
Although it is pretty obvious, the question is whether we can or cannot
see the schism that could easily appear in the relationship. Chauncey
can't stop himself from cruising, and Ned wants the conflicted, actually
self-hating, Chauncey to remain faithful. Interspersed are the hoary
skits (with original songs by Glen Kelly) and silly bump and grind
routines performed by the house strippers, Joan (Jenni Barber), Carmen
(Andrea Burns) and a wonderfully feisty Cady Huffman (Sylvie) the
latter his "Bolshevik sister" and dedicated social activist. This allows
for some enlivening political posturing to be imposed on the plot.
Although it is pretty obvious, the question is whether we can or cannot
see the schism that could easily appear in the relationship. Chauncey
can't stop himself from cruising, and Ned wants the conflicted, actually
self-hating, Chauncey to remain faithful.
Interspersed are the skits and songs augmented with short and silly
routines performed by the house strippers, Joan (Jenni Barber), Carmen
(Andrea Burns) and a wonderfully feisty Cady Huffman (Sylvie)— the
latter his "Bolshevik sister" and dedicated social activist. This allows
for some enlivening political posturing to be imposed on the plot.
Chauncey makes no bones about his hatred for President Roosevelt and for
being a staunch Republican. This is a side of him that is most
provocative and puzzling. He, like so many self-deluding citizens of our
nation's minorities who vote against their own best interests, chooses
to hide his feelings of guilt behind conservative values. Of course,
that allows Sylvie to remark, "Being a homosexual Republican is like
being a black member of the Klu-Klux-Klan."
There is no hiding for any of these characters within the marvelous
revolving sets designed by that genius John Lee Beatty to transfer us
fluidly from the automat, to back stage of the theater, to Chauncey's
apartment faster than it takes for the balloons to burst over a
stripper's boobs. This is a play about the end of an era, but also the
beginning of what will become a long and continuing struggle for "the
used and discarded" in our society to assert and attain their rightful
place in our world.
The Nance
Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th Street
Tickets: $137.00 - $37.00
Performances: Tuesday evenings at 7pm, Wednesday through Saturday
evenings at 8pm, with matinees Wednesday and Saturday at 2pm and Sunday
at 3pm.
Review by Simon Saltzman based on performance 04/13/13
From 03/21/13 Opened 04/15/13 Ends 08/11/13
Monday, May 27, 2013
Motown: The Musical
At the beginning of Motown: The Musical the entire company is gathered on the stage of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. It is 1983 and many of the recording stars who got their first break and achieved success through the promotional and marketing efforts of Motown Records beginning in the 1950s are there to celebrate the company's 25th anniversary.
For a while it looks as if Berry Gordy, the multi-talented founder of Motown, is not going to make an appearance at this all-star reunion because he's doesn't feel appreciated or worse. If you've seen the dozens of movies where a similar scene occurs, it won't exactly be a spoiler alert to say that at the end of the musical he makes his well-calculated, if dramatically delayed, appearance. And everyone who was ever mad at him is suddenly glad with him and everyone sings.
Among those with whom we should be most glad to celebrate, however, is this musical's director Charles Randolph Wright who has brilliantly channeled all the resources afforded him in this music-driven but unfortunately book-burdened musical. Wright, a multi-talented theater artist and playwright (Blue), has shaped Motown's collection of real-life memories and theatrical cliches into an edifying entertainment. But Berry Gordy has ill-advisedly authored this musical based on his published memoire To Be Love, The Music, the Magic, The Memories of Motown.
Although Gordy is also credited as a producer, Motown: The Musical doesn't come off as a vanity production since its impressive assemblage of performers happily overshadows the then-I-did-then-I wrote-then-I-discovered chronicle. Gordy is impressively portrayed in the filtered light of the author's self-serving vision by Brandon Victor Dixon. Be that as it may, the tangential familial memories, his marriage, the conflicts with his stars within the record industry and the law suits that come with the territory are anchored weightlessly to a musical that works its magic as a humdinger of a revue.
The 'book reveals no eye-opening or ear-pricking insights into Gordy's dealings with his real family or recording family — except perhaps for Diana Ross of the Supremes (a sensational performance by Valisia LeKae). It is his discovery and guidance of the Supremes and lead singer Ross that is the most developed portion of the book, but it too falls short of anything that could be called revelatory or moving. The Gordy-Ross relationship gives us the clearest hook through which we see the dedication of this formidable entrepreneur, in particular developing the persona of the young trio of girls into The Supremes.
Lekae, in a collection of stunning gowns by Esosa) gives the most dramatically exciting performance in the show. She has some terrific close-to show-stopping musical numbers including "I Hear a Symphony," "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You" and "You're All I Need to Get By," a duet with Ross and Gordy. Kudos to Esosa for defining the decades with acres of wittily fashioned attire.
To get the plot moving, we are transported back to 1938, the Gordy home in Detroit where the young Berry (the astonishingly talented Raymond Luke, Jr. (who also plays the young Stevie Wonder and young Michael Jackson) wants to grow up to be Joe Louis but then more fortuitously catches the music bug watching the dancing ("Black Like Me") in his neighborhood. The choreography by Patricia Wilcox & Warren Adams energetically and bracingly captures the flavor of the 1930s as it does all the subsequent eras.
It's in 1957 Detroit where Gordy is impelled to start his own record label and fearlessly challenge the white power brokers of the record industry. We see him begin life-long friendships with Marvin Gaye (Bryan Terrell Clark) and Smoky Robinson (Charl Brown) who reappear frequently to reflect their rise to fame and fortune and their affection for Gordy.
Sometimes the fast-moving musical numbers with many songs truncated, appear as fleeting as the history that is embedded, like flash cards to recall the racial segregation, the rioting, the assassinations of both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President John Kennedy.
Also in state of motion are the colorful modernist settings by designer David Korins that expand and contract, rise and fall as fluid, dimensional graphics. Amid the waves of scenery shifting and a passing parade of history are interspersed some really wonderful music moments that brought cheers from the audience with whom I saw the show.
Cheers greeted the appearances of Stevie Wonder (Ryan Shaw) and such various boy and girl groups as The Supremes ("Buttered Popcorn" "Where Did Our Love Go"), The Miracles ("Shop Around") The Marvelettes ("Please Mr. Postman"), Mary Wells and The Tempations ("By By Baby"/"Two Lovers Medley"), Martha Reeves and the Vandellas ("Dancing in the Street"), The Contours ("Do You Love Me"), plus many others doing bits of their hits among the show's sixty-or-so songs. Unfortunately the program does not identify each song with its performer.
A standout among the groups is The Jackson Five featuring a whirling Michael Jackson, as splendidly played by Luke, Jr. at the performance I saw. A short backstage scene after The Supremes have performed "Stop in the Name of Love" on the stiff-necked Ed Sullivan's (a perfect impersonation by John Jellison) TV show is very funny. on the stiff-necked Ed Sullilvan (a perfect impersonation by John Jellison) is very funny.
Despite its rambling dramatic arc, Motown: The Musical has what it takes in the way of great music that is certain to bring back memories for many of the decades as well being a reminder of how apropos was the nickname given to Motown's first headquarters — Hitsville, U.S.A.
Motown: The Musical
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 West 46th Street
877-250-2929
Tickets: $57.00 - $142.00
Performances: Tues at 7pm; Wed - Sat at 8pm; Wed and Sat at 2pm; Sun at 3pm
From 04/08/13 Opened 04/14
At the beginning of Motown: The Musical the entire company is gathered on the stage of the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. It is 1983 and many of the recording stars who got their first break and achieved success through the promotional and marketing efforts of Motown Records beginning in the 1950s are there to celebrate the company's 25th anniversary.
For a while it looks as if Berry Gordy, the multi-talented founder of Motown, is not going to make an appearance at this all-star reunion because he's doesn't feel appreciated or worse. If you've seen the dozens of movies where a similar scene occurs, it won't exactly be a spoiler alert to say that at the end of the musical he makes his well-calculated, if dramatically delayed, appearance. And everyone who was ever mad at him is suddenly glad with him and everyone sings.
Among those with whom we should be most glad to celebrate, however, is this musical's director Charles Randolph Wright who has brilliantly channeled all the resources afforded him in this music-driven but unfortunately book-burdened musical. Wright, a multi-talented theater artist and playwright (Blue), has shaped Motown's collection of real-life memories and theatrical cliches into an edifying entertainment. But Berry Gordy has ill-advisedly authored this musical based on his published memoire To Be Love, The Music, the Magic, The Memories of Motown.
Although Gordy is also credited as a producer, Motown: The Musical doesn't come off as a vanity production since its impressive assemblage of performers happily overshadows the then-I-did-then-I wrote-then-I-discovered chronicle. Gordy is impressively portrayed in the filtered light of the author's self-serving vision by Brandon Victor Dixon. Be that as it may, the tangential familial memories, his marriage, the conflicts with his stars within the record industry and the law suits that come with the territory are anchored weightlessly to a musical that works its magic as a humdinger of a revue.
The 'book reveals no eye-opening or ear-pricking insights into Gordy's dealings with his real family or recording family — except perhaps for Diana Ross of the Supremes (a sensational performance by Valisia LeKae). It is his discovery and guidance of the Supremes and lead singer Ross that is the most developed portion of the book, but it too falls short of anything that could be called revelatory or moving. The Gordy-Ross relationship gives us the clearest hook through which we see the dedication of this formidable entrepreneur, in particular developing the persona of the young trio of girls into The Supremes.
Lekae, in a collection of stunning gowns by Esosa) gives the most dramatically exciting performance in the show. She has some terrific close-to show-stopping musical numbers including "I Hear a Symphony," "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You" and "You're All I Need to Get By," a duet with Ross and Gordy. Kudos to Esosa for defining the decades with acres of wittily fashioned attire.
To get the plot moving, we are transported back to 1938, the Gordy home in Detroit where the young Berry (the astonishingly talented Raymond Luke, Jr. (who also plays the young Stevie Wonder and young Michael Jackson) wants to grow up to be Joe Louis but then more fortuitously catches the music bug watching the dancing ("Black Like Me") in his neighborhood. The choreography by Patricia Wilcox & Warren Adams energetically and bracingly captures the flavor of the 1930s as it does all the subsequent eras.
It's in 1957 Detroit where Gordy is impelled to start his own record label and fearlessly challenge the white power brokers of the record industry. We see him begin life-long friendships with Marvin Gaye (Bryan Terrell Clark) and Smoky Robinson (Charl Brown) who reappear frequently to reflect their rise to fame and fortune and their affection for Gordy.
Sometimes the fast-moving musical numbers with many songs truncated, appear as fleeting as the history that is embedded, like flash cards to recall the racial segregation, the rioting, the assassinations of both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and President John Kennedy.
Also in state of motion are the colorful modernist settings by designer David Korins that expand and contract, rise and fall as fluid, dimensional graphics. Amid the waves of scenery shifting and a passing parade of history are interspersed some really wonderful music moments that brought cheers from the audience with whom I saw the show.
Cheers greeted the appearances of Stevie Wonder (Ryan Shaw) and such various boy and girl groups as The Supremes ("Buttered Popcorn" "Where Did Our Love Go"), The Miracles ("Shop Around") The Marvelettes ("Please Mr. Postman"), Mary Wells and The Tempations ("By By Baby"/"Two Lovers Medley"), Martha Reeves and the Vandellas ("Dancing in the Street"), The Contours ("Do You Love Me"), plus many others doing bits of their hits among the show's sixty-or-so songs. Unfortunately the program does not identify each song with its performer.
A standout among the groups is The Jackson Five featuring a whirling Michael Jackson, as splendidly played by Luke, Jr. at the performance I saw. A short backstage scene after The Supremes have performed "Stop in the Name of Love" on the stiff-necked Ed Sullivan's (a perfect impersonation by John Jellison) TV show is very funny. on the stiff-necked Ed Sullilvan (a perfect impersonation by John Jellison) is very funny.
Despite its rambling dramatic arc, Motown: The Musical has what it takes in the way of great music that is certain to bring back memories for many of the decades as well being a reminder of how apropos was the nickname given to Motown's first headquarters — Hitsville, U.S.A.
Motown: The Musical
Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 West 46th Street
877-250-2929
Tickets: $57.00 - $142.00
Performances: Tues at 7pm; Wed - Sat at 8pm; Wed and Sat at 2pm; Sun at 3pm
From 04/08/13 Opened 04/14
Shakespeare in Vegas (Dreamcatcher Repertory Theater)
What is a disheartened, disillusioned yet dedicated New York actor to do when she is offered a lucrative contract by a Las Vegas "wise guy" to head west to "sin city" and build a company to present plays by Shakespeare? No longer an ingenue and certainly no fool, the forty-something Margo (Laura Ekstrand) does rush in ("I cannot take the heartbreak anymore") and accepts the offer that no out-of-work actor would refuse. Tony (a terrific Eli Ganias) may have a tough exterior, but inside he harbors a tender and abiding love for the Bard that he has inherited from his grandmother in the old country.
In Suzanne Bradbeer's very funny comedy, Shakespeare in Vegas, we see how frustrating it is for Margo to work with actors who have no discernable talent and no previous experience playing Shakespeare, as well as to fulfill entrepreneur Tony's pledge to his dying grandmother to "bring Shakespeare to the new world." That Tony carries the burden of a generations-old family curse, even as he is the target of a rival family's vendetta, adds a bit of goofy grit and some gunplay to the plot.
Laughs are abundant as Margot tries to make the most of her first production Antony and Cleopatra casting herself as "the queen of the g.d. Nile and hoping to get decent support from her handmaidens - a strip stripper Collette (Rachel Lee) who is mainly concerned with balancing her boobs in the skimpy and sparkling Egyptian attire and a jealous, loud-mouthed and curvaceous Hooter's employee Merrie Jo (Jessica O'Hara).
For her second production, Romeo and Juliet, she has to deal with the insecurities of a twenty-something, handsome ex con Mike (Barron B. Bass) who has never set foot on a stage or held a sword, but who gets some extra sexual encouragement from Merrie Jo. Expect more hilarity when the Scottish Play hits the boards and a hit man appears (also played by Bass) and interferes with Tony's ambitious plans to give the customers "tits and ass and iambic pentameter."
Under John Pietrowski's nimble direction, the silliness of the premise is buoyed by the crackling, crisply delivered dialogue. However modestly designed, all of the various locations allow opportunities for the five excellent actors to get into the full spirit of this fast-moving romp. A co-production of Dreamcatcher Rep & Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Shakespeare in Vegas will undoubtedly add to the award-winning playwright's growing canon of acclaimed plays that includes Full Bloom produced at the Barrington Stage in 2000. Word of mouth should generate good houses before the end of this all-too-short run.
Shakespeare in Vegas
Dreamcatcher Repertory Theater, Oakes Center, 120 Morris Avenue, Summit, NJ
(908) 514 - 9654
From 04/04 Opened 04/06/13 Ends 04/21/13
What is a disheartened, disillusioned yet dedicated New York actor to do when she is offered a lucrative contract by a Las Vegas "wise guy" to head west to "sin city" and build a company to present plays by Shakespeare? No longer an ingenue and certainly no fool, the forty-something Margo (Laura Ekstrand) does rush in ("I cannot take the heartbreak anymore") and accepts the offer that no out-of-work actor would refuse. Tony (a terrific Eli Ganias) may have a tough exterior, but inside he harbors a tender and abiding love for the Bard that he has inherited from his grandmother in the old country.
In Suzanne Bradbeer's very funny comedy, Shakespeare in Vegas, we see how frustrating it is for Margo to work with actors who have no discernable talent and no previous experience playing Shakespeare, as well as to fulfill entrepreneur Tony's pledge to his dying grandmother to "bring Shakespeare to the new world." That Tony carries the burden of a generations-old family curse, even as he is the target of a rival family's vendetta, adds a bit of goofy grit and some gunplay to the plot.
Laughs are abundant as Margot tries to make the most of her first production Antony and Cleopatra casting herself as "the queen of the g.d. Nile and hoping to get decent support from her handmaidens - a strip stripper Collette (Rachel Lee) who is mainly concerned with balancing her boobs in the skimpy and sparkling Egyptian attire and a jealous, loud-mouthed and curvaceous Hooter's employee Merrie Jo (Jessica O'Hara).
For her second production, Romeo and Juliet, she has to deal with the insecurities of a twenty-something, handsome ex con Mike (Barron B. Bass) who has never set foot on a stage or held a sword, but who gets some extra sexual encouragement from Merrie Jo. Expect more hilarity when the Scottish Play hits the boards and a hit man appears (also played by Bass) and interferes with Tony's ambitious plans to give the customers "tits and ass and iambic pentameter."
Under John Pietrowski's nimble direction, the silliness of the premise is buoyed by the crackling, crisply delivered dialogue. However modestly designed, all of the various locations allow opportunities for the five excellent actors to get into the full spirit of this fast-moving romp. A co-production of Dreamcatcher Rep & Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Shakespeare in Vegas will undoubtedly add to the award-winning playwright's growing canon of acclaimed plays that includes Full Bloom produced at the Barrington Stage in 2000. Word of mouth should generate good houses before the end of this all-too-short run.
Shakespeare in Vegas
Dreamcatcher Repertory Theater, Oakes Center, 120 Morris Avenue, Summit, NJ
(908) 514 - 9654
From 04/04 Opened 04/06/13 Ends 04/21/13
Noir (New Jersey Repertory Company)
The house lights dim and the credits of a black and white film are projected on the screen, the underscoring as well as the title Noir are easy clues that we are back in a movie theater in 1950. Perhaps it was a time some of us can still remember, but that some only know from the Turner Classic Movies Channel.
At any rate, there was something special about sitting in the dark awaiting the mystery, mayhem and menace that was promised and was mostly delivered in the next eighty minutes or so. Interesting, the wonderfully noir-ish new play by Stan Werse is exactly eighty minutes long and it is a surprisingly amusing and clever valentine to the genre.
Credits complete, the play's three characters soon emerge out of the dark shadows (excellently applied by lighting designer Jill Nagle) that are cast upon the grey brick-walled back streets of New York City and the arched doorways and corridors of police headquarters. It doesn't take us long to see that these three characters have their own issues, agendas, and back stories and swiftly become entwined into a convoluted pulp-detective-story.
Noir is exceedingly well calculated to keep us in suspense as it never lets us forget how far corruption, cynicism, cigarettes (herbal for sure) and most of all sex can take us into the underbelly of a society that doesn't play by the rules, especially when it comes to blackmail and murder.
In this case, the play, splendidly directed by Marc Geller, follows the efforts of Clay Holden (Darrell Glasgow), a tough, brash, thirty-something detective (Darrell Glasgow) as he attempts to keep his professional ethics and equilibrium while coping with two inquiring, resentful and distrusting detectives, Norbert Grimes (Thomas Grube) and McQue (Michael McCoy). Grube is perfect as the sixty-something older detective whose years on the force have made him callous and mean even as he mentors the unshakable, misguided Clay. A big and brawny McCoy is excellent as the much maligned, but quietly brainy McQue, who serves as the plot's narrator.
They make excellent adversaries for Clay who unwittingly becomes vulnerable to the seductive charms of a mysterious, beautiful and rich widow cum nightclub chanteuse Helen Lydecker (a wonderfully enigmatic Catherine Lefrere) with a scheme or is it a scam? She's quite a curvaceous number who not only happens to have long dark wavy hair, very red lips and a sultry voice, but bears an uncanny resemblance to noir film star Marie Windsor. Lefrere gets to sing a nice torchy ballad written by Eric Werse (Stanley's cousin).
While it would be easy and possibly apt to quote some of the funny but never corny bon mots that punctuate Werse's tense and taut and very witty text, I would prefer to keep you in suspense until you have the pleasure of seeing it.
Noir was originally produced during the 2010 New York Fringe Festival. This more elaborate and more importantly slick and polished production should have a prosperous afterlife in regional theaters.
Noir
New Jersey Repertory Company, 179 Broadway, Long Brach, NJ
From 04/04/13 Opened 04/06/13 Ends 05/05/13
The house lights dim and the credits of a black and white film are projected on the screen, the underscoring as well as the title Noir are easy clues that we are back in a movie theater in 1950. Perhaps it was a time some of us can still remember, but that some only know from the Turner Classic Movies Channel.
At any rate, there was something special about sitting in the dark awaiting the mystery, mayhem and menace that was promised and was mostly delivered in the next eighty minutes or so. Interesting, the wonderfully noir-ish new play by Stan Werse is exactly eighty minutes long and it is a surprisingly amusing and clever valentine to the genre.
Credits complete, the play's three characters soon emerge out of the dark shadows (excellently applied by lighting designer Jill Nagle) that are cast upon the grey brick-walled back streets of New York City and the arched doorways and corridors of police headquarters. It doesn't take us long to see that these three characters have their own issues, agendas, and back stories and swiftly become entwined into a convoluted pulp-detective-story.
Noir is exceedingly well calculated to keep us in suspense as it never lets us forget how far corruption, cynicism, cigarettes (herbal for sure) and most of all sex can take us into the underbelly of a society that doesn't play by the rules, especially when it comes to blackmail and murder.
In this case, the play, splendidly directed by Marc Geller, follows the efforts of Clay Holden (Darrell Glasgow), a tough, brash, thirty-something detective (Darrell Glasgow) as he attempts to keep his professional ethics and equilibrium while coping with two inquiring, resentful and distrusting detectives, Norbert Grimes (Thomas Grube) and McQue (Michael McCoy). Grube is perfect as the sixty-something older detective whose years on the force have made him callous and mean even as he mentors the unshakable, misguided Clay. A big and brawny McCoy is excellent as the much maligned, but quietly brainy McQue, who serves as the plot's narrator.
They make excellent adversaries for Clay who unwittingly becomes vulnerable to the seductive charms of a mysterious, beautiful and rich widow cum nightclub chanteuse Helen Lydecker (a wonderfully enigmatic Catherine Lefrere) with a scheme or is it a scam? She's quite a curvaceous number who not only happens to have long dark wavy hair, very red lips and a sultry voice, but bears an uncanny resemblance to noir film star Marie Windsor. Lefrere gets to sing a nice torchy ballad written by Eric Werse (Stanley's cousin).
While it would be easy and possibly apt to quote some of the funny but never corny bon mots that punctuate Werse's tense and taut and very witty text, I would prefer to keep you in suspense until you have the pleasure of seeing it.
Noir was originally produced during the 2010 New York Fringe Festival. This more elaborate and more importantly slick and polished production should have a prosperous afterlife in regional theaters.
Noir
New Jersey Repertory Company, 179 Broadway, Long Brach, NJ
From 04/04/13 Opened 04/06/13 Ends 05/05/13
The Last Five Years
It was only a year ago that I saw a production of Robert Jason Browns two-character musical about the dissolution of a marriage at the Crossroads Theater, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In that production a black and white (she was African-American, he was not) imparted to the almost sung-through musical an extra crease in the conjugal complexities. Without that or any extra crease, I'm not sure that The Last Five Years is all that fascinating or compelling a theatrical experience.
Now getting its first major New York production since it first opened Off Broadway in 2002, The Last Five Years has always been considered somewhat like the flip-side of I Do! I Do! the Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt musical in which we see a couple survive the ups and downs over fifty years of marriage. The flip side from Brown's viewpoint is definitely less fun.
There is no denying that this musical, which has had a healthy life in regional theaters, is a rather bitter pill to swallow in that it attempts to shift and manipulate our empathy as well as our feelings about its two and only protagonists. This has to be achieved by the sheer persuasive power of each performer. It would be nice to say that Adam Kantor as Jamie and Betsy Wolfe as Cathy were able to make me care deeply about or for them. I couldn't, nor did I feel I was meant to try.
It may be both the fault of seeing the show so soon that it now seems more cleverly devised than emotionally involving. Or it may also be the fault of two splendid actors who, try as they might, don't make their respective arias resonate with anything more than what the score provides, even under the smoothly commendable direction of the composer.
Apparently inspired by his own failed first marriage, Brown used his distinctly personalized point of view to compose a story as told from the diverging perspectives of his two characters. Through them we see how their marriage was doomed to failure and specifically how infidelity and contemporary career issues pebble that course.
Each character tells the story comprised of sung soliloquies from different starting points. Cathy begins her story at the end of the marriage and Jamie begins when he first falls in love with Cathy. Only during the middle when they get married do the two stories cross paths.
The big hurdle is for us to feel that these two people could have made their marriage work, had this or that happened or had this or that been said. But sadly neither compromises nor options play a role. The way the musical is structured and staged only underlines the degree of their separateness.
Given that the songs are there to evoke the inner needs and wants of Cathy and Jamie, they mainly reinforce the fact that they are unable to have a common meeting ground. What they end up with is a stalemated relationship, with one going one way and one going the other way. What we end up with is a musical concept/gimmick without the benefit of an emotional commitment to either Cathy or Jamie.
Kantor, who won accolades for his performance on Broadway in Rent and Next to Normal, would appear to be ideally cast as the Jamie Wallerstein, a young, ambitious, Jewish writer flush with the success of his first novel. What perhaps is not ideal is the thick layer of callous self-absorption that he affixes to Jamie's otherwise boyishly cocky pursuit and winning of his "shiksa goddess." We don't particularly like this Jamie or see his side of the issues with even a little empathy. Yet, there is no doubt about the resoluteness he puts into "Moving Too Fast," or the amount of guilt he reveals in trying to rationalize his infidelity in "Nobody Needs to Know."
Wolfe, who recently played Rosa Bud in the revival of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, plays the unquestionably more likable character. She is quite delightful as the aspiring actress whose career moves are not as meaningful as she would like in the light of Jamie's rapid success. As much as I admired Wolfe's singing and acting though, her Cathy also appears almost ridiculous in the way she cant quite grasp the idea that wherever her husband's devotion is, it is not in service to her. She has her most endearing and the show's wittiest scene singing "Climbing Uphill," as part of a very funny "Audition Sequence."
Cathy and Jamie inhabit a simple but well-designed setting created by Derek McLane. It features lots of small hanging windows upon which upon which projections and graphics provide a sense of where and when. Set pieces such as a row boat and a bed glide into view. In constant view are the six musicians perched like an artistic installation on the back wall of the set.
Whatever it is, we end up feeling for Cathy and Jamie, it won't be for their lack of musical and dramatic commitment to Brown's ambitious score.
The Last Five Years
Second Stage Theatre, 305 West 43rd Street
From 03/07/13 Opened 04/02/13 Ends 05/12/13
It was only a year ago that I saw a production of Robert Jason Browns two-character musical about the dissolution of a marriage at the Crossroads Theater, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In that production a black and white (she was African-American, he was not) imparted to the almost sung-through musical an extra crease in the conjugal complexities. Without that or any extra crease, I'm not sure that The Last Five Years is all that fascinating or compelling a theatrical experience.
Now getting its first major New York production since it first opened Off Broadway in 2002, The Last Five Years has always been considered somewhat like the flip-side of I Do! I Do! the Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt musical in which we see a couple survive the ups and downs over fifty years of marriage. The flip side from Brown's viewpoint is definitely less fun.
There is no denying that this musical, which has had a healthy life in regional theaters, is a rather bitter pill to swallow in that it attempts to shift and manipulate our empathy as well as our feelings about its two and only protagonists. This has to be achieved by the sheer persuasive power of each performer. It would be nice to say that Adam Kantor as Jamie and Betsy Wolfe as Cathy were able to make me care deeply about or for them. I couldn't, nor did I feel I was meant to try.
It may be both the fault of seeing the show so soon that it now seems more cleverly devised than emotionally involving. Or it may also be the fault of two splendid actors who, try as they might, don't make their respective arias resonate with anything more than what the score provides, even under the smoothly commendable direction of the composer.
Apparently inspired by his own failed first marriage, Brown used his distinctly personalized point of view to compose a story as told from the diverging perspectives of his two characters. Through them we see how their marriage was doomed to failure and specifically how infidelity and contemporary career issues pebble that course.
Each character tells the story comprised of sung soliloquies from different starting points. Cathy begins her story at the end of the marriage and Jamie begins when he first falls in love with Cathy. Only during the middle when they get married do the two stories cross paths.
The big hurdle is for us to feel that these two people could have made their marriage work, had this or that happened or had this or that been said. But sadly neither compromises nor options play a role. The way the musical is structured and staged only underlines the degree of their separateness.
Given that the songs are there to evoke the inner needs and wants of Cathy and Jamie, they mainly reinforce the fact that they are unable to have a common meeting ground. What they end up with is a stalemated relationship, with one going one way and one going the other way. What we end up with is a musical concept/gimmick without the benefit of an emotional commitment to either Cathy or Jamie.
Kantor, who won accolades for his performance on Broadway in Rent and Next to Normal, would appear to be ideally cast as the Jamie Wallerstein, a young, ambitious, Jewish writer flush with the success of his first novel. What perhaps is not ideal is the thick layer of callous self-absorption that he affixes to Jamie's otherwise boyishly cocky pursuit and winning of his "shiksa goddess." We don't particularly like this Jamie or see his side of the issues with even a little empathy. Yet, there is no doubt about the resoluteness he puts into "Moving Too Fast," or the amount of guilt he reveals in trying to rationalize his infidelity in "Nobody Needs to Know."
Wolfe, who recently played Rosa Bud in the revival of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, plays the unquestionably more likable character. She is quite delightful as the aspiring actress whose career moves are not as meaningful as she would like in the light of Jamie's rapid success. As much as I admired Wolfe's singing and acting though, her Cathy also appears almost ridiculous in the way she cant quite grasp the idea that wherever her husband's devotion is, it is not in service to her. She has her most endearing and the show's wittiest scene singing "Climbing Uphill," as part of a very funny "Audition Sequence."
Cathy and Jamie inhabit a simple but well-designed setting created by Derek McLane. It features lots of small hanging windows upon which upon which projections and graphics provide a sense of where and when. Set pieces such as a row boat and a bed glide into view. In constant view are the six musicians perched like an artistic installation on the back wall of the set.
Whatever it is, we end up feeling for Cathy and Jamie, it won't be for their lack of musical and dramatic commitment to Brown's ambitious score.
The Last Five Years
Second Stage Theatre, 305 West 43rd Street
From 03/07/13 Opened 04/02/13 Ends 05/12/13
Monday, April 8, 2013
Kinky Boots Broadway Review based on performance 03/31/13
Can you believe, as do the workers in the Northampton, England shoe factory Price & Son, that a shoe is (as the opening number exuberantly proclaims) "The Most Beautiful Thing in the World"? Then there is no doubt that you will enjoy seeing all of the other beautiful things on the stage of the Al Hirschfield Theatre.
Any resemblance of the new musical Kinky Boots to the 2005 film comedy of the same name is purely intentional, but it is also almost irrelevant. There is little doubt that the intention of the collaborators, Cyndi Lauper, who wrote the music and lyrics and Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the book, was to improve on their source material.And they have done it exceedingly well.
Based on a true story, the British film comedy evidently did not please the majority of critics nor did it do too well as the box-office. It did, however, nurture a cult following not unlike the film Once that was turned into the award-winning hit musical currently on Broadway. Kinky Boots has similarly been resuscitated and revitalized into a terrifically entertaining musical with plenty of heart as well as with a plethora of heels by its collaborators. A significant adjunct to their success is Jerry Mitchell, whose perceptive direction and inventive choreography are a key component to this musical's success.
In Kinky Boots we recognize issues about the struggle many have to being open-mined and tolerant to the many facets of sexual preference and diversity explored in La Cage Aux Folles, and the predominantly juke-box musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The Kinky Boots team is to be commended for this more modestly but no less affably conceived creation .
Set designer David Rockwell has framed the musical with a responsive unit set filled with moving parts, bells and whistles that serves the story within it. There is no room for modesty, however, in the flashy and, indeed, wonderfully kinky creations designed for the drag queens by designer Gregg Barnes.
This vibrant and enjoyable musical not only has more memorable performances but also more muscle than did the film (notwithstanding the sturdy calves that dance and parade about) about a drag queen who turns around the fortunes of a long-established but failing shoe factory.
The fortunes of this musical ultimately reside to a large extent in the astonishingly sophisticated and melodic score composed by rock music genre's most adorable (my opinion) star. Lauper's songs pulsate with a gratifyingly empowerment through Fierstein's heart-warming, but also humorously gritty book. Lauper is making her Broadway debut as composer but also as a lyricist and many of the lyrics reveal her affinity for the poetic illusion. (see quote above).
Kinky Boots boasts a central diva-styled role that comes direct from the revered here-I-am-boys school of performing. There is little doubt from the time we meet the one-of-kind Lola, as played with a refreshingly pugnacious perspicacity by a sensational Billy Porter, that whatever Lola wants, she is likely to get. But it has to be with the help of Charlie (Stark Sands), the factory's young and insecure owner. As the inheritor of his recently deceased father's long-established but now failing business, Sands is not only an engaging and splendid singer and actor but he also strikes a nice balance of power in the light of Porter's obligatory flamboyance. But as we see in Kinky Boots, not all drag queens are alike.
Lola gives us a particularly poignant perspective of a man who has found his niche. We see him as ten-year-old Simon (Marquise Neal) who would rather put on his mother's red high-heeled shoes than become the tough, manly prize-fighter that his father is training him to be. Putting on the shoes, the talented young Mr. Neal belts a short refrain from "The Most Beautiful Thing" out of the park.
Motivated by Lola, who has gives up her job performing in a London club, The Blue Angel, to become his designer, Charlie has to not only deal with the disintegrating relationship with his self-centered and unsupportive fiancée Nicola (Celina Carvajal) who wants Charlie to sell the business and move with her to London, but also with the anxiety of the workers who worry that their jobs are at stake.
Standouts among them are Lauren, who, as played by a delightfully idiosyncratic Annaleigh Ashford and Don (a super performance by Daniel Stewart Sherman) as the bearish homophobe who challenges Lola to a fight at the local Fisticuff's Bar. This cleverly devised, if also somewhat silly scene, is played within a ring and serves as a cap, as well as a surprise, after we have seen the young Lola/Simon practicing his sparring earlier in the show.
The bevy of queens, known at the Angels, dress up the stage as characters, and also tear it up as they dig in those heels as a dynamic dancing Greek chorus. The scene in which the haut-couture-d Angels make a visit to the factory and assure the workers that they have something to strive for is a dancing highlight as part of it is performed on conveyor belts, as exciting as the song that drives it, "Sex is in the Heel." "What a Woman Wants," a particularly funny song for them in Act II, in which they challenge the men's ideas about masculinity is another show-stopping winner.
Although it does seem to come out of the blue,the musical's biggest dramatic jolt involves Charlie's change in attitude toward Lola, a change that will undergo some convolutions in regard to accepting each other for who they are. The one song that affects us deeply and emotionally is "I'm Not My Father's Son." It gives us an insight into Charlie's attempt to disassociate himself from his father's legacy, as it also, through its dual musical narrative, considers the torment behind Lola's decision to stand up and be his own man.
But be assured that all will be resolved to everyone's satisfaction by the time the factory's collection of high fetish-fashioned boots hit the runway in Milan for a finale with an a obligatory rousing number, "Raise You Up/Just Be." It's designated to make you cheer. And you will.
Lauper and Feinstein have proven themselves fortuitously formidable partners who have found a formula that has transformed a so-what film into a so-fine musical.
The Winter's Tale
McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ Review based on performance April 5, 2013
So who knew that Bohemia was a playground for huge rainbow-hued butterflies? And who could suspect that the simple and celebratory-minded country-folk who also frolic there among their sheep would look like exiles from Dogpatch. Even the pretty blonde ingenue, oops I mean shepherdess, looks as if she were kin to Daisy Mae. But I'm rushing the plot a bit as things start off a lot less colorfully and, indeed, more dourly in the neutral palate palace in Sicilia where begins Director Rebecca Taichman's visionary staging of William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.
Anyone familiar with Taichman's beautifully conceptualized, wondrously clever even coy direction of Sleeping Beauty Awakes, and Twelfth Night" for the McCarter Theatre as well as with her memorable 2010 Off Broadway direction of Orlando, will also admire her adventurous approach to a play that many have considered as one of the Bard's lesser works.
Let's dispel that notion of it being lesser, despite the judicious pruning of the text and the elimination of minor characters, in the light of Taichman's magical treatment of the convoluted, preposterous plot with its essentially unmotivated exposition. Seen from her surreal perspective and through the unaffected but dramatically taut acting of her company, immersion into the plot isn't all that difficult. A significant part of the immersion is due to designer Christopher Akerlind's mood-enhancing lighting, especially a spectacularly lighted finale that is not to die for but to live for.
Shakespeare reveals his melodramatic hand early on. To be sure, there is more behavioral idiocy than psychological profundity in the story. What is profoundly chilling is the performance by Mark Harelik as Leontes the king of Sicilia, who suddenly goes mad with jealousy because he suspects and then accuses, for no more reason than a smile and an affectionate touch, the visibly very pregnant Queen Hermione of having had an affair with Polixenes, their house guest, his best friend, the king of Bohemia. A brilliant directorial touch is letting us see what Leontes imagines he is seeing in a series of freeze frames involving Hermione and Polixenes. We may surmise, as Shakespeare did, that even best friends can overstay their welcome.
Paradoxically, after the play's first half in which we see how a distressingly paranoid monarch wittingly slanders, humiliates, alienates, and even destroys most everyone he holds dear, we are treated to a second half all bathed in a sweetly sheep-shearing light, and resolved to making everyone live happily ever after. Perhaps, not one of Shakespeare's greatest hits, but this The Winter's Tale makes up for its lack of coherence and cohesiveness in its inexplicable ability to entertain.
Taichman intrigues and entertains us with a production that starts off like a modern-dress concert-staging with some of the actors attending admirably and without affectation to the text's rushes of exquisite lyricism while those not involved sit in chairs in the back of designer Christine Jones's starkly handsome unit setting that serves in Sicilia as a spacious uncluttered palace room and as a meadow in Bohemia.
The spin that Taichman puts on her modernist approach is seen in the joyous behavior of the residents of Bohemia, whose faces we recognize belonging to the characters in Sicilia. It's a lark to see six of the nine actors suddenly show up romancing and romping about in designer David Zinn's loopy costumes in a setting whose primary reference to the pastoral is limited to a large painting of a green meadow and some cardboard cut-outs of sheep. For our added pleasure, a trio of drunken musicians and the assembled shepherds and shepherdesses engage in the obligatory merry dance.
Although it is hard to forgive Leontes for his mindless, impetuous stupidity, the character comes back to haunt us. The difficult-to-swallow redemption of Leontes presents a challenge that Harelik eventually meets. But until this happens late in the play, we see him take his rage to an extreme, throwing his body on the floor in a convulsive fit of laughter after being refuted by the Oracle. What a dramatic turnabout for Harelik who, in the midst of all his anguish, is also assigned to delight us with some delectable scenery-chewing in the role of Autolycus, a roguish, one-eyed thief and ballad-monger.
Sean Arbuckle is excellent as the gallant but maligned Polixenes, as is Brent Carver, as Leonte's trusted counselor Camillo. Getting her say is Nancy Robinette as Paula, the court loudmouth and as a drunken Shepardess. So does theater veteran Ted van Griethuysen, as Paulina's husband. Hannah Yelland's display of patience-in-adversity as that "precious creature" Hermione is heart-breaking. Heather Wood as the long-lost daughter Perdita, and Todd Bartels as the a-wooing Prince Florizel are atypically disarming the lovesick teens.
With its romantic innocence tainted by morbid undertones and its gorgeous poetry tested by melodramatic excess, "The Winter's Tale" makes uncompromised appreciation difficult. However, Taichman's ability to give us "The Winter's Tale" with equal parts chills and charms is sure to win fans. There will likely be additional fans for this fantastical tale about the healing power of love as it has been so beautifully produced by McCarter in association with The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C. where it will move following this engagement.
The Winter's Tale - Opened 04/05/13 Ends 04/21/13
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