La Cage, Revisited

I am convinced that if you love broadway musicals, it is impossible not to adore La Cage Aux Folles. Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein created a damn near perfect musical that remains relevant in spite of having been written almost thirty years ago, when the gay landscape was so different than it is today - and in many ways, thankfully so. It's delightful, emotional, hysterically funny, and the songs are gorgeous. You don't need to know much of the show's history to love it, but my perspective was forever changed when I watched the great PBS documentary Words and Music by Jerry Herman, and learned that half of the original ensemble of La Cage didn't live to finish the run. What started as a mysterious plague became the AIDS crisis, and its stranglehold on the gay community incited homophobia with unprecedented intensity. Meanwhile, here was this one place in New York where drag queens were singing about love, hope, and acceptance. Now that's seeing things from a different angle.

With all of this in mind, it's pretty magical to see this spirited revival so lovingly embraced by a modern audience, and remarkable to see the show's own Tony-winning book writer in the lead role of Albin. Harvey Fierstein has hinted that this production is the most satisfying one to his taste, in part because the real love between the story's central couple can finally take the spotlight in a way that perhaps was less palatable for audiences in the past. To say that Fierstein shines in the role would be an insult to the sequin - he beams, he dazzles, and he delights. And though Fierstein's performance is the bigger news story, his counterpart Christopher Sieber deserves equal praise. Sieber's George is buoyant yet understated, and he holds the audience rapt in the quiet moments that reveal the true heart of La Cage, which is not really about a drag act but about the powerful bonds between members of a family who fiercely love each other.

A brief note to the Cagelles - Girl, you are fierce! Kick your face. Work!

It's also one of those musicals that gets filed under The Tao of Musical Theater Lyrics. I can personally guarantee that anyone who wakes up each morning and recites the following mantra will be at least a little bit happier.

The best of times is now.

What's left of Summer

But a faded rose?

The best of times is now.

As for tomorrow,

Well, who knows? Who knows? Who knows?

So hold this moment fast,

And live and love

As hard as you know how.

And make this moment last

Because the best of times is now,

Is now, is now.

Now, not some forgotten yesterday.

Now, tomorrow is too far away.

So hold this moment fast,

And live and love

As hard as you know how.

And make this moment last,

Because the best of times is now,

Is now, is now.

It Sucks to be Mormon

It's no secret that original Broadway musical offerings have been beyond limp lately. So when the guys behind South Park teamed up with the composer-lyricist of Avenue Q, the theater kids obligingly whipped themselves into a frenzy of anticipation. Early enthusiasm has now been corroborated by reviews that exalt The Book of Mormon as the savior of the Broadway Musical. I was at opening last night, and it's pretty great, and very funny - but my my, how contrast elevates the very good to genius heights.

Time Out NY:
As you laugh your head off at perky Latter-day Saints tap-dancing while fiercely repressing gay tendencies deep in the African bush, you will be transported back ten years, when The Producers and Urinetown resurrected American musical comedy...

The Hollywood Reporter:
One of the freshest original musicals in recent memory. It has tuneful songs, clever lyrics, winning characters, explosive laughs and disarmingly intimate moments.

NY Magazine:
Mormon chipperly shitcans all pieties … except the sacred, mystic conventions of musical theater. And therein lies the real miracle: ...Parker and Stone—the sincerest, most serious-minded of social comedians—have effectively closed an irony wormhole that opened with Urinetown, grandpappy of all millennial metamusicals. After Mormon, I like to imagine, the Broadway musical might be free to be a Broadway musical again—even if it is balls-out funny and relevant to audiences under 85.

NY Daily News:

It's a show where you catch yourself laughing one minute, mouth agape the next, eventually wiping away tears, and, finally, cheering.

Meanwhile, Terry Teachout at the Wall Street Journal has a less rapturous reaction, and it's one that I can't disagree with. I really, really wanted to full-stop LOVE this show. Sadly, I didn't, and I find his review pretty spot-on:

Don't let anybody try to tell you that "The Book of Mormon" is suitable for anyone other than 12-year-old boys who have yet to graduate from fart jokes to "Glee." A couple of reasonably effective production numbers notwithstanding, it's flabby, amateurish and very, very safe... The creators of "South Park" like to call themselves "equal-opportunity offenders," but if you think there's anything risky about "The Book of Mormon," you're kidding yourself. Making fun of Mormons in front of a Broadway crowd is like shooting trout in a demitasse cup.

Million Dollar Quartet

What can be said about Million Dollar Quartet? Where to begin? This is a musical experience that would cozily fit into the Vegas circuit, prompting smiles and nods of recognition from oldsters reliving the heyday of Elvis, Johnny Cash, et all. Alas, it does not fit so comfortably on Broadway.

There's very little story, and yet what little narrative the anemic book does provide is nonsensical. The cast, I'm sorry to say, can't provide the necessary energy and charisma to elevate the experience to the dynamite one-night-only event that the production insists you are witnessing. Instead it feels more like a warmed-over impersonator cabaret. Oh, and Hunter Foster is there to narrate, which unfortunately does not help matters. An icky feeling hangs over the whole affair, as if a producer saw Jersey Boys and thought they'd throw the same ingredients together and manufacture an easy money-making hit. They were mistaken.

As a friend lovingly dubbed these recent productions, "Guys & Suck," "Not-so-Brighton Beach", and now "Four Dollar Quartet" - is the Nederlander the new Biltmore?

This at Playwrights Horizons

Despite cleverness that occasionally overshoots its mark, Melissa James Gibson's play This deftly maneuvers between striking themes which are rarely portrayed with the complexity in which they occur in real life. From Playwrights Horizons press notes, here's an idea of the story:

Jane is not okay. She’s a promising poet without a muse, a single mother without lessons to pass along. Her dating life’s a shambles, and her helpful friends are only helping make things more complicated. This bright, witty, un-romantic comedy captures the uncertain steps of a circle of friends backing their way into middle age.

That summary only skims the surface of this sad, smart, very funny play. Grief, loneliness, the intricacies of old friendships, career, dating, intimacy, aging, sex, parenting - many playwrights would find a significant enough challenge in intertwining just a few of these, but Gibson's characters exist amidst the whole mess, just as most normal people's lives are a daily negotiation of conflicting desires and realities and urges and responsibilities. Not only does Gibson thoughtfully explore these personal venn diagrams, she also manages to raise questions about race, gender, ethics and politics in personal ways that further the story. All of this rolled into an hour and fifty minutes makes for engaging, provocative theater. Though there are occasional missteps in the overuse of devices and flowery language that feel like road signs interrupting the natural flow of the storytelling, overall This packs a pretty powerful punch.

Playwrights Horizons has once again assembled an excellent cast, with Glenn Fitzgerald giving a standout performance as the droll and brazenly sensitive Alan, bittersweet sufferer of an ability to recall any conversation he's ever heard. Louis Cancelmi is also fantastic as Jean-Pierre, an alluringly no-nonsense Doctor Without Borders, who also happens to be French and smokin' hot. Design elements are uniformly strong, with Louisa Thompson's set conveying the subject matter's messy compromise and beauty.

(photo above by Joan Marcus. Eisa Davis, Darren Pettie, Glenn Fitzgerald, Julianne Nicholson and Louis Cancelmi are pictured)

Desire Under the Elms

From the moment the lights come up on two sweat-soaked brothers hauling a massive load of rocks, Desire Under the Elms is loaded with heavy and hot-blooded emotional struggles. Watching an expert cast strain under the burden is fascinating, even if the release theatergoers may crave is lacking.

The level of blood, sweat, and tears packed into O'Neill's 90-minute melodrama is impressive to say the least. The impossibly, inhumanly alluring Carla Gugino manifests Abbie as a woman so scarred by life's hardships, it's plain to see how her hunger for comfort drives her to disastrous ends. Pablo Schreiber's Eben impressively matches her as a man desperate for a woman's attention and encouragement, particularly in the face of his father's relentless battery of mocking, emasculating dismissals. And of course, Brian Dennehy's Ephraim is brimming with a malicious spite that belies his ferocious obsession with all that he is master of, be it his farm or his own body - a body which threatens to live on for years to come despite old age and decades of hard labor. Watching these three duke it out is amazing to say the least - Carla Gugino is a marvel, and the ferocious sexual tension between her and Schreiber is exhilarating.

However, director Robert Falls has fashioned a strangely blunt emotional sledgehammer out of O'Neill's greek tragedy. Given so little space to fall in love with the characters before they begin clawing each other to shreds, the payoff is more exhausting than satisfyingly cathartic.

Desire Under the Elms is playing at the St. James Theater. By Eugene O'Neill; directed by Robert Falls; sets by Walt Spangler; costumes by Ana Kuzmanic; lighting by Michael Philippi; music and sound by Richard Woodbury; wigs by Charles G. Lapointe; technical supervisor, Larry Morley; associate producer, Broadway Across America. A Goodman Theater production. Starring Brian Dennehy (Ephraim Cabot), Carla Gugino (Abbie Putnam), Pablo Schreiber (Eben Cabot), Boris McGiver (Peter Cabot) and Daniel Stewart Sherman (Simeon Cabot).

Review: Next to Normal

Thanks to Alice Ripley's masterful, astonishing performance, Next to Normal is transporting from the first moment, and devastating to the last note. While it may not fit the picture of a buoyant broadway musical built for easy crowd-pleasing, this nuanced portrait of madness and grief provides more emotional payoff than most nights I've had in a theater.

The story tracks Diana (Ripley), wife, mother, and sufferer of mental illness. Her instability stems from events treated with such delicacy in the production that revealing them in a review would deplete one of the most thoughtfully achieved aspects of the production. As Diana's connection to reality slips through her fingers, her family becomes increasingly desperate to maintain their own connection to the wife and mother they love. Ultimately, the story is not only about madness - it's about the delicate nature of the human capacity for love, and both the destruction and the mending that love can do for the soul.

A long development period has paid off in spades for Next to Normal, which ran Off-Broadway at Second Stage before transferring to Washington D.C.'s Arena Stage, and finally venturing to Broadway. Creators Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, with director Michael Greif, have created a finely detailed picture of one family that's been fragmented by the past, each member isolated but desperate to connect. A fine cast treats the material with the requisite sensitivity and nuance, and the design elements actualize the world they live in - sometimes scary, sometimes full of warmth. But Alice Ripley is the crown jewel in the production, radiating pure emotion with every note and gesture. She's funny and loving in one moment, a terrified child the next, while remaining credible as the person whose family would stick with her in the very worst of times. Her portrait of Diane will surely join the ranks of Little Edie, Evita, and Mama Rose in the legion of great unhinged grand dames of musical theater.

Next to Normal is playing at the Booth Theater. Music by Tom Kitt; book and lyrics by Brian Yorkey; directed by Michael Greif; musical staging by Sergio Trujillo; sets by Mark Wendland; costumes by Jeff Mahshie; lighting by Kevin Adams; sound by Brian Ronan; orchestrations by Michael Starobin and Mr. Kitt; vocal arrangements by AnnMarie Milazzo; music director, Charlie Alterman; music coordinator, Michael Keller; technical supervisor, Larry Morley. Starring Alice Ripley (Diana), J. Robert Spencer (Dan), Aaron Tveit (Gabe), Jennifer Damiano (Natalie), Adam Chanler-Berat (Henry) and Louis Hobson (Dr. Madden/Dr. Fine).

Hair Makes Hippies Irresistible

The Onion recently ran an article entitled “Oh No, Performers Coming Into Audience”. The piece was a frighteningly detailed account of a theater performance in which the cast descended “previously unseen stairs” in a “horrifying breach of the fourth wall,” bringing their singing, dancing, and cavorting right into the laps of their (captive) audience. My mind touched on this article at a recent performance of Hair, as Will Swenson’s heinie shimmied mere inches away from my mortified face. Three songs in, I was flat-out terrified he was going to drag me up onstage. But he didn't - thank god! - and once I came around to the flower children who aren't afraid to hug a stranger, the show was a total delight. Bottom line: Hair is a lot of fun, but don’t sit on the fourth row aisle unless you’re looking for a lap dance.

Conceived by two hippie actors in 1964, Hair was created as an autobiographical piece that took almost every political and social issue of the moment and fused them into a wild tribal rock musical, played fast and loose in a way that was unprecedented in the world of traditional musical theater. Concept musicals like Company, Follies, and even A Chorus Line were all borne, in a sense, of the creative freedom that Hair established when it burst onto the scene almost 50 years ago.

The big selling point of this new production of Hair is that it manages to manifest the untamed spirit of that era without appearing outdated or silly. The theater has been stripped down and decked out as a rainbow-infused hippie hideout, and the staging creates an intimate connection between the cast and audience from the get-go. Most importantly, the spirited cast shines as if ideas like peace and free love are things that they are creating right here and now. The urgency and innocence of their performances works in perfect harmony with the rich history of the piece to make Hair enchanting and irresistible.

HAIR The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is playing at the Al Hirschfeld Theater. Book and lyrics by Gerome Ragni and James Rado; music by Galt MacDermot; directed by Diane Paulus; choreography by Karole Armitage. WITH: Sasha Allen (Dionne), Allison Case (Crissy), Gavin Creel (Claude), Andrew Kober (Dad/Margaret Mead), Megan Lawrence (Mother/Buddahdalirama), Caissie Levy (Sheila), Darius Nichols (Hud), Bryce Ryness (Woof), Saycon Sengbloh (Abraham Lincoln), Kacie Sheik (Jeanie), Theo Stockman (Hubert) and Will Swenson (Berger).

Billy Elliot

It's no secret that these are bleak times for Broadway. With rising ticket prices and dwindling tourism during New York's coldest months, a handful of shows will close in the coming weeks, with more sure to follow. For artists, as for the rest of the country, the world looks uncertain and perhaps even a little unfriendly. It seems fitting then, that a musical about the value of art set amidst poverty, instability, and social strife would be inspiring passion and hope in seemingly everyone who sees it.

The story is simple. Boy discovers art. Boy's family shuns art, hopes boy isn't a pansy (or since we're in industrial 80's England here, a "poof".) Boy secretly continues making art, and family finally realizes his incredible talent just in time to help him achieve success. A cursory glance may lead one to believe that the message is clear: be yourself, work hard, follow your dreams, and things will work out.

Those neat little lessons are certainly present in Billy Elliot, but there is also something deeper at work. Billy's family isn't just poor - they are the working class on strike, a part of the brutal 1984 Coal Miner's Strike, and they are fighting every day with everything they have. There is a scene close to the end of the play in which much of the town is present at a meeting, at their ropes end trying to put food on their tables and care for their families. They are desperate and exhausted, with no end in sight, and finding a way to send Billy on the expensive journey to London to audition for ballet school seems impossible. Then something incredible happens. One by one, these people who have next to nothing step forward from both sides of the picket line, each offering what little money they can, intent on giving Billy that one chance at his dream. Even in their darkest of times, there is an awareness that this child, an artist, is someone to be protected, respected, and encouraged. He, and his art, are important.

This tribute to the dreams of a young artist is at the heart of Billy Elliot, and it elevates the show from a dance spectacular to a cathartic theatrical experience. There is no doubt that it will inspire legions of young people, not just dancers but dreamers of all sorts, which is what Billy really is. Because of this, I can't think of a better show to recommend to just about anybody.

Just one thing is irritating about Billy Elliot: the possibility of what it could have been with a better score. As the spirited ensemble battles to inject fire into Elton John's ho-hum melodies, I couldn't help but wistfully imagine a soaring and expressive score by composers like Ahrens and Flaherty, or Adam Guettel. Even with some of the most awe-inspiring choreography I've ever seen, it's still a *musical*, and a mediocre score keeps this one just a hair short of truly transcendent.

Photo of David Alvarez and Haydn Gwynne by David Scheinmann.

The Most Damaging Wound

Tomorrow is your last chance to see The Production Company's excellent staging of The Most Damaging Wound, perceptively directed by Mark Armstrong. The show has already received an impressive amount of critical praise, and I'm happy to jump on the bandwagon. Armstrong has assembled a talented cast who nimbly communicates a familiar story to theatergoers: your average group of white guys gather in New York to reminisce and part with the beer-swilling ghosts of "the old days". I know, I know, the setup has the potential to be exhaustingly old hat, but the cast embodies the characters with an exuberant simplicity that is entirely free from judgment, and Armstrong's canny direction favors honesty over the irritating earnestness that many similar plays have suffered from. It's such a pleasure to see a smartly staged off-off production with a spirited cast under terrific direction. Check it out!

Were the World Mine

I caught Were the World Mine when it closed Newfest earlier this year. The film was selected for (and won) a ton of festivals, and it's easy to see why - it's a charming musical fantasy that succeeds in making your heart soar, even on an indie shoestring budget. The story follows Timothy, the only out gay student in a preppy all-boys high school. When Timothy is cast as Puck in the school's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, he discovers Puck's magic flower, complete with a magic potion capable of turning the straightest rugby player into a drooling puddle of love. Before long, the entire small town that was so conservative and homophobic is brimming with puppy love of the non-hetero variety.

The cast, led by talented newcomer Tanner Cohen, is pitch perfect, but the real star here is the music. By turns it is haunting, catchy, and soaring, and I guarantee you will leave the theater singing "Oh, Timothy..."

Were the World Mine opens this weekend at Cinema Village, check it out!

Update: Here is the official trailer.

Speed-the-Plow

Things I liked about Speed-the-Plow, in preferential order:

1. Raul Esparza's fiery and funny performance. He is far and away the best part of the show. Somebody give this man a Tony for chrissake. This is worth seeing just for him.
2. Elizabeth Moss and Jeremy Piven, who are both also phenomenal, if not as absolutely pitch-perfect as Esparza. Piven is strong as always. Moss completely demonstrates her talent as a first-rate actress, but suffers from a character who is the least compassionately - or skillfully - drawn in the play.
3. The direction, which maximizes the biting energy of the play and creates a thrill ride for the audience.
4. The play itself. The above elements make for fun theater, but ultimately, the play is a little anemic and spends far too long indulging in (and mocking) hippie-dippy philosophy. Also, David Mamet's distaste for women reads a little too loudly in the script. Nevertheless, it's fun theater that's very well acted.

BEAST

On the list of comedy-killers, torrential downpours and sleepy matinee audiences should be placed right under cancer jokes. Unfortunately, the afternoon performance of BEAST I saw* was subject to both, and the "marauding adventure" felt less like a comedy and more like an incensed playwright's threatening letter to George W. Bush, a letter that happened to exist in the form of a play. Despite the usual fantastic performances by Lisa Joyce** and Logan Marshall-Green, playwright Michael Weller and director Jo Bonney never escape the clutches of the vindictive and angry political agenda of the play, and the characters are seen less as humans than they are as symbols and objects used to illustrate that agenda. Rather than appreciating the story unfolding onstage, I couldn't help but feel subjected to an onslaught of subtextual howls, including "the Iraq war is terrible!" and "we are abandoning our veterans!" and of course "George W. Bush is a total moron!", all of which are sadly true, but don't add up to good and engaging theater. Watching Marshall-Green and Corey Stoll's maimed, scarred, half-crazed soldiers fumble through a series of exchanges with blind prostitutes, backwards truck drivers, and desperate army widows is a lot to ask of an audience. If the point of such a difficult, upsetting journey is nothing more than a grotesque two-hour lambasting of the Bush administration, one has to wonder if there's a better way to incite change in the world.

*I do feel compelled to mention that the performance I was invited to of BEAST was a fairly early preview, and to my understanding, there were still some pretty major changes happening in the process. If they have since found their footing, it's possible that the BEAST onstage now at NYTW is an entirely different animal than the one I saw. However, my personal taste for political dramas is pretty specific, and I particularly dislike the feeling of being a captive audience for a playwright who is preaching to the choir about the evils of war, so it's hard for me to imagine feeling much differently, even if they really nailed it.

**Lisa Joyce is amazing. She really should be more famous by now. She is one of the most consistent and startlingly truthful young actresses today, in a class with Anna Paquin and a select few others. Watch out for this one.

Review: The Drunken City

In the opening moments of The Drunken City, three brides-to-be march out from house left, giggle to each other, and then, screaming gleefully, thrust their three sparkling engagement rings forward for all the audience to see. The rest of the play, like this opening moment, is both refreshingly joyful and maybe just a teensy bit annoying.

The story: Three gals from the suburbs head into the city to drink pink martinis and celebrate one's impending marriage. What glorious bridge-and-tunnel fun! Until the gals get way too drunk, some too-drunk men enter the picture, and suddenly the bride-to-be is making out with a black dude...

--- wait a second. I didn't mean to say "a black dude." I should have said "a stranger," or "a ridiculously hot stranger," since Mike Colter plays said dude. His race is so totally not the point, but my theatergoing instinct says that if the actor is black, it must be because his blackness is integral to the plot. And hey, let's be honest, my own innate racism is playing a role here, too. (What do you find yourself expecting when a non-caucasian actor walks onstage? Discuss.) But hey, white people aren't always talking about what it's like to be white, and I don't think everybody else is constantly talking about the color of their skin. So how fucking awesome is it that this is a play about love and relationships and New York City, and some of the people are white and some are not? I mean, thank god. In fact, as with many of Adam Bock's plays, The Drunken City uses a truly color-blind cast, featuring actors who are asian, hispanic, and african-american without their casting being due to a necessity in the script. To see this group of friends onstage who happen to be different ethnicities is refreshing to say the least, and reflects both the world I know and the world I hope to see. Enormous kudos to Adam Bock and to Playwrights Horizons awesome casting department for this. Anyway.

... When the bride-to-be heads off to god knows where with her hot, drunk man off the street, everyone (understandably) freaks. Through the fish-eye lens of their inebriation, we see that each character is a whole lotta lost, and pretty messy sober or not. The message is ultimately sweetly romantic and hopeful, and maybe secretly what all New Yorkers need to hear: everybody is secretly terrified, it's less scary when you get honest, and it's yes, you will find love. It's a little too sweet at times, and the running theme of utter intoxication wears thin after the first 45 minutes or so. But ultimately, it really is a delightful play.

Now here's the bad news. And I felt a lot worse about saying it before she got really good reviews, so maybe I just didn't get it, but... I did NOT go for Cassie Beck in the lead role. I just wasn't feeling it. I didn't believe her, I felt like she was acting and trying and full of effort and awkwardness and just. not. good. It pulled me right out of the play many times, and was just not an enjoyable performance, for me.

BUT! The rest of the cast is terrific, especially Sue Jean Kim, who is one of the *best* actresses you've probably never heard of. The girl is funny, smart, beautiful, and ought to be working constantly. And Alfredo Narciso is a revelation (at least to me), and gives a hilarious and moving performance that will blow you away. See this play for them, they are the bomb.

By the way, Playwrights Horizons has a ton of cool materials online. You can watch scenes from the play, hear a podcast from Adam Bock about drunkeness, and more. It's fun, check it out.

Review: Passing Strange

“What IS Passing Strange?” This is the question that many friends have asked upon hearing that I’ve seen the show four times now, and loved it each time more than the last. And even after several viewings, it’s not a simple question to answer. This two-and-a-half hour trip through the mind, musings, and memories of a guy named Stew is more rock concert than Broadway musical, and more visceral current of experience than straightforward story.

What it is about, to boil it way down, is the coming of age experience of a middle class black kid from L.A. From his rejection of the beige-toned suburban life, through the cafes of Amsterdam, into the underground art scene of Berlin, the story is a sort of historical fiction based on Stew’s own experiences traveling abroad in his youth.

Though Passing Strange isn’t an outright political piece, politics played a noteworthy role in the creation of the piece. Observe the word of Stew:

We have GWBush to thank for this play. Seriously. When I found out that he had never been to Europe in his youth (or in his adulthood until he becme prez!!!) I immediately knew I wanted to write a play about a kid who wanted to go to europe. That fact about Bush said a lot to me about America's lack of interest in anything foreign except that which it can exploit (always to exploit – never to learn from). Can you imagine an uber-privileged billionaire's son from any other country that would not have been curious enough to travel to a foreign country or two or 3 or 20? Especially when you're talking the kind of money where you already OWN a few airplanes yourself? As someone whose experience abroad informed and shaped my very being and consciousness about everything from sexuality, politics, culture, language and human nature, I became obsessed with this factoid and decided this incuriosity was at the heart of the war. I realized that we are actually suffering the results of Bush's and his cronies' incuriousness… their dimwitted foreign policy time and again shows that beneath it all these fuckers don't even care about trying to understand the world they wish to dominate.

After years of development, the final product is a musical that is truly unlike any other I’ve seen - different in form, style, message, and music than anything you would expect to see on Broadway. Stew, creator and composer, narrates the show from centerstage, with his band onstage amidst the action and occasionally even piping into the scenes. Stew shows us himself at a younger age (“Youth,” Daniel Breaker), with a fiercely talented supporting cast that takes on the variety of friends, family, lovers, and comrades whom Youth knows, loves, and inevitably leaves, “right when it was starting to feel real.”

Back when Passing Strange was at the Public, I said that "between the poetry, depth, and humor of the piece, and the kick-ass cast, Passing Strange is pretty transcendent." It's even stronger in it's more robust Broadway staging, and still completely unmissable. Check out the show's awesome website here, where you can download songs for free!! See? It really is the hippest show on Broadway...

Critics love Passing Strange

Hate to say I told you so, but it looks like I'm not the only one who digs Passing Strange.

David Rooney/Variety:

...a magical mystery tour that fuses aspects of concert, concept album, cabaret and revivalist meeting. Significantly finessed since last year's Public Theater run, this idiosyncratic odyssey toward self-knowledge explores universal questions of identity with the specificity and wry insight of autobiographical experience. It's boldly atypical Broadway fare that pulses with a new kind of vitality.

Terry Teachout/Wall Street Journal:

It's also the freshest musical in town, in part because Stew (whose real-life name is Mark Stewart) and his songwriting collaborator, Heidi Rodewald, are either ignorant of the conventions of musical comedy or don't care about them. Most likely they're more knowing than they let on, but it doesn't matter: "Passing Strange" is the most original Broadway musical since "The Light in the Piazza," and my guess is that it is headed for a long, profitable and influential run.

Charles Isherwood/New York Times:

Although it is far richer in wit, feeling and sheer personality than most of what is classified as musical theater in the neighborhood around Times Square these days, its big heart throbs to the sound of electric guitars, searing synthesizer chords, driving drums and lyrics delivered not in a clean croon but a throaty yelp.

Here's my review from Passing Strange's run at the Public. Miraculously, tickets are still available on TDF for many upcoming performances. I'll be there on Sunday, and these great reviews make me more excited than ever to see what they've done with the show.

[The great illustration above is from The New Yorker]

Brantley hates The Little Mermaid

Oh dear.

Loved the shoes. Loathed the show... O.K., I exaggerate. I didn’t like the shoes all that much.

And the real humdinger:

Directed by Francesca Zambello, this “Little Mermaid” burdens its performers with ungainly guess-what-I-am costumes (by Tatiana Noginova) and a distracting set (by George Tsypin) awash in pastels gone sour and unidentifiable giant tchotchkes that suggest a Luau Lounge whipped up by an acid-head heiress in the 1960s. The whole enterprise is soaked in that sparkly garishness that only a very young child — or possibly a tackiness-worshiping drag queen — might find pretty.

The Little Mermaid: So How Bad Is It?

Oh it's bad. So bad, I missed In My Life. Essentially, Disney Theatricals has sunk its rabid teeth into The Little Mermaid, infected it with a terrible disease, and is forcing the maimed, grotesque beast of a show to go on despite being only a shadow of it's glorious former self.

As I watched in shock and horror, I longed for the adorable cartoon I loved in my youth. My heart ached to hear the same refrains that had given me such happiness - but this is not the same The Little Mermaid I loved so well. No, little Moxie, avert your eyes! This Little Mermaid is too sick to be saved, and if anyone at Disney had a heart, they'd put it out of its misery.

To list all that is horribly, horribly wrong with this production would turn this blog into a short novel. Here are just a few highlights:

- The ugliest, most non-sensical sets I've ever seen. I still don't know what all the plastic crap on that stage was supposed to be. Waves? Trees? No idea. Plenty of photos here.

- Humiliating costumes for the poor actors. The mermaid sisters' tails are so out of control, they hit each other in the face whenever they turn around. Norm Lewis looks like the toast of Coney Island. And Heidi Blickenstaff, I'm so sorry they did that to you. You are fabulous and everyone knows it.

- An uninspired, boring book by Doug Wright, delivered with utter lifelessness by a cast who I know can do better. Did they spend any rehearsal time on acting, or character? WTF? And yeah, Sherie Renee Scott is supertalented, but I cringed watching her with those awful, awkward tentacles. Terrible.

- Heelys. They don't look like they're swimming, they look like they're skating. Which makes the whole thing look like exactly what it is: Disney on Ice on Crack.

- They've taken some of the best great Disney songs and staged them with all the conviction of a shitty theme park ride. Under The Sea is mostly about a dancer shakin' it in a day-glo unitard. Kiss The Girl involves giant plastic spinning things, and a frog puppet that likely got rejected by Toys 'R' Us.

To make things even more maddening, there are a number of glaring solutions to the show's problems. For example, would it kill them to use some puppets? The actors are costumed as vague, bizarre ideas of sea creatures, and it is not working. Is that a seahorse? Or a crab? I saw eight-year-olds cocking their heads sideways, thinking, "what is that?" Hey, Disney, I don't know if you've heard of it, but there was this musical that really turned heads a few years back, it is called The Lion King.

As pissed as I am at Disney for being the embodiment of corporate evil in the theater, you can't watch this show and not blame director Francesca Zambello. From top to bottom the thing is a total mess, and what is most dramatically lacking is a cohesive directorial vision. I'm sure that many will have much to say at where she went wrong, but all I can say is failure, failure, failure. It is an utter failure. She has failed everyone who loved that movie.

**It is definitely worth noting, in spite of everything, that Sierra Boggess is a great Ariel. The best part of the show are the minutes she spends alone onstage, and when she sings "Part of Your World" it is, for a minute or two, magical.

Review: In a Dark Dark House

Neil LaBute should thank his lucky stars for Fred Weller. In lesser hands (cough-Jason Patrick!-ahem), In a Dark Dark House could be an exercise in the pointless, overwrought, and predictable. The incisive, electric performance from Weller (and the other two cast members) acts as a bonafide defibrillator, creating palpable excitement and intrigue whenever the script gets thin.

Here's MCC's summary of the proceedings:

On the grounds of a private psychiatric facility, two family members find themselves brought face to face with each other's involvement in their traumatic past. In court-ordered rehab, Drew calls on his brother, Terry, to corroborate his story of abuse. Drew's request releases barely-hidden animosities between the two; is he using these repressed memories to save himself while smearing the name of his brother's friend and mentor? In Neil LaBute's powerful new play, these siblings must struggle to come to grips with their troubled legacy, both inside and outside their dark family home.

I'm quite of two minds about the show. It's an interesting set-up, and explores the ceaselessly relevant and scary topic of how exactly human monsters are made. Also, it's an interesting sort of cousin of Blackbird, telling the male side of the complexities of abuse, as Blackbird more directly explored a comparable story in which the victim was a girl. However, the "twists and turns" are often predictable from the moment of initial set-up. The interesting topic is articulated in a way that's too foggy and vague, and I admit that I'm generally not a fan of LaBute's tone. It kind of makes me feel dirty and unpleasant, which is doubtless what he's going for, but it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

But on the other hand, this cast totally rocks, and succeeds at making a clunky play kind of riveting. Ron Livingston carefully navigates a character who is both a self-interested, corrupt lawyer and a softie, pussyfooting younger brother, making Drew layered enough to be both compelling and condemnable. Louisa Krause is fantastic, playing 16-year-old Jennifer (aka "Buddy") with a rare and realistic combination of tough sophistication and naiveté. And Fred Weller's performance is unbelievably smart and agile, maneuvering each twinkle of the character's shifting motives with ease and incredible specificity. Watching the three of them is a pleasure, and they completely succeeded in making me enjoy the production, despite disliking the play. I also have to credit Carolyn Cantor, who created a physicality in this production that brings the tension between the characters to astronomical levels.

Journey's End: Review, and Closing Notice Reactions

After finally seeing the terrific, devestating Journey's End last night, I came into the office this morning to find its closing posted for 6/10. It's very sad... Journey's End is a lovely play that manages to posess plenty of the archetypal war drama plot points, while also seeming fresh, unexpected, surprising and shocking. Written in 1928, it's a beautifully told story of a just a few of the millions of soldiers lost to war, beautifully and lovingly performed by Boyd Gaines, Jefferson Mays, Stark Sands, Hugh Dancey, and a very fine ensemble.

After seeing so many sweeping, epic war films with thousands of CGI soldiers and extras storming beaches and deserted cities, how refreshing and simple to see the experience through the lives of these few guys. Much of the action takes place while the men are waiting for news of an imminent attack, and the opportunity for sitting and talking allows an intimate, raw look inside the terror of being at war, the love and respect between the soldiers, and most of all, their simple humanity. Whereas the big war epics find maximum drama in maximum slaughter, often missing the human element (or being so heavy-handed with emotion that you can't take it seriously), the audience at Journey's End is given a whole first act just to fall in love with these guys, to understand exactly who they are, where they come from, what they care about, and what they fear. I have never seen and felt so clearly that these boys could easily be my brother, my dad, my boyfriend, my schoolteacher.

The raw and beautiful humanity present in the play may, in fact, be it's downfall. Before the curtain rose, I chatted with the woman seated next to me about how empty the house was - even on the day after the Tony nominations. The show has been selling 30, even 20% recently - unbelievable for such a critically lauded show. We wondered aloud if the poor attendance was due to stiff competition from more fun/punchy/exciting plays like Talk Radio, Radio Golf, Frost/Nixon, and other vehicles with more star pull, like The Year of Magical Thinking, Inherit the Wind, and A Moon for the Misbegotten.

Though I'm sure the bevy of alternatives hasn't helped at the Journey's End box office, at the play's conclusion, I had a different theory: it's too difficult, and too painful. During the lead-up to the most emotionally difficult parts of the play, I found myself checking out, even rolling my eyes. "Come on," I thought, "Will we really have to suffer through these boys getting killed?" I couldn't engage in the world of the play, because accepting it's reality was akin to accepting the reality of war. I feel utterly horrified by what our country has engaged in in Iraq, and what we're putting our troops through - no, what we're putting our sons, daughters, dads, moms, boyfriends, girlfriends, brothers, sisters through (not to mention the people of Iraq, or course). My horror and anger is usually back-burnered, however, in favor of escapist cynicism that allows me to keep the terrible truth at bay. When I realized how the connection between this WWI setting and current events was making me keep the play at arm's length, I decided to gently push myself into the play, open up, and accept these characters that you can't help but care immensely for. Of course, that was when I really started enjoying the play, in spite of the waterworks that made me feel like I was back in 8th grade at Les Miz. However, I wouldn't be suprised if many people aren't ready to get in the trenches for 2 1/2 hours via this play. I have a cousin and a few friends at war, and certainly wouldn't blame their families for not wanting to go through this.

This brings up a lot of questions for me - Can a war drama be effective during wartime, or would this play be more useful cathartically if it were staged after the war in Iraq ends? Art certainly can't be put off while war goes on, but we clearly don't have a climate in which Journey's End can survive. Stuff Happens, on the other hand, was a huge success. Perhaps the answer in this case is both - some need to see this play now, and some just can't go there yet. It's just too bad that more people won't get to experience the fine performances in this small, intimate, beautiful play. Here's a link to some discounts - catch it before June 10th if you can.

Jack Goes Boating

I totally, totally LOVED Jack Goes Boating. It's one of those rare productions when material, direction, design, and performances all work perfectly together and create a really magical, delightful evening of theater.

The story is amazingly normal: married couple Clyde (John Ortiz) and Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega) introduce their single, socially anxious friend Jack (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to sweet but equally troubled Connie (Beth Cole). Jack and Connie's hesitant courtship is juxtaposed by Clyde and Lucy's sometimes-rocky-but-pretty-typical marriage. Ultimately, it's nothing more (or less) than a story about Jack trying new things, branching out, and becoming just a little bit adventurous in hopes that he might find a companion, and even a little romance. In fact, a good song for this show would be Rilo Kiley's "More Adventurous".

The simplicity and detail of this production are astounding. David Korins' set effortlessly creates a modest but comfy apartment, a dingy telesales office, and a public pool with humor and style. And the final moment , when Jack rows Connie across what we imagine to be a glassy lake, is stunning.

The performances are also achievements in simplicity, honesty, and fun detail. John Ortiz is so charming, and Daphne Rubin-Vega is delightful and perfectly cast - refreshing after seeing her working so hard in Les Miz, where she was clearly a square peg in a gigantic, overwrought, revolving hole. Philip Seymour Hoffman is magnetic, and does so much with so little. The play might disintegrate in the hands of a lesser actor, but Hoffman's sensitive, light touch is so watchable that any flaws in the writing are rendered invisible.

Also: it's really nice to see a play where the characters use drugs, and it doesn't feel like an infomercial. The drug use in Jack Goes Boating informs the characters, and furthers the action, and tells us about these people's lives, and that's it. It doesn't aim to warn us of the terrible consequences of drug use, aside from burning dinner. So, SO many people smoke pot these days, and it's really nice to see it represented in a truthful way - not a positive way, not glorifying it, but not making it into the devil's handiwork, either.