Nothing Interesting Here

Was there some sort of 19 day Broadway stagehand strike that just ended? Funny, I hardly noticed. For the first two weekends of the strike, two shows I was scheduled to see (August: Osage County, and Is He Dead?) had cancelled performances, so I replaced them with two of my favorite new off-Broadway shows, The Piano Teacher and Make Me A Song. After that, all I had was Roundabout and Lincoln Center stuff, so I went right ahead with my Broadway-going, undeterred. There was a controversial article in the Times sometime during the strike, complaining about the mediocrity of the shows left to see on Broadway during that time. In a season that was supposed to celebrate the glorious return of the new drama, I was stuck with two mediocre revivals.

I had never seen "Pygmalion" before, though I've certainly seen the movie of "My Fair Lady" enough times. I think part of my dislike of "Pygmalion" may have come from the fact that I had been obsessed with "My Fair Lady" first. I know people always complain that adaptations are never as good as the original source material. But when you've seen the adaptation so many times, and then you read the original, it's possibly for the reverse to happen. I remember in fifth grade, I picked "The Phantom Tollbooth" to do for a book report, because I loved the movie. Well, I picked up the book and found that there were many thing in there that weren't in the movie. And there were also lines from the book that were taken verbatim and turned into song lyrics, so that I couldn't really read sections without singing. I think there may have been something to story about me skimming the night before the report was due, but that's not really relevant to my point. What I mean to say is that while George Bernard Shaw purists may have been blowing all sorts of gaskets when "My Fair Lady" premiered, well I can see why musical theater fans could be sort of blase towards the source material. We don't see Ascot, we don't see any of the training, we don't see the ball... basically all of the best parts are left out. And of course, there is the lack of music as well. I know it's blasphemy to not enjoy Shaw, but I don't know... it felt really choppy with those missing scenes, and I just found myself watching and replaying the musical in my head at the same time, and being irritated that Jefferson Mays is no Rex Harrison, and Claire Daines is no Audrey Hepburn (let alone Julie Andrews). I will say that I did thoroughly enjoy Boyd Gaines' Pickering, and Helen Carey's Mrs. Higgins. Whenever I was onstage, I think I was able to stop humming to myself. But otherwise I think I was kind of disappointed and bored. And the set was really very odd. I guess the designer wanted to keep the dimensions of the rooms the same as they would be in a London townhouse, but with the low ceilings, and walls not reaching the edge of the stage, it almost felt like the production had transferred from an off-Broadway theatre, because it didn't really make very good use of the size of the stage, except in the fancy-shmancy set changes. Overall, a disappointment.... I think I would have had more fun sitting at home and watching my dvd of "My Fair Lady." Or maybe even watching the old video of the play that my grandmother gave me a number of years ago and that I still haven't watched.

The next week was another case of previous experiences killing a production. A few months ago, I saw a production of "Cymbeline" at BAM... I think put on by Cheek by Jowl. Anyway, it was my first time seeing the play, and while it did seem like Shakespeare just took the highlights of each of his other plays and smushed them all together into a new one, I did really enjoy it, and didn't really see why it was so relegated to obscurity. Well, after seeing the Lincoln Center Production, now I see why. I found the whole endeavor mediocre in every way. I wasn't particularly thrilled about anyone in the cast, other than maybe Martha Plimpton. The usually excellent Phylicia Rashad gave probably the worst performance of the cast. Remember her Tony speech from "A Raisin in the Sun"? Well the way she acted in that, was how she acted as the Queen. Meaning basically, she wasn't acting... she was just playing herself. And absolutely dreadful performance, and especially disappoint after she was so good in "Raisin..." and "Gem of the Ocean." The set designer apparently spent his entire budget on the 'deus ex machina' in the second act. Most of the time we have to stare at an almost empty stage, with just a couple of unattractive door. Not that a bare stage is necessarily a bad thing - the BAM production was definitely sparse - but there's a way to do sparse that looks artsy and tasteful (the natural beauty of the Harvey, of course always helps), but this just looked cheap. And the aforementioned 'deus ex machina'? Well, the whole scene reeked of theme park entertainment. As soon as I heard the miking of the actors, I couldn't help but think it sounded exactly like the quality of the sounds from the haunted house in Disney World... or the talking gargoyles at the Jekyll and Hyde restaurant. If they ever build ShakespeareLand, that scene would fit in quite nicely. Even the costume were ugly. It was a traditional dress production, which is fine, but Michael Cerveris and Jonathan Cake were given costumes made with some of the ugliest black and gold floral fabric that I've ever seen. The costumes other costumes were fine, but just looking at those two outfits made me ill. Maybe I've been watching too much Project Runway. Anyway, maybe I was spoiled by that BAM production (which, to be perfectly honest, even though I loved, I don't remember getting great reviews), but really, there was just no comparison between the two.

Now don't think I'm only knocking Broadway. Off-Broadway hasn't been that much better (Piano Teacher, and Make Me A Song, excepted of course).
"Trumpery" is a new play at the Atlantic, about how Darwin and a man named Wallace both discovered natural selection at the same time. So I figured it be mostly from Wallace's point of few, since he's the one no one really knows about, and the play would be about how he had this theory, and then Darwin suddenly stole his thunder. Well, what's on stage isn't nearly as interesting as what I imagined. Basically, Darwin spent fifteen years working on "The Origin of Species." He gets a letter from his friend Wallace, that Wallace just came up with this great theory about natural selection and what not. So Darwin, feeling threatened, rushes his book to publication. But he feels really really guilty about doing that, because no one really cared about Wallace. Um... Darwin came up with the theory fifteen years before Wallace. What's the problem? It's not like Wallace had the theory, and Darwin stole it. Or they came up with it even at the same time. Clearly Darwin was first, and while yes, Wallace may have gotten to the press first if he hadn't corresponded with Darwin, I don't really see the problem. Apparently, the playwright seemed to think this was somehow interesting, though, and so we see Darwin wandering around with guilt for two hours. Darwin also gets two children: one is very sick and you can guess what happens to her; the other runs on stage at random times for no apparent reason. I groaned every time he walked on stage, though he least he broke up the non-action, I guess. Manoel Felciano (who plays Wallace) gets a nice long speech in the second act about his life as an explorer, and Michael Countryman does a nice job as Darwin, but really neither makes this very academic and dull production interesting. My aunt saw this and raved about it, but she's a retired science teacher, so I think that basically explains it.

Finally (yes, we're nearing the end of my ramblings), "The Receptionist," a performance notable only because sitting two rows ahead of me and across the aisle was Stephen Sondheim. I honestly, did not understand the play one bit. It started out as a rather amusing office comedy, but then it turned serious, and I honestly just didn't understand why anything happened or what the point of any of it was. I just made absolutely no sense. I'm sure Adam Bock, the playwright, had some very deeply buried and very pretentious hidden meaning in their somewhere, but I was just totally baffled. I just kept waiting for something in the way of explanation to come along, and it just never did. It was just all setup with no payoff. I will say that Jayne Houdyshell was wonderful in the title role, and I can't imagine how painful the show would have been without her. She's one of those "I would watch her read the phone book" type actresses. And since the script isn't really much deeper than a phone book, well this is pretty close. Oh, and here was a first for a play - someone actually boo-ed at the curtain call. I've heard boo-ing a-plenty at the opera, but never anything else. I'm not saying it deserved to be boo-ed, but I can't say I blamed him. If even 1% of the audience got anything out of the play, I'd be surprised. 70 minutes long, not boring, but not remotely satisfying, and totally baffling.

And I wonder why I keep wanting to revisit "Make Me A Song," "The Piano Teacher," and "Die Mommie Die" (actually, I've only seen "Die Mommie Die" once, but I think I may go again just to have a sure-fire escape from the mediocrity).

Loving Franz and Finn

Isn't it amazing how some playwrights can create a completely compelling drama in half the time it takes Tom Stoppard to bore his audiences (and actually, a sixth of the time if you count "Coast of Utopia" as one play). Julia Cho's "The Piano Teacher" was only 90 minutes long, but it felt absolutely complete and satisfying. The success of the play belongs in no small part to an absolutely mesmerizing performance from Elizabeth Franz. The play has a total of three actors, but it's mostly a solo play with other actors, because not only is Franz onstage the whole time, but she is also speaking most of the time. Franz plays Mrs K, a retired piano teacher and a woman who you just want to run up on stage and hug. The setting is her living room, and since there Cho quickly disposes of any fourth wall, the audience might as well be sitting on her couch having a chat. This is one of those plays where it's best to go in not knowing too much, so I'll try to very briefly describe the plot. Basically, Mrs K sits reminisces about her old piano students, eventually decides to start contacting them. And of course the other two actors play former students. I'm probably making it sound like some happy-go-lucky piece of fluff, but it is of course, not. In fact I think I may have nightmares tonight... and not because I'm remembering all those time I didn't want to practice the piano. The play is genuinely disturbing. I will say that the play did take a while to really get going - it starts off charmingly enough, but there's only so long the audience can watch a kindly old woman chatter on before their attention starts to lag. Luckily it was such a joy to watch Franz, I just sat there in awe until the story really got going, which it eventually did. I can't say I totally understood everything that went on (I think I may have to go see this again), but I really was riveted almost the entire time. This would probably be worth seeing even if Mrs K was just sitting there reading the phone book, but it was nice to see that the play was pretty much able to live up to Elizabeth Franz's performance.

On another happy note, I also very much enjoyed "Make Me A Song," a revue of the music of William Finn. I knew I would probably enjoy it when I looked at the song list before the show, and I said to myself "Ooh, I like that song, and I like that song, and I like that song... I don't know that song, but I like that one and that one and that one..." and that went on down the entire song list. There were three songs in it that I had never heard of (because they were written by Finn for a special performance at Williams College, and as far as I know have never been recorded), but all the other I already knew and loved. So the performance would have had to be pretty lousy for me not to enjoy myself. Luckily, the four performers (five, if you include the pianist) did a wonderful job. There were perhaps a few times when the choreography or a performance would verge on being hokey, but those moments were few. If you either love the work of William Finn (especially "Elegies," "Falsettos" and the songs on "Infinite Joy") or aren't sure if you love him or not, this is certainly worth seeing.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: "The Little Mermaid" on Broadway

I went to the first preview of "The Little Mermaid" tonight.

"The Little Mermaid" is a film beloved by children of all ages. And those classic songs: Under the Sea? Part of Your World? Everyone loves those songs. Why you could probably dress Ariel's friend Flounder in a baggy yellow shirt and shorts, make the set out of a couple of pieces of plexiglass, and even rewrite the ending that makes very little sense, but as long as you have those songs to give the audience as touchstones, and of course use at least one in the finale, the audience will love it. Well, they (Disney) did and they (the audience) do.
Let's start with the set and the costumes. They hired the set and costume designer who last worked on the critically reviled Kirov "Ring Cycle." Needless to say, their work here is on par with their "Ring" work. The mermaid have tails sticking out of their butts. Sebastian is wearing a red suit and top hat, with some red tubes sticking off. Flounder gets a baggy yellow shirt and baggy yellow shorts. The other aquatic life are dressed in unattractively colored spandex body suits, with lots of sparkles. The set looks like it was made entirely out of cheap plastic. The water is wavey plastic. There's a giant sculpture that looks remarkably like a giant bottle opener (you know, the kind with the arms that go up as the screw goes into the cork?), that opens up during musical numbers to turn into something that looks like a ride from Disneyland. It's all very sparse. Cheap looking. And sparse. And unattractive. The lighting, by Natasha Katz, is basically just random splashes of color. Ah, such creativity.
The "swimming" is accomplished by giving the actors heelys (sneakers with wheels in the heel). I can't say I really understand the concept. So basically, "swimming" involves walking fast enough to get some momentum, and then moving to roll on your heels. Uh huh.... Oh, and remember how the motto for this production was no water, no wires? Well, there's no water but, surprise surprise, there are in fact two scenes (Eric's drowning, and Ariel's transformation) that use wires for a swimming effect. And guess what? Those are only two times where I was actually impressed by the special effects. Oh, did I mention Ursula didn't get heelys? I guess Sherie Rene Scott doesn't roller skate too well. As punishment though, they took away her legs. So she walks by sort of waddling (except when she's rolled on and off stage on a platform), and to dance she just wiggles her hips and the tentacles on her dress jiggle.
Speaking of the dancing, Stephen Mears' choreography is uninspired. So uninspired that I have nothing else to say about it.
Alan Menken's new songs are fine. I didn't leave humming any of them, not that they had a fair chance against the classics, but I enjoyed listening to them, and I look forward to the new cast recording. I did have some minor problems with some of the lyrics for said new songs. In a melodically rather nice song in the second act, we get cringe inducing lines that go something like "I wish I could pull a cure out of thin water" or "I'd wave my claw and make this all go away." Maybe if the song was going for comedy I might not have cringed so much, but it was a serious song, and that sort of underwater cheese just didn't seem right for the moment.
As for the book, the show sticks pretty close to the movie, plotwise, until near the end. Instead of having Ursula come back to marry Prince Eric, we get a singing contest that's basically a singing version of Cinderella's Prince's search for the glass slipper: Eric hears a group of girls sings and hopes to hear Ariel's voice from one of them. When they all fail though...

(*BEGINNING OF (NEW) PLOT SPOILERS*) Ariel dances because as we learned in an earlier song, dancing is another form of communication, and so Ariel's dancing is just as good as if she had sung. Or some such drivel. Of course, the whole Ariel and Eric thing is too late, and Ariel is taken back to Ursula's lair, and things continue as in the movie. Now there was some backstory given in act one, that Poseiden gave Triton his trident, and Ursula a magic shell, and that's the source of their power. But if Ursula's shell breaks, she dies. So, as in the movie, Triton gives his soul for Ariel's. Then, somehow Eric's boat goes over Ursula's lair (because it's not deep in the ocean, but close to the surface where he can see???), and this distracts Ursula long enough for Ariel to grab the shell. Then eventually Ariel breaks the shell and Ursula dies. Now I had a number of problems with this. First, was how the boat got to the lair. But second... why, if Ursula had the Triton's trident, didn't that replace the power of the shell? I just didn't understand why Ursula still needed the shell after she had the trident. And of course, Doug Wright didn't care to explain it, none of the little girls in the audience cared because it was the end of the show and they were about to get another reprise of "Part of Your World," and so anyone who was trying to prick the surface of the story was left in the dark (*END OF SPOILERS*)

As for the performances, I was very impressed with everyone. Sierra Boggess has a lovely voice, and makes for a lovely Ariel. Sean Palmer does generic handsome prince quite well. And Sheri Rene Scott, who is totally different from the movie Ursula (Pat Caroll) was quite amusing in the part. And thankfully not anywhere near as scary as Pat Caroll otherwise I might have had nightmares.

Anyway, as you can see, the show is artistically on par with "Tarzan." The difference is that "The Little Mermaid" is a far far better movie than "Tarzan," with a much larger and more passionate fan base. So despite the fact that the show was visually hideous, and the ending mangled, the show includes great songs, and when Ariel and Eric walk out at the end, and the whole cast sings "Part of Your World," well even the most hard hearted person can't help but smile and get a little teary eyed. I mean, the fact of the matter is, Disney could have installed an ice rink on the stage of the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, and presented "The Little Mermaid: On Ice (on Broadway)" and audiences would have been happy. I suppose they wanted to get another "Lion King" (kiddie show with snob appeal), but in that respect they failed. So in the end, despite the fact that the entire creative team should be blacklisted from the stage for this travesty, the show is still, against all odds, actually enjoyable. Despite the very bumpy ride, you still get well sung live renditions of beloved songs, interwoven into a sort of compelling story. Hey, here's an idea - just go to the show and sit there the whole time with your eyes closed. Then it'd be even better!
And so in the end, though Zambello et al tried to drown "The Little Mermaid" in their pretentious and awful production, the fact is that mermaids live under water and so you can't actually drown them. And so "The Little Mermaid" survives to entertain another day.

My prediction? Pans from the critics, no Tonys, and it'll run for years.

After which Disney can revive "Beauty and the Beast." Hey! There's my title. After all... the source material is a beauty, and the production is a beast!

On "Queen Margaret" (a play also more commonly known as "Richard III")

"Richard III" is the third collaboration between actor Michael Cumpsty and director Brian Kulick at Classic Stage Company. Kulick also happens to be artistic director of CSC, and apparently he has a great fondness for Cumpty's Shakespeare performanes (even so much as to let him be co-director on this one), so I don't think it really matters whether the productions are any good, because until Kulick is booted from his post, I think we can safely assume we'll get a new CumptyKulick play each season. The first production they did, "Hamlet," was probably the most interesting. Not that it was necessarily great, but it had enough wacky interesting quirks (like starting the play with the audience standing on the stage) to get noticed. Cumpsty, was a bit too old for the title role, but he wasn't terrible. The productions, both in terms of creativity and in terms of Cumpsty's performances seem to be going steadily downhill. For "Richard III," the major set pieces were a mirrored wall, and eight chandeliers, each which would move up or down depending on the scene. This seemed to be an utter waste of effort, considering I don't think anyone would know where a scene took place if the upstage far-right chandelier was down halfway or the downstage middle-left one was touching the floor. They were very nice chandeliers, mind you, but seemed really kind of confusing and pointless. In what I suppose an effort to engage a rather bored audience near the end of the first act, one of the performers was apparently directed to run up the aisles and shake the hands of audience members. Many audience members were also given flags, and were encouraged to wave them in support of Richard. I found that rather schticky, though playing with the flag at least gave me something to do.
Cumpsty's Richard III was very very very unlikeable. Which I guess is supposed to be the point, but I just wanted to run up onstage myself to get over with the killing of him so I could go home. In, what I supposed was an effort to keep the length of the play down (it runs 2 hours, 40 minutes) without cutting too much, many of the actors would just race through their lines. Cumpsty especially seemed to like to blurt out his lines as quickly as possible... unless they were very important, in which case he took more care in reciting them. That's an interesting take on editing a play - leave all the lines in, but the ones that you would normally have cut, or that are technically necessary but don't have much impact on the plot, just race through.
The rest of the cast was fine, with Judith Roberts (Duchess of York) and Maria Tucci (Queen Elizabeth) being particularly good.
And then there was hurricane Robert Maxwell, whose Queen Margaret is absolutely spectacular. She only gets basically two scenes - one in the first act where she curses Richard, and one in the second where she chats with the other mourning mothers - but she creates so much electricity that it's a wonder the theatre didn't burn down. I almost wished she could have grabbed the executioners axe in her first scene, chopped off Richard's head, and done the rest of the play by herself. She was, in fact, the only performer to get exit applause after her scenes. I was almost going to leave at intermission because I thought her character had been killed (it had at least been mentioned), but I'm glad I stayed because she had another brilliant scene in act two. The production is almost worth seeing just for her performance.
I will say that while I was miserably bored by the first act, overall I did enjoy the second - probably mostly because all three of the mothers had big scenes that were able to divert my attention from the irritating title character. And, of course because (*spoiler*) whiney Richard's life is finally taken away.
I should point out that Cumpsty could improve since this production only began performances two days ago, but I have to say I am rather skeptical. Then again, this is probably worth seeing just to be electrified by Roberta Maxwell. I can't help but wonder though, how much better the production could have been without Cumpsty and Kulick's misguiding hands.

Stoppard Must Be Stopped (but yay for Charles Busch)

In my bookshelf of plays, I have a volume so slim that it doesn't even have a spine to print its title on. The play is called "The Fifteen Minute Hamlet," and is indeed a condensed version of "Hamlet" that should, I supposed, take fifteen minutes to perform. It is followed by an encore... apparently a two minute version of Hamlet. Would you like to guess who wrote these oh so brief plays? Well, it was none other than Tom Stoppard. Tonight's performance of Stoppard's "Rock 'n' Roll" ran three hours and five minutes. His play before that was the nine hour snooze fest, "The Coast of Utopia." Does the idea that he wrote such a short play so shame him that he must make up for it by making his new works as long as possible? Does Mr. Stoppard have a fear of editors? Are his directors so enamored with his shelf of awards that they are afraid to cut one precious line from his plays? Well, I don't know the answer to those questions, but I do know one thing: "Rock 'n' Roll" is too darn long. Granted, the play would likely be AT LEAST a half hour shorter, had they cut the very long, very distracting, very boring scene changes. For some reason - I guess to rub in the fact that the play is indeed about rock n roll - at each scene change the curtain comes down, some random rock song is blasted at a volume so loud that it is certainly only meant to wake up theatergoers who would try to say 'Wake me when it's over,' and projected on the curtain - in a different kooky style each time (it's sort of like what a first-time Powerpoint presentation looks like when someone wants to use a different effect on each slide because it's JUST SO COOOOOL) - is every little detail of every song, like who wrote it, who sang it, who played each instrument, where it was recorded, and what label it was released on. Who wants to know this useless information? Certainly not me. But I guess it's true to Stoppard's style of throwing pretentious drivel into his plays that only those holding doctorate degrees in history or philosophy would possibly care about (or understand). Those hideous scene changes are used every few minutes in the first act, making the play feel very choppy. Luckily, there are fewer scene changes in the second. Still, there was a point, I guess around the three hour mark, when the curtain came down, they played a song, and I was certain the play was finally over. I kid you not, when I tell you that I almost burst into tears when the curtain went back up and the actors started on the next scene. I had actually been enjoying the play up to that point, but I had quite simply reached my breaking point and I couldn't take any more of the play. There were only two short scenes left to suffer through, but they absolutely ruined the play for me. Had it ended but five minutes earlier, I would probably say I liked though didn't love the show. I was so excited that while there was some political drivel that I didn't understand, I did think I understood most of what was going on, and was really enjoying Rufus Sewell's brilliant performance as Jan. Granted, I didn't really understand (or care) why Jan was so obsessed with rock n roll - it kind of just seemed like some device Stoppard was using to try to be hip - but the idea of struggling under an evil government's reign is easy enough to understand. And there were some interesting points made about politics in the 60s. HOWEVER, because of those last two scenes, I think I'm going to break out in a cold sweat next time I have to enter a theatre. I don't think I've ever been so happy to leave a theatre or so happy for a show to finally end. When the show didn't end when I thought it would, I think I had visions of sitting in the theatre until 4:30 the next morning, with the play still going on. "Rock 'n' Roll" may not have been nine hours long like "The Coast of Utopia," but it sure felt just as long. Is it so much to ask for 90 minutes no intermission?

On the subject of 90 minutes, no intermission, I went to see Charles Busch's absolutely delightful "Die, Mommie, Die!" the complete opposite of a Tom Stoppard play, if there ever were. 90 minutes of mindless campy fluff. The perfect anecdote to a Stoppard play if there ever were one, ah only if I had seen them in the opposite order. Busch plays diva Angela Arden, and of course one cannot takes one's eyes off of him when he is onstage. He is joined by the always hilarious Kristine Nielsen, who plays the maid, and a few other actors who do (purposeful) campy, over-the-top bad acting oh so well. The play isn't brilliant my any means, but it's a mighty entertaining was to pass an evening.