Escape From New York

Summertime is here. The 07-08 theatrical season is over, and now it's the long wait til Fall for the new one to start. What's a determined theatregoer to do to quench his thirst for exciting new shows? Why escape to surrounding cities to catch the tail end of their Spring seasons of course... At least until summer stock starts up. So two weeks ago I caught the closing weekends of "A Seagull in the Hamptons" at the McCarter (Princeton, NJ), then ditto for "13" at Goodspeed (Chester, CT); then last week was "Our Town" at the Arden (Philly, PA), and this weekend was "The Visit" at the Signature (Arlington, VA). And looking ahead, there's the Charles Busch show in Sag Harbor next week, and the stuff in the Berkshires and Poughkeepsie two weeks after that.

Okay, so starting with "Our Town" (very briefly)... The gimmick that attracted me to the production was that the first act is performed in the regular Arden theatre, but then the second (the wedding act) is performed in a newly restored church next door, then back to the theatre for Act 3. Let's just say it was better in theory than execution. That middle act was in a very un-air conditioned Church, and it was so hot, I had trouble paying attention to the play. Plus, there seemed to be something off about the scenes preceeding the wedding - like the location made sense for the last few minutes of the act, but not so much the rest. Still, the third act back in the air conditioning was quite moving, and the first had enough running around with the Stage Manager (the character) up and down the aisles, and other such schtick to keepme interested. They're doing "Candide" there next season, and I think it should be interesting to see.

This week, while unable to leave NYC, I did manage to squeeze in some local type theatre.

"The Marriage of Bette & Boo." Strange. And depressing. I had honestly no idea what was going on in the first act. I just sat there totally baffled. Luckily, the second act was much clearer - I laughed quite a bit at many of the (intetionally) tasteless jokes, and was moved by the ending. I think this is probably one of those plays that you need to experience (either see or read) more than once to fully appreciate. I already have plans to see this again later in the run and am very much looking forward to a second viewing.

"Macbeth: 2008." This is one of those shows I'd been looking forward to seeing since it was first anounced. It's an adaptation of "Macbeth," in Polish (with only the most famous lines like the dagger speech and "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow") translated verbatim from the Shakespeare. Of course, I wasn't looking forward to the production because it was Shakespeare in Polish - I'm not that crazy - I wanted to see it because it's being performed across the street from St Ann's Warehouse, in an open air former tobacco factory, which allows the audience to be underneath the Brooklyn Bridge to the left, and have the Manhattan Bridge just to the right. An absolutely beautiful view. Because of the unique outdoor 'neath the noisy bridge setting, every audience member is provided with headphones, and all of the dialogue and sound effects are heard through them - the actors are not amplified at all, so you can't hear anything without them on. As for the production? And I thought "Bette & Boo" was weird. Depending on your tolerance for such things, this is either brilliant regietheater or Eurotrash - the terms mean the same thing, but well... you know. It has all of the things one has come to expect from such productions: Update of a classical piece to modern times? Check. Gratuitous nudity? Check. Tons of graphic violence? Check. Someone dressed as Elvis? Lady Macbeth peeing on the floor? Check and check. This made the recent Rupert Goold (starring Patrick Stewart) production look like a classical setting you'd see at the Old Globe. For my part, I found the production visually to be fascinating (it's set in a Muslim country... probably Iraq, and the first scene has Macbeth beheading two men praying. Then the witch (there's only one) comes out wearing a burka... from there it's just wackier and wackier with the burka eventually being removed to show the witch wearing a bright pink slip and having a shaved head), but really emotionally empty. This really felt like a case of style over substance. Still both because of the physical theatre, and the shear novelty of the staging, I do highly recommend trying to see this, even though the entire run sold out before it even started. There are rush tickets and cancellations, though.

"Some Kind of Bliss." Playing at 59E59's postage stamp sized Theater C, this is a 65 minute long, one woman play about a reporter who gets into trouble on her way to interview Lulu. Cute enough. Certainly the right length for this fairly slight story. Held my interest. Not a must see, but you could certainly do worse - though as far as the Brits Off Broadway fare goes, I preferred "Vincent River."

"A Perfect Couple." This is Brooke Berman's follow-up to "Hunting and Gathering." Didn't particularly like her first play, and after this one, I think maybe she's not a playwright whose work I enjoy. This one's about a couple of hip 40 year olds - you know, the type that drinks French press coffee and San Pellegrino, and lives somewhere like Park Slope... or in this case, in the country, near a train that runs every hour. In other words, not people I feel any connection with. So, the story goes that a woman finds a diary entry that her step-mother wrote, that says that her fiance who she dated for 15 years went up to this country house with the woman's best friend (and also friend of boyfriend/fiance) around ten years before, and the step-mother thought she saw some sort of a spark between the two. Not that she was awake all night because they were making such loud sex - only that there was a spark. And of course she totally flips out (yada yada yada). Now maybe it's because I'm not a woman, but this seemed like a really far-fetchedm over-the-top reaction. Add to that that I felt no connection to any of the characters, and I was very glad it was only 75 minutes long.

And that brings me to today, and the bus I'm taking back from DC, where I saw "The Visit" (well, it was in Arlington, but that's just a quick Metro and bus ride from DC). This was my first forray to the Signature, but now that I know the experience is so painless (even the long bus ride from NYC to DC isn't so bad), I'm very likely to return - especially when they premiere Michael John LaChiusa's new musical, "Giant," next year.

[NOTE: I’m finishing this from home. Left DC at 5:50pm – back in my apartment at 10:15pm. And all for $7 round trip ($1.50 there and $5.50 back). Amazing.]

Let me also say that the Signature is a really lovely theatre. First of all, it’s brand new, which is always nice. Secondly, when I got to the theatre before the show with time to kill, first I got upstairs to where the main lobby is, and they had a pianist playing this really pleasant lite jazz type music… which I soon realized was actually lite jazz versions of music by John Kander. Then when I further explored the lobby, I found in the “gallery” section, they had a tribute to (the dearly departed) Fred Ebb, including the type writer he wrote the lyrics to “The Visit” on, sheets of lyrics for the show up on the wall, as well as photos, awards, even a show pillow from “The Happy Time.” Really really nice stuff – and honestly, just reading the lyrics on the wall without even hearing the music, I was already in love with the show. And it hadn’t even started yet. OH, and (skipping ahead) at intermission… they sell warm cookies. Positively genius. NY concessions stands would make even more money than they already do if they could get audience warm cookies at intermission. Sooo yummy. Any theatre that sells warm cookies at intermission instantly has my heart forever. Even if they were responsible for the loathsome “Glory Days” (or as it’s now referred to… “Glory Day” – they were selling t-shirts from their run in the lobby and I was oh so tempted…).

Now I know it’s bad to go to see shows with high expectations, and maybe it’s because I had read so many positive reviews (excepting the *cough* Charles Isherwood NY Times pan *cough*), and this was a new Kander & Ebb musical starring THE Chita Rivera and THE George Hearn, and I had traveled four and a half hours plus just one way to be there and darn it I just had to love it – but I loved it. First of all, we all need to thank our lucky stars that Chita Rivera is still willing to not just appear in, but STAR, in a brand new musical. And she is absolutely ravishing. From the moment she first appears on stage, she has the audience tightly in her grip, and it is impossible to take your eyes off of her. The only unfortunate thing (and this has been mentioned by everyone) is that she plays a character with a wooden leg (as well as an ivory hand, and who knows what else), so she can’t really dance. I mean, if Chita Rivera’s going to be in a musical, you want to see her dance. She does get one sort of dance number (in which she dances as well as a character with one leg can be expected to), and indeed that number stops the show. And really let’s face it – would you rather have someone else do the show just because Chita Rivera’s talents aren’t fully utilized here? I mean that’s just ludicrous. Dancing or no dancing, her singing and her acting spine tinglingly brilliant here. And let’s not forget George Hearn who also does a fantastic job, in the less flamboyant, but no less important or easy to act role of the man who Claire (the Chita Rivera character) wants dead. On that note, I will say that “The Visit” is kind of odd source material for a musical, although if you think about the sources for Kander & Ebb’s other most famous musicals (Cabaret and Chicago), well perhaps it’s really not so odd at all. Gotta love a dark disturbing musical, that still manages to be at times quite funny (no one wrote lyrics quite like Ebb did), and also romantic and sad.
The music here is as wonderful as one would expect from John Kander. Even if this doesn’t make it to Broadway (more on that later), I would at least hope we could get a cd out of this. The big humumumumable melody in this show comes at the end of the first act, and I think it’s called “Yellow Shoes.” Granted, it does sound an awful lot like “Second Chance” from Kander & Ebb’s “Steel Pier,” but it’s still a fine song – managing to give the audience something to hum during the intermission, even while being totally disturbed by it.
If I may offer some minor criticism, while the first act was completely fantastic, I did find the second act lagged a bit in the middle. It seemed to sort of fall into this drippy sentimental territory - I first noticed my excitement dropping during a song George Hearn sings while riding in the car with his family for what he thinks will be the last time (I won’t say whether he’s right or not, lest I spoil the ending), and it continued through to what I suppose was Chita’s 11 o’clock number – I think it was called “Love Alone,” but it left me a bit cold. What ultimately saves the musical, not just at the end, but many times, is the brilliant work done by the chorus of townspeople, who are absolutely chilling in the scenes where they are all together. In retrospect, I think they reminded me a bit of the crowds in Britten’s “Peter Grimes” – just absolutely brilliantly creepy, but sending a shiver up your spine, and a tear from your eye.
I’d like to say it would be absolutely criminal if this didn’t make it to New York either on Broadway or off. Actually, I will say it – it would be absolutely criminal if this doesn’t make it to NY. But realistically, my new least favorite critic Charles Isherwood had the nerve to pretty much pan the show in the all important NY Times (can the character of Claire, the richest woman in the world, come to New York and give us tons of money in exchange for killing him?), and to be perfectly honest, how many dark serious new musicals are successful on Broadway? I suppose we can only hope and pray that one of the not-for-profits will pick this up for their upcoming season - it was previously announced for the Public around 2001-ish, although the Mitzi E Newhouse is sort of similar in shape to the Signature; ah, if only the Beaumont weren’t occupied by “South Pacific”… speaking of which, I felt like I was in New York, being in the audience of the show today. First I saw (TalkinBroadway.com’s NY critic) Matthew Murray, then Patrick Pacheco of NY1 and probably some other stuff, then I think Ted Sperling (playing hooky from “South Pacific” post Tonys?), and after the show, Stephen Flaherty. Considering I didn’t see any of them waiting to get the bus from Shirlington Village back to Pentagon to take the subway to Chinatown, those folks probably had more glamorous rides home. But let me say it was absolutely worth all of the time spent to get down there.
I remember my first experience with a musical version of “The Visit” was an operatic version that City Opera did I don’t know how many years ago, called “The Visit of the Old Lady.” And all I remember was that the logo had a woman in profile, carrying a wooden coffin, with a bird (I think it was a vulture) sitting on it. And because that logo was so bizarre and amusing to me, I made my mother buy us tickets to see it. And I have absolutely no recollection of anything about the opera other than that fantastic logo. I think I even have a t-shirt with it somewhere. I suppose that’s a totally random anecdote, but I’ll use it to say that while I remember nothing about the opera, I feel fairly certain I won’t forget Kander & Ebb (and bookwriter Terrence McNally)’s version of “The Visit” or Chita Rivera’s performance in it anytime soon.

I know I always seem to end these things this way, but now I am going to collapse because even more than usual, I am totally exhausted. Besides, since “The Visit” had its last performance tonight at 7pm, tomorrow begins the long days ahead of prayer to the theatre gods to let me see “The Visit” again. Closer to home this time.

(Oh gosh. I just remembered I forgot to mention the simple but fantastic set and not as simple but just as fantastic lighting. So much love to shower on “The Visit.” So tired.)

The Mufti Grind

Just a quick update because it's late and I need to get up early tomorrow.

I went to see "Grind" at Musicals in Mufti tonight, and was really pleasantly surprised. It only runs through Sunday night, but it's well worth seeing if you have the time and inclination. I had tried to listen to the cd at work on Thursday and Friday, but couldn't really get into it. But as often happens with me, now that I've seen everything in context, I think I'm going to be listening to it quite often. The cast is uniformly excellent - with my surprise favorite being Joe Cassidy (who I'd never heard of before) who was really fantastic as the Irishman. His big song near the end of the second act was particularly gut wrenching and had me getting all teary eyed. Apparently there were a lot of problems with the original Broadway production of the show, having to do with an overly complicated book, and Ben Vereen using his clout to over-expand his supporting role (including a random Fosse dance number that had nothing to do with the show). Well, with this production there's a new book, that I assume is much clearer - I didn't have any big problems with it anyway - and very little dancing (it IS a Mufti staging, after all), and I really just found the whole thing to be totally enjoyable and moving. Of course after looking at the production shots from the Broadway staging in the lobby, now I want to see what the show's like with sets and costumes and all. Hopefully some rich person will see this version and put together a more complete production. I know - never gonna happen, but I can dream, can't I?

This is definitely up there with my favorite Mufti's I've seen. Thank goodness the York stills ticks to its mission of performing bonafide obscure musicals, as opposed to Encores which is doing "On The Town" as part of it's next season. Just saying....

A Weekend In The Country / Puttin' on the Brits

How did I spend the weekend of the first big heat wave of 2008? By escaping New York of course. Half-baked plan that it was though, I escaped to two cities that were just as hot as NYC - Princeton, NJ and Chester, CT. Luckily both those cities require air-conditioned train rides, and both are home to air-conditioned theatres. Because there is no air conditioning in NY? Okay, actually those two side trips were planned long before the weathermen started playing the song "Heat Wave" along with their weather reports (though disappointingly not the Ethel Merman version).
The Saturday trip was to the McCarter to see "Seagull in the Hamptons," Emily Mann's update of Chekhov's "The Seagull." I'd seen three productions of the play in the past two years or so (Royal Court, Royal Shakespeare Company, Classic Stage Company), so I already knew the play well enough before going in. And this production is basically just the same story, with random points updated for no apparent reason other than to make it "hip." So Arkadina (now Maria) is compared to Meryl Streep and they talk about "The Devil Wears Prada." And Konstantin (now Alex) doesn't just tear up his play in frustration - he says he tore it up and then he deleted it. And instead of him going to another room to play the piano, he plays old records. Stuff like that that just seemed really just completely random - and really for me only served the purpose of pulling me out of the play every time one of those changes happened and set my mind on a side track of why those things needed to be changed. I dunno - I sort of though the play was relevant enough as it was before it was dragged into 2008. And I don't think it would have been that much of a stretch to just do the play in modern dress, but still use a traditional translation. All that whining aside, Mann didn't manage to ruin the play - I still found it quite moving. Standouts for me were Maria Tucci's Arkadina/Maria and Stark Sands' Konstanin/Alex. I should note that my sister, who had never seen the play before, was not at all bothered by the updating, and loved the whole thing. I suppose now I'll have to drag her to see the Kristin Scott Thomas production that's supposed to be transferring to Broadway from the Royal Court (one of the productions I saw when I was in London - and it was well deserving of its rave reviews - though it was my first time ever seeing the play performed, so I guess I'll see how it holds up as compared to the other staging I've seen since).

In Chester, CT I went to see Jason Robert Brown's new (Broadway bound) musical, "13." The show is fine - it's probably best described as "cute," but my big problem with it is that the whole thing really felt like a middle school or high school musical. It's performed entirely by teenagers (even the excellent band is all teens), and I think that's the big problem for me. I mean it's a cute enough idea, but is anyone (other than friends and family of the cast) going to want to pay $120 to see a bunch of teenagers sing and dance for two hours. Might as well just go to your local high school and pay a couple of bucks for their production of "Once Upon A Mattress" or "Grease." Then again, I may have had less to complain about if the material was better. It's never "bad" or "boring," but as my "Disney's High School Musical" loving friend (I - for the record - have not been able to make it all the way through that movie) pointed out, there's nothing exciting about it. All of the songs are nice, but there weren't really any show stoppers that got the audience really excited. The best song is the cute little song that gives the sidekicks a chance to ham it up, and that's fun enough, but the show really needs more big high energy exciting dance numbers. As it is now, I don't really know that this is even a musical that will appeal to the teeny bopper crowd. It seems to me, based on the popularity of "High School Musical" and "Wicked" among them, that they really crave American Idol style crazy belting and radio-friendly sounding music. And that's not what Jason Robert Brown writes. His music is much more old fashioned musical theatre, with maybe a light pop sound. The hardest rocking the score gets is the title song which, as my friend pointed out, sounds just like the title song from "Footloose."
Well, enough of knocking the musical. It still has time to improve before Broadway comes along. As I said, it's not that I didn't like it, it just doesn't say big professional Broadway musical to me. But I'll certainly go and see it once it hits the Jacobs in the Fall, and I'm definitely curious to see how it runs. Of course, it's going to be running across the street from the fabulous "Billy Elliot" - a show that also has quite a few of the kiddies in the cast, and which most definitely knows how to get an audience excited and cheering for more - kiddies in the cast and all.

I've also finally gotten around to checking out some of the offerings at the Brits Off-Broadway festival. Last season I was there all the time, seeing every one of the "Intimate Exchanges" plays. This season, nothing sounded quite as exciting as that.
Friday, I went to see the festival's first musical - "The Hired Man." Despire a tall Starbucks iced coffee before the show, I fell asleep in the first act, and honestly that combined with too much of the text, for my taste, being sung (I know an odd complaint for a musical) I was almost totally lost. I had read in some of the reviews that there was a good tear jerker of a song in the second act, so I stayed. And act two takes place in the future, so sleeping through act one was not a problem. And indeed I did enjoy act two quite a bit, even if there was an awful lot of plot crammed in there - honestly they could have scrapped the first act, and fleshed out the second into a full length work and it would have been fine (probably even better). I found I quite liked the music - it's very melodic and pretty. The story is incredibly depressing. There is just absolutely nothing happy at all. On the same note, I'm not really sure why anyone felt this should be a musical in the first place. Because the story didn't really seem to be crying out for song. It's mostly about war and the horrors of working in mines. Maybe it's because I'm not British, so I didn't have any real connection to the history of the events (the material is based on a true story), but it just seemed sort of odd to me. Um, yeah... so despite all that whining I just did, I would actually recommend the show, because it is quite well done, and because the score is really quite fine. I'm almost tempted to see the show again, to see if I can stay awake this time. But it's so depressing, and it's so long (I think it ran two hours and fifty minutes - though it felt a bit longer), that I don't think I can do it. But I do think I'll try and find a copy of a cast recording.

The other, equally depressing, Brits Off-Broadway offering I've seen is "Vincent River." I was so disturbed by it, that at one point I was thinking to myself that if it went on at the same pace much longer, I was going to have to run to the toilet after the show was over and throw up. But you know, graphic descriptions of brutally mutilated dead bodies can do that to a person. The play is a two-hander - there's a mother and the boy who found her son's dead body some 18 weeks earlier. I was actually attracted to the play because of Deborah Findlay (who plays the mother) - having seen her in both "The Cut" and "John Gabriel Borkman" at the Donmar in London. Afterwards though, I was far more impressed by the performance of the boy (well, teenager), played by Mark Field. Not that Findlay was bad - it's more a case of being very good versus fantastic - but Field gave a much more polished and emotionally wrenching performance. Which is probably to be expected, because on some quick google-ing Field played the same role in the recent London production, while this was only Findlay's second performance in the play. And I'm sure she will dig deeper into the character as the (three week-ish) run progresses. The play was perhaps a bit slow at times, but armed with a grande Starbucks iced coffee this time, and the fact that I was put in the first row (always a great help in helping me concentrate... unless the stage is neck achingly high), and was honestly riveted almost the entire time. Based on the snorts (or chuckles?) coming from the guy sitting next to me each time some new plot twist was revealed, I think perhaps he was less moved by the action of the play. I know I was definitely satisfied by the experience anyway, thoguh it took my entire subway ride home for me to shake off the creepy feeling it gave me. Ben Brantley was in the audience tonight, so I'm definitely curious to see what his reaction to the play was. Not that I agree with him all that often.

Shoot. It's late. And I need to watch the season finale of "Top Chef" that I've Tivo-ed, because I won't be able to go to work or access the internet at all tomorrow without it being spoiled. So, ta ta now.

Bizzaro LaBute and a Surprise Minnie/Merrily Mufti Treat

Twas a rather strange day of theatergoing.

First up was "reasons to be pretty" - a sweet romantic drama that had me a bit misty eyed at the end, but that also left me feeling quite a few times with a nice warm and fuzzy feeling. It's one of those plays where the protagonist is just so nice and sweet that all of the women, and at least half the men just want to run up on stage during the curtain call and give him a hug... and perhaps propose marriage to him. That said the play did also leave me in something of a state of shock, because according to the Playbill, this play was by none other than Neil LaBute - he who only writes plays about how people are just all really crappy and then throws in some random twist ending just for the heck of it. This has got to me the most shocking turn around for a playwright since David Lindsay-Abaire went from whimsical plays like "Fuddy Meers" and "Wonder of the World" to the utterly devastating "Rabbit Hole." There's a line at the end of the final monologue of "reasons to be pretty" about how it's not that hard to be nice, but it really does a lot of good. And it was almost as if LaBute was apologizing for the nastiness of the rest of his plays - that we may be like the characters in "Shape of Things" and "Fat Pig" (the first two plays in his "trilogy"), but this is the salve for that evilness. I will say the play starts off in typical LaBute mode, with (the brilliant and intense as usual) Alison Pill screaming at her boyfriend (played by the oh so loveable Thomas Sadoski) and every other word out of her mouth is "fuck." And there is the typical LaBute character - an extremely obnoxious guy played by the irritating Pablo Schreiber. In the program note LaBute mentions that Greg (the nice guy) is the first "adult" he's written (as opposed to men who act like boys - like the Screiber character). The play is all about obsession with beauty (Greg's girlfriend freaks out when she finds out he told a friend that her face is plain and then breaks up with him - even though it was one mistaken line and they really did love each other; and then there's the guy who's in a relationship with a dumb blonde only because she's pretty, but he's a total loser) And I have to say the casting of Thomas Sadoski in the role of the nice guy was particularly good as far as the theme of the play goes because he's really not particularly attractive when he first walks on stage, but as the audience gets to know him and how nice and smart he is, and we really see what he's like inside, of course we grow to love him. And since one of the points of the play is that we really should look past surface beauty, well... this seemed to work very much in the play's favor. I have to say I'd never heard of Sadoski before (according to his bio I saw him in "Reckless" on Broadway, though the only thing I remember about that production was that it was weird and Mary-Louise Parker was in it), but his performance in this is really fantastic. I should mention this isn't a perfect play my any means - the scenes with Pablo Schreiber were more typical Neil LaBute stuff in that he was beyond irritating, and whenever he was onstage I couldn't wait for him to just go away so we could get back to the nice people. And also LaBute for some reason decided to give each character a confessional monologue, in which they just randomly step to the edge of the stage and talk to some offstage presence (the audience? an unseen character? Big Brother?), and though they were informative, and though the final one worked quite well (though it also served as an epilogue), I couldn't help think he could have come up with a more creative and dramatically interesting way to convey the information we get from those scenes. Still, considering I usually consider MCC's yearly Neil LaBute productions to be a low point of each season, to say I was pleasantly surprised by "reasons to be pretty" is quite the understatement.

My evening show was the Musicals in Mufti (aka off-Broadway Encores) production of "Minnie's Boys." The show is about the Marx Brothers, and is probably best known as the musical that gave the world the song "Mama a Rainbow." The show was fine and cute, though it's kind of obvious why it flopped (uneven score, choppy book). But the real highlight actually happened before the show even started. Apparently, a group of audience members were trapped in the elevator that goes down to the theatre (if you've ever been to the York, you know that's one unpleasant elevator - but it's better than taking the zillion flights of stairs down to the theatre... usually). So to keep the audience happy while we waited for the fire department to save our fellow audience members, cast member Jim Walton was sent over to the piano to entertain us. So he attempted a couple of Marx Bros tunes, and then sort of fumferred and asked for requests. And someone in the back yelled out "Anything from 'Merrily We Roll Along'." Yes, Jim Walton was Franklin Shepard in the original Broadway production of "Merrily." And so he graced us with his renditions of "Good Thing Going" and "Not A Day Goes By," and let me tell you, hearing him those songs live after hearing them so many times on the cd, was beyond thrilling. So thank you to those people who got stuck in elevator, for allowing the rest of us the chance to have the chance to have a most exciting evening.