I would strongly recommend taking full advantage of the newly renovated restrooms at the Longacre Theatre so as to avoid peeing in your pants from laughing at the onstage antics at "Boeing-Boeing." I'd seen (and loved) the Matthew Warchus-helmed revival when I was in London last year, and I was obviously nervous about how it would play over here with a mostly American cast (the wonderfully hilarious Mark Rylance was the only cast member to cross the pond with it to Broadway), having slept through so many imports that were supposedly great in London and ruined here. Well, I'm pleased to report that all is well, and it's just as deliriously silly and side-splittingly funny as it was over there. If I had one minor quibble, it's that Christine Baranski isn't quite as good as Frances de la Tour was, partly because she insists on using a French accent that takes some time to get used to, and partly because the idea of Frances de la Tour playing a maid was just so inherently ridiculous that it just added a whole other level of amusement. Still, I did eventually warm up to Baranski, and the rest of the new cast is all absolutely splendid. If you're in the mood for evening of turn you brain off, totally ridiculous and endlessly amusing farce, well you couldn't do better than "Boeing-Boeing."
Also rather high up there on the silly scale is the Met's current revival of "La Fille du Regiment." There are unfortunately only two performances of it left, both are sold out, and I just noticed the incomparable Juan Diego Florez isn't doing the one on Monday, which means there's only really one chance left, because you don't want to miss him. I honestly don't think I've ever heard a mid-opera ovation as long and impassioned as the one following Florez's big first act aria. Honestly, I think the audience would still be applauding now, a week later, if it wasn't so tiring to keep clapping for so long. Which is not to ignore the also brilliant comic performance of Natalie Dessay, who once again this season (the first time was in "Lucia"), has proved what a great singing actress she is. I usually find I don't much care for comic operas - if I'm going to the opera I want to see misery and death (expressed in glorious song) - but resistance was really futile here. At one point early on in the first act, while the soldiers were marching around singing some silly song or other, I couldn't help but think that if Monty Python were going to put on an opera, it would be very much like this. This production was recorded for those HD movie theatre broadcasts, so that probably means it'll end up on PBS sometime later this year. But there's really no substitute for live and in person opera, so if you can beg, borrow or steal a ticket (or grab a cancellation or standing room one), it's well worth heading over to the Met on Friday to see the final performance. And even on Monday, when Barry Banks (who?) takes of the Juan Diego Florez role, well you still have the likes of Natalie Dessay, Felicty Palmer, and Marian Seldes (yes, that Marian Seldes) to keep you in opera heaven, so that worth trying to score a ticket to too, I suppose.
On the unsilly front, I went to see "Substitution" on Wednesday mostly because there was really nothing else I wanted to see, and I hadn't seen anything on Saturday, Sunday, Monday or Tuesday and I was going through withdrawal. It stars Jan Maxwell, who as usual is the saving grace of a lousy show ("as usual," referring to "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and "Coram Boy"). The play is pretty dreary and unconvincing, but watching Jan Maxwell act is always such a treat that it was somewhat bearable. The story is basically that a mother lost her high school age son in a boat accident, and the boy's substitute teacher (who was somehow obsessed with this boy, even though he was just a substitute teacher...), falls in love with the mother. Then spliced in, there are snippets of a conversation between two students who are on the bus with the boy, and who were also involved in the boat accident. The student conversations seemed pointless and rather boring. The whole relationship between the mother and the substitute teacher was also not in the least bit convincing (they had absolutely no chemistry at all, and honestly their personalities were so different, the inevitable ending just seemed totally ridiculous). And then there's the fact that this guy was only a substitute teacher, which made his obsession with the dead boy ever so much more implausible. It was just overall a terribly unsatisfying play, with Jan Maxwell's devastating performance really its only saving grace. What I found particularly interesting about her performance, was that she starts out totally drained and emotionally raw, and get slowly happier (well, kind of) through the course of the play, which I imagine must be really hard to act. I don't want to think about how she prepares each night to bring herself to the point she's at when she first steps out on the stage. I guess one of these days Jan Maxwell will appear in a play equal to her talents. But when?
Friday, May 9, 2008
Thursday, April 24, 2008
When 90 Minutes Feel Like "Days" (plus visits to The Heights, India, and Potatoland)
After "Glory Days" was over, as I compared noted with my parents, all three of us seemed to have the same reaction: If I had been in an aisle seat, I would have walked out. Note that the show is ninety minutes long with NO INTERMISSION. Then came the, how long did it take before you started looking at your watch - for me it was forty-five minutes (followed by forty-six, forty seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, and fifty...), my mother was thirty, and I think my father slept through the whole thing. Really, I can't think of a nice thing to say about it. Well, okay - the four person cast does a decent job. None of them are spectacular, but consider the material they have to work with. It's strange - listening to the songs posted on the show's Myspace page made me sort of excited to see the musical - yes, they are a little Jonathon Larson-y sounding, but they seemed young and fun. But when sung in the context of the show, by characters that I found not remotely likable, they seemed to lose all of their charm. They also all started to sound the same. "Glory Days" is about four guys who were friends in high school, who then come together after their first year of college and find they don't like each other anymore. The thing is, they all come across as the jerky frat boy types - the sort of people I would avoid eye contact with in the hall and hope would ignore me - so I couldn't have been less interested in spending five, let alone ninety minutes with them. Four unlikeable guys who don't even like each other. What is supposed to be entertaining about this? Granted, sometimes people being mean to each other can be fun. But this doesn't come across as real mean - it's more like watching them stand facing each other, close their eyes and look away, and fake slap each other. I mean, the whole thing could have been told in about thirty seconds:
Guy A: Hi.
Guy B: Hi.
Guy C: Hi.
Guy D: Hi.
(pause)
Guy A: You suck.
Guy B: No you suck.
Guy C: No you suck.
Guy D: I'm gay.
(pause)
Guy A: Whatever - bye.
Guy B: Sh... bye.
Guy C: Bye.
Guy D: Bye.
The end.
As for the production values, well the set should be easy to replicate for community theatres. There's a wall of lights and bleachers. And that's it. Oh, and there are some exposed bulbs hanging down, so when they sing a song about "electric stars," they can turn on and the audience can literally see electric stars. The whole lighting design looks like some cheap Kevin Adams rip off. That anyone would have the nerve to charge $97.50 for a show with no set and no stars (not to mention no entertainment value) is mind boggling. And really, who is the target audience for this show? Being in my mid-20's, I would think I would be what would be considered the target age set for this show. But maybe it's not just 20-somethings, but frat boy 20-somethings. And doesn't that just put this musical in the same hole as "High Fidelity" - aka a musical whose target audience hates musicals? One of the main producers must have had his name removed from the Playbill - namely Max Bialystock. Because who else would have moved this to Broadway?
To end on a positive note, since the music was actually pretty good, at least outside of the context of the show, I look forward to see what composer/lyricist Nick Blaemire writes next. Hopefully something with a book that doesn't make "In My Life" look like "Gypsy."
On a happier note, I also went to see "In The Heights" this week. Compared to "Glory Days," it's "Gypsy," "Sunday in the Park..." and "Spring Awakening" (those being my three favorite currently running Broadway shows) all rolled into one, I actually found it more satisfying than I did off-Broadway. The book remains its weak point - it presents such a white-washed view of Washington Heights, with nothing of consequence really happening at all, it's more "Sesame Street" than "Avenue Q," and that should be the other way around. That said, the cast is so bursting with the energy that it's really impossible, I think, to dislike it. The music is for the most part extremely tuneful and entertaining (though I don't think it really warrants the 2-cd set that it's been given), even if there are some duds like that awful song they wrote for Priscilla Lopez (called "Enough" - coincidentally also what I wanted to yell out while she was singing it) only there because she was upset that she didn't have a song. The choreography is fun in small bursts, though when it steps center-stage, like in the overlong final song/scene in the first act, I found myself extremely bored. Then again, I'm usually not really a fan of long dance sequences. Flaws aside, the show is harmless fun - the best (and I guess only) good new Broadway musical of the season - and with the exception of the first act closer, the overlong Carnivale song in the second act, it was never really boring - even if nothing was really ever at stake plotwise. I had a surprisingly good time, and managed to enjoy the show - warts and all. I won't feel too bad about rooting for it come Tony time.
I also saw "Rafta, Rafta," the winner of this year's Olivier Award for Best Comedy, and which just started previews off-Broadway. I was pleasantly surprised by it. I found the first act a bit slow - it's starts out with the celebration after an Indian wedding (in Britain), and I felt sort of like an outsider watching other people have fun but not actually feeling a part of the action - but thing improved towards the end, and then the second act was much better. The show is about a young couple who get married, but they live with in the groom's parents' house, and so he has trouble keeping it up long enough to have sex with his wife, which obviously frustrates her. It's not all comedy - there are serious scenes too (call it a dramedy maybe). The best unintentional laugh (PLOT SPOILER here, if you care) was when after the couple does actually have successful intercourse near the end of the second act, the lights go out, and the guy behind me yells "Finally!" Then the lights come up again, and the parents are sitting in the kitchen, and the mother's line is something like "Did you hear something?" Biggest laugh of the night. It's my new favorite audience comment moment (the previous was at "New Century," when Mr. Charles is talking about how no one was surprised when Ian McKellen said he was gay, and the guy behind me yells out "Who's Ian McKellen?!") Anyway, I think this one's worthwhile. Oh, and the set is mighty impressive - especially for an off-Broadway production. At least twice the number of cast members as in "Glory Days," a better set, and all at a fraction of the price. Just saying.
And I suppose I need to throw in a mention for "Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland," the latest of Richard Foreman play. This was my sixth Foreman play. As usually, I was pretty much totally baffled, but at least it was only a little over an hour long, and it was actually sort of amusing - in that it looks like your typical totally bizarre and over-the-top, low budget, avant-garde production. One of these days I'll understand his work. One of these days....
Guy A: Hi.
Guy B: Hi.
Guy C: Hi.
Guy D: Hi.
(pause)
Guy A: You suck.
Guy B: No you suck.
Guy C: No you suck.
Guy D: I'm gay.
(pause)
Guy A: Whatever - bye.
Guy B: Sh... bye.
Guy C: Bye.
Guy D: Bye.
The end.
As for the production values, well the set should be easy to replicate for community theatres. There's a wall of lights and bleachers. And that's it. Oh, and there are some exposed bulbs hanging down, so when they sing a song about "electric stars," they can turn on and the audience can literally see electric stars. The whole lighting design looks like some cheap Kevin Adams rip off. That anyone would have the nerve to charge $97.50 for a show with no set and no stars (not to mention no entertainment value) is mind boggling. And really, who is the target audience for this show? Being in my mid-20's, I would think I would be what would be considered the target age set for this show. But maybe it's not just 20-somethings, but frat boy 20-somethings. And doesn't that just put this musical in the same hole as "High Fidelity" - aka a musical whose target audience hates musicals? One of the main producers must have had his name removed from the Playbill - namely Max Bialystock. Because who else would have moved this to Broadway?
To end on a positive note, since the music was actually pretty good, at least outside of the context of the show, I look forward to see what composer/lyricist Nick Blaemire writes next. Hopefully something with a book that doesn't make "In My Life" look like "Gypsy."
On a happier note, I also went to see "In The Heights" this week. Compared to "Glory Days," it's "Gypsy," "Sunday in the Park..." and "Spring Awakening" (those being my three favorite currently running Broadway shows) all rolled into one, I actually found it more satisfying than I did off-Broadway. The book remains its weak point - it presents such a white-washed view of Washington Heights, with nothing of consequence really happening at all, it's more "Sesame Street" than "Avenue Q," and that should be the other way around. That said, the cast is so bursting with the energy that it's really impossible, I think, to dislike it. The music is for the most part extremely tuneful and entertaining (though I don't think it really warrants the 2-cd set that it's been given), even if there are some duds like that awful song they wrote for Priscilla Lopez (called "Enough" - coincidentally also what I wanted to yell out while she was singing it) only there because she was upset that she didn't have a song. The choreography is fun in small bursts, though when it steps center-stage, like in the overlong final song/scene in the first act, I found myself extremely bored. Then again, I'm usually not really a fan of long dance sequences. Flaws aside, the show is harmless fun - the best (and I guess only) good new Broadway musical of the season - and with the exception of the first act closer, the overlong Carnivale song in the second act, it was never really boring - even if nothing was really ever at stake plotwise. I had a surprisingly good time, and managed to enjoy the show - warts and all. I won't feel too bad about rooting for it come Tony time.
I also saw "Rafta, Rafta," the winner of this year's Olivier Award for Best Comedy, and which just started previews off-Broadway. I was pleasantly surprised by it. I found the first act a bit slow - it's starts out with the celebration after an Indian wedding (in Britain), and I felt sort of like an outsider watching other people have fun but not actually feeling a part of the action - but thing improved towards the end, and then the second act was much better. The show is about a young couple who get married, but they live with in the groom's parents' house, and so he has trouble keeping it up long enough to have sex with his wife, which obviously frustrates her. It's not all comedy - there are serious scenes too (call it a dramedy maybe). The best unintentional laugh (PLOT SPOILER here, if you care) was when after the couple does actually have successful intercourse near the end of the second act, the lights go out, and the guy behind me yells "Finally!" Then the lights come up again, and the parents are sitting in the kitchen, and the mother's line is something like "Did you hear something?" Biggest laugh of the night. It's my new favorite audience comment moment (the previous was at "New Century," when Mr. Charles is talking about how no one was surprised when Ian McKellen said he was gay, and the guy behind me yells out "Who's Ian McKellen?!") Anyway, I think this one's worthwhile. Oh, and the set is mighty impressive - especially for an off-Broadway production. At least twice the number of cast members as in "Glory Days," a better set, and all at a fraction of the price. Just saying.
And I suppose I need to throw in a mention for "Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland," the latest of Richard Foreman play. This was my sixth Foreman play. As usually, I was pretty much totally baffled, but at least it was only a little over an hour long, and it was actually sort of amusing - in that it looks like your typical totally bizarre and over-the-top, low budget, avant-garde production. One of these days I'll understand his work. One of these days....
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
On Comedies and Plotless Bores
The last four shows I've seen fit semi-neatly into two categories: the comedies and the plotless bores.
THE COMEDIES
I saw two "comedies" this week - one was "The New Century" and the other was "The Walworth Farce." The former is pretty much pure fun fluff, and the latter is Irish (needless to say it was one of the most bleak, disturbing and depressing things I've seen in a while). "The New Century" is a series of four short plays by Paul Rudnick, with the first three introducing the separate characters, and the fourth bringing them all together. I think this is one of those plays where you need to be a gay and/or Jewish New Yorker (or very much aware of those cultures) in order to get any of the humor. The four stories all have fairly thin, silly plots, but it's really those oh so hilarious one-liners that come fast and furious that make it so very entertaining worthwhile. At intermission and again after the play (and to be perfectly honest, even thinking about it now), we couldn't help going around and re-telling our favorite jokes like "In this house we use a toilet, not our friends from Tribeca" or "It's like if Patti LuPone was a store." Those are just paraphrases of the lines since I don't have a script in front of me, and honestly I they're probably not nearly as funny out of context and when just read on a screen as opposed to being recited by a master comic actress like, say, Linda Lavin, but trust me, when recited on stage those lines and ones like them had me falling out of my seat in laughter. I will say that all five of us in our group felt that the second play (about Mr. Charles - who was thrown out of NY for being "too gay" and then ended up having a cable access show in the middle of the night in Florida) was the weakest of the four. But even if that one seemed to be a bit stale, it had it's choice moments. Oh and I must say that I'm certain the cast, with my favorites being Linda Lavin and Jayne Houdyshell, had a good deal to do with making Rudnick's lines land as often as they did. Yes, the show is a silly piece of mindless entertainment, but what's so wrong with that? And not only did I love it, but my grandmother who usually sleeps through and hates most shows we take her too, both stayed awake the entire time and loved it. Now if that's not a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is.
In the category of the most certainly not a silly piece of fluff, is Enda Walsh's "The Walworth Farce" - which is your typical Irish comedy - meaning you may laugh a bit, but you completely totally and utterly depressed. It's the sort of thing that Martin McDonagh does so brillianty, and Walsh seems to be in very much the same league here, though I will say I was often very confused by the comic portions of the play. The basic premise is that there are these three men (an older father figure, and two grown "sons") who just stay in their apartment all day and perform the same farce. Every single day. For years and years. I suppose partly because there are so many characters in the play within the play, but only three actors to play all of them, I found it extremely difficult to follow the story that they were presenting. It was still fun and funny (for a time anyway) to watch their zany quick changes and bad acting (you can tell when a section is real vs part of the play-within, because the characters are all rotten actors, so when the dialogue sounds natural it's supposed to be real, versus the forced over-the-top stuff that's part of the "play"). I got the basic premise from the first act and was basically amused through, but it's the second act, where things just snowball and become increasingly disturbing and depressing, to the point where I was jaw-dropped in miserable shock for the last maybe ten minutes of the play, as I saw what I suppose was inevitable play out before me. The production, from the Druid Theatre Company (that also I think presented the premieres of Martin McDonagh's plays), plays for around a month or so (tonight was the first preview) at St. Ann's Warehouse, and I think is very much worth seeing. If you don't mind depressing Irish comedies. If it happens to pop up on tdf again, I think I may actually try to see it again - both because I really "enjoyed" it, and because I want to see if I can get a better handle on the stuff I missed the first time around.
And now on to the...
PLOTLESS BORES
Is it so much to ask for a show to tell a story? Maybe I'm lazy and I just like my theatre spoon-fed to me, but I don't see what's so wrong with shows telling stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The first example of that this week was "God's Ear." I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Supposedly it was about a parents dealing with the death of a child. But it all sounded like repetitive gibberish to me. I think the play must be more interesting on the page, when it can be looked at as a long piece of poetry. But as a piece of theatre, I really just didn't get it at all. It's by a young writer named Jenny Schwartz, and while I applaud her for being what I would certainly call an original new voic for the theatre, it was just totally over my head, and not at all to my taste. The only entertainment I was able to glean from the experience came from the older couple in my row (the first row, no less): after around twenty-five minutes, the wife whispered to her husband that she couldn't take anymore and she was going to sit in the lobby; the husband stayed and kept watching the play and about five minutes later she came back and asked him why he hadn't left yet; he said he wanted to see if it would get better, she grunted and sat down again, and then five or ten minutes after that they finally both left. At least it wasn't a total loss :O)
And then there's "Satyagraha," an opera that makes "Tristan und Isolde" look action packed. I will say that the Met's new production (or, well, it's co-production with the ENO) is really marvelous. Does that make it worth sitting through all three hours and forty-five grueling minutes of the opera? I think not. I'm sort of hit or miss with Philip Glass, but even the minimalist music didn't bother me all that much. What really bored me to tears was the story, or lack of one. The opera is made up of random scenes from the life of Gandhi. For some bizarre reason, the designers chose to not provide met-titles for this production, and instead to just project the translations on the back wall of the stage. We get about one line every fifteen minutes. There's also an insert in the Playbill that I think may be the libretto. It's two pages long. Two pages for three hours and forty-five minutes of opera. So basically, I sat there the whole time, watching the actors go through motions that seemed to only vaguely resemble the scenes listed in the synopsis, and listen to people sing words I couldn't understand (either because they were in Sanskrit, or English with bad diction). I just don't understand how anyone could find this remotely entertaining as a musical drama, considering there isn't actually any "drama." In the last scene, Gandhi walks slowly towards the stage, singing the same line what seemed like forty times. Maybe if I knew what he was singing, I would have found this interesting. But listening to someone slowly walk towards the front of the stage singing the same line of what sounds like gibberish over and over again, and sorry but my limited attention span can only stand so much. As for the most entertaining moment of that evening... On the subway platform, after I think every opera I've been to at the Met, there's a single musician playing music from that's evening's opera. I had sort of forgotten about this, but when I got down to the platform I heard music playing, and a woman walking next to me said to her friend, "Oh god, the flutist is playing Philip Glass." At which point I could barely contain my laughter. That comment definitely made my night, even as I was considering asking if I could pay the guy playing the flute to STOP playing the music.
Okay - that was long, it's now very late, and so good night.
THE COMEDIES
I saw two "comedies" this week - one was "The New Century" and the other was "The Walworth Farce." The former is pretty much pure fun fluff, and the latter is Irish (needless to say it was one of the most bleak, disturbing and depressing things I've seen in a while). "The New Century" is a series of four short plays by Paul Rudnick, with the first three introducing the separate characters, and the fourth bringing them all together. I think this is one of those plays where you need to be a gay and/or Jewish New Yorker (or very much aware of those cultures) in order to get any of the humor. The four stories all have fairly thin, silly plots, but it's really those oh so hilarious one-liners that come fast and furious that make it so very entertaining worthwhile. At intermission and again after the play (and to be perfectly honest, even thinking about it now), we couldn't help going around and re-telling our favorite jokes like "In this house we use a toilet, not our friends from Tribeca" or "It's like if Patti LuPone was a store." Those are just paraphrases of the lines since I don't have a script in front of me, and honestly I they're probably not nearly as funny out of context and when just read on a screen as opposed to being recited by a master comic actress like, say, Linda Lavin, but trust me, when recited on stage those lines and ones like them had me falling out of my seat in laughter. I will say that all five of us in our group felt that the second play (about Mr. Charles - who was thrown out of NY for being "too gay" and then ended up having a cable access show in the middle of the night in Florida) was the weakest of the four. But even if that one seemed to be a bit stale, it had it's choice moments. Oh and I must say that I'm certain the cast, with my favorites being Linda Lavin and Jayne Houdyshell, had a good deal to do with making Rudnick's lines land as often as they did. Yes, the show is a silly piece of mindless entertainment, but what's so wrong with that? And not only did I love it, but my grandmother who usually sleeps through and hates most shows we take her too, both stayed awake the entire time and loved it. Now if that's not a ringing endorsement, I don't know what is.
In the category of the most certainly not a silly piece of fluff, is Enda Walsh's "The Walworth Farce" - which is your typical Irish comedy - meaning you may laugh a bit, but you completely totally and utterly depressed. It's the sort of thing that Martin McDonagh does so brillianty, and Walsh seems to be in very much the same league here, though I will say I was often very confused by the comic portions of the play. The basic premise is that there are these three men (an older father figure, and two grown "sons") who just stay in their apartment all day and perform the same farce. Every single day. For years and years. I suppose partly because there are so many characters in the play within the play, but only three actors to play all of them, I found it extremely difficult to follow the story that they were presenting. It was still fun and funny (for a time anyway) to watch their zany quick changes and bad acting (you can tell when a section is real vs part of the play-within, because the characters are all rotten actors, so when the dialogue sounds natural it's supposed to be real, versus the forced over-the-top stuff that's part of the "play"). I got the basic premise from the first act and was basically amused through, but it's the second act, where things just snowball and become increasingly disturbing and depressing, to the point where I was jaw-dropped in miserable shock for the last maybe ten minutes of the play, as I saw what I suppose was inevitable play out before me. The production, from the Druid Theatre Company (that also I think presented the premieres of Martin McDonagh's plays), plays for around a month or so (tonight was the first preview) at St. Ann's Warehouse, and I think is very much worth seeing. If you don't mind depressing Irish comedies. If it happens to pop up on tdf again, I think I may actually try to see it again - both because I really "enjoyed" it, and because I want to see if I can get a better handle on the stuff I missed the first time around.
And now on to the...
PLOTLESS BORES
Is it so much to ask for a show to tell a story? Maybe I'm lazy and I just like my theatre spoon-fed to me, but I don't see what's so wrong with shows telling stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The first example of that this week was "God's Ear." I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Supposedly it was about a parents dealing with the death of a child. But it all sounded like repetitive gibberish to me. I think the play must be more interesting on the page, when it can be looked at as a long piece of poetry. But as a piece of theatre, I really just didn't get it at all. It's by a young writer named Jenny Schwartz, and while I applaud her for being what I would certainly call an original new voic for the theatre, it was just totally over my head, and not at all to my taste. The only entertainment I was able to glean from the experience came from the older couple in my row (the first row, no less): after around twenty-five minutes, the wife whispered to her husband that she couldn't take anymore and she was going to sit in the lobby; the husband stayed and kept watching the play and about five minutes later she came back and asked him why he hadn't left yet; he said he wanted to see if it would get better, she grunted and sat down again, and then five or ten minutes after that they finally both left. At least it wasn't a total loss :O)
And then there's "Satyagraha," an opera that makes "Tristan und Isolde" look action packed. I will say that the Met's new production (or, well, it's co-production with the ENO) is really marvelous. Does that make it worth sitting through all three hours and forty-five grueling minutes of the opera? I think not. I'm sort of hit or miss with Philip Glass, but even the minimalist music didn't bother me all that much. What really bored me to tears was the story, or lack of one. The opera is made up of random scenes from the life of Gandhi. For some bizarre reason, the designers chose to not provide met-titles for this production, and instead to just project the translations on the back wall of the stage. We get about one line every fifteen minutes. There's also an insert in the Playbill that I think may be the libretto. It's two pages long. Two pages for three hours and forty-five minutes of opera. So basically, I sat there the whole time, watching the actors go through motions that seemed to only vaguely resemble the scenes listed in the synopsis, and listen to people sing words I couldn't understand (either because they were in Sanskrit, or English with bad diction). I just don't understand how anyone could find this remotely entertaining as a musical drama, considering there isn't actually any "drama." In the last scene, Gandhi walks slowly towards the stage, singing the same line what seemed like forty times. Maybe if I knew what he was singing, I would have found this interesting. But listening to someone slowly walk towards the front of the stage singing the same line of what sounds like gibberish over and over again, and sorry but my limited attention span can only stand so much. As for the most entertaining moment of that evening... On the subway platform, after I think every opera I've been to at the Met, there's a single musician playing music from that's evening's opera. I had sort of forgotten about this, but when I got down to the platform I heard music playing, and a woman walking next to me said to her friend, "Oh god, the flutist is playing Philip Glass." At which point I could barely contain my laughter. That comment definitely made my night, even as I was considering asking if I could pay the guy playing the flute to STOP playing the music.
Okay - that was long, it's now very late, and so good night.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
The Tuesday Night Catch Up
Okay, here we go, starting with Friday...
Basically because I have no will power, when "The Country Girl" showed up on tdf, I was powerless to resist picking up a ticket. Especially since I just happened to have on plans for Friday night. This was, of course, before I read that at the first preview on Thursday night, the actors didn't know their lines yet. Cue plummeting expectations. I'm already had/have tickets to see the play again at the end of May, so it would probably be more fair to write about it in more detail then. At the second preview, there were only a few flubbed lines (nothing that seemed particularly out of the ordinary), but it was pretty obvious that the actors really hadn't found their parts yet - it seemed like they were basically just trying to get through the play without screwing up their lines. So they can really only improve as the run progresses since they've begun at basically rock bottom. That said, I can't say I'm really sure why anyone really felt the need to revive the play. It didn't really strike me as some long lost classic. Possibly due to the weak performances, the first act was pretty interminable, and the second act a little better. It was also really really warm in the theatre. The play's about an old alcoholic actor (played by Morgan Freeman) who's called in to take over a major role in a play. He can't remember lines very well, but thanks to support from his wife (Frances McDormand) and the director of the play (Peter Gallagher), he gets by. The play as a whole just struck me as kind of creaky. Maybe I'll think better of it next time. Oh, and the set (which I'm assuming will not change over the course of previews) was rather underwhelming. There seemed to be a turntable in the center of the stage that allowed everything to rotate for presumably quick set changes... except for some reason they felt the need to have this extremely long curtain move across the stage so the stagehands could set each scene unseen. I didn't really see the point, and I'm sure a less dreary solution could have been found. Also strange is that though the scene-change curtain looks exactly like the curtain that comes down at the beginning and end of each act, the regular curtain goes up and down, while the scene-change one goes side-to-side. Seemed like a strange waste of money to me.
Saturday afternoon was "A Catered Affair." This is basically the conversation that I had with my parents after the show:
--------
Mom: That was sad.
Me: Really sad.
Dad: Sad.
(pause)
Me: It was just so sad.
Mom: Wasn't it sad?
Dad: That was sad.
(pause)
Me: It was sad.
Mom: Is that all we can say? It was just really sad.
--------
This has got to be the most depressing musical of the season. I mean, yes there's a happy-ish ending, but it's sort of like putting on a little bandaid after being stabbed twelve times with a knife. It was too little too late. I don't necessarily mind a sad musical - there's something to be said for the catharsis from a real tear jerker. But I don't know... there was just something about the show that left me sort of empty inside. I enjoyed it (if that's the right word) while I was watching in, but when the lights came up at the end I couldn't really say I was satisfied by what I had seen. It's funny (well, not really) but when we were walking down to Penn Station after the show, we saw two people getting married on the marquee for the Hard Rock Cafe. And just seeing the bride and groom up there after having sat through the show just made me even more depressed. After sitting through a show that beats you over the head with how horrible these big catered affairs are, and then seeing one right after, it made me want to cry.
Part of the problem could be that the story is just very slight (a girl decides she's going to get married, the mother insists on a big catered affair, and that brings about nothing but disaster after disaster - and not happy goofy mishaps - very real, tearing family, friends and lives apart, disasters). It's just a really ordinary family in the 50s going from very ordinary situations. Maybe it was something how very ordinary and normal everything was that failed to truly grab me.
The performances are on a whole excellent. Faith Prince and Tom Wopart are fantastic as the parents of the bride. They give very quiet, but really devastating performances. For me, one of the big mistakes of the show, was Harvey Fierstein casting himself (or letting himself be cast - however that went, since he did write the book of the musical), because as we all know, he cannot sing. That's fine in a show like "Hairspray" because it's part of the fun. But in a serious, quiet chamber musical like this, it was honestly really painful to listen to him croak out his two songs (the first made me really want to cover my ears because he was pushing so hard, and it was obviously out of his two-not range; the second was a little quieter and since he didn't have to push as hard in that one, it was less unpleasant).
The music - this is a musical after all - is pretty and pleasant. The songs just sort of drift in and out over the course of the scenes. There aren't too many "songs" per se, there will just be scenes where one moment they're talking, and the next moment they're singing - and then back to speaking again. I can imagine people saying it's not really melodic, but maybe because I had listened to the music once or twice first (from a *cough*bootleg*cough*) I did leave humming one or two songs. I don't know that I would ever necessarily listen to a cast recording, but I think they work well in context, and it's a fine score from John Bucchino.
The set is very plain, which I think works because the show is so small. One odd thing though, was that at the end of the the show, after staring at basically just walls, fire escapes, a little bit of furniture, and lots of projections, suddenly they roll a car onto the stage. Maybe the set designer just had money left over in his budget, and felt the creative team felt this was an extremely important part of the show, but to me is seemed totally out of synch with the style of the rest of the staging. Like they needed something big and special to roll out at the finale to show the audiences why they paid so much for this little musical. But I really think it would have been less odd if they had found a simpler way to present it, with a projection on the wall or something.
In the end, I didn't enjoy the show as much as I would have liked to. I sat there the whole time really enjoying it, only being bored every now and then, but then when the lights came up at the end, I was just really depressed and unsatisfied. Maybe I need to go back and see the show again, to get a better handle on it.
And might I also point out that the ad campaign for the show is really terrible. Listening to people leaving, I think most audience members were expecting some kind of old fashioned musical comedy. I mean, it's four smiling happy people (including a bride and groom), and one guy off to the side just looking sort of gruff. Seemed like a happy romantic show, no? No.
So, then Saturday night I took the train out to Princeton to see "Arognautika," which is written and directed by Mary "Metamorphoses" Zimmerman. Well, you know what they say about lightning not striking twice. I had seen (and also disliked) that Da Vinci show that she did at Second Stage a season or two after hitting it big with "Metamorphoses," but I still had high hopes for this. It just really felt like childrens theatre for adults. Very very long (an excruciating two hours and forty minutes) children's theatre for adults. The acting, especially in the first act, was all the sort of over the top really showy irritating acting that you see in really bad kiddie theatre productions. You know what I mean - where they all talk slowly, and really loud and with too much expression? I found it really grated my nerves. They seemed to calm down in the second act, but it really didn't help. The whole thing was really pretentious, and just had none of that simple beauty of "Metamorphoses." If I hadn't shelpped all the way out to Princeton to see it, and I hadn't been with my sister (who loved it, but what does she know... she compared it to the Julie Taymor "Magic Flute" which she also loved and which I also detested), I would have seriously considered leaving at intermission. Just a really painful experience.
Tonight, I went to see a workshop production of "The Paris Commune" by the Civilians. I won't go into too much detail because it is a workshop, but I will say I really enjoyed most of it. It's about a minor revolution in France I think in 1871, in which Paris basically seceded, and for two months was it's own little communist state. It sounds really boring, I know, but the cast is very enthusiastic, and it includes a lot of peppy songs - there's even a history of the can-can thrown in to boot. Things went a little off-kilter and into that sort of overwrought over-the-top Les Miserables territory near the end when the French army finally got around to fighting back, but hopefully that's the sort of thing that the workshop is there to look at and fix. It runs through April 19 at the Public, and costs a whopping ten buck (I even paid full price for once), and I think it's really worth seeing - it's nice to see something that's both educational and entertaining (though it did sometimes feel like one of those educational shows that tours to different high schools, sponsored probably by the French Club). I definitely look forward to seeing this again in its next incarnation.
And now I'm all caught up. Gosh that was long.
Basically because I have no will power, when "The Country Girl" showed up on tdf, I was powerless to resist picking up a ticket. Especially since I just happened to have on plans for Friday night. This was, of course, before I read that at the first preview on Thursday night, the actors didn't know their lines yet. Cue plummeting expectations. I'm already had/have tickets to see the play again at the end of May, so it would probably be more fair to write about it in more detail then. At the second preview, there were only a few flubbed lines (nothing that seemed particularly out of the ordinary), but it was pretty obvious that the actors really hadn't found their parts yet - it seemed like they were basically just trying to get through the play without screwing up their lines. So they can really only improve as the run progresses since they've begun at basically rock bottom. That said, I can't say I'm really sure why anyone really felt the need to revive the play. It didn't really strike me as some long lost classic. Possibly due to the weak performances, the first act was pretty interminable, and the second act a little better. It was also really really warm in the theatre. The play's about an old alcoholic actor (played by Morgan Freeman) who's called in to take over a major role in a play. He can't remember lines very well, but thanks to support from his wife (Frances McDormand) and the director of the play (Peter Gallagher), he gets by. The play as a whole just struck me as kind of creaky. Maybe I'll think better of it next time. Oh, and the set (which I'm assuming will not change over the course of previews) was rather underwhelming. There seemed to be a turntable in the center of the stage that allowed everything to rotate for presumably quick set changes... except for some reason they felt the need to have this extremely long curtain move across the stage so the stagehands could set each scene unseen. I didn't really see the point, and I'm sure a less dreary solution could have been found. Also strange is that though the scene-change curtain looks exactly like the curtain that comes down at the beginning and end of each act, the regular curtain goes up and down, while the scene-change one goes side-to-side. Seemed like a strange waste of money to me.
Saturday afternoon was "A Catered Affair." This is basically the conversation that I had with my parents after the show:
--------
Mom: That was sad.
Me: Really sad.
Dad: Sad.
(pause)
Me: It was just so sad.
Mom: Wasn't it sad?
Dad: That was sad.
(pause)
Me: It was sad.
Mom: Is that all we can say? It was just really sad.
--------
This has got to be the most depressing musical of the season. I mean, yes there's a happy-ish ending, but it's sort of like putting on a little bandaid after being stabbed twelve times with a knife. It was too little too late. I don't necessarily mind a sad musical - there's something to be said for the catharsis from a real tear jerker. But I don't know... there was just something about the show that left me sort of empty inside. I enjoyed it (if that's the right word) while I was watching in, but when the lights came up at the end I couldn't really say I was satisfied by what I had seen. It's funny (well, not really) but when we were walking down to Penn Station after the show, we saw two people getting married on the marquee for the Hard Rock Cafe. And just seeing the bride and groom up there after having sat through the show just made me even more depressed. After sitting through a show that beats you over the head with how horrible these big catered affairs are, and then seeing one right after, it made me want to cry.
Part of the problem could be that the story is just very slight (a girl decides she's going to get married, the mother insists on a big catered affair, and that brings about nothing but disaster after disaster - and not happy goofy mishaps - very real, tearing family, friends and lives apart, disasters). It's just a really ordinary family in the 50s going from very ordinary situations. Maybe it was something how very ordinary and normal everything was that failed to truly grab me.
The performances are on a whole excellent. Faith Prince and Tom Wopart are fantastic as the parents of the bride. They give very quiet, but really devastating performances. For me, one of the big mistakes of the show, was Harvey Fierstein casting himself (or letting himself be cast - however that went, since he did write the book of the musical), because as we all know, he cannot sing. That's fine in a show like "Hairspray" because it's part of the fun. But in a serious, quiet chamber musical like this, it was honestly really painful to listen to him croak out his two songs (the first made me really want to cover my ears because he was pushing so hard, and it was obviously out of his two-not range; the second was a little quieter and since he didn't have to push as hard in that one, it was less unpleasant).
The music - this is a musical after all - is pretty and pleasant. The songs just sort of drift in and out over the course of the scenes. There aren't too many "songs" per se, there will just be scenes where one moment they're talking, and the next moment they're singing - and then back to speaking again. I can imagine people saying it's not really melodic, but maybe because I had listened to the music once or twice first (from a *cough*bootleg*cough*) I did leave humming one or two songs. I don't know that I would ever necessarily listen to a cast recording, but I think they work well in context, and it's a fine score from John Bucchino.
The set is very plain, which I think works because the show is so small. One odd thing though, was that at the end of the the show, after staring at basically just walls, fire escapes, a little bit of furniture, and lots of projections, suddenly they roll a car onto the stage. Maybe the set designer just had money left over in his budget, and felt the creative team felt this was an extremely important part of the show, but to me is seemed totally out of synch with the style of the rest of the staging. Like they needed something big and special to roll out at the finale to show the audiences why they paid so much for this little musical. But I really think it would have been less odd if they had found a simpler way to present it, with a projection on the wall or something.
In the end, I didn't enjoy the show as much as I would have liked to. I sat there the whole time really enjoying it, only being bored every now and then, but then when the lights came up at the end, I was just really depressed and unsatisfied. Maybe I need to go back and see the show again, to get a better handle on it.
And might I also point out that the ad campaign for the show is really terrible. Listening to people leaving, I think most audience members were expecting some kind of old fashioned musical comedy. I mean, it's four smiling happy people (including a bride and groom), and one guy off to the side just looking sort of gruff. Seemed like a happy romantic show, no? No.
So, then Saturday night I took the train out to Princeton to see "Arognautika," which is written and directed by Mary "Metamorphoses" Zimmerman. Well, you know what they say about lightning not striking twice. I had seen (and also disliked) that Da Vinci show that she did at Second Stage a season or two after hitting it big with "Metamorphoses," but I still had high hopes for this. It just really felt like childrens theatre for adults. Very very long (an excruciating two hours and forty minutes) children's theatre for adults. The acting, especially in the first act, was all the sort of over the top really showy irritating acting that you see in really bad kiddie theatre productions. You know what I mean - where they all talk slowly, and really loud and with too much expression? I found it really grated my nerves. They seemed to calm down in the second act, but it really didn't help. The whole thing was really pretentious, and just had none of that simple beauty of "Metamorphoses." If I hadn't shelpped all the way out to Princeton to see it, and I hadn't been with my sister (who loved it, but what does she know... she compared it to the Julie Taymor "Magic Flute" which she also loved and which I also detested), I would have seriously considered leaving at intermission. Just a really painful experience.
Tonight, I went to see a workshop production of "The Paris Commune" by the Civilians. I won't go into too much detail because it is a workshop, but I will say I really enjoyed most of it. It's about a minor revolution in France I think in 1871, in which Paris basically seceded, and for two months was it's own little communist state. It sounds really boring, I know, but the cast is very enthusiastic, and it includes a lot of peppy songs - there's even a history of the can-can thrown in to boot. Things went a little off-kilter and into that sort of overwrought over-the-top Les Miserables territory near the end when the French army finally got around to fighting back, but hopefully that's the sort of thing that the workshop is there to look at and fix. It runs through April 19 at the Public, and costs a whopping ten buck (I even paid full price for once), and I think it's really worth seeing - it's nice to see something that's both educational and entertaining (though it did sometimes feel like one of those educational shows that tours to different high schools, sponsored probably by the French Club). I definitely look forward to seeing this again in its next incarnation.
And now I'm all caught up. Gosh that was long.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
On That Rodgers and Hammerstein Revival
A quick note that if you've never seen "South Pacific" there are major plot spoilers included below.
------------------
I went to see "South Pacific" this afternoon, and it was an... interesting experience. I had never seen the show before in any form - either live or on film - though I did know all of those classic songs. And I think I can see why the show has not been revived on Broadway since it's original production in 1949. Time has not been kind to it. Or maybe it's that director Bartlett Sher has not been kind to it. More likely it's a combination of the two.
The first act clocks in at an hour and forty minutes. And after the thrilling overture during which the stage is pulled back to reveal the extremely large orchestra, well... I felt every minute of it. It just drags on and on. Maybe it's because I've heard all of the songs so many times before, but they each really seemed to stop the show cold. Usually after hearing an album time after time, it's illuminating to finally see the song in context. Not so here. Granted the show may be a bit creaky - it was written almost 60 years ago after all, but I think the staging was a big part of that too. The big production numbers like "Bloody Mary" or "There Is Nothing Like A Dame" seemed to fair all right, because they were more about the soldiers goofing off than really story telling. But with the love songs between Emile and Nellie, it seemed awfully odd to have them spend a large chunk of say, "Some Enchanted Evening," with them singing directly to the audience instead of facing and singing to each other. And one more quibble... is it really necessary to do what seemed like a medley of every song from the first act at the end of it? And we wonder why the first act is so long? Anyway, at the intermission I was really wondering whether this show is really just best done in concert form, so we get to hear all of the songs sung, but don't need to invest so much time in those dreary book scenes.
The second act started off at an equally underwhelming pace, with those Thanksgiving Follies just dragging on for what seemed like forever, and then "Happy Talk" which just seemed really bizarre and out of place (the book scenes with Bloody Mary made her seem like this really intelligent but somewhat bizarre looking islander, and then she just suddenly starts singing this random happy Rodgers and Hammerstein song to her daughter and her boyfriend, it just didn't work for me). Then we get "You Have To Be Carefully Taught" which sort of bumpily flows into "This Nearly Was Mine." I've read that Rodgers & Hammerstein had to really fight to keep "You Have To Be Carefully Taught In The Show," and I understand that it's an important song - but maybe it's an important song that they could have put somewhere else in the show - because we have Emile being upset about Nellie dumping him, then Cable singing this random song about prejudice, and THEN we get "This Nearly Was Mine." It just really felt like "This Nearly Was Mine" wanted to naturally flow from the conversation with Emile and Cable, without that other song interrupting everyone's train of thought. But then Paulo Szot sings "This Nearly Was Mine," and the grumbling in my head about the odd placement stopped and I started listening, and it seemed like time stood still while he was singing. That moment was the first time in the show that just absolutely totally worked - it was just him by himself singing to the audience - and it was simple, absolutely beautifully sung, and just really absolutely riveting. That song alone, provided enough energy for the show to smoothly sail home (no pun intended there). What I did notice, was after (the earth shattering, totally made the three hour show worth it) "This Nearly Was Mine" and the end of the show, there are almost no more songs. There's a moving short reprise of "Some Enchanted Evening" for Nellie, a really bizarre reprise of "Honey Bun" sung by the soldiers marching off to war that really really really should have been cut because it made no sense and really ruined a powerful moment, and then a little bit of "Dites Moi" at the very end. So what really surprised me was that the show really worked best when there were the fewest songs to interrupt. Just watching almost a play with its beautiful underscoring was really just extremely powerful. It almost made we wonder if the show would have been better (to the detriment of musical theatre in general - certainly all of those songs ending up in a trunk would have been a travesty) if the show had had only a fraction of the number of songs it ended up with.
So really what I came away with was that this is a mostly creaky, flawed musical, with fantastic music, but which when it finally gets down to business deep in the second act, can be really exciting and powerful. At least in this production. I can certainly imagine that another production that perhaps better knew what to do with the plethora of musical numbers could have created a better more cohesive whole. But as this is my one and only experience from the show, that is what I took away from it.
As for the performances, I thought the cast was pretty strong. I've only seen bits and pieces of Mary Martin's Nellie Forbush, but what I've seen made her seem far more interesting in the role of Kelli O'Hara. I think O'Hara was maybe missing some of the zaniness that the character requires. When (it looked like) she was looking into Emile's eyes when singing the end of "Some Enchanted Evening" in the first act, I really felt a sizzle, and her reprise of the song in the second act was moving as well. So I think she had the more serious part of the role down, but she was a bit lacking in the spunk department. As for Paulo Szot, I thought he was quite good. His voice was spectacular (especially in "This Nearly Was Mine"), and his acting was fine. I was rather disappointed in Matthew Morrison's Cable. His singing was fine, but he was just really bland and charmless. I was actually happy when he died in the second act, just so I wouldn't have to suffer through any more of his scenes. I then felt bad when Liat came and found out her love was dead, because I thought she was sweet. But they surely could have found someone more interesting for the role. I'm not going to go through the rest of the cast name by namer, but I really didn't have a problem with anyone else, it really a fairly strong ensemble.
Well, I think I've gone on for far too long now. So I'll leave you with a Youtube clip of Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza singing "Some Enchanted Evening." Notice had romantic it is when Emile sings the song while clutching Nellie instead of standing across the (crowded or empty) room from her:
------------------
I went to see "South Pacific" this afternoon, and it was an... interesting experience. I had never seen the show before in any form - either live or on film - though I did know all of those classic songs. And I think I can see why the show has not been revived on Broadway since it's original production in 1949. Time has not been kind to it. Or maybe it's that director Bartlett Sher has not been kind to it. More likely it's a combination of the two.
The first act clocks in at an hour and forty minutes. And after the thrilling overture during which the stage is pulled back to reveal the extremely large orchestra, well... I felt every minute of it. It just drags on and on. Maybe it's because I've heard all of the songs so many times before, but they each really seemed to stop the show cold. Usually after hearing an album time after time, it's illuminating to finally see the song in context. Not so here. Granted the show may be a bit creaky - it was written almost 60 years ago after all, but I think the staging was a big part of that too. The big production numbers like "Bloody Mary" or "There Is Nothing Like A Dame" seemed to fair all right, because they were more about the soldiers goofing off than really story telling. But with the love songs between Emile and Nellie, it seemed awfully odd to have them spend a large chunk of say, "Some Enchanted Evening," with them singing directly to the audience instead of facing and singing to each other. And one more quibble... is it really necessary to do what seemed like a medley of every song from the first act at the end of it? And we wonder why the first act is so long? Anyway, at the intermission I was really wondering whether this show is really just best done in concert form, so we get to hear all of the songs sung, but don't need to invest so much time in those dreary book scenes.
The second act started off at an equally underwhelming pace, with those Thanksgiving Follies just dragging on for what seemed like forever, and then "Happy Talk" which just seemed really bizarre and out of place (the book scenes with Bloody Mary made her seem like this really intelligent but somewhat bizarre looking islander, and then she just suddenly starts singing this random happy Rodgers and Hammerstein song to her daughter and her boyfriend, it just didn't work for me). Then we get "You Have To Be Carefully Taught" which sort of bumpily flows into "This Nearly Was Mine." I've read that Rodgers & Hammerstein had to really fight to keep "You Have To Be Carefully Taught In The Show," and I understand that it's an important song - but maybe it's an important song that they could have put somewhere else in the show - because we have Emile being upset about Nellie dumping him, then Cable singing this random song about prejudice, and THEN we get "This Nearly Was Mine." It just really felt like "This Nearly Was Mine" wanted to naturally flow from the conversation with Emile and Cable, without that other song interrupting everyone's train of thought. But then Paulo Szot sings "This Nearly Was Mine," and the grumbling in my head about the odd placement stopped and I started listening, and it seemed like time stood still while he was singing. That moment was the first time in the show that just absolutely totally worked - it was just him by himself singing to the audience - and it was simple, absolutely beautifully sung, and just really absolutely riveting. That song alone, provided enough energy for the show to smoothly sail home (no pun intended there). What I did notice, was after (the earth shattering, totally made the three hour show worth it) "This Nearly Was Mine" and the end of the show, there are almost no more songs. There's a moving short reprise of "Some Enchanted Evening" for Nellie, a really bizarre reprise of "Honey Bun" sung by the soldiers marching off to war that really really really should have been cut because it made no sense and really ruined a powerful moment, and then a little bit of "Dites Moi" at the very end. So what really surprised me was that the show really worked best when there were the fewest songs to interrupt. Just watching almost a play with its beautiful underscoring was really just extremely powerful. It almost made we wonder if the show would have been better (to the detriment of musical theatre in general - certainly all of those songs ending up in a trunk would have been a travesty) if the show had had only a fraction of the number of songs it ended up with.
So really what I came away with was that this is a mostly creaky, flawed musical, with fantastic music, but which when it finally gets down to business deep in the second act, can be really exciting and powerful. At least in this production. I can certainly imagine that another production that perhaps better knew what to do with the plethora of musical numbers could have created a better more cohesive whole. But as this is my one and only experience from the show, that is what I took away from it.
As for the performances, I thought the cast was pretty strong. I've only seen bits and pieces of Mary Martin's Nellie Forbush, but what I've seen made her seem far more interesting in the role of Kelli O'Hara. I think O'Hara was maybe missing some of the zaniness that the character requires. When (it looked like) she was looking into Emile's eyes when singing the end of "Some Enchanted Evening" in the first act, I really felt a sizzle, and her reprise of the song in the second act was moving as well. So I think she had the more serious part of the role down, but she was a bit lacking in the spunk department. As for Paulo Szot, I thought he was quite good. His voice was spectacular (especially in "This Nearly Was Mine"), and his acting was fine. I was rather disappointed in Matthew Morrison's Cable. His singing was fine, but he was just really bland and charmless. I was actually happy when he died in the second act, just so I wouldn't have to suffer through any more of his scenes. I then felt bad when Liat came and found out her love was dead, because I thought she was sweet. But they surely could have found someone more interesting for the role. I'm not going to go through the rest of the cast name by namer, but I really didn't have a problem with anyone else, it really a fairly strong ensemble.
Well, I think I've gone on for far too long now. So I'll leave you with a Youtube clip of Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza singing "Some Enchanted Evening." Notice had romantic it is when Emile sings the song while clutching Nellie instead of standing across the (crowded or empty) room from her:
Saturday, March 29, 2008
An Exciting New Find (and other less exciting ones)
Finally, after being disappointed in play after play this year, finally one has come along that I'm actually excited about. And to be perfectly honest, if you had asked me about what I was looking forward to in the new year, this wasn't even on my radar. Just this week I saw two extremely disappointing plays from young up and coming playwrights Adam Bock (Drunken City) and Itamar Moses (The Four of Us - more on that in a bit), and I suppose it's worth adding to that list Sarah Ruhl (whose Dead Man's Cell Phone was perhaps the biggest let down of all, a few weeks ago). Who would have thunk "From Up Here," a play by Liz Flahive (who?), would be better than those by such comparatively big names. Add to the shock that this was a last minute replacement for the highly anticipated "The Starry Messenger" by Kenneth Lonergan, that was supposed to star Matthew Broderick. I think most Manhattan Theatre Club subscribers are still grumbling about how a play that sounded like one of the hot tickets of the season was replaced by one by (as far as I can tell from her bio) a first time playwright, though granted starring Julie White (who, granted, is far more exciting than the always irritating Broderick). I went in knowing nothing about the plot of the play, nothing about the playwright, having read nothing on any of the message boards even though it started previews on Thursday (you know there would have been fifteen posts on "The Starry Messenger" after the first preview alone), and I can't remember the last time I was so genuinely pleasantly surprised.
The play is one of those quirky dysfunctional family affairs, with the main source of all of the conflict coming from the unstable high school-age son who was caught possibly preparing to shoot a bunch of his classmates one day. The other major characters are the mother who is a bit overwhelmed but tries hard, the step-dad who's really nice though the kids still hate him, the boy's sister who's also in high school, the kooky aunt who's in from a stint in the peace corps, and two classmates - one being a nerd who has a crush on the sister, and one who's a goody two-shoes smart kid. Put them all together in a bowl, stir well, and bake at 350 degrees for an hour and fifty minutes, and you basically have the play. I'm usually too lazy to pull out my Playbill to look up the names of actors I don't really know, but I'll make an exception here for Tobias Segal, who plays the son. He's full of quirks, but there was just something really endearing about him, and also strangely enough a lot in him in both the way the character was written and the way he was played that I found I could relate too (not that I'm on anti-depressants or that I ever considered killing classmates, but other things...).
I will say that my mother really didn't seem to like the play at all and my father didn't look too pleased either, so it maybe it has more of an appeal to the younger - I'm bad at gauging appeal but maybe the 18-29 crowd? - which I suppose the average MTC subscriber, or theatergoer for that matter, is not - I don't know for sure, but I will say I was personally An Exciting New Find (and other less exciting ones)really moved and entertained by the play, and there was just something about it that I found really easy to relate to. I'm very excited to see what Liz Flahive next has to offer.
Oh - and one more thing before I forget - I really liked the incidental music (mostly just background instrumental stuff for scene changes and whatnot), but when I looked in the Playbill afterwards I saw it was composed by Tom Kitt (of "High Fidelity" and "Next to Normal"). Was curious to see what he was going to do next, and while this obviously isn't a musical, it was an interesting surprise.
Other shows this week:
"The Four of Us" (at MTC's Stage II) by Itamar Moses. I found this to be rather dull. I'm glad I read the reviews first because they pointed out that this was based on the playwright's friendship with Jonathan Safran Foer (who I suppose is most famous for "Everything Is Illuminated," a book well worthy of its hype), so at least some scenes that probably would have been somewhat boring had a bit of that gossipy tell-all quality. Then again, I watched the whole play substituting the "real" names in my head, whether or not that was really the intention of the playwright. There is an amusing twist at the end that I enjoyed, but really, so much of the play was just so slow, that it really didn't make up for what had come before. It was definitely an interesting premise for play, just not executed as well as I would have liked.
"Juno" (at Encores). Well I can see why this show ran two weeks in its original run, and I don't think it was, as Joseph Stein insists, it was because the original was cast with two people who couldn't sing the score in the least roles. The first act is really really dull. The second was much better, with a really peculiar dream ballet focusing on a character with one arm (it was amazing to watch him dance with only one arm out for balance - I was really impressed), and the ending (it's based on "Juno and the Paycock," one of those typically really really depressing Irish plays) was quite moving. It's nice to see Encores do a musical for once that really fulfills what seems to have been its original purpose - presenting works that are in danger of never being seen again (unlike such recent choices as say... "Bye Bye Birdie" or "The Pajama Game"). I'm definitely glad I saw it, but I really have no desire to either pull out the cast recording to give it another shot, or really to ever see a production of it ever again.
I also saw "Cry-Baby" again - not on purpose, but because I already had tickets for Friday before I knew I would see an even earlier preview. I noticed they cut a couple of lines that didn't really make much sense the first time around, but overall it's the same underwhelming, unfunny, untuneful, generally unentertaining show it was the first time around. Whatever.
The play is one of those quirky dysfunctional family affairs, with the main source of all of the conflict coming from the unstable high school-age son who was caught possibly preparing to shoot a bunch of his classmates one day. The other major characters are the mother who is a bit overwhelmed but tries hard, the step-dad who's really nice though the kids still hate him, the boy's sister who's also in high school, the kooky aunt who's in from a stint in the peace corps, and two classmates - one being a nerd who has a crush on the sister, and one who's a goody two-shoes smart kid. Put them all together in a bowl, stir well, and bake at 350 degrees for an hour and fifty minutes, and you basically have the play. I'm usually too lazy to pull out my Playbill to look up the names of actors I don't really know, but I'll make an exception here for Tobias Segal, who plays the son. He's full of quirks, but there was just something really endearing about him, and also strangely enough a lot in him in both the way the character was written and the way he was played that I found I could relate too (not that I'm on anti-depressants or that I ever considered killing classmates, but other things...).
I will say that my mother really didn't seem to like the play at all and my father didn't look too pleased either, so it maybe it has more of an appeal to the younger - I'm bad at gauging appeal but maybe the 18-29 crowd? - which I suppose the average MTC subscriber, or theatergoer for that matter, is not - I don't know for sure, but I will say I was personally An Exciting New Find (and other less exciting ones)really moved and entertained by the play, and there was just something about it that I found really easy to relate to. I'm very excited to see what Liz Flahive next has to offer.
Oh - and one more thing before I forget - I really liked the incidental music (mostly just background instrumental stuff for scene changes and whatnot), but when I looked in the Playbill afterwards I saw it was composed by Tom Kitt (of "High Fidelity" and "Next to Normal"). Was curious to see what he was going to do next, and while this obviously isn't a musical, it was an interesting surprise.
Other shows this week:
"The Four of Us" (at MTC's Stage II) by Itamar Moses. I found this to be rather dull. I'm glad I read the reviews first because they pointed out that this was based on the playwright's friendship with Jonathan Safran Foer (who I suppose is most famous for "Everything Is Illuminated," a book well worthy of its hype), so at least some scenes that probably would have been somewhat boring had a bit of that gossipy tell-all quality. Then again, I watched the whole play substituting the "real" names in my head, whether or not that was really the intention of the playwright. There is an amusing twist at the end that I enjoyed, but really, so much of the play was just so slow, that it really didn't make up for what had come before. It was definitely an interesting premise for play, just not executed as well as I would have liked.
"Juno" (at Encores). Well I can see why this show ran two weeks in its original run, and I don't think it was, as Joseph Stein insists, it was because the original was cast with two people who couldn't sing the score in the least roles. The first act is really really dull. The second was much better, with a really peculiar dream ballet focusing on a character with one arm (it was amazing to watch him dance with only one arm out for balance - I was really impressed), and the ending (it's based on "Juno and the Paycock," one of those typically really really depressing Irish plays) was quite moving. It's nice to see Encores do a musical for once that really fulfills what seems to have been its original purpose - presenting works that are in danger of never being seen again (unlike such recent choices as say... "Bye Bye Birdie" or "The Pajama Game"). I'm definitely glad I saw it, but I really have no desire to either pull out the cast recording to give it another shot, or really to ever see a production of it ever again.
I also saw "Cry-Baby" again - not on purpose, but because I already had tickets for Friday before I knew I would see an even earlier preview. I noticed they cut a couple of lines that didn't really make much sense the first time around, but overall it's the same underwhelming, unfunny, untuneful, generally unentertaining show it was the first time around. Whatever.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The (Mostly) Underwhelming
Hasn't exactly been the greatest week of theatre for me...
Tonight was "Drunken City," which basically amounted to a what felt like a 90 minute episode of some lousy sitcom. It's about three female friends who go and get drunk in the city (hence the title) in the name of a bachelorette party. The playwright (Adam Bock) throws in a metaphor about the city being alive (the stage would tilt back and forth when things would go wrong, and I'm assuming that that had something to do with the living breathing city) and then the metaphor was continued with something about a pet dragon - the city and dragon stuff was all spouted by the Asian character (dragon? Asian girl? ooh yeah), and there's even a random song about the dragon at the end. The play actually starts out on what I thought was a fun note, but I guess you could say when the stage tilted the second or third time, my interest began to lose balance and I became increasingly bored. At least this was better than Bock's last "play," "The Receptionist," then again I think watching a puppy chase his tail for an hour would have been more entertaining than that waste of time (that is assuming that the puppy finally catches his tail at the end of that play, otherwise I suppose it would have been equally pointless...).
Last night was the surprisingly entertaining Australian comic/pianist Tim Minchin. He wasn't necessarily the funniest act I've ever seen, but he's an awfully talented composer and pianist, and even if I didn't necessarily find all of his songs hilarious, I found I was entertained enough just watching and listening while not paying attention to the lyrics. And I did find most of the show funny, even if not every joke struck my fancy. You can look him up easily enough on Youtube to see if he strikes your comic fancy, but I have to say he was a highlight of this less than exciting week.
Then, Sunday and Friday were parts one and two of my "Why it's a mistake to see Roundabout shows early in their runs (even on comps) when one already has tickets to see them later in their run with one's subscription." I had already seen, and not particularly cared for "Crimes of the Heart" and "The 39 Steps," but I already had tickets to see them this weekend with my subscription, so I was forced to give both a second chance. The first time I saw "Crimes," one of the actresses was out (I think it was Sarah Paulson), so at least I got to see her this time. Didn't really care for it the first time, didn't really care for it the second. My parents confirmed that they too remember enjoying the production of the play we saw all those years ago at the Airport Playhouse, and that none of us could fathom why because the play was so dull in this production. My mother said she thought there was more humor in that production. I dunno - maybe it's a lousy production, maybe the play is just really dated - but why this show won the Pulitzer for drama is far beyond me.
I didn't dislike "The 39 Steps" quite as much the second time, though I chalk that up to sitting in the first row orchestra this time, which usually helps. I still didn't find the show at all funny, but the movie wasn't so fresh in my mind this time, so the story was entertaining enough to watch. And when a dummy fell off the stage and hit me near the end of the show, well... at least that was a totally random and unique amusement.
Saturday was the Met's cursed production of "Tristan und Isolde." I had seen the La Scala production of the opera at Symphony Space a month or two ago, and I have to say there's no comparison to seeing it live. Opera at the movies is all well and good, but it just can't compare to the thrill of being in the same room with the orchestra and those voices. Yes it's very very long, and very very slow, but the music was beautiful enough to at least keep me awake for the whole five hours, even if my mind did wander. As for the performances, Deborah Voigt as Isolde was excellent (as usual) and Robert Dean Smith (I think that was his name) was a fine Tristan, even if his voice was at times totally drowned out by the lovely Voigt, or the orchestra. I don't think I need to see another production of the opera for another few years at least, but I'm definitely glad I went.
Thursday was a play called "Betrayed," that got excellent reviews from the critics, and was highly recommended by one of my uncles. That uncle is now on my list of people to never ever listen to show recommendations from ever again. It was agony to sit through. It was written by a journalist, and it was about the Iraqis who work for the Americans over there, and how poorly they're treated. There were I think two scenes that were well done and quite moving. But other than that, I was in pain. I think this is just a case of the playwright assuming the audience will inherently care about what happens because it's an important subject, so good craft need not apply. No denying the importance of the topic, but I don't need to sit there for close to two hours (no intermission) in a cramped seat, in a theatre with no air conditioning, and listen to these rather two-dimensional characters suffer. If I wanted to experience dry journalism, I would have read the article. If I'm going to invest two hours or more, I want well crafted, interesting drama. I felt similarly about "The Conscientious Objector" a few weeks ago - in that play the author assumed I cared about the relationship between President Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr during the Vietnam War. I was bored stiff (spent most of the first act staring at the abstract painting of an American flag on the back wall and looking for random pictures - one section, for example, looked like an evil bunny) and left that one at intermission.
Wednesday, was another political play (I usually try to avoid plays about politics because they do usually bore me, this was just an unhappy coincidence) - the second preview of "Something You Did." I went with two other people, and we all agreed it wasn't as bad as we were expecting (not sure if that's a compliment or not). While "Betrayed" was say 90% dry political rhetoric, this was only maybe 60%. The one scene wonder Adriane Lenox, who won a Tony for her ten minutes on stage in "Doubt," once again has exactly one scene to perform, and once again is makes a huge impact, being the highlight of the evening. This time instead of playing the mother of the unseen source of controversy (in "Doubt," that being a boy who may or may not have been molested by the priest), this time she's the daughter (of a man who was killed, and whose death may or may not have been the fault of an imprisoned political activist). Joanna Gleason gets the main role in the play - a woman who helped plant a bomb that killed a man, and who's been in prison for 30 years, and who is now up for parole. It may have been that it was only the second preview and she hadn't found the character yet, but I found her really rather unconvincing - I was never able to forget that I was watching Joanna Gleason playing a role - she just didn't lose herself in the part, and her character really didn't interest me until a somewhat moving monologue near the end. There are some other characters, two of which seem to be there just to recite dull political arguments. The play isn't awful, but it's not great either. Certainly not the worst play I saw that week, but I can't really say I liked it all that much. I guess it's a solid "okay."
And now I'm caught up and I can go turn my brain to mush by watching "Big Brother." Wee....
Tonight was "Drunken City," which basically amounted to a what felt like a 90 minute episode of some lousy sitcom. It's about three female friends who go and get drunk in the city (hence the title) in the name of a bachelorette party. The playwright (Adam Bock) throws in a metaphor about the city being alive (the stage would tilt back and forth when things would go wrong, and I'm assuming that that had something to do with the living breathing city) and then the metaphor was continued with something about a pet dragon - the city and dragon stuff was all spouted by the Asian character (dragon? Asian girl? ooh yeah), and there's even a random song about the dragon at the end. The play actually starts out on what I thought was a fun note, but I guess you could say when the stage tilted the second or third time, my interest began to lose balance and I became increasingly bored. At least this was better than Bock's last "play," "The Receptionist," then again I think watching a puppy chase his tail for an hour would have been more entertaining than that waste of time (that is assuming that the puppy finally catches his tail at the end of that play, otherwise I suppose it would have been equally pointless...).
Last night was the surprisingly entertaining Australian comic/pianist Tim Minchin. He wasn't necessarily the funniest act I've ever seen, but he's an awfully talented composer and pianist, and even if I didn't necessarily find all of his songs hilarious, I found I was entertained enough just watching and listening while not paying attention to the lyrics. And I did find most of the show funny, even if not every joke struck my fancy. You can look him up easily enough on Youtube to see if he strikes your comic fancy, but I have to say he was a highlight of this less than exciting week.
Then, Sunday and Friday were parts one and two of my "Why it's a mistake to see Roundabout shows early in their runs (even on comps) when one already has tickets to see them later in their run with one's subscription." I had already seen, and not particularly cared for "Crimes of the Heart" and "The 39 Steps," but I already had tickets to see them this weekend with my subscription, so I was forced to give both a second chance. The first time I saw "Crimes," one of the actresses was out (I think it was Sarah Paulson), so at least I got to see her this time. Didn't really care for it the first time, didn't really care for it the second. My parents confirmed that they too remember enjoying the production of the play we saw all those years ago at the Airport Playhouse, and that none of us could fathom why because the play was so dull in this production. My mother said she thought there was more humor in that production. I dunno - maybe it's a lousy production, maybe the play is just really dated - but why this show won the Pulitzer for drama is far beyond me.
I didn't dislike "The 39 Steps" quite as much the second time, though I chalk that up to sitting in the first row orchestra this time, which usually helps. I still didn't find the show at all funny, but the movie wasn't so fresh in my mind this time, so the story was entertaining enough to watch. And when a dummy fell off the stage and hit me near the end of the show, well... at least that was a totally random and unique amusement.
Saturday was the Met's cursed production of "Tristan und Isolde." I had seen the La Scala production of the opera at Symphony Space a month or two ago, and I have to say there's no comparison to seeing it live. Opera at the movies is all well and good, but it just can't compare to the thrill of being in the same room with the orchestra and those voices. Yes it's very very long, and very very slow, but the music was beautiful enough to at least keep me awake for the whole five hours, even if my mind did wander. As for the performances, Deborah Voigt as Isolde was excellent (as usual) and Robert Dean Smith (I think that was his name) was a fine Tristan, even if his voice was at times totally drowned out by the lovely Voigt, or the orchestra. I don't think I need to see another production of the opera for another few years at least, but I'm definitely glad I went.
Thursday was a play called "Betrayed," that got excellent reviews from the critics, and was highly recommended by one of my uncles. That uncle is now on my list of people to never ever listen to show recommendations from ever again. It was agony to sit through. It was written by a journalist, and it was about the Iraqis who work for the Americans over there, and how poorly they're treated. There were I think two scenes that were well done and quite moving. But other than that, I was in pain. I think this is just a case of the playwright assuming the audience will inherently care about what happens because it's an important subject, so good craft need not apply. No denying the importance of the topic, but I don't need to sit there for close to two hours (no intermission) in a cramped seat, in a theatre with no air conditioning, and listen to these rather two-dimensional characters suffer. If I wanted to experience dry journalism, I would have read the article. If I'm going to invest two hours or more, I want well crafted, interesting drama. I felt similarly about "The Conscientious Objector" a few weeks ago - in that play the author assumed I cared about the relationship between President Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr during the Vietnam War. I was bored stiff (spent most of the first act staring at the abstract painting of an American flag on the back wall and looking for random pictures - one section, for example, looked like an evil bunny) and left that one at intermission.
Wednesday, was another political play (I usually try to avoid plays about politics because they do usually bore me, this was just an unhappy coincidence) - the second preview of "Something You Did." I went with two other people, and we all agreed it wasn't as bad as we were expecting (not sure if that's a compliment or not). While "Betrayed" was say 90% dry political rhetoric, this was only maybe 60%. The one scene wonder Adriane Lenox, who won a Tony for her ten minutes on stage in "Doubt," once again has exactly one scene to perform, and once again is makes a huge impact, being the highlight of the evening. This time instead of playing the mother of the unseen source of controversy (in "Doubt," that being a boy who may or may not have been molested by the priest), this time she's the daughter (of a man who was killed, and whose death may or may not have been the fault of an imprisoned political activist). Joanna Gleason gets the main role in the play - a woman who helped plant a bomb that killed a man, and who's been in prison for 30 years, and who is now up for parole. It may have been that it was only the second preview and she hadn't found the character yet, but I found her really rather unconvincing - I was never able to forget that I was watching Joanna Gleason playing a role - she just didn't lose herself in the part, and her character really didn't interest me until a somewhat moving monologue near the end. There are some other characters, two of which seem to be there just to recite dull political arguments. The play isn't awful, but it's not great either. Certainly not the worst play I saw that week, but I can't really say I liked it all that much. I guess it's a solid "okay."
And now I'm caught up and I can go turn my brain to mush by watching "Big Brother." Wee....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)