I'm a self-professed theater geek who usually sees over 100 performances a year. This is where I'll get to share my reactions, work out my thoughts, and catalogue everything I see this year.
Let's be honest: if there's one notable thing about the musical Lysistrata Jones, it's Liz Mikel's right breast. In a metal bra covered in a half toga, her enormous cleavage spends the entire show upstaging the rest of the cast and threatening to bust out of its constraints. There were definitely moments when I was waiting for the bra to bust. I just kept thinking, "The center cannot hold." Her breasts also are the focus of the best sight gag of the entire show.
But what's it really saying when you spend roughly 90% of a show thinking about a supporting actor's boobs, even when she's not on stage? Nothing good, I'm afraid.
Lysistrata Jones awkwardly attempts to update the Greek classic to a modern college campus where instead of Trojan women withholding sex to end a war, cheerleaders hold it back in order to convince their boyfriends to win a basketball game. It's a concept I found very cute...until the show started. And it almost immediately became clear that the musical was going to sink under its own efforts at cuteness and curiously dated comedy. Every joke lands like it's 1997, especially the curiously dated dialect. One wouldn't be surprised if a Spice Girls joke suddenly popped up.
The cast does well with what they have, but they're not working with a ton. The Transport Group again decides to do an "environmental" staging. For Hello Again, that meant sitting around tables that the cast cavorted on. Here, we get to sit on folding chairs in a basement gym and the cast performs on a basketball court. What does this add to the show? Absolutely nothing. But the chairs are super-uncomfortable, and the score is amplified to maximum distortion for all 100 or so people in the small playing space.
Listen, I wasn't going to like this show no matter what. Cute moments are sabotaged by an awkward book that tries too hard to be funny and not nearly hard enough to make any actual sense. But what could have been harmless was drained of any joy by a terribky conceived production .
I loved Hello Again and felt like the unusual staging added quite a bit to the experience, even if it made for some awkward angles and strange sound issues. This was less awkward but all the more disappointing because it added literally nothing. The show just felt...cheap. Win some, lose some. This is infinitely skippable.
As opposed to the last entry, Knickerbocker, of which the less said, the better, I'm overwhelmed even thinking of how to capture or discuss the new musical The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World, one of the weirdest, boldest, most fascinating things I've seen done in about...ever.
The Shaggs are the world's most interesting band. Three sisters who were taken out of school and forced to start a rock band because their grandmother had a psychic vision they'd be a famous band, they eventually recorded one (and only one) album. Part of me wants to say that's because they had no discernible talent. And certainly, if you choose any five seconds of one of their songs to listen to, it's a credible theory. What makes it so much more interesting though, is that if you keep listening (which I admit is a challenge), you start to hear a method to the madness. And it does seem to be madness. The lyrics are juvenile to an extent that is discomfiting given that the sisters were in their teens and not, say, four. Meanwhile, one of the three musicians will be pounding away at a single note for the entire song. Somewhere in the mix, the lyrics will start to overlap with such discord that it sounds like it has to be intentional. If it is, though....why? Okay, there's no way to describe this accurately. Just take a listen to the first Shaggs song I ever heard, "My Pal Foot Foot." I dare you.
The show take a bit of license with their backstory, but only the slightest bit. We still have a father motivated by the grandmother's psychic prediction, but the how and why is tinkered with (for entirely sound reasons).
Here's the thing about the musical: it's as weird as The Shaggs themselves. There is a creative team involved that clearly allowed themselves to go balls to the wall in any way they wanted to, most notably with the choreography which often has the sisters dancing like spastic rejects from the set of the "Thriller" video. The sets all feel like they could have been created out of a rec room. And the music, while certainly a lot more traditionally ear pleasing than the album that led to the show's creation, aren't at all afraid to push the boundaries of silliness, sincerity, or emotional akwardness.
But what's most fascinating here is that the story of these three sisters plays out in a way that feels as discordant and atonal as the music of The Shaggs themselves. While one could argue that it's simply messy, it's ultimately far too successful and thoughtful to have come together as it has by chance.
Oldest sister Dot is the biggest enigma. Played by Jamey Hood who is all big eyes and awkward line deliveries, she seems to at once be the force holding the family together and the most disturbed member of it (which is saying something). Youngest sister Helen is played by Emily Walton in a hugely expressive performance somehow not hindered by the fact that Helen one day just stops talking. Middle sister Betty is the most identifiable and is given the most naturalistic performance by Sarah Sokolovic whose discomfort within the family mixed with her protectiveness of her sisters and her desire to get out of their small town drive much of the action and are offered to the audience as a sort of rope to hold onto as the madness spins around and through the family at large.
Peter Friedman, who I loved so much in Ragtime and Circle Mirror Transformation, is the volatile father whose single-minded drive is terrifying but who we don't necessarily get to see as a force of good or bad until the end of the show, in a moment of reflection. Which felt like a bit of cheap writing at first until I considered how the sisters' perceptions of him would have been so easily hidden beforehand for each other's sakes.
Annie Golden plays the mother who for the most part is a doormat but who delivers the most stunning song of the night, "Flyin'" and completely blew me away. I've listened to her on the original cast recording of Assassins so many times, and while I've seen her before, this was the first I heard her sing live. She is amazing. Actually amazing.
I also loved Cory Michael Smith as Helen's love interest Kyle. Yeah--Helen. The mute. She's the one with the love interest. And it didn't make me cringe. Because that's the thing about this show. It's all so intensely strange, but every piece works so fully within the greater context.
I know that there will be people who HATE this show. There were definitely points throughout where it felt unclear whether or not I should be laughing or cringing or just simply observing. But when I got to the end, I respected the hell out of it. And it's been about a week, but I cannot stop thinking about it. The show has all the trappings of a natural born cult hit. It's aggressive and strange and will invite an incredibly wide range of responses. Who knows? Maybe down the line I'll look back and realize that my convictions about the show were a case of the emperor's new clothes. But I don't think so. Right now, I'm convinced it's sneakily brilliant even as it ignores convention, drops in and out of cliches, and seriously has the most unsettling choreography I've ever seen. I loved it. And I'll likely go back.
My, how I've fallen behind. Not for any good reason other than the fact that the next show I have to talk about was such a big fat waste of time, such a colossal suck of energy, and such a failure at providing anything of artistic merit or entertainment value that the act of writing about it feels like a waste. I try to find the good in things even when I don't like them, but let's just get this over with in a short post. Knickerbocker sucks.
Set at the Knickerbocker Grill on University Place, just down the street from where I work every day, the show is a series of two-person conversations in which pretentious schlub Jerry talks about whether or not he's ready for fatherhood. You literally watch two people in a booth for 90 minutes. Every scene change requires the change of one actor. Jerry is a constant. And a constant annoyance. Is there anything less interesting than watching one whiny middle-aged man come to terms with the fact that his universe is about to expand? Is there anyone more annoying to watch than a self-involved tool who ironically drinks Shirley Temples (why is there never food ordered?!) who doesn't listen to what anyone says and can't see anything past his own navel?
And can I mention that every single shred of dialogue feels like it was written and rewritten by the staff behind Dawson's Creek with the dial turned up to maximum forced wit? None of it felt remotely realistic. Not a single moment was believable. If there had been an intermission, I would have left. This whole show reeked of autobiographical self-indulgence, so by the end of the show, I didn't dislike the characters, none of whom were convincing. I disliked the playwright. This was the most infuriating evening I've spent at the theater this year. It was even worse than Mandy Patinkin in bed with an Anne Frank puppet. At least that failed in spectacular ways. Knickerbocker doesn't explode into terribleness. It just swallows itself into a black hole of suck.
If I were putting together a list of the best original plays I'd ever seen, Lynn Nottage's Ruined would definitely make an appearance. It was an exquisite, painful, but ultimately hopeful interpretation of Mother Courage set during civil war in Congo and dealt with female genital mutilation, the physical and emotional cost of war, and the desperate attempts of one woman to stay safe by rejecting either side of the fighting. It was gut-wrenching stuff, rooted in interviews Nottage did throughout the Congo with people who had suffered through the sorts of things she was writing about.
In other words, I'm damn glad she took a break from dark drama for her follow-up to write the delightful (though still serious, sharply intelligent) comedy By the Way, Meet Vera Stark. I hope this writing experience allowed her a little more breathing room and a lot more fun. The results certainly indicate that's the case.
In the 1930's, Vera Stark is a maid to actress Gloria Mitchell, helping her rehearse for a part as an octoroon in an epic new film. Vera hopes Gloria will help her get a role in the movie as the maid Tillie who has actual lines and a chance to really perform. As her friend Lottie (the pitch perfect, scene-stealing Kimberly Hebert Gregory) can attest, most roles for black actors just call for cotton picking, woe-is-me line readings, and Negro spirituals. Act I is Vera's attempt to get the part. I was wholly unprepared for the shift in Act II which led us to a contemporary academic conference on the affects and meaning of Vera's career and an investigation of her last interview--which is played on stage in front of us--to promote a Vegas concert appearance, just before she disappeared from the public eye.
This is a crafty, sly show. It presents us with the history, then shows us two sets of characters-those present, and those looking in from the outside--trying to deconstruct what it all meant. Ultimately, it is a criticism of academics (Gregory again, in a second role, beams), an account of the toll taken on trailblazers, and a celebration of (and apology to) those who lead the way.
At first, I was disappointed with where Act II was going. I loved being with the characters of Act I so much that I wanted to keep watching them. You're lulled into expecting a very traditional play, so when the rug is pulled out, there's a touch of disappointment. At least, there was for me. But Nottage is an exceptional writer, and it quickly becomes clear that she's taking us where she is for a reason, and the play is more interesting, more unique, and just plain richer for it.
If I have a criticism of the show, it's about the direction: there's a whole lot of mugging going on. Even melodramatic actresses probably aren't quite as melodramatic as Gloria. And Vera in the first act doesn't quite pop as much as I wish she did. In fairness, Sanaa Lathan bites into the older, more bitter Vera with abandon, so any questions I had about her performance in the first act shifted from wondering how good of an actress she was to wondering why she wasn't directed to be as sincere and precise as she was in the second. Daniel Breaker is wonderful as a chauffeur and a professor. Karen Olivo is passable as an aspiring actress in the first act but delightful as an angry feminist in the second. Really, though...any time Gregory takes center stage, she is inspired, hysterical, and...god, she's just amazing. Trust me.
But the criticisms are quibbles. The writing is so strong that the show doesn't need to be played over the top. Regardless, I really enjoyed the whole thing. And whatever Nottage does next, I'll get tickets. Based on just a few shows I've seen by her, she appears to be one of the best, most vital writers working here right now.
When I saw Nina Arianda in David Ives' Venus in Fur last year at the Classic Stage Company, I was convinced it was one of the best performances I had ever seen. Crazy, then, that it was also her first major production. If there is such a thing in the theater anymore, it felt like a star-making performance. With her striking features, biting humor, and capacity for stunning (but controlled) rage, she tore the stage up. You can throw any cliched adjective at the performance she gave: breathtaking, incandescent, stunning... Basically, she was fucking brilliant, and I couldn't rip my eyes away from her. So when she was announced for the lead in Broadway's Born Yesterday, I was super excited. Someone had noticed her and was giving her a lead even though her only significant credit was an off-Broadway limited run. Happily, I can say that she beams from the stage in Born Yesterday in another fabulous performance. Unhappily...the rest of the show is dated, flat, and poorly performed.
Let's start with the problem of Jim Belushi. As a rich jackass trying to buy his way into politics, there is no line or action that he doesn't over-deliver. Yes, Harry is supposed to be loud and abrasive. But loud and abrasive people still have a variety of volumes and temperaments in their wheelhouse. Belushi cranks the dial to 11 and oversells everything aggressively. It's bad enough that people had to watch this kind of terrible performance when I was in theater in high school hamming things up and shouting my lines. But for this to be what's being delivered to theatergoers paying real money is shameful.
Robert Sean Leonard, as the civilized writer down the hall in Harry's hotel does a much better job of creating a character. He is quite believable as a resentful yet sophisticated man who hates everything Harry stands for. Leonard's problem, though, is that he doesn't seem to have been informed that he's in a comedy. Certainly not that he's in the sort of comedy that doesn't benefit from emotional truth. This is pretty slapsticky stuff, and it demands a lot more mugging that he's prepared to give. He's giving the flipside of Belushi's performance. One is so loud you want him to disappear. The other is so quiet, he threatens to do just that.
Only Arianda strikes a balance. As Harry's dimwitted girlfriend Billie, she has a high-pitched New Yawk accent and is fiercely ditzy--seeming to have chosen idiocy as a protective measure against a cruel world. She's heartbreaking when you really think about where she is in her life, but you never lose sight of the fact that she's still, on the surface, totally hysterical.
Born Yesterday was probably a lot fizzier and more charming 60 years ago when seeing a woman get beaten was probably slightly less shocking. That scene, along with a handful of others, is so deeply throwing, not because they're difficult to watch (or not JUST because), but because they seem deeply, uncomfortably out of place tonally.
In the end, as much as I appreciated seeing a remarkable performance, the show itself and the rest of the performances sank this totally. I'll still see Arianda in whatever she does next. I just hope it's much, much better than this.
There are actually a number of surprising things about Sister Act--some good, some less so. It's not like it's based on the best movie in the world, but I have to admit that I do love it, especially the silly but endearing numbers changing old Motown songs into Christian anthems. "My Girl" into "My God" is a genius piece of musical fluff. So perhaps the biggest surprise of the show is that none of the numbers from the movie are replicated. Every song in the show is a new composition. And while I feel like it should be heartening that the musical isn't simply a recreation of the movie on stage, I actually find it a bit baffling that the best and most theatrical bits didn't make it onto the stage.
It's a happier surprise that the show isn't star cast. In the lead role of Delores is Patina Miller making her Broadway debut. I saw he a few years ago in Shakespeare in the Park's Hair, belting out "Aquarius" and "Let the Sunshine In," and she's got a booming, beautiful voice. It's lovely to see her get such a huge role so early in her career. That said, I kept waiting for her to have a big, belty number to really sink her teeth into, and it never arrived. At a certain point, she's talking about her murderous ex, Curtis, and all I could think of was the exchange, "Curtis was supposed to..." "Love me. Curtis was supposed to love me," which kicks of Dreamgirls' "And I'm Telling You." It's not necessarily a great sign when you're thinking how good someone would be in a different show than the one you're watching. But I sure would love to hear her rip into that number.
Further surprises: that the show has been set in the 70s, giving male supporting characters the chance to to bust out their best Bee-Gees falsettos. That instead of moving Delores across the country to put her in witness protection, she's now kept in the same town , making her appallingly easy to find and all of the characters look like idiots. That anyone thought the finale, featuring more sequins than Liberace's closet, was anything other than an assault on the eyes. And when I, of all people, think you overdid the sequins? BAD SIGN.
But the final surprise is that in the end, even with all of the missteps, the show is still sweetly entertaining, often laugh out loud funny, and (though thin and dopey) still a totally entertaining evening. The one-liners are groan-inducing, the sets are deeply unattractive, and the music largely unmemorable, but at the same time, through sheer force of will by the fantastic ensemble, you are pretty much required to crack a smile and have fun. Maybe because this season featured a couple of truly terrible shows, I'm grading on a curve. Maybe because the show just tries so hard when it could have just replicated the movie and been done with it. Or maybe just because the casting is, to a person, perfect. Whatever the reason, I walked out with a smile on my face and goodwill toward the show.
Also, I can't not mention two performances. Sarah Bolt, in the Kathy Najimy role, cracked my shit up as did Demond Green as Curtis's cousin TJ. Neither is a huge role, but they are both comic perfection. In the midst of a lot of talented actors, no one rivaled these two for comic timing or sheer brightness of personalit
I feel like my opinions about shows tend to be borne out by critical consensus rather often, but from time to time, I really enjoy something that ends up critically loathed (see The People in the Picture) or revile something that the critics adore (see War Horse, or better yet—don’t). As far as Lincoln Center Theater goes, I feel like I’ve been disagreeing with the critics more often than not for the past year or two. As I said, War Horse wasn’t my cup of tea, and I wasn’t overly fond of Other Desert Cities either, in spite of its wonderful performances. Last year, I adored When the Rain Stops Falling, but critics were largely dismissive. So when I say that I was very charmed by the new musical A Minister’s Wife, I feared that I was damning it to a critical lambasting. Pleasantly enough, it got a few very solid reviews. But I checked some message boards, and people on those HATED it.
The show is a musicalization of Shaw’s play Candida. Did that play call out for a musical treatment? No. Does the musical make the case that it was, in fact, necessary? Well…also no. But while it’s rather slender and slight, the show is also a confectionary delight. Light, sweet, and sure, a little flaky.
A minister’s wife comes home after a few weeks away in the company of a young poet. The minister is terribly upright. The poet is not. Played by Bobby Steggert, young Eugene Marchbanks is hopefully in love with the minister's wife Candida. Steggert is stupidly adorable and enormously convincing as a petulant young romantic. He is endlessly bratty but well-intentioned, happy to call people out on what he sees as their weaknesses, not JUST to be a bitch, but because he believes that honesty and love are sacrosanct. This involves putting the minister's assistant Prossie on the spot about her hidden feelings for her boss and ultimately convincing the minister that they should allow Candida the choice between them. Of course, neither of them ever actually bothers to mention to her that they're fighting for her love.
The five person cast is flawless. Steggert and the incredibly charming Liz Baltes as Prossie are stand-outs. Baltes I've never seen before but would love to see in more. Steggert I've seen three or four times, and I think he's now in the small group of actors that I would go out of my way to see in anything.
For a musical, this isn't so much "song" based as it is a play with music weaving in and out. The characters sing often, but the transitions into and out of song are quite fluid. There are only three musicians (seen through a scrim), but with carefully deployed notes, their impact registers fully. A plucked chord here, a moment of underscoring there, everything contributes to celebrating the lyrical qualities of much of Shaw's original language (I think--it's been awhile since I read the play).
It's a slight show--it hasn't been so thoroughly updated that it has all that much new to say about love than was said just as well by the original play. But that's hardly faint praise given the source. So while I wouldn't call it strictly necessary, it is one of the most charming things I've seen in some time.
Every so often, I go into "theme" mode with what I'm reading and every book I pick up is about the same subject. Usually, the more depressing the topic, the more likely I'll get caught up. I once spent four months only reading novels set during West African civil wars. Another time, I dedicated myself to reading AIDS literature of the mid-80s: Paul Monette's memoirs, And the Band Played On, Queer and Loathing, the essays of Andrew Holleran...really upbeat stuff. But I had never read Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. I had read (and loved) his scabrous novel Faggots, and knew stories of the play's original run at the Public, when the original leading man died of the disease a few months into the run, the walls of the theater were updated with the names of those who passed away, and the production went on to break records and became the theater's longest running show ever. I just hadn't actually read it, and for some reason, I anticipated that it would end up being a bit of a museum piece--political theater of a particular time that didn't hold up except as a document of a moment.
Last year, I was lucky enough to catch the reading that the current Broadway production of the show is based on. I won't lie. Part of what drew me in was the cast: Glenn Close, Jack McBrayer, and Patrick Wilson among them. But the two best things that came out of the night for me were how wonderful actor turned director Joe Mantello was in the central role of Ned Weeks, and how fantastic the play actually is. It was scarily prescient given when it was written, but it also holds up as a deeply moving snapshot of a community in crisis. It's shot through with humor, but its vitality comes from the enormity of rage at its core.
The play is, lets be real, completely autobiographical. Ned Weeks is Larry Kramer, founder of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, notorious loudmouth and asshole. And in a lot of ways, the play is his way of showing that he was right all along while simultaneously serving as a mea culpa for his less than stellar behavior. What makes it hold up is Kramer's ability to paint all of the characters around him with compassion and understanding, getting just enough distance to give every character around his space to breathe and enough saving grace not to wallow in their bad judgments.
From reading to full production, all but two cast members changed. It's not a slight to those in the reading that they are (with one exception) outshone by the current cast. After all, in the first go-around there was about a week to prepare and everyone was on script. Now in a fully realized, though still spare, production the action feels more immediate, more real, and even more moving. Jim Parsons is phenomenal as Teddy Boatwright, Southern gentleman, flirt, cad, and compassionate caregiver. He gets most of the show's lighter moments but never loses sight of the stakes around him. It was crushing to read a letter Kramer distributed after the show and learn that the real Tommy had killed himself. Joe Mantello is perfection as Ned Weeks. Along with Mark Rylance and Al Pacino, he is one of three actors this season who gave performances that are among the best I've ever seen. In Mantello's hands, Ned is a dragon, but a compassionate one--full of rage borne only out of love, unable to contain himself because of the wrongs he sees done even as his actions ruin his own life. This man who could be seen as a pretentious blowhard is portrayed with deep humanity that allows us to see him (and by proxy his creator, Kramer) for the truly heroic souls they are. As his lover, John Benjamin Hickey is so charming and so thoughtful and so romantic that his eventual illness (this is not really a spoiler--it's an AIDS play) is all the more heartbreaking.
Only Lee Pace seems out of place. As Bruce, the more charismatic, attractive, sensible co-founder of the GMHC, he seems stranded amidst greater talents and can't quite rise to the occasion. His monologue in the second act was delivered astoundingly by Patrick Wilson in the reading. Pace's speech felt hollow, tried on, and just...less real. What should be the first significant gut-punch of the night doesn't hurt as much as it should, and that's a shame.
That aside, this is a thrilling night out, if you can count as thrilling something that ends with an entire auditorium audibly sniffling and red eyes all around. That letter from Kramer which is handed out on your way out of the theater is a depressing testament to just how current the show really still is, but also to the fact that the old blowhard just won't give up. Bless him. If you see the show and get the letter, I recommend you wait until you're alone to read it. I was a wreck after reading it. The man has a way with words, and his play, perhaps his greatest achievement, is living proof.
born bad has no business being as good as it is. It’s a 55 minute play with highly stylized language and action in which no one really says much of anything. Six members of a family stand around a bunch of starkly lit chairs saying cryptic things for just under an hour. Five minutes in, clueless as to where anything was going, I was prepared to write it off as some wannabe Beckett nonsense with nothing to say but a whole lot of pretentious ways to say it.
And then, curiously, the pieces started to come together. The characters, I realized, weren’t talking about vague somethings; they were talking about one very specific something. Their vagueness, and how the author treated it, all related to this family’s inability to confront their secrets, whether the nearly silent father who remains uninvolved, the coolly distant mother who wants not to believe what is being said, or even the barreling force of nature Dawta, demanding to be heard, but still afraid to give voice to the specifics of what she is talking about.
As it turns out, born bad tells a story that has been told many times before. But in its presentation and its refusal to spell things out in any literal way, it finds a creeping, disturbing, beautiful, and heartbreaking way of not only dealing with the events of this one family’s past, but confronting the myriad ways in which they’ve failed to communicate with each other about them.
Thank the gods the play isn’t any longer than it is because by the end, I was deeply, wonderfully upset and moved. It’s a gutpunch of a play, but in the best, most transformative way.
The cast is Re. Dic. You. Luss. Heather Alicia Simms is the picture of righteous rage as Dawta. Quincy Tyler Bernstine who was amazing in Ruined is no less so here, balancing the most humorous character of the piece ever so carefully on the edge of this deeply tragic show. LeRoy James McLain is smashingly sweet and sincere; Crystal Dickinson is a revelation as the sister you desperately want to slap, and Elain Graham and Michael Rogers in the rather small roles of the parents, are nauseating villains all too easy to believe in.
It’s an incredible show that, like Black Watch the week before, left me shaken.
