Hair: Be-In for Marriage Equality

After spending a Saturday night at a friend's bachelorette party (in spite of not being a lady), I went to a benefit for marriage equality with performances from the current cast of Hair. This is not the first benefit I've been to for the cause (regardless of my own semi-ambivalence: we'll get there), but it was a particularly special one as it happened to be the first day that same-sex weddings were happening in New York.

So let's just get this out of the way: I'm supportive of gay marriage in a very basic, "If they can do it, we should be able to do it," kind of way. My actual ambivalence is really toward the institution of marriage which to me seems a bit hokey and dated. While I understand the benefits in practice, I don't know that I believe state-recognized partnerships are really the world's best way to handle things like visitation rights and shared finances. It's the easiest, most obvious way to go about it, yes. But it seems to me to deny the complicated nature of human relationships. Plus, let's be honest: when I found out that gay marriage was legalized, my first thoughts were titally selfish: Fuck, I'd have to buy more presents, go to more weddings, and feel more pressure to find "the one." Hey, at least I'm honest about it.

You know what cuts through some cynical and/or self-centered bullshit? Seeing two women in their 50s in matching outfits and "Just Married" sashes, holding hands and kissing each other over and over as they waited to get into the show. Seriously. It was like a knockout punch to my heart. I couldn't have been any happier for two complete strangers. Near the top of the show, the two women were recognized from the stage and congratulated. I'm gonna skip right ahead to the highlight of the show: Kacie Sheik got up and said she had written a song for her friend's wedding reception but chickened out and hadn't performed it there. Looking into the audience, she spotted the couple and said, "Well, I guess I'm kind of singing it at yours!" I felt like the Grinch with my heart swelliing to three times its size (see, there was an explanation for my opening image!). I'm obsessed with Sheik's voice. She's been trucking along in Hair for about three years now, and she's amazing in her fairly small part, but I can't wait to see her do something new.

None of this really addresses the performance overall which was quite fun. There was a hiccup with one other original song which the cast member (I really can't remember who it was--eeps!) tried to play her grating, Ani-esque song on the guitar and kept losing her place. Another hiccup with Nicholas Belton occasionally (yet adorably) losing the words to the song "Three is a Magic Number." Better off were Caren Lynn Tackett who ripped it up with a song SHE had written (so many multi-talented ladies!) and Allison Guinn who centered on a cover of "Dream On" that was shockingly good. Shocking only in that I didn't think ANYONE could cover that song. The show's leads were present to play guitar but allowed their lesser known castmates take the night's bows. But the night belonged to a pair of women who had flown in from California to get hitched. I may not be 100% supportive of marriage, but I could not have been any happier that those two COULD get married. So oh yes, there were tears.

Pilobolus

Dear reader, do not expect anything informed or intelligent to be said here. Most of my knowledge of the dance world comes from So You Think You Can Dance and repeated viewings of that contemporary classic, Center Stage. Which is not to say I wouldn't LIKE to know more about dance. I just don't. So buying tickets to see Pilobolus in repertory at the Joyce Theater was a random shot in the dark. First of all, it's about a ten block walk from my apartment. Second, there were seats for $10. And third, the ads were just really pretty.

In other words, I had no idea what to expect. What I got was a small dance troupe whose performances felt almost gymnastic. The opening piece, "The Particle Zoo," was a delight--the movement was dynamic, and while I didn't follow a throughline for the whole piece, I don't know that there was necessarily one I was SUPPOSED to follow. More or less, four men danced in rotating pairs while a fifth continually tried to insinuate himself into the action. Was I supposed to be reading messages about the intersection of male friendship and showmanship? I thought maybe I was. But I also felt like maybe I was forcing it and that, in fact, I was just supposed to calm the fuck down and enjoy what was happening. Which is what I did for the second number (number? piece?), "Pseudopodia," an incredibly brief solo performed mostly on the ground with a ton of tumbling, sliding, and crawling. It was incredibly beautiful and slightly disturbing. It felt incredibly personal and somehow almost...confrontational?

"Rushes" was pretty obviously a dream piece, and knowing it was supposed to be a bit surreal let me open up further and just take it all in. Two images stood out most: the first, a woman climbing a man's back and looking wholly dependent on him not only for support, but apparently for any ability to move, was rather haunting but also seemed to drive how just how much the company's dances (at least those that I saw) seemed to favor its male dancers. Beyond "Pseudopodia," every number seemed choreographed to highlight the strength and bulk of the male dancers. This isn't an attempt to suggest sexism--just an observation that stylistically, the female dancers weren't as well-served by the material.The second, in which the dozen or so chairs on stage were hurled back and forth to continue to create a path for a dancer walking along them to follow, was incredibly beautiful, and frankly could have gone on forever as far as I was concerned. A simple image that looked incredibly difficult to execute and was sweet, sad, and a bit haunting.

I was excited about "All Is Not Lost," because I love the fun OKGo! music videos and wondered what a collaboration with that band would result in. Answer: a music video. A movie screen dominated half the stage as the dancers performed on a glass platform stage right, filmed from below. It was like an incredibly entertaining explanation of how the video for "All Is Not Lost" was filmed. But it wasn't much more than that. Insubstantial, but fun.

And we closed with "Day Two," a dance about the second day of creation. Apparently in the company's repertory since 1980, it's easy to see why it has staying power--a dynamic, celebratory, propulsive collection of movement that ended with a curtain call performed on slip and slides! I don't have much to say about it, but frankly: what's not to love?

In the end, I walked out happy to have seen the group and interested in seeing more contemporary dance. All in all, that's a win!

Unnatural Acts

Since it's roughly the temperature of Hades outside, I've canceled my Friday plans, so it's as good a time as any to get (almost) caught up on posts.My original goal had been to never be more than two shows behind. Spring threw that out the window, but here I am back on track.

So let's talk about Unnatural Acts at the Classic Stage Company. A nonfiction play about a group of gay men at Harvard in the 1920s who were brought up against a secret court after the suicide of one gay student led to a witch hunt to ferret out the names and activities of the other gay students on campus, the play was sharply written, beautifully performed, and deeply moving.

Really, the whole thing was just really, really good. It begins with the discussion of Cyril's funeral. Ken Day is the heartthrob on the swim team who seems to have had a relationship with Cyril in the past. Eugene Cummings pines after Ken but doesn't ever reveal his feelings, even if his roommate, the flamboyant Edward Say, can see right through him. Say spends a ton of time with Ernest Roberts, a Senator's son who can get away with anything...and does. These four, among many others, periodically find themselves in Roberts' room, Perkins 28, which has become the center of Harvard gay life.

After Cyril's death, a letter is discovered (how? by who? all will be revealed) indicating that he was gay and that Ken Day was as well. Day is called in to see the powers that be for an interview that was unbearably uncomfortable to watch. "Have you had sexual relations with women? Have you had sexual relations with men? How often do you masturbate?" Overwhelmed and trying to hold onto his reputation as much as he can, Ken gives the court the names of other men he knows to be gay.

The show progresses showing people facing the notion of losing their futures, wrestling with throwing other people to the lions to save themselves, and most interestingly, with the idea that as vile as the court's actions were, their intentions though born of ignorance, were largely intended to protect young men from lives that would ruin them or lead them to actions like Cyril's. The strengths of the script are in never taking the easy way out and demonizing the "bad guys." They aren't presented in a terribly favorable light, of course, but they are allowed to be understood, especially by the time you discover how everything began. The show is also balanced by a solid balance of joy and pain. As dark as the material is, we're given enough moments of flirtation and frivolity to not only balance the mood, but also to show what is being lost.

The cast was crazy good. Especially high marks to Brad Koed as the mild-mannered Eugene whose sincerity and confusion were equally heartbreaking without being overplayed, Frank De Julio as aspiring actor Keith Smerage who is absurdly likeable until he turns in the most crushingly cruel scene, and Roe Hartrampf as the absurdly attractive, deeply conflicted Ken. Well...he played him as deeply conflicted. He just IS absurdly attractive.

Most surprising was that the last few minutes of the show involved a choreographed movement piece as one character delivered an imperative final speech. Even more surprising than he fact that this play went for an interprative dance finale? That it worked incredibly well.

It's a rare play that is both crushing AND entertaining. Though it's a lesser play (and that is not an insult), it reminded me a bit of Ruined in that way. All in all, it's just a really, really good show.

Company/Broadway Bares/Book of Mormon...Again!/Anything Goes (belatedly)

Here's a quick compendium post where I can cover a few things that I missed in order to make myself feel dutiful and as though I'm actually writing everything up...and to help me keep count, though by the looks of it, 100 shows in a year is going to be passed well ahead of schedule.

ANYhoo, let's start with something that only pseudo-belongs on here. Company at the NY Philharmonic with Neil Patrick Harris as Bobby. I had tickets to actually be there which I had purchased before consulting my calendar. I ended up being in LA for the weekend so had to settle for the filmed version, which I'm kind of okay with even though I enjoyed it. Listen, like just about everybody else, I love me some NPH. He should host every awards show ever, is fantastic on sitcoms, and seems hyper-intelligent and a little goofy. He just seems like great people. I saw him in Assassins a few years back, and his acting was spot on, but his singing was just a bit tenuous for my taste. I'm happy to say that his voice was more assured in Company, but coming just a couple years after Raul Esparza decimated this role on Broadway...I don't know how anyone could have topped it vocally. The acting was charming. He was an incredibly charming presence as the 30something single guy surrounded by married couples. His Bobby was much more confused and ambivalent while Esparza's was more embittered. It was a great take on the role, but...c'mon: just YouTube Raul singing "Being Alive." That shit can't be topped.

I had a number of problems with the Broadway production. The Joanne just wasn't as searing as I wanted her to be. In the hands of Patti LuPone, she wasn't just searing, she was broiling. I felt like I found shades in the character that I didn't know were there before. She's a bitter older alcoholic who craps all over her husband (not literally), but she was so precisely and thoughtfully played that I finally understood why her husband loved her and defended her. It was an exquisitely calibrated performance. Also a delight was Christina Hendricks as April, the dimwitted flight attendant. Hendricks isn't much of a singer, and she pitched her performance to full camp, but damned if I didn't eat it up. She played it as a farce, and it just popped like crazy. And she and Bobby had some serious chemistry. So...my other problem with the Broadway production was Marta. She gets the song "Another Hundred People, which...maybe my favorite Sondheim song? It's AMAZING. And it was destroyed by screeching. Actual screeching. Like owl in a woodchipper sounds. So I was so excited to see the clarion-voiced Anika Noni Rose in the role. But you know what? She kind of sucked. Her voice was a terrible match for the song, and her performance just felt completely random. Still, all in all, it's a renter if it comes out on DVD.

Let's move on to Broadway Bares. This'll be short. For anyone who doesn't know, this is basically a strip-a-thon to raise money for AIDS charities. Pretty people bumping and grinding away for about 90 minutes. There is literally nothing not to like about this. It's more playful than sexy, and a dozen or so plus-sized gals nearly tore the roof of with a striptease to "Big Girl, You Are Beautiful." Let's just say that it's not usually the ladies at this event that get the biggest applause. I've been to Bares only once before, and while this one had less big star power (although Judith Light gave the speech at the end), the one-liners were a ton more amusing, and the theme of masterpieces of art lent itself to a lot of fun, campy material. The big girls were, duh, a Ruben painting. Meanwhile, as for legit sex appeal, Josh Buscher was Washington Crossing the Delaware, and while I find him a little creepily buff, the kid just has confidence and swagger for days. He's sexy even in a white wig--that's impressive.

Another super-quicky: I saw Book of Mormon for the third time, and gurrrrrrl, the show actually just gets better on repeat viewings. So often, I feel like musicals have these super-fun first acts and then the second act gets bogged down in conflict resolution. Too many writers are just much better at setting up problems than they are at solving them. This show is so seamlessly written and directed. Its quieter moments are thoughtfully contained (the exquisite, and still amusing, "Sal Tlay Kacity"), and the plotting is just effortless. The cast hasn't lost a drop of energy, and repeated viewings have allowed me to focus more on the stupidly amazing ensemble. Whoever cast this show is a frigging genius.

Last of the recap, I offer Anything Goes which I gave some feedback about in my Tony nominations post. It's a fabulous production of a silly, silly show. A nightclub singer, some mobsters, an heiress, and an earnest boy in love all end up on a boat together. Hijinks ensue. That's actually everything you need to know about the plot. But the music! Cole Porter knew his way around a tune for sure, and the music is bubbly and joyful, just like the show.

Here's the problem: it's a terribly unpopular opinion. I know people love her. And hell, she won the damn Tony. I just...don't enjoy Sutton Foster. I know, I know! She's a pro, and she gives it her all, and she dances up a storm, and has a lovely voice and blah blah blah. I just find her too arch and too self-aware while at the same time never seeming to be able to blast through her good girl sheen. She just reads so flat to me, and she's playing Reno Sweeney, the super-sultry goodtime dame with a naughty side. I didn't buy it for a second. She's a committed stage actress and one of the brightest rising stars of musicals. I want to love her, but instead I amply respect her and admire her. Commence throwing tomatoes....NOW.

Zarkana by Cirque du Soleil

Walking into Radio City last Thursday, I was already starting to feel less than excited about seeing Cirque du Soleil's new show Zarkana. There were costumed performers all over the damn place singing, clowning, miming, and carrying around silly umbrellas. Let the great oversell begin.


I took my (admittedly excellent) seat and began to feel even less confident about my potential enjoyment as two clowns roamed the audience interacting with the audience and other performers posed for photo ops. I'm not against interactivity and scene-setting, but it just all felt so tacky and forced, just oversized and underwhelming, not to mention terribly familiar.


It didn't get a lot better from there.


First, let's talk about the big French Canadian elephant in the room--Cirque du Soleil can do a lot of things right. Constructing a narrative that feels coherent and cohesive is not among them. Which would be fine...if they didn't try. But here we have a magician named Zark who seems to think he's lost his powers even though he really hasn't, and then there's this lady he seems to love who...is a snake? For one song? But then a beautiful lady? In a box? When I've seen Cirque shows before they've been in languages I don't speak. That, it seems, has been to their benefit. Because the lyrics to the (terrible) songs here are in English and reveal only further how little anything makes actual sense.


There are two main singers. Ask me or the person I went with to identify who was worse, and we'd have different answers. For me, the lady just sort of disappeared into the background and Zark was full nails on a chalkboard. My friend felt the exact opposite. I think what can be deduced from this is mostly that they were both bad, but in different ways. Points for originality?


There is a lot of clowning in the show. It appeared that this was because the stage is very large, and this is not a troupe known to leave empty space when they can instead fill it with unnecessary nonsense. Which explains why what could have been a very exciting 60 minutes of circus acts was about two and a half hours of drudgery.


This isn't to say I didn't enjoy myself at all. The trapeze artists were amazing. There was a solo dance number (one person on stage ALONE!) that was probably the best moment of the night. For all of three minutes, he was allowed to do his thing, and it was extraordinary. There was also a ladder climbing/balancing act that...I'll just say that until I realized there were harnesses involved, I almost soiled myself.


Yes, an hour of death-defying stunts presented in a row, totally unbroken, would be numbing. But in a few tiny moments--a lone hula hooper crossing the stage, two organists pounding through a song intro--you could see how things could have been more exciting if the creators allowed their cast's talents to shine individually rather than throw a million and two things at the stage to see what would stick. I don't hate everything Cirque does. O, in Vegas, is truly beautiful, but that's because all of the many elements tend to actually work together. It's still overkill, but it's a balanced overkill. And their Beatles show, Love, also in Vegas, is similarly over-stuffed, but hey--the music actually sounds good. Lacking a single song you'd want to listen to or any sense of harmony on stage, Zarkana is the worst that Cirque has to offer, run amok all over Radio City. A pity. And a waste.

Hair

I've seen Hair a few more times than I'd like to admit. Let' start in 2007. I lined up with two friends at the Public Theater at about 6:00 in the morning to get tickets to the 40th anniversary concert in Central Park. It starred Jonathan Groff as a phlegmatic Claude (I've never seen a performer spit so much), Patina Miller, now in Sister Act, as a glorious Dionne, and Karen Olivo as a lispy Sheila. It was a thrill to hear the score live. I had listened to it probably a hundred times or more growing up and adored it. But for some reason, I left the park that night feeling this curious disconnect. What seeing it performed live for me really drove home was that these hippies didn't seem to actually seem to be motivated by peace and love but by narcissism and self-protection. Without a draft, I started to wonder, would there have been hippies? Further, when did I start getting so cynical?

Flash forward a year. Hair is back in the park as part of the Shakespeare in the Park season, and they've instituted a virtual lottery so you have a chance of winning tickets without waiting on line. Knowing the concert left me a bit cold, I was still more than happy to go back and see it just to hear the music. There was a new Sheila, who I still didn't like, but much the rest of the cast stayed the same. IT felt more staged than before though the set was simply a mound of grass and a psychedelic bandshell. It started to really win me over. Sure, I could question the narcissism of the characters and the enormity of their self-involvement, but with performances more deeply fleshed out, they felt like real people confronting something bigger than them, lost in a void and not knowing what to do. I ended up seeing it three times in the park, enjoying it more each time but not feeling quite as much in love as I expected to be--I kept going back because it was free, really.

Flash forward to 2009, and the production moved to the Hirschfeld theater. And it's at that moment that I tumbled head over heels for it. For me, it was as though the show needed a back wall to bounce off of. Out of doors, it had felt free flowing and sweet, but once it moved inside, for me, it galvanized the entire show and ramped up the energy across the board. Groff was replaced as Claude by Gavin Creel who I thought was wonderful. I worried that the new Dionne would pale in comparison to Patina Miller, but Sasha Allen brought a voice just as big and expressive. And there was yet another new Sheila...who I still didn't like. WTF was up with me and the actresses playing this part? Even though it was my fifth time seeing it (though the first I paid for it), I fell deeply, terribly in love with the show that first time in the theater and went on to see it mumblemumble times.

So then it closed and went on tour. I said my goodbyes. Then those bastards decided to bring the touring cast back to Broadway for the summer. Don't they know I'm not strong enough to resist?? So I went back and for the first time got to see it with an almost entirely new cast exempting Darius Nichols and Kacey Sheik who continue to deliver two of my favorite performances as Hud and Jeannie. That they're still as good as they are and seem to be having as much fun as they are is crazy to me since they've been doing these same parts off and on for four years now.

I was excited to see a new Berger because I always had some trouble with the fact that Will Swenson was about double the age of the character. While Steel Burkhardt performs the role admirably, I found that after all my bitching about how he was too old to play the role, I quite missed Will Swenson's outsize presence. His Berger was more obnoxious but also more charismatic. Burkhardt plays him a little more lost and desperate, which works very well, but I wanted to see a blending of the two--dark moments contrasted with higher highs. I was less excited to see a new Claude because I felt it was a role that had been done brilliantly and the bar was set too high. Then along comes Paris Remillard to tear the shit up delivering the best performance I've seen out of the four actors that I've seen in the role. He's the most sincere, the most believable, and dare I say even has the best voice of any of them. His Claude is achingly beautiful and earnest, the beating heart of the production as it now stands and its strongest performer. And what of Sheila? Do I just hate the part? As it turns out, no. I loved this Sheila which is confusing since it turns out she's the same one from the second summer. So what happened in the meantime that turned a performance I didn't enjoy at all into one I thought was wonderful? Well, it's been a while, but I think she's got better chemistry with this Berger, has become more in touch with the anxiety of the role, and simply perfected her big number, "Easy to Be Hard." It was the first time I've believed this character, and her disappointments became crushing. She just connected in lovely and wonderful ways.

So yeah, I'll go back. Again. Goddammit.

Silence!

A few months ago, I saw the Black Swan parody SWAN!!! and fell deeply, terribly in love with it. Super-silly film parodies are a guilty pleasure of mine, and each year's Fringe Festival can be counted on for at least a small handful. Last year, I caught a super clever one called Jurassic Parq, the lines of which still occasionally get stuck in my head. "Velociraptor in a cage; velociraptor full of rage." They work best, of course, when you've seen the movie. The first one I ever saw, about five years ago, was Silence!, the Silence of the Lambs musical. Happily, it's back for a short run this summer with most of the original cast intact including, most importantly, Jenn Harris as Clarice Starling. The same actress played Nina in SWAN!!!, and frankly should probably be in charge of every parody performance ever. Nailing Jodie Foster's strange West Virginia accent from the movie, making explicit the lesbian undertones with a fellow classmate, and delivering a perfect send-up of the lights out hunt near the end of the movie (with stage lights fully blazing), she has perfect comic timing, a natural knack for mimicry, and the deepest level of commitment. If the world were more fair, she'd be a star.

So listen, I did love this, but I won't lie: it's not the freshest of parodies (the movie is 20 years old), and no one involved seems against going for the easiest and most obvious jokes. But there are flashes of incredible wit and the entire cast is gifted enough to make even the lesser scenes shine. Jeff Hiller is probably one of the best character actors around, and even without a major part leaves a lasting impression. I'm still bummed he didn't get a Tony nod for Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. And while Brent Barrett may lack the level of smarmy charm that Anthony Hopkins brought to the role of Hannibal Lecter, he's clearly having a blast on stage, especially during his deeply wonderful solo, "If I Could Smell Her Cunt," accompanied by a dream ballet in which dream Lecter ends up with dream Clarice's naughty bits especially close to his face rather often.

What else is there to say? The chorus of lambs (yup) is delightful, Buffalo Bill gets my favorite number, "It Puts the Fucking Lotion in the Basket," and while it may not be as exciting as it was a few years ago since so many similar shows have come along in the meantime, it's a damn fine way to spend two hours.

4000 Miles

Oh, dear individual reader. I've treated you so badly for so long. No updates from me in weeks. How will I ever get to a hundred shows? Easy--I only have two weeks of vacation a year, and this lapse covered my days off until Christmas. Bring on the plays!

How did I choose to re-enter my theatergoing? With Amy Herzog's play 4000 Miles at the Duke Theater, part of Lincoln Center's LCT3 series of $20 shows. And how was it? Fucking fantastic.

The last Lincoln Center show I saw was War Horse, and I blogged about how I really didn't like it, but I posited that some of that may have had to do with the fact that I was crazy tired and under the weather when I saw it. But I hit 4000 Miles while in the throes of terrible jetlag, almost fell asleep before the show even started, and then was completely and totally riveted for the duration.

4000 Miles (I so badly want to add a comma to the number) is about an early 20something who arrives at his nonagenarian grandmother's apartment in New York having just biked across the country. Things we know: no one has known where he was for awhile, he has no desire to let his mother know where he is now, and his girlfriend is at Columbia U and turned him away. Hence his unexpected arrival on grandma Vera's doorstep.

What's so magical about the play is that it unfolds so realistically. We keep learning more and more about what has led the 21-year-old Leo to where is is right now, but none of the writing actually feels expository. Okay, almost none. There's a late-in-the-play monologue that lands with a deafening clunk not only because it's just a hunk of explanation awkwardly dropped in, but also because some of the information in it is laughably forced. It's a comically terrible monologue in a play that is otherwise fantastic. I'll forgive it.

Dropping by Vera's apartment over the course of the single act show are Leo's girlfriend Beck, the gorgeously honest and sincere Zoe Winters, and Greta Lee as potential one-night stand Amanda. Lee's character could be a cliched, one-note comic part, but the writing is so precisely observed, and Lee deftly blends the quirky and the sincere. It's a tour-de-force performance in one drunken scene.

But the heart of the play is Mary Louise Wilson's Vera. Frankly, it's a testament to the young cast that they even register on the stage with Wilson who is just unbelievably good. Vera is fiercely intelligent and understanding, but at 91, her faculties are diminishing. Her new limitations and her frustrations about them factor in significantly, but the play never gets mawkish about her aging. Because while she may be on her way out, we never lose sight of how sharp she is. And yet, at the same time, we're not asked to look at her as an old woman who knows it all just because she's survived a long time. She is prickly but warm, independent but loving. And while she's sharply critical...actually, no, she's just plain sharply critical, but that leads to some of the most amusing moments in the play.

The entire enterprise seems like the kind of show destined to drop into cliched observations, which makes it only the more impressive that it's so carefully calibrated and carefully constructed. There's a rumor that it's going to get a wider off-Broadway production later this year. I hope it's true. But man, Herzog really, really needs to rewrite that monologue.