Rixosous

Easter Mysteries (Theatre at St. Clements, March 2013)

I'm getting a bit of religious whiplash this week.  Tuesday evening I attended the last part of a Passover seder notable for its cheerful feel and silly moments ("let me go kasher the scimitar!"), and for the rest of the week I am house manager for Easter Mysteries, billed as "a contemporary oratorio about death and resurrection" being presented by St. Clement's, New York's famous theatre-church, as a benefit for its food pantry.  "Contemporary oratorio" means that this is a semi-staged musical passion play accompanied by piano and cello.  I don't have a lot of experience with passion plays (other than Sarah Ruehl's take on the subject) and am not emotionally involved in it on a religious basis, but this is quite a good little production of a very powerful story.

The composer/librettist/lyricist is John O'Boyle, whose contemporary take on the story of Jesus's last days in Jerusalem, death, and resurrection is sung and acted by an accomplished twenty-two-member ensemble (led by Kyle Scatliffe (Jesus), Elizabeth DeRosa (Mary Magdalene), and Danny Rothman (Peter).  Scatliffe is a gentle, otherworldly presence as Jesus, and DeRosa and Rothman ably portray the conflict between Jesus' male and female followers, Mary's combined faith and frustration, and Peter's self-doubt and insecurity.

The production begins with a triumphant sung entrance into Jerusalem and a seder (the Last Supper), where the disciples are wonderfully humanized as uncertain young activists.  It proceeds quickly through the familiar tale of Judas' betrayal at Gethsemane, Peter's denials, Jesus' trial, and the crucifixion.  Notable character turns include Paul Louis Lessard's slyly swishy, scene-stealing Herod in the wonderful trio "Wash My Hands" and Jason Veasy as a dignified Roman Centurion, who quietly but powerfully delivers a hideously detailed description of death by crucifixion.

After intermission, as the disciples begin to fall apart, Mary and her companions Joanna and Miriam (Trista Dollison and Mary Jo Mecca) come into their own as the first to visit Jesus' tomb and report the news of the resurrection in two more notable trios, "Nearly Day" and the marvelous "Voices".  Michael Deleget (Cleopas) and Hansel Tan (Simon) also get a spectacular duet as they describe their meeting with the risen Jesus in "On the Road to Emmaus", and the entire ensemble powers the joyous "Good News". 

Costuming is minimal (concert black), the bare-bones staging consists of two risers, and the oratorio is performed with binders of music and scripts in hand, but the cast succeeds in delivering quite a bit of nuance.  DeRosa's Mary is particularly poignant as she is repeatedly  dismissed by Peter, whose own imperfection and how it fuels his resentment and jealousy of Mary and her relationship with Jesus are beautifully conveyed by Rothman.

The production is directed by Dan Wackerman with musical direction by Milton Granger and is being presented for only three performances this week (Wednesday being past, that leaves this evening's performance and tomorrow's matinee).  I would recommend it to anyone interested in a contemporary take on the Easter story.

Tickets are available through St. Clement's; use discount code EM20 for a special rate.

I hope this becomes an annual tradition at St. Clement's.

Earnest on Broadway!

Brian Bedford's production of The Importance of Being Earnest is playing on Broadway!  This is an excellent production which I saw at Stratford eighteen months ago and shared my thoughts on then.  Bedford directs as well playing Lady Bracknell.  The latter is not as unusual as it sounds -- the role has been played by male actors enough to make it something of a tradition.  And this is not a drag portrayal; he's simply playing the part with his usual perfect comic timing.

Of the rest of the supporting cast, it looks like only Sara Topham (Gwendolyn Fairfax) made the transfer.  But the Desmond Heeley sets and costumes (complete with Lady Bracknell's astonishing collection of hats) appear to have come along.

I highly, highly recommend this production.  Bedford is a superb director of this sort of farcical drawing room comedy, and his Lady Bracknell is one for the ages. 

If you can't possibly make the show, here's a video sample courtesy of The New York Times.

Evita (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 8/4/10)

I planned the second phase of my Stratford visit as a three-part nostalgia tour of shows I saw as a child or teenager.  The first of these was Evita.  (Left: Chilina Kennedy in the title role with Juan Chioran in the background; click images to enlarge.)

My first Evita was the original Broadway production, with Mandy Patinkin singing the role of Che, when I was around twelve or thirteen.  I loved the show, bought the LP -- yes, an actual record, and I probably still have it -- and listened to it until I'd memorized the entire first act.  (I learned that whole opening Latin prayer-song phonetically without having the faintest idea what it meant.)  I developed a crush on Patinkin-as-Che, the memory of which was enough to lure me to a somewhat dubious production of The Tempest a couple of years ago just for the chance to hear that voice in person again.

This sort of intense teenage imprinting on a particular production makes seeing a different one very problematic.  That first production was so definitive and my memory of the musical numbers so thorough that I suspected I was going to really resist enjoying anything short of an exact recreation of it.

So why bother?  Well, I really do love the soundtrack (or at least the first half of it; more about that below.)  And one of my favorite Stratford actors, Juan Chioran (whose performance in Dracula: A Chamber Musical I've been rhapsodizing about for over a decade), was singing Perón.  And I've been reading up a bit lately on Argentina's Dirty War, which made me rather thoughtful about how odd it must have been for a politically aware audience member during the show's original run, which coincided almost perfectly with the Dirty War.

Another Part of the Forest (Peccadillo Theater Company, July 9, 2010)

 I saw Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes (1939) at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario back in 1996, but I had never seen its 1946 prequel, Another Part of the Forest, before squeaking into the closing weekend of last night's superb production (left) by the Peccadillo Theater Company at New York City's Theatre at St. Clements.  I was fascinated by the play itself as much as the production.

While Foxes depicts the nasty infighting of the Hubbard siblings in their forties and fifties, Forest takes them back twenty years, to their young adulthood in 1880, to show us an earlier stage in the family conflicts of the wealthy Southern merchant family.  Big brother Ben is an amoral schemer, whose proclaimed disinterest in women in both plays makes me wonder if he was meant to be read as gay.  Oscar is a fool and a brute who rides with the Ku Klux Klan.  And sister Regina is moving well beyond father-daughter flirtatiousness into something that borders on incest in her practiced manipulation of her father.  (The production actually takes it a bit further than the play as written, which calls for a daughterly kiss, but does not describe it as being placed on the lips while Regina straddles her father's lap.)  

In Foxes, I was always a little torn in my response to Regina.  I despised her for her dishonesty and her indirect murder of her husband, but I couldn't help feeling a little sorry for her, too, trapped in a loveless marriage with no money of her own and continually told, in effect, to shut up and be pretty and charming because that was the only way a woman could get anywhere.  That would probably make me pretty nasty and manipulative, too.  In Forest, she just sickened me with her mercenary schemes and her selfish indifference to John's desires, though I still winced a little at how callously Ben planned to marry her off for money at the end.

Pilobilus (Shubert Theater, New Haven, April 30, 2010)

Despite their being resident in Connecticut, I'd never before seen Pilobilus perform.  This evening's playbill explains Pilobilus as "a phototropic zygomycete -- a fungus that grows in barnyards and pastures...It is also a highly unusual dance company."  That's a bit of an understatement.  It seems like a sort of bastard child of modern dance and contact improvisation with costumes and some creepy undertones.

That's not a bad thing, though it's not something I'm likely to get terribly excited about.  It was interesting to watch a dance performance and admire the skill and creativity of the dancers and choreographers while remaining emotionally uninvolved except for occasionally being a bit disturbed.  It was certainly a unique experience for me.

Venus in Fur (Classic Stage Company, February 6, 2010)

Oddly enough, I've never actually read Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's classic 1870 novella Venus in Furs, though that's an omission I intend to rectify quickly.  Despite having mixed feelings about previous Classic Stage productions (The Tempest, Age of Iron), I was drawn to their new, two-actor comedy/drama, David Ives' Venus in Fur, by the sparkling review it got in the New York Times and made a special trip into the city just to see it.  It was well worth the effort: I was literally on the edge of my seat for the entire ninety-minute show, performed without an intermission.

The premise might have been specifically written to attract me: a mysterious woman, coincidentally named Vanda (like the novella's Wanda), arrives to audition for Thomas, the writer/director of a play adapted from Venus in Furs.  As the two of them read scenes together, the boundaries between theater and life become blurred.  Vanda makes this explicit: "You don’t have to tell me about sadomasochism. I’m in the theater."  That comparison could as easily have been reversed; the play likewise brilliantly illustrates the theater in sadomasochism.

But who exactly is the sadist and who the masochist? 

Compulsion (Yale Rep, 2/2/2010)

I was eager to see the world premiere of Rinne Groff's Compulsion at the Yale Repertory Theatre both because the subject matter intrigued me and because I have a nostalgic fondness for Mandy Patinkin.  After not seeing him perform live for nearly three decades, this is the second time in eighteen months, after the Classic Stage production of The Tempest (discussed here).

(Left: a very nice publicity still which bears no resemblance to the actual set.)

While I am familiar with the story of Anne Frank and read and loved her diary as a child, I didn't known anything about Meyer Levin, who was instrumental in getting the diary published in the United States and then began an obsessive, decades-long attempt to get his staged version presented.  Compulsion takes the story from his first visits to a New York publisher to promote the diary in general and Anne as a Jewish victim, rather than a generic, religion-free symbol of victimhood.  That's entirely worthwhile, but Levin went right 'round the bend when Anne's father licensed a different writer's play based on the diary and proceeded to spend decades trying fruitlessly to get his version produced, suing everyone from Doubleday to Frank himself in the process. 

Ragtime (Broadway, December 30, 2009)

It feels like I'm starting to make a habit of dashing into the city around the year-end holidays and seeing a show or two before the early-January closings (last year's expedition involved Spamalot and Hairspray).  This year, I was actually on an emergency costume supply run and had plans for dinner with a friend, so I decided to see if I could catch the soon-to-close revival of Ragtime at the matinee.  I hadn't seen the original back in 1998; I was just starting grad school and had no money for shows then.  Nor have I read the E.L. Doctorow's novel.  So all I really had to go on was the reasonably positive New York Times review, balanced by the fact that planning to close only six weeks after opening does not suggest a vote of confidence from audiences.  I decided it didn't warrant spending too much money, so I gave the show's lottery a try, and after entering a complex three-person consortium got lucky with the very last of the $25 tickets, which put me in the very last seat of the front row, extreme stage right, right under a speaker.  That wasn't exactly ideal, though it didn't stop me enjoying the show.

In The Next Room, or the vibrator play (Lincoln Center Theater/Broadway, December 5, 2009)

I'm getting a bad case of theatrical whiplash here.  The last work I saw of playwright Sarah Ruhl's was the magnificently surreal Passion Play at the Yale Rep.  The last time I saw Laura Benanti she was taking her clothes off as the famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee in Gypsy.  The last time I saw Michael Cerveris he was playing the title role in Sweeney Todd (which also starred Patti LuPone, who played Momma Rose in that same producion of Gypsy).  What a small theatrical world it is.

I don't even know how to describe In The Next Room, or the vibrator play, and it's difficult to discuss without drifting into double entendre.  It's a sex comedy without sex, made all the more insane by the characters' ignorance of what the sensation caused by the "thermal electrical massage" actually is.  I think most of the audience was laughing as much in nervousness and embarrassment as genuine amusement; female sexual response is not something people are used to seeing or discussing.  But I also found it unbearably sad; all the characters except the black wet nurse (who, in an annoying bit of stereotyping, is the only woman really in touch with her body, in contrast to the repressed white women) are estranged in some way from both their spouses and their own bodies.

Eyes Like Stars

I have to give Lisa Mantchev full credit for originality in her first book, Eyes Like Stars (Feiwel & Friends, 2009), a young adult novel that I picked up for light vacation reading.  It's part of the mini-genre of fantasy tales (such as the previously-discussed King of Shadows) which take place in theaters.  The theater is a natural setting for the magical, of course, but this book goes the usual theme of real magic mixing with stage magic one better.  The name Théâtre Illuminata makes me twitch slightly on grammatical grounds, but the concept of a theater inhabited by the players of all the roles ever created in all the plays ever written is intriguing to me as a confirmed theater geek, and Ms. Mantchev follows through with good enough theatrical jokes to leave me laughing:

Gertrude pointed at Macbeth, who was holding up a cruller and muttering, "Is this a doughnut I see before me?"  Then he noticed the raspberry jam on everything and started to shriek.

Dracula: A Chamber Musical (Stratford Shakespeare Festival / TV Ontario)

I was thrilled during my recent trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to be able to finally buy a DVD of the Festival's 1999 production of Dracula: A Chamber Musical.  This isn't a movie; it's a straight-up film done by TV Ontario of an actual evening of live theater with only a few moderate effects (fades, multiple camera angles) added.  I saw the production in person ten years ago and own a copy in VHS, but with the advance of technology and growing layer of dust on my VCR, it's good that the Festival finally reissued it.  I promptly bought two copies so I could have one to loan to friends, since for some unaccountable reason it doesn't seem to be available outside the Festival's bricks-and-mortar stores.  (Left: Amy Walsh as Lucy and Juan Chioran as Dracula; click to enlarge.)

This version of Dracula is an original Canadian musical which intended to be a more accurate adaptation of the novel than the Hamilton Deane version, Dracula: The Vampire Play in 3 Acts, which was written and first produced in the 1920s and then revived on Broadway with Frank Langella in the late 1970s (presumably inspiring the Langella Dracula film).  That's not a high bar; the Deane play, among other weirdnesses, swaps the names of the female leads, kills Mina (originally Lucy) off before it even begins, then makes Lucy (originally Mina) the daughter of Dr. Seward (in the novel, one of Lucy's suitors) and gives her Jonathan (who did marry Mina).

Richard Ouzanian's book returns both women to the stage with their proper names in a speaking/singing cast of only seven people (though three other women make silent cameos as Dracula's undead brides).  Lucy Westenra (Amy Walsh) is Dracula's first victim; Mina Murray Harker (June Crowley) the second.  Lucy's three suitors are combined into one, the young doctor Jack Seward (Shawn Wright).  Dracula is magnificently sung by Juan Chioran, a favorite of mine since my very first Festival.  Rounding out the cast are Roger Honeywell as Jonathan Harker, Michael Fletcher as Abraham Van Helsing, and a spectacular Benedict Campbell as the insane Renfield.  Music and orchestration are by Marek Norman.  Ouzanian directs, with Allan Myers additionally credited for the television version.

Where to begin?

Macbeth (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/11/09)

I was wary of Des McAnuff's production of the Scottish play after having discussions with other patrons and friends in the town.  All the conversations went something like this:

Me: So, how was it?

Other Person: (loooong pause)  Well, the banquet scene was amazing.  (another long pause)  And the handwashing scene was great.  (silence)

Damning with faint praise, indeed, for a production directed by the Artistic Director of the Festival and starring golden boy Colm Feore (no longer so boyish, but still a major star at the Festival).  At this point I've been at more Festivals than Feore has, so I feel free to mention that I have often been underwhelmed by his performances (including much of his performance in Cyrano a couple of days ago).  The attention given him raises expectations higher than I have found warranted.  And from what I'd heard, McAnuff had cast the play in a way as much race-conscious as race-neutral and moved it to mid-20th-century Africa, allowing him to play with colonialism and a lot of explosions.  I don't object setting Shakespeare in different periods and places (that his works travel so well is part of their greatness), but it's not clear to me that this play is in particular needs either an exploration of colonialism or explosions.  (Above left, Yanna McIntosh as Lady Macbeth and Colm Feore as Macbeth.)

So why see the show?  Well, I felt a little silly going to Stratford and seeing only one play by Shakespeare (yesterday's excellent Caesar).  This year's third, the Dream, won't open until later in the summer.  So I decided, somewhat nervously, to wind up my Festival with Macbeth.

Julius Caesar (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/11/09)

Finally, I got to the Shakespeare!  This afternoon's production of Julius Caesar was superb, maybe the best Caesar I've ever seen, including two previous Stratford productions in 1990 (my first season) and 1998.  Caesar is not a particular favorite of mine, but I'm happy to finally find a production I could admire unreservedly.  I tend to forget how much the first act feels like a string of "Shakespeare's greatest quotations," with so many memorable lines coming from this one play.

The leads were all strong.  I particularly liked Tom Rooney as an excellent "lean and hungry" Cassius and Jonathan Goad as a very charismatic Marc Antony.  Geraint Wyn Davies (left; click to enlarge) made a noble Caesar.  I'm not a huge fan of Ben Carlson (last seen a few days ago as Jack Worthing in Earnest), but he was quite a competent Brutus.  It was interesting to watch the two "spin" speeches by Brutus and Antony and feel myself respond to Antony's emotional appeal, even in my awareness that it was manipulative demagoguery.  Not that this is news to anyone who's studied the play, but there's a timely political lesson here about the failure of logic in the face of emotion and a charismatic leader.  Last fall's election was, frighteningly, something of an exception in having the Antony figure (Palin) not succeed.

West Side Story (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/10/09)

Wow.

Where do I start?

West Side Story is another show I have a long history with, starting with the summer stock production I worked in the costume shop for when I was a teenager.  I will never forget sweating over a sewing machine churning out circle skirts for the dance in the gym.  I've seen it a couple of other times, including at Stratford in 1999, when it was staged at the Avon Theatre, which has a typical proscenium stage.  This time it was staged on the thrust stage at the Festival Theatre.  I went to see it mostly to fill a hole in my schedule and because I figured it was a pretty idiot-proof classic that really can't get much worse than pretty good.  If nothing else, I'd get to see that fabulous Jerome Robbins choreography danced by a high-quality cast. 

I was blown away. 

Ever Yours, Oscar (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/9/09)

(posted from an island in the middle of the Avon while ducks and swans float by)

I wound up Thursday with a short (less than ninety minutes) one-man performance that isn't actually a play: Brian Bedford reading a selection of letters from Oscar Wilde, ranging in time from when he was a teenager at school through his intellectual triumphs as a speaker and writer and, sadly, his prison stint, brief continental exile, and death.  The letters were compiled by Peter Wylde (no relationship to Wilde).

Mr. Bedford is an experienced performer and has beautiful vocal control, so he can pull a great deal of emotion out of a simple reading, with no costumes or props required and only brief introductory remarks before a few of the letters.  This was in the Tom Patterson Theatre, which is quite small, with a relatively long "runway" stage with the seating in a U-shape around it.  No amplification is needed there.  The stage was mostly bare, with only a music stand for the letters and a small table for a glass of water.  A photograph of Wilde was projected against the back of the theater.  Mr. Bedford wore an elegant black suit with a pale gray-blue tie.  On-stage seating was offered, so a group of devotees was settled happily on cushions almost at his feet.  I was just as happy with regular seating, and I'd been warned that he directed all his readings straight forward, so I spent the money to get a good seat where I'd be able to see his face.

The letters were entertaining, and often more sentimental than I'd expected.  While some were arch and witty -- I particularly liked his description of lecturing to miners in California and putting them to sleep with his discussion of Florentine art before waking them up by mentioning Botticelli, whom they thought was a new drink --  many, especially the later ones, were quite poignant.  Who would have expected to find Wilde negotiating with a prison warden from his cell to arrange to pay the fine to have two poor children released from prison?

Also included was a letter offering a synopsis of The Importance of Being Earnest, with the basic plot recognizable even though most of the characters had different names.  This was a pitch for the (unwritten) play when he was desperate for money and needed the advance.  There was also a letter mentioning the card left by the Marquess of Queensbury at his club (the "posing somdomite" card) which inspired Wilde's lawsuit against the Marquess and triggered his own trial and imprisonment.

I was thrilled to be sitting in front of a whole row of neatly-dressed teenagers, on whom I eavesdropped shamelessly.  They were happy to be there and very pleased to be hearing Bedford read before seeing Earnest later in the week.  Hopefully they will become hooked on theater and turn into regulars; Stratford's audiences are still gray-haired enough to be alarming.  They were chattering happily about the performance when I left at the end.

Ever Yours, Oscar is running a limited number of performances through August 29th only, but they've added half a dozen to the schedule which have not been well-publicized, and those still have seats.  It's worth seeing for anyone within range of Stratford.

Cyrano de Bergerac (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/9/09)

Of course, I couldn't miss Cyrano de Bergerac.  It's one of my all-time favorite shows.  I first saw it as a young child in Dallas, probably at the Dallas Theater Center, where it made an indelible impression on me and helped shape my love for period drama and swashbuckling romance.  I saw it again in New York in the early 1980s, the magnificent Royal Shakespeare Company production with Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack, which remains my ideal.  And fifteen years ago I saw it here at Stratford.  I can't offer any opinion on the one I saw as a child, when I pretty much loved everything I saw on a stage, but the RSC and 1994 Stratford versions were both superb; I count myself lucky to have seen two such productions.

(Photo: Colm Feore as Cyrano intimidates Robert Persichini as Montfleury; click to enlarge)

But this one was oddly dissatisfying. 

The Importance of Being Earnest (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 7/8/09)

"If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being immensely over-educated."

Continuing my little comedy-binge, with the level of farce decreasing ever so slightly, I spent this afternoon at Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.  I've seen Earnest before, of course, including the excellent four-act Festival production directed by the late, lamented Richard Monette back in 2000.  But Wilde is Wilde, and always amusing, and this production has Brian Bedford double-dipping as both director and Lady Bracknell.  Bedford doing period comedy is a must-see for me.  As a bonus, the production was designed by the great Desmond Heeley.  (Left, Bedford in costume.  Click the image to zoom in.)

Overall, it was excellent.  First things first: Bedford makes a surprisingly convincing woman.  This was a not an obvious drag performance.  Over-the-top physical comedy isn't really necessary in such a role and Bedford is not one to overdo.  He simply played the part thoroughly and effectively.  His personal star power is well-suited to playing the sublimely self-centered Lady Bracknell, absolutely confident of her ability to dominate her family and the center of every scene she's in.  I'm not entirely sure I'd have read him had I not known beforehand.

Coraline (MCC Theater, 6/27/09)

"How long does this go on for, the theater?"   "All the time...forever and always."

Taking another break from the all-Hugos-all-the-time blogging, last night in New York I saw the MCC Theater's musical production of Neil Gaiman's young adult novel, Coraline, directed by Leigh Silverman with music and lyrics by Stephin Merritt (of the Magnetic Fields) and book by David Greenspan, who also plays the Other Mother.  I haven't seen the film adaptation, though I expect I'll get around to it if (when?) it turns up on next year's Hugo ballot.  But I was quite curious to see how they'd handle such a fantasy in live-action in a tiny theater without special effects.  The answer is: quite well.

Nothing's Gayer than the Lonely Goatherd

From the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS  2007 "Broadway Bares" show.  Donations to fight the scourge which has taken so much talent from the world of theater are accepted at their website.

The video is Not Safe For Work.

Happy Pride week!

Hat tip for the video and title to Dan Savage at Slog.

Edited to add:

The shapely male dancer is Nick Adams.

Mary Stuart (Broadway)

It's always interesting when theater immediately sends me off to do some historical research in order to figure out what parts of a play are based on fact.  This production of Mary Stuart, an 1800 play by Friedrich Schiller, was newly retranslated from the original German by Peter Oswald and revived in England (Donmar Warehouse and West End) before traveling on to Broadway with director Phyllida Lloyd and the two lead roles' casting intact in Janet McTeer (right) as Mary Stuart and Harriet Walter (left) as Elizabeth I, both of whom are on the ballot for the Tony Award for Best Actress tonight.  The play dramatizes an imaginary meeting between the two queens just prior to Mary's execution on charges of treason for her purported part in various assassination plots against Elizabeth.  It was extremely well-reviewed, and while I see more problems with the play than The New York Times' reviewer did, I found it utterly engrossing overall and was inspired to spend a couple of hours this morning refreshing my memory of 16th-century genealogy and political intrigue.

Stomp (U.S. tour, New Haven, 3/18/09)

I was back at the Shubert last night to see the road version of Stomp, which has a lovely website running video from the show on the front page.  I felt like I must be the last theater person on earth to see this show; my own mother exclaimed on the phone "but I saw that ten years ago!"  Well, yes, mom, but you didn't invite me, did you?  I went with four local dance friends.

Stomp isn't standard theatrical fare.  It's an all-percussion performance with no spoken lines at all, though the ability of the cast to convey humorous little personal interactions purely by body language was impressive.  Likewise, the sheer range of stuff they used to make noises (banging, swishing, thumping, etc.)  This included everything from the push brooms of the opening number to the giant trash cans and can lids of the finale.  It wasn't the proverbial everything but the kitchen sink; one number actually used several kitchen sinks.  They were attached to harnesses so they could be carried around by the performers and filled partly with water, the draining of which became a comedy routine all by itself.  They even used sand to make noise by sliding their feet through it (reminding me of some social dancers...)  The cast also brought the audience into the show by starting up call-and-response clapping several times.

Gypsy (Broadway, January 3, 2009)

There are so many Broadway shows closing this month that I'm scurrying back and forth into the city to try to see as many as possible before the final curtain comes down.  Not that I needed the incentive to see the consistently magnificent Patti LuPone (left) sing Rose in Gypsy.  Oddly enough for such a theater nut, I'd never seen a production of Gypsy before, and only knew the bare outline of the plot (stage mother from hell turns her daughters into burlesque stars).  This would be my third time hearing Patti Lupone (the title role in the original Evita and Mrs. Lovett in the recent actors-as-orchestra Sweeney Todd were the other two), so I was quite confident of a star turn from her and just hoped the rest of the production would measure up.  No fears: this was a production to set the standard for me for a lifetime.  Its rave reviews (New York Times review here) are well-deserved.

It's rare for me to really have nothing negative to say about a production; maybe if I had seen some of the other significant productions of the last few decades I would find something to quibble about.  But I found all the performances excellent, and strong enough to match LuPone.  Baby June (Leigh Ann Larkin) was appropriately cloying as the original star of the family; her cutesy costumes and numbers made me wince, which is exactly what one wants from the performance.  I'm not sure whether "Baby June and Her Newsboys" or "Dainty June and Her Farmboys" was more annoying.  Boyd Gaines as Rose's reluctant theatrical agent balances nimbly between his love for Rose and the obvious pain she causes him with her maniacal obsession with vaudeville success at any cost.  And the gorgeous Laura Benanti as Louise perfectly portrays her character's evolution from a gawky, ignored tomboy, constant second fiddle to her pretty sister, into the simultaneously flirtatious and ice-cold Gypsy Rose Lee.  Her final confrontation with the mother she has finally escaped and outdone is absolutely chilling.  And yes, we get a cleverly-staged strip-tease, though the transformed Louise's costumes (right) are gorgeous enough that I was rather sorry to see them go, even briefly.

What else is there to say?  It was magnificent.  And it's closing by the end of the month, so anyone within range who still wants to see it should hurry up and do so.  Or if not, take a look at Patti LuPone's performance of showstopper "Everything's Coming up Roses" at the 2008 Tony Awards for a glimpse of what you're missing:

Hairspray redux (Broadway, December 20, 2008)

It's a wonderful feeling to take my seat in a theater with complete confidence that I will have a magnificent theatrical experience. 

I'd seen Hairspray once before on Broadway as well as a scaled down touring production last year, but since the Broadway show is closing in a couple of weeks as part of a sort of midwinter massacre of major shows* and original cast members Harvey Fierstein (left) and Marissa Winokur are back for a final spin in the lead roles of Edna and Tracy, I decided it was worth seeing again if I could get a cheap ticket. 

So off I went to the theater after seeing Spamalot with some friends (yes, I saw two shows in one day) and entered the lottery for a pair of $25 tickets.  I hadn't won any the last time I tried this, but I worked on having good karma by offering to give the second ticket to someone else in the lottery line, even though she was already partnered with someone and couldn't reciprocate.  And this time it worked: I got two tickets and duly handed one off to the stranger, whose lottery effort had failed.  (She paid for the ticket; I wasn't that charitable.)

We ended up sitting at the very far end (stage left) of the front row, which was good in that I could hear the actors rather than the amplification and bad in that I ended up with a severe crick in my neck from looking almost straight up.  But for a total ticket price of $26.50, I could live with having the dancing feet about a yard from my nose.  I was so close I could see the Band-Aid under the tights of one of the dancers and the nifty rhinestone strip up the back of Susan Mosher's stockings in one of her three roles as the "lesbian menace" women's prison matron.  My lottery friend turned out to be a theater buff herself, so we amiably compared opinions about other shows while waiting for the curtain.

I didn't get to see Winokur, alas, but her understudy (whose name I missed, unfortunately) did an entirely capable job, well up to the star's level.  And really, I was here for the show as a whole and for Fierstein, Broadway royalty that he is.  And I was not disappointed.  I was completely swept away on a wave of music and joy.

Spamalot (Broadway, December 20, 2008)

I saw Spamalot primarily because a couple of my friends wanted to see it before it closed on Broadway and made the effort to get discount tickets.  While I had a reasonably good time, it was hardly brilliant theater, and I am certainly glad I didn't pay full price.  I'm stunned that it won the Tony for Best Musical in 2005; the competition must have been mighty slim that year.

I've seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail, though it was probably twenty years ago, and I wouldn't call myself a passionate fan.  I do remember several of the major set-pieces (the black knight, the killer bunny, the knights who say Ni, the debate about swallows, etc.), but I don't have enough nostalgia to be more than mildly pleased at seeing them redone live.  Perhaps it's asking too much of a show like this to actually work for people who can't recite Python lines by heart.  I think knowing the jokes without being a true fan may have actually hurt the show for me; without that fannish passion, jokes repeated unchanged just aren't as funny the second time around.

Rough Crossing (Yale Rep, December 19, 2008)

Rough Crossing is billed as by Tom Stoppard and "freely adapted" from a 1926 play by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár, who was hugely popular in New York in the 1910s and 1920s.  The most famous adaptation of Molnár's work is Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel.

Rough Crossing, written in 1984 and first produced in London, is a farce based around the popular "play within a play" conceit which, come to think of it, was also used in two other Stoppard works that I've seen: The Real Thing (Broadway) and Shakespeare in Love (film).  I've no idea how much of what I saw here was Stoppard and how much was Molnár, so I'm not sure whom to blame for the farce being a little too heavy-handed for me to enjoy.  The best line came very early on (first scene); I made special note of it because I foresee using it myself in the future:

He can write a bit but unfortunately writes a lot.

What a superlative piece of snark.  I can think of several writers that I would apply it to.

Wig Out! (Vineyard Theatre, November 1, 2008)

Much to my pleasure, I ended up with a front-row seat for the Vineyard Theatre production of Tarell Alvin McCraney's interesting new Wig Out! yesterday.  The set was T-shaped, with the longer portion being a fashion-show style runway, and I was seated near the end of the runway for the ultimate in up-close viewing.  The disco-ball-enhanced lighting design (Peter Kaczorowski) and the thumping pre-show music (playlist credit to sound designer Robert Kaplowitz?  or to the playwright?) set the stage perfectly for a play that switches rapidly between the internecine bickering and romantic soap opera of a queers-of-color family-of-choice (the House of Light), the over-the-top excesses of a drag ball (competition between two Houses), and Spoon River-like reminiscence-monologues by all the main characters that each began with "My grandmother wore a wig."

The Tempest (Classic Stage Company, 10/4/2008)

This won't be a formal review (even by my very low standards of formality) -- if you want that, the New York Times one is here.

I've seen The Tempest numerous times before, most memorably twice with William Hutt at the Stratford (Ont.) Shakespeare Festival.  I probably would not have bothered with another production so soon if it hadn't featured Mandy Patinkin (left) as Prospero.  I had a tremendous crush on Patinkin many years ago in his role as Che opposite Patti LuPone in the original Evita (me and men with beards who can sing; it's a problem).  You can hear his magnificent voice on the original Broadway cast album.  There's enough residual affection left thirty years later that I was curious to see what he could do in the nonmusical role of Prospero in a production by the small Classic Stage Company in New York City.

Passion Play (Yale Rep, 9/23/08)

Left, Joaquín Torres in Passion Play.  Did you think I was turning Catholic?

I saw the Yale Rep production of Sarah Ruhl's theatrical triptych, Passion Play, last night on a whim spurred by a cheap-tickets offer.  Short version: I and the rest of the audience left the theater feeling somewhat befuddled, but I liked it.  How can I not like any production in which two Elizabethan courtiers carry a soldier off the battlefield in Vietnam, followed by Queen Elizabeth with a rifle and two gigantic fish puppets escorting a six-foot-long dead fish?

Long version....

Detailed spoilers follow; if you intend to see Passion Play, I suggest not reading my thoughts on it until afterward.

Thank you, Mr. Monette

I was shocked to read this morning of the death of Richard Monette, longtime Artistic Director of my beloved Stratford (Ont.) Shakespeare Festival.  I've been attending the Festival near-annually for the past eighteen years, which mostly overlaps with Monette's directorial tenure.  Under Monette's leadership, the Festival simultaneously widened its artistic scope and found financial stability.  The talented actors that study each year at the conservatory Monette started at the Festival will continue to grace the stage there and elsewhere for decades.  He expanded the repertoire to include marvelous classic musicals and some intriguing new work.  Over the years of his tenure, the Festival produced every one of Shakespeare's plays, giving me the chance to see obscurities like Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII and come close to completing my own life list, as well as important modern works like Barrymore and Elizabeth Rex; memorably astonishing productions of classic Shakespeare like The Merchant of Venice,  A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Henry V; and some truly magnificent productions of musicals like Guys and Dolls, Man of La Mancha, and Fiddler on the Roof.  Monette stepped down from his position last year, but I had looked forward to many more years of his expertise as a director of individual shows.  The world of theater is much the poorer this morning for this loss. There are dozens of obituaries already posted; my favorites are from the Globe and Mail and the Festival itself.  The picture above left is Monette in 2005, the "Saints and Sinners" season.

Caesar and Cleopatra (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 8/17/08)

I wound up this year's Festival with a magnificent production of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, which returned Christopher Plummer to the Festival stage accompanied by newcomer Nikki James, who's having quite the debut season between this and Romeo and Juliet.  (Left: Plummer and James in the title roles.)  I last saw Plummer here several years ago in his King Lear, and then quite a few years before that in his solo turn as John Barrymore in the eponymous Barrymore.  I believe both of those productions traveled to Broadway.  I haven't heard that they're sending this one, but they ought to.

Without any planning whatsoever, I managed to get a ticket on the gala opening night, for which I was slightly underdressed, with a great seat right in the middle of the orchestra section.  Plenty of Festival luminaries were present, including former Artistic Director Richard Monette.

Plummer, needless to say, was simply superb as the aging, world-weary Caesar with a sense of responsibility and a cynical sense of humor.  James acquitted herself well acting opposite a living legend -- that must be intimidating -- though once again I caught her stumbling slightly on a line.  But in general I was pleased with her performance.  She can't possibly be as young as she plays (she has a BFA and a solid list of professional credentials), but she does a great job of acting the passionate teenager.  Other standouts were Peter Donaldson as Caesar's chief officer, the loyal soldier Rufio; Steven Sutcliffe as the prissy secretary Britannus; Diane D'Aquila as the hilariously hissing nurse, Ftatateeta (mispronunciations of the name are a running gag); and Gordon Miller as the artist-slash-merchant Apollodorus.

Romeo and Juliet (Stratford Shakespeare Festival, 8/13/08)

The silver lining in missing a Tuesday night show due to an overly interesting trip to Stratford was that my festival opened in classical style on Wednesday afternoon with the Festival Theater fanfare and the resonant voice of Festival veteran Peter Donaldson as Friar Laurence (left) reciting the famous opening lines of Romeo and Juliet:

        Two households, both alike in dignity,
        In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

This is technically a Prologue, not part of the Laurence role, but Donaldson, looking down on a modern street scene from above, delivered it splendidly and swept me away into the magic of the theater.  This is exactly what I come to Stratford for.

Hairspray (2008 non-Equity U.S. tour: New Haven)

I hadn't actually realized that this was a significantly scaled-down non-Equity production when I got my ticket, so I was a little startled, especially since the pictures on the website had the full set.  Given good casting, the show is hard to kill, so the bare-bones set didn't matter too much.  I was more disturbed that they trimmed a number of the songs by a verse or two (yes, I know the soundtrack well enough to notice) and that the choreography has been redone.   But I badly needed the theatrical production to scrub the problematic recent film version from my brain, and it did accomplish that fairly well.  I was also pleased to find myself in a theater with a large cohort of screaming teenagers, presumably lured in by the film.

So, first a few thoughts about this production in contrast with the original Broadway version.  Then a few rants about the idiocies of the filmed version.

Macbeth redux (Broadway)

My good ticket karma with the Scottish play continues - on three days notice a friend and I were able to get tickets for a Saturday night performance of the formerly-BAM, formerly-Chichester, now-Broadway production of Macbeth, starring the superb and classy Patrick Stewart and the equally superb Kate Fleetwood.  I have written previously about how much I liked this production (here), and I was thrilled to have the chance to see it a second time.  If you're within range of NYC, it's running through May 24th.

I don't have a lot to add to my previous thoughts, but seeing it a second time I spent less time being bowled over by the production and was able to appreciate details more:

(Production spoilers.  Stop here if planning to see.)

Patrick Stewart: Class Act

You know, if I had a chance to interview Patrick Stewart, I wouldn't spend four out of my eight questions on Star Trek.  What an insult for Newsweek to send a shallow and ignorant reporter with an obvious agenda to an actor with a career as long, varied, and distinguished at Stewart's.

I've been impressed with Patrick Stewart ever since I saw his Claudius in the BBC's 1980 Hamlet (with Derek Jacobi in the title role) in junior high school in the early 1980s.  More recently, I was hugely pleased with his current turn as Macbeth, now moved to Broadway.  So I really wish I'd been a fly on the wall to watch him take down the reporter who tried so hard in the recent Newsweek interview to make him slam a segment of his audience:

When you're onstage, aren't you worried about weird Trekkie fans in the audience?
Oh, come on, that's just a silly thing to say.

I wasn't a particular fan of ST:TNG and haven't even seen most of it, though I have a huge, huge soft spot in my heart for the original series.  And I certainly don't delude myself that any of Star Trek is a work of art on a par with the works of Shakespeare, which are much more interesting to this "weird Trekkie fan" who toddled down to Brooklyn to see Stewart in the Scottish play back in February.

So it's very pleasant to see an actor of Stewart's stature and range actually go out of his way to defend not only the show, but the fans against this sniggering idiot of a reporter:

But they are weird.
How many do you know personally? You couldn't be more wrong. Here's the thing: if you say the fans are weird, that means there is something essentially weird about the show, and there is nothing weird about it. I'm very passionate when people like you snigger.

That last sentence ought to be on a t-shirt or button (paging Nancy Lebovitz...)

Thanks, Mr. Stewart.  You have class.

A Woman of No Importance (Yale Rep)

I had the pleasure last night of seeing a fine production of this Oscar Wilde play at the Yale Rep, where it is running through April 12th.  This post contains plot spoilers such that if you have not already read the play and intend to see it, it might be worth waiting to read this until afterwards.

Since I had neither seen nor read the play, I was expecting a comedy along the lines of The Importance of Being Earnest, stuffed full of Wilde aphorisms and catty jokes.  I was especially eager to see Geordie Johnson (pictured with Felicity Jones (left) and René Augesen) as Lord Illingworth, and was not disappointed by his fine work here.  I have enjoyed his performances at the Stratford Festival ever since his memorable turn as Chance Wayne in Sweet Bird of Youth back in 1996, where he managed to hold his own on stage opposite the generally-overpowering Martha Henry as the Princess Kosmonopolis.  I've also been delighted at Stratford with his Edmund (King Lear), his Darcy (Pride and Prejudice), and his Nathan Detroit in the truly splendid production of Guys and Dolls a few years ago.  It's wonderful to have such fine actors turn up in one's local theater!  Other familiar faces included Anthony Newfield (from the Bedford Tartuffe) and Michael Rudko (from Julie Taymor's memorable TFANA Titus Andronicus).  Younger characters and servant roles were played by Yale School of Drama students.

Macbeth (Brooklyn Academy of Music/Chichester Festival)

I didn't think I would have an easy time getting tickets to see the Patrick Stewart Macbeth, directed by Rupert Goold, which is currently playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music through March 22nd and - happily - will be moving on to Broadway in late March for an eight-week run.  When I made my dutiful daily call to the box office last Wednesday to see if any returns had come in, I was so startled to be offered a seat that I actually argued with them briefly before it sank in:

"We have tickets for Friday." 

"But you're supposed to be sold out!" 

"Yes, we're sold out, but we have tickets for Friday." 

"I thought you were sold out!" 

"Look, do you want a ticket or not?"

BAM seems to have a non-standard definition of "sold out".  It's a little tricky getting all the way to Brooklyn from New Haven on a Friday afternoon, but I wasn't going to turn this down.  It definitely beat the previous plan of going in at the crack of dawn Saturday morning and spending several hours sitting on the sidewalk hoping for a return.

I've seen the Scottish play many, many times over the years, and as is my practice with Shakespeare's plays, was seeing it over and over in the hopes of finally finding a production which would stick in my heart and memory and be my definitive Macbeth forever.  This production wasn't perfect, but I think I may have found what I was looking for.  I have that warm, satisfied feeling that I need to never see Macbeth again, though of course I probably will eventually.  And I'm seriously considering going back to this one again when it moves to Broadway.

Left: Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.  Yes, his right hand is exactly where you think it is.

Given the time remaining in the run and the Broadway transfer coming up, I heartily recommend this production to everyone within range of New York City and with a taste for high-powered Shakespeare.  The remainder of this post contains significant production spoilers, and I recommend coming back and reading it later if you plan to see this production - it deserves to be taken in without any foreknowledge.

Update 4/13/08: An interesting interview with director Rupert Goold and star Kate Fleetwood, spoiler-free.

Die Fledermaus (Yale Opera)

I should start out by saying that I am not an opera buff.  While I've seen opera companies perform works that straddle the opera/operetta/musical line (Kismet, Brigadoon), I have only seen one true opera (Die Fledermaus, New York City Opera, sometime in the 1980s) and do not really have much sense of the conventions of the form.  But I had vaguely pleasant memories of having enjoyed Die Fledermaus before, so off I went Friday night to see a performance of it by the Yale Opera, which I guess I would describe as a graduate student ensemble of the Yale School of Music.  I suppose that means I should judge it somewhere between the scales for professional productions and college ones, but it was taking place in the Shubert Theater, home of professional productions, so I lean more toward seeing it as such.  This was a one-weekend-only show, all over now.

Edward II (Red Bull Theater)

Having mostly finished my Shakespeare life list, I’ve expanded to Marlowe, but so far all I’ve managed to see is Edward II.  This is the third production of E2 I've seen in the past two years.  I’m not going to review it, per se – there have been excellent professional reviews in various publications - so I will merely say: if you are in the New York City area, go see this production.  It’s just been extended through January 27th and, as seems to be standard for Red Bull, is simply not to be missed.  It’s not as gory or over-the-top as their production of The Revenger’s Tragedy (that would be difficult), nor is it the same sort of horror-humor roller coaster ride.  But it’s a hard-edged (I was about to say “penetrating”, but what production of this play isn’t?  Sorry…) look at power and corruption and the clash of public and private, privilege and responsibility, homosexuality and homophobia.  Go, and bring your friends, and tell them to bring their friends.  Buy your tickets now, before it sells out and you miss it.

Important time-sensitive recommendation out of the way, I’m just going to ramble on a bit about this production and the other two I’ve seen.  Plot and production spoilers will abound.  If you plan to see this production, I recommend not reading further until afterwards - I think allowing Red Bull to reveal its magic at its own pace will give you a better experience.

The Revenger's Tragedy (Red Bull Theater) (1/12/06)

(Note: this post is adapted from an email I sent to a group of my NYC-area friends on January 12, 2006.  I reprint it here and now as a prelude to reviewing Red Bull's latest production.)

Last weekend my mother and I went to see the spectacular Red Bull Theater production of "The Revenger's Tragedy", a Jacobean blood-and-gorefest.  This is not unusual for one of our mother-daughter outings; one year we decided "Titus" (Shakespeare via Julie Taymor) would make a perfect heartwarming family Christmas movie.  Most of my friends seem familiar with RT from its use in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin.  I read that many years ago and didn't care for it, so I'd forgotten the reference, but it seems to have made an impression on a lot of people.  I'm not sure Dean had a production like this in mind.