The Most Happy Fella
Laura Benanti and Shuler Hensley in a scene from The Most Happy Fella (Photo credit: [more]
Archive
If/Then
Of course, it has to happen with the music and with dancing, with costumes, with sets – ye gods. Director Michael Greif has the great boon of set designer Mark Wendland's fresh way of presenting the entire premise instantly. He gives us the glittering ability of seeing what is going on two ways at once, with mirrors, very bright, very brainy. But we are not thus twice as much pulled into events so much as setting one view against another, a perfect visual metaphor fitting with the creators, but not with us, the audience. We are happily tasking outside, we don't come in until someone with heart pulls us in. [more]
And Baby Makes Seven
There has been renewed interest lately in the early, pre-How I Learned To Drive plays by Paul Vogel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. First there was The Baltimore Waltz (1992) at the Underground Theater last November. Now And Baby Makes Seven from 1984 is on view in a thoughtful, detailed production by the Purpleman Theater Company, directed by Marc Stuart Weitz, at the New Ohio Theatre in the West Village. Baby's tale of a same-sex couple having a child still resonates with particular clarity nowadays. Except for the fact that this lesbian couple, Ruth and Anna (the one who's bearing the child) couldn't be married back then, the play rings true as it explores all the anxieties, humor and fantasies straining the relationship of these two women with each other and with Peter, the biological father of the child. [more]
The 28th Annual MAC Awards
All Photos by Stephen Sorokoff “Was I supposed to campaign?” Joked [more]
Amaluna
Of course, there is a burst of aerialists flying overhead as the revels come to a close and Prospera exerts her spells over all. Was this the most spellbinding of the serial Cirque du Soleil shows because it was so female-centered? Certainly, Amaluna is one of their most beautiful and most satisfying. In spite of the clowns. What is there about the crude, corny, hokey, exaggerated mugging and capering that characterizes almost all the clowns in all the Cirque du Soleil shows that keeps them coming, show to show, a kind of tradition?? [more]
Mothers and Sons
Tyne Daly has made it a specialty playing unsympathetic and difficult women, for example her star turns as Mama Rose in Gypsy and Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s Master Class. Now in a new McNally play, Mothers and Sons, she plays the bitter, angry, taciturn Katherine Gerard, the Andre’s mother of McNally’s earlier one act. [more]
The Cripple of Inishmaan
If you add up all the billions of intakes of dollars for all the motion pictures starring the galaxy of movie stars putting their bare, nekkid faces before Broadway audiences this season, the sum tops by far the starstruck lists of recent years. And of all these powerhouses, the face on the cover of the Cort Theatre Playbill says it all: Daniel Radcliffe. Here he is, back in New York once again to, please, once again convey to everyone who's willing for the conveyance that he is not Harry Potter. Or maybe, not just Harry Potter. And so he has gone about as far as he can go: he is, in this very play, Cripple Billy, the Cripple of Inishmaan. And he's wonderful. [more]
Elaine Stritch and Chiemi Karasawa with Michael Musto: Conversation and Clips (February 17th, 2014)
Throughout, clips from the film were shown. These included her commenting on posters and photographs from her career, "A Delicate Balance, one of the best things I ever did." "At Liberty, my favorite poster from a of show of mine." She was shown at an eye doctor's visit comically undergoing an exam. Performing her nightclub act at The Carlyle with her singing "The Road You Didn't Take" from Follies and forgetting lyrics. "Fuck it!" There were affectionate interviews with Cherry Jones, Nathan Lane, George C. Wolfe and Tina Fey. From the front row, it was fascinating watching Ms. Stritch watch herself in the clips. Her facial expressions ranged from stern to grinning to intense.
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The Tribute Artist
A rich elderly lady is held captive in her posh townhouse by distant relatives and a former lover all out for her wealth. [more]
On The Town .. Feb 17, 2014
As I write this, I've just gotten back from attending Edith O'Hara's 97th birthday party, and the 13th Street Repertory Theater (50 W. 13th Street, New York City), which she has long run. She is the senior-most theater-owner/producer in New York. She has an idealistic spirit I've long found inspiring. (I first met her years ago, when I wrote something about her and her theater for The New York Post. She was then battling real-estate developers who sought to demolish her theater and put up a high-rise in its place; she wasn't going to about to give up without a fight. All of these years later, she and her theater are still going strong. [more]
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder
Alexander Dodge's Edwardian sets which appear inside a reproduction of Pollock's Toy Theater are always delightful. Linda Cho has created an enchanting collection of costumes from those for all of Mays' transformations into the D'Ysquiths to the women's lovely and seductive gowns. The amusing projection design is the work of Aaron Rhyne. Jonathan Tunick's melodic orchestrations are always faithful to its Edwardian period and its music hall roots. Credit director Tresnjak, artistic director of Hartford Stage, now making his Broadway debut, with keeping this confection airborne throughout the evening, including when stretching credulity to the limit. [more]
Random Access Music presents Parthenia, A Consort of Viols, “Prisms: Ancient Courses in A New Light”
On November 8, 2013 in the welcoming Benzaquen Hall performing space of the DeMenna Center in Manhattan, Random Access Music, a New York City based consortium of contemporary composers, presented an evening of new music created specifically for the highly acclaimed viol consort, Parthenia. The program opened with a brief welcome from Allen Schulz, president and founding member of Random Access Music. He noted that plans for collaboration between Parthenia and RAM began almost two years ago; this November 8 concert of RAM's 2013-2014 season was the first of what many hope will be continued future collaborations. [more]
Big Fish
everybody gives a standing ovation to improbably named Norbert Leo Butz, its star of stars. Yes, super director/choreographer Susan Stroman has pulled and woven and wreaked and hammered the story of the life and death of ordinary extraordinary Edward Bloom, traveling salesman, tale spinner, fabulist who fills the lives of everyone he meets with cockeyed wonders. [more]
First Date
You also recognize every inch of the rites, the mind revealing alter-egos, and alter-alter egos and whippy costume changes, the gropes, the innuendos. You laugh, you groan. You know the next bit is going to get a laugh, too, what else? Yes, that is the present status of the First Date. Cliché. Was it yours? Is that why you're laughing? Is that who we are today? Mine wasn't. Not in the 8th grade. She was so blonde! So what if she as a little cross-eyed. It was unsettling and alluring. [more]
Pippin
yes I was amused and/or captivated or both with the costumes of Dominique Lemieux, and yes, I thoroughly enjoyed the players, everyone, not just the principals, Terence Mann, Stephanie Pope (subbing for Leading Player Patina Miller), Matthew James Thomas, Charlotte d'Amboise, Rachel Bay Jones and that Andrea Martin but so many more because they went beyond antics. They reached us, again and again. The whole, dizzying, towering, funny, moving, exercise becomes a deep inside savoring for again and again. [more]
Matilda The Musical
Matilda is the story of a very bright, five year old girl who takes refuge in reading books from the library at a very early age. She gets through several books a week and entertains the librarian, Mrs. Phelps, with wonderful tales. Unwanted by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, and older brother Michael, Matilda is sent to a school run by a scary headmistress Miss Trunchbull who is unusually cruel to children and enforces her own rules, sometimes in a sadistic manner. [more]
Jekyll & Hyde
Director/choreographer Jeff Calhoun does not seem to have trusted the material or wanted this production to be as different as possible from the original Broadway staging. While much of this Jekyll & Hyde is handled as caricature, the sets by Tobin Ost in garish red and black with their walls at steep angles resemble nothing so much as a color version of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, without the expressionist weight of that story. [more]
Motown: The musical
In this huge and loving tribute to himself, his music, his stars, Berry Gordy is producing and writing an overstuffed, overcharged, oversized musical in thirty-six settings, fifty-eight songs, twenty-two musicians, forty-one performers, to an additional complement of twenty-nine production entities, and three producers, one of which, of course, is Berry Gordy. [more]
Bye Bye Birdie
Longbottom's choreography and musical staging is busy, busy, busy, but not joyful or inspired. As conducted by David Holcenberg, Strouse's bouncy score is played at too slow a pace, even with orchestrations by the legendary Jonathan Tunick. The comedy is played too broadly, and the love scenes are passionless. [more]
(title of show)
Hunter's book and Jeff's music and lyrics have been winningly directed and choreographed by the remarkable Michael Berresse, taking Hunter and Susan and Jeff and Heidi everywhere they wanted to go. The four of them are a cornucopia of theatrical gifts gilded with the glorious hopes of adolescence still completely retained by their older, if not wiser, selves. The juxtaposition is at once deeply touching and laughingly joyful. [more]
The Drama League’s 25th annual all-star gala, “A MUSICAL CELEBRATION OF BROADWAY”
Originally published on Theaterscene.net Jan 21, 2009. Original link: [more]
Billy Elliot
Elton John proved once again (Lion King, Aida,) that he is great at adapting his songwriting to a dramatic script. “I find it easier writing for a story line than just individual songs” and he succeeds admirably in a wide variety of numbers from the touching “Dear Billy” a heartwrencher between Billy and his Dead mother, “Solidarity” the vociferously defiant anthem of the striking workers, the tender lilting “We’d Go Dancing” as Grandma and the men recreate the lovely waltz of old happier time, “Express Yourself” and” Born to Boogie”, exuberant razz ma tazz Broadway dance numbers. [more]
A Chat with Bob Avian
The creative forces with whom he has worked are a who’s who of the Broadway musical. They include Steve Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Cy Coleman, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Claude-Michel Schoenberg, Neil Simon, Hal Prince, Tommy Tune and Cameron Mackintosh. And performers such as Mary Martin, Betty Grable, Barbara Streisand, Katherine Hepburn, Elaine Stritch, Jennifer Holliday, Diana Rigg, Eartha Kitt, Patti Lupone, Glenn Close, Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett, just to name a few. [more]
BROADWAY’S 2006 Fall/Winter Season
The White Way barely had time to recover from last season’s exciting Tony race when Martin Short roused the sleeping giant with his manic ode to himself, Fame Becomes Me. [more]
Company
Raul Esparza, the dynamic young actor who made great impressions in such not so great shows as Taboo and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang , plays Robert, whose tainted attitudes about attachment and commitment to women, and specifically to his three concurrent girl friends, appear the direct result of observing his friends' disintegrating relationships. Esparza delivers the insecurities of his character with a brio and confidence that also drives his two big songs "Marry Me a Little" (not in the original show, but restored here as it was in the earlier revival) and "Being Alive." Pivotal as he is, Robert often stands at the outside of his friends' lives as they are revealed in a series of skittish skits. [more]
Spring Awakening
Although its language is no rougher than what you'll hear in Rent or Avenue Q, Spring Awakening may be a tougher journey, especially for young teens. This sometimes downbeat adaptation of a controversial work incorporates a number of uncomfortable topics, including incest, masturbation, teen suicide and abortion.
Warnings aside, let's hope that older teens (who already make up much of the audience), along with Generations X and Y will embrace Spring Awakening the way they did Rent ten years ago. [more]
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
There are few better ways to celebrate the holiday season than with The Alvin Ailey American Dance [more]
The Apple Tree
The best moment finds Chenoweth putting a torrid spin on "I've Got What You Want," and yet not quite able to master the cracking of a whip. It's pure silliness. In Passionella …, Chenoweth plays Ella, a lonely sooty chimney sweep, who is magically transformed by her fairy godfather (Kudisch, who also serves as the story' s narrator), into a blonde sex pot of a movie star. She is destined to find true love, however, with a rock singer (James). Chenoweth's talent for breaking through the sound barrier with her high notes is the highlight of this skit. Fans of Chenoweth will be delighted; others will find the triptych trying. [more]
Mary Poppins
The musical has inspired many to learn how to sing. The magic comes from Bob Crowley's breathtaking sets and costumes aided by David Benken's technical direction: Mary Poppins flies in and out on her umbrella, people pop out of chimneys, toys become human, birds fly around the theater, and statues break their poses and move. The opening scrim is a blue pen and ink illustration which suggests the world of the P.L. Travers' stories on the printed page. The Banks' house at 17 Cherry Tree Lane, London, is a giant Victorian doll house come to life. Crowley uses brilliant colors in both his costumes and the fantasy sequences to replace the animation that made the Walt Disney film so attractive. [more]
70, Girls, 70
Seen today, 70, Girls, 70 is a weak show with a few strong numbers and a touching message about America's indifferent treatment of its elders. Within the show's limitations, Director/Choreographer Kathleen Marshall did her best to spin straw into gold, as did the outstanding Encores! Orchestra led by musical director Paul Gemignani.
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The Threepenny Opera
The best way to imagine what has happened to the beggars, the bourgeoisie, the pimps and whores, and the sordid denizens of the underworld in this operatic rant on the evils of capitalism is to think of a Cirque du Soleil troupe on Valium and under neon (what was lighting designer Jason Lyons thinking?). Worst of all, it is plodding and dull and an eyesore thanks to Isaac Mizrahi's Halloween-on-Fire-Island costuming. [more]
The Woman in White
As an easy-reader version of Wilkie Collins's pot-boiling gothic Victorian mystery romance, it plays out like a cross between a wide-screen 3-D film, a pop-up styled Classics Illustrated Comic Book and a Zoetrope peep show. In keeping with his fearlessly saccharine musical style, and his almost recklessly familiar brand of melodic recycling, Lord Webber has, nevertheless, commendably concocted a thoroughly enjoyable piece of era-evoking clap trap. [more]
The Light in the Piazza
The music by Adam Guettel, a grandson of Richard Rogers, is sumptuous, tending toward operatic and performed by a full orchestra with a cello, harp, guitar and mandolin adding richness and flavor. It is lovely to listen to, but contributes little in the way of strong dramatic impact. His lyrics for the most part are less successful, but he is clearly a gifted composer. I suspect there are more memorable scores in his future and his work here may even be the finest this season. [more]
Sweet Charity
Christina Applegate is surrounded by an excellent team. Every design aspect of the show while maybe not as imaginative as the original, nonetheless, gleams and the supporting players are polished as well. Dennis O'Hare as the neurotic Oscar is a standout and the scene when the two are trapped in the elevator is one of the evening's highlights. He is absolutely hysterical demonstrating a duality of character and aliveness that much of the evening lacks. [more]
Souvenir
Using Foster Jenkins' legacy as a jumping off point, the piece, subtitled a Fantasia on the Life of Florence Foster Jenkins tells this brave character's story through the eyes of Cosme McMoon (Donald Corren), a frustrated composer who spent many years as her competent, long-suffering accompanist. Souvenir could also be subtitled, "A memory play." This two-character study opens in 1964, with McMoon performing in a Greenwich Village piano bar, on the anniversary of Jenkins' death 20 years before. Unable to concentrate on the keyboard, McMoon chats with his audience, digressing into memories of his collaboration with the infamous, improbable soprano. [more]
Sweeney Todd
Doyle's innovative approach dispenses with set changes while placing the action in a black and white arena that suggests a dreary psychiatric ward. The story begins with a terrified young man in a straitjacket surrounded by people in white robes. As he sings the musical's opening words "Attend the tale of Sweeny Todd," we are summoned into his disturbing world. There is no turning back. The effect was as if someone had snapped a whip and commanded our attention.
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Jersey Boys
Jersey Boys is an adroitly entertaining evening that pulsates with energy, drama, and rock and roll standards. We didn't want it to end. After the final curtain call, the entire cast obliged by performing a reprise of the opening song and sending us out of the theatre singing, "Oh What a Night." [more]
All Shook Up
Cheyenne Jackson as Chad is of course the star and delivers a star turn. Mr. Jackson is a seductive charmer with a wonderfully rich voice, who moves beautifully and is funny as well. He is not only a gorgeous hunk with enormous appeal, but he has a warm magnetic presence that grows on you. He receives a tremendous assist from the entire cast of energetic performers, who sing marvelously and perform their respective songs with committed style and enthusiasm.
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Putnam County 20th Annual Spelling Bee
This musical follows the hopes, dreams and disappointments of six children (played by adults) competing in their county spelling bee, with the winner going to the Nationals. Also, competing in the contest are four pre-selected audience members. This type of gimmick usually comes off as forced, but with the help of the cast and the accommodating script, this venture into audience participation is one of the true charms of the show. [more]
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Yes, folks, prepare yourselves - The Car simply takes your breath away. And as you're sitting there gasping at the marvel of it all, you keep reminding yourself of your age. Because by the time Chitty makes her celebrated appearance, you have magically become eight years old again. [more]
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
The show possesses a golden score characteristic of the Broadway golden age of the early 1950s, and is worth breathing life into, even if just for a weekend at City Center. Gary Griffin, who has tamed previous Encores! productions including "The New Moon" and last year's "Pardon My English," provides skillful, erudite direction for the piece, showcasing the musical's memorable score as well as a number of talented performers such as Jason Danieley, Emily Sinner, and Sally Murphy. [more]
Spotlight on Ahrens and Flaherty: Dessa Rose and a Merkin Hall Tribute Concert
The 12-person cast, as staged by longtime Ahrens & Flaherty director Daniele Graciele, presents a moving tale throughout the show. However, the material, especially in Ahren's dialogue scenes, can be very repetitive and can seem overly sentimental. This is often the case with Ahrens & Flaherty shows, which usually contain a batch of stunning musical numbers performed by excellent actors in shows that never seem to be perfected – say "My Favorite Year," "Ragtime," and "A Man of No Importance." Of course, one is glad that Ahrens & Flaherty's shows get regularly produced on Broadway, Off Broadway, and at Lincoln Center. [more]
Little Women
What power the show has rests on the shoulders of Sutton Foster, the engaging performer and Tony winning star of "Thoroughly Modern Millie." Foster gives an amusing performance, marked by her tomboyish striding about in long skirts. Her robust body language and broad facial expressions get the laughs they deserve and are apparently meant to be slightly at odds with the quaintness of the rest of the musical. [more]
Good Vibrations
In the first line of the show, actor David Larsen addresses the audience with the following: "Once upon a time, there was a land called California." A moment later, the electric guitar play strikes up his strings, and the cast breaks out into "Fun, Fun, Fun," the first Beach Boys standard of the evening. This number begins a process that will be repeated throughout the show, one where a song's lyrics will have little or nothing to do with the play's characters. For in terms of "Fun, Fun, Fun," one cannot help but wonder – who is this girl that they are singing about? Where's the T-Bird? Where's her father? Are they somewhere in another musical? [more]
Caroline, or Change
There is a lot of anger vented through music in "Caroline, or Change,"; the nearly sung-through musical by Tony Award-winner Tony Kushner (book and lyrics) and Jeanine Tesori (music). Operatic in its aspirations and dramatic in its presentation, this unusual musical made enough friends and supporters during its successful run earlier this season Off-Broadway to justify a move to Broadway. The production fits as snugly into the Eugene O'Neill Theater as it did at the Public Theater. [more]
Pacific Overtures
Weidman's book is especially clever in its anecdotal cohesiveness, and with additional material credited to Hugh Wheeler, will probably be thought of as more vindicated than it was initially. Yet one wonders if the sadness we feel as we watch the Japanese lose their will to resist American determination is actually compounded by the new ending that brings Japan into the modern age and includes an image of the bombing of Hiroshima. [more]
Dracula The Musical
o, here is the plot, for those unfamiliar with the Dracula saga: In Transylvania, Count Dracula (Tom Hewitt) sucks the blood of young Jonathan Harker and sets his fangs on the innocent, English girl Mina Murray (Melissa Errico), Harker's fiancé, who we are told is of "good blood." And about twenty minutes into the show, the Count is young and powerful again, and, set to a keyboard synthesizer-influenced band, he breaks into the pop cry "Fresh Blood." [more]
Little Shop of Horrors
Foster, recently of "Urinetown," is terrific as the Faustian nebbish who sells his soul to win the girl he loves but, mostly, for riches. Butler holds her own and more (for those who cherish the stage and screen performance of Ellen Greene), as Audrey. Bartlett zeros in on Mushnik (shades of Zero Mostel in his performance) until the plant zeros in on him. DeQuina Moore, Trisha Jeffrey, and Carla J. Hargrove, are delicious as the perky girl-group and urchins that sing those tight vocal arrangements by Robert Billig and cavort to Kathleen Marshall's delightful choreography. Bon appetit! [more]
The Boy From Oz
But never fear, the show, as irrepressible as Allen himself, delivers an eleventh hour number, and the song everyone is waiting for, "I Go To Rio", borrows every show biz cliché, a staircase that lights up, chorus girls in huge headdresses, come down, and Jackman, heretofore often tethered to a piano, finally explodes onstage like an exultant puppy let off the leash in this bonanza of a finale. Truly irresistible! [more]
Nine
or all the handsome production values contributed by Scott Pask's handsome silvery unit setting and Vicki Mortimer's ravishing and revealing costumes, it is the presence and performance of Antonio Banderas, in the role of director Guido Contini (originated by the late Raul Julia), that pilots the action to perfection. Banderas, who is making his Broadway debut, proves an excellent choice both dramatically and vocally. That the Spanish-born actor was a member of the National Theater of Spain before he was discovered by Hollywood, accounts for his accomplished stage presence and the authority that he brings to both his singing and his character. [more]
The Look of Love
When polished and classy performers such as Broadway veteran Liz Callaway ("Merrily We Roll Along," "Baby," "Miss Saigon") and Capathia Jenkins ("Civil War"), as a Dionne Warwick substitute, attempt to provide some inner life to relatively uncomplicated songs, the effect is still-born. When the gentle and folksy "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" is sung in Spanish by Kevin Ceballo and danced in orgiastic spasms by Shannon Lewis, you'll see how desperate staging can get. [more]
Big River
Tyrone Giordano plays Huck with an unforced naturalism that is matched by the terrific Daniel Jenkins (he played Huck on Broadway in 1985) who gives Huck his voice. The multi-talented (check out the banjo) Jenkins also plays Twain as a narrator on the sidelines. Michael McElroy plays and sings the role of Jim the runaway slave. His striking good looks, stature and magnificent baritone voice add considerable dramatic weight to the production. [more]
Gypsy
Within seconds after musical director Marvin Laird picks up his baton, you will know why composer Jule Styne's slam-bang overture to "Gypsy" is considered by many the greatest and the most invigorating overture ever written for an American musical (okay, so you prefer Leonard Bernstein's more highfalutin "Candide"). Know this, however, that those who do go to this "Gypsy," will hear, probably for the very last time, the sound of 24 musicians in the pit (thanks to the concessions made during the recent strike). That alone is worth the price of admission. [more]
AVENUE Q
Even the set is clever: Set designer Anna Louizos' two-dimensional backdrop of rundown townhouses is replete with doors and windows that pop open like the flaps on an Advent calendar, transforming segments of the stage into a disco, an apartment interior, or even the observation deck of the Empire State Building. [more]