Stew and Ms. Rodewald’s command of the musical genres of the 1960’s and 1970’s—gospel, Motown, soul, glam-rock, funk, R&B, blues, etc.—is astounding. The songs are organic extensions of the dialogue. In fact, this show could easily have been a straight drama or a sung-through opera. [more]
This production combines the simplicity of the 1967 Off Broadway original version with the additions from the 1999 Broadway revival, using two of Mr. Lippa’s songs and much of Mr. Mayer’s additions. Most notable is replacing the character of Patty with Charlie Brown’s sister Sally. For this role, Kristin Chenoweth won that year’s Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical. [more]
Ms. Errico gives a smashing musical theater performance. Her gutsy broad that’s tough on the outside and unraveling on the inside characterization is quite captivating. Her singing of several of the wan attempts at showstoppers exhibits her charismatic range. It’s definitely a case of a performer elevating weak material with their talents. Her commitment is as intense here as if she were playing either Sally or Phyllis from Follies particularly for the boozy ode to self pity, “Everyone Loves Leona.” [more]
Director Dev Bondarin cleverly enlisted scenic designer Tim McMath to transform the APAC’s theater into a high school gymnasium, complete with posters (“No Bullying Allowed,” “Today is a great day to learn something new,”) banners (“Go Cougars,”) and the kind of simple platform that would be at home in any gym. Bondarin also gifted this production with an air of immediacy and an unrelenting up-tempo. [more]
Under Gabrielle L. Kurlander’s intricate direction," Votes" presents a moving and personal picture of the real lives and feelings of an extremely powerful couple in America. Votes brings a more human side to their relationship – recalling how Melanie, played by Lisa Wright-Mathews, and William Jefferson (Wayne Miller), met as law students at Yale. It shines a light on their early plans to do some good in the world – all with a twinkle in their eyes as Melanie recalls how she first fell in love with the “pimply kid from Arkansas.” As this couple ages, they question if it was all worth it and consider what they are actually playing for, as this Election 2016 offers the bold chance to do something different. [more]
"Wonderful Town" is one of those musical comedies which seem to get better as they age due in this case to the classic quality of the Bernstein/ Comden & Green score and the witty book by Fields and Chodorov. Director Evan Pappas has given the Musicals Tonight! revival a bright, breezy, high-spirited production that is certain to put a smile on your face, while for a change you can go out humming the songs. Much more should be seen of Elizabeth Broadhurst who sparkles as would-be writer Ruth Sherwood. [more]
Shoving a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face in "Public Enemy," George M. Cohan’s "Yankee Doodle Dandy" song and dance numbers for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the “Top of The World, Ma!” finale from "White Heat" are among the exciting factual highlights of this old-fashioned chronicle. [more]
The prime instigator of the events, John Adams, was rotund and abrasive. Here he is played by the handsome Santino Fontana who was Prince Charming in the recent Broadway production of Cinderella. Though Mr. Fontana bears no physical resemblance to Adams he conveys his rage, frustration and humanity with his dynamic performance. Fontana’s soaring voice captures the emotion and humor of the score, particularly on "Is Anybody There?" [more]
One problem with reviving musicals from the pre-Sondheim era is that they were often created around the talent of a big, unique star like Ethel Merman, Bob Hope, Mary Martin, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice or Eddie Cantor. Unfortunately, not only are these talents not around, there are very few oversized personalities in musical theater today. Musicals Tonight!’s revival of the Jule Styne/Comden & Green musical, "Do Re Mi," runs into this problem. Originally tailored to fit comedians and singers Phil Silvers, Nancy Walker, Nancy Dussault, John Reardon, and Al Lewis, their presence is sorely missed. [more]
"Southern Comfort" is an ambitious and admirable attempt to depict a community that till now has been left off of our stages. Though the material at times seems tamer that the content would warrant, it is ultimately a very moving musical. It also is a showcase for Annette O’Toole to give one of the finest performances of the season. [more]
The musical known for its “Let’s put on a show!” plot has a great deal more going for it than one might expect. First off, it has one of the greatest scores ever written for a Broadway musical comedy adding the witty and lilting “Where or When,” “I Wish I Were in Love Again,” “Way Out West (on West End Avenue),” “Johnny One Note,” “The Lady Is A Tramp,” “Imagine” and the title number to the American Songbook. This represented more hits than any other R&H show. The political plot (which was sanitized in 1959 under the auspices of the composer himself) has been restored and the show is positively electric with hotly debated ideas, philosophies and theories. As performed by Andrews’ cast, the satiric show has a colorful array of dynamic characters. [more]
Along the way she met the songwriters whose work she illuminated. During "Mabel Madness," Ms. Beverley sings “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine” (Kern/Hammerstein), “Down in the Dumps on the Ninetieth Floor” (Porter), “Summertime” (The Gershwins), amongst others. She uncannily finds Mercer’s style, sounding surprisingly like Mercer in her speak-singing period which depended mostly on exquisite timing, understanding the lyrics and hitting the few notes still within her power. She catches Mercer's regal, yet still down to earth, quality, too. [more]
Director Ruben Santiago-Hudson has inventively and thoughtfully staged the show with vibrant precision. Mr. Santiago-Hudson’s work combined with Camille A. Brown’s often stunning choreography makes for an eye-catching spectacle including the dream sequence with The Queen of Sheba in a golden gown and headdress. Santiago-Hudson also collaborated with Encores! artistic director Jack Viertel in adapting Lynn Root’s original book into an engagingly flowing narrative with depth. [more]
safe guess would be that most audiences coming to see New Light Theater Project’s adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ "The Count of Monte Cristo," one of most classic and exhilarating works of all time, are quite familiar with the material. A tragic tale of a man imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit leads sailor Edmund Dantes to seek justice as he becomes the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. [more]
"Maurice Hines: Tappin’ Thru Life" is a pleasantly entertaining look at the personal and professional life of Maurice Hines. Of course, his life and career were closely intertwined with his late brother Gregory’s, his dance partner for many years. The story of how their parents, Maurice and Alma, pushed them—willingly, it seems—into show business and their almost immediate success is the gist of this smooth, occasionally exciting show. Two boys from D.C. made good. [more]
In Rolin Jones’ re-do of "Much Ado," the soldier buddies have become a Beatles-like rock band called The Quartos, the first of many Shakespearean references. Continuing the parallels: Leonato (the always terrific Stephen DeRosa) has become Leo Messina whose Hotel Messina takes the place of the Italian town, Messina; his daughters, Bea (Nicole Parker) and Higgy (Ariana Venturi) are the Beatrice and Hero characters, whose romantic adventures with Ben (Justin Kirk) and Claude (Bryan Fenkart) (stand-ins for Benedick and Claudio), are the strength-testing plot-churners here as in the original. [more]
Although this is the eighth show minimalist director Ivo van Hove has directed for New York Theatre Workshop, one would be hard put to recognize it as his. The production uses Tal Yarden’s almost continual streaming video, slide projections, a huge screen representing a television monitor, and an on-stage band made of seven musicians. The pink beige set is often turned into other locales with video which covers all three walls of the set. The band sits behind the set but is often revealed when Venetian blinds on the back wall of Newton’s apartment occasionally open for actors to be seen behind the windows or for the video to transform the stage like cinematic cuts into scenes from various locales. Like Roeg’s movie version of "The Man Who Fell to Earth," Lazarus makes use of surrealistic imagery that gives the evening a psychedelic sensibility. [more]
Jackie Hoffman is famous for her combination of sarcasm and wit in a small, rubber-faced package and John “Lypsinka” Epperson, for his uncanny way of taking lip-synching to the heights of great art. Hoffman imbues the character of Princess Winnifred with New York street smarts, despite coming from a Swamp. (Well, maybe NYC is a swamp!) Lypsinka’s Queen Aggravain is, amazingly, the most possessive mother ever and at the same time the most self-involved human in the kingdom. She does not want her simpering son, Prince Dauntless (the sweetly shlumpy Jason Sweet Tooth Williams), to marry—ever!—but if he doesn’t marry, no one else in the kingdom can, either. [more]
The tale of their demise in 1964 en route to a show in their native Pennsylvania and their temporary 2015 resurrection still works brilliantly. Even though "Tidings" cover a good deal of the "Forever Plaid" musical territory, the holiday songs they’ve added give this show seasonal warmth. [more]
It has taken years and many people, to restore the book and score of the 1923 "The Golden Bride" which was last performed in 1948. A concert performance by the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene in May 2014 laid the groundwork for the current full-blown staging with its large cast, orchestra, sets and costumes, zestfully co-directed by Bryna Wasserman and Motl Didner with not so great, but energetic, choreography by Merete Muenter. [more]
Alas, the Tiny Tim of olden days exists no more. Thanks to medical advancement in the mid-1800’s, young Tim underwent a surgery which not only cured him of his ailment, but gave him a new heightened ability referred to as “a dancing leg.” This newly autonomous dancing leg is Timothy’s calling card and—whether he accepts it or not—the leg which was once a burden is now the precious asset upon which this grand adventure is based. "The Astonishing Times of Timothy Cratchit" is massively ambitious. As if imagining a sequel for one of Dicken’s most famous fictional characters wasn’t enough, Knee and Catrini scale things to an even higher level by tying in the fictional accounts of A Christmas Carol with the real-life autobiographical "Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi," written first hand by the famous English clown and then later rewritten by Charles Dickens. It is a heroic effort which attempts to bridge the gap between two of Dickens' most famous works, even if there isn’t much correlation between the two to begin with. [more]
"Gigantic," the new feel-good musical, is a dynamic up-to-date show about teenagers at a summer weight-loss camp. Previously seen as Fat Camp in the 2009 New York Musical Theatre Festival, Gigantic’s book by Randy Blair & Tim Drucker may be conventional, but its pulsating pop-rock score by Matthew roi Berger to lyrics by Blair is vigorous and high-powered and the energetic, first-rate cast under the fast-paced direction of Scott Schwartz makes the material seem better than it is. This is one of the few teen musicals in which the characters actually sound like modern youth rather than what adults think they sound like. [more]
The new musical is similar to Sater’s "Spring Awakening" in that it takes a group of people in a specific historic time and place (here New York, circa 1995) and adds music between the scenes which is in a different style from the play. It also resembles Bacharach’s "Promises Promises" in depicting a series of New York types at work and play. While the Bacharach/Sater score is sumptuously sung by an on-stage band of five led by impressive lead vocalist Jo Lampert, Sater’s book in which we meet various Manhattan denizens whose lives intersect in the course of one day feels dated in that we have met these people before and the problems of the characters seem trivial compared to the problems of today. [more]
Over the course of just over an hour, the actors enact Dylan Thomas’ classic prose work of his childhood recollections interspersed with their sweet performances together and solo of familiar Christmas songs including “Silent Night” in his native Welsh. Cullum often sits in a chair holding an elaborately covered edition of the book, reading from and sometimes referring to it as if grandly telling a story. [more]
Stanley Kubrick’s "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" appears to be a titular and stylistic inspiration. Like that classic film, one’s enjoyment of "Who's Your Baghdaddy? Or How I Started The Iraq War" depends on one’s sense of humor and sensibilities. [more]
Kate Baldwin (John & Jen, Giant, Big Fish, Finian’s Rainbow) as self-absorbed country western star Tammy Tripp gives a big bravura performance as a mother who resents her adult son as he gives away her real age. Adam Cochran as the young songwriter Dean (Konstantin in Chekhov) has just the right combination of confusion and frustration. As Mia (Nina), his girlfriend who wants to be a singer, Ephie Aardema is quite sweet as the impressionable young woman starting out who chooses to go on her own journey. Eric William Morris as successful songwriter now producer Beck Michaels (Boris Trigorin) offers rueful regret for the career he might have had. [more]
Twenty-two years after writing "First Lady Suite," four linked musicals about Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and Lady Bird Johnson, composer-lyricist Michael John LaChuisa has written a follow-up. Entitled "First Daughter Suite," it also contains four mostly sung-through musicals and depicts six of the Presidents’ daughters as well as six of the First Ladies. The individual pieces vary in content, seriousness and musical style: opera, jazz, pop and Broadway. While the material is impressive, the first two musicals are very lightweight while the other two included in the second half of the evening are much more profound. However, what First Lady Suite does best is offer several veteran singing actresses a chance to appear in extremely meaty roles, turning each of their roles into a tour de force. This is the fifth collaboration between LaChuisa and director Kristen Sanderson who directed the original production of "First Lady Suite" which also premiere at the Public Theater. [more]
The surviving original creators, book writer Sherman Yellen and lyricist Sheldon Harnick, have written a new streamlined version of the show now called Rothschild & Sons which is being given its world premiere by the York Theatre Company. With a cast of eleven (most playing multiple roles) led by Cuccioli now playing patriarch Meyer and an orchestra of three, the show is a powerful study of anti-Semitism in Europe at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century and the desire of the Rothschild family to break down both the walls of poverty and those of prejudice. While the new adaptation performed in one act is both engrossing and admirable, it may not be the definitive final version as it is devoid of humor, a necessary ingredient to make a musical popular. [more]
Initially based on Plautus’ Roman comedy, "Amphitryon," "Out of This World" is an uneasy mix of 1950’s slang and idiom, and classic Greek themes handled in a jokey manner. One of the major problems with the show is finding the right style for this broad-winking sex farce. After she was fired, Agnes De Mille stated that if she had more time she would have directed the show in “a mock heroic style.” Musicals Tonight!’s director Norb Joerder hasn’t solved this problem either and his few dance numbers look more like Native American dances from "Annie Get Your Gun" than those of the ancient Greeks. [more]
Though it touches on complex societal issues during this turbulent time period in the United States, the show's overall lack of depth depicting these conditions relegates it to slick opulence. Such a lack of overall substance does often play well in Las Vegas or on the sea but in a midtown Manhattan theater it's a striking flaw considering the numerous other theatrical options. [more]
From the evidence of Colgan’s Musicals Tonight! production, "Oh, Kay!" not only still works in the original but has a glorious score including such Gershwin classics as “Dear Little Girl,” “Clap Yo’ Hands,” “Do, Do, Do,” “Fidgety Feet,” “Heaven on Earth” and “Someone to Watch over Me.” The three songs cut from the original production (“When Our Ship Comes Sailing in,” “Ain’t It Romantic?”, and “Stiff Upper Lip” used in the film A Damsel in Distress) while not lost treasures are very pleasing lyrics and melodies. [more]
Performed by two bonafide Boogie Woogie experts, Baldori and Migliazza are positioned on stage next to each other in front of their dueling grand pianos. With a lifetime of experience in the business, Baldori has played with Chuck Berry for the past 40 years in over 100 performances. This is evident in his stylings, technique, and from the hilarious and entertaining stories that are told in between songs. As his counterpart, Migliazza is a skilled and formidable musical opponent. Together the two take turns singing, playing the piano or keyboard, or cracking jokes to the audience to vary the pace. [more]
Jean Webster’s classic epistolary novel of the coming of age of a college age girl at the beginning of the twentieth century, "Daddy Long Legs," has been dramatized many times. What makes this charming new Off Broadway musical now at the Davenport Theatre different is that it is played by only two characters and as a result it remains extremely faithful to the original book. Although the show written by composer/lyricist Paul Gordon and book writer/director John Caird, (Tony Award winner for the original "Les Misérables" and "Nicholas Nickleby"), the team responsible for the 2000 Jane Eyre, can’t compete with the big brassy Broadway musicals down the block, its very old-fashionedness and fully rounded characters make it extremely satisfying and endearing in a way that few musicals are today. Just try to not care about these characters. [more]
