Quick reviews 2012

These are the shows I've seen in 2012 with a quick rating for each and links to reviews (some still to come). Please scroll down for other recent posts.

I also have a list of shows I've seen since 2007. (Ok, it's a bit out of date now.)

BEST. EVER.

Black Watch - National Theatre of Scotland at Shakespeare Theatre - D.C.

ZOMG

The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs - Public

Assassins - Broadway Reunion Concert - Roundabout
Cock - The Duke

Da - Gate - Dublin, Ireland
Dirt, Part I - HERE Summer Sublet Series
DruidMurphy cycle - Druid Theatre/Lincoln Center Festival
The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity - Company One - Boston

Freestyle Love Supreme

Once - New York Theatre Workshop and Broadway transfer
Prison Dancer: The Musical - NYMF

Tribes - Barrow Street
Uncle Vanya - Sydney Theatre Company/Lincoln Center Festival
The Whale - Playwrights Horizons

W00T

American Idiot tour

Assistance - Playwrights Horizons

The Best Man - Broadway

Billy Elliot - Broadway

The Canterbury Tales Remixed - SoHo Playhouse

Chimichangas and Zoloft - Atlantic
Falling - Minetta Lane Theatre
Glengarry Glen Ross - Broadway

An Iliad - New York Theatre Workshop

Lonely, I'm Not - Second Stage

Long Day's Journey into Night - New Rep - Boston
Macbeth - National Theatre of Scotland/Lincoln Center Festival
No Room for Wishing - Company One and Central Square Theater - Boston/Cambridge

A Number - Whistler in the Dark - Boston

Outside People - Vineyard

Slowgirl - Lincoln Center
Uncle Vanya - Soho Rep

YEAH

Backbeat - Mirvish Productions - Toronto
Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo - Company One - Boston
Bring It On - Broadway
Le Cabaret Grimm - NYMF
Car Talk - Underground Railway Theater - Cambridge
Chinglish - Broadway

The Columnist - Broadway

The Common Pursuit - Roundabout

Death of a Salesman - Broadway

Dogboy & Justine - workshop production at American Theater of Actors

An Early History of Fire - New Group

February House - Public
Fried Chicken and Latkes - Actors Temple Theatre

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - Encores
Golden Age - New York City Center
Good People - Huntington - Boston

Harold and Maude musical - York Musicals at Mufti
Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Rose Tinted Productions/A.R.T. - Cambridge
*Hedwig and the Something Homunculus (that's what I remember about the working title) - workshop presentation at AFTERGLOW - Provincetown, MA
The Heiress - Broadway
If There Is, I Haven't Found It Yet - Roundabout
Ingmar Bergman's Persona - HERE Summer Sublet Series

Leap of Faith - Broadway

The Lyons - Broadway

Merrily We Roll Along - City Center Encores
Modern Terrorism, or They Who Want to Kill Us and How We Learn to Love Them - Second Stage

Next to Normal - Speakeasy - Boston

One Man, Two Guvnors - Broadway

Potted Potter - Little Shubert

Stick Fly - Broadway

Storefront Church - Atlantic

That Beautiful Laugh - La Mama
Through the Yellow Hour - Rattlestick
Two Gentlemen of Verona - Actors' Shakespeare Project - Somerville

Wit - Broadway

Out of Iceland

http://outoficeland.com

Well, kudos to the Culture Project's Out of Iceland for leaving me at a loss for words. Unfortunately, that's about the kindest thing I could say about it. Honestly, I don't even know how to review a show this unentertainingly bad. If they're even remotely like this one, please let me never see another play by Drew Larimore. I can't judge Josh Hecht's direction because the play itself is so bad. Maybe he took it on just because he loves Lea DeLaria as much as I do? I mean, I also made the poor decision to see the show because she's in it. Now we both know better.

The good:

* DeLaria is always a pleasure to watch. She's great here as a mischievous troll(?) with a wandering accent. I also loved her in Prometheus Bound at the A.R.T., and she's the main reason I bought a ticket to Out of Iceland.

* DeLaria's tattoos. No, this has nothing to do with the show, but they gave me something else to watch as I counted down the minutes until I could leave the theater.

* DeLaria's blue pseudo-mohawk. It's hot.

* Stagehand mimes. More amusing for them actually existing as part of this production than anything in particular that they do. Say it with me now: STAGEHAND MIMES.

* It's short, so there's time to drink yourself into oblivion afterward.

The bad:

* Everything else.

No, really, pretty much everything else. The plot is trite even though it's cloyingly quirky at the same time. The characters are unbelievable, but not in a fun campy way. The dialogue is just terrible. The acting is bad, particularly from Jillian Crane, who takes bad material and then somehow makes it worse. Michael Bakkensen manages to be charming sometimes despite everything. But his Southern accent is awful.

Note to actors: Sounding Southern is not the same as sounding like the stereotype of a learning-disabled child. Also, not everyone in the South has the same accent. Stop being so lazy.

Quick reviews 2011

These are the shows I saw in 2011 with a quick rating for each and links to reviews (some still to come). Please scroll down for other recent posts.

I also have a complete list of shows I've seen since 2007.

BEST. EVER.
Black Watch - National Theatre of Scotland at St. Ann's Warehouse - off-Broadway
The Cripple of Inishmaan - Druid ensemble tour through ArtsEmerson - Boston
Frankenstein - National Theatre (London) Live broadcast

ZOMG
American Idiot - Broadway
The Book of Mormon - Broadway
The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures - Public Theater - off-Broadway
The Merchant of Venice - Theatre for a New Audience at Emerson's Cutler Majestic - Boston

Once - Broadway

W00T
Anything Goes - Broadway
Arcadia - Broadway
Carson McCullers Talks about Love - Rattlestick Theatre - off-Broadway
Completeness - Playwrights Horizons - off-Broadway
The Dream of the Burning Boy - Roundabout Theatre Black Box - off-Broadway
Good People - Broadway
Gruesome Playground Injuries - Second Stage - off-Broadway

Hadestown (Anais Mitchell) - traveling concert version
Invasion! - Play Company - off-off-Broadway

The Lyons - Vineyard Theatre - off-Broadway
Misterman - St. Ann's Warehouse - off-Broadway
The Normal Heart - Broadway

The Public - Powerhouse - New York Stage and Film at Vassar College

The Rocky Horror Show - The Old Globe, San Diego
Seminar - Broadway
Sons of the Prophet - Huntington Theatre - Boston

Sons of the Prophet - Roundabout Theatre - off-Broadway
Through a Glass Darkly - Atlantic Theater - off-Broadway

Venus in Fur - MTC - Broadway

Awkward turtle (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever opening)

http://onacleardaybroadway.com

I went to my first Broadway opening! Many thanks to the excellent folks at the Vineyard Theatre for hooking me up with a pair of tickets for opening night. It was fun spotting Tom Kitt and Len Cariou at Angus McIndoe before the show. Yes, Arthur and I gave up our bar stools to Sweeney Todd and his wife! And with minimal fangirling on my part.

Unfortunately, that was most of our celebrity spotting for the night. I couldn't find my nice wool coat because it had been way too balmy in previous weeks to ever break out the winter gear, and there was a total planning failure on my part leading up to packing for the weekend. I don't buy into the idea of theater being a dress-up event (it should be an affordable part of everyday life), but even I knew a hoodie would not do for this special occasion. So I went with a thin, 3/4-sleeve wrap over my cute, fancy short-sleeved shirt. That ensemble was wholly inadequate to the chilly task, and we both felt like awkward turtles just standing around, so we went inside shortly after the house opened.

Loitering outside before then, though, we did spot the fantastic Brian d'Arcy James being interviewed. (The Smash cast is showing up en masse to pretty much every arts-related event right now.) Mo Rocca was there, looking dapper. The self-important dude who does the overrated Battery's Down was wandering around, I think with Carly Jibson (who was sooooo good in the really bad Johnny Baseball musical at the A.R.T.--seriously, considering that amazing cast, the show should have been great, but the book was an unholy mess).

Our seats up in the mezz had a great view. (The balcony was closed--is that common for an opening?). But from up there we weren't able to oogle the stars in the orchestra once we were seated. Alas. The show started about half an hour after advertised, but that's probably normal. There wasn't any late seating, which was a wonderful perk. No cell phones went off. And people pretty much didn't talk or text, as far as I saw. That lack of distractions and the overall enthusiasm from cast and audience made the performance a special experience for us.

The show itself doesn't do it for me. In so many ways. The revisions are half-baked, the premise is beyond dumb, and there is nothing likable about most of the characters. The sets are violently awful, perhaps in an effort to distract from the rest of the mess on stage. And considering that the gay twist was one of Michael Mayer's main reasons for reviving the show, cutting to black before the big kiss is a ridiculous cop-out.

Some of the choreography for the trio is fairly brilliant, though. And Jesse Mueller's voice is perfection.

Bonnie & Clyde

http://bonnieandclydebroadway.com

I'm a heartless bitch, but even I feel a bit bad about giving this necessarily negative review for the new Bonnie & Clyde musical. The coroner has already been called on this one, so if you have your heart set on seeing it, you better hightail it to the Schoenfeld Theatre by December 30.

This musical had so much potential, but I was pretty sure they would screw it up, so expected it to flop. I just wish it had done so in a bigger, fun(nier), more spectacular way. (Like On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, for example.) Well, at least Jeremy Jordan is available for Newsies, now.

Really, the show isn't all bad. It just ... fails to be good. On the plus side: It's chock-full of really talented performers. The design work is great, especially the projections. And everyone sings the crap out of the (overly eclectic, and mostly forgettable) songs. But the main problem is a failure of vision, of focus. The book is terrible, basically, and it has no excuse for not being awesome and really relevant to what's going on in the country right now.

At its core, the story of Bonnie and Clyde is about a celebrity-obsessed country in financial ruin. But instead of focusing on this historical pair of vain, fame-hungry criminals in order to proffer Crucible-like incisive commentary on contemporary issues, this creative team chooses to focus on the love story. Because that's clearly more ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Remember how I didn't like Laura Osnes in Anything Goes or Grease? I like her even less here. She sings like a dream, but none of the songs are particularly great, so that doesn't really save her performance. And Bonnie Parker had to have been more than a self-centered, lovesick ingenue since she was also an accomplice to bank robbery and murder. But Osnes's performance has no edge or down-and-dirty sex appeal, and her saccharine line deliveries feel so out of place once the bodies start dropping. Some of that must be a failure of Ivan Menchell's writing and Jeff Calhoun's direction, but I'm not sure she could have handled anything darker anyway.

Jeremy Jordan is much better as Clyde Barrow. The boy can SIIIIIING, and he has charm for days. Others have complained about the cloyingly cute young Bonnie (Kelsey Fowler) and Clyde (Talon Ackerman), but I kind of like them. In fact, they have some of the edge that Osnes sorely lacks. Claybourne Elder as Clyde's brother Buck was fine in a kind-of nothing role. And Melissa Van Der Schyff gives a performance better than the one she was handed as Buck's wife, Blanche--and, really, Blanche has the best lines in the show anyway. Unfortunately, I hate country music, so I don't like her songs as well as I should.

My favorite song in the show is definitely the one in the beauty shop about how the women actually prefer the freedom they have while their husbands are in jail. It's hilarious and a bit out of place--and pretty much the only island of joy in this sea of mediocrity that seems to go on and on forever.

I could rip apart other problems in the show, such as how poorly written Bonnie's sad sack not-Clyde suitor is. Or that prison rape jokes are. not. funny. Instead I will bury this nearly dead horse with this bit of praise: I love the use of real photos of the famous duo and newspaper stories about them. I also appreciate how the integration of the projections onto the rustic set leaves parts of the images obscured. That, the precision of the sound effects (i.e., gunshots), and starting the story at the end and then flashing back are the best things about Bonnie & Clyde. (But ending the show right before it catches up to where it began feels anticlimactic, which is really the problem with the show in general. Damn, I guess I really don't know how to end this on a kind note.)

All New People

http://www.2st.com/component/option,com_plays/task,viewPlay/id,147


(Justin Bartha and David Wilson Barnes. Photo by Joan Marcus.)


All New People is a new play by Scrubs star Zach Braff, who also wrote and directed the indie-darling movie Garden State. I'm not sure if he picked the songs, but both the movie and the play do have killer music, which might be the best that can be said of them. This odd black comedy starts out with the fantastic Justin Bartha standing on a chair, with his head in an electrical-cord noose, smoking a cigarette--and finding it difficult to reach the ashtray.

That scene is excellent, but it's probably the best in the play, and it has only one character and no dialogue. Can you see where I'm going with this? Well, anyway, he's then interrupted by Krysten Ritter as a flighty British (*cough*) expat who is there to show the off-season beach house to a potential renter. Hijinx are then heavily contrived to ensue. I will be extremely vague about the plot here because it's clear that the play relies heavily on the surprises it can keep.

Let me start at the end, when Anna Camp, as an escort and aspiring music star, breaks out a ukelele and sounds very lovely singing along. (Braff really does use music well.) Camp was great as the cult leader's wife on True Blood a while back, but the writing for her part here--and therefore her performance of it--aims for Brittany on Glee and never quite gets there. Ritter's slightly less dense character is a bit better written but still not believable, and her accent is embarrassingly, distractingly bad. (It was a bit better in the filmed flashback, but the difference between the two was another distraction.) And I did not in any way believe her character's backstory. In fact, I find the play's flippancy toward the topic is fairly offensive.

The guys in this show, however, are excellent and really elevate the mediocre material. Although the plot just doesn't hold, every interaction between Justin Bartha and David Wilson Barnes is absolutely riveting, and they ground the goofy characters so well that it's like they're in an entirely different (good) play than when the women are involved. It's likely that the male characters are just better written. But, also, their wordless moments are the best of the play, and to me that's the mark of excellent acting.

Right, so ... the play. It's ... hmm ... funny at times. But the sight gags are predictable. On the other hand many of the jokes come out of nowhere and seem shoehorned in. Plus the airhead-escort bit gets old really, really quickly, especially when the other female character is also a ditz. And it's unconvincing that all of the characters end up in the same place together to begin with, much less remain there together given the circumstances. When the central premise bringing the characters together is shaky, it's hard to be invested in the action.

The fire chief/drug dealer, played by Barnes, is clearly there to be entertained, so I actually believed his character would hang around. He is playing probably the most chaotic, unpredictable character, and (stupid backstory aside) that makes his staying there the most believable in many ways. (I refuse to believe if an escort is told she can keep the money and NOT work that she'd stay, even if the client were Justin Bartha.) And Barnes's performance is certainly the highlight of the show--even better when he and the wonderfully beleaguered Bartha interact. I hope to see them both in a million other productions.

The ending is bland. I don't know. It just all feels a bit pointless and much of the dialogue seems trite. I love black comedy, with the darkness and humor being good counterpoints, but that's a precarious balance. And I love silly slapstick, but then it needs to give up on any pretense of depth. Plus, I hate when shows include their title in the dialogue. ("So you're all astronauts on some sort of ... star trek?")

This review ended up being much more negative than I expected when I started writing it. I suppose Peter DuBois must have directed the hell out of this script to make it so enjoyable at the time, as it all seems to fall apart on further reflection. I had a good enough time while I was watching it--thanks mostly to the absolutely perfect Bartha and Barnes and, to be fair, some truly hilarious lines. But it's only two weeks later and already the show is mostly gone from my memory, and what I can remember makes me angry.

I ran into someone there who had seen All New People multiple times. I seriously have no idea why.

But have I mentioned how wonderful Bartha and Barnes are? ;)

These divas leave me cold (Follies, Anything Goes)

Lisa and I saw Follies and Anything Goes weekend before last, so we experienced several big-name or up-and-coming divas: Bernadette Peters (who was on my bucket list), Elaine Paige, Jan Maxwell, Sutton Foster, Laura Osnes. Overall, the experience made me sad.

Anything Goes is a great time: everyone looks like they're having a blast; there's an insane tap number that is just jaw-dropping; and Sutton Foster is clearly in love with the show. Still, although I had fun, I didn't love it. Part of the problem is that Foster seems completely wrong for the part. I mean, based on off-stage videos (like in the hilarious Side by Side with Susan Blackwell), she is probably excellent to have a few beers with. I'm sure she knows hilarious jokes, probably rude ones. And the girl can sing and dance. She works hard and has fun and I just don't buy her as the risqué, sex-on-legs Reno Sweeney. Her number at the top of Act II in the nightclub fell flat because of it. (The Tony voters clearly disagreed.)

AG was the second time I'd seen Foster on stage. Previously, she failed to convince me as a dominatrix in the Second Stage play Trust. I firmly believed she'd yell at and beat the hell out of her clients if they so wished. I did not believe that she'd be at all erotic while doing so. She's a pretty girl, but something about her just comes off as too goofy to be sexy. Alas.

Back to AG, Laura Osnes has a beautiful singing voice, and when she dances it's like she's floating above the floor. Seriously, I have no idea how she moves so smoothly or sings so effortlessly. Stunning. She should not, however, be allowed to open her mouth except to sing in this show. Her acting is so acty and her line deliveries remind me of high school plays. *sigh* And I was rooting for her. I actually voted for her in that terrible Grease casting show on NBC back in 2007. (In fact, I owe my current Broadway obsession to that--as I've said, awful--show.) I saw her in the terrible production of Grease on Broadway that followed. I was so happy, and impressed, when she took over for Kelli O'Hara in South Pacific (though I didn't see the show until closing, when O'Hara was back). And I'm glad for her that she's getting the chance to originate a role on Broadway, though I think the Bonnie & Clyde musical will be truly dreadful. What I'm saying is that I was rooting for her. But every time she talks--so earnest and so forced--it kills my theater-loving soul a little bit. I thought it was just a problem with that completely charmless (and toothless) Grease revival but her acting was really bad in both it and AG. (Perhaps with the better direction and better material of South Pacific she was fine. She certainly got good reviews for it.)

So, after filling up on post-show Belgian fries at BXL across the street from AG, we saw Follies. (It was still in previews, but it did have a recent out-of-town tryout in D.C.) This is a Sondheim musical, and one that I loved at Boston's Lyric Stage a few seasons ago. So it was the fall production I had been most excited for. I expected to still love the show itself, and I've wanted to see Bernadette Peters on stage since I first saw the video of Sunday in the Park with George oh so long ago. Oh, well. I could not be more disappointed. I don't care a whit about her Sally Durant. Her little-girl voice grates. And her singing voice isn't that impressive. Mostly, I can't see why anyone would have an affair with or marry (and, indeed stayed married to) that simpleton who is completely lacking in charisma or passion, other than her obsession with Ben. *snore* And I don't remember feeling that way, that complete lack of compassion for Sally, with the Lyric's production (possibly because Leigh Barrett is absolutely perfect, always).

Jan Maxwell, on the other hand ... HOLY! Why would anyone cheat on her Phyllis? Brilliant, witty, not preserved-within-an-inch-of-her-life. And HER VOICE! And her dancing! And her acting! And, just, everything about her performance was stunning. Despite the accent, I liked Grams Mary Beth Peil, too, but Solange is such a minor part. Other than Elaine Paige's fantastic I'm Still Here and Jayne Houdyshell being generally amazing at all times, I really didn't care what happened in the show except when Maxwell was on. And wow, is she ON. Overall, I'm sad that I didn't like the show more in general. I remember feeling in love with the musical itself the first time around. Now I think I probably never need to see it again. That can't be entirely Peters's fault, of course.

Anyway, I must be a terrible Sondheim fan and a diva-hater because I am out of love with Follies and did not enjoy Gypsy. And Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, and Sutton Foster all leave me cold (well, ok, LuPone was perfect in Company). If Peters takes a Tony Award over Maxwell, I will throw things at my TV.

Quick hits 1

My longer list of shows I've seen this year obviously includes shows that have closed. And there are a ton of productions I saw this year that I haven't gotten around to reviewing yet (plus shows I saw in past years that are still running). I do hope to double back to them.

In the meantime, here are my brief impressions of shows I've seen that are still running, in case you're looking for recommendations of shows to see (or to avoid). I'm just going from the lists of Broadway and off-Broadway shows at Playbill.com. If no dates are given, the show's run is open-ended.


ZOMG
Avenue Q - off-Broadway (not for the easily offended, but smart and hilarious)
Billy Elliot - Broadway (not for those who care about accurate British accents, but heartwarming with great music and dancing)

W00T
Anything Goes - Broadway
Sons of the Prophet - off-Broadway - currently scheduled for Sept. 20 through Dec. 23

YEAH
Blue Man Group - off-Broadway (weird and fun)
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying - Broadway
Jerusalem - Broadway - closes Aug. 21 (heavy, but Mark Rylance's Tony-winning performance is definitely worth seeing)
Silence! The Musical - off-Broadway - currently extended through Sept. 24 (not for the easily offended, or for people who don't remember the movie well, but so much fun)
The Talls - off-Broadway - closes Aug. 27 (I laughed so hard and so often that I was embarrassed and had to clamp my hands over my mouth at times)

OK
All New People - off-Broadway - closes Aug. 14
Follies - Broadway - closes Dec. 30
Rock of Ages - Broadway (fun if you like that kind of music, and really much better than I expected)
Wicked - Broadway (quite a spectacle; I saw this on tour in Boston not on Broadway, so take from that what you will; a good time, but with all the hype I was a bit disappointed)

MEH
Catch Me if You Can - Broadway
Hair - Broadway (tour) - closes Sept. 10 (not my favorite songs, and I wish it had more of a story and developed characters, but the wall of sound created by so many voices is quite impressive, so if you like the music, this might be for you)
Priscilla, Queen on the Desert - Broadway
War Horse - Broadway/London's National Theatre

Upcoming
Bluebird - off-Broadway - currently scheduled for Aug. 9 through Sept. 9
The Book of Mormon
Dreams of Flying Dreams of Falling - off-Broadway - currently scheduled for Sep. 9 through Oct. 23
The Lyons - off-Broadway - currently "scheduled" for September through November
Master Class - Broadway - closes Sept. 4
Once - off-Broadway - currently scheduled for Nov. 15 through Jan. 1
Porgy and Bess - Boston pre-Broadway tryout Aug. 17 through Oct. 2 - currently scheduled to start on Broadway Dec. 17
The Submission - off-Broadway - currently scheduled for Sept. 8 through Oct. 22

The Motherfucker with the Hat

http://themfwiththehat.com/about/




With the death of Amy Winehouse, once again we have lost a talented young artist, probably to addiction. Of all the commentary on the event, Russell Brand(!) has offered the one most worth reading. In addition to recounting his personal history with Winehouse, he reminds us:

Not all addicts have Amy's incredible talent. Or Kurt [Cobain]'s or Jimi [Hendrix]'s or Janis [Joplin]'s. Some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalization doesn't even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.

The Motherfucker with the Hat, an ear-splitting look at life in recovery (and not), depicts some of those less-talented drunks and junkies in their one-day-at-a-time struggle to get by. I love the idea of the play, which is both important and ripe for humor and insight. And the creative team is promising: Although I'd never seen any of Stephen Adly Guirgis's previous plays, they all sound interesting (Jesus Hopped The A Train, Our Lady of 121st Street, The Little Flower of East Orange). Plus, Anna Shapiro won the Tony for directing a similarly intense dark dramedy, August: Osage County.

As it was the show's closing weekend and I was out of things to see, I figured I'd finally give Hat a shot (sorry, that's a fairly bad pun if you've seen the show). I had been avoiding this play because tickets weren't cheap and I'm not a huge fan of the two leads, Chris Rock and Bobby Cannavale. Both seem fairly one-note to me across their respective bodies of work. In the supporting cast, Annabella Sciorra has been hit or miss for me, and I had no idea who Elizabeth Rodriguez or Yul Vásquez were. Sadly, Rock and Cannavale were true to form in Hat, and Rodrigues and Sciorra cranked up their volume to meet the guys, shrieking expletive after expletive (or maybe everyone else rose to Rodriguez's inexplicable constant fever pitch). Their performances certainly did nothing to make up for weaknesses in the script.

I can't believe the show was only 90ish minutes long, because it seemed interminable. (At least Todd Rosenthal, also a Tony winner for August's set design, gave me something cool to look at.) The only real surprises came from the most minor character--also the only actor who didn't scream every line. I perked up every time Vásquez appeared because I had no idea what kind of crazy, or touching, or profound shit his endearingly odd character would say. And Vásquez managed to make some pretty wacky lines seem sincere, so I'll definitely be on the lookout for what he does next.

Perhaps I'm just not the target audience for this show, because other people were busting up all around me (in the cheap seats). But I should be the perfect audience for this type of play. I'm a huge fan of the antihero, and the unhappy ending. In fact, I do love much of what the play has to say, mainly that giving up drugs and alcohol is only the first step in turning a life around. It won't turn a self-centered tool into a saint, a layabout into a hard worker, or a cheat into a monogamist. And though your sponsor may be able to help keep you on the wagon, it doesn't mean he's a role model in any other aspect of life. On the flip side, just because someone is a total asshat doesn't mean he doesn't also have something important to offer along your path.

The show is short enough that I might--a couple years from now--go see a good local company production of Hat, just to see whether different direction and acting choices change my opinion of the script.

Catch Me if You Can

http://www.catchmethemusical.com





Like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, Catch Me if You Can fills me with inertia. The second act is better than the first, but everything about it should be better. Sure, Aaron Tveit and Norbert Leo Butz throw their all at what they're given, but I was still bored. After holding his own in Next to Normal opposite the formidable Alice Ripley, it's clear Tveit has the charisma and the pipes to carry a musical. Just not this one.

Both actors are charming and funny and sound great, but I just don't care what happens to either of them. The stakes are too low (and not just because we've all seen the movie). Tveit plays larger-than-life Frank Abagnale Jr. in a very understated, natural way, which would be lovely with a better script and if it weren't a completely different style from Butz's over-the-top bumbling FBI agent Carl Hanratty. Pratfalls aren't really my favorite kind of humor, but I'm also disturbed that the too-glib tone glosses over the very real effects that con artists have on the people they swindle and, in this case, on patients who might have been endangered by Abagnale posing as an emergency room supervisor. And rather than dragging down the show, more dramatic material might help the jokes land better.

For me, Tom Wopat is the standout of the show, perhaps partially because Abagnale's smary, boozy father has the only serious scenes and suffers the only real consequences in the show. Also, Wopat has amazing stage presence and a great, booming voice. I know he's been in several Broadway shows before, with good reviews, but I had only ever seen him in reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard, so his charismatic performance in Catch Me is a brilliant surprise. His descent over the course of the show is inevitable but sad. Kudos for making me wish, just a little bit, that he wouldn't get what he deserved. (And for wishing Jr. would.)

I like David Rockwell's set design (other than the cheesy cutout plane) and love his cool, mobile onstage home for the fantastic orchestra. William Ivey Long's costume design bores me to tears and makes no sense to me. Toward the end of the show I realized that he is carrying through an all-white theme for the ensemble women (even in their first big number, "Live in Living Color"!). And while I don't really understand it as a choice (imagine the great, colorful '60s-inspired dresses that could have been used!), I would be less disappointed if the great white parade weren't interrupted by the Pan Am women wearing pastel blue flight uniforms. And to be exceedingly picky, the satin nurse uniforms may be the ugliest, cheapest-looking costumes I've ever seen on stage (including high school productions).

The vocal performances are powerful, and the sound from the orchestra is joyous and full, but I remember none of Marc Shaiman's bland music or Scott Wittman's lackluster lyrics.Terrence McNally's book is superficial and dissatisfying, and the too-frequent breaking of the fourth wall at first seems like a good way to hold the story together but descends into lazy, wink-wink storytelling.

After initially being excited about the show because I love Tveit and Butz and was curious to see Kerry Butler (so underused that it's not worth discussing), I lowered my expectations based on word-of-mouth. I was still disappointed, but the show isn't awful. There's enough there to be fun for the once-a-year tourist looking for a big Broadway musical. But given all the talent involved, it should have been much, much better.

Seriously, how do you make a boring musical about the country's most famous con man? (In the same way you make a musical about Australian drag queens boring, I guess.) The hard emotional, racial, and socioeconomic issues lurking within fun shows like A Chorus Line, Billy Elliot, In the Heights, and Passing Strange make those stories richer without zapping the joy and spectacle out of them. These shows expect more of their audiences and are more satisfying for it.

Spring Awakening non-Equity national tour

http://www.springawakening.com




Many people assume, not unreasonably, that my favorite musical is Spring Awakening. I've certainly seen it a ridiculous number of times--way more than I've seen anything else--and I love it a ridiculous amount. I still listen to the cast recording often. I've followed some of the actors to their new projects. Yes, I'm a huge Spring Awakening fan, but it's not my favorite musical and I certainly don't think it's the best musical ever (hello, Sondheim!). I do love the show, but I'm not blind to its many faults. It's clear that I've seen it for the last time, and I'm ok letting it go.

About three and a half years after seeing Spring Awakening on Broadway for the first time (two and a quarter since it closed) and almost two years since seeing it in Boston during its first national (Equity) tour, I finally saw it again last weekend. It was the second national (non-Equity) tour, in New Haven. There were apparently no understudies on, which is good because I don't know anything about the current cast, including their names. After seeing the show, I don't think I'll be bothering to learn them, but you can find the cast list here.

Can we all just agree that Steven Sater's dialogue here must be the worst for any show that has won a Tony Award for best book? (Suffering through it all again really makes me love American Idiot's dearth of dialogue even more. Michael Mayer, who directed both musicals, obviously learned his lesson!)

On the astonishingly positive side, this performance was the only time the beating scene EVER worked in any cast I've seen, Broadway or tour. The way Wendla breathed/gasped through the pauses in the whole never-felt-anything bit made up for so much awkward writing. How did no one ever think to do this before? Major kudos, kids (and/or whoever took over for Mayer in directing the tour).

Overall, sitting on stage was a terrible idea for me. I'm very glad I didn't pay more to see it (stage seats are cheap because they're partial view and awesome because the cast sings while sitting next to you), but I was in danger of being terribly rude and laughing my face off at the most inappropriate times. I didn't, but it was supremely awkward. Unfortunately, holding that in meant I didn't laugh at all because everything else ceased being funny several viewings ago.

Below the jump are my Twitteresque responses to everything else. They will only make sense if you've seen the show. Sorry. The performance just filled me with inertia and I can't face writing a real review (which would end up being twice as long as my Idiot post was, and no one wants that).

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

http://www.priscillaonbroadway.com

This will be my shortest review ever because I just don't care enough about this show to complain more. It's so mediocre, and I can barely remember any of it other than the crushing weight of disappointment I felt at watching it fall so flat.

The costumes are visually assaulting, sometimes in a good way (how the three leads' dresses fit together at the curtain call is worthy of a Tony all by itself). But I don't remember any of the songs, the show ends well after the emotionally satisfying reconciliation between drag queen and son, and, though his dad scenes are great, Will Swenson just doesn't sell the swish. That said, Tony Sheldon and C. David Johnson are great as Bernadette and Bob. And Nick Adams ... is very athletic.

This is a musical about two guys and a transgender woman traveling across the Australian desert to do a drag show at a big casino and for one of the guys to meet his young son. That should be awesome, right? The movie definitely is: It's smart, full of heart, and, appropriately for a movie about Australian drag queens, bitingly hilarious. This Broadway musical, however, is the Disney version of drag queens. I said funnier, gayer, more shocking things in high school than this gang does on stage. The clearest indication that the show is only trying to appear edgy--to make the tourists feel that they're seeing something shocking, without doing anything that might actually alienate middle Americans--is that the three people on the show's webpage are not the three leading men but instead three minor women. Yup, nary a drag queen in sight.

But I'm sure people will love the tour. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Hello Again: A Musical

http://www.transportgroup.org/cms/HelloAgain.php



Oh, the joy of an unamplified musical! And even better with one of the voices belonging to Blake Daniel (a favorite of mine from Spring Awakening)! It's been too long since I've sat in a room with live musicians and voices reaching my ears without electronic intercession. And that aspect was the greatest benefit of this production of Hello Again by the Transport Group, which they advertise as "staged non-traditionally in a raw space in SoHo." Words and music are by John LaChiusa with direction by Jack Cummings III.

After venting my spleen about how much I hate Diane Paulus's transformation of the A.R.T.'s smaller theater into Club Oberon, I'm glad to have a similar surround-sound show for comparison. As I mentioned in that earlier post, "It's one thing for a scrappy theater company to turn a run-down club into a low-budget, makeshift theater space. It's another entirely for a high-profile, well-funded company to turn a perfectly good theater with decent sound and sightlines into a crappy club performance space." Indeed, I love the set/atmospheric design of the large, non-theater room where Hello Again is staged. The use of mirrors and various kinds of lighting as the primary set decoration is visually interesting and thematically appropriate, and also just cool to look at. (The A.R.T. was using Oberon to perform both Prometheus Bound and The Donkey Show, so neither had any decorations to the space.)

Hello Again is the second Transport Group musical I've seen, both performed partially among the audience and directed by Cummings. (They call it "environmental," but when tables are being used as anything but tables, and when very little about the performance space resembles the piece's setting, I don't consider that environmental.) I definitely think the staging worked better with Adam Mathias and Brad Alexander's See Rock City & Other Destinations, with the audience on two sides of the space and very little action taking place from behind (and nothing particularly in-your-face).

I still don't love this particular kind of alternative setup. No doubt, it's thrilling to be up close to actors you admire--to see the minutiae of their performances and to hear their beautiful singing so close to your ears (one of the best things about stage seating for Spring Awakening). But for both Hello Again and Prometheus Bound, this could be (better) accomplished in a small performance space that uses a more traditional configuration. Plus, with a traditional setup, there's no annoying chair sounds or cricks in the neck as the audience strains to see action taking place out of the line of sight.

I've heard Hello Again called racy and daring, but I don't find it so. Rather than making the sex scenes more exciting, having them performed a foot away from your face just highlights how faked they are. (That is not to say I particularly wanted more nudity in my face, but why make the experience immersive only to highlight how theatrical it is instead of real and raw?)

I don't mean to harp on the staging and ignore the material itself, but I honestly don't have much to say about the book. It has some funny lines, and the performers act--and sing!--the heck out of it. But I was kind of bored, and by the end I was more than glad to escape my very uncomfortable chair. The orchestrations are gorgeous, and the voices are so, so lovely, but there are no actual, cohesive, distinct songs in this musical. And I can't remember any of the "songs," just two days later. The show is like listening just to the sung-through parts of Rent or Bare but skipping all the memorable songs. (And, really, when you're skipping through the cast recording, do you want to listen to Voice Mail #1 or to Seasons of Love?) I'm not a fan of sung dialogue to begin with, and when it's the entire script ... ugh.

I find it difficult to determine whether I would like the show any better if were a more traditional musical, with the dialogue spoken and the songs sung. I must also admit to being unfamiliar with the source material, Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, which was clearly much more provocative in its time than Hello Again is today. None of the sexual pairings surprised me, and none of the characters' stories seemed fresh or enlightening. Having the stories span decades didn't really seem to add much, either--are we really surprised by the idea that people were sexually confused and/or promiscuous in earlier times? Even the framework of two people pairing off and then one of them going off to have sex with someone else and then that someone else pairing off with yet another until it comes full circle seemed too familiar to prop up the well-worn individual tales.

I also found the show to lack emotional resonance, other than the pairing of Tony nominee Alan Campbell as The Senator and Rachel Bay Jones as The Actress. Oh, how trite that storyline is! But Jones acts it for all it's worth, and I feel her pain even as I want to laugh at her for thinking it will ever work out. A scene that should have been infuriating and heartbreaking (and was also about the only surprise in the script, so I won't spoil it other than to say it involves a famous historical event) because of one character's insensitivity to the needs of another--and it's horrible classism--is just glossed over, sapping it of all impact.

Yes, I think that is the problem I have with this show: it lacks impact. It's in your face without being intimate, full of singing without having any songs, and packed with great performances but playing no characters worth caring about (either to pity or to despise). Completely forgettable.

Prometheus Bound at the A.R.T.

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/148207-Tony-Nominee-Gavin-Creel-Is-Prometheus-Bound-Opening-at-ART-March-4

Gavin Creel as Prometheus. Photo by Marcus Stern.

This musical should be titled Prometheus's Abs. As with Hair and The Donkey Show, A.R.T.’s Diane Paulus once again uses naked flesh (in the form of Gavin Creel, again) to distract from a hot mess of a show. (Hair isn't a bad show, exactly--especially compared to the completely clothed Johnny Baseball--but it's not a particularly great one.)

For me, the most telling thing about this lackluster production is that while I continue to think of additional things I loved about The Dream of the Burning Boy that I left out of my review (the clever use of movable bookshelves, the preshow music, the awesome blackboard/backlight panel), I've already forgotten almost everything about Prometheus, which I saw only three days earlier.

Here are my general recollections of this collaboration between Paulus, Steven Sater (Tony winner for the very awkward book to Spring Awakening), and Serj Tankian (from band System of a Down, which I've never listened to):
Loud! abs! where'd they go? can't hear lyrics! on my table! plot??? hate this space! creepy chicks are awesome! LOUD!

As my husband complained to me, for as loud as the show is, and with all the jumping around, nothing really happens. And because of that, there are no character arcs. The lack of action makes the story about as engaging as reading a Wikipedia article about the myth. This is not helped by Sater's stiff and clunky writing in both dialog and lyrics (but his earlier work with Spring Awakening makes this unsurprising). Plus, the vocals are often drowned out by the music, so it's hard to follow what story there is.

 The show bleeds righteous indignation and aspires to be a political anthem for Amnesty International, to inspire the youth to rise up and take social action. But to me the script lacks heart and, worse, is mostly irrelevant to its cause. But at least there’s loud music and half-naked dancing, right?

 And the kids on the dance floor did have their hands in the air.

Eventually even the wonder of the abs wears off, and only boredom is left. As I mention in an earlier post, in the Oberon space I feel very detached from the show even when it is happening on top of my table. (I'm curious how that experience will compare to the also-immersive Hello Again, by New York's Transport Group, which I'm seeing on Sunday.)

 The most interactive the A.R.T.'s shows get is to require the audience to remove everything from their tables when the cast comes bounding up. Yes, everything, including the menu that the staff puts on the table and the drinks they sell.

Between straining to hear the lyrics, trying to follow the actors around the space, keeping my head and arms inside the vehicle at all times, and looking very hard for the point, my mind wandered. I wondered if Creel had that ripped body before or developed it over the course of this very physically demanding show, caught myself pondering his terrible dye job, then admired the tenacity of the body tape valiantly holding on the mic cord running down his back in the face of all that sweating and thrashing about. Bravo, tape!



For all its faults, though, this production has a lot going for it, which is why it's such a shame it's not better. The actors performed the hell out of the material given to them. (Unfortunately, Gabe Ebert as Hephaistos/Hermes was always breaking character--I assume an ill-chosen direction from Paulus.) A couple of the less musical-theatery songs sounded wonderful, enough overall that I'll definitely check out System of a Down, but except for the quiet ones sung by the Daughters of Aether the lyrics were so hard to hear that I don't remember which songs.

Other aspects I liked:


• Uzo Aduba as Io. The only emotional part of the show is her story, and her pain is palpable (even though it's written as way too overwrought, she sells it). Although I wish some of her songs were quieter, subtler, Aduba acted the crap out of it.

 Prometheus is the protagonist, but whatever heart and soul this production has is Io.
• Gavin Creel as Prometheus. Wow, the guy can sing. Imagine if he had better songs! Also, the spotlight just loves him, even when the script gives his almost nothing to do but belt out angsty songs while looking pretty.
  
• The trio of Daughters of the Aether. Their songs are spooky and interesting, and I loved how Ashley Flanagan, Jo Lampert, and Celina Carvajal's voices meld together. Their movement around the club space is the only immersive aspect that makes sense for the story and is compelling rather than distracting (they're fairly peripheral to the story, lending atmosphere most of the time). Basically, they bring the cool.

• Lea DeLaria as Force. Ok, mostly DeLaria being DeLaria, kicking ass and being generally awesome.
  
• The crazy hair in the show. Especially the shaved/bright red 'do on one of the Daughters, Lea DeLaria's fauxhawk, and what the various band members sport. (Not Gavin's hair though. The black makes him look washed out, and the hair gets strangely poofy after all that writhing around.
)
• Highlighting Amnesty International's work. After the curtain call, they tell the story of one suffering activist and invite the audience to sign postcards on her or his behalf. (Apparently a new activist is selected for each show.) Although I fail to see any strong connection between the show and this very important work for human rights--despite the note in the program asking "Are we in ancient Greece? Or is Prometheus a defiant dissident in modern-day North Africa? Or China? Perhaps Iran or Belarus?"--I'm glad to see the effort on behalf of Amnesty nonetheless.

All in all, it comes down to this: Once the show was over, instead of pondering Prometheus as a modern human rights hero, I was instead thinking of how much I loved the National Theatre's broadcast of Frankenstein (based on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus) and Anais Mitchell's brilliant Greek folk opera, Hadestown. Both put the A.R.T.'s Prometheus Bound to shame.

For the sake of all that’s right and good, would someone please mount a fully staged production of Hadestown in Boston or New York already?


(ETA: Anais's manager says they're working crafting the show right now, to be ready sometime next year. BEST NEWS EVER.)

Diane Paulus and the new A.R.T.

http://www.americanrepertorytheater.org/

(Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office)

Last night I sat through Prometheus Bound, Steven Sater's new musical written with System of a Down lead singer Serj Tankian, at the Boston-area A.R.T., directed by the inexplicably popular Diane Paulus. Her star is on the rise after directing Hair on Broadway, which happens to be on tour in Boston at the Colonial Theater at the moment.

I'm not surprised that I didn’t love Prometheus. I clearly just do not like her work, and I suspect I never will. I didn't love Hair, with its paper-thin story full of characters I didn't connect with played by a highly energetic cast throwing out an impressive wall of sound on songs I knew but never had loved. I half-hated the complete two-headed mess of a musical that was Johnny Baseball (the modern half was a light and hilarious spoof of Red Sox fans, while the flashback was a muddled, preachy, ineffectual, sappy, and trite treatise against racism). And I despised The Donkey Show.

Most of all, I hate what Paulus has done with Zero Arrow Street in Harvard Square. I don’t find her use of the space to be daring or exciting or even particularly creative. In fact, it’s annoyingly disingenuous. It's one thing for a scrappy theater company to turn a run-down club into a low-budget, makeshift theater space. It's another entirely for a high-profile, well-funded company to turn a perfectly good theater with decent sound and sightlines into a crappy club performance space so that dancing half-naked actors can sing loudly at you and invade your personal space to distract you from the deficiencies in yet another underdeveloped show.

This immersive-theater style Paulus is cramming down our throats just makes me weary. I thought Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More was brilliantly immersive, with the audience roaming around four floors of an abandoned school out in Brookline to check out the amazingly detailed spooky-cool set design and then running to catch up with gorgeous dancers as they zipped from room to room to wordlessly interpret scenes from Macbeth. (Bringing Punchdrunk to Boston is Paulus’s best contribution to Boston theater so far.) She’s riding high on Sleep No More’s critical raves and The Donkey Show’s success (undeserved, I think--aside from the fun of drag kings and very pretty, very scantily clad go-go boys, I don’t see the appeal of this hideous disco-music sketch of A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Paulus now seems determined to force this in-your-face style onto pieces much less suited for it.

I neither want to stand for a 90-minute show on a crowded dance floor, getting pushed around to make room for actors and set pieces flying at me from different directions, nor do I appreciate having to crane my neck around this way and that to try to follow the action from the more expensive raised table seating. The lack of tiered seating upstairs and the action taking place mostly on the level below means someone else’s head is in your way even when the actors are directly in front of you. The floors on the upper level are creaky, and the actors are always stomping and jumping on and off tables and railings, so it's really loud. And with the mix of voices over music being woefully unbalanced, you just miss too much of the show visually and aurally.

I do wish I had seen Amanda Palmer as the Emcee in Cabaret there, since that seemed like a brilliant use of the space (and it wasn't directed by Paulus). And I must admit that the kids down on the dance floor at Prometheus Bound, and the gay men and bachelorette parties at The Donkey Show, seemed to be having a grand time and were likely to come back for repeat viewings. So it's clearly bringing in a new audience to the theater. So even if I don't like the style, and even if it will keep me from seeing future shows in that space, I must grudgingly admit that I’m grateful that Paulus is helping to make a new generation of theater-goers.

Peter and the Starcatcher

http://www.playbill.com/events/event_detail/21709-Peter-and-the-Starcatcher-at-New-York-Theatre-Workshop

Based on excellent word of mouth, last weekend I set aside one of my precious weekend-theater timeslots for Peter and the Starcatcher (or, as I think of it, Bloody Bloody Peter Pan) at the New York Theatre Workshop. It was what I imagine a crazy Hasty Pudding production is like, except without the charm and wit. I was not amused.

Peter displayed all the faults (distracting, inappropriate, juvenile humor) and none of the occasional brilliance of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (interesting if superficial commentary on timely issues; catchy songs). Justly or not I blame Alex Timbers, who shepherded BBAJ ill-advisedly all the way to Broadway (for all its faults, I think it could have been a long-running cult hit off-Broadway). I don't find Rick Elice’s script for Peter particularly compelling, but I definitely hate the way Timbers (I assume it’s his fault, based on its type of "humor") ruined the flow by punching up the story with lame jokes winked at the audience. Without that interference, this might have been a charming and age-appropriate prequel to Peter Pan, albeit one I wouldn't have bothered to see.

I had been told this was a musical, but it was somewhere between a musical and a play with music, and it would have benefitted from moving a significant distance in either direction. I don't remember any of the songs, and the lyrics were fairly lame, so it probably would have been better as a simple children's play. Overall, I thought the show was trying too hard to be clever (just like BBAJ), but I didn't think the theater in-jokes were funny enough to justify breaking out of the story. It was just a mess: both too childish and too meta, in ways that didn't mesh for me.

All the performers did an admirable job with a lackluster script, but for all their effort to sell it, the show never got off the ground. Adam Chanler-Berat (previously a high school stoner in Next to Normal) and Celia Keenan-Bolger (once a child competitor in 25th … Spelling Bee and, more recently, in an adult role in Bachelorette) made charming and fairly believable children. I've only seen Christian Borle in this and in the current revival of Angels in America, each role over-the-top in its own way, and he certainly threw himself into both characters.

I thought wistfully about skipping the second act, but I really don't do that. (If I can live through the zionist musical The Time of Mendel's Trouble--both a terrible musical and in no way convincing anyone to move to the Holy Land, so a failure all around--I can live through about anything someone throws on stage.) I'm glad I stayed because the musical number that opened act II was so crazy. It certainly didn't fit well with the rest of the show, and I don’t think it was a good number, but it was certainly the most entertaining stretch of the show by far. I don't even remember what the song was about, but the costuming was genius: mermaid outfits constructed out of kitchenware, with those metal strainers that spiral out like flower petals as bras. It was stunning.

The high point of the show was its staging. I don’t know if it was the work of the codirectors (the venerable Roger Rees, whom I expected more from, and Timbers), “movement” coordinator Steven Hoggett (American Idiot and Black Watch choreographer), set designer Donyale Werle, or someone else. But the use of the show’s lack of space was absolutely brilliant. At one point a length of rope was stretched across the stage and shimmied to make ocean waves, and at another it was held up to make a door frame. This allowed for quick “set changes” that kept the otherwise dragging show moving along. At another point, ten or so actors were lined up shoulder to shoulder as a hallway of doors that were opened and shut in rapid succession, with crazy scenes behind each. I think even if I had loved the rest of the show, this creative staging would have been my favorite aspect.

Overall, I felt I could have used that time seeing something I would have enjoyed much, much more. Luckily, the other shows I saw that weekend were much better (Molly Sweeney at the Irish Rep, and The Other Place with the excellent Laurie Metcalf at MCC Theater).

JUNE 2012 UPDATE: Lisa saw the Broadway transfer and really likes it. I get the impression that I'm about the only person who doesn't.