Thank god for Broadway tours (American Idiot is back!)

http://americanidiotthemusical.com

Boston is an amazing city with tons of great local theater. Plus it's a doable bus distance from New York. It also launches shows that later transfer to New York, hosts Broadway tryouts, and always brings in big Broadway tours. And I am SO thankful for that, especially when dearly departed Broadway shows come around on national tour. (Billy Elliot just closed, and I'm already ready for the tour to get here. I can't believe I have to wait until July!)

This week, I finally get to see American Idiot again. (A lot.) Oh, how I have missed this musical since it closed on Broadway nine months ago! And I'm so excited to see familiar faces from the Broadway cast, especially Van Hughes reprising his role as Johnny and two excellent former understudies now in leading roles: Leslie McDonel as Heather and Joshua Kobak as St. Jimmy.

Mostly, I'm in love with Tom Kitt's gorgeous arrangements of Green Day's cathartic music and Steven Hoggett's powerful choreography. I really can't get enough of either. Sure, eight shows in one week is excessive. But surely that's not surprising to any of you who have read this blog before.

I'll write up a review at the end of the week, but I can tell you now that it will be mostly positive!

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A special hello to my new theater friend, Jorge. It was great talking with you before the show, and I look forward to seeing you at other performances in Boston and New York. Theater people are the best!

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ETA: There is a ticket lottery for $28 seats in the first 2 rows. Cash only. Submit your name 2.5 hours to submit your name. Winners will be chosen 30 minutes later.

2012: A Look Ahead

How can it be 2012 already when I still haven't finished my reviews of shows I saw in 2011? Less than twelve hours into the new year, and I'm already disappointed with myself. And not just because of my behavior last night.

But now that I mention it:

1. Next year I shall try to not be the drunkest person at the party.

2. Even when I'm drunk at a NYE party, I still talk trash about theater.

(This time I was complaining about the gay lumberjack outfits for the supposedly straight-dressing gay older brother in Sons of the Prophet at Roundabout. If your flannel shirt is fitted, even in a small Pennsylvania town people will start to wonder if you are gay. Right? And both brothers were way less flaming when the show was at the Huntington. More on this later when I double-back to finally reviewing that show, which I really liked, by the way.)

In exciting news, I already have tickets to 27 theatrical performances for this year (in chronological order):

The Mountaintop
Chinglish
Billy Elliot (closing performance)
The Canterbury Tales Remixed (Soho Playhouse)
Stick Fly
Outside People (Vineyard)
Once (NYTW, closing performance)
Red (SpeakEasy, Boston)
American Idiot (tour, Boston)
Wit
CQ/CX (Atlantic)
Assistance (Playwrights Horizons)
Yosemite (Rattlestick)
Merrily We Roll Along (Encores!)
Once (Broadway transfer)
American Idiot (tour, Denver)
Death of a Salesman
Carrie (MCC)
Next to Normal (SpeakEasy, Boston)
Xanadu (SpeakEasy, Boston)

(No, I'm not terrible at math. I'm seeing the American Idiot tour multiple times in Boston. Yes, every performance. It's all Steven Hoggett's fault. Well, mostly.)

It seems unlikely that I'll match 2011's record of 102 theater performances ever again, but perhaps that means I'll read more than 10 books this year.

The Cripple of Inishmaan (and tour)

http://www.druid.ie/productions/the-cripple-of-inishmaan-2011


Tadhg Murphy and Laurence Kinlan from the tour. Photo by Robert Day.

[Here's a review of a show I saw more than two years ago then again this year on tour. I figured since it's the best thing I've ever seen on stage, I'd better at least say something about it here.]

As you may have noticed, I've seen a ton of shows, by a lot of authors, presented by a bunch of Broadway teams and off-Broadway and regional theater companies. So far this year, I've seen 58 different productions. So I hope it carries some weight when I say that the Atlantic Theater's presentation of the Druid's 2009 production of Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan at the Atlantic Theater Company is the best thing I have ever seen on stage.

If you've read any of my previous reviews, you may also have gathered that even when I love a show, I always have at least a few complaints. Not so with Cripple. The production at the Atlantic was flawless in every aspect, from casting to set design to script. I'm so in love with it that I saw it again when ArtsEmerson brought the Druid tour to Boston. It was still excellent (though not perfect), and I'm so glad I got to experience it again.

McDonagh is a fecking brilliant playwright. He may be my favorite playwright, in fact. (I also love the less-violent but also profane Conor McPherson a ridiculous amount.) McDonagh's work is shockingly dark, blisteringly funny, brutal, curse-strewn, and more than a little twisted. (I have still not recovered from reading The Pillowman and cannot even imagine surviving seeing it performed. The Lieutenant of Inishmore is the opposite--it wrecked me when I read it, but on stage I found it more bearable--and very funny.) If you have not seen his brilliant movie In Bruges, go rent it. Now.

This description of Cripple is shamefully stolen from Amazon.com because I am incapable of brevity:

In 1934, the people of Inishmaan learn that the Hollywood director Robert Flaherty is coming to the neighboring island to film a documentary. No one is more excited than Cripple Billy, an unloved boy whose chief occupation has been grazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. For Billy is determined to cross the sea and audition for the Yank. And as news of his audacity ripples through his rumor-starved community, The Cripple of Inishmaan becomes a merciless portrayal of a world so comically cramped and mean-spirited that hope is an affront to its order.

As in all McDonagh works, the characters are ridiculous, outrageous, and oversized but underneath the over-the-top action and bloodshed there are somehow hauntingly human truths about what we need from other people and what they give us (and vice versa). I don't know of another playwright that makes horrible people so vulnerable and horrible situations so funny. Also, the fake-blood budgets for his plays must be enormous!

The entire cast of the Atlantic production was spot-on, but Aaron Monaghan was really completely brilliant as Cripple Billy (Tadhg Murphy was also so, so good in the tour). My heart hurt for him the entire show. (And my ankle had sympathy pains for the way he had to walk. I'm sure there was some sort of costuming trickery with his shoe, but it really did look like he was walking--or shuffling, really--on his ankle for the entire show.) Kerry Condon was also excellent as Slippy Helen, possibly the most difficult of the characters to keep real and even a little bit likable. No, really, everyone in this cast was perfect. And it had brilliant direction by Garry Hynes and charming set design by Francis O'Connor.

I was so disappointed when this didn't transfer to Broadway, as had been rumored. I'm so, so glad I had the chance to revisit it on tour. And I'm very grateful for the kinds of works that ArtsEmerson is bringing to Boston.

Black Watch tour

http://www.stannswarehouse.org/current_season.php?show_id=60

http://www.nationaltheatrescotland.com/content/default.asp?page=home_Black%20Watch%202010

I'm not a fan of war drama at all, but I decided to see Black Watch anyway because I was desperately curious about the movement, created by the choreographer of American Idiot and Peter and the Starcatcher. It helped that the rave reviews specifically praised that choreography. And, ok, I figured if nothing else I'd enjoy listening to a company of cute young Scottish men talk for a couple hours.

So I was unprepared when Black Watch (about the regiment's involvement in the recent Iraq war) knocked the wind out of me. I am completely in love with this National Theatre of Scotland play-with-music. Written by Gregory Burke and directed by John Tiffany, with movement/choreography by Steven Hoggett and music by Davey Anderson, the piece is honest, beautiful, and not even a little bit overwrought.

The play surprised me so many times during its two hours, and it's a bit difficult to categorize. It's somehow grittily realistic one moment and gorgeously impressionistic the next without falling apart stylistically. That may arise from being wonderfully infused with sound and movement throughout instead of having separate speaking and singing-and-dancing scenes. There's movement ranging from background characters in subtle tableau during talk-heavy scenes to coordinated group movement that might as well be called dancing. The same with sound: a few delicate piano notes repeating softly in the background or static from the TVs, percussive marching, beautiful full-out singing of folk tunes and, of course, bagpipes. But it's still not a musical.

The movement and music are at once arresting but not flashy, and always in service of the story. Each artistic component (dialogue, set, props, movement, music, video, wire work) is used in unexpected ways to take on burdens that traditional use of a more expected element couldn't adequately carry. A pool table is ripped open from within to reveal soldiers hiding there, and the movement of their exit is fantastically precise (as with every bit of the show); later its emptied-out shell is used as troop transport. The silent mail call uses subtle, gorgeous hand motions for each man as he reads news from home. There's even a series of hilarious costume changes enacted on one character by his mates to show him in various period uniforms during a retelling of the history of the Watch.

Kudos to the fantastic cast, which is pulled in so many directions over the course of the show. The requirements for this piece go way beyond being a triple threat, and the baby-faced cast delivered, one and all. Brilliant, brilliant ensemble work (from the cast and from the creative team).

I came to the show mainly for Hoggett's choreography, and it more than delivered. As I mention in my review of American Idiot, I love how he takes real-life movement and stretches it until it becomes dance. I can count on one hand the shows that have threatened to make me cry, and this one certainly surprised me. The ending of Black Watch is the first in which it was the choreography that brought tears to my eyes.

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).

The Merchant of Venice tour

http://www.tfana.org/season/the-merchant-of-venice/overview

I'm not proud of it, but I don't know much about Shakespeare. (Hey, I wasn’t an English or theater major!) I know, I should probably be barred from the theater until I do my homework, right? Or, I could just go to more amazing productions like Theatre for a New Audience's tour of The Merchant of Venice and get schooled.

All the ads focus on Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham in a smart suit (see above)--and he is, unsurprisingly, excellent--but the star of this show is director Darko Tresnjak. By which I mean I loved everything about this show: the sleek set, the slick costuming, every single actor, and the use of the original language in a contemporary setting in a way that actually works. Tresnjak seems to direct many Shakespearean works. I don’t know if they’re all in this half-modern style, but if they were I would watch them all.

I find it difficult to follow Shakespeare live. The language is unfamiliar to me, so when it's spoken too quickly and in a pompous, stagy way, I get lost (even though it's generally easier to understand it on the stage than on the page). This production solves that problem entirely, though. Even when I missed a line or two because it was too quiet or too fast (or I was distracted by a terrible audience member), the superb acting got me right back on track.

What I find the most delightful, though, is that the actors look (in gestures and general movement) and sound (in cadence, inflection, and speech mannerisms) as though they're performing a modern play. There's nothing stuffy about their delivery at all because they clearly understand how every line they're saying would be translated in modern language. And they act and give line readings according to that modern dialogue while actually speaking the original words. It's thrilling to watch.

Scholars the world over study Shakespeare, so I won't weigh in on the various debates regarding anti-Semitism in Merchant. I will just say that as a viewer new to this play, I find the whole cross-dressing bit with the wives fairly weird. In fact, I find the mix of humor and drama odd. I'm a fan of black comedy, but usually the twisted comedy derives from the drama itself, and here it's more like a parallel story that doesn't quite mesh. Also, the play gets surprisingly gay there at the end (perhaps without enough of a lead-up?), complete with a full on-mouth kiss. I don't know if it's just this production, but I couldn't tell if Antonio and Bassanio are supposed to be good mates or soul mates in the original play or in this production.

The setup about the husbands stupidly giving away the rings from their wives (to their wives in drag) seems to be the only part that straddles the drama/comedy line and brings the various storylines together. Portia certainly seems justified in her worry that she comes second in Bassanio's heart. She cares enough to save him from losing his friend, which would likely break him, even though saving him means having to share her husband's love with another. (Because she actually loves him or because he was the best of the bunch of potential spouses?) I'm disappointed for Portia that she only has a portion of her husband's heart, and also sad for Antonio that he has to be grateful for Portia saving his life while being envious that she has married his true love. Am I alone in wishing this storyline had been developed a bit more? (Am I also alone in wondering what exactly Antonio did to secure Bassanio's devotion? He comes across as a feckless asshat to me.)

So, now that I've made it clear how little I know or understand about the Bard, I hope you will still take me seriously when I say that you should go see this show if you get a chance. It's at the Cutler Majestic in Boston through April 10. The $25 seats in the rear mezzanine have a good view. (If you see it, please come back and explain it all to me!)

Big musical number (list of shows seen)

To give you the idea of the scale of my theater-going activities, below are a tally and a list of (as far as I know) all the shows I've seen since September 2007 (plus one Broadway show I saw as a kid--the original production of A Chorus Line, late in its run). Some shows I have seen multiple times. A few of them a thoroughly excessive number of times. (Should I admit to which ones? Hmmmmmm, maybe later.)


PERFORMANCES ATTENDED
2007 (September-December): 11
2008: 124
2009: 95
2010: 72
2011: 102
2012: ???