Under the steady and artful hand of director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall, this musical keeps you laughing and tapping your toe. The witty book is by Joe DiPietro (with a little inspiration from Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse) who is also a Tony nominee this year. The show in general could have 10-15 minutes cut fromt it; at two hours and forty minutes, it's a tad long.

Nice Work If You Can Get It stars Matthew Broderick and Kelli O'Hara as a rich tycoon and an unlikely bootlegger who find love together.  Broderick gives a performance as Jimmy that uses his stock-in-trade, boyish charm with a hint of sad-sack mama's boy.  He's light on his feet but I wouldn't call his performance snappy.   His movement is inhibited by his damp-blanket character.  I’m also comparing, and probably unfairly so, his performance to Tommy Tune's performance from another Gershwin composite musical of almost thirty years ago, My One and Only (on which "yours truly" worked as the stage door manager for a week in 1983.)  Tune had a sparkle that Broderick’s character doesn’t have, particularly when he danced.    

Ms. O'Hara's "Billie" is charming  and her vocals are gorgeous.  Whether its the torch song "Someone to Watch Over Me" or the lilting "Hangin' Around With You," Ms. O'Hara rendered them beautifully.  She plays well off Broderick and their dancing together is flawless. She has been nominated for a Tony Award for her performance.  I simply adore her.

The evening I saw the performance, Estelle Parsons who plays Jimmy’s domineering mother was not in the show.  Her understudy, Jennifer Smith, admirably went on in her stead.

Derek McClane's set is simple and elegant.  The costume design by Martin Packledinaz is simply stunning and deserves the Tony Award nomination it got.  Peter Kaczorowski (one of my favorite lighting designers) smartly enhances McClane's and Packledinaz's work.  

If those aren't enough reasons to go see this good time musical, did I happen to mention that it has an orchestra with nearly 20 members (ah how I long for the days of the 35-piece orchestra).  Arranged by, and under the musical supervision of David Chase, these Gershwin songs have new life in them.  

If you live outside of New York and are feeling bad about not being able to get to New York to see it, rest easy.  The show will be headed out on a national tour in the fall of 2013.  There is also a cast album coming.

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Ghost the Musical

In yet another example of just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, Ghost the Musical opened last week on Broadway.  Directed by veteran director Matthew Warchus, this "musical" is an apparition, someone thought they saw a musical, but they didn't.  Save yourself a lot of money and go out and rent the movie where you will at least make an emotional connection with the characters.  The show has an inordinate number of bland power ballads by Glenn Ballard and founding member of Eurythmics, Dave Stewart.  These tunes never live up to “Unchained Melody” which is used repeatedly throughout the evening.  They are performed adequately by Richard Fleishman and Caissie Levy as the lovers Sam and Molly.  Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Oda Mae Brown in the Whoopi Goldberg role is good, but Whoopi was funnier.  She does fine by the two numbers in which she is featured.  Ms. Randolph has just received a Tony nomination for her performance.  Bryce Pinckham is n'er do well Carl Brunner.

The book by Bruce Joel Rubin appears to have come directly from the movie.

The show has an interesting set made up of LED panels that move.  Rob Howell has designed the set.  The dynamic video and projection design is by Jon Driscoll.   The outlines on the LED wall mirror the dancers on stage, they move as they do.  Howell and Driscoll have been nominated together for a Tony Award for Best Scenic Design of a Musical.  The illusions by Paul Kieve were impressive.  He had Sam walking through walls and has his hand move right through an object while trying to pick it up.

It seems so rare that a movie makes a decent transition from film to Broadway.  I could probably name all the decent ones on one hand. Ghost the Musical is not among them.  -- Get Tickets to Ghost the Musical

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A Streetcar Named Desire

The new production of A Streetcar Named Desire  featuring an African-American cast  is certainly a well put together production.  The three leads, Blair Underwood as Stanley (sans Kowalsky) is effectively intimidating, Nicole Ari Parker as Blanche is mellifluous but her demure “maiden in distress” routine becomes annoying.  A large part of that is the character and not Ms. Parker's performance.  Daphne Rubin Vega as Stella gives a solid performance and her unusual voice adds an interesting dynamic to Stella.

My favorite performance though from this production is Wood Harris as Mitch, one of Stanley's card-playing buddies.  Mitch takes an interest in Blanche before he learns that she's really not what she appears.  Mr. Harris  plays Mitch with a simplicity and honesty that connected for me.  The audience obviously felt this way as well considering the reception they gave him during the curtain call.

I don't think that having an African-American cast is either here nor there, but I did find it distracting wondering if an African-American woman would have owned a plantation in the south in 1952.  While there inevitably were land owners of color, Mr. Williams might have adjusted the character of Blanche such that she wouldn't be quite so unsettled by her sister's living circumstances, which frankly, didn’t strike me as all that unbearable.   Directed by the McCarter Theatre’s Emily Mann (who personally knew Williams), she has been quoted as saying that "Tennessee always wanted this to happen" but I wonder what changes he would have made to the script with an African-American cast?

A note on the audience, one thing I found tacky, insensitive and frankly, just a little bit disturbing was the laughter of some audience members during the rape scene.  This was not brought about by anything either of these actors did, these were just immature theatre goers who obviously weren't taking into consideration the live performance going on in front of them. -- Get tickets to A Streetcar Named Desire

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Featured last evening were three talented ladies of stage and screen, Adriane Lenox, Catherine Russell, and Tracie Thoms.  They took turns interpreting many of Ms. Water’s most famous songs.

Catherine Russell, who only recently performed in a solo show for Jazz at Lincoln Center, confidently handled Hoagy Carmichael’s “Bread and Gravy,” and Irving Berlin’s “Harlem on My Mind.”  On one of Ms. Water’s signature songs, “Am I Blue,” Ms. Russell showed her ability to bend a note to her will.  Russell’s most impressive turn of the evening was with “When I’m Gone,” just an amazing performance.

Tracie Thoms (most recently seen on Broadway in Stick Fly) showed that she has a knack for song in addition to her fine acting chops (though she was in the film version of Rent).   Ms. Thoms sang “Georgia on My Mind,” “Good for Nothin’ Joe,” “Heat Wave,” and “I Must Have That Man.”  

The most impressive performance of the night belonged to Adriane Lenox.  Ms. Lenox has been seen on Broadway in Doubt, Kiss Me, Kate, and Caroline, or Change, to name a few.  Two of the songs that Ms. Lenox interpreted were character songs, “Birmingham Bertha” and “Go Back Where You Stayed Last Night.”   But her pièce de résistance was a beautiful rendition of “Stormy Weather,” another song closely associated with Ms. Waters despite Lena Horne’s later co-opting of the song.

Ethel Waters: Blues, Broadway, and Jazz will have a final performance on Wednesday, May 2 at 7:30pm.  Jazz at Lincoln Center will be presenting two more sets of concerts in the same series.  Next up is “Cy Coleman: Bringing Jazz to Broadway” May 15-16, “Sweet and Lowdown: How Jazz Standards Became Jazz Classics” June 5-6 and a family concert of “Sweet and Lowdown...” on Sunday, June 10 at 3pm.  For more information, visit their website at http://jalc.org/jazzandpopularsong/.

For purposes of full disclosure, I am an employee of Jazz at Lincoln Center, though I always try to remain as impartial as possible.

Richard Bean has based the play on the commedia dell’arte play The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni.  The time and location have been cheffanged to the 1960s, Brighton, England.  

The plot is so complicated, and almost unnecessary, as I’m sure we could put Mr. Corden up on stage with a phone book and he would find a way to make it funny.  Corden is Francis Henshal, a poor sod who has foolishly agreed to work for two employers (guvnors) at the same time.  Poor Francis’s mental capacity doesn’t seem up for the job as he hasn’t eaten in 16 hours.

One of his governors is Roscoe, or at least our poor sod thinks it’s Roscoe. You see, Roscoe has recently been murdered and is being impersonated by his twin sister Rachel (played with mannish swagger by Jemima Rooper). His other governor is a slim effete man/boy, Stanley Stubbers (a swell Oliver Chris), who also happens to be on the run. He’s Rachel’s intended but he has killed Rachel’s brother, Roscoe, who she is now pretending to be.  You see what I mean about the plot.  It’s all very silly.

What a cast of colorful characters Mr. Bean has given us.  There is Charlie the Duck (Fred Ridgeway), a poor divorcee who was left to bring up his dim-witted daughter Pauline (Claire Lams) all by himself.  Pauline has been promised to Roscoe, who is now deceased, leaving her free to marry her new beau, Alan (played with unflinching conviction by Daniel Rigby), a want-to-be actor who spends the evening making grand entrances, striking actor-ly poses and making profound pronouncements like saying his fiancee is “pure, innocent, unsoiled by education, like a new bucket.”  Alan’s father is the solicitor Harry Dangle (of Dangle, Berry and Bush, did you catch the joke there) played with perfect pomposity by Martyn Ellis.  Dolly (tartly played by Suzie Toase) is Francis’s love interest.

A standout performance is given by Tom Eddin as Alfie the jittery geriatric waiter, his first day on the job.  Alfie is continually pushed down stairs, slammed behind opening doors, and even has his pacemaker turned up so far that he spins in circles.

Throughout the evening Mr. Corden breaks the fourth wall and interacts with the audience, at one point even eliciting help from two audience members to help carry a trunk offstage.  Later, when he asks if anyone has a sandwich, he is offered a hummus sandwich by one eager audience member and a piece of frosted lemon pound-cake from Starbucks by another (I hate to say it, but I think that these two were put up to it). There is another instance of audience member participation that I won’t spoil by giving you too many details, but the fact that you were unsure up until the end whether or not this person was a “plant” is testament to the marvelous work of this ensemble and their director.

A hot, young, and smartly-clad skiffle band (looking much like the Beatles) called The Craze begins to play 10 minutes before the curtain goes up. The band also covers some scene transitions by coming up on stage and playing through the transition.  A few cast members even join the band soloing on various percussive instruments (Corden plays a pretty mean vibraphone).  It would seem to me that this would be the year for the Tony awards to give an award for Best Use of Music in a Play. I’m thinking of not only One Man, Two Guvnors but also Peter and the Starcatcher and End of the Rainbow, all of which have a significant musical component.

If you are looking for an opportunity to laugh, One Man, Two Guvnors is just the ticket

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The show has been written to tell the story using third-person narrative with characters taking turns doing the narration.  I barely noticed this potentially creaky theatrical device, which Rees and Timbers have used here to effortless effect.  The cast is superb and doesn't have a weak link among them.

Steven Hoggett is credited with movement in the playbill.  As you watch these characters transform from scene to scene, Mr. Hoggett's work is showcased as the characters morph from one character to the next; the movement is so slick.   

Press materials for the show refer to it as a play despite the presence of several musical numbers. In fact, it could actually benefit from a few more numbers.  The musical numbers that are there are very entertaining, particularly the mermaid number that opens act two detailing precisely how they became mermaids.  The music by Wayne Barker is delightful.  There are also some very creative sound effects from percussionist Deane Prouty and sound designer Darron L. West.

At the beginning of the play, the other characters call Peter "No Name."  He's an orphan; no one ever cared enough about him to give him a name.  With him are two other "lost boys,"  Prentiss and Ted (Carson Elrod and David Rossmer, respectively).  Peter is played by Adam Chanler-Berat who brings a wide-eyed joyousness to the role. (Chanler-Berat was previously seen on Broadway as the stoner boyfriend in Next to Normal.)  The three boys have been sold into slavery to the King of Rundoon. 

Two ships leave Portsmouth, the Wasp carrying a special cargo for Queen Victoria and the Neverland, a slower, safer ship carries the daughter of Lord Leonard Astor (played by Rick Holmes, who is on the Wasp guarding the special cargo for the Queen) and her nanny  The daughter Molly is played by Celia Keenan-Bolger in a performance that's played with confidence and charm. She is our story's heroine and ultimately the mother of Wendy (yes, that Wendy).  Her caretaker is Mrs. Bumbrake, played with over-the-top silliness by Arnie Burton.  Mr. Burton plays the role in men's clothing but has no problem convincing you of his matronly nature.  Other than his performance, a headband and handbag are the only thing to convince us that he is a she.

The special cargo is none other than starstuff; you might know it as fairy dust.  Lord Astor is a starcatcher, someone whose job it is to reign in and keep an eye on this potentially dangerous material.  There are only "six and a half" starcatchers in the world according to Molly, with her being the half.)  

Chasing after the "stuff" is Black Stache, a suave, cultured pirate (who eventually becomes known as Captain Hook) played by the hilarious Tony Award nominee Christian Borle.  His malaprops and inability to articulate his own name make his the most fun performance in the show to watch.  He is chasing after the trunk holding the starstuff but a decoy has been put in place by Slank (Matt D'Amico) that was to be switched with the real one while the boys were loading the boat.  After continually running into the trunk filled with sand, Black Stache quips, in one of my favorite lines of the evening, that the trunk is "as elusive as the melody in a Phillip Glass opera." 

Ultimately the Neverland crashes into an island with its cargo dumped into the sea but not before Peter rides the trunk to shore all the while leaking its starstuff.  Due to his exposure to it, Peter gets a special ability that he has always desired, the ability to fly.  Starstuff "makes you what you want to be" says one of the show's characters.  In Peters case perhaps that's flying, or perhaps it's that he never has to grow up, or perhaps it's both.

The scenic design by Donyale Werle is dark and dank in the first act and then transformed into a brightly back-lit cyclorama made of squares of gauze-like material for the second.  The lighting by Jeff Croiter is lovely and works well to help Rees and Timbers create many of the inventive theatrical devices used throughout the show.  

Peter and the Starcatcher will hold equal appeal for kids, young and old alike.  It could stand to be tightened up with perhaps 20-25 minutes trimmed off the running time. Clocking in at two hours and twenty-five minutes, the piece is a tad too long and perhaps a bit convoluted for very young children to follow.  But this child loved it. 

“Mr. Broadway” is not only an autobiography about Gerald Schoenfeld, it is a history of the business of theater during the 20th century. The Shubert organization was behind many of the biggest hits during the latter part of the 20th century. That includes shows such as A Chorus Line, Equus, Amadeus, Pippin, Les Misérables, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Godspell, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Dream Girls, Dancin’, Sunday in the Park with George, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Heidi Chronicles, The Gin Game, Miss Saigon, and many more.

The Shubert Organization dates back to the year 1900 when Sam Shubert left Syracuse for New York to set up shop in the theatre business by leasing the Harold Square Theater on 35th St. and Broadway. Eventually his brothers Lee and J.J. joined him in a partnership and the brothers began to acquire more theaters.  The organization now owns 17 Broadway theatres, one off-Broadway theatre and a theatre each in Boston and Philadelphia.

Mr. Schoenfeld became acquainted with the Schubert’s through a weekly poker game. It was 1949 and he had just graduated from law school.  He was 24 and didn’t have any idea what he wanted to do with his life.  The large law firms did not hire Jews and the only other lawyer he knew was his brother’s friend, Bernie Jacobs.

If you’ve been to Broadway in the past few years and have traveled to 45th Street, you might have noticed two theaters side-by-side, the Schoenfeld and the Jacobs, these are named after these two legendary men.  Schoenfeld started by working for the Shubert’s attorneys and went on, together with Jacobs, to lead the Shubert Organization through some choppy waters making Broadway, and the Shubert Organization what it is today.

When I first moved to the city almost 30 years ago, Times Square was nothing but hustlers, prostitutes, drug dealers, and once legit theaters that now showed only porno and martial arts films.  Broadway theatre patrons were afraid to come to the theater district because of the crime.  It was Gerald Schoenfeld’s vision and dedication that ultimately led to the gentrification of the theater district. He worked with every mayor since Abe Beame to clean up the area.

This book gives a professional bird’s-eye view of the business of Broadway.  But what makes the book so endearing is Mr. Schoenfeld’s humility and flawless ethical center.  His struggles with depression and anxiety reveal the man behind the figure-head.  Broadway will forever be indebted to Mr. Schoenfeld and Mr. Jacobs for their work to restore theatres and Broadway to the majestic and economically viable state we find it in today.  

This book is a great read.

In this new production, Evita is played by Argentinian Elena Roger.  Ms. Roger has played the role in London's West End.  Her Evita is aloof.  She is most connected when belting out the show's tuneful score.  Unfortunately, Roger's singing voice has a shrillness to it.  She doesn’t have the power in her voice that the original Evita, Patti LuPone, did.

Pop-star Ricky Martin is the show's narrator, Che, the voice of the people.  Martin gives Che a pop-star veneer with an intensely earnest performance.  He handles the vocal requirements of the role with ease but it looks like every move he makes has been finely choreographed for him (even the hand gestures, and there were a lot of them.)  Martin is no stranger to Broadway, he previously starred as Marius in Les Misérables.  

As Gen. Juan Perón, Broadway veteran Michael Cerverus gives a solidly acted and well sung performance.  

Max von Essen is Magaldi, a night-club singer (in real life he was rumored to have traveled with Evita, though this has been disputed.)  von Essen has a beautiful tenor voice and was pitch-perfect singing the stratosphere-reaching “On This Night of a Thousand Stars.”  Rachel Potter plays Perón’s mistress who Evita throws out with “Hello and good-bye, I’ve just unemployed you.”  Ms. Potter has a lovely voice that did justice to “Another Suitcase In Another Hall.”   

Michael Grandage has beautifully staged this production.  Grandage takes advantage of the impressive scenic design of Christopher Oram and the lighting design of Neil Austin to paint pictures on stage.  Oram’s set creates a feel of the Casa Rosada with its arched windows, and Austin’s dramatic top and back-lighting set the mood.  Oram also designed the show’s costumes which nicely completed the picture.  Rob Ashford’s choreography is inspired by the native dance of Argentina, the tango.  

Andrew Lloyd Webber and David Cullen’s lush orchestrations were beautifully played by the large orchestra under the direction of Kristen Blodgette.  With 19 members in the orchestra, it’s large by today’s standards.  The sound of this orchestra playing one of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most inspired scores is worth the price of admission alone.  Add to that the physical beauty of this production, the fine vocals of the chorus and the creative choreography and you have a very good reason to go see Evita.

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The setting is the Ritz Hotel, London, December 1968. Ms. Garland and her fiancé Mickey Deans (Tom Pelfrey) have just arrived in London for five weeks of performances at The Talk of the Town. Deans is also acting as Ms. Garland’s manager and handling all her decisions.  He attempts to control her drinking and pill-popping, but eventually resorts to enabling her just to get her on stage.

Michael Cumpsty is Anthony, Garland’s musical director and pianist.  Anthony and Judy have an instantaneous connection, she had worked with him previously in a disastrous show in Sydney. this makes Mickey jealous, even if Anthony is a gay man.  

As Anthony, Michael Cumpsty is droll and to the point.  His sarcasm runs deep.  Tom Pelphrey’s performance as Mickey is not as three-dimensional as Ms. Bennett’s or Mr. Cumpsty’s.

Garland rehearses for her new show in her hotel room with a baby grand piano.  We move back and forth between the hotel room and the stage of The Talk of the Town by flying out the upstage wall of the hotel suite revealing a six-man combo on a bandstand.  When that wall flies out, the show pops and Judy is on.  

Ms. Bennett covers many of the most famous songs associated with Garland: “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “Just in Time,” “For Me and My Gal,” “You Made Me Love You,” “The Man That Got Away,” “When You’re Smiling,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” and of course, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”  Ms. Bennett has a big voice and has managed to precisely duplicate Ms. Garland’s vibrato and vocal mannerisms, channeling Judy.  The band behind her, under the direction of Jeffrey Saver is smokin’.  Director Terry Johnson has kept the show simple and efficient.

Peter Quilter’s script appears to be factually correct, with liberties taken here and there.  Part of the problem is, there isn’t anything revelatory in it.  It doesn’t delve into Judy’s psyche beyond her known addiction to pills, alcohol and men.  His Judy is superficially self-deprecating with an insatiable demand for attention.  It’s like that friend that always has to be the center of attention, the person who sucks the oxygen out of the room.

End of the Rainbow is enjoyable due to its dynamo star, Tracie Bennett, and her ability to completely capture the essence of the Judy we all think we know.  

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The Best Man has an all-star cast.  John Larroquette is the morally conflicted Secretary William Russell.  Eric McCormack is his opponent, Senator Joseph Cantwell.  Cantwell is ethically challenged and will do anything it takes to get the nomination.  The two men are in a heated battle with each other for the nomination.  Larroquette’s performance is understated but not emotionally devoid. When Russell struggles with whether or not to release a counter attack against Senator Cantwell’s smear tactics, Larroquette’s performance gains depth.  As Senator Joseph Cantwell, McCormick has no trouble conjuring up the smiling, confident slimeball.

James Earl Jones is Former President Arthur “Arty” Hockstader. Mr. Jones is an immensely capable actor who deftly handles the role. But his is a piece of gimmicky casting considering, there would never have been a black candidate for president in 1960. It’s obvious why they chose to cast a black man in the role, it mirrors our current political landscape, thus enabling the audience to better identify with the character.  President Hockstader is at the convention to endorse one of the two men.  Secretary Russell seems to have the advantage after having been the president’s former Secretary of State.

Broadway doyenne Angela Lansbury, in a much smaller role than her last two Broadway outings (Blithe Spirit and A Little Night Music), is Mrs. Sue–Ellen Gamadge, the Chairman of the Women’s Division of the Republican Party.  Ms. Lansbury is agile and full of energy.  When Mrs. Gammage tells Secretary Russell that the women voters don’t like it when he tries to be funny, Russell quickly points out that Lincoln was a humorist, Mrs. Gammage retorts “the women were not voting in 1860.”  Lansbury has a way with a one-liner but can say just as much with a look.

Cantwell’s wife Mabel, played by Kerry Butler is the perfect dingbat to McCormick’s slimeball.  Anytime they are alone in the room together they begin referring to each other in the third person as Mama and Papa Bear in cutesy voices.  This role is a nice departure for Butler who has been primarily associated with musicals (Hairspray, Little Shop of Horrors).

Candice Bergen is Russel’s wife Alice.  Ms. Bergen’s performance is unexceptional.  She appears stiff and uncomfortable, though that does seem to be perfect for the character.  The cadence of Bergen’s delivery is hypnotic.  But it is that same cadence that enables her to toss out a snide aside to great effect. While meeting with Cantwell’s wife, Mrs. Cantwell accuses Mrs. Russell of trying to be witty and profound, just like her husband, Mrs. Russell replies “I’d like to think that intelligence is contagious.”  Think of Murphy Brown saying that line and you have the idea, it’s very funny.

Michael McKean plays Dick Jensen, Russel’s campaign manager. His performance is perfect as the handler cajoling the candidate into doing things he doesn’t really want to do.  Jefferson Mays, who won a Tony award for I Am My Own Wife, is perfect as the nebbishy Sheldon Marcus, a man with a grudge and possible dirt to throw back at Cantwell.

Director Michael Wilson has given The Best Man a nice brisk pace. He uses the clever scenic design by Derek McLane to more efficiently move from scene to scene.  The set consists of two turntables that spin into place, creating two distinct hotel suites and a more general playing area. Ms. Lansbury and Ms. Butler both look exquisite in Ann Roth’s costumes. I must, however, take exception to one of the character’s hair color.  You are no doubt now asking yourself if you just read that correctly, but two lines in the script refer to Mrs. Russell’s “naturally gray hair.”  Ms. Bergen’s hair has the distinct look of highlights and it doesn’t appear so much gray as it does blonde from a bottle. Didn’t anyone notice this in a costume fitting?

Vidal’s script is a peek behind the scenes of something we are living with daily, the advantage here is that it’s gilded with humor. Mrs. Gammage remarks that Russell is “not the ideal candidate for the women.” Doesn’t that sound like a couple of candidates in the current field of Republican contenders? Like Russell does in The Best Man, I’d like to see more enlightened politicians who could admit that they don’t believe in God.  President Hockstader remarks “Well, the world’s changed since I was politickin’. In those days you had to pour God over everything, like ketchup.”  It would seem everything old is new again.

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It looks like Messrs. Menken, Feldman and Fierstein have given boys their version of Annie.  Thirty-five years ago it was another ragamuffin group of orphans and lecherous villains who were taking Broadway by storm.  Their hero was a confident little red-headed girl.  Newsies’ hero is Jack Kelly, outrageously well played and sung by teen heart-throb Jeremy Jordan (seen earlier this season as Clyde Barrow in the ill-fated Bonnie and Clyde.)  

The show is full of musical numbers that completely stopped the show the night I saw it (including “Carrying the Banner,” “All for One” and “King of New York”).  Christopher Gattelli's acrobatic choreography might have something to do with that.  These boys don’t stop doing cartwheels and backflips for two hours and thirty minutes.

Newsies is directed by Jeff Calhoun (who also directed the aforementioned Bonnie and Clyde) such that you (or should I say the cast) barely gets a chance to breath.  Mr. Calhoun has creatively used Tobin Ost's automated staircases to optimal effect as they spin to become row houses, a roof-top and even the offices of Joseph Pulitzer.  It looks like the set of "The Hollywood Squares" with nine distinct boxes which contain the fire escape stairs.  In an interesting decision, Calhoun has elected to have all of the newsies speak in a Damon Runyonesque New York accent that is so broad as to be cartoon-like and yet, the accent works perfectly with the mood of the show.  They give the show character.

Other standouts among the cast include a pair of brothers played by Ben Frankhause and Lewis Grosso.  Grosso practically steals the show with his pint-size antics.  Jack’s sidekick, Crutchie, a crippled orphan is played effectively for laughs and sympathy by Andrew Keenan-Bolger.  

Capathia Jenkins is the lovely and zoftig Medda Larkin, the proprietress of a local burlesque theatre.  She befriends Jack who, in addition to being a “union organizer,” also has a talent for painting theatrical backdrops.  Ms. Jenkins has a hot little number in the first act called “That’s Rich” which she sells full throttle.  

Jack’s love interest, Kathryn, is played by Kara Lindsay. She has a lovely singing voice and a brilliant smile. When she and Mr. Jordan sync up to sing “Something to Believe In,” it’s beautiful.

Mr. Fierstein has given us a book that makes sense, tells the story and has wit.  Alan Menken’s music is tuneful, but not among his best works (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid are all better scores.)  Newsies is slightly formulaic, but there’s nothing wrong with that when it’s done right, and the cast and creative team of Newsies got it right.

So congratulations to Disney for an entertaining new member to the Broadway musical family.  And a note to our friends over in the Nederlander office, you won’t be needing that theatre anytime soon.

The musical chronicles the last couple of weeks of Jesus Christ’s life, right up through and including his crucifixion.  The three principals give respectable performances, but two of them are as emotionally connected as a Stepford wife.  

As Judas, Josh Young brings the most emotion to his role.  He has a lovely singing voice but it’s stretched to its limit by the material. On some of the higher sustained notes, Mr. Young had intonation and cracking problems.  However, in fairness to all in this production, any vocal stress could have been caused by just coming off of opening week, a week that is preceded by days of “ten-out-of-twelves,” a union phrase describing the length of a work day.  On average, a show will have about three of these long days.  Generally this time is reserved for rehearsing the technical elements of a production.  They can be long, tedious days and they take their tole on the cast, even if they aren't always singing full-out.

As Jesus Christ, Paul Nolan is nearly catatonic.  His performance has no soul.  Nolan has an interesting voice; it sounds like it is placed largely in his head.  While it has the clarity of a bell, it lacks dimension.  

Chilina Kennedy as Mary Magdalene is entirely uninteresting.  She has no emotional connection to the material or her character. For her best song in the show, “I Don't Know How To Love Him,” McAnuff does her no favors as he rushes her into the song from the song before it (the reprise of “Everything’s Alright”) without a moment for transition. This makes the transition jarring and less fulfilling for the audience.  Her skills are also being tested here. Her upper register is markedly different in strength from her lower register giving the appearance of a diminished volume once she gets past the passaggio and into her upper register.  

Tom Hewitt is suave as the indecisive Pontius Pilot.  He has a Tom Jones look about him.  Bruce Dow is fun as King Herod, channeling a bit of Dom DeLuise on “Herod’s Song.”

The scenic design by Robert Brill is two levels with the upper level circling the lower level like a horseshoe. It has an industrial feel to it with horizontal metal pipes that look like the outside of the New York Times building.  There are two large stair cases that practically become dance partners for some of the chorus members as they continually move them from one position to another.  McAnuff's blocking is a continual parade of actors repeating their steps up and down the same staircases. It becomes tiresome.

There is a "zipper" (the kind they used to have around the outside of the building at 1 Times Square before the gentrification of Times Square) scrolling the time and place of each scene as they count down to Jesus's death.  The show makes use of creative video projections by Sean Nieuwenhuis.  One of the most emotionally effective moments in the whole show is after Jesus’s death.  After he is pulled off the cross, the entire company is standing on stage as the orchestra plays “John 19:41” and projections of bible verses are scrolling across the back and side of the set.  The lighting by Howell Binkley is vibrant and stunning.

There were no credits in the Playbill for orchestrations, which is a shame because they were beautiful. After inquiring about this with the press agent I was informed that some of them were done by David Cullen many years ago. Cullen has been involved with many of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s other productions.

David Tazewell's costumes are a combination of nondescript robes and mental patient escapee meets ninja bad-ass.  All of the apostles had a modern bag of some type or another, messenger bags, backpacks, and the like.  

I enjoyed myself but found myself distracted by the production’s short-comings.  This is a difficult score to sing.  Each of the three principals has an immense amount of vocal talent, I just think we’re seeing their breaking points with this score.  That score, however, is what’s so enjoyable about this production, and the show in general, even if Tim Rice’s lyrics feel a little clumsy at times.  If you are looking for a bit of nostalgia, you can’t go wrong with this production.

Once stars Steve Kazee as "Guy" and Criston Milioti as "Girl."  "Guy" is a bit of a sad-sack who lives at home with his Da over their Hoover repair shop in the North Strand.  He and his girlfriend have split up and he is about to give up on his second love, music, until he meets "Girl." Kazee has a beautiful voice with a wonderful tone.  But don’t be deceived, he can also cut-loose with a throaty growl when needed (“Say It To Me Now”).  He also plays a mean guitar.

As “Girl,” Ms. Milioti is abrupt and quirky.  Her vocal style has a plaintive quality to it.  When she sings “The Hill,” laying bare her character's soul, it’s haunting.  She is center stage accompanying herself on the piano.  “Girl” is Czech and her heavily accented English gives an abrupt and comedic edge to her character.  “Guy” has agreed to fix her broken vacuum in exchange for music.  When he tries to leave before he has fixed her vacuum she bluntly cries “The transaction is not complete until you have made the Hoover suck!”  

Kazee and Milioti have a charming chemistry together.  Both of their characters are in, or just out of,  other relationships.  His he describes as “over.”  After he describes how she left with another man, “Girl” suggests that he kill the man with whom she left.  When he asks her if she is serious, her response: “Yeah. I’m always serious – I’m Czech.”

The musical is slightly ballad heavy, though Glen Hansard  and Markéta Irglová have thrown in a couple of novelty numbers like “Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy” and “Abandoned in Bandon” to keep things interesting.  The a capella version of “Gold” is breathtaking.  The book, by playwright Enda Walsh, nicely ties together the numbers in a cohesive story-arc that begins with the excitement of meeting that stranger who might just be “the one,” to the sadness of finding out it isn’t to be.

The cast is comprised of 12 actors/musicians, the two principals, and 10 actors in the chorus who also play minor roles.  Everyone in the chorus plays instruments, some of them even double and triple on instruments.  And when they all come together and play, banging on apple boxes for percussion, they are a wonder to behold.  This is a talented cast.

The unit set by Bob Crowley is a semi-circular bar facing the audience.  The walls are lined with mirrors. Up-center there is a large mirror angled towards the stage to reflect the action at the center of the stage.  Director John Tiffany uses the mirror to perfect effect, heightened by Natasha Katz’s stellar lighting.

If you have seen the movie, you might be surprised to learn that the 87-minute long movie has been turned into a 2-1/2 hour musical, yet you never notice the time.  They have added or replaced a couple of numbers (“The Moon,” “Ej, Pada, Pada, Rosicka” and the aforementioned “Abandoned in Bandon”), and shuffled a bunch of numbers from their original order in the film.  I’m only sorry that the vacuum cleaner didn’t quite become the character it was in the film. During the first third of the movie we watch as "Girl" drags the bright blue vacuum around behind her through Dublin's streets and even on the bus.

Congratulations to Mr. Tiffany and the entire cast and creative team.  They have made this ballad-heavy movie-musical a sweet and simple new stage musical that thankfully never gets bogged down in its own self-pity.

View Complete Production Credits at IBDB.com.

But perhaps it was more?  It could have been because they connected with Willie Loman in a way that previous audiences haven’t since the play first premiered in 1949.  The idea that there has to be something more, or if you work hard enough, or if people like you enough, then you can’t fail, is the illusion that this salesman has sold himself.  This is the delusion of today’s dying middle class.  After these past several years, the average American probably identifies strongly with Willie Loman’s struggles.

Philip Seymour Hoffman is understated and intense as Willie Loman. Linda Emond is Willie’s love-blind, faithful wife, Linda.  Both look too young for the roles, but this is forgotten almost instantaneously as Hoffman embodies the beaten down salesman whose loyalty no longer matters and whose past deeds are but distant memories that matter only to someone who is no longer alive.  Ms. Emond is persuasive as the ever-optimistic enabler of Willie's frequent delusions.

As Willie’s two sons, Happy and Biff, Finn Wittrock and Andrew Garfield, respectively, are perfect replicas of their father.  Both gentlemen give nuanced and effective performances as the physical fruits of their father’s inconsequential life.  John Glover’s performance as Willie’s manifestation of his successful brother, Ben, is enthused with the conviction of Willie’s own salesmanship.

In his autobiography, Timebends, Arthur Miller says “I had known all along that this play could not be encompassed by conventional realism and for one integral reason: in Willie the past was as alive as what was happening at the moment, sometimes even crashing in to completely overwhelm his mind.”  Mike Nichols magnificent direction embodies this idea, smoothly transitioning from past to present with a deft hand.  Brian MacDevitt’s evocative lighting further facilitates the transitions in Willie’s mind.

One of the stars in this play is the Loman house itself, always looming in the background.  The Tony-winning scenic design for this production is by Jo Mielziner from the original 1949 production.  It perfectly suits the play’s need to move effortlessly between the reality of the Loman house to the scene’s enacted in Willie’s head.  The playing space is limited but serves to increase the fluidity of those blurred lines.  This scenic design was so integral to the original production that, to quote Elia Kazan (the play’s original director) in his autobiography, Elia Kazan: A Life, “Art rewrote the stage direction for the book based on Jo’s design.”

You will never see a more important, timely or relevant production of Death of a Salesman, attention must be paid.  You only have sixteen weeks (through June 2nd) to see this production, don’t wait until it is too late.

Gardner and Fanny Church  (Cunningham and Chalfant, respectively) have reached that point in their life where the chief topics of conversation are: who amongst their friends are dead; who's still alive; who's dealing with what disease; and is it cocktail time yet.  Gardner is a formerly successful writer and poet, but since the onset of dementia hasn't been able to write anything of substance for some time; and not for lack of trying.  As the curtain goes up we hear the tap, tap, tapping of an old typewriter offstage.  He and Fanny are stuck together in a large rambling house that they can no longer afford and in which Fanny can’t keep a constant eye on the failing Gardner.  They’re packing up and moving from Beacon Hill in Boston to their cottage on Cape Cod.  

For the first couple of minutes, Fanny is talking to herself alone onstage.  Occasionally she will make it a point to call out to Gardner in a voice like a fog horn, it starts high and ends low.  This one-sided conversation doesn't feel entirely natural. During this initial scene it feels as though Ms. Chalfant is talking directly to the audience rather than having a conversation with herself, like she has broken the fourth wall without intending to and without recognizing it.  Don’t misunderstand me, Ms. Chalfant gives a terrific performance, especially during quieter moments when you really understand what Fanny’s life has become.  You understand why she would find it funny that her husband has come into the room with urine running down his tux pant leg.  She has gotten to the point where she laughs so she won’t cry.  She’s at the end of her rope and it is then that Ms. Chalfant’s performance becomes glorious in its simplicity and honesty.

As Gardner, Mr. Cunningham delivers a fine performance.  He is lovable and romantic; his love for his wife and daughter are obvious.  Cunningham perfectly handles the duality of complete clarity one moment (reciting the poetry of Yates from memory) to complete loss of consciousness the next (wandering around looking for his manuscript, which is in his hand.)  

Their daughter Mags (Turnbull) has arrived home to help them pack.   At the same time she has finally gotten her parents to agree to sit for her so she can paint their portrait.  She is a successful painter who has just gotten her first solo show at a very prestigious gallery; she also teaches painting.  But Mags is a mess.  Ms. Turnbull doesn’t portray her as the confident young woman you expect this artist to be.  In her youth Mags had an eating disorder.  Ms. Turnbull has a terrific scene where she describes coming to terms with her creative self and how it was in response to her food anxiety. As a child she couldn't swallow her food and she would be sent to her room to eat.  She would flush the food and distract herself by melting crayons on the radiator until it was a giant monument to all the cast-off food she ultimately flushed down the toilet.  

In the second act Ms. Turnbull has a breakdown as she reveals her parents portrait to them. I have to call out director Carl Forsman here.  He has directed Ms. Turnbull to completely upstage a wonderful moment where the parents come to their own appreciation of what their daughter has created.  When their initial response is not completely ecstatic, Ms. Turnbull has a meltdown, pacing and hyperventilating. She so completely steals focus in this scene to the point that we don't get to enjoy the moment her parents discover what they do love about their portrait.  This breakdown is overdone by a country mile.

The scenic design by Beowulf Boritt effectively recreates the Churches' colonial home. The set is minimal, which is important considering the size of the stage. At the same time he achieves a sense of depth to the stage through the use of crown molding suspended from the fly space with the corner of the room directly up-center creating a vanishing point.  Josh Bradford's lighting beautifully creates various times of day as the light comes flooding through the large casement windows.

All-in-all the Keen Company production of Painting Churches is uneven but it still bears a professional sheen which I have come to expect from the Keen Company.  It does have some delightful moments, I particularly liked when Mr. Cunningham and Ms. Chalfant are trying to figure out what pose to strike for their portrait.  They strike famous poses like the pitchfork wielding farm couple in American Gothic and Adam and God on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, God bestowing knowledge to man with the touch of a finger.  Tina Howe’s play is very simple, it doesn’t delve too terribly deeply into the familial issues but it does drive home the effect of Alzheimer’s and dementia on a care-giver, a subject on which I wish I knew less.  

Growing up in Montreal, Shatner used to skip school to go to one of the last remaining vaudeville houses, the Gayety, to see Lili St. Cyr, the stripper.  At the same time he was introduced to, and inspired by, the comedy of vaudeville’s baggy pants comedians.

Comedy is not where Shatner started out, however.  He has had a legitimate theater career even working with Tyrone Guthrie at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and on Broadway.  As a juvenile, Shatner understudied Christopher Plummer in Henry V.  One day Plummer was out, and with no rehearsal Shatner had to go on, receiving accolades for his performance.

But for Shatner’s World, it is the vaudeville comedy that sets the tone.  Frequently his stories have long build-ups with a punch-line not worth the distance.  In one, he meets Coco, a gorilla who communicates with sign language.  A horny male gorilla is in an adjacent cage next to them causing a racket.  Shatner provides the dialogue for the amorous primate.  He tries to infuse the story with some deeper meaning, relating it to various kinds of love, but it doesn’t go anywhere.  Again, leading up to a disappointing button.  There is a story of the camping trip Shatner took with his children where he discovered a rat in their camper (he hates rats).  Again the punchline is not worth the time it took to play it out.  There is no writer credit in the Playbill so I am assuming Shatner wrote it.

So as not to disappoint his fans, Shatner even gives us a sampling of his singing. Well he doesn’t really sing, he speaks.  He actually plays clips from a couple of his albums and sings one song live.  I’m sorry to report that he does not do “Rocket Man,” which garnered him a cult following after he sang the song on an awards show in the 1970s.

Director Scott Faris has Shatner using a rolling office chair as a multipurpose prop throughout the evening. Unfortunately Mr. Shatner must not have had very much time to get associated with the chair as he seemed to have trouble negotiating it. Trying to use the chair as a horse and a motorcycle and an airplane just struck me as silly.

The scenic design by Edward Pierce is simple and tasteful. About halfway upstage is a black curtain that actually turns out to be a star drop.  There are cocktail tables down-left and down-right with stools. The projections are on a large disk hung at center stage.

Shatner’s fans will have a great time in Shatner’s World.  It’s a modestly funny evening with no real belly laughs. It can’t be said that Shatner is not an accomplished man, but Shecky Greene he’s not.

Shatner’s World: We Just Live in It is playing at the Music Box Theatre through March 4, 2012.

Most people remember Carol from Hello, Dolly!, but her Broadway debut came in 1948 in Marc Blitzstein’s No For An Answer.  She has nearly a dozen Broadway shows to her name including Lend an Ear, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Wonderful Town.  She has also been the recipient of three Tony Awards; one for Hello, Dolly! in 1964, a special Tony Award in 1968, and a 1995 Lifetime Achievement Tony Award.

While I could trifle with a few sluggish moments in Ms. Berinstein’s film, this film’s subject makes it sparkle.  A good deal of the time, we see Ms. Channing with her husband Harry Kullijian, Ms. Channing’s fourth husband, and first love. She and Mr. Kullijian dated when Ms. Channing was 12. They went their separate ways and found each other again 70 years later, but not before Ms. Channing was married three previous times.  Before Kullijian, she weathered 42 insufferable years married to her publicist, Charles Lowe.  In the film, Ms. Channing talks about her previous relationship, and her current husband’s previous relationship saying “He had a beautiful 65-year-marriage… and she died. And I had a miserable 42-year marriage.”  (In a sad note, Mr. Kullijian died on December 26, 2011, just before his 92nd birthday and the release of this film.)

Also appearing in the film are Jerry Herman, Lily Tomlin, Chita Rivera, Barbara Walters, Debbie Reynolds, Phyllis Diller (the sixth woman to play Dolly Levi on Broadway), Marge Champion, and JoAnne Worley, to name a few.  Ms. Worley tells of being Channing’s understudy for Hello, Dolly! and never having the opportunity to go on. Carol Channing only missed one half of one performance of Hello, Dolly! in more than 5,000 performances.  Also in the movie are some of the chorus boys from the 1995 Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! who all speak lovingly of the woman who rallied her cast-mates with events like nights out at the movies.

One of Broadway’s greatest historians, caricaturist Al Hirschfeld had drawn Carol a number of times. Ms. Berinstein drew on this inspiration and turned one of those caricatures into animated transitions used throughout the film.  One minor disappointment in the film is not getting to see Richard Skipper, famed Carol Channing impersonator (who they interview), do his impersonation of Carol.

I had a great time at this film. It was an opportunity to see the real persona behind this truly, “larger-than-life” character.

Cynthia Nixon is a triumph as Bearing.   Ms. Nixon's performance starts out broad and bombastic as the egotistical professor. She sustains this well into the evening; it creates the necessary contrast to the whimpering, dying, vulnerable woman we ultimately see.

The play begins with the overtly friendly, smiling professor inquiring as to her guests’ (the audience) well-being in exaggerated and insincere mimicry of the medical establishment to which she has become a prisoner.  Ms. Edson’s play makes use of exposition directly to the audience.  Bearing’s droll humor is evidenced by her pronouncement “It is not my intention to give away the plot; but I think I die at the end.”  

Using John Donne's work, specifically his Holy Sonnet Six, Edson explores what it means to face death. 

“Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe.”

Suzanne Bertish plays Victoria’s college professor EM Ashford.   Flashback,  Victoria is 22 and in college.  EM is chastising her for her use of a text of the Holy Sonnet Six which has been “inauthentically punctuated.”  After this scene, you may never think of a comma, or death, the same way again.  Even while EM is dressing her down you can't help but feel the empathy and affection she has for the young Victoria.  Ms. Bertish's performance is commanding, warm, and genuine.  

Victoria’s medical team are researchers who poke her, prod her, and generally treat her with the same respect they would a lab specimen. In the dual roles of her primary doctor and her father, Michael Countryman does a solid job creating a man who shows some modicum of concern for his patient.  As Jason, the eager young doctor in training, and a former student of Dr. Bearings, Greg Keller is wonderful as the bumbling man of science who has to be reminded that his subject is a human being.  The one medical professional who does treat Victoria with care and respect is her nurse, Susie, played with the requisite empathy by Carra Patterson.  

Director Lynn Meadow is to be commended for the performances she gets from this talented cast.  She has kept Ms. Nixon just this side of obnoxious and that's an important distinction here.  The same could be said of some of the other characters, Jason for example.  It’s a fine line between character and caricature.  

Ms. Edson’s play is beautifully written.  She exquisitely captures the final moments and thoughts of this ebbing life force. She succinctly conveys a paradox of the dying process as Victoria lays still in a hospital room.  “You cannot imagine how time…can be…so still.  It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly, and yet it is so scarce.”

The scenic design by Santo Loquasto is minimal and representational, consisting mostly of medical “furniture.”  The lighting by Peter Kaczorowski is subtle and effective in setting the mood.

If you are concerned about seeing Wit due to the maudlin subject matter, hesitate no further.  You will need a hanky handy, equally for tears of laughter, as you will for tears of sadness.

View full production credits at IBDB.com.

When Porgy and Bess arrived in its newly revised and rechristened form at The American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Stephen Sondheim himself sent a letter to the New York Times railing at the shows new interpreters.  Out of the gate Sondheim took them to task for the renaming of the show.  He also took umbrage with their need to fill in suspected holes in the original work and to pare it down to a neat two-and-a-half hours.  

My only previous experience with Porgy and Bess was a production at Radio City Music Hall sometime in the early 1980s. My memory of that is shady at best. But the new production of what is now being called The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, is a taut dramatic and marvelously acted piece of theater.

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess tells the story of a crippled beggar man, Porgy, and his love for Bess.  Unfortunately, Bess is already in a relationship with Crown, a mean and murderous man. After Crown murders a man and has to run, Porgy takes in Bess and shows her true love, only to have her run away with another lowlife, Sporting Life, to New York.  In the end, Porgy heads out after Bess.  It sounds like a setup for a sequel.  

Audra McDonald is exhilarating as Bess, the loose, drug addicted woman who is just as loose with her affections as she is with her body.  As Porgy, Norm Lewis is thoroughly engaging emotionally, although his vocal skills, when compared with McDonald’s, are dim by comparison. The evening I saw the show, he also seemed to be having vocal problems on “I Got Plenty of Nothing.”  In this production, Ms. Paulus has Porgy arriving not in a goat cart, but walking with a cane, his left leg distorted outward.  

As the “magic dust” peddler, Sporting Life, David Alan Grier is slick and ominous. He is every bit the showman as he sings “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” and every bit the villain as he continually seduces Bess and Crown with his wares.  As Crown, Phillip Boykin is a steamroller of a man. You can see and feel his pull on Bess. He has murdered another citizen of Catfish Row, Robbins (Nathaniel Stampley) and has to flee.  As Robbins’ wife Serena, Bryonha Marie Parham is amazing as she wails “My Man’s Gone Now.”

In another supporting role that just can’t go unmentioned, NaTasha Yvette Williams as Mariah is marvelous. You want to see more from this big-hearted proprietress of the local tavern.  She seems to be the only one on stage who takes no guff from anyone.

The scenic design for The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess is by Ricardo Hernandez. It has to be one of the most blatantly ugly and useless sets I’ve ever seen. While Ms. Paulus creates some lovely tableaux on the stage using her company, had she been given more playing room vertically, this show would have been much more visually interesting. I realized this while researching this review and looking at a picture from the original 1935 production of Porgy and Bess by the Theatre Guild.  The scenic design by Sergei Soudeikine included a big front gate (a reference to a line now cut from this production) and multiple playing levels with windows and balconies of rowhouses. With Mr. Hernandez’s set we are stuck with what appears to be boarded up rowhouses with only two portals on two levels.  The lighting design by Christopher Ackerland is effective, if not a bit heavy on the amber.

I am not a Gershwin scholar, nor am I particularly familiar with the original Porgy and Bess, but, I can say that what Ms. Paulus and Ms. Parks have assembled here is a vibrant interpretation and a daring homage to Messrs. Gershwin and Heyward.  I’m sorry Mr. Sondheim, while I do hold you in the utmost regard, and consider myself a huge fan, I’d Like to think that the original creators might have found these lady's further exploration of their work a positive and not a negative.

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess is playing on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.

View full production credits for The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess at IBDB.com.

The "road" to Mecca in this case is a statuary garden outside the home of Miss Helen (Harris), a woman in her early 70s for whom time has begun to take its toll. This statuary has given her an outsider status among the residents of the Karoo village of New Bethesda, South Africa where she lives. The creation of this garden was a cause she took up after the passing of her husband and has turned into the driving force in her life.  

Elsa, played by Carla Gugino arrives at the top of the play in response to a note that she has received from Miss Helen. In the note, Miss Helen alludes to depression, sending Elsa on a hurried 12 hour car ride from Cape Town in the midst of finals (she’s a professor).  We spend much of the first act trying to figure out what Elsa’s relationship is to Miss Helen.  This never seems to be particularly clear beyond a young girl who wandered by one day and was smitten with her garden.

It quickly becomes apparent that Miss Helen may no longer be capable of living alone. A singed windowsill and new curtains, as well as burns on Miss Helen’s hands, indicate that candles she left burning had gotten out of control.  She tries to attribute the burns on her hands to creating a prickly-pear syrup for Elsa.  

Miss Helen’s friend Katrina (whom we don’t meet), a black woman with a baby and a drunkard for a husband, is the only one who looks in on Miss Helen.  The exception to this seems to be the Dominee from Miss Helen’s church (which she long ago left), Marius (Dale).  Elsa isn’t the only one worried for Miss Helen.  For most of the play we’re given the impression that Marius has ulterior motives in trying to get Ms. Helen to move into a seniors residence.  He has brought her an application to the facility that she is expected to sign.  It is obvious that Ms. Helen’s depression and angst has arisen from the pressure Marius has been putting on her.  We originally side with Elsa in thinking that something darker is at play here, when in fact it just seems Marius is looking out for her.

Athol Fugard’s traditional theme of apartheid is present in The Road to Mecca.  His treatment of the topic is subtle in this case and takes a backseat to Miss Helen’s story. It comes up in the discussion of a possible new bottle store in New Bethesda and the impact it might have on the black community.  More importantly it comes up in the way the white members of the community don’t think to ask the black members of the community how it might affect them.  It comes up in the form of a hitchhiking single mother who Elsa picks up on the way to New Bethesda.  The woman’s husband has just died and the “‘Baas’ told her to pack-up and leave the farm.”  She is left to travel 80 miles to try and find family who might give her shelter. These are merely sidelines in this overly long and wordy play that clocks in at a hefty two hours and forty minutes.

The inside of her home, as designed by scenic designer Michael Yeargan, and colorfully lit by Peter Kaczorowski, is a testament to Miss Helen’s love for color and light. Her artistic nature is on display on the walls inside her house which are painted beautifully streaked purples and yellows and oranges inlaid with broken pieces of glass to create glitter. At the top of the play we see late afternoon sunlight streaking through the windows. It all too quickly turns to night and we then rely on a couple of lit candles. This sets a somber and subdued tone.  Later in the play during one of Miss Helen’s monologues, as she begins to talk about the discovery of her new life after the death of her husband, she instructs Elsa to begin lighting candles around the room. At this point, the room, and Ms. Harris, are brilliant.

The Road to Mecca premiered at the National Theatre in London before coming to the Spoleto Festival in Aspen in 1987.  It went on to win the 1988 New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for Best Foreign Play.  In 1992 it was turned into a movie co-directed by, and starring Fugard as Marius and Kathy Bates. The Road to Mecca seems a tepid vehicle for such theater legends as Rosemary Harris and Jim Dale.  It doesn’t give either a real opportunity to shine.

Arriving home first is Kent played by Dulé Hill (TV’s “Psyche”) and his new girlfriend Taylor played by Tracie Thoms.  Taylor is the daughter of a well known African-American historian. She has a giant chip on her shoulder owing to the lack of recognition by her father. Kent’s father, Joe LeVay, played by Tony-Award winner Ruben Santiago-Hudson, is impressed when Kent brings her home. Beyond that, he’s not impressed with much that his son has accomplished despite paying for his son to receive two advanced degrees. Taylor’s big news on this trip is that he is about to become a published novelist. A fact which is completely lost on his father.

Next to arrive home is Flip, played by Mekhi Phifer (TV’s “ER”). He is an accomplished plastic surgeon who has a new girlfriend arriving any minute. He sets up her arrival by telling his father that she is Italian (translated, white).  In fact, Kimber is not only white, but she’s a WASP.  Her only possible credentialing into this family is having been a political science major with a focus on African-American studies. Her dissertation was on achievement gap issues.  This is where it gets prickly, as Taylor and Kimber lock horns as to credibility.

Making her Broadway debut, Condola Rashad (Off-Broadway’s Ruined), is Cheryl the daughter of the LeVay family’s maid.  She is filling in for her ailing mother. Having grown up with the family, she is practically a sister to the LeVay children.  Being forced into the role of maid is awkward.  Even more awkward is her inability to stop playing the role of maid and slide back into the role of sister when invited.  Rashad gives Cheryl a wonderful stinging edge.

Ms. Diamond’s script, while full of minor conflict among family members, is given an added dimension by the inclusion of the discussion of class dynamics. The play’s real pièce de résistance is a plot turn (which I won’t share here) that requires everyone in the play to examine their own feelings of class and forever alters the relationship between Cheryl and the LeVay boys.

Hill’s performance as Taylor was stilted.  Phifer as Flip was mush-mouthed and hard to understand at times.  As Joe, Ruben Santiago-Hudson (known for his work on August Wilson plays and a Tony winner for Seven Guitars) is solid despite being miscast as the demanding father. The ladies all give outstanding performances, with Condola Rashad’s being a standout.  Her meek facade is hilarious when punctuated with sarcastic asides. One minor complaint, I did occasionally find her asides hard to hear.

Director Kenny Leon has given Stick Fly a brisk pace but I wonder if he could have gotten more even performances from the men in the cast.  

The set by David Gallo, and the lighting by Beverly Emmons, have beautifully set the scene of a lovely Martha’s Vineyard getaway and the LeVay’s life of privilege (upon which so much of the play’s conflict centers).

If I have one major gripe with Stick Fly, it’s the title and the paper-thin premise from which it is derived.  It is a reference to Taylor’s study of insects. Despite this minor flaw, Stick Fly is a wonderful new play from a playwright from whom I suspect we will see more great things.

Tickets for Stick Fly are currently on sale through April 8th at the Cort Theatre.

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
Previews Begin: December 17, 2011
Opening Night: January 12, 2012
Closing Date: June 24, 2012
Music by: George Gerswhin
Lyrics by: DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin
Book by: DuBose Heyward, based on the play Porgy by DuBose Heyward and Dorothy Heyward
Adapted by: Suzan-Lori Parks and Diedre L. Murray
Directed by: Diane Paulus
Starring: Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis
Theatre: Richard Rodgers Theatre
Get The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess Tickets

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess is the classic American tale is set in the 1930s in Catfish Row, a neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina. Bess, beautiful and troubled, turns to Porgy, the crippled beggar, in search of safety after her possessive lover Crown commits murder. As Porgy and Bess’s love grows, their future is threatened by Crown and the conniving Sporting Life. This heartbreaking love story boasts some of the most famous and beloved works from the Great American Songbook, including: “Summertime,” “Bess, You Is My Woman,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So" and “I Loves You, Porgy.”

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The Road to Mecca
Previews Begin: December 16, 2011
Opening Night: January 17, 2012
Closing Date: March 4, 2012
Playwright: Athol Fugard
Directed by: Gordon Edelstein
Starring: Rosemary Harris, Carla Gugino and Jim Dale
Theatre: American Airlines Theatre
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Set in the region of South Africa known as the Karoo, The Road to Mecca tells the story of an elderly woman who has spent the years since her husband’s death transforming her home into an intricate and dazzling work of art.  The reclusive Miss Helen (Rosemary Harris) has become depressed and appears increasingly unable to care for herself.  Pastor Marius Byleveld, who embodies the village’s conservative values, is determined to get Miss Helen into an old-age home.  Her friend Elsa (Carla Gugino), a young teacher from Cape Town who is deeply suspicious of the patriarchal traditions Byleveld represents, is just as determined that Miss Helen remain free.

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Wit
Previews Begin: January 2, 2012
Opening Night: January 26, 2012
Playwright: Margaret Edson
Directed by: Lynne Meadow
Starring: Cynthia Nixon
Theatre: Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
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Wit follows a brilliant and exacting poetry professor (Cynthia Nixon) as she undergoes experimental treatment for cancer. A scholar who devoted her life to academia, she must now face the irony and injustice of becoming the subject of research.   

 

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Shatner's World: We Just Live in It
Previews Begin: February 14, 2012
Opening Night: February 16, 2012
Closing: March 4, 2012
Starring: William Shatner
Theatre:  Music Box Theatre
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The two-hour show will take audiences on a voyage through Shatner’s life and career, from Shakespearean stage actor to internationally known icon and raconteur, known as much for his unique persona as for his expansive body of work on television and film.

Returning to Broadway for the first time since 1962, William Shatner says, “I've been pretty busy since I last played the Music Box.  I've been refurbished; I hope the theatre has been too. My plan has always been to return to Broadway every 50 years.  I can’t ask my fans to wait for me longer than Halley’s Comet, so I’m coming back. "

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Death of a Salesman

Previews Begin: February 13, 2012
Opening Night: March 15, 2012
Playwright: Arthur Miller
Directed by: Mike Nichols
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Linda Emond, and Andrew Garfield
Theatre: Ethel Barrymore Theatre
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One man and his family are caught up in the pressures and delusions of living the American Dream. Miller's play is the story of a traveling salesman whose illusions of picture-perfect business and family life cave in on him.

 

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Once

Previews Begin: February 28, 2012
Opening Night: March 18, 2012
Music and Lyrics by: Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová
Book by: Enda Walsh
Directed by: John Tiffany
Starring: Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti
Theatre: Bernard B. Jacobs
Get Once Tickets

On the streets of Dublin, an Irish musician (Guy) and a Czech immigrant (Girl) are drawn together by their shared love of music. Over the course of one fateful week, an unexpected friendship and collaboration quickly evolves into a powerful but complicated love story, underscored by the emotionally charged music that has made ONCE an international sensation.
 

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Magic/Bird

Previews Begin: TBA
Opening Night: March 21, 2012
Playwright: Eric Simonson
Directed by: Thomas Kail
Starring: Kevin Daniels
Theatre: TBA

At the heart of one of the fiercest rivalries in sports history, two of the greatest basketball players of all-time battled for three championships, bragging rights, and the future of their sport in the 1980’s. Johnson and Bird electrified the nation on the court, reinvigorated the NBA, and turned their rivalry into one of the greatest and most famous friendships in professional sports. The play, with a six actor cast, will premiere at a Broadway Theater TBA in Spring 2012.

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Jesus Christ Superstar
Previews Begin: March 1, 2012
Opening Night: March 22, 2012
Music by: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics by: Tim Rice
Directed by: Des McAnuff
Starring: Paul Nolan, Josh Young, Chilina Kennedy, Tom Hewitt, Bruce Dow, Marcus Nance and Aaron Walpole
Theatre: Neil Simon Theatre
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This ground-breaking rock opera, which reinvented musical theatre for the modern age, tells the story of the last week of Christ’s life.  The score includes such chart-topping songs as “I Don’t Know How To Love Him,” “Everything’s Alright” and “Superstar.”

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Newsies
Previews Begin: March 15, 2012
Opening Night: March 29, 2012
Closing: June 10, 2012
Music by: Alan Menken and Jack Feldman
Book by: Harvey Fierstein
Directed by: Jeff Calhoun
Starring: TBA

Set in New York City at the turn of the century, Newsies is the rousing tale of Jack Kelly, a charismatic newsboy and leader of a ragged band of teenaged ‘newsies,’ who dreams only of a better life far from the hardship of the streets. But when publishing titans Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst raise distribution prices at the newsboys’ expense, Jack finds a cause to fight for and rallies newsies from across the city to strike for what’s right.

Newsies is inspired by the real-life ‘Newsboy Strike of 1899,’ when newsboy Kid Blink led a band of orphan and runaway newsies on a two-week-long action against Pulitzer, Hearst and other powerful newspaper publishers.

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Gore Vidal’s The Best Man
Previews Begin: March 6, 2012

Opening Night: April 1, 2012
Playwright: Gore Vidal
Directed by: Michael Wilson
Starring: Candice Bergen, Angela Lansbury, John Larroquette, Michael McKean, Eric McCormack, Kerry Butler
Theatre: A Shubert Theatre TBA
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There are two front-runners at this political convention, and the one who gets the nomination will almost certainly be President. Each candidate has some serious mud to sling. How dirty will it get?

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End of the Rainbow
Previews Begin: March 19, 2012
Opening Night: April 2, 2012
Playwright: Peter Quilter
Directed by: Terry Johnson
Starring: Tracie Bennett, Michael Cumpsty, Tom Pelphrey and Jay Russell
Theatre: Belasco Theatre
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Starring Olivier® Award-winner Tracie Bennett in a bravura performance as Judy Garland, End of the Rainbow received rave reviews and four Olivier® Award nominations in London. The setting is December 1968, and Judy Garland is about to make her comeback… again. In a London hotel room preparing for a series of concerts, with both her new young fiancé and her adoring accompanist, Garland struggles to get “beyond the rainbow” with her signature cocktail of talent, tenacity, and razor-sharp wit. This savagely funny drama offers unique insight into the inner conflict that inspired and consumed one of the most beloved figures in American popular culture. End of the Rainbow features some of Garland’s most memorable songs, performed with the show-stopping gusto for which she will always be remembered.

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Evita
Previews Begin: March 12, 2012
Opening Night: April 5, 2012
Music By: Andrew Lloyd Webber
Lyrics By: Tim Rice
Directed by: Michael Grandage
Choreographed by: Rob Ashford
Starring: Ricky Martin, Michael Cerveris and Elena Roger
Theatre: Marquis Theatre
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Eva Perón used her beauty and charisma to rise meteorically from the slums of Argentina to the presidential mansion as First Lady. She won international acclaim and adoration from her own people as a champion of the poor, while glamour, power and greed made her the world’s first major political celebrity.

Evita tells Eva’s passionate and tragic story through Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s most dazzling and beloved score, which includes “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” “Another Suitcase in Another Hall” and “High Flying Adored,” together with “You Must Love Me,” the Oscar-winning hit from the film EVITA.

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Peter and the Starcatcher
Previews Begin: March 28, 2012
Opening Night: April 15, 2012
Playwright: Rick Ellis
Directed by: Roger Rees and Alex Timbers
Theatre: Brooks Atkinson Theatre

In this innovative and imaginative new play, a company of twelve actors plays some 50 characters, all on a journey to answer the century-old question: How did Peter Pan become The Boy Who Refused To Grow Up?  This epic origin story of one of popular culture’s most enduring and beloved characters proves that an audience’s imagination can be the most captivating place in the world.

 

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One Man, Two Guvnors
Previews Begin: TBA
Opening Night: April 18, 2012
Playwright: Richard Bean, based on Carlo Goldoni’s The Servant of Two MastersDirected by: Nicholas Hytner
Starring: Grant Olding and James Corden
Theatre: The Music Box
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In ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS, Corden stars as “Francis Henshall” (“ONE MAN”).  Always-famished and easily-confused, Henshall agrees to work for a local gangster as well as a criminal in hiding (“TWO GUVNORS”), both of whom are linked in a tangled web of schemes and romantic associations... none of which Francis can keep straight. So he has to do everything in his power to keep his two guvnors from meeting while trying to eat anything in sight along the way. Simple.

Falling trousers, flying fish heads, star-crossed lovers, cross-dressing mobsters and a fabulous on-stage band are just some of what awaits at the most “deliriously funny” (The Daily Telegraph) new play to cross the pond in decades.

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Clybourne Park
Previews Begin: March 26, 2012
Opening Night: April 19, 2012
Playwright: Bruce Norris
Directed by: Pam MacKinnon
Starring: Crystal A. Dickinson, Brendan Griffin, Damon Gupton, Christina Kirk, Annie Parisse, Jeremy Shamos and Frank Wood
Theatre: Walter Kerr Theatre
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The winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and London’s Olivier Award for Best Play, Clybourne Park is a split-level comedy built upon a foundation of changing times and racial mistrust that explodes in two outrageous acts set 50 years apart. Hailed by the critics and honored from London to Los Angeles, this wickedly funny, brutally honest play about race and real estate is now set to become Broadway’s hottest property.

 

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A Streetcar Named Desire

 Previews Begin: April 3, 2012 
Opening Night: April 22, 2012
Closing: July 12, 2012
Playwright: Tennessee Williams
Directed by: Emily Mann
Starring: Blair Underwood, Nicole Ari Parker, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Wood Harris
Theatre: Broadhurst
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A talented multi-racial cast tackles Tennessee Williams' Pulitzer Prize-winning play about the clash between an aging and delusional Southern belle and her brutish brother-in-law.

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Ghost
Previews Begin: March 15, 2012
Opening Night: April 23, 2012
Music by: Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard
Book by: Bruce Joel Rubin
Directed by: Matthew Warchus
Starring: Siobhan Dillon, Mark Evans and Sharon D. Clarke
Theatre: Lunt-Fontanne Theatre
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Set in modern day New York City, Ghost The Musical is a timeless fantasy about the power of love. Walking back to their apartment one night, Sam and Molly are mugged, leaving Sam murdered on a dark street. Sam is trapped as a ghost between this world and the next and unable to leave Molly, who he learns is in grave danger. With the help of a phony storefront psychic, Oda Mae Brown, Sam tries to communicate with Molly in the hope of saving and protecting her.

 

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The Lyons
Previews Begin: April 5, 2012
Opening Night: April 23, 2012
Playwright: Nicky Silver
Directed by: Mark Brokaw
Starring: Linda Lavin, Dick Latessa, Michael Esper, Kate Jennings Grant, Brenda Pressley and Gregory Wooddell
Theatre: Cort Theatre
Get The Lyons Tickets

The Lyons is a funny and edgy work starring Linda Lavin as Rita Lyons, the indomitable matriarch of a family at a major crossroads:  her husband is dying, her son's in a dubious relationship, her daughter's struggling to stay sober and on top of it all, she can't settle on a new design for the living room.

The Lyons -- the first play by Mr. Silver (PTERODACTYLS, RAISED IN CAPTIVITY, THE FOOD CHAIN, THE EROS TRILOGY, THE MAIDEN'S PRAYER, etc.) to come to Broadway -- was a major success during its sold-out, twice-extended run at The Vineyard last year.

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Nice Work if You Can Get It
Music and Lyrics by: George and Ira Gershwin
Opening Night: April 24, 2012
Directed by: Kathleen Marshall
Starring: Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara
Get Nice Work if You Can Get It Tickets

This new musical features a veritable hit parade of iconic George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin songs as well as some unknown gems in their catalog, and a book by Joe DiPietro. NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT follows Billie Bendix (Kelli O'Hara), a tough-as-nails bootlegger who meets wealthy playboy Jimmy Winter (Matthew Broderick) on the weekend of his nuptials. Mayhem ensues.

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The Columnist

Previews Begin: April 3, 2012
Opening Night: April 25, 2012
Playwright: David Auburn
Directed by: Daniel Sullivan
Starring: John Lithgow
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Columnists are kings in midcentury America and Joseph Alsop (Lithgow) wears the crown. Joe is beloved, feared and courted in equal measure by the Washington political world at whose center he sits. But as the ’60s dawn and America undergoes dizzying change, the intense political drama Joe is embroiled in becomes deeply personal as well.

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Don’t Dress for Dinner
Previews Begin: March 30, 2012
Opening Night: April 26, 2012
Closing: June 17, 2012
Playwright: Marc Camoletti
Directed by: John Tillinger
Theatre: American Airlines Theatre

Marc Camoletti's Don’t Dress for Dinner is the wildly funny sequel to the Broadway hit Boeing-Boeing. Bernard’s plans for a romantic rendezvous with his mistress are complete with a gourmet caterer and an alibi courtesy of his friend, Robert. But when Bernard’s wife learns that Robert will be visiting for the weekend, she decides to stay in town for a surprise tryst of her own… setting the stage for a collision course of hidden identities and outrageous infidelities. The cook is Suzette, the lover is Suzanne, the friend is bewildered, the wife is suspicious, the husband is losing his mind and everyone is guaranteed a good time at this hilarious romp through the French countryside.

Don’t Dress For Dinner opened in Paris in 1987, under the original title Pajamas Pour Six, and ran for over two years. Robin Hawdon’s adaptation of the original French play premiered in London at the Apollo Theatre in 1991 and ran for six years.

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Harvey 
Previews Begin: May 18, 2012
Opening Night: June 14, 2012 (technically this is a part of the 2012-13 season for Tony Award Consideration)
Playwright: Mary Chase
Directed by: Scott Ellis
Starring: Jim Parsons, Jessica Hecht and Charles Kimbrough
Theatre: Studio 54
Get Harvey Tickets

Harvey was first brought to the Broadway stage in 1944 and was directed by Antoinette Perry.  The play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1944, and its initial run lasted for four years—1,775 performances.  James Stewart assumed the role of “Elwood” from Frank Fay in the 1944 production and originated the role in the 1970 production as well as the film adaptation in 1950.  Helen Hayes played “Veta” opposite Mr. Stewart in the 1970 production.

Parsons stars as one of modern theatre’s most lovable characters, Elwood P. Dowd. Charming and kind, Elwood has only one character flaw:  an unwavering friendship with a 6-foot-tall, invisible white rabbit named Harvey.  In order to save the family’s social reputation, Elwood’s sister Veta (Jessica Hecht) takes Elwood to the local sanatorium. But when the doctors mistakenly commit his anxiety-ridden sister, Elwood — and Harvey—slip out of the hospital unbothered, setting off a hilarious whirlwind of confusion and chaos as everyone in town tries to catch a man and his invisible rabbit.

Other Desert Cities takes place in Palm Springs, California in 2004.  Brooke (Griffiths) has returned home from her cottage in Sag Harbour, New York to her family home and Southern California roots.  Her parents are conservative Republicans who spend their time at the country club and at Republican fund-raisers.  Her father, Lyman Wyeth (Keach) is a former actor and ambassador.  He and his wife, Polly (Channing), were intimates with Ron and Nancy (yes, that Ron and Nancy).  Brooks brother, Trip, is played by Broadway's current "It" boy (no, not Hugh Jackman, Broadway’s other “It” boy), the always terrific Thomas Sadoski.  He is the producer of a court-room reality show and the family arbiter.  Light is Polly’s sister, Silda Grauman, a recovering alcoholic who has lived in her sister’s shadow her entire life. At times her resentment is palpable.

Baitz has created a high-profile dysfunctional family that's holding onto one big secret that only the parents and Silda know.  That secret is about to spill out into the light of day, forced by Brooke’s big announcement.  She is a successful author with one previously published book to her name.  She has come home to break the news to her family that her new book (which they believe to be a novel) is really a tell-all book about them and the suicide of her idolized older brother, Henry.  He became estranged with his parents after joining a cult and blowing up a recruiting station where someone was killed. Mental illness runs in the family and Brooke has spent a good deal of her life in mental health facilities.

The family dynamics mirror each other in successive generations in this play.  “Don't talk to me like Mom talks to Silda” chides Brook to Trip.  Channing’s Polly is a pit-bull.  You can tell she has had to stand up to her share of public scrutiny.  She's cold-hearted towards both her daughter and her sister.  She even belittles her own daughter's secretive emotional life "lots of locked doors in her doll-house."  

Griffiths is marvelous as Brooke, believable and sympathetic. I’m always impressed with actors from other countries who do such an undetectable American accent. Griffiths has handily dispensed with her native dialect for her state-side television projects which included TV's "Six Feet Under" and "Brothers and Sisters." During the curtain call there was an appeal for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Griffiths immediately lapsed into her Aussie accent.

Channing and Light boldly inhabit these polar opposite siblings and Baitz has given these ladies some great verbal sparring.  Perhaps my favorite line of the play is when Polly refers to herself as a Texan.  Silda reminds her “you’re not a Texan, you’re a Jew.”  

The set, by scenic designer John Lee Beatty is 1960s desert-modern and includes a circular fireplace.  I’m not sure whether this was an artistic decision or not, but the furniture on the stage was an off-white and was actually spotted and dirty. This struck me as odd and I found it distracting.

All in all, Bates has crafted a moving and funny play. I could, however, have done without the epilogue where we see Brooke giving a public reading of her book at a Seattle bookstore. Her parents Polly and Lyman are seen in a tableau up-center, Silva is down-left sitting motionless at a table with a bottle and glass in front of her. The button Baitz put on the and of the prior scene seemed a perfect ending for the play. Despite this minor objection I can’t recommend this play highly enough.  

View Other Desert Cities production credits on IBDB.com.

The ensemble is so perky you might confuse them for a runaway cast of “Up with People," but they are definitely talented.  Uzo Aduba beautifully rendered “By My Side” (music Peggy Gordon and lyrics Jay Hamburger) about the lengths she would go to for Jesus. Julia Mattison (who was replacing Morgan James in the performance I saw) did a saucy turn with “Turn Back, O Man.”  The adorable Telly Leung did a show-stopping series of impressions from famous movies.  On “Learn Your Lessons Well” Leung even played the piano.

Godspell is chock full of current-day pop-culture references that give this musical telling of the Book of Matthew a modern day sensibility. Goldstein and his team have worked in Occupy Wall Street, Muammar Gaddafi’s death, Heidi Klum, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Lindsay Lohan, and even a joke about the other dual-theatre complex tenant, Schwartz’s Wicked.  

Producing this show in the round seemed like a good idea.  The audience is closer and interaction with the audience is easily facilitated.  What didn’t work was spreading out the band throughout the audience.  Andrew Keister’s sound is a muddy mess with audience members straining to understand lyrics.  

Having not seen Godspell, but knowing the music and the premise, I pretty much knew what to expect.  Something tells me I would have preferred the original production over this one.  The beauty part about this show is its simplicity.  That simplicity seems to get amped to a fevered pitch with this production and that simplicity disappears.  Schwartz rapidly wrote Godspell while in his early twenties.  It stands to follow that Godspell is not nearly as substantial as his most recent endeavor, Wicked.   

While this production may have enough cheese to get the Crucifixion sponsored by Kraft, it’s still a winner for family entertainment.

 

View production credits on IBDB.com
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The setting, by John Lee Beatty, is a bland looking audition studio that unfortunately allows the eyes to atrophy throughout the evening.  As the lights come up, Thomas (Dancy, as an author adopting the 19th century German novel "Venus in Fur" into a play) is on the phone railing against the quality (or lack thereof) of the 35 actresses they have seen for the lead role of Vanda.  "Young women can't even play feminine these days.  Half are dressed like hookers, the others, like dykes."

Ms. Arianda bursts through the door like the Tasmanian devil on speed.  She is late for her 2:15 appointment (that she may or may not have actually had.)  She is positively crazed; the word fuck coming out of her mouth every other word.  On the surface she appears to be everything that Thomas was railing against on the phone.  That immediately dissipates after she convinces Thomas to read with her.  When Thomas asks her if she has read the script, she replies I "kinda flipped through it quickly on the train."  On the surface she may seem like a ditsy blond.  But underneath that she is every bit the gritty, demanding and commanding actress the role requires.  As the evening progresses Thomas also discovers he’s not exactly the man he thought he was.  A major power shift takes place that is both intriguing and erotic.  

Ives reveals these characters slowly and methodically, bit by bit.    He facilely has them moving between their 19th Century alter egos and their present day selves.  This is facilitated brilliantly by director, Walter Bobbie, who has directed Venus... with such style and grace you might think you were at the ballet.  These two characters (four really) circle one another like prey being hunted.

Ives's script is witty and fast-paced and a true delight.  If there is a commercial producer out there with any sense, he would pick up this production (currently in a non-commercial run at Manhattan Theatre Club's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre)  and turn it into a commercial run.  If that doesn't happen, then you only have through December 18th to see this electrifying production.

The play begins with Daniel giving a presentation to the Commerce League of Ohio on doing business in China.  On the screen are various signs with Chinese characters and their mangled English translations.  “To take notice of safe: the slippery are very crafty” reads one sign.   It's supposed to say "slippery slopes ahead."  "Financial Affairs Is Everywhere Long" reads the next sign.  What does it mean?  “Chief Financial Officer.”   But the best one of all?  "Fuck the certain price of goods."  It's supposed to read "Dry Goods Pricing Department."

Flash back three years earlier to Daniel’s first trip to China.  He's in the office of the Minister of Culture for Guiyang City, Cai Guoliang (perfectly played by Larry Lei Zhang).    He's there to try and drum up business for his family’s sign company.  His conduit to the Minister is a teacher, Peter (a convincing Stephen Pucci).  Peter is "owed one" by the Minister.  He did a favor for the Minister’s son and helped him get into college.  

When Peter has his first meeting with the Minister, the icy Vice-Minister, Xi Yan (played by human firecracker Jennifer Lim) is also in the room.   Her performance as Xi is hilarious, with her clipped, broken English and emotional detachment.  This scene also features a fun performance by Angela Lin as Miss Quian, a translator who mangles the translations almost as much as the slides in the opening scene.  Xi and Daniel have a terrific scene where XI explains to him that he will never get the sign contract for the new cultural center as long as the current Minister is still in power.  The vendor got the deal "through the back door" (i.e., a family connection).

In Chinglish, the principal characters all have ulterior motives and aren't everything they seem to be on the surface.  Daniel has his Enron skeleton and a family business that is not much more than a cell phone and a website.  Though she is quick to hop into bed with Daniel, XI is married to a judge (Johnny Wu) whom she confesses to Daniel she does not love.  “Once — long time — but, no. Today, only husband.”   Not that she is ready to give up her marriage.  In fact she is just playing Daniel to her ambitious husband's advantage as he angles for her bosses job.

David Korins's revolving set is genius.  Every turn of the turntable reveals a new combination of walls and furniture that create a new environ.  Director Lee Silverman's even-handed direction keeps the action moving.  He uses actors crossing Korins's moving set to give a fluidity to the play.  The scene changes are covered by pumping Chinese pop music that also sustain the momentum of the play.

The most fascinating thing about this play is its look at the cultural differences between the East and the West. This includes things as small as how they reverently present a business card with both hands extended, to their odd fascination with America's financial debacles.  The production has engaged a pair of cultural consultants, Joanna C. Lee and Ken Smith.  Between playwright Hwang's own travel in China and these two consultants, they have created a culturally realistic and funny evening of theatre.

They are Caroline Aaron, Bill Army, Katherine Borowitz, Lisa Emery, Ari Graynor, Steve Guttenberg, Danny Hoch, Julie Kavner, Jason Kravits, Richard Libertini, Mark Linn-Baker, Max Gordon Moore, Patricia O’Connell, Allen Lewis Rickman, Grant Shaud, and Marlo Thomas.  

In the first act, Talking Cure, by Ethan Coen, a doctor (Kravitz) visits his patient (Hochman) in a mental hospital.  The patient flusters the doctor by flipping the tables on him.  He may be a large oaf but he’s articulate.  When he opens his mouth he completely negates his physical presence.  Hochman, with his putty-like face, is fun to watch as he contorts it to match the twist he puts on the doctor’s thesis.  For his part, Kravitz is perfect as the flustered doctor.  He opens one of the scenes leaning back and bouncing off the chain-link walls of a holding cell with his arms crossed in utter frustration.  After the doctor explains to the patient “the talking cure” and how one can simply solve a problem by talking through it, the patient replies, “What if the illness is, talking too much?” Ba-dum-TSH!  That’s what we’re in for in this evening of largely borscht belt comedy.

Coen’s play has a second half that only slightly connects to the first half of the play.  It takes place over a dinner table between a father (Rickman) and pregnant mother (Borowitz).  The second half initially seems like a nonsequitor until you realize that the baby in the woman’s stomach is Larry, our mental patient in the previous half of the piece.  In a telling sign of the father’s concern for Larry he refers to the baby in his wife’s stomach as “that thing.”  In this contentious argument even Hitler and Hoeffitz (also brought up in the first half of the piece) are brought into the argument.  It ends up being a completely illogical and purposeless argument that does nothing but imply what might possibly be wrong with the grown son we see in the first half of the play.  Talking Cure is the weakest and most disjointed of the evening’s three mini plays.

The second piece of the first half of the evening is Elaine May’s George is Dead, the most pulled-together of the three pieces.  In it, Marlo Thomas is Doreen, a spoiled, child-like and childish, recently widowed woman whose pink party dress would be perfectly in character for Baby Jane Hudson (“Whatever Happened to Baby Jane”) and Blanche Devereaux (“The Golden Girls”).  She has shown up on the doorstep of her former nanny’s daughter, Carla (Emery).  Carla has her own troubles at the moment.  It’s late and her husband Michael  (Shaud, again) still hasn’t come home.  They’ve had a fight over her lack of attention to him and this isn't helping.

Doreen has spent her life going from being taken care of by her nanny to being taken care of by her husband.  She has never had to face any kind of reality.  When asked to confront her husbands accidental skiing death and plan the funeral, she replies “I don’t have the depth to feel this bad.”  Carla resentfully goes about planning for Doreen’s husband’s funeral.  Emery gives a wonderful performance as Carla.  She is a veritable pressure-cooker.  Thomas gives the best performance of the evening.  She is fabulous as this hateful character, or as Carla puts it, a “selfish, brainless, heartless, little slut.”  Unfortunately, that’s about as harsh as we ever see Carla get, despite hoping for more.

George is Dead dissembles at the end with the entrance of Nanny (O’Connell in a thankless role).  The ending of this piece is equivalent to opening a half used liter of soda, you start with a burst of air that makes you think you will be rewarded with a bubbly beverage but what you wind up with is just sickly sweet and flat, in other words, disappointing.  The piece ends with George’s funeral and a weepy Doreen.  Not terribly satisfying, I’m afraid.

After intermission, we have Woody Allen’s farce-like addition to this trio, Honeymoon Motel.  A newlywed couple, Jerry and Nina (Guttenburgh and Graynor), checks into a hotel's garish honeymoon suite (wonderfully rendered by scenic designer Santo Loquasto.)  Unfortunately, Jerry was not the man that Nina intended to marry, it was his step-son Paul (Army).  Before long, everyone from the wedding is in the suite throwing barbs.  There's Jerry's best friend Eddie (Shaud, again), Jerry's wife Judy (Aaron), the bride's parents, Fay and Sam (Kavner and Linn-Baker), the "over enunciating" Rabbi (Libertini), and Jerry's psychiatrist (Kravits, again).  The group throw's around modestly humorous one-liners that it's hard to imagine haven't already been included in some form or another in one of Mr. Allen's many films.  There's even a bad Lorena Bobbitt joke.

What will get the audiences attention is the ethically questionable relationship. At the end of the play, Sal, a pizza delivery boy sums up and articulates the feelings I can only imagine Allen found himself uttering after the relationship with his step-daughter came to light.  “For whatever combination of miraculous reasons she and Jerry have fallen in love and while it defies conventional logic or science or religion, it’s yet a reality. My advice is to accept it, go with the flow, try not to be embittered and move on with life.”

All in all, this is a disjointed evening that, were it not for the stature of its writers, might never have seen the light of day.

View full production credits on IBDB.com.

There are plenty of candid backstage shots and a scrapbook section for each show.  This book is chockablock with anything you could want to know about any of the plays or musicals that appeared on Broadway last season. Everyone, including the ushers, are represented here. Appropriately, there is also an In-Memoriam for those in the industry who left us during the year.

From the Scrapbook for each show you can learn about backstage rituals, find out who performed the most roles in a show, what the cast’s favorite off-site hangout is, and even memorable ad libs. In the case of musicals, the musical numbers and the orchestra members are listed as well.

There is a faculty section which is dedicated to all the related organizations that help make Broadway happen. This includes the Broadway League, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the Dramatists Guild, Actors’ Equity Association, the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers, the Theatrical Teamsters, and many more.

If you are looking for the perfect gift for the Broadway lover in your life this holiday season, The Playbill Broadway Yearbook is the perfect gift. Get THE PLAYBILL BROADWAY YEARBOOK Now.

Write your own Review in The TheatreSphere.

The play won the Olivier Award in 2010 and may once again speak to the differing tastes in the English and American theatre audiences.  It takes place in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.  It is the evening before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The theatrical device used in the play can't be divulged.  We have been asked by the show's press agent not to reveal the major plot twist in the play.

An Academy Award winner for "What's Love Got to Do With It," Angela Bassett plays Camae, a maid who brings King coffee and decides to stay for a spell.  She giggles continuously at King as he flirts with her.  Samuel L. Jackson is good as King but is never asked to play a three-dimensional character.  Bassett walks away with the best scene of the evening, a rapid-fire monologue that is part Lin-Manuel Miranda and part Anna Deveare Smith.  This one brief scene is the most meat in the entire play.

David Gallo's scenic design on the surface seems plain, a simple hotel room, but at the end of the play the set transitions off-stage in one of the slickest scene changes I've seen in a long time.  His projections, a vortex of historical way-points, is powerful.

Kenny Leon has directed The Mountaintop with a light hand to match Hall’s mostly light script. He brought out great performances from both Bassett and Jackson.

If you were hoping for something substantial from The Mountaintop, you will be disappointed. You might wait for Moments with Dr. King, another new play about Dr. King currently making its way towards Broadway without a publicly announced timeline.

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The appropriately gritty Greenwich Village apartment setting by Derek McLane is perfect.  Gregor has unexpectedly shown up at the apartment of his son Vassily, played by Adam Driver.  Vassily walked out of his father's life five years ago, changed his name to the American-sounding Basil Anthony, and is now playing a piano in a Greenwich Village club.  He eeks out a meager existence compared to the opulence of his childhood.  He's dating an actress, Carol played by Virginia Kull, who makes the best of a rather characterless role.  Carol realizes she doesn’t really know the first thing about Basil until his father shows up.  

Gregor’s hiding from the authorities and seeking an out-of-the-way place for a meeting to try and cover his financial misdeeds.  It is his intention to blackmail a spooked potential business partner, Mark Herries (Zach Grenier, who is so marvelous at creating his roles that I never seem to recognize him until I look at the Playbill after) into moving forward with a merger by exposing his homosexuality.  To enable this, Gregor introduces his son to Herries as his boy toy.  (Will this man stop at nothing, you are no doubt asking yourself by now?)

While Rattigan’s play is an interesting character study into the mind of someone like Bernard Madoff, it loses credibility when the son so quickly goes from hating his father to loving his father. There is no reason for Basil to suddenly go from denying his father’s existence to becoming emotionally entwined in his father’s affairs. Mr. Driver is competent in the role of Vassily but his character rings false when he begins to stutter and during some of the more emotionally vulnerable scenes.  This seems to be more of a problem with Rattigan’s script than with Driver’s acting.

On its surface, Man and Boy is about greed, but its soul is about a man who can’t let himself be loved.  Gregor is a sad, pathetic man who drove away his only son with his unethical behavior. He refers to the loss of Vassily as the loss of his conscience.

Gregor has the same aloof relationship with his wife, the Countess Antonescu, a former girl from the steno pool who has made good. Her husband has purchased her the title of Countess.  Francesca Faridany is the Countess.  Her performance is slightly telegraphic at times with her facial expressions and large gestures bearing the brunt of the work.

Gregor’s right-hand man and “best friend” Sven (its hard to think of a guy like Gregor having a best friend) is sternly played by Michael Siberry.  

Rattigan's Man and Boy was originally produced on Broadway with Charles Boyer as Gregor in 1963. It ran for just over a month.  Not exactly a success.

Maybe it’s our current climate that makes us want to understand someone like Gregor; perhaps it’s a “know thine enemy” thing.  It seems oddly apropos that this work is being presented as hundreds gather in a New York City park to protest the greed and reach of Wall Street.

View full production credits at IBDB.com.

I only wish that Mr. Twist's directorial efforts were as refined as his puppeteering.  Alas, while Arias with a Twist can be entertaining, it isn't without it's slow and uneven moments.  There is a lot of eye candy here not only from Twist but also from lighting designer Ayuma "Poe" Saegusa, projection designer Daniel Brodie and costume designer Manfred Thierry Mugler.  Unfortunately the show gets so caught up with its own cleverness that Arias frequently seems lost on stage among the spectacle.

After an hilarious tumble from the flying saucer upon which she was being probed, Arias finds herself lying in a jungle on her back, her legs up in the air, surrounded by exotic birds, a boa-constrictor and other animated flora and fauna.  All these creatures come from the creative genius of Mr. Twist, a third-generation puppeteer.  Four marionette orchestra members featured in the show actually belonged to Twist's grandfather and were given to him as a child.  

After landing in the jungle, Arias gets hungry and succumbs to the temptation of a jewel-encrusted magical mushroom that sends her tripping.  And to think, the alien probing was BEFORE the effects of the mushroom.  Before the evening is over Arias finds herself copulating with huge puppet devils with red lit eyes and engorged phallus's, stomping through Manhattan as an Amazon woman towering over the city, and a growling (and occasionally chirping) singer in a posh nightclub a la Billie Holiday (drunk, slurring, and all) backed up by the aforementioned marionette orchestra.

The show includes a mix of original songs by Alex Gifford of the English band Propellerheads as well as some existing songs like the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin.  To say that Arias performs all of these numbers with conviction would be a major understatement.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to stave off the boredom or fill the holes in this plot-less trip down a trippy rabbit hole.

Arias with a Twist runs through October 15th at the Abrons Art Center at 466 Grand Street.  You can get tickets online at www.AbronsArtsCenter.org or by calling 212-352-3101.

Follies is the story of a reunion of the Weismann Girls (think Florenz Ziegfeld).  It is the 30th anniversary of the closing of the show and they have gathered one last time to celebrate the past before the theatre is torn down to make way for a parking lot.

Follies focuses on two couples, the middle-class Buddy Plummer (Danny Burstein) and Sally Durant (Bernadette Peters), and the lawyer Benjamin Stone (Ron Raines) and his “cultivated” wife Phyllis Rogers (Jan Maxwell).  

Sally has severe depression and perhaps a bit of psychosis and poor Buddy does everything he can to make her happy.  Ben is outwardly successful but is in reality having a mid-life crisis, successful with his career and that’s about it.  Phyllis is bitter and feels abandoned by Ben.  

Follies is written with overlapping scenes that take place simultaneously between young versions of these couples.  It contrasts the difference between youthful hopes and aspirations and the realization that this is as good as it gets.  Throughout the show there are also ghosts of show-girls the cross the stage and crawl on catwalks on the back wall of the theatre like lost souls.  As the black curtain rises during Sondheim’s overture you see the ghosts of the past wandering the stage.  The past and the present are beautifully delineated by lighting designer Natasha Katz who has used cool lighting to indicate the past and warm toned lighting to represent the present.

Not only does Follies represent the death of youthful dreams, but also the death of a style of musical theatre that is no longer in vogue.  It uses pastiche numbers representing various song styles of the golden years of the follies and more contemporary numbers that bear Mr. Sondheim’s own unique style.

One is challenged (in a good way) to keep up with this facile production as it moves seamlessly between the present and 30 years ago.  The folks next to me just didn’t get it.  I heard one of the men say “I thought there was going to be more dancing and singing, you know, like the follies.”  As soon as the more fantastical “Love Land” section begins, I hear him exclaim “now this is what I was talking about.”  I guess you could say Follies has something for everyone.

Led by the inimitable Bernadette Peters, this cast is spell-binding.  This is perhaps my favorite of Ms. Peters' performances to date.  She has convincingly honed ex-follies girl Sally Durant into a quirky, desperate and needy character, completely out of touch with reality.  Ms. Peters' voice, though not what it once was, is ideally suited to the vulnerable Sally.  She breaks your heart with “Losing My Mind” as she laments a long-ago fling with Ben.  

Ron Raines as Ben is marvelous.  He is in fine vocal form and is believable as the successful man with his own demons and regrets (“The Road You Didn’t Take”) and whose facade crumbles by the end of the show (“Live, Laugh, Love”) when he has a break-down on stage.  

Jan Maxwell is tart and sharp-tongued as the vengeful, angry and sassy Phyllis.  Her “Could I Leave You?” is finely articulated and spitting with venom.  Jan Maxwell’s performance has made me a fan for life.  

Danny Burstein gives a touching and funny performance handily performing Buddy’s two big numbers, “The Right Girl” and “The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me-Blues” like a true showman.  I loved his performance.

Another highlight of the evening was getting to see English theatre legend Elaine Paige live for the first time.  She did not disappoint. Her “I’m Still Here” was fresh and edgy.   

Jayne Houdyshell is just hilarious as Hattie.  She did not do the original production in Washington (Linda Lavin played the role).  She is a wonderful addition to the cast.  Her comedic timing is brilliant and she sings the hell out of “Broadway Baby.”

Gregg Barnes costumes are magnificent and stunning.   Whether it’s his head-dresses and sequined outfits for the ghost follies girls, the 1971 attire for the women or the spectacular “Love Land” sequence which is so eye catching, Mr. Barnes had his hands full with this one and he came through beautifully.

My thanks to the Kennedy Center for hiring a 28-piece orchestra.  The sound of real instruments and more than just a smattering of musicians make this one of the other big reasons to see this show. Master orchestrator Jonathan Tunick’s orchestrations are lush and full.

Follies originally opened at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1971 and only played a total of 522 performances, losing a large portion of the investors $800,000.  Perhaps it proved too much for the audience then.  Sondheim and Goldman were ahead of their time.  Thanks to timing and this delicious new production,  Follies might just have found an audience.  Do not miss this production, you will regret it.  It is playing a limited run at the Marquis Theatre on Broadway.

View Full Production Details at IBDB.com

Follies

Previews Begin: August 7, 2011
Opening Night: September 12, 2011 OPENED
Limited Run
Playwright: James Goldman
Music: Stephen Sondheim
Director: Warren Carlyle
Starring: Bernadette Peters, Jan Maxwell, Danny Burstein, Ron Raines and Elaine Paige
Theatre: Marquiss Theatre
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When former members of the "Weismann Follies" reunite on the eve of their theater's demolition, two couples remember their past and face the harsher realities of the present. Reminiscing of their younger selves and the years gone by, the crumbling theater brings back memories for both couples of good times and bad. FOLLIES echoes the songs, exuberance and romance of the vaudeville days between the two World Wars. The score features some of Stephen Sondheim's best-known songs, including "Broadway Baby," "I'm Still Here," "Too Many Mornings," "Could I Leave You?" and "Losing My Mind."


Man and Boy
Previews Begin: September 9, 2011
Opening Night: October 9, 2011 OPENED
Playwright: Terence Rattigan
Director: Maria Aitken
Starring: Frank Langella
Theatre: American Airlines Theatre
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Roundabout Theatre Company (Todd Haimes, Artistic Director) presents three-time Tony Award® winner Frank Langella as "Gregor Antonescu" in Terence Rattigan's drama Man and Boy, directed by Maria Aitken. At the height of the Great Depression, ruthless financier Gregor Antonescu's (Langella) business is dangerously close to crumbling.  In order to escape the wolves at his door, Gregor tracks down his estranged son Basil in the hopes of using his Greenwich Village apartment as a base to make a company-saving deal.  Can this reunion help them reconcile?  Or will this corrupt father use his only son as a pawn in one last power play?   Man and Boy is a gripping story about family, success and what we're willing to sacrifice for both. Additional cast members and the creative team will be announced shortly.

The Mountaintop
Previews Begin: September 22, 2011
Openning Night: October 13, 2011 OPENED
Playwright: Katori Hall
Director: Kenny Leon
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Angela Bassett
Theatre: Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre
Get The Mountaintop Tickets

Taking place on April 3, 1968,   The Mountaintop is a gripping reimagining of events the night before the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as he retires to Room 306 in the now famous Lorraine Motel in Memphis, after delivering his legendary 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' speech to a massive church congregation. When room-service is delivered by a young woman, whose identity we puzzle over, King is forced to confront his past, as well as his legacy to his people.

The Mountaintop received its world premiere to critical acclaim in a three-week run at Theatre 503 in June 2009, and subsequently transferred to the West End's Trafalgar Studio 1.   The production featured powerful performances by David Harewood as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Lorraine Burroughs as the mysterious Camae, under the direction of James Dacre.  The Mountaintop also received two Evening Standard Awards Nominations, including Most Promising Playwright, and was awarded the coveted 2010 Olivier Award for Best Play. This year, Ms. Hall also received the Susan Smith Blackburn prize.

Relatively Speaking
Previews Begin: September 20, 2011
Opening Night: October 20, 2011 OPENED
Playwright(s): Ethan Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen
Directed by: John Turturro
Starring: Caroline Aaron, Bill Army, Lisa Emery, Ari Graynor, Steve Guttenberg, Danny Hoch, Julie Kavner, Fred Melamed, Grand Shaud, Marlo Thomas
Theatre: Brooks Atkinson Theatre
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Three one-act comedies by Ethan Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen.  Directed by John Turturro.  Relatively Speaking is comprised of three one-act comedies springing from a different branch of the family tree.  In Talk Therapy, Ethan Coen uncovers the sort of insanity than can only come from family. In George is Dead, Elaine May explores the hilarity of death.  And in Honeymoon Motel, Woody Allen invites you to the sort of wedding day you won't forget.

 

Chinglish
Previews Begin: October 11, 2011
Opening Night: October 27, 2011 OPENED
Playwright: David Henry Hwang
Directed by: Leigh Silverman
Starring: Gary Wilmes, Jennifer Lim, Angela Lin, Christine Lin, Stephen Pucci, Johnny Wu and Larry Lei Zhang
Theatre: Longacre Theatre
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Chinglish is the new comedy about the challenges of doing business in a culture whose language—and ways of communicating—are worlds apart from our own.  An American businessman arrives in a bustling Chinese province looking to score a lucrative contact for his family's sign-making firm. He soon finds that the complexities of such a venture far outstrip the expected differences in language, customs and manners – and calls into questions even the most basic assumptions of human conduct.

Venus in Fur
Previews Begin: September 30, 2011
Opening Night: November 8, 2011 OPENED
Playwright: David Ives
Directed by: Walter Bobby
Starring: Nina Arianda and Hugh Dancey
Theatre: Samuel J. Friedman
Get Venus in Fur Tickets

Tony Award nominee Nina Arianda in her phenomenal breakout performance as 'Vanda,' is a preternaturally talented young actress determined to land the lead in a new play based on the classic erotic novel, Venus in Fur. Her emotionally charged audition for Thomas, the play's adapter/director, becomes an electrifying game of cat and mouse blurring the lines between fantasy and reality, seduction and power, love and sex. This dazzling new play is written by theatrical mastermind David Ives, and directed by Tony Award winner Walter Bobbie. Casting for the role of Thomas will be announced in the coming weeks.

Other Desert Cities

Previews Begin: October 12, 2011
Opening Night: November 3, 2011 OPENED
Directed by: Joe Montello
Starring: Stockard Channing, Rachel Griffiths (Broadway debut), Stacy Keach, Judith Light and Thomas Sadoski
Theatre: Booth Theatre
Get Other Desert Cities Tickets

In Other Desert Cities, Brooke Wyeth (to be played by Rachel Griffiths who is making her Broadway debut), a once promising novelist, returns home after a six year absence to celebrate Christmas in Palm Springs with her parents, former members of the Reagan inner-circle (Stockard Channing and Stacy Keach), her brother (Thomas Sadoski) and her aunt (to be played by Judith Light).  When Brooke announces that she is about to publish a memoir focusing on an explosive chapter in the family's history, the holiday reunion is thrown into turmoil and the Wyeths are both bound together and torn apart as they struggle to come to terms with their past.   LCT gratefully acknowledges that Ms. Griffiths will appear in Other Desert Cities with the permission of Actors Equity Association.

Godspell
Previews: October 13, 2011
Opening Night: November 7, 2011 OPENED
Directed By: Daniel Goldstein
Choreographed By: Christopher Gattelli
Starring: Telly Leung, Uzo Aduba, Nick Blaemire, Morgan James, Hunter Parrish
Theatre: Circle in the Square
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This beloved classic from Stephen Schwartz, the Grammy® and Academy Award®-winning composer of Wicked and Pippin. Enjoy all the good gifts of one of the most enduring shows of all time as it comes to Broadway in a brand new, intimately staged, one-of-a-kind production. Raise your spirit with the Tony-nominated score filled with the popular hits "Day By Day", "Learn Your Lessons Well" and "Turn Back, O Man".

 

Noël Coward's Private Lives
Previews Begin: November 6, 2011
Opening Night: November 17, 2011 OPENED
Limited Run - Closing Date: February 5, 2012
Directed by: Richard Eyre
Starring: Kim Cattrall and Paul Gross
Theatre: Music Box Theatre
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Noël Coward's Private Lives premiered in London in 1930 and has been produced around the world ever since; it premiered on Broadway in 1931.  Glamorous, rich and reckless, Amanda (Cattrall) and Elyot (Gross) have been divorced from each other for five years. Now both are honeymooning with their new spouses in the South of France. When, by chance, they meet again across adjoining hotel balconies, their insatiable feelings for each other are immediately rekindled. They hurl themselves headlong into love and lust without a care for scandal, new partners or memories of what drove them apart in the first place…for a little while, anyway.

Seminar
Begins Previews: October 27, 2011
Opening Night: November 20, 2011 OPENED
Directed by: Sam Gold
Starring: Alan Rickman, Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater
Theatre: John Golden Theatre
Get Seminar Tickets

In Seminar, four aspiring young novelists sign up for private writing classes with Leonard (Mr. Rickman), an international literary figure.  Under his recklessly brilliant and unorthodox instruction, some thrive and others flounder, alliances are made and broken, sex is used as a weapon and hearts are unmoored.  The wordplay is not the only thing that turns vicious as innocence collides with experience in this biting new comedy.

An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin
Previews Begin: November 16, 2011
Opening Night: November 21, 2011 OPENED
Limited Run - 63 Performances Only
Directed by: Mandy Patinkin
Starring: Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin
Musical Staging Consultant: Ann Reinking
Theatre: Ethel Barrymore Theatre
Get An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin Tickets

Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin reunite on Broadway for AN EVENING WITH PATTI LUPONE AND MANDY PATINKIN. Two Broadway legends who first appeared together giving Tony Award winning performances in Evita, will bring their critically acclaimed theatre concert to the Barrymore Theatre.  Patinkin directs and Ann Reinking is consulting on movement.  Much more than a concert, AN EVENING WITH PATTI LUPONE AND MANDY PATINKIN is a funny, passionate, intimate and unique musical love story told entirely through a masterful selection of some of the greatest songs ever written for the stage.

 

Bonnie & Clyde, the Musical
Previews begin: November 4, 2011
Opening Night: December 1, 2011 OPENED
Music by: Frank Wildhorn
Lyrics by: Don Black
Book by: Ivan Menchell
Directed by: Jeff Calhoun
Starring: Laura Osnes and Jeremy Jordan
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Two small-town kids from the middle of nowhere became the biggest folk heroes in all America. They craved adventure—and each other. Their names were Bonnie and Clyde.

Laura Osnes (Grease, Anything Goes) and Jeremy Jordan (West Side Story) star as the 20th century's most infamous duo, as the daring story of love and crime that captured the imagination of a country takes aim at a whole new generation.

Bonnie & Clyde feature music by Tony® nominee Frank Wildhorn (Jekyll & Hyde), lyrics by Tony® and Oscar® winner Don Black (Sunset Boulevard) and a book by Emmy® Award nominee Ivan Menchell.

Stick Fly
Previews begin: November 18, 2011
Opening Night: December 8, 2011 OPENED
Playwright(s): Lydia R. Diamond
Directed by: Kenny Leon
Starring: Rosie Benton, Mekhi Phifer, Dulé Hill, Mekhi Phifer, Tracie Thoms, Ruben Santiago-Hudson and Condola Rashad
Theatre: Lyceum Theatre
Get Stick Fly Tickets

Produced by Alicia Keys, Stick Fly follows the LeVays, an affluent African American family who come together to spend a summer weekend at their Martha's Vineyard home. The adult sons, aspiring novelist Kent and golden boy plastic surgeon Flip, have each brought their respective ladies (one Black and one White) to meet the parents. Food, drink and Trivial Pursuit tangle with class, race and identity politics in this contemporary comedy of manners.

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
Previews begin: November 12, 2011
Opening on Broadway: December 11, 2011 OPENED
Directed by: Michael Mayer
Starring: Harry Connick Jr., David Turner, Jessie Mueller
Theatre: St. James Theatre
Get On a Clear Day You Can See Forever Tickets

Love blooms in unexpected places in the delightful, newly imagined world of ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER.  Still in love with his deceased wife, Dr. Mark Bruckner (Harry Connick, Jr.), a dashing psychiatrist and professor, unknowingly takes on the case of his life with David Gamble, a quirky young florists' assistant.  While putting David under hypnosis to help him quit smoking so he can move in with his perfect boyfriend Warren, Dr. Bruckner stumbles upon what he believes to be David's former self – a dazzling and self-possessed 1940's jazz singer Melinda Wells.  Instantly intrigued by Melinda, Dr. Bruckner finds himself swept up in the pursuit of an irresistible (and impossible) love affair with this woman from another time and place, who may or may not have ever existed.  Michael Mayer and Peter Parnell's enchanting new version celebrates much of the beloved score from the 1965 musical including the classic hits "Come Back To Me," "What Did I Have That I Don't Have Now?," "She Isn't You," and the titular "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever," while adding songs from the film score such as "Love With All The Trimmings," and "Go To Sleep."  Songs from the Lerner and Lane score for the film Royal Wedding such as "Ev'ry Night At Seven," "You're All The World To Me," "Open Your Eyes" and "Too Late Now" complete the landscape for this romantic musical comedy.  This production of ON A CLEAR DAY makes the case for living life with your eyes, and heart, wide open.

Lysistrata Jones
Previews Begin: November 12, 2011
Opening Night: December 14, 2011
Directed By: Dan Knechtges
Starring: Patti Murin, Josh Segarra, Jason Tam, Lindsay Nicole Chambers
Theatre: Walter Kerr Theatre
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The Athens University basketball team hasn't won a game in 30 years.  But when spunky transfer student Lysistrata Jones dares the squad's fed-up girlfriends to stop 'giving it up' to their boyfriends until they win a game, their legendary losing streak could be coming to an end.  In this boisterous new musical comedy, Lyssie J. and her girl-power posse give Aristophanes' classic comedy a sexy, modern twist and take student activism to a whole new level.

The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess
Previews: December 17, 2011
Opening Night: January 12, 2012
Closing Night: June 24, 2012
Directed by: Diane Paulus
Starring: Audra McDonald, Norm Lewis and David Alan Grier
Theatre: Richard Rodgers Theatre

The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess is the classic American tale is set in the 1930s in Catfish Row, a neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina. Bess, beautiful and troubled, turns to Porgy, the crippled beggar, in search of safety after her possessive lover Crown commits murder. As Porgy and Bess's love grows, their future is threatened by Crown and the conniving Sporting Life. This heartbreaking love story boasts some of the most famous and beloved works from the Great American Songbook, including: "Summertime," "Bess, You Is My Woman," "It Ain't Necessarily So" and "I Loves You, Porgy."

Wit
Previews:  January 5, 2012
Opening Night: January 26, 2012
Playwright: Margaret Edson
Directed by: Lynne Meadow
Starring: Cynthia Nixon
Theatre: Samuel J. Friedman
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Wit follows a brilliant and exacting poetry professor (Cynthia Nixon) as she undergoes experimental treatment for cancer. A scholar who devoted her life to academia, she must now face the irony and injustice of becoming the subject of research.

In the vein of Punch Drunk’s Sleep No More at the McKittrick Hotel on West 27th Street (which I have not seen), The Tenant is site-specific theatre.  The location becomes a part of the piece itself.

The West-Park Church parish house is where the majority of the action takes place.  It's turned into a run-down boarding house. It’s hard to tell what was part of the original building and what was built for this production specifically. There are a couple of tiny rooms that were obviously created just for this production, one used to represent a wig shop.

The building itself is in particularly poor condition to begin with.  There are portions of the hardwood floor that are splintering, no sign of finish on any of the visible boards.  Paint peels from the walls.  At one point there is a box marked on the floor in white tape, pointing out a potential accident, the floor-boards have buckled.

This is the perfect setting for this play.  It recreates a low-end boarding house where a young woman has just killed herself by throwing herself out the window of her apartment.  A young man by the name of Trokolvsky, naturally and comfortably played by Michael Crane takes up residency in the dead girls room.  He is eventually driven mad by his myriad neighbors in the boarding house.

The script has been written by six new and upcoming playwrights, Bekah Brunstetter, Sarah Burgess, Paul Cohen, Dylan Dawson, Steven Levenson, and Tommy Smith.  Each of the writers has taken on separate character lines.

Everyone starts out by being corralled into the basement where there are church pews lining the walls of the room.  There is a back room with a bar where you can purchase a drink.  One corner of the room is cordoned off with a curtain.  Projected on the curtain are subtitles in French and in English.  The messages mix the usual pro-forma curtain speech.  “There is no photography or recording of any kind.” It’s followed by “such apostasy is dangerous and illegal,” giving the message it’s own stinging rebuke.  It continues with “talking is not necessary or appropriate.”  Direct and to the point (you almost wish more theatres would put it like that.)  There are some unique portions of the curtain speech, “please do not start the relationship with the actors.”  After the first scene in the basement, you disperse and follow the cast around and step into their world.  You are free to follow any character you wish.

There is never any kind of interaction between audience members and the cast (until the very end when they point you in the direction you are supposed to move).  It’s as if they are looking through you and you aren’t there.  That doesn’t mean you don’t get close though.  At one point I caught myself between two actors screaming at one-another, one actor actually spraying spittle all over my face.  Now that’s what I call “experiential theatre.”

This theatre experience will differ wildly depending upon which character(s) you choose to follow.  There is the deranged concierge of the building, the insane old woman and her crippled daughter who you can always hear clumping up and down the five flights.  There is the desperate detergent salesman, and other characters whose character line I didn’t follow. Herein lies the problem with The Tenant.

If you look at the script, there are scenes they call “irises.”  During these scenes the audience is brought together to experience the delivery of key elements of the story-line.  Sometimes this is accomplished by causing a stir and drawing attention and other times via video that appears in almost all the rooms (modern television equipment put into old television components).  I don’t feel that this worked particularly well as I felt I had missed important details in the plot line.  I got the impression that the original girl’s death was not a suicide and that there was foul play involved.  I think this because I saw one character pass me with blood on her hands.  But I would have to go back to see it again and follow different characters in the play to learn this.

PLOT SPOILER: The ending involves the audience being drawn into the large sanctuary where the final scene plays out.  The scene shows Trelkovsky throwing himself out the window of the same room, blackout.

The video design by Kate Freer, Josh Higgason, Alex Koch and Dave Tennet is startling in how well it is executed. Certain scenes have a film-noir feel to them.  The music by Duncan Shiek and David van Tieghem is brilliantly put together and enhances the spooky surroundings appropriately.  I was amazed at how both the sound and the music was customized by room and scene, just so intricate.

I would like to see The Tenant again.  Despite the loose threads, I really enjoyed myself and found the entire experience riveting, particularly being that close to actors.  May I make a suggestion though, if you are going to go, go with a few friends.  Do not eat before you go to the theatre.  As you leave the basement after the first scene in the show, you should all split up and each follow a different character or set of characters.  After the show, go have dinner or meet up down in the bar in the parish house basement for cocktails to discuss.  You will be putting together the pieces like a game of Clue.

The Tenant is playing at the West-Park Presbyterian Church on 86th Street and Amsterdam through September 17, 2011. The production is free to the public. As you leave there is a collection being taken for those wishing to make a donation. For more information go tohttp://www.woodshedcollective.com/

Perhaps it’s the smaller off-Broadway house at New World Stages that make the relationships feel so much more intimate than the stage of the Nederlander.  Rodger's relationship with Mimi, played with delightful coyness by the lovely Arianda Fernandez, breaks your heart.  We see the still struggling addict, Mimi, and the recovering addict, Mark, their relationship teetering on the brink.  To make matters worse, Mimi still has a thing for Benny (Ephraim Sykes), Mark’s former roommate whose family now owns the building they are all living in.  The relationship between the cross-dressing Angel and Tom Collins feels so real. The two men playing the roles, MJ Rodriguez as Angel and Nicholas Christopher as Tom Collins, feel so connected that it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the two men are an item off the stage.  Rodriguez is hot as Angel. His "Today 4 U" is a stand-out moment in the show.  Christopher plays Collins with a masculine, yet vulnerable side.  His "I'll Cover You" reprise is heart wrenching.  

Performance artist Maureen, played by Annaleigh Ashford,  is hilarious during her public demonstration, “Over the Moon.”  Her lover, Joanne, played by Corbin Reid finds herself in the uncomfortable situation of having to come face to face with Maureen’s former lover, Mark.  Out of this comes “The Tango Maureen.”

Jonathan Larson based Rent loosely on Puccini's La  bohème (itself being based on Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger.)  Vignettes portraying young bohemians living in the Latin Quarter of Paris in the 1840s have been transported to New York's Alphabet City in the early days of the AIDS crisis.  Also like La  bohème, Rent doesn't focus so much on a unifying plot as it does on the myriad dynamics among the "family" of outsider artists, many with HIV, living in a run-down tenement.  The fact is, the struggles these artists are going through can be seen as symbolic of other parts of the world where people are struggling and sick in large numbers (think Somalia).  Despite some criticism that Rent is dated, I found it genuine and relevant.

The ensemble is vocally strong and blends nicely.  At times, I did feel like they were not with the band.  The band was upstage of them and up one level on the two level set.

Michael Greif’s direction is almost ballet like.  He works the cast in and out of the complex set sleekly and smoothly.  The set design by Mark Wendland is perfect for the space.  It recreates New York fire-escapes with one of the sets of giant stairs being rotated into different positions for different scenes.  The set is beautifully lit by Angela Wendt.  The projections by Peter Nigrini are clever.  This new, smaller set really forces the actors to confront each other in closer proximity than did the Broadway production and that pays off nicely for this production

Whether you are a Rent-head or not, go see this new production.  If you want to discuss this production with other fellow theatre-lovers, visit the Rent discussion group at TheAndyCamp, the first social network for theatre lovers and professionals.

<p> Generet's set consisted of 11 songs.  The first couple of songs I didn't care for much.  I was not familiar with the songs and was not able to ascertain their proper titles.  However, with the third song, Generet hit his stride, a smooth version of the 1970s Van Morison classic, &quot;Moon Dance.&quot;  He had a willing, vocal audience with one woman yelling &quot;oh yes, that's my song,&quot; as the intro to &quot;Moon Dance&quot; began to play.  A middle age couple in front of me decided to take advantage of the romantic atmosphere continuing  to nestle closer and closer to each other.  The showman in Generet took full adavantage, winking and nodding at the couple.</p><p>  Generet's rendering of the Bruno Martino song &quot;Estanté&quot; (using alternate lyrics by Jon Hendricks, subsequently titled &quot;In Summer&quot;) was as effortless an example of sultry as I think you are going to find anywhere.  His &quot;Love for Sale&quot; was intro'd by a walk down Memory Lane, or more accurately, 42nd Street, pre-Disneyfication.  He painted the picture of a world of blue movie houses, hustlers and hookers.  Generet's care-free and cavalier rendition of &quot;Love for Sale&quot; brought forth visions of a pimp with a cold heart and hot flesh to sell.</p><p>I didn't particularly care for  Mr. Generet's delivery of the Burton Lane/Yip Harburg classic, &quot;Old Devil Moon.&quot;  Generet didn't seem to be in the same key as that of his rock-solid four-man combo.  I know this is jazz but this didn't jive.  By the second verse, Generet and the band seemed to be back on the same page, or at least in the same key.</p><p>And speaking of the four-man combo; <b>Christian Sands </b>set the keyboard ablaze with his nimble fingers.  It was fascinating to watch him play, a toothpick protruding from his lips.  <b>Matthew Rybicki</b> was on bass, <b>Dwayne &ldquo;Cook&rdquo; Broadnax</b> on drums and <b>Eddie Allen</b> on trumpet.  These men were pros.  </p><p>Generet is a talent I suspect we will see plenty more of in the future.  The combination of his terrific voice, the ambiance of the Metropolitan Room at Gotham and the room&rsquo;s friendly staff, made this a pleasant evening out.  </p><p> Generet performed August 12-19, 2011 at the Metropolitan Room.</p>

The music used for this new version is by Fred Fisher. In 1913 Fisher wrote the hit song "Peg o' My Heart" and was promptly sued by J. Hartley Manners.  In a settlement forced on them by a judge, Fisher was required to use a photograph of Taylor and the dog from the play, Michael, on the cover of the sheet music when it was published, thus ensuring more publicity for the play.  The original play has been turned into three movies and was revived on Broadway (also starring Lorette Taylor) in 1922.  It was the basis of a musical in London in 1984 from composer David Heneker.  It ran just four months and suffered from confusion with another show bearing a similar title on Broadway, Peg, starring Peggy Lee.

The recent production of the Peg story was a workshop production which producers are hoping to return to the Court Theatre on Broadway in 2012.  The story adopts a vaudeville motif by presenting each scene’s setting on a lit scene card down-left.  The story concerns young Peg O'Connell played confidently (even if overtly broad at times) by the charming Brittany Lee Hamilton.  She is being sent by her father (played by Scott Willis) to visit an ill uncle (her mother’s brother) in England.  Upon arriving in England she is shown to the home of her aunt, Monica Chichester (Jennifer Smith).  The Chichester family (her mother’s sister) is, for all her airs, completely broke.  The family finds out they’re ruined after their bank fails.  In one of the more ironic lines of the evening, Peg’s cousin Aleric (a funny Allen E. Read), has the line “What right have banks to fail?”  Indeed!

Mr. Hawks (David Arthur), a representative of the executor of Uncle Kingsnorth’s estate has arrived with young Peg and instructions that she is supposed to be raised as a lady by his sister Monica, for which she will be paid.  You see, Uncle Kingsnorth had disowned his sister when she married Peg’s dad.  This was his way of compensating Peg for what he inadvertently felt he did to her.  The instructions to the family though prohibited Peg from seeing her father.  It also prohibited the family from divulging this agreement to Peg.  If, after a year, Peg had become a “young lady,” she would then receive five thousand pounds a week for life.  

Along the way, Peg falls in love with Chicester family friend, Jerry.  When she inquires as to who he is, he responds “No one in particular.”  That isn’t exactly the truth, it turns out he is Sir Gerald Adair, the executor of her late Uncle’s will.  Jerry is played with complete charm by Jeremy Benton.

Unfortunately, director/choreographer James Gray has gone a little large with his direction and choreography of this showcase.  The stage of the June Havoc Theatre at the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex is small and some of the choreography felt ambitious for such a small space.

My problem with this production though was really the concept.  The songs are light, frothy and very short.  Sometimes these songs only last thirty-two bars.   The book by Karin Baker is fine but could have been so much more interesting if it had had some sort of twist from the original material.  Perhaps if the time period had been changed to the Great Depression or the 2008 Great Recession, something different, then perhaps it might have a chance at the Cort in 2012. We’ll wait and see.  I’m not certain Broadway’s current audience will go for something that’s almost 100 years old.  It just feels creaky and seems a bit of a chestnut.

McNally’s play fictionalizes a series of master classes that Callas gave at the Juilliard School in the 1970s.  The audience is the class.  On her entrance, the audience applauds.  Callas basks in it before admonishing the “class” with “no applause.”   Master Class is a witty play that captures the cantankerous diva post-career.  She is full of wisdom to impart to these students yet seems to lack the patience for the role of teacher.

Daly’s Callas has been stylishly dressed in a black pantsuit (no, not the kind Hillary wears) by costume designer Martin Pakledinaz.  Her gold jewelry catches the light and bounces it back out into the darkened theatre. Draped over one shoulder, an Hermes scarf, and in her hand an expensive handbag.  She definitely has "a look."  She tells her first student, Sophie DePalma, played with annoying earnestness by Alexandra Silber, that she is lacking a look.  In one of many funny moments in this play,  she singles out several audience members who she also deems look-less and tells them to get a look.

Her third student, Sharon Graham,  played by Sierra Boggess is so unnerved by Callas that she has to leave the stage to throw up.  This is the role Audra McDonald won a Tony for in the original Broadway production. Boggess originated the role of Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid.  After she composes herself, she comes back to take on La Divina with her performance of “Vienti! T’Affretta” from  Verdi’s MacBeth.

The third student, Anthony Candolino, is played with cocksure confidence by Garrett Sorenson. His character flirts shamelessly with Callas to maximum effect.  She hardly gives him any criticism and seems enamored of him. The way that Callas stares at him gives you the feeling that she is reliving a moment from her own past affair with Aristotle Onassis (who ultimately left her for Jackie Kennedy.)  There are many moments in the play where Callas reminisces about past events.  Daly handles these moments with startling clarity even when having to carry on both sides of a conversation with another character during a flashback scene.  She snaps back into the moment each time with what becomes a familiar phrase, "that's another story."

Jeremy Cohen as Callas's accompaniest is an artful piano player and actor. Not even he can avoid Callas's barbs, nor her allure. I should also mention, all three actors, Alexandra Silber, Garrett Sorenson, and Sierra Boggess carry the vocal performances soundly.

Director Stephen Wadsworth has seemingly given Daly free range of the stage. She takes advantage of it and uses the full, mostly unencumbered stage.  During the flashback scenes Thomas Lynch's scenery floats offstage, each time leaving Callas alone on a completely bare stage isolated in David Lander's moody lighting, a back-lit drop suggesting an opera house or MacBeth's castle is hung upstage.  During these flashbacks a recording of the real Callas is played in the background.

Ms. Daly's performance is captivating and commanding, so don't miss it. This is a limited run.  Master Class is being performed at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on Broadway and has recently been extended through September 4, 2011.

Unfortunately Zarkana’s director and creator, François Girard, has attempted to create (in his own words) “an acrobatic rock opera.”  Girard, who directed the films “The Red Violin” and the documentary “Silk,” has coordinated a massive production.  There are a lot of moving parts to this production and he has done an admirable job.  Unfortunately, he also wrote the story which I could completely do without.  Canadian pop star Garou is Zark, a Ring Leader or narrator, who has lost his love, presumably the lead female vocal of Cassiopee.   Unfortunately, his love is not the only thing that gets lost on the behemoth stage of Radio City Music Hall.  There are musical interludes that attempt to add some level of plot line but merely elongate and drag out the show and give it a slow, plodding feel.  They could have cut some of these numbers from the show which didn’t really aid in my understanding (or lack-there-of) of the plot.  

This company of more than 75 are in stunning costumes by Alan Hranitelj.  The scenery by Stéphane Roy is breathtaking and eye-popping.  As with many shows these days, the scenery is part old-fashioned scenic arts (a false proscenium made of snakes, actually carved styrofoam) and part high-tech.   It has an LED backdrop and border that looks like a screen-saver with floating eyeballs, planets, flowers and, of course, more snakes.  

The real stars of this show though, are the talent on stage.  They include jugglers, a nerve-wracking team that balances on ladders, the magnificent Ray Navas Velez and Rudy Navas Velez on the wheel of death, sort of two hamster wheels spinning around while these two men ride the outside and inside of the wheels.  These two also double up on high-wire duty.  These guys could get seriously hurt.  

There is an ingenious act at the top of act two (which picks up significantly) where a petite Erika Chen takes center stage.  A podium of sorts rises up out of the stage as a large screen descends overhead.  There is a camera looking down on the podium, its signal being displayed on the large screen.  The podium is lit from inside.  Chen scatters blue sand across the illuminated surface and proceeds to create scene after wispy scene using just her fingers and the sand, just transfixing.  

Anatoly Zalevskiy does a one-man hand balancing act that displays poise, strength and beauty. A group of four men throw flags that are designed to rise in the air, hang there, and then come back down, spinning as they do.  One sour note from this production, the two clowns.  Most of their routines were humorless with only one routine involving an audience member being truly funny.  

Cirque Du Soleil’s Zarkana runs through October 8, 2011.  Click here to get tickets to Zarkana.

I did not see the original v1.0 and so can't compare the two.  While you were able to follow the plot-line, it wasn't a very interesting one.  Science geek gets tormented at school, has no friends, has a crush on girl, gets bitten by a spider on a field-trip to a lab where experiments are being done on spiders to give them super-spider strength.  He turns into Spider-Man and Norman Osmond, played by Patrick Page, gets all pissy about it because it’s his science which has catapulted the mysterious Spider-Man to front page news.  So Norman decides he’s going to experiment on himself.  This turns him into the Green Goblin.  He then creates “The Sinister Six,”  a gang of “freaks” that set out to destroy everything in their site.  The only thing that can stop them (insert spooky organ music here), is Spider-Man.  

The big payoff in Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark is, of course the aerial sequences.  They are phenomenal.  But don’t go expecting to see Foy’s thin, barely visible wires, these flying sequences are made possible by very sturdy cables (thankfully) and other apparatuses that are hard to hide.  Thankfully the flying sequences weren't the only thing there to distract me from the horrible songs.  This show is a visual treat with a magical pop-up comic book style set by George Tsypin, brought to vibrant life under Donald Holder's brilliant lighting.  Julie Taymor’s mask design and the projection design by Kyle Cooper, are both impressive.  Even the props and Eiko Ishioka's costumes are colored and shaded in comic book style.  

There is one real problem with continuity in the production design.  It appears to be set in the 1940s with zoot suite gangsters and old style typewriters and telephones at the offices of the Daily Bugle.  But then actors on stage have cell phones and there are jokes about the Internet. It's ridiculous.

Reeve Carney is Peter Parker; he sings with a wispy melancholy voice you'd likely find on “American Idol.”  Jennifer Damiano, last seen as Natalie in Next to Normal  is Mary Jane Watson, Parker's love interest.  Both of these kids are talented but they have no chemistry together.  This may be the script, it may be the actors.  

The real scene stealer in the show is Patrick Page as Norman Osborn/Green Goblin.  Mr. Page seems to have a thing for green characters.  You’ll recall he played the Grinch in the Broadway musical Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! several seasons back.  If only Bono and The Edge had given Mr. Page something to really work with here.  The number they’ve given him at the top of the second act, “A Freak Like Me Needs Company” is repetitive and irritating.  But Page certainly has the villainous laugh down pat.  He has a funny bit where he is trying to call the Daily Bugle and gets bungled by a phone tree (something else they didn’t have in the 1940s).  

The choreography by Daniel Ezralow and Chase Brock is reminiscent of back-up dancers at a Madonna concert.  There is one number in the second act where Peter Parker is down center singing and the male chorus is up stage in Spider-Man costumes.  The down-stage section of the stage descends with Parker on it while the chorus of Spider-Men perform a mini-ballet that looks like speed skaters in slow motion.  They then bring the down-stage section that has descended, back up.  Now I figured they would have done some form of transformation with Parker, but no, nothing.  From my vantage point it looked like they just wanted Parker out of the line of site for the speed-skating number.

If you are looking for a well-written Broadway musical, don’t expect to find it at Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, but you certainly can expect to see spectacle.  This show looks like a million bucks, actually make that seventy-one million bucks to be more precise.  

I’d suggest if you are going to see Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, get your seats in the mezzanine.  I actually got a stiff neck from looking up.  The folks in the mezzanine had the best seats in the house.

Read full production credits at IBDB.com.