Category Archives: Theater

Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries

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All About Goodspeed

Goodspeed Opera House is 50 years old, sitting pretty on the Connecticut River.  The house itself feels a bit saggy, as well as charming.  You can imagine it–the well worn seats, the raised stage like in your high school auditorium, the sound of tappers warming up before the orchestra hit its first note.

I thought, “it’s okay.  I’ll just leave at intermission.”  That is, until the show started.  Each cast member was the perfect physical type for the role and could sing and dance.  Beef, the football player, can jete!  And they make the most of the tiny stage by choreographing up, not out.

No wonder the New York Times ventures out to review its three summer musicals.

The show Good News gave Ginger Rogers her break out role when it premiered in the 1920s.  Later, June Alyson was in a lukewarm movie version, but she’s pretty adorable.  If you are into the video thing, this hilarious 1930 version is much more in the spirit of the show I saw today.  This young, frothy cast has done them all proud.

A Musical Comedy

The songs by DaSilva, Brown, and Henderson, not exactly household names, are a delight, with a bunch of standards set in a perfectly silly book.  There are some good lines though:

“Love is for idiots,” says the astronomy student.

“Yeah, they’re better at it than we are,” laments the astronomy professor.

Each song is a wow, several with improbably good dancing.  “You’re the Cream in My Coffee” is the perfect love song, sung by the football coach and astronomy professor, as is “Button Up Your Overcoat” crooned by the vivacious Tessa Faye in the Rogers’ role, along with the ugly duckling Bobby she energizes as he heads in to play in the big game.

Tessa Faye with the football team singing “I Just Wanna Be Bad”

I totally subscribe to the Good News philosophy: Life is just a bowl of cherries, don’t take it serious!

 

 

 

The Joys of NY Theater

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Far From Heaven–a film with a monstrously overwrought score  has been turned to a sadly beautiful musical at Playwrights  Horizons.

Far From Heaven image 1

In the post-show discussion of today’s very early preview, with the director, artistic director of Playwrights, composer Scott Frankel, and lyricist Michael Kortle, they talked about using the architecture of an existing property, like a film, as a starting point.  Frankel commented that he looks at a contemplative close up in a film as an opportunity to unrepress the character’s feelings in a song.  That really worked in this show, as it did in their Grey Gardens.  They also talked about converting stylized 1950s dialogue into lyrics and period-driven rhythm.  They have something very good here, liberating a really good story from its hideous soundtrack and adding in their smart songs.  It’s almost there.

I brought up how I found the ending too abrupt, that the central character moved faster than I did.  I made the comment with some trepidation, since the discussion had been so laudatory to that point.  They not only responded well, but also took a poll of the audience who agreed and offered several more suggestions.  I feel great that I might have helped the show along, but they were already thinking along the same lines.  By Tuesday, it will be on its way to being fixed.  So go see it, and let me know.

The heck of it is, one of them said they should hire me.  The road not taken…being a dramaturg.  I always thought I’d be good at that, being a natural critic and all.

So then to a more traditional musical good time with On Your Toes at City Center.

In the Encores Series, they put on forgotten musicals in a Mickey-and-Judy let’s-put-on-a-show kind of way.  It all comes together in just twp weeks, then runs for only one week.  Of course, they’re working with Christine Baranski , Kelli Barrett with her huge, sweet voice (a great complement to wondrous Kelli O’Hara this afternoon), a temperamental Russian ballerina played by the hilarious Russian ballerina Irina Dvorovenko from American Ballet Theatre, and old Broadway pros Karen Ziemba, Randy Skinner, and Walter Bobbie.  How can you go wrong?

I wore a smile through the Rodgers and Hart songs with their lush sound and clever lyrics, and the Russian ballet, choreographed by Balanchine of course, was laugh out loud funny.  Even better than the finale “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” was the tap-ballet dance-off–a literal show stopper.

How could they pull this all together in two weeks?  That’s the magic of New York theater.

Over the Wall

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Tina Packer, the Shakespearean director, has pulled together five works and one overview, which I saw,  on the patterns of development of Shakespeare as a man and as a writer, read through his attitudes toward women.  She alternates speaking somewhat extemporaneously on the resulting themes with acting out scenes with Nigel Gore.  The result is Women of Will.

 

By clumping plays into themes, I had some interesting insights.  For example, they did the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet immediately after the history plays of Henry VI.  Those Henry and Richard III plays deal with the War of the Roses, fought between the houses of York and Lancaster.  That civil war only ended once a woman, Elizabeth, married her daughter and the opposing house’s son, giving rise to the Tudor Rose.  Packer points out that Shakespeare was writing for that couple’s granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth.

Then Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet and their competing houses, well I couldn’t help connect them to the Yorks and Lancasters.  The English teacher next to me didn’t see it that way, remarking that the split in the play had historical roots.  I know, but the analogy to English history seems like a possibility, too–the play with the deeply tragic ending, resulting from senseless prejudice, acts as confirmation of the majestic right of the current queen–Elizabeth as the glorious expression of ending that civil war violence.

Packer also intersperses dialogue between plays to draw out a point, most interestingly with poor Desdemona from Othello and sparkly Rosamund from As You Like It.  Huh?, you’re thinking.  I know!  But Packer’s idea is that Shakespeare advances to the point where he uses women to tell the truth in this stage of plays.  But those dressed in a skirt either died or went mad, or both.  Those who disguised themselves in pants and lived as a man, well they could go on to self-discovery and happiness.  A good reason to wear trousers, yes?

I left with a really interesting idea about walls.  Women were walled off in private gardens in the medieval and early Renaissance period, ostensibly for safety, but also to keep them in their place.  Monks and nuns crossed over walls into inner sanctums for a life of devotion.  The families of girls paid steep dowries for their daughters to marry Christ.  All this I know from my study of art.

But Romeo leaps a wall to reach Juliet’s balcony.  Packer says that leap over the wall equates to the leap to the monastery, a leap to enlightenment.  Juliet is the east (the mystery), the sun (alchemy), in other words, the mysterious source of Romeo’s transformation toward knowledge.  Packer calls this the sexual merging with the spiritual, as evidenced in the text of the scene.  Beautiful.

Now I’m thinking about walls.  How to leap over walls?  And which walls to leap over for enlightenment?  Hmmm.

A trip worth taking

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Having seen “The Trip to Bountiful” many times, each with the same wrenching emotional effect, I wasn’t sure my heart could stand another visit just now.  But after reading the article for my Arts & Leisure broadcast for the blind on Cicely Tyson this morning, I decided to go today.

The play tears me up because for many years I made first monthly, then weekly, trips to my own version of Bountiful, Texas–to visit my parents in their rapidly deteriorating house, filled with their rapidly aging lives.  Horton Foote writes his elderly mother character with great tenderness and understanding.  Her need to see her collapsing old house in Bountiful helps her deal with how empty and meaningless her life has become.  Admittedly, seeing my parents in their home did not help me deal with the empty meaninglessness of their lives, or my own.  But the yearning Mrs. Watts feels in the play makes sense inside my bones.

So, I’m glad I went back there again today.

While no words of the play were changed, the cast and the incredible sets were changed with an added layer of meaning.  All the cast, except for the white sheriff, are African American, with Cicely Tyson heading up the all-stars onstage.  But they really fad, those tv and movie stars, next to her theater essence.

A real highlight was when some of the audience starting singing and clapping with her as she sang a spiritual.  Not a common occurrence on Broadway.The New York Times reports that Tyson, 88 years old, traveled to Harrison, TX, where Foote was from, to put her hands in the dirt and find her character.  Find her, she did.

The play, in case you haven’t seen it, is very quiet, poignant, and old-fashioned.  The other TDF’ers (deeply discounted tickets for non-profit types) around me wondered whether the slow first act would have a payoff.  I just smiled and counseled patience.  Afterwards, they all agreed, the second act made it all come together.

I cried some tears, my Horton-Foote-gets-me tears, the my-mother-was-like-that tears.  And I braved the journey.  Let me know if you do, too.

Testament

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I hope I can find the words to describe “The Testament of Mary,” with Fiona Shaw.  She has no trouble with words, in a flawless, pointed, energized, painful one-woman play by Colm Toibin.  I read the book when it came out a few months ago, and the book seems to be a transcript of the play.  While I enjoyed it, the play and Shaw’s performance has left me dizzy with awe, exhaustion, and reverence.

The subject is irreverent–positioning Mary as a truth teller about what really happened during Jesus’ last days and the rewriting of religious history.  The play may have one of the best last lines in all of theater history.

The experience of the play started the moment I arrived, about 15 minutes early.  Shaw was walking out on stage, and people were milling about on stage.  “Are those audience members?” I asked the usher by the stage.  I was invited to join them and did.

By then, Shaw was seated, wrapped in a blue blanket like a shawl over her head and most of her body, over a corral dress.  She was holding an apple in one hand and three lilies in the other.  Her gaze was heavenward, and her lips moved, as if in prayer.

As gorgeous as any Raphael Mary, still as any sumptuous still life, Shaw was pedestaled for display.  She sat in a glass box, covered with a gauzy, black scrim.  The audience meandered around her and around the stage, most stopping in front of the vulture chained to a three legged, wooden table.  The huge black bird with its bare blue head and pinkish purple beak occasionally would extend its wings to full span, revealing the white under-feathers.  Twice, it freaked out, and a handler calmed it.

The stage was strewn with detritus, both vaguely historical and vaguely modern.  Handwritten notes, a dirty coffee cup, and an old tape recorder were on one folding, metal chair, next to hip high earthenware jugs.  A ladder, some wire, a birdcage, some herbs in a basket with gloves, a tub, all were scattered around the stage, a messy counterpoint to the perfect beauty of Mary as presented to us through the ages.

In the back, a tree with a wheel horizontally affixed to the top added creepiness to the staged world that didn’t quite cohere.  Nearby, the stage floor had a glass window.  Looking way down, like into an archeological dig, were more earthenware jugs, some broken, and a bare mattress.  The audience couldn’t see this hidden room, unless they came on stage.

Synthesizer music played all the while.  Then as Shaw stood up, the black sheer curtains fell around her, and the glass box lifted to the rafters.  She removed the blue and coral garments to reveal a plain gray tunic over taupe pants and brown boots.  She revealed the Mary the audience would encounter.

She put on the glove, took the vulture onto it, unchained and took it offstage.  The stage went dark.  The synthesizer music softened.  Running water was heard.  The play began.

Perfect night

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It’s a New York moment.  The artistic perfect storm.

On one stage, at the same time, the New York Philharmonic, Broadway, Metropolitan Opera, and New York City Ballet.  Add Glorious music.  Carousel.

I’ve never been the hugest fan of Carousel.  I can’t imagine ever being able to get past the climactic moment that justifies physical abuse: “Yes, you can be hit, hit hard, and not feel a thing.”

But tonight, until that moment, I gave in.  I think the operatic format of the Encore Series helped, too.  The whole had more gravitas.

From the first note of the overture, I knew something great was happening.  The sound in Avery Fisher, along with the enormous orchestra of the Philharmonic, made the sound lush and swelling at once.  I felt like I was inside the music, riding on a soft bed of wonder.  Glorious, glorious music.

And the voices weren’t too bad either.  After seeing Kelli O’Hara in Nice Work if You Can Get It, deliNathan Gunn and Kelli O'Haraghtful to be sure, hearing her sing Julie Jordan, I didn’t know she had that kind of voice in her.  Every time she opened her mouth, tears rand down my cheeks.  Nathan Gunn is a huge baritone, spoken and singing, and his Billy, well it’s a match for her Julie.

Stephanie Blythe will never be accused of acting, but hearing her sing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” with the walls trembling is noble.

Jessie Mueller, coming off her hilarious turn in Drood, takes on the very different role of Carrie, and her Mr. Snow, Jason Danieley was a revelation.  His sweetest, most powerful tenor sliced through the sad wash of the show.  And who knew Shuler Hensley (The Whale!) could sing like that?

Although I really shouldn’t be surprised.  From what I can tell, even the divine Tiler Peck, from the New York City Ballet, can sing, and her second act ballet?  She’s a gorgeous being.  Only John Cullum appears to have no voice, but he was so perfect in the role of Dr. Seldon.  Kate Burton took the throwaway role of Mrs. Mulin, maybe just to be in the company of this company!

 

Too bad there isn’t a cast recording, although who knows?  It might show up on youtube.

Tender

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Not By Bread Alone

Not by Bread Alone.  What an experience.  Imagine acting, when you’ve never seen acting before.  That’s what kept going through my mind, as I marveled at the deaf-blind actors of the Israeli theater troop Nalanga’at.  A combination of a performance piece, vaudeville, silent film, pantomime, and of course, a Jewish wedding (complete with confetti and glitter), the experience was not quite like anything I’ve seen or heard before (all puns intended).

The courage and trust of each actor, interacting with each other (and a guide) in ways that revealed their personalities: the Romantic, the Clown, the Shy One.  They shared their dreams, so ordinary, so tender–to have a really great haircut, to eat popcorn at the movies, to get married.  Each said or signed what bread means to her or him.  One courted her beloved by playing a song from a long ago Russian memory, while he laid his head on the electric keyboard to feel the rhythm.

What brought tears to my eyes, that never quite left during the performance, was toward the beginning.  Each actor was kneading dough, then breaking and rolling the dough into balls for rolls that would bake in the ovens onstage.  But not until 10% had been given to someone less fortunate or more in need–someone hungry, an abused child, a pregnant woman, the birds.  Of course any of us in the audience would have assumed the actors themselves would have been the people in need.

But waste no pity on these people.  They express themselves.  They have a voice.  They create a vision.  My heart was captured by these sometimes awkward, sometimes childlike, sometimes full-of-grace actors who put their hearts out to touch mine.

At the end, I was one of the first to go on stage to talk with the actors, through their interpreters, while holding a hand.  Then I broke bread, hot from the oven, with another audience member, before dipping in olive oil and savoring.  The entire audience lined up to do the same.  I imagine them still working their way through the crowd, so many wanted a touch and a taste.

Even exiting had a sweetness.  Two young men, deaf and signing, with true joy thanked me for coming, asked about the bread, and wiggled their fingers above their heads when I said it was delicious.

An experience like this reminds me to be at my most open, my most kind, my most grateful for the simplest, most tender moments.  To hold a hand.  To say thank you.

Chicken bones

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Today, I went to a very entertaining talk on Regency era theater by Lorella Brocklesby, a professor at NYU.

In her very proper British accent, Lorella told us how actors accommodated for poor lighting by acting down toward the front of the stage by the audience, hence downstage.  The wealthiest notables got to sit on stage.  Anyone else was lucky to sit on a rough-hewn bench, and otherwise stood.

The producers put on two or three shows for one ticket price.  So Othello might be first bill, along with a comedy and a light musical.  Jane Austen, who at one  point lived very close to the Drury Lane theater, remarked on taking a carriage (apparently no one walked) and enjoying a 4 1/2 hour evening.  Now we complain if the show has an intermission and lasts longer than 90 minutes.

Still they would think nothing of editing Shakespeare down or having a 15 year old wunderkind play Hamlet.  I wonder if his voice squeaked when he said, “to be or not to be.”  As late as the Victorian era, the Queen was known to grouse about the unhappy endings in Shakespeare’s plays.  In the Regency era, the motto was to leave ’em happy.  Hence ending the performances with musical comedies–certainly my favorite mood elevator.

Lorella commented how polite we all were, attentively and quietly listening to her.  Regency era audiences would catcall, and if they didn’t like a performer or performance, they would throw chicken bones.  I’ve certainly wanted to throw a bone or two at some honkers I’ve seen.  Could a revival of customs be in store?

The Sublime Kate

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If you are a Katharine Hepburn fan like I am, then get thee to NYPL’s Performing Arts Library exhibit in the Lincoln Center complex.   Love the Playbills, over-the-top movie posters, photos (my favorite was Hepburn in trousers standing on her hands), and other ephemera, but it’s the objects that bring Kate to life.

Seeing Hepburn’s makeup kit led into a conversation with a diminutive woman, stabilizing on her walker.  “She kept everything, you know,” the woman told me.  “A lock of her baby hair, her first school books.  She was an eccentric.”  While the woman didn’t know Kate personally, she saw her on the streets of the Upper East Side and went to the auction held after Hepburn passed away.  I think many New Yorkers feel ownership about Kate, even though she seemed to identify with charming Old Saybrook, CT.

You know how much I love hats, and to see the tiny, tiny hat she wore for Alice Adams, well, it didn’t look small on her.  That powerhouse on screen was teensy.  Of course, she always looked slim on celloid, but really.  The size of the pants and dresses make me feel hugely dinosauric.  Even in the late 1940s, when she was in her 40s, she had a waist size of 20 inches, and the gowns look even smaller than that.

Check out the Madwoman of Chaillot boa, and more, in the slideshow below.

 

 

[Show picture list]

 

 

Polishing a Creaky Chestnut

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I wasn’t too excited about seeing The Mystery of Edwin Drood today.  But Roundabout did what Roundabout does.  They take a classic, in this case the creaky, unfinished Dickens tale, and they wallop the audience with a great good time.

This is the music hall done right, not like the woeful, obnoxious One Man, Two Guv’nors.  Once I was willing to let go of knowing this chestnut just too well, I laughed and had so much fun with the ensemble musical.

I didn’t even realize until the intermission that Chita Rivera is in it.  During the second act, I focused on her and will say, I finally recognized her cheek bones.  She shares the stage very willingly with the always wonderful Stephanie Block and Will Chase, who was a small bright spot on Smash as the actor who nearly breaks up the Debra Messing character’s marriage.  He is wonderful here, playing against type.

While I’m the last one to tell you to run out and buy a ticket for this show, if you are a Roundabout subscriber like me, you don’t have to sigh at the thought of spending this time in the theater with them.  Even the luscious Studio 54 theater is complemented by their production, and their sets, especially the railway station (reminiscent of the famous Monet painting), are nicely done.

Claude Monet, St Lazarre Train Station, 1877

Go prepared to participate and have fun!

Whale and whale of a good time

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This afternoon, I saw the Whale at Playwrights New Horizons.  It continues to be the best theater in town for my taste.  I’d say don’t wait around, run go see this play.

 

The play is a slow build, carefully constructing a tight, small world, that begins to resonate wider and wider.  By the end, I was moved to tears.  You know I see a lot of theater.  I can’t remember the last time I cried at a show.  When it was over, the audience sat in complete, absolute, almost terrified silence.  Again rare for me, I wanted to see it all over again from the beginning.

Now, this isn’t an easy play, nor an uplifting one.  It’s got references to the whale and Jonah and the whale and Ahab.  It has characters that may make you uncomfortable.  It is defined by acts of love, well, Acts of Love, that are neither expected, nor simply understood.

If you are up for a challenge, I think you’ll be glad you saw it, and I want to talk with you about it afterwards.

The Met Museum once again comes through with a whale of a good time.  This time with its “Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop” exhibit.

Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop

Now the smaller exhibit of photos manipulated by Photoshop is also interesting, but go see the warhorses by Gustave LeGray, Henry Peach Robinson, and Edward Steichen.  In person, you can really see the manipulation, which is missing from a PowerPoint slide.  I finally get why Fading Away was so challenging.

Henry Peach Robinson, Fading Away, 1858

Of course, there are the Surrealist and Postmodernist greatest hits, too.  Weegee gets his day in the Met sun (nice to see him other places besides the International Center for Photography). 

I was “turned on” by Grete Stern’s Dream #1: Electrical Appliances for the Home from 1948.  The whole dream series was new to me.

 

 

 

 

I do have a personal connection with the “Novelties and Amusements” theme of the show.  I was visited by a spirit when I had my photograph made in Gettysburg, PA.  Of course, it was no novelty, no mere amusement.  Well, she was my Muse for writing a paper, so I guess, in a way, it was a-muse-ment.

Black Box blues, or is it black and blue?

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Okay, my return to theater after more than a week away was a powerful one, thank goodness.  I was losing my faith from a string of losers (to browse the list of what I’ve seen check out the Theater Log).

Bad Jews at Roundabout’s Black Box will probably take on more resonance with the passage of time.  While watching, I was riveted and also aware that my own point of view was clear.  Even at the end, when the playwright challenges the audience with some revelations that might shake that certainty, I was still comfortable inside myself.  I know which argument I favor, even if I might change a core plot action as a result of the revelations.  So I was not changed by seeing the play.

However, this is good theater.  Strong content, doing what a good play is supposed to do–make you think, make you reflect on the characters and how they develop, challenge you.

These are flawed characters, all.  Each is deluded and endures some painful truth-telling.  The one character who tries “to stay out of it” ends up at the center, being forced to have an opinion.  I would say that the end of the play means change for the 3 principals, and maybe even the 4th character.  The moments of awareness at the very end are subtle (which the rest of the play is not) and clearly left for post-play discussion.

This is one to see with a friend and plan to discuss.  Will it transcend its heavily Jewish content?  Will it transcend its mini-lecturette formatting, albeit delivered at hyper speed?  I’m interested in your thoughts.  For sure, you will see 4 young actors working their hearts out. You’ll see a play that will push you, make you work along with the characters, and maybe make you laugh, often in a kind of cringing way.

Click on this link to learn more about the production and watch a video that, warning, gives a bit away.  As you know, I like to go in knowing nothing.  So if that’s you, viewer beware.

Roundabout Black Box production of Bad Jews