MIXED - West Side Story – Open Run

Left: Cast of West Side Story (the Jets). Palace Theatre on W47th Street.
Every reader of this blog is already aware that West Side Story transports Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to the nasty gang warfare of 1950's New York City, long before the gentrification of the Upper West Side. The romance of the two star-crossed lovers, Tony and Maria, is blighted by conflict between the rival street gangs of different ethnic backgrounds, the white 'Jets' and Hispanic 'Sharks.' This revival coincides with what would have been the 90th birthday of composer Leonard Bernstein who died in 1990, and has been directed by Arthur Laurents, the original book writer who himself is 90, born six weeks before Bernstein. Stephen Sondheim wrote lyrics, but in this production, some lyrics are song in Spanish; the original choreography was by Jerome Robbins, who also directed the original Broadway production.
Our good friend Steve saw WSS on a recent visit to NYC and recommended rating this musical revival a PICK, and particularly enjoyed the performance of Josefina Scaglione as Maria:

The story and music is so familiar that, for theater-goers of a certain age, the Puerto Rican gang and ladies speaking and singing in Spanish is no impediment to following the Romeo and Juliet saga. I'm not sure the same holds for the scores of high schoolers seeing the musical for the first time -- even Spanish classes attending might not pick up on "I Feel Pretty" and "A Boy Like That" without consulting the "Cliff Notes" lyrics in the Playbill. I agree with the NYTimes that none of the gang members on either side seem particularly menacing -- but, never mind, what made me glad I saw this rendition is Josefina Scaglione. Imagine an unknown 21-year-old performing in low-key productions in Argentina -- the producers here look at her YouTube clips and cast her as Maria. To listen to her operatic singing is breathtaking to behold --one feels she will shine on Broadway, in London, in films, wherever she desires as long as she wishes to. A star is born.

However, other critics and audience members have generally found this revival of WSS unsatisfying. The performance of Matt Cavanaugh as Tony has come in for harsh criticism; he plays Tony as a mild preppy misplaced among the fierce Jets. Nearly every viewer who has previously seen the show or movie or heard the score comes to WSS with high expectations, and therefore can find fault with some aspect of this production. Our reader Pat from DC wrote in that she had viewed this production at National Theatre in D.C. prior to its New York opening: "The integration of Spanish into the dialogue was artful. However, that aside I have nothing complimentary to say. It had none of the incredible energy of the original; nor the excitement of the movie. Overall I was disappointed."
The following excerpt from Martin Denton's review for nytheatre.com is typical of the critical reaction:

The eagerly anticipated Broadway revival of West Side Story is a major disappointment. This is probably an inevitability. Of all the classic musicals of Broadway's so-called Golden Age, none has been more famously or popularly or faithfully put on film than West Side Story: everything that's iconic about this show is so not because of word-of-mouth or a great cast album but because we've all seen it, as its creators presumably intended it, enshrined and preserved on celluloid (and now digital video) for all time. So we know what Jerome Robbins's extraordinary choreography looks like and how it feels to experience it. We know that amazing Bernstein score. We know all of the beats of the story.
It all begs the question of why even bother trying to make lightning strike once again. Librettist Arthur Laurents has decided to take on the project nonetheless, directing the play himself and abetted by Joey McKneely (reproducing Robbins's original choreography), music director Patrick Vaccariello, and more than a dozen above-the-title producers. They've filled the stage with a big cast and seem to have consciously made the show look and feel as different from the original as they dare. The score is intact, and generally sounds marvelous—far and away, the best element of this production is the big Broadway orchestra playing this music for us. The dancing is intact too, as Robbins ordained, but it is utterly devoid of life or energy, sitting uneasily on performers for whom it was not created.

TOP PICK - Hamlet - to April 12

You should hurry over to the Duke Theatre on 42nd to see a fine production of Hamlet mounted by Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA), directed with great insight by David Esbjornson. The production is performed in modern dress on a practically bare stage, and the effect is stunning. TFANA is hitting home runs this season; their production of Othello (scheduled to return to the stage of the Duke for a limited number of performances when Hamlet closes) is also a TOP PICK.
First and foremost, actor Christian Camargo as Hamlet gives the best performance that I have ever seen in this difficult role. The rest of the cast is also fine, but I especially enjoyed the performances of Alvin Epstein as Polonius, a man who is not a comical wind-bag as he is often played, though he may talk on and on, as some of us do. He is fallible, but deserves the love of his son and daughter and the respect of Hamlet. Jennifer Ikeda is a shining Ophelia whose stage presence is tremendous. The choreography of Hamlet's duel with Laertes is frightening -- possibly the first time that I have seen a stage duel in which I felt that the actors were truly in mortal danger.
This production is so vivid that I wish I could save it on film.
-- Ellen

MIXED – Irena’s Vow – Open Run

Left: Tovah Feldshuh as Irena Gut Opdyke in Irena's Vow
At the Walter Kerr Theatre, W. 48th Street . This new play features Tovah Feldshuh as Irena Gut Opdyke along with a supporting cast of nine. Irena was a real-life heroine, a young Polish Catholic who saved the lives of Jews whom she hid away in the basement of the house of a German officer. By all accounts, her true story is inspiring and amazing; unfortunately, the play (by Dan Gordon) suffers from a heroic portrayal of Irena and a cardboard-cutout approach to all the rest of the characters.
Lorette, an outspoken Israeli woman, reported: "The play is so bad that I felt uncomfortable. But the real story of Irena is more interesting than the play itself. What made it interesting for me was that Irena Gut Opdyke's daughter spoke about her mother after the play. The play doesn't go into what happened to the German officer after the war; when he returned to Germany after the war, Rugemer was rejected in his own community, and was taken in and lived until his death with one of the Jewish families who had sheltered in his basement. Their son thought the old man was his zayde (grandfather). But this is not in the play."
Rosemarie was more favorably disposed to the play:

"I liked it very much. It has weaknesses as a play because only Irena's character is filled out. The other roles basically serve to illuminate her action. Nevertheless,her story, which is true, shows how a 20 year-old girl saves 12 people's lives, at the risk of her own, and the obstacles she overcomes in doing so, and the price she pays for doing it."

Martin Denton reviewed the play for nytheatre.com:

“Tovah Feldshuh, as committed and oversized a theatrical presence as ever in the role of Irena, is probably at her best in the portions of the show that embrace the solo performance ethos: she bonds with the audience with great warmth as she narrates her tale to us (the play's framing concept is that Irena is lecturing at a high school in 1988, with the audience her students). And in a few scenes where she portrays both Irena and other characters (a house full of storm troopers, for example), the drama is urgent and palpable. Half a dozen underwritten characters, plus some smaller cameos, are assigned here to nine actors, only two of whom really have an opportunity to make much of an impression. (Both do good work within the limitations of the script—Thomas Ryan as Rugemer and Steven Hauck as Herr Schultz, another of Rugemer's servants who befriends Irena.) The dozen Jews who are hidden by Irena are represented by actors who play three of them, an odd economy; Gordon seems to go out of his way to present them as needy rather than noble."

For more about Irena's true story, she is covered at this link, the website of the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

TOP PICK - Ruined - to May 3

New York premier at the Manhattan Theatre Club (at City Center, W. 55 Street), written by the talented playwright Lynn Nottage and directed by Kate Whoriskey.
Ben Brantley published this favorable review on Feb. 11 in the NY Times:

Patrons are asked to leave their bullets at the bar in the Congolese brothel that is the setting for “Ruined,” the strong and absorbing new play by Lynn Nottage at the Manhattan Theater Club. Mama Nadi (Saidah Arrika Ekulona) runs a cozy little whorehouse — one of the cleanest and safest places in the area — and she’s determined to keep it that way. That means no bullets, no brawling, no unwashed hands and no talk of the civil war being waged in the rain forest outside.
But no matter how vigilant Mama is, evidence of a cruel and bloody conflict keeps trickling in, like isolated raindrops from a storm. It’s not so much the sound of gunfire. Mama and her customers are used to that. It’s what is in the eyes and postures of the women who work for her. Like Sophie (the exquisite Condola Rashad), Mama’s 18-year-old bookkeeper and bar singer, who walks with the stiff, wide-legged gait of someone who feels pain with every step she takes.
The play in which Mama Nadi appears is not unlike the house over which she presides. “Ruined,” which opened Tuesday night in a vivid production directed by Kate Whoriskey, is a comfortable, old-fashioned drama about an uncomfortable of-the-moment subject. But whereas Mama, a latter-day variation on Brecht’s Mother Courage (the Brecht play partly inspired “Ruined”), uses hominess and familiarity to shut out the terrors of war in Congo, “Ruined” craftily creates the same atmosphere to bring those same terrors to our attention.

Ms. Nottage, the wide-ranging and increasingly confident author of “Intimate Apparel” and “Fabulation or, the Re-Education of Undine,” hooks her audience with promises of a conventionally structured, purposefully plotted play, stocked with sympathetic characters and informative topical detail. She delivers on those promises.
Yet a raw and genuine agony pulses within and finally bursts through this sturdy framework, giving “Ruined” an impact that lingers beyond its well-shaped, sentimental ending. The play isn’t a form-shattering, soul-jolting shocker like Sarah Kane’s “Blasted,” another and more innovative study in wartime atrocities (which had its New York premiere at the Soho Rep last year), or an intellectual epic like “Mother Courage and Her Children.”

Our friends Stephanie and Victor provide an enthusiastic endorsement and encourage us all to see Ruined.