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.

TOP PICK - Mary Stuart - to August 16

Left to right: Harriet Walker and Janet McTeer; photo by Alastair Muir.
The Donmar Warehouse production of a new translation/adaptation by Peter Oswald of Friedrich Schiller's 1800 classic drama, Mary Stuart is amazing audiences at the Broadhurst Theatre on W. 44th St. The play features two proud, intelligent Tudor Queens: Mary, Queen of Scots (Janet McTeer) and Elizabeth I of England (Harriet Walter). Brilliantly directed by acclaimed British opera, film and theater director, Phyllida Lloyd, this production was a success in July-August 2005 at London's Donmar Warehouse and then transferred to the West End from October, 2005 to January, 2006.
The following description is from the press materials: "For a Queen to stand, a Queen must fall... Mary Stuart is a thrilling account of the relationship between England’s Elizabeth I and her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth’s rival to the throne. With its behind the scenes intrigue, scheming and betrayal, the play has the contemporary feel of a modern-day political thriller. Mary Stuart builds to one of the most electrifying dramatic confrontations in world theatre, in which Schiller imagines a fictive meeting between the two monarchs on the grounds at Fotheringay Castle."
A brilliant directorial touch is the decision to dress all the male courtiers and jailors in conservative gray modern business suits, while the women are dressed in period attire. The effect is to make the male ministers and courtiers resemble a throng of scheming modern bureaucrats, while the two queens are trapped in the machinations of the courtiers and in their prescribed roles.
Some viewers reported that the romantic melodrama and long monologues are '"static, old-fashioned" and not to their taste, but all viewers applaud the drama of the rain scene (12 minutes of downpour when Mary walks in the courtyard, unaware why her jailers have allowed her this scrap of freedom) and the dramatic but fictional confrontation between Mary and her cousin Elizabeth in the courtyard. In addition to McTeer and Walter, both splendid and convincingly monumental, the cast includes: Michael Countryman, John Benjamin Hickey, Michael Rudko, Robert Stanton, Maria Tucci, Chandler Williams, Nicholas Woodeson, Brian Murray.
Get tickets right away, while the early discounts are available, on offer at both www.theatermania.com and www.broadwaybox.com, with prices as low as $45/$40 for tickets ordered before April 19. Tickets have also been offered at TKTS booths and to tdf members.
-- Ellen

NIX - Impressionism

Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons; photo by Joan Marcus.
At the Schoenfeld Theatre, W. 45th Street, where it is not likely to last very long. This is a new play by Michael Jacobs, a TV writer best known as creator of TV series such as The Torkelsons, Charles in Charge, and My Two Dads.. This description is from the press release: "Impressionism is the story of a world traveling photojournalist and a New York gallery owner who discover each other and also that there might be an art to repairing broken lives." Despite a wonderful cast, including Joan Allen, Jeremy Irons, Marsha Mason, Andre DeShields, the play has garnered not a single favorable review.
One correspondent notes: "The play is weak, but, I felt that Impressionism had several genuinely sweet, touching moments among the sentimentality and triviality. And Jeremy Irons was very good in his main role, as a pleasant, shy, disheartened guy and also as the father. He was a bit less convincing as the artist. But, nevertheless, he gave one of the better performances I've seen this year."
Another correspondent adds: "It felt like watching three plays melted into one... and none of the three plays worked well with the others. The two leads, although well played, had no chemistry...It was nice to have Marsha Mason breeze in, even as an uninteresting character. At least the secondary characters in Impressionism had a reason to be there. A forgettable play with unforgettable actors."
Excerpts below are from various mainstream reviews, all negative:

- Ben Brantley in The New York Times writes: "But I’ve concluded that even if I were to back up all the way to the Hudson River, with half-open eyes fixed on the stage where Mr. Irons and Ms. Allen labor so valiantly, Impressionism still wouldn’t look credible. I mean this both in terms of its plot and as a proposition that would entice some very talented people and a vast army of producers."
- Elizabeth Vincentelli in the New York Post writes: "On paper, Impressionism is all class. Onstage, it's a stupefying bore. . . . Allen and Irons put up a stoic front but can't help betraying a certain sense of defeat. . . . But their limp performances also stem from the characters: The actors look as bored by Katharine and Thomas as we are."
- David Rooney in Variety writes: "Distress signals went out when the original opening date was pushed back by 12 days after preview audiences proved unresponsive. The creative team used that time to condense the show from two acts into one, presumably to stanch the intermission exodus. But there's not much here worth saving; the play is a dud, as thin on humor as it is on emotional rewards."
- John Simon for Bloomberg News writes: "Two distinguished actors, Jeremy Irons and Joan Allen, are mired in Michael Jacobs’s Impressionism, at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. The play suffers from three major ailments: pretentiousness, trickery and triviality."

PICK - Tartuffe (Pearl Theatre) - to April 26

Rachel Botchan as Mme. Orgon and Bradford Cover as Tartuffe; photo by Gregory Costanza.
Pearl Theatre Company (at Theatre 80 St. Marks) offers a new production of Moliere's Tartuffe, and it is luscious. This production uses the Richard Wilbur translation, by far the best English verse translation, and the actors, virtually all regulars of the Pearl repertory company, are fluent and well paced in verse delivery even in previews.
The director (Gus Kaikkonen) has opted for broad physical comedy, a lot of pratfalls, and it really seems to captivate the audience; I have seen the play in drier and more "classical" productions in the past, with greater emphasis placed on Tartuffe's religious hypocrisy. Here, however, the emphasis is on ribald comedy, not political or theological satire.
Ordinarily, the Pearl's sets are quite spartan, but on this occasion they have managed lush set design and lighting for the opulent hall of Orgon, the affluent and gullible man who sacrifices his family's well-being out of devotion to the pious swindler and hypocrite Tartuffe. The regulars of the Pearl company are out in force for this gleeful comedy: TJ Edwards, Bradford Cover, Rachel Botchan, Sean McNall, Robin Leslie Brown, Dominic Cuskern, and Carol Schultz.
Embarassment of riches, there is another adaptation of Tartuffe in NYC on stage right now -- at the South Street Seaport. I have not seen it. According to nytheatre.com, it's in modern dress with a modern adaptation/translation. The publicity says "Moliere spun his comedy from the stock characters of Commedia, and Mr. Cohen spins his from the golden era of American comedians and films." I haven't seen it, but would be delighted to hear from anyone who has seen that version.

TOP PICK - Incident at Vichy - to April 11

Scene from Incident at Vichy – Photo By Stephen Kunken
At the Beckett Theatre, W. 42nd Street. Arthur Miller's 1964 play is gripping from the very first minutes clear through to the end, a mere 90 minutes of taut drama.
Arthur Miller's drama is about ten men, strangers to one another, who are brought in for questioning to a detention hall resembling a police station. They fret about why they were brought in, some insisting that this is just a routine check of documents, others sure that they will be sent to a labor camp, and one man has heard a rumor about ovens in Poland where people are killed. The men quarrel about politics, debating about communism and fascism, ethics, and art. Is it possible that Germans who are so reverent about music and theater could ever do acts of senseless brutality?
Above all, they argue about whether to sit tight and hope that it will pass by, or whether to take a chance and try to overpower the sole guard. Miller also shows us the sentiments of a German regular officer, SS officers, and French cooperators. We also see that the Jewish victims of discrimination practice prejudice and discriminate against a gypsy who is caught up in the same sweep. I left amazed with the economy of Miller's writing, to pack so much into a brief 90 minutes of theater.
The drama is enhanced by the direction by Scott Evans. This is an ensemble work with a very large all male cast, and I was impressed by the acting. Also, the set by Scott Bradley is quite effective. The play's short run is scheduled to end on April 11, so I suggest that you see it soon.
My husband had seen the original production in 1964 with his parents and said that he didn't understand it then. At the time, he and his parents took it to be a realistic play about the holocaust. Seen today, further away from the events, we are more inclined to see it as a moral and ethical exploration: how people react to evil events affecting themselves or their fellow man.
-- Ellen

PICK - Joe Turner's Come and Gone - to June 14

Lincoln Center Theater presents a revival of August Wilson's play, Joe Turner's Come and Gone. Set in 1911, Herald Loomis arrives with his young daughter at a Pittsburgh boarding house; we learn that he and his daughter have been on the road for three years, ostensibly in search of Herald's wife but in fact, he is really looking for freedom from the awful memories of his abduction and involuntary service for seven years on a forced labor gang. The boarding house is filled with memorable characters who aid or impede his search for his inner freedom. Cast: Marsha Stephanie Blake, Chad L. Coleman, Michael Cummings, Aunjanue Ellis, Danai Gurira, Andre Holland, Arliss Howard, Ernie Hudson, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Amari Rose Leigh, Roger Robinson. Director is Bartlett Sher.
Our first report came from Sue, an avowed August Wilson fan, who calls it a PICK. She says,

"We went to see Joe Turner's Come and Gone, by August Wilson, whom we really love,and I have to say I thought it was a terrific production. It is a very long play at three hours, but not wordy. I thought it flew by. It got a standing ovation. It is very serious drama and therefore, not for everybody ....but perfect for some theatergoers. It is about the sometimes terrible lives of black people just after Reconstruction...The Belasco is a wonderful old theater and we enjoyed ourselves enormously."

An anonymous commenter says: "I second the rave. The acting was tremendous and the play was riveting. I was somewhat apprehensive as the only Wilson play I saw previously -- Radio Golf -- had left me underwhelmed. This was fantastic, and made me understand why Wilson is such a big name. Plus, seeing Chad Coleman live, after loving him as "Cutty" on the Wire, was a treat!"
I think that those who are already fans of August Wilson's drama will find this a "must see", but some people will find the first act talky and slow. However, the high point of the drama is well worth the wait: a scene in which the residents of the boarding house follow their Sunday dinner with wonderful drumming and dancing in an African-American tradition they call "jouba"; then Herald Loomis enters in a fit to recount a horrific vision or nightmare of "dry bones" who walk upon the sea until they sink and drown; the scene is chilling. The play is threaded through with examples of the lingering wounds in the African American community created by slavery and its aftermath.
-- Ellen

PICK - 33 Variations - to May 24

Left, Zach Grenier as Beethoven; right, Jane Fonda as Katherine Brandt. Photo by Joan Marcus. Eugene O'Neill Theatre, W. 49th Street. In Moises Kaufman's 33 Variations, a contemporary musicologist Katherine (played Jane Fonda) sets out to resolve an old musical mystery. Beethoven was one of many composers commissioned to write a variation on a trivial waltz theme composed by music publisher Anton Diabelli. He chose to write not one but many variations, ultimately 33 in all. Why did he devote so much of the latter part of his life to embellishing such a trivial tune?
Katherine's struggles with degeneration caused by late-stage ALS are parallel to Beethoven's growing deafness while working on the variations; each must overcome the progress of his illness in order to complete an obsessive task. Kaufman takes great composers and their music as a metaphor for life and employs a fugal structure to organize a many-layered play. Critic Martin Denton wrote:

"What [playwright Moises Kaufman]does do in 33 Variations is look at the ineffable nature of art. Where does it come from? How does a Beethoven 'hear' so many different and glorious arrangements of the same four notes, finding such diverse moods and emotions within them? And how does a Katherine sift through so-called evidence (sketches, historical accounts, letters, and so forth) to impose meaning on this music?"

Our correspondent Harriet enjoyed 33 Variations and this is her report:

"The play is a wonderful piece of theater and there are lots of nominations possible. There is a Tony nomination for Best Actress in Jane Fonda's performance. There is a Tony nomination for Best Supporting Actor in Beethoven's performance [Zach Grenier]. There is a Tony nomination for Best Play by Moises Kaufman. And, there might even be a nomination for best set design. If there were a nomination for best classical music piano accompanist, it would go to Diane Walsh for her peformance of the 'Diabelli Variations.' The ensemble put together a wonderful story based on research into musical history, with 'variations' on some of the human emotions and stories of the people involved, both in Beethoven's time and now."

You can listen to the Diabelli Variations as recorded by Diane Walsh on the show's website. There is a tremendous amount of glorious music played in the show, but it is not a musical. The play has its flaws, but nonetheless it is a very interesting evening of theater with fine music and a magnetic performance by Fonda.

PICK - Zooman and the Sign - to April 26

A revival lovingly done at the Signature Theater at Peter Norton Space on far West 42nd St. This description is from the publicist "A random act of violence devastates Reuben Tate's family and scares their once caring community into silence. While young Zooman terrorizes the neighborhood, Reuben makes a dangerous appeal which may tear their world apart. This powerful drama by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Charles Fuller (A Soldier’s Play) depicts the horrifying aftermath of violence on a family and community."
Our frequent contributor Harriet selects this as a PICK and reports:

"Zooman and the Sign, now playing at the Signature Theater is part of the year's productions featuring the Negro Ensemble Company. It is a wonderfully acted revival of the 1980 Charles Fuller play which resonates every bit as much dramatically today, since the same 'incident' occurred in Trenton this past fall. No one sees anything and no one was looking in that direction. The fear is powerful. You would have to wonder what you would do in that very situation... Zooman got me very involved with the personal issues, and how much it reverberated almost 30 years later."

PICK - God of Carnage - Open Run

From left: Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels, and James Gandolfini in a scene from God of Carnage; Photo by Joan Marcus.
The publicity material says: “God of Carnage is a comedy of manners without the manners. The play deals with the aftermath of a playground altercation between two boys and what happens when their parents meet to talk about it. Written by French playwright Yasmina Reza (Art), in a translation by Christopher Hampton that premiered in London last year.” This French/British import is playing at the Jacobs Theatre on W. 45 St. Running time is 90 minutes.
Our frequent contributor Harriet calls it a PICK and reports:

"God of Carnage" lets four seasoned actors work as an ensemble letting it all fly. It has some vibrations of the four adults in 'Virginia Wolfe,' but the 'types' on the stage are not from the 50s. They're from right now and do they act out!
Things start in a very civilized manner and they deteriorate very dramatically. Who's afraid of a guy with a cell phone? Who's afraid of a woman with a degree in art history? Who's afraid of a wealth management consultant? Who's afraid of a guy with a small business? We might all be if they were in our living room.
"I didn't feel drawn into the play, as I did at Zooman and the Sign. Carnage kept me a spectator watching some urban types acting out...and it would probably be more of a must see for people who like to see stars change from the big screen and TV to the theater."

PICK - Happiness - to June 7

Photo at right by Paul Kolnik.
Happiness, at the Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center is a new musical about a disparate group of New Yorkers caught on a subway train under unusual circumstances. Director and choreographer is Susan Stroman, book is by John Weidman, and the team of Scott Frankel and Michael Korie (both of Grey Gardens) is responsible for score and lyrics.
We received an enthusiastic review from our friend Rosemarie:

“Happiness, a musical, currently in previews at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center, opens on March 30. It is staged in a stalled New York City subway car. (It reawakened memories of my own experience in a stalled subway car in the 1960's, when New York City and most of the northeast experienced a massive power outage.) There are about a dozen people on that stuck train who cannot leave it until they remember and reenact the happiest moment of their lives. The rules are set forth by a trainman played by Hunter Foster, 2004 Tony nominee for his role as Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors. He is excellent as he sings, dances and performs his wry comedic lines. Sebastian Arcelus, a lawyer involved with investment banking and driving hard for success, performs my favorite song, 'Just Not Now,' the reply to every interruption to his rush toward success. The vignettes are moving, sometimes funny, as they uncover character and history. One of my companions who knows dance observed that the choreography by Susan Stroman was unexciting. I am not sure it needs to be exciting to work well.
"We saw the show on the first night of previews and the audience reaction was enthusiastic. I believe it deserves to be a hit, and will be one."

TOP PICK - Othello - April 15 -24

John Douglas Thompson as Othello and Juliet Rylance as Desdemona; photo by Gerry Goodstein.
NOTE: Othello will return to the Duke Theatre for a brief reprise on April 15 -24.
A splendid production of Othello by Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) awaits you at the Duke on 42nd Street. This production uses a nearly bare stage to extremely good effect; the emphasis is on the text and the clarity of the direction. When my husband and I saw this in an early preview, we were struck by the coherence of the work which made us feel that all elements were united to increase our comprehension of the drama and its rich layers of emotion. While the entire cast is a strong ensemble, I would especially single out fine performances by Ned Eisenbery as Iago, Juliet Rylance as Desdemona, and Kate Forbes as Emilia. John Douglas Thompson made Othello a most credible amalgam of experience and naivete, valor and passion. There were moments in the first act when his delivery was somewhat stilted, but as the drama progressed his performance grew deeper and more affecting.
Othello is directed by Arin Arbus, a young director whose work I have never before seen, but Arbus' biographical sketch in the program reveals this tantalizing nugget: "In association with Rehabilitation through the Arts, Arbus also leads a theatre company of inmates at Woodbourne Correctional Facility, a medium security prison in upstate New York."
-- Ellen

AWAITING REVIEW - Exit the King - to June 14

Exit the King began previews at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on March 7 and is scheduled to open on March 26. ing June. This is a new production of Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King, in a new translation by Neil Armfield and Geoffrey Rush. It is about a megalomaniacal ruler, King Berenger (Rush) whose incompetence has left his country in near ruin. Despite the efforts of Queen Marguerite (Susan Sarandon) and the other members of the court to convince the King he has only 90 minutes left to live, he refuses to relinquish any control. This is Rush's Broadway debut, and Sarandon's first Broadway appearance since 1972. This translation has been seen in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia with Rush in the lead and Armfield at the helm.
A review of the same production in Melbourne by Alison Croggon:

Like Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco is aging well. As the years roll on, he just looks more and more hip. While contemporaries like John Osborne or Arthur Miller have gained a tinge of sepia, the mark of the "classic" that is an expression of its time and must be seen through a lens of metaphor in order to reflect ours, Ionesco sparkles with contemporary bite: he took a short cut and made a metaphor in the first place. He was never concerned with the social applicability of his work, and directed his intelligence towards very simple things - death and loneliness, mainly - writing about them with a directness and clarity that, paradoxically, gave him a reputation as a fiercely difficult playwright.
In a 1958 review of a revival of The Chairs, Kenneth Tynan accused Ionesco of turning his back on reality. "M. Ionesco certainly offers an 'escape from realism': but an escape into what?" he asked. "A blind alley, perhaps... [his] theatre is pungent and exciting, but it remains a diversion. It is not on the main road." Ionesco's reply, in which he claimed that man as a social animal was inevitably alienated, prompted a storm of voices talking at cross-purposes, that in 2007 looks at once faintly puzzling and depressingly familiar. Ionesco's refusal to hoist himself to a progressive ideology, his horrified rejection of any political or social agenda, could only be regarded by his peers as the most reprehensible nihilism. Yet Ionesco's final reply seems to me to be an immensely moving statement of faith in the possibility of what remains, in the face of all of the confusions and impossibilities of language, communicable between human beings:
'When my lieutenant and my boss are back in their homes, alone in their rooms, they could, for example, just like me, being outside the social order, be afraid of death as I am, have the same dreams and nightmares, and having stripped off their social personality, suddenly find themselves naked, like a body stretched out on the sand, amazed to be there and amazed at their own amazement, amazed at their own awareness as they are confronted with the immense ocean of the infinite, alone in the brilliant, inconceivable and indisputable sunlight of existence. And it is then that my general or my boss can be identified with me. It is in our solitude that we can all be reunited.'
As the brutal history of the 20th century collapsed the categories of right and left ideologies into a maze of contradictory mirrors, it began to look rather as if Ionesco's dark but surprisingly joyous vision might have been more prescient than it was allowed in his time. His sceptical humanity is bracing when the possibility of belief seems to be decaying into a kind of mediaevalism, and when the pressures of modernity have made the self uniquely atomised and lonely. Certainly, Exit the King, which charts the gradual death of a monarch who has reigned past his allotted time, has lines that bite deeply into the political present. But the play is ultimately a lament for human mortality, all the more poignant for its pitiless and anarchic comedy.

MIXED - Guys and Dolls - Open run

Right: Cast of Guys and Dolls; photo by Carol Roseagg.
This revival of Frank Loesser's classic musical Guys and Dolls, directed by Des McAnuff, opened at the Nederlander Theatre on March 1, and critics have not acclaimed director's Des McAnuff's choices in casting or mounting this production. The male leads, Craig Bierko and Oliver Platt, have not garnered any praise, while female leads Lauren Graham and Kate Jennings Grant have generated some favorable reviews. A sentiment typical of the mainstream reviews is this quote from Ben Brantley's critique in the New York Times: "...there ain’t no chemistry in your show: not between the two pairs of leading lovers, or between the singers and their songs, or the actors and their parts. Whatever special substance it is that makes old shows feel new-born and artificial musicals ring truer than life, this 'Guys and Dolls' left it behind in the laboratory. Instead this production, which opened Sunday and also stars Oliver Platt and Lauren Graham, provides a valuable lesson in the importance of chemistry by demonstrating what can happen without it — even to a show as seemingly foolproof as 'Guys and Dolls.'" Some reviewers have noted that the show achieves a greater spark of life in the second act. In the words of Brendan Lemon of the Financial Times, "we go to Guys and Dolls less for purveyors of pristine pitch than for a sense of raffish joy, and by this criterion the production delivers, if more solidly in the second act than in the first."
Craig Bierko plays smooth gambler Sky Masterson; Kate Jennings Grant is the women he unexpectedly falls in love, a Salvation Army missionary; Oliver Platt plays Nathan Detroit and Lauren Graham his fiancee, Miss Adelaide. The score contains such classics as "Fugue for Tinhorns," "A Bushel and a Peck," "Adelaide's Lament," "I'll Know," "Guys and Dolls," "More I Cannot Wish You," "Luck Be A Lady," and "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat," with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows, based on Damon Runyon stories "The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown," "Blood Pressure," and "Pick the Winner."
I have not seen this production, but Julian Suez saw it in previews and came away with a far more favorable impression than the mainstream reviewers: "At TKTS, I bought matinee tickets for Guys & Dolls. It was a wonderful production, still in preview. In fact, the director came out before curtain time to say that this is the first Wednesday matinee in preview. All four leads are great, especially Craig Bierko who did Music Man revival a few years back. The supporting cast was also outstanding. All in all, it was a great show. I will probably be crazy enough to go see it again." Given the generally weak reviews, discounts abound, including on www.theatermania.com.
-- Ellen

PICK - The Garden of Earthly Delights – to May 31

The Minetta Lane Theatre (West Village) is the site of a brilliant revival of Martha Clarke’s unusual 1984 dance/performance work, a fascinating 70 minutes of music, dance and aerial work loosely inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s allegorical and fantastic triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights” (circa 1500).
The musical score, written by Richard Peaslee and played by on-stage musicians dressed as monks on animal horns, jews harp, percussion, and cello, evokes primitive tribal rites. For me, the music played a big role in the overall success.
Dancers in flesh-colored body suits crawl or amble about on all fours, eventually standing upright, walking, running, and enacting a parable of a man and woman, a snake, and an apple. The dancers take to the air on wires as they vault about the stage. In the middle segment, the dancers don peasant-like outfits and evoke paintings by Brueghel the Elder (e.g., The Harvesters, The Kermiss, The Peasant Wedding), and enact brutish games and sports, wrestling matches or assaults, a rape, tossing potatoes, eating potatoes, excreting potatoes.
Finally, the dancers return to their skin-toned body suits and take to the air once more. Flying by Foy receives prominent credit in the program, with credits to Geddy Webb as Flying Director and David Hale as Flying Consultant, and I would like to find out where I can go to try out these flight tricks.
I will have to see the show again to answer the simple question “what does it mean?", but this is an unforgettable 70 minutes of performance art.
Discount tickets have been offered to TDF members.

AWAITING REVIEW

Feb 2 West Side Story
At the Palace Theatre, a musical revival directed by Arthur Laurents (who wrote the original book). Reportedly, the Puerto Rican characters speak Spanish.

Feb 26 Blithe Spirit at the Shubert Theatre
A new Broadway revival of Noel Coward's comedy. A man’s second marriage is threatened by the arrival of his first wife’s ghost, called back at a bungled seance. Angela Lansbury plays the medium, Christine Ebersole plays the first wife, and Rupert Everett (in his Broadway debut) plays the husband.

TOP PICK: Billy Elliott

Playing at the Imperial Theatre on W. 45th Street. The dance musical won an enthusiastic review from Ben Brantley of the New York Times:

"Your inner dancer is calling. Its voice, sweet but tough and insistent, pulses in every molecule of the new Broadway musical Billy Elliot, demanding that you wake up sleeping fantasies of slipping on tap or ballet shoes and soaring across a stage. Few people may have the gift of this show’s title character, a coal miner’s son in northern England who discovers he was born to pirouette. But the seductive, smashingly realized premise of Billy Elliot... is that everybody has the urge. And in exploring that urge among the population of a down-at-heels coal town suffering through the Britishminers’ strike of the mid-1980s, this show both artfully anatomizes and brazenly exploits the most fundamental and enduring appeal of musicals themselves.
It’s been more than three years since Billy Elliot, directed by Stephen Daldry and featuring a score by Elton John, first sent critics and audiences into a mass swoon in London, where it continues to play. The delay in bringing the show to Broadway hinted at fears that it might not sit comfortably on American soil.Adapted by Lee Hall from his screenplay for the affectionately remembered 2000 movie of the same title (also directed by Mr. Daldry), Billy Elliot is told in thick working-class accents and an argot that, even in London, necessitated putting a glossary in the program. What’s more, the show traffics in a particularly British brand of bitter treacle, wallowing in the glory of the bravely defeated and the pathos of small, trapped lives."

This report came from our good friend Steve Fetter:

"I have seen the musical three times in London and have tickets for Thanksgiving week in NYC -- and this from someone who very rarely sees a show a second time. It counterbalances the gritty life of miners in Northern England with a miner's son who has ballet talent but a hard road having it recognized within his blue-collar existence. Music and lyrics are superb, energizing, moving and touching -- count on tears at least a couple of times -- with British politics thrown in. And as one would expect, the dancing is a treat. My hope is that the language (must have been a couple of hundred four-letter words, because I understand that's how miners speak to each other) and the accents stay true in the Atlantic crossing -- I've read in the NYTimes that that is the intent."

TOP PICK - South Pacific

Left: Lincoln Center Theater cast ensemble.
Lincoln Center Theater's new revival of South Pacific, directed by Bart Sher wowed audiences and garnered seven Tony awards with its loving recreation of the great Rogers and Hammerstein classic.
Harriet sent us her review:

"Well, the revival is terrific, a first-class job in every respect. Comparisons are inevitable--Mary Martin, Enzio Pinza, Juanita Hall, Bill Talbot--but this young, gorgeous, extremely talented cast won my heart right from the start in this musical classic, not seen since 1954. The audience, whether they'd seen the original or not, was charmed and enthralled by the performance. The music is gorgeous. The staging is creative. The themes of apple pie and racism are carefully and artfully developed. You'll be cheering in your seat long before the curtain calls and humming all the way home."

I heard several people say as they left the theater: "I didn't realize what a dark play this is." Perhaps that is because the technicolor movie version sugar-coated the dark themes, but also because Bart Sher has brought forward the aspects that earlier stage and screen productions didn't accentuate. Lieutenant Cable (played by Matthew Morrison) is more of a coward and less like a hero in this version, and Nellie Forbush (the wonderful Kelli O'Hara, who previously starred in The Light in the Piazza and The Pajama Game) does not belt the songs as Mary Martin did in the same role. The stage setting is not lush and tropical, but rather it is a claustrophobic naval base on a tiny island, the temporary resting place for people who would have been brought into improbable proximity by the coincidence of a global war.
NOTE: There have been numerous changes of cast; most notably, Paulo Szot left the cast of South Pacific to fulfill opera engagements from December 2, 2008 - Janaury 25, 2009, and will also be away from March 10 - April 12, 2009. During his absences, David Pittsinger plays the role of Emile de Becque. Matthew Morrison has also been replaced. -- Ellen

MIXED - Sessions

At the Algonquin Theatre on E. 24th Street, you can see an engaging little musical that centers around Dr. Peter Peterson, a New York therapist who learns that he is as much in need of therapy as his patients. The play concerns a therapy group that include a comically bickering couple, the Murphys, the lonely young man who for 15 years has obsessively loved a woman from afar, an abused wife, the real estate tycoon who is unhappy despite his wealth, a brash young woman named sunshine, and a singer who believes himself to be Bob Dylan. And then there is Leila, the seductress who is intent on seducing her therapist, Dr. Peterson. Book, music, and lyrics are by Al Tapper. This musical premiered off-off-Broadway in 2007.
Somewhere between a light musical revue and a full-blown musical, Sessions has an engaging cast, and I genuinely enjoyed many of the musical numbers. However, the plot seemed thin and its psychological insights a bit too pat.
-- ELLEN

PICK - August: Osage County

Estelle Parsons as Violet Weston. Photo by Joan Marcus.
I recently returned to August: Osage County at the Music Box Theatre on West 45th St. to see if the play's magic depended upon its original cast of Chicago actors, or if it still crackles now that virtually the entire cast has changed out. I was happy to find that the new cast is an impressive ensemble and the play continues to send out sparks of energy. Estelle Parsons has taken over the role of the tough, pill-popping Violet Weston from Deanna Dunagan, and she puts her own spin on this juicy role. Amy Morton continues in the cast as the eldest daughter Barbara, and I was even more aware of how central her role is to this busy, jam-packed play. The play won numerous Tony awards last year, including best play.
Upon the disappearance of their alcoholic patriarch, an award winning poet who hasn't published any poetry in decades, the Weston clan gathers at their three-story home in rural Oklahoma to respond to the crisis and help mom, a pill addict with an attitude. The three Weston daughters bring in their significant others and all the attendant baggage. The stage set is huge, an open view into a three-story house that effectively allows the audience to view all the interactions among the family members inside the house and on the doorstep. The play is bursting with activity and emotions; it is a dark and corrosive comedy which violates all of the viewer's sentimental hopes for a silver lining and happy ending. August: Osage County satirizes feel-good family dramas in which a family crisis causes all to pull together and eventually find a hopeful resolution.
The best parallel I can give is that AOC is like "Long Day's Journey Into Night" with constantly shocking humor. The play also brings to mind "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" in mood and in its constant shifts and surprises. It is long - 3 hours plus, with two 10-minute intermissions, but the show never dragged, and it held my attention from start to finish. Compared to most recent plays, the cast is very large. The ensemble acting is superb,with no celebrity stunt casting.
Upon viewing the play for a second time, I was struck by two impressions. First, Tracy Letts is the rare modern male playwright who can write credible and interesting female characters. Second, the opening scene, in which we meet the patriarch Beverly Weston (he is missing for the rest of the play and does not appear again) and he hires the young native American woman Johnna to care for his wife and oversee the household, is probably unnecessary and is to blame for the excessive length of the play. Letts could have cut this scene and tucked one or two bits of exposition in other spots to make the play more concise.
Check for ticket discounts at TKTS, www.broadwaybox.com, and www.theatermania.com.
-- ELLEN

PICK - Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind

If you're looking for off-beat entertainment in the East Village on Friday and Saturday nights at 10:30 pm, here's an idea: Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind at the Kraine Theatre on E. 4th Street.
This review was sent in by Mike, who rates it a PICK:

Too Much Light is an eclectic and innovative format combining the thought-provoking intensity of rehearsed, premeditated theater with the energy and unpredictability of in your face improvisation. The goal of the production is to perform in 60 mintues 30 plays written by the show's six performers. The production is particularly entertaining because of the high level of audience participation and the use of chance. Even before the audience has made it's way to seats in the small theater, the excitement has already begun, each having rolled a die to determine the price of his own ticket. Chance and audience participation continue throughout the show, with the audience choosing the order of the plays by shouting numbers at the top of their lungs, and several plays involve volunteers from the audience, making each performance unique while keeping you on the edge of your seat. And yet, what I found truly impressive about Too Much Light is that the cast manages to deliver a range of plays from melancholy to philosophical to whimscal, despite frantically running around the set to manage the time constraint and relying on dollar-store props and gags. Each week, the performance changes as new plays are added and old ones are removed, so you can enjoy this show again and again without ever again seeing the same thing.
With tickets costing a flat $15 in advance or $11-$16 at the door (depending on your luck), Too Much Light is a great value and an entertaining way to kick off a Friday or Saturday night in the Village. You might even find yourself donating a little extra to this non-profit organization on the way out.

A few years back, when this show was resident in a Brooklyn theater after a long run in Chicago, Jeffrey Lewonczyk reviewed it for www.nytheatre.com

How is it that theatre isn't considered... to be as exciting and immediate as sports? A play and a game are both live, physical events performed in front of an audience that, if all goes right, is intimately embroiled in the fortunes of the players. I suppose an exploration of the issues surrounding this disjoint could fill volumes, but no one can deny that it exists, and that it finds theatre at a noticeable disadvantage. What, the frustrated lover of theatrics wails as he beats his breast and rends his garments, is to be done?
Well, the Neo-Futurists have come up with a pretty good example of how the gap can be narrowed. Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, which has been running in Chicago for 16 years, presents a group of actors who attempt to perform 30 original plays in 60 minutes—an athletic endeavor to be sure, and one which viscerally exploits the connection between performer and spectator for maximum ka-pow...
The randomness-loving interactivity of the evening becomes apparent before the audience is even let into the space, when each attendee must roll a six-sided die to dictate how much admission will set them back... Next, audience members are brusquely asked their names and given name tags that in no way resemble their answers (mine said "Avenue"). Then, after being given a program, or "menu," the games begin.

PICK -The 39 Steps

After a long run in London and a limited run at the Roundabout Theatre, this stage farce based on Hitchcock's film of The 39 Steps has transferred to a commercial Broadway run at the Cort Theatre. The film was a classic spy thriller melodrama; this version is a satire and irreverent imitation and send-up not only of the film, but also of the entire Hitchcock body of films. In brief, this is the story of an innocent man who learns too much about a dangerous spy ring and takes off on the run, suspected of murdering the young woman found dead in his flat. Handcuffed to the woman who believed he was the murderer and turned him in, he is pursued across Scotland, before returning to London to foil the villain’s dastardly plans. On stage, four actors play all the roles, using some pretty clever stage tricks and mime to convey all the characters and famous scenes from the movie, such as the chase on a railroad train, the escape on the Forth Bridge, and the grand finale in the London Palladium.
Caveat 1: You may enjoy this more if you have seen the classic 1935 film, although that is not strictly necessary. I suggest that you rent the film and view it again if you have not seen it in the past 20 years. (Film: The 39 Steps)
Caveat 2: If you don't like Monty Python-style humor and never liked the zany satires of movies and plays done by Carol Burnett or Sid Caesar/Imogene Coca, you probably will think that the gag goes on too long.
Sue Goldman reported "39 Steps is really extraordinarily well done," and I agree.
There are discount tickets available at TKTS and to TDF members. Also check such services as www.broadwaybox.com and www.theatermania.com for discount codes.
-- ELLEN

MIXED- In The Heights

Photo: Cast of In The Heights

We saw In The Heights off Broadway and rated it a PICK when it ran at 37Arts until July 15 of 2007. It is now at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on W. 46.
Regarding the off-Broadway production, Stagestrucknyc said:
"This musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda is drawing an enthusiastic young audience, and its fans return with their friends to see it repeatedly. No wonder, because the show has novel and exciting music, high energy dancing, and some really engaging performers. Nearly everyone has expressed exasperation with the corny story line, which is simplistic but sincere, but the music, dance and high spirit of the whole production make up for it."
Tickets available via http://www.intheheightsthemusical.com/

Definitions of Broadway, Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway?

A Broadway theatre is a house of 500 seats or more, used primarily for theatre, and in the district bounded by Sixth Avenue to Eighth Avenue, 41st to 54th Streets. The Vivian Beaumont is outside this district but also qualifies as Broadway. (Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and City Center all have larger houses than Broadway but theatrical shows in those houses aren't considered Broadway.)
Off Broadway: A theatre of 99 to 499 seats is a reasonable guide for Off-Broadway but the strict definition is about whether the shows are mounted by companies working under an Equity contract or not. (But note: There are some Equity companies working in under-99 seat houses, some of which call themselves Off-Broadway and some of which don't.)
The 99 seat cutoff derives from Equity's showcase code which specifies the conditions under which Equity actors may work for a production not governed by a contract. It limits the length of run (20 or 24 performances), the price which can be charged, and the size of theatre which can be used (a maximum of 99 seats although the Fringe Festival has an exemption).
The theatre festivals and most of the Off-Off-Broadway companies of any note in New York are operating under “showcase code”, and there are hundreds of them. Sooner or later a company gets too big for showcase and must move to a transitional Equity contract. Even if they don't move theatres they are entitled to call themselves Off-Broadway at that point ,and they usually seize the chance because their expenses go up and hence their prices must go up as well.
Source: http://www.talkinbroadway.com