I have just about completed my trip to New York, which would be classified as a short trip, with two and a half days in the city and four Broadway shows. It was also a solo trip as Nico is Montreal visiting JEB (Jaxon Elijah Bethel) and his parents.
On this trip I was somehow reminded of the review scale of the San Francisco Chronicle where one of five possible photographs would be shown to indicate how enthusiastic that paper’s critic was about the show that he had seen or how disappointed he was of that night’s offering.
Here are the five possible ratings:
The highest would be a man (the critic) suspended in mid air hovering over a chair out of which he had just jumped and he would be clapping energetically. That rating would indicate that the show was brilliant and had no flaws. On another rating scale it would be considered a 4 out of 4 or a 100%.
The second rating was the critic sitting in a chair clapping. This indicated that this was a very good show, a must see but possibly maybe just not as spectacular as the previous one. On another scale it would be a 3 out of 4 or a 75%.
The third rating would find the critic sitting alert in his chair, holding his hat. (I think you get where this is all going.) He is sort of interested in what is going on and at least they have his attention. Other scale ratings would be a 2 out of 4 or a 50%.
In the fourth rating we have come across the critic dozing in his chair. A 1 out of 4 or a 25%.
The fifth and final rating finds an empty chair. A 0 out of 4 or a 0%.
I experienced no empty chairs on this trip and only once did I come close to almost jumping out of my chair and clapping energetically. I said almost.
Curtains
My first offering was on Thursday evening and that was the musical Curtains. This show is by the same team that bought us Chicago, Cabaret and many others, the great John Kander and Fred Ebb (who passed away on 2004). This musical was long-in-development and is called a ‘musical comedy murder mystery’.
According to the press notes, “The musical, which is set in 1959 during the tryout of a Broadway-bound musical, whose cast and crew all become suspects after the show’s leading lady mysteriously drops dead onstage while taking her final bow to the sound of applause. The detective “is a fervent musical theatre fan, (who) allows the company to continue rehearsing while he conducts his murder investigation. He soon finds himself in the middle of the uproarious bedlam of theatrical egos and eccentricities, more murders and even a budding love affair.”
This show my no means disappoints, the mystery is clever and most of the songs are quite singable with “The Woman is Dead” reminding me a little bit of “Class” (from Chicago) not in tone but in style. The performances were all pretty solid but I must say that I’ve now had enough of Edward Hibbert’s shtick. It’s just the same thing over and over again. It was new when he played ‘Gil Chesterton’ in Frasier, and acceptable when he appeared in The Drowsy Chaperone but coming on heals of that show to see him once again go over the top, and in a much bigger way in this performance, I was pretty much over it.
Debra Monk and Keren Ziemba were both solid in their respective roles of ‘Carmen Bernstein’ and ‘Georgia Hendricks’ as was Jill Paice as ‘Niki Harris’ and Megan Sikora as ‘Bambi Bernét’. The performance that really stood out for me was that of Jason Danieley who played ‘Aaron Fox’ half of the musical within the musical’s writing team. He had a brilliant singing voice and not bad acting to boot.
There has been a lot of talk on a Broadway discussion board that I frequent that Raul Esparza who played the lead role of ‘Bobby’ in the recent revival of Company was robbed of the Tony Award for best actor in a musical by David Hyde Pierce for his Tony winning performance is Curtains. Being a big fan of Company, and of Mr. Esparza’s performance, I was curious to see if I would also come to that conclusion, I did not. Having seen Mr. Pierce’s brilliant work for many years in Frasier one would wonder if the same character would appear on stage like one of his acting partners here, Edward Hibbert. Granted I had seen Mr. Pierce in Spamalot but having cast that show out of mind I don’t even remember what he did in that forgettable hit. This performance was, in my opinion, worthy of the Tony he received so I don’t think that any robbery took place.
I can’t understand for the life of me how the gyrations in Spring Awakening won for Best Choreography over the dancing in Curtains. I can only guess that it got swept up with the excitement of that show (which I still don’t understand). There are real dance numbers here and they are done well.
All in all it was an entertaining night at the theatre. Not brilliant and not earth shattering. I think my first response when asked what I thought of the show was that it was cute. As the man in the chair I sat there alert, holding my hat and in my head I even clapped a few times.
Xanadu
On Friday night the offering was Xanadu. Yes, that Xanadu. Why would I be caught dead going to see a musical based on what is considered such an incredibly bad movie? The writer of the book, Douglas Carter Beane’s most recent work on Broadway, The Little Dog Laughed, was quite good and equally important, he and I were in the same class at acting school and in a play together while there.
For those that don’t know, Jeff Lynn and John Farrar wrote the music for Xanadu. Lynne wrote and produced all of the music for ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) and John Farrar is an acclaimed music producer, songwriter, singer and guitarist who is best known for his work with Olivia Newton-John. Farrar is a former member of the group ‘The Shadows’. So for those of you, like me, who have not seen the movie Xanadu you will still know the music in this show with songs like, “I’m Alive”, “Evil Woman”, “Have You Never Been Mellow?” etc.
This musical is performed in one of the smallest Broadway Theatres, The Helen Hayes (previously called The Little Theatre). I get the sense that this space was maybe chosen because many people thought, like I did, “who would go and see a musical based on Xanadu?” The space does work however. Solid performances by the entire cast with special mention going to Jackie Hoffman and Mary Testa. Kerry Butler is quite good in the lead role of ‘Clio/Kira’ and Cheyenne Jackson who stepped in for James Carpinello, who broke his foot during rehearsals, is also good. There are no weak links in this group. There are some great lines that poke fun at the movie of Xanadu as well as at Andrew Lloyd Webber and the lack of creativity in theatre in the 80s. One character says the show is “like children’s theater for 40-year-old gay people” she also says, “If we’re muses of inspiration, what are we doing in the theater?” I’m sure that I missed some of the inside jokes about the movie, having not seen it and Butler’s take on Olivia Newton John was quite funny.
The musical runs 90 minutes, without an intermission, and this is also talked about. At one point a character, when taking about the length of the show, says “they have only just started up their first barricades across the street”, referring of course to Les Miz, which indeed was playing across the street and I was leaving Xanadu, Les Miz was just in intermission.
At the end of the day, it’s a juke box musical and even though it’s a fun evening it’s a far cry from what one expects to see on Broadway. Or maybe it’s a far cry from what I expect to see on Broadway. I’m not disappointed that I saw it and I expect that it will do well, especially for nostalgia crowds. It will probably do for ELO what Mama Mia did for ABBA. The show only opened on the 10th and it’s gotten mixed to positive reviews with a few negative ones thrown in as well. As one critic wrote, “The 90-minute show, which kicked off the new season last night at the Helen Hayes Theatre, is a grand little piece of smart dumb fun.” I kind of agreed as I sat in my chair, alert, with my hat in my hand.
Frost/Nixon
Saturday afternoon brought the piece that I had anticipated probably more than all of the other offerings on this trip, Frost/Nixon. As sort of a history buff and a total Watergate buff, I was curious about this piece. I remember the actual interviews and the press surrounding them at the time and I had recently seen interviews on Theatre Talk with a number of people associated with this piece.
The stage is set with one table and a chair behind it. A number of feet behind the chair and above on the wall was a set of television screens, 36 in all. Six across (6 times) and six down (6 times) filling out the space all framed into one giant screen with lines running through it from the separation of the various sets.
The play had two narrators, one in each camp. ‘Jim Reston’ speaks for the Frost camp and ‘Jack Brennan’ speaks for the Nixon camp. It’s all done in flashbacks and the TV screens are used as a device to help change scenes. This device irritated me at times but was quite effective at others. The basic plot is the preparation for the interviews by both camps. As far as the play goes I felt that there could have been more but the performances took the whole production to another level. There was not a single weak performance in the play but the performance of Frank Langella alone is worth the price of admission. He finesses his Nixon character so brilliantly and is consistent throughout. It’s not that Michael Sheen does not rise to the occasion with Frost, it’s just that there was more to latch onto in this play with the Nixon character.
As I mentioned earlier the scene changes using the screen became an irritant. At times it felt a bit gimmicky and the sound accompanying it was rather loud. During the actual interview sections the screens were more effective allowing the audience to see how it might have actually looked on television. The most effective use was in the final questioning of Nixon on Watergate. The camera moves in for an extreme close-up so we see this one face covering these 36 screens and we watch as Langella portrays Nixon at his most vulnerable. A Tony Award well deserved.
I might have been jumping out of seat if I though that the play was a bit stronger. I was sort of making that jump in my head for the performance of Frank Langella but at the end I was sitting in my chair clapping.
110 In The Shade
The last show that I saw was one that I knew nothing about. I had not read any reviews but I knew who some of the cast members were. As the show started, I realized that I was watching a musical version of The Rainmaker, a play by Richard Nash. It’s a familiar musical especially to me and that was brought home even more when I saw a quote from Ben Brantley, theatre critic for the New York Times, who called it, “a poor man’s Music Man“. Both musicals deal with the arrival to town of a con man and his effect on the community.
The songs in this musical are not ones that I think that I will remember. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this about an hour after seeing it and can’t remember one song from the show. That’s not to say that they were not performed well but I will get to that soon. The same team who gave us The Fantastics, Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones brings the songs here to us.
The story takes place in the Texas Panhandle on July 4th, 1936 and has a kind of Oklahoma feel to it at times. What I found most interesting was the use of color blind casting, which in a piece like this, never happens on Broadway. Four of the main characters are a father, two sons and a daughter. The father and one son are white while the other son and the daughter is black. The other main characters are the town’s sheriff and the con man. It’s a pleasant enough story to watch and I think that it’s a show that a whole family will enjoy. I could not help feeling, however, that it was a bit dated. Not because it was set in 1936 because other shows are set even earlier, like Chicago, but they don’t feel dated in the same way that I felt this was.
As for this cast, again there was an even ensemble of fine actors. It was good to see John Cullum on stage again. He played he father, ‘H.C. Curry’. And then there is Audra McDonald. Any show that this woman is in automatically rises to another level. It is quite evident why she has won four Tony Awards (three of them before she was 30). Simply brilliant! There is nothing that this woman cannot do on stage. An incredible actress, singer and dancer. When the script says that he character is plain, one has to stop and say “Audra McDonald plain? Surely you jest”. On top of her talent she quite a beautiful woman so that characterization did not work for me and I’m sure not for many in the audience. I would have to say that on her performance alone this production rose to one level higher than it would have been without her. On a side note, it would be interesting to see what she does in the new TV series Private Practice next season but I expect that we will see her Tony winning performance in A Raisin In The Sun on television before that.
I sat alert, with my hat in my hand for this show but in my head I was clapping and jumping out of my chair for Audra. Too bad I could not do that for the entire show.
So there it is, four shows in two and half days and soon I’ll be making a trip to the airport (3:30am) to head on back to Nassau. The new Broadway season has only just opened. It would be interesting to see what will be happening in the various theatres in months ahead.
By the way, as a point of information, when the San Francisco Chronicle reviewer did his review of You Can Lead A Horse To Water, the critic was sitting in his chair clapping.
