Broadway

The Hills of California

Gary Lucas — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 17:08:08 +0000

The Hills of California Gary Lucas September 29, 2024 - 13:08

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The Hills of California is a superb play. It is three hours long, and we found it riveting, with no filler. Jez Butterworth (Jerusalem) and Sam Mendes (The Ferryman) return to Broadway as just about the best writer/director tag-team currently on the scene.

The story takes place in postwar England in a shabby seaside resort hotel in Blackpool, Lancashire. Off-stage hotel owner and widow Veronica Webb is dying, and her extended family arrives one by one to pay their last respects (and also usher her into the ranks of the Choir Invisible with a willing doctor).

In flashbacks, we see scenes of the vibrant, sexy mother who daily drills her four talented and charming young daughters into a Midlands version of the Andrew Sisters (and they really do sparkle! You can actually believe the Webb Sisters could have been massive given a break from the showbiz Gods; they are that good).

The character of Veronica, played by phenomenal Northern Irish actress Laura Donelly, is not far afield from Rosalind Russell's "Rose," the show-biz mother from hell in Gypsy.

A cautionary tale of sisterly rivalry and music biz dreams deferred if not dashed (the greasy American impresario who finally comes to audition them coldly picks one daughter out of the four as the only possible "star" in the act and takes her upstairs to "audition" her), and the residual bitterness and jealousy that poisons the ranks of this formerly close-knit family who drift apart after the child-act is broken up, the cumulative effect is affecting and heartbreaking (but with lots of comic turns and laughs abounding).

At the close the audience leaped to their feet and gave the large ensemble cast (many of whom were imported from the show's hit production in the West End) a prolonged standing ovation and much cheering. Truth be told, both Caroline Sinclair and I had tears in our eyes at the end. The play is that powerful.

For some reason, there has not been ONE review in the local media of NYC since the play opened here last month, which is mind-blowing and speaks volumes about the "official" cultural mandarins and critical apparatchiks afoot in our fair city.

Now playing at the Broadhurst Theater 235 West 44th Street, NYC, and extended through December.

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I Know the Difference Between Cantaloupe and Watermelon

Cearia Scipio — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 14:03:05 +0000

I Know the Difference Between Cantaloupe and Watermelon Cearia Scipio November 14, 2019 - 09:03

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Photo Credit: Matthew Murphy

Last month a couple of my black friends told me they were going to see a new Broadway show called Slave Play. I asked them why they would want to go see a play about slaves. The response I got was "I heard it's really good." Then I thought to myself, "Ain't nothing good about slavery." My friends came back to me after the show and told me that I'd like it. I had the opportunity to see the play myself this weekend. I needed to see what all the hype was about.

Slave Play was written by Jeremy O. Harris, a black, male playwright. Walking into the theater, I was silently judging every white person in there. And there were A LOT of white people in the theater. To me it felt like "Dang. They couldn't wait to get in here to see a play about slaves." As a black woman, I'm just a little tired of the "slave narrative." I'm tired of us revisiting a time when black people were seen as property. When the show began with a sweeping black woman dressed in "slave attire," I sank into my seat. Watching her interact with her white scene partner made me feel slightly uncomfortable. I just wanted to get this over with.

Then I caught interest in the other two couples. I was surprised by the comedy in the dialogue and the nudity that was shown on stage. Now they had my interest. So I thought, "Cool. This is going to be some sexy slavery tale. I can dig that." Then the play flips everything on its head! The couples were all participating in some sort of interracial couple group therapy. That whole plot is so very clever. I thought the play had a perfect blend of comedic and serious moments. I was paying extra attention now. The two therapists' comedic timing complimented each other well as they tried to navigate what their attendees were feeling.

Listening to the stories of the couples was both hilarious and heartbreaking. For example, there was one story that stood out to me. The biracial man, Phillip, is going on about how he went to a white school. He said he never saw himself as a color. He says he was just "Phillip." It wasn't until his white schoolmates pointed out his blackness that he started to see it as well. I've been black my whole life and I've never thought of myself as just "Cearia." I have always thought of myself as "Black Cearia." I think this way because I know that my skin color is the first thing people see. They don't see my personality. They don't see my bank account. They see my skin.

My skin color affects how I see the world. I am always inclined to point out differences of race wherever I go. During the previous semester, I performed in City College's production of Dry Land. I wasn't originally cast. I took the spot of a girl who couldn't do the play. During our first table read, the whole cast was present. I looked around the room and I was the only black person in there. Yes, we did have two Latina women but they were white passing. Later on in the semester I found out the identity of whom I was replacing. She was white. I still think about how white that show would have been had I not been in it. Our director was white as well. Maybe it's not her fault that I ended up being the darkest person there, maybe she didn't notice. I noticed. I always notice.

Overall, Slave Play empowered me. It was refreshing to see a black woman who was taking control of her life. On stage there was a black woman, who wasn't going to submit to her man, a white man. I silently cheered her on. I stared at her with so much intensity, hoping she could feel the power and respect that I was transferring to her telekinetically from somewhere in the sea of audience members. This play made me feel desirable. It somehow turned on a switch that made me appreciate and love the black body that I walked in with even more.

Miss Scipio is a 22 year-old aspiring actress who is currently attending City College. Her instagram is @Rotiprincess.

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AMAZING

I love this article so much, you have such a strong opinion and reading this just enforced that. Please write more!!

This is perfectly said! As…

This is perfectly said! As someone who watched this play about a week ago, I completely understand your message and agree. Your passion is instilled in me and has given me another perspective of this eye-opening performance. Once again, well done!

Loved this article and what…

Loved this article and what you had to say. Will for sure check it out!

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Get Your Claws Out!

Leah Richards — Wed, 05 Sep 2018 15:16:30 +0000

Get Your Claws Out! Leah Richards September 5, 2018 - 11:16

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Worse Than Tigers

Written by Mark Chrisler

Directed by Jaclyn Biskup

Presented by The Mill Theatre and New Ohio Theatre at New Ohio Theatre, NYC

August 24-September 8, 2018

The opening tableau of Mark Chrisler's Worse Than Tigers neatly and economically establishes the state of the relationship between its married protagonists. When we see them first, Olivia (Shannon Marie Sullivan) and Humphry (Braeson Herold) are sitting side by side on a loveseat, physically together but otherwise disconnected, each individually absorbed in a smart phone (perhaps some of you are reading this review in such a situation right now). When they do begin to speak to each other, their conversation takes a Beckettian turn, with the couple asking if and how they can entertain themselves, like a Vladimir and Estragon whose outfits subtly coordinate with their tastefully if impersonally appointed surroundings; and when one tries to tell each other a joke, the other interrupts repeatedly in taking every element too literally. While for the audience this is a very funny production, for the characters, jokes often fall into the paradigm of humor as aggression. Humphry and Olivia's snappy, barbed exchanges, simmering repression, and psychosexual conflict results in a play that might be described as Noël Coward meets Edward Albee meets a ravenous tiger.

In the opening of the play, Humphry and Olivia are waiting not for Godot but for Jeff, an old friend of Humphry's whose visit has been scheduled out of a desire to be reminded of happier times. Olivia bemoans the loss of surprise and the unknown in their lives, and as if response to her lament, their houseguest, seeking refuge from an escaped tiger, turns out to be not Jeff but police officer Kurt Patrick (Zach Wegner), who arrives with his flask, gun, and an unexpected connection to Olivia. Kurt could charitably be described as a bit manic and is imposingly uninhibited, but paradoxically, that dearth of inhibition functions as a means of evading the existential dread that creeps into his thoughts if he lacks "a bit of danger, a bit of blood in the water" to distract him. Kurt's contrast to the outwardly milquetoast Humphry is comedically crystallized in the way that Kurt pointedly pronounces "vase" as "vayse" to Humphry's "vahse" while they argue over the meaningfulness of the condo's décor. The minimalist aesthetic to which Kurt is reacting, composed almost entirely of grays and whites, reflects the repression and absences of feeling that have overtaken Humphry and Olivia's lives and relationship. Olivia, though, has some Hedda Gabler-ian DNA in her character, asking, for example, whether nostalgia is really an attempt at remembering what fear feels like, and arguing that not feeling is not a form of bravery, while Humphry defaults to rationalization and therapy-speak. The clashing couple's reaction to early misfortune prepares narratively and thematically for the later, climactic hashing out of a part of their past that is neither desperate nostalgia nor yet truly relegated to the past.

While the tiger remains an offstage presence, her voice, which we hear with impactful volume, functions as both a reaction to and an amplification of the human characters, especially Olivia, who shares a symbolic association with the big cat. Under different circumstances, she could be this powerful, keenly alive animal, not the purring kitten that Humphry recalls from their lost past, although even that would be preferable to her present state—although purring is also a mechanism by which, as Olivia points out, cats in pain soothe or comfort themselves. Humphry, meanwhile, a bit like Rhinoceros' Berenger bemusedly watching everyone around him choose to transform into horned ungulates, can't help but wonder why people are going towards the tiger, or even worse (if it is worse), letting her in.

The play's tagline, a "comedy (until it's not)," elegantly sums up Worse Than Tigers, and a great final twist on the recurring joke "What is worse than tigers?" embodies the production's ability to pull off its tonal shifts. Wegner's performance invites us to laugh at Kurt's id-driven brashness, but he also brings a palpable sense of danger to the role. All three actors skillfully play off one another as fast-paced comic sparring partners, but Herold and Sullivan also effectively ground the more intimate, serious moments between their characters, building to a cathartically emotional monologue by Sullivan; and both find different ways to suggest what's roiling beneath their characters' self-imposed suppression.

Olivia asks how we experience our own emotions in an era when relationships have adopted the pace of the social media that enables them and when a person's sustained engagement with significant life and emotional experiences is received by others, she posits, like telling an old joke. Luckily, we don't have to brave an enormous feline predator in order to find out how Worse Than Tigers answers. - Leah Richards and John Ziegler

Dr. Richards is an English professor in NYC, and spends her free time raising three cats and smashing the patriarchy. When not writing reviews, Dr. Ziegler spends a lot of his time being an Assistant Professor of English in NYC and playing guitar in a death metal band.

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Yes, You Again... And Again... And Again

Mark Weston — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 20:02:45 +0000

Yes, You Again... And Again... And Again Mark Weston August 29, 2017 - 16:02

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Weeks before it closes, I got a chance to catch up with Groundhog Day, The Musical.

[I'm tempted to simply repeat the above sentence 28 times but will fight the urge!]

I guess it makes no sense to question why there was an imperative to create a musical out of Groundhog Day, The Film which, in itself, is hardly worthy of such an effort. Unless, that is, you had Bill Murray to star -- again. Asking the question "why" seems churlish.

The show itself is actually pretty good. It's cute. It's fun. It features a tremendously winning performance from the tremendously winning Andy Karl who, truth be told, created a new Phil Connors that didn't have me longing for the iconic Bill Murray. That's quite a feat. And kudos to the super-talented Andy Karl for pulling it off.

If only it was shorter.

At 2:45 (with intermission), it is an hour longer than the movie, and you might say that the movie itself extended the running joke a tad too long.

Along with Andy Karl, the star of the show is director Matthew Warchus who stages and choreographs deja vu in a most entertaining way. The music is serviceable to the story but, like virtually everything that seems to come to Broadway these days (with the exceptions of Hamilton, Dear Evan Hanson and some others) the music is generic and completely unmemorable. The lyrics are a bit better - clever - and several times made me laugh out loud. The orchestra sounded canned - a shame that the live musicians couldn't have been made a part of the on stage show.

Regarding the staging and constantly moving scenery -- the idea is to re-create the camera angles of a movie by changing our perspectives within the same scene. An interesting idea and, fortunately, executed with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Despite lots of high tech video images on stage, the most applause-worthy scenic trick was decidedly low-tech, as cast puppeteers create a 2 police car chase of a pick-up truck through the residential streets of Punxsutawney from a variety of angles and perspectives.

The musical successfully translates the character of Ned Ryerson from screen to stage but is less successful with the characters of producer (and love interest) Rita and cameraman Larry. It does feature a secondary love interest which the film does not, a pretty blonde named Nancy in a break-out performance by Rebecca Faulkenberry.

In certain ways, it's a shame that Groundhog Day is closing. It could have/should have found an audience. But then some folks are likely surprised that there is a Broadway musical called Groundhog Day -- which reflects the vagaries of marketing a Broadway musical.

Apparently Bill Murray saw the show late in the run (and went the next night too) but his endorsement came too late. Which makes me wonder why the producers didn't involve Bill Murray from the very beginning. Give him a "story by" credit, put his name above the title (Bill Murray presents) a la Oprah, feature him on TV and social media commercials exhorting folks to go see the show. Or, if they couldn't get Bill Murray, make iconic advertising choices about repeating things over and over and over and over and over and over...

And cut that running time by an hour. At least.

Indecent!

Mark Weston — Sun, 14 May 2017 10:56:23 +0000

Indecent! Mark Weston May 14, 2017 - 06:56

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Indecent

Cort Theatre, NYC

Indecent is a strange play. It's like getting a gorgeously wrapped package and finding something insubstantial and vaguely disturbing inside the box.

The packaging of Indecent includes fantastic direction from Rebecca Taichman, engaging writing from Paula Vogel and a near-perfect ensemble of performers. But once you get past the seduction of the production, you have to wonder why so much talent was lavished on what is no more than a historical theatrical footnote.

That footnote is the closing of God of Vengeance on Broadway early in the last century for indecency. The play was apparently a big hit both way downtown (in the thriving Yiddish theater) and mid-downtown in Greenwich Village -- not to mention in many European cities -- but the move to Broadway seems unnecessary, unless the producer purposefully wanted to traffic in scandal.

What's most emotionally compelling about Indecent is also what's most intellectually disturbing about it.

Vogel and Taichman decided to frame their play in the shadows of the holocaust and the rise of anti-semitism in the 1920s. The latter part of Indecent suggests that God of Vengeance was performed in the Lodz ghetto in Poland -- along with what I assume were many plays of the Yiddish Theater.

So one must assume that God of Vengeance was an extraordinarily influential and important play for the Jewish community. Alas, it was not. What it was, to be sure, was audacious and scandalous. But high art -- no. It's story revolves around a Jewish man running a brothel in the basement of his house for profit so his family can have many material things others cannot, including a beautiful Torah. His daughter and one of his prostitutes fall in love and have a sexual encounter outside in the rain, in what is claimed to be the first lesbian scene in modern theatrical literature, replete with the daughter saying to the whore "I want to taste you." The father is so enraged when he learns of this affair that he casts his daughter to work in his brothel and casts his Torah into the street.

That might be a shocking play today -- imagine it in the early 1900's. While we can layer on the play a contemporary view of sapphic love I doubt that too many audiences shared our liberal view of the subject. Rather, the play's success was due to its shock value -- not it's poetic ambitions or cultural importance.

Imagine, though, if the play were not written by a Jew. Imagine if it were written by a non-Jew, showing a general audience that this is how the dirty, sex-obsessed, licentious and money-grubbing Jews behave. It would be a prime example of anti-semitic propaganda and, in fact, the way the Jews are depicted in the play bears too close a similarity to the way Jews were portrayed in proto-Nazi propaganda leading up to World War Two.

And that is what bothers me about Indecent. It lionizes Sholem Asch (the playwright) and his play, without addressing any of the disturbing aspects of it. Promotional materials talk about the scandalous obscenity trial of God of Vengeance -- but Indecent spends almost no time on that trial. Indecent shows us the tragedy of the performers in the throes of virulent anti-semitism, without exploring the paradox or irony of their making a living off of an anti-semitic play.

Of course, all of this is provocative, and provocative plays should be encouraged on Broadway. So kudos to Daryl Roth, Liz McCann and Cody Lassen for bringing Indecent to Broadway. And kudos to an astonishingly beautiful production. I just wish the play hadn't left so many disturbing questions unasked. - Mark Weston

Broadway's Secret Weapon

Helen Eisenbach — Fri, 06 May 2016 09:53:14 +0000

Broadway's Secret Weapon Helen Eisenbach May 6, 2016 - 05:53

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Drew Hodges is at a loss for words. Asked if he's surprised at the life he's leading -- did he imagine he'd grow up to fly around the world orchestrating scenes with great actors and artists for his own wildly influential agency -- he pauses three entire seconds. "I wish I had an answer for you," he says. "It's like, Come for the veal, stay for the floor show."

You might not know Drew Hodges’ name, but if you’ve enjoyed some form of popular culture in the past decade, you’re living in a world he helped create. "When I started, the idea of theater was still very much that ‘fabulous invalid’ thing," he says, "sort of dying, old, kind of nostalgic. I was lucky enough to work on a lot of stuff that started to chip away at that."

Twenty years ago, art-directing for his small design firm’s music, film and cable clients, Hodges was offered his first theater project, a little show called Rent. The man for whom performance meant taking the train from Hyde Park, NY, as a high schooler to see Yes at Madison Square Garden harnessed the excitement he felt watching innovative theater and expanded his rock & roll take to advertising, moving the firm carved out of his Flower District apartment closer to Broadway, where it would grow into the entertainment powerhouse SpotCo.

Using modern techniques developed in their work with video, records and film, Hodges & Co. helped upstarts Rent, The Vagina Monologues and John Leguizamo's Freak catch fire, opening the door for more daring fare to be produced and thrive. "We worked on quite a few of the sort of things that were seen as marginalized, and brought them forward," he says, "a lot of pieces that would maybe have been left to a smaller audience." Such shows would lay the groundwork for "bringing back this idea that theater is a crossover art, a contemporary art, that really relates to our culture today."

SpotCo (acquired by England's First Artist Corporation in 2008) can lay claim to introducing audiences to a dizzying percentage of work that's tapped into the zeitgeist, as varied as August: Osage County, Kinky Boots, The Pillowman, Pippin, The Book of Mormon, The Scottsboro Boys, Once and last year’s surprise Tony winner Fun Home. The firm's flair for framing how shows come into public consciousness has netted them eight Best Musical Tony winners in a row -- and this year's Hamilton should make it nine. It's a testament to Hodges' gift for recognizing art that speaks to the moment, and his team’s talent for transforming unconventional fare into not merely buzz worthy destinations for hip young audiences but mainstream must-sees.

"Things that were unexpected have happened on Broadway over the last 20 years that have actually resulted in it feeling much more a part of the contemporary culture," says Hodges. "Avenue Q was seen as a thing that definitely did not need to go to Broadway. Now it feels incredibly mainstream. Some of the things that are happening with Hamilton may be specific to Hamilton, but they’re also things that haven't happened since the '40s -- the fact that the album is charting. This stuff is as much in our world as a summer hit movie -- Ryan Reynolds is in that movie Deadpool wearing a Rent T-shirt!"

Today the tall, fast-talking, ebullient 53-year-old is celebrating the two-decade anniversary since that first theater project with On Broadway: From Rent to Revolution, a full-service extravaganza of a coffee-table book that reveals how Broadway has changed the cultural conversation. Brimming with insider dish from on- and offstage talent, On Broadway unveils a treasure trove of previously unseen posters and provocative promotional campaigns, a delightful what-if of alternate realities for now-iconic shows. Its behind-the-scenes anecdotes and strategies give fascinating insights into how the some of Broadway’s most intriguing projects unfolded, and the twists and turns beloved and controversial shows took on their path to (mostly) success.

Hodges was working with producer Margo Lion when something she said about her show Catch Me if You Can stuck in his head — about not being able to put her finger on what she called the "event." He would obsess for years on identifying what that meant, how to capture the experience of going to a show, trying to brand that perfect component, "sort of the elevator pitch times word of mouth. I sometimes say it’s the emotional promise: Promise me what’s it gonna feel like to go. People don’t really care that much what happens; they care Give me the tone of the evening." Recently looking back on shows that failed, Hodges discovered he couldn’t figure out what each one’s “event” was. "In the end, the best way a show sells is word of mouth, so people hand that on to each other. If I can’t figure out the best way to tell you why you should go, probably other people can’t either, so they don’t know how to transfer the heat.” What Hodges’ crew does best is create a campaign that makes people think, “Oh, that looks like something I would like. Once they’re in, they’ll tell someone else. But in the beginning, when there is no show, and we’re trying to get enough tickets sold, the job is to figure out that ‘event,’” he says. It need not be more complicated than Hugh Jackman or Nicole Kidman takes her top off -- as long as it communicates something that inspires people to commit time and money to sitting in an audience.

If few things are more dispiriting than watching bad theater, nothing compares to discovering great work. Hodges was SpotCo’s sole member to get an early glimpse of Hamilton: “I was lucky enough to see that show in a reading -- I sat next to Mike Nichols.” His friend (Rent, Avenue Q and Hamilton producer) Jeffrey Seller asked what he thought. “That’s the best show I have ever seen,” Hodges told him. “It was very calm,” he recalls. “I was not all jumping up and down.” Debating marketing approaches over a long period of time, he determined to do the opposite of what was expected: the “downtown” feeling he’d worked to achieve with Rent, or the predictable path of going “super hip-hoppy” were too reductive for a play he believed had more classic appeal. “The most amazing thing about Hamilton is that your grandfather and your granddaughter, everybody, can find a place in that show, David McCullough next to hip-hop kids. That never happens.”

One of the book’s pleasures is discovering images that got away -- sometimes more daring than the ones chosen. “I once got into an argument with Edward Albee over a poster,” says Hodges. “It was a glass with ice falling and in the ice it said Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, kind of frozen in, it was really great, and he killed it.” Asked why, the playwright said, “Because. My show. Is not. About drinking.” Hodges laughs. “In that moment it doesn’t matter what you say -- he wrote it. I always tell people, ‘My job is to take your very layered and rich thing and reduce it to something faster and more simplified, because that’s what I’ve got to do.’ I’m not trying to give people your play, I’m trying to give them Come to this play and it will feel a little like this.”

Of course, since his campaigns often start before a show is even in rehearsals, attempts to provide that “emotional litmus test” can go awry. With Dance of the Vampires, SpotCo created a campaign sending a letter from Michael Crawford — “basically the Phantom writing to you. It went out to all these women, this sort of implied romance of what was going to happen.” Hodges saw the first preview and got a shock: the show was basically “a pie in the face. We had told all these people Michael Crawford’s gonna give you Phantom 2, but instead he does Benny Hill. We told everybody the wrong thing to go for, and nothing fails faster.”

How often does his team create innovative work producers don’t understand? “Part of the art is getting it approved,” he says. “If you think the art is just making some work of genius that no one touches, that’s just not it. It’s all about hearing from everybody and solving it and keeping going, and having it turn out well.” The book testifies not only to his team’s idiosyncratic gifts but the number of collaborators smart enough to recognize their artistry and take a leap to create theater magic. “So many of these pieces, when I look at them, what occurs to me is not the sense of I/We did this [but] that time when we were all standing there and this happened. The sharing of it ends up being the joy in it.” Hodges has a way with a story, but throughout the book he cedes center stage to other artists inside each show. "I wanted to get this sense of, kind of around the circle of, different people’s perspectives on how these things tend to be. Because that’s really how they’re made: it’s through all this wisdom of multiple people’s point of view that you kind of come together and say, Okay, that.”

Seeing the often hilarious, bold, gorgeous art that didn't get chosen, one can’t help wondering about the frustrations of the job. "There are producers who take risks, there are producers who -- their job is not to pick the artiest poster, that is for sure," he says. "There are producers who really have an inherent ability to see the work and get it; there are many more who think they have the ability, which is actually worse than if you say, "'This is not my strength; tell me what I should do.'" He considers Seller one of the best: "It's not an accident that the work ends up being so strong, because he knows how to respect the people making it, so they want to make even better work."

Such collaborations have provided one gift Hodges never anticipated. Unlike his years in records and film and cable, where "you're really very outside the making of the actual thing," Broadway offers a thrilling invitation in. "The group that's making the show is in such a bubble, but they're dying for someone just outside that bubble to give them some perspective. They can't go to someone who's way outside that bubble, so you get asked all the time what you think, what you're not getting, what you love. The biggest surprise is that you get the respect of being in the middle of the creative process. I thought we could make some great posters; I never thought I would be in a conversation with Edward Albee. I didn't imagine I would be inside the making of the actual show -- I never thought I would be in that room where it happens."

Hodges' opinion is clearly valued across the industry -- as his role helping Fun Home realize its true potential, a tale shared in the book, makes plain. "There's always a conversation, ‘Should this move?’ And I’m often one of the people who gets asked," he says. "I was absolutely asked on that show, and my answer was, 'You can't not move this.' Because then I have to decide that there are good things for Broadway and really good things that just can’t be on Broadway. Fun Home is actually such a beautiful one to think about, because I’m so thrilled to see that that show could be the mainstream -- and continues to be. We've all worked on really arty things that did okay for three, four months and won their Tonys, but this show keeps becoming this mainstream hit. I send people all the time. They're often not sure what it is. No one's ever disappointed. And I really feel good that everyone was like, This needs an audience. How are we gonna do this? In that case it really was the Tony. One of the best things we could do was to try and get people to feel how beautiful that show is, get that Tony -- and with the Tony, there are a certain amount of people who are just going to make sure to see the thing. Fun Home‘s a good example of a thing that probably wouldn’t have been on Broadway 20 years ago."

When he was young, Hodges saw three shows all in one season: Stockard Channing's turn in Joe Egg, Ain't Misbehavin's ensemble, and the thing that was Sweeney Todd -- the first time theater really registered for him. "It sort of ends up representing my career," he realizes, "that I'm always working on this mixture: something big, something small, something serious, something not, something gay, something straight."

On Broadway may vividly re-create the latest golden age of theater we’ve been living through, but it feels of-the-moment: "We're talking about something very now," says Hodges. After working on 25 shows a season all these years, he finds it satisfying to bring the world he’s inhabited to those outside the circle. The man who's helped transform the way performance has entered our cultural bloodstream routinely deflects compliments by praising the work of others, but Drew Hodges can't deny his latest theatrical outing has been fun: "Not everybody gets to play the organ at their own wedding."

©On Broadway: From Rent to Revolution by Drew Hodges, Rizzoli New York, 2016. Hamilton and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? art courtesy of SpotCo.

Ms. Eisenbach is a journalist, screenwriter, and author of the novel Loonglow and the satirical how-to/cry for help Lesbianism Made Easy.

Bring the Kids...

C. Jefferson Thom — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 02:27:12 +0000

Bring the Kids... C. Jefferson Thom April 24, 2013 - 22:27

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Cinderella

The Broadway Theatre, New York City

If you have a little kid at home between the ages of a seven-year-old who can sit through a show and a fantasy-prone twelve-year-old, Cinderella might be the ticket to buy if you’re going for them. With a mediocre score from the legendary team of Rogers & Hammerstein and a contemporary book by Douglas Carter Beane, this musical is ideal for kids and perfectly tolerable for adults.

Though this production plods along with the story that everybody knows, there are moments of theatrical magic that might be lost on one not jumping to suspend disbelief, but will likely dazzle those who still think their uncle can pull a quarter out of his ear. Beane's book seems geared at amusing the more mature audience members, but often tries too hard to be modern-day in its humor, detracting from the story while only paying off in moderate laughter.

Laura Osnes is lithe, charming, and perfectly genuine as the fabled Cinderella, managing to portray this absurdly good person without turning into a cartoon character devoid of humanity. Santino Fontana shares a similar success as Topher, our story's prince, maintaining heartfelt sincerity while summoning comic moments, which are uncommon for royalty of this genre. Both sing with a simple beauty fitting for a fairy tale. As the now not-so-wicked stepsisters, Ann Harada lands some funny moments as Charlotte and Marla Mindelle makes for a sweet confidant to Cinderella, while Greg Hildreth struggles to find a place and a reason for being Beane’s most confused addition, the firebrand Jean-Michel.

Director Mark Brokaw plays it towards the kiddies, employing stuffed animal hand puppets to keep it cute and fluffy, but gears his actors' performances towards the adults, working to pull as much dimension as the story will allow, while aiming to somewhat nuance characters who are normally viewed in black and white. Beane feels like a misfit with his adaptation of the book, writing for one musical while everyone else seems to be performing in another. His contributions are random, including the reform activist stereotype of Jean-Michel, and pop out enough to be glaringly noticed but are weakly developed to the point of being almost apologetic. Like a party crasher who has the guts to make a loud and intrusive entrance but doesn’t stick around long enough to truly alter the tone of the scene, it might have been better if he had knocked on someone else’s door.

While either a truer-to-the-original version or more committed revised exploration may have proved more enjoyable, this manifestation is wholly passable and fulfills most of the expectations that one could assume of it. Professionally executed and efficiently performed, it makes for some very safe and family-friendly entertainment.

Flowers for the Dead

C. Jefferson Thom — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 05:39:28 +0000

Flowers for the Dead C. Jefferson Thom June 4, 2012 - 01:39

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End of the Rainbow

Belasco Theatre, NYC

Dedicated fans of the great, late Judy Garland are likely to a feel a thrill at seeing their ill-fated idol briefly brought back to life in End of the Rainbow. Tracie Bennett blossoms as the Judy who is unknowingly living the last months of her life while Michael Cumpsty makes for a sympathetic complement to her floating flourish, but they are the only two flowers to hold their color in this otherwise wilting arrangement.

Bennett enters the stage as the undisputed Judy Garland, unconcerned with hitting the marks of an impersonation but rather focused on evading the jaws of addiction and self-destruction that will eventually consume her. She moves naturally, breathing Judy's breath, moving Judy's body, bouncing with the compulsive energy of a performer that finds it near impossible to allow herself to be "off."

What Ms. Bennett accomplishes is far greater than a tribute enactment; it is a performance independent in its own greatness and deeply marked with some genuinely uncomfortable moments of hard, ugly reality. Michael Cumpsty provides a solid support to Bennett's Judy in the role of Anthony, her once-spurned but ever-devoted pianist. Cumpsty works the arc of his role well, revealing new layers in time and living in the fan-fantasy position of the piece, lastly offering the solace that would have undoubtedly been the dream of many of her adoring followers. On the other side of the scale, Tom Pelphrey's performance as Mickey Deans is so focused on subtly hinting that the character is interested solely in Judy's fame and potential fortune that there is little else to be said of him; the rest is just non-incremental yelling.

Playwright Peter Quilter seems to have written a posthumous apology to Ms. Garland with this play, asking for forgiveness on behalf of those who reveled in her eccentric behaviors and shameless insanities while ignoring the sickness beneath the often amusing symptoms. She was prized for her voice but also praised for her antics; the finger-pointing is self-inclusive but does not make for captivating or compelling drama. This guilt, or play at guilt, confines the work to the mood of a funeral dirge and, despite Bennett's stunning contribution, never allows the piece to live before it dies. Director Terry Johnson is unable to pull its tires out of the mud, and though William Dudley's scenic design is beautiful and fittingly functional, it too is trapped in a monotonous rhythm that the play never successfully escapes. Ultimately it is this sense of stagnation that kills the play before Judy herself has a chance to get to the end of her rainbow.

The merits of Ms. Bennett's acting alone would warrant buying a ticket to this production, but those looking for something more than a singular performance will likely find themselves clicking their heels together part way through the second act.

Gripping Family/Political Drama

Jim Miller — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 14:50:11 +0000

Gripping Family/Political Drama Jim Miller December 1, 2011 - 09:50

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Other Desert Cities

Booth Theatre, NY

There is no reason to beat around the bush when it comes to describing John Robin Baitz's play, Other Desert Cities, which recently opened on Broadway after a sold-out Off-Broadway run at Lincoln Center last winter. To me, it is a great play, a term I don't get to use often, and the best new play I can recall in quite some time. It was riveting, mesmerizing, totally involving, along with being quite funny and relevant. Beautifully written by Baitz, Other Desert Cities grabs the audience from the beginning and never lets go.

The play takes place on Christmas in 2004 at the Palm Springs home of Polly and Lyman Wyeth, staunch Republicans (and one-time friends of the Reagans) played brilliantly by Stockard Channing (above) and Stacy Keach. They are being visited by their son, Trip (Thomas Sadoski), an L.A. producer of a courtroom reality show, and their liberal daughter Brooke (Rachel Griffiths), who was a successful novelist before suffering a breakdown. Now recovered, Brooke returns home after a six-year absence and could tear the family apart due to the tell-all memoir she has just written about the circumstances surrounding the suicide of her older brother years before. Since that book is about to be serialized in the New Yorker, Brooke figures she better tell her parents about what she has written. Polly and Lyman are not at all pleased about the memoir. Add Polly's recovering alcoholic and liberal sister, Silda (the magnificent Judith Light) to the mix, and suffice it to say that fireworks erupt. To give away any more of the details or twists would spoil the experience of watching this exceptional play.

Part of the joy of Other Desert Cities is the chance to view these five wonderful actors all giving award-caliber performances. Each performer has his or her big moment, and all deliver. Channing is just a wonder, with her combination of acerbic wise cracks and hard-edged willpower combining for a powerhouse performance. Griffiths, making her Broadway debut, is an exceptional mix of needy, damaged, and sincere, yet also self-righteous. Keach is strong yet conflicted in a performance that builds as things start to crumble around him, leading to the show's climactic moments. Sadoski delivers in his big and very touching Act Two moment. Best of all may indeed be the remarkable Ms. Light, who can be both hilarious and sad. She has a speech to Griffiths late in Act One that is heartfelt and beautiful, and one of many moments in the play that are heartbreaking, powerful, and moving. Light, Channing, and company demand the audience's attention, and they deliver profoundly memorable moments onstage.

While Other Desert Cities is very much about politics and the great political divide in America, it is at its core a family drama, dealing with secrets, the quest for the truth, and consequences of actions that are taken. The pain as well as the deep underlying love that make up the Wyeth family dynamics are fully on display. Baitz masterfully takes fair and critical looks at both the left and the right and focuses on the grey areas that are often overlooked in today's politics. No matter what your politics are going in, the play requires its audience to constantly rethink an opinion about a character of a point of view. To my surprise, I found myself at times sympathizing with Polly and Lyman, even though their political views are far different from mine. The people and their positions are complicated, and the audience's sympathies shift back and forth throughout the evening, which is played out in an entertaining yet searing manner.

The impact of Other Desert Cities will stay with you long after the curtain has come down. A half hour later, I was sitting down to read the newspaper, and I found myself almost staring into space, still wrapped in the play's web. All in all, the combination of great writing and exceptional performances makes for some terrific theater.

Booth Theatre is at 222 West 45th Street in Manhattan.

We Laugh at You Long Time

Steve Holtje — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 06:13:34 +0000

We Laugh at You Long Time Steve Holtje October 29, 2011 - 02:13

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David Henry Hwang: Chinglish

Longacre Theatre, NYC

Chinglish is the word coined for those humorously bad Chinese-to-English mistranslations found on signs, in electronics manuals, etc. That sort of thing is hardly exclusive to China (there are plenty of examples from around the world here), but thanks to the first-world economic implosion, China is where the stakes are highest now. The new play by Chinese-American playwright David Henry Hwang (his first on Broadway in 13 years) is built around both this crucial transition and mistranslation. Bring your opera glasses, because being able to read supertitles has never been more important.

Our ~~hero~~ lead schlub, Daniel Cavanaugh (Gary Wilmes), opens the play alone, explaining to an unseen conference audience the secret of his business success in China. As his business is signs, this talk includes memorably mistranslated examples, most prominently "Fuck the certain price of goods," which makes perfect sense once it's explained that when Chinese script was modernized and simplified, the ideograms for "dry" and "to do" became the same.

The conference address is a brief framing device, revisited even more briefly at the end; 99% of the play is Cavanaugh's flashback to the start of his business in China three years earlier. That kicks off with him hiring a consultant there, Peter Timms (Stephen Pucci), who explains the importance of relationships to doing business in China and also emphasizes that he should bring his own translator to meetings. We are quickly shown why as Cavanagh meets with Minister Cai Guoliang (Larry Lei Zhang) and Vice Minister Xi Yan (Jennifer Lim) in hopes of winning the signage contract for the arts center they're planning for their out-of-the-way city, Guiyang. "We are a small, family-run firm" is rendered by Miss Qian (Angela Lin) as "his company is small and insignificant." We hear all of the Mandarin Chinese dialog, which is why the supertitles are so crucial. The clever set design always includes space onto which the supertitles are projected, rather than having them far above the stage. (The highly mechanized, smoothly and quickly operating set changes are marvelous.)

Soon, intrigue overtakes the clueless Cavanagh as the Vice Minister shows up for a follow-up meeting and orders Timms away. Neither her English nor Cavanaugh's powers of comprehension are quite up to the challenge of unmediated conversation, notwithstanding which they soon are in bed together in his hotel room. (Although Xi curses like a sailor, she apparently manages to have satisfying sex in her bra and panties, and Cavanagh's jockey shorts remain on as well.)

One can enjoy this play simply as hilarious farce. Certainly there are more than enough laughs for that -- they come so fast and thick during the first business meeting that half of them are drowned out by audience laughter. One occasionally wishes that the actors could drop in a few pauses, but a) it would make the cadence of the conversation completely artificial; b) enough of the laughs come from the chasm separating the supertitles' accurate translations and the Chinese translator's bungled efforts that the thread of the action can be followed even if you're missing a few jokes here and there. Although Wilmes is a bit stilted in his delivery, Pucci's comedic timing is good (his interplay with Zhang is perfect) and Lim is a riveting presence. As the Vice Minister's husband, Judge Xu Geming, Johnny Wu manages to get laughs via body language and vocal tone. (Wu doubles as Bing, another incompetent translator.)

However, should one feel inclined to delve beneath the surface, there are some meaningful points being made, not least that the misunderstandings come from ignorance of just how different American and Chinese cultures are. There's also a meaningful structure to the characters' relationships and parallels. Explaining this will involve some spoiler references, but I'll keep them as vague as possible.

Until recently, the U.S. was dominant in every way, and an Asian woman in a relationship with an American man was often an objectified exotic fetish. Now China dominates, and the American man is both the fetish object and the powerless figure in the relationship. Where the woman might have gotten the upper hand before through trickery, now the man is not tricked by her, but by his faulty expectations and assumptions; if Cavanagh had a more realistic grasp of the situation, he would see that because Xi is Chinese in China, nowadays anyone in her position is automatically more powerful than him, and there's nothing he can do about it. Because of this, because of a cultural misunderstanding, and also for what we eventually are told about his concealed background, his plight becomes rather poignant.

But at least Cavanagh gets what he came to China for, albeit in a roundabout way that initially makes him feel humiliated, and ultimately leaves him with only business success. The play has two other men -- one Chinese, even -- whose complete downfalls come from failing to recognize the new dynamics at all (the first Minister, still in his mind living in the days of the Cultural Revolution, when at least things were simple; at the end, he dons his old Red Army uniform, which still fits him) or recognizing them too late and not thoroughly thinking through all their consequences (Peter, the teacher trying to turn himself into a consultant a little too late in the game, and who picks the wrong horse in the race). But since Peter and the Minister go out together with a callback to their most amusing previous interaction, and since Cavanagh gets some of what he wants (partly because what he hid turns out to be considered an asset, another clever twist in a play full of them), a tragic tone is avoided, leaving Chinglish comfortably comedic in its overall impact.

The Longacre Theatre is at 220 West 48th Street in Manhattan.