PORGY AND BESS at the Richard Rodgers Theater, 206 W. 46th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

So what do you do?  Even before you enter the theater, you see that the full title of the show is “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess”, to distinguish this production from other productions.  Each production has its own mystique, emendations here, twiddles there.  The full version?  Almost never.  The operatic version, yes, the Broadway musical version, yes, the straddle, yes..  And that pretty much is what this is you’re seeing now, a mixture of operatic voices – and performances – and Broadway musical voices, now so skillfully enhanced there’s no worries about reaching the back seats, and the result in one case is the best Porgy I’ve seen in like forever. Today, that can happen.

Porgy and Bess burst upon this world seventy-four years ago, will surely be with us for seventy-four more, throwing off controversy with every new production until race goes away and perfection is achieved among mankind and theater folk.  I learned something this time around and I expect I will learn something about Porgy and Bess as well as the rest of us next time, too, D.V.  I learned that this splendid, moving, uplifting opera is about Porgy, not about Bess.  I learned it’s about hope, eternal hope, the gift that makes us human.  I learned it’s about love and the power of love which I should have learned from other productions before but did not.  Everybody was too busy making a stage piece and making its music, its very special music, which has become so part of our culture it’s main stream. And nobody agreed as how to do it. There is still no agreement, especially in this age when everybody has an opinion based on other folks’ opinions and everybody expresses each individual – really not so individual – opinion. George Gershwin, a genuine American genius, cut off in his prime,  steeped himself in the environment which spawned Porgy and all the other denizens of  the Gullah community as only a genius can.  His author, Dubose Heyward, had Gullah roots that deeply informed his story. Their time spent in the Gullah Sea Island communities developing their musical project blossomed into the  American masterwork infused with the Gullah spirit, the Gullah language, even their rituals, such as the Gullah “shout “, much Gullah speech patterns.

Today, those patterns have been “corrected” in the text, in the lyrics. The proudest of the black people, whose famous descendants spread all over the country, from Michelle Obama to Chris Rock, are little seen as the proud people they were, closest to their African roots. But this Porgy, shorn of his goat cart, given a cane and a lameness, shines with that pride.  He is easily smitten by this flamboyant creature, this Bess, so different from the rest of his Catfish Row community he cannot see that she is a broken soul already, all he sees is her sweetness, her beauty, her neediness, her vulnerability under the bravado.  Audra McDonald brings her wealth of experience and gifts to a beautifully touching portrayal.  She is the property, the woman of Crown, (Philip Boykin)  a fearsome brute who kills Robbins in a drunken fight after a gambling game and flees, warning Bass he’ll be back for her. Bess’s attachment to Porgy puts them both in peril. When Crown does come back and fights Porgy for Bess, he’s killed.  The community tries to cover up what happened but Sportin’Life knows. Throughout, Sportin’ Life, the local drug dealer dude, played by absurdly over the top David Alan Grier, constantly tries to seduce Bess and succeeds. Porgy plans to find them, in New York, and win back Bess.

Yes, it’s an operatic story but it opens with beautiful, small voiced Nikki Renee Daniels singing perhaps the most famous of the show’s songs, “Summertime” and wonderful songs are what make this show live and breathe. Would that wonderful performances throughout were the rule.  Philip Boykin, whose huge, rich voice gives operatic dimension to his vivid presence as Crown, is singing opera.  Bryonha Marie Parham as Serena, widow of the slain Robbins, does a stilted operatic aria with “My Man’s Gone Now”. Audra McDonald finds far more character in her singing performance which is both operatic and Broadway.  David Alan Grier is in vaudevile with his famous “It Ain’t Necessarily So”..  Norm Lewis sings thrillingly with less voice but much more presence that almost everyone.  It’s musically schizophrenic but with irresistible music, even just competently performed – and these people are better than that – there are musical moments that surpass anything else currently on the stage. Would that the look of the settings, the sound effects and the costumes helped.  They don’t.  It’s as if the designers had tin ears. But nothing defeats the score.  Go.
                        *
Porgy and Bess. At the Richard Rodgers Theater, 226 West 46th Street.  Tickets: $75-$150. 1-800-745-3000. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                        *
Porgy and Bess. In this, the Gershwin estate authorized version, Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald star in this perennially thrilling  gem of musical Americana.



THE ROAD TO MECCA at American Airlines Theater, 227 W. 42nd St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Athol Fugard, the author of The Road to Mecca, sets his play in the premises of an Afrikaner house belonging to Miss Helen, elderly, eccentric, an artist, a sculptor, a visionary.  The time is 1974. The house, envisioned by splendid set designer Michael Yeargan, is an ordinary, deep country frame house made radiant by the sweeping colors Miss Helen has lavished on its walls and ceilings, against which her lifetime of oddments collected look enchanted,  under a spell. Hardly a typical Afrikaner abode. Miss Helen is in a dither readying for an expected visitor, tottering as she carries the heavy black kettle to the wash basin in the sleeping space.  Somebody is going to have a wash up.  It’s a long way from Capetown to here in the dusty Karoo.  She pulls the tangled comforter from the unexpectedly elegant chaise longue in the living room and throws it on the bed.  Hardly a getting ready move, more like – dithering.

In comes taut, fraught, tired Elsa, half Miss Helen’s age, distressed at the long drive, distressed at her encounter on the way, distressed at being here, distressed with Miss Helen. Playwright Fugard has got us under way in a fine fettle abetted by director Gordon Edelstein’s trove of behaviors for his two female stars, Rosemary Harris and Carla Gugino.  All the little bits of what might pass for life, the wash up, the tea, the busy things we do and never think about are doled out of Edelstein’s basket, even the hair brushing. And --  something feels wrong.  (We drop out of the show. Questions simmer.  Why? This hair brushing is intimate business and wrong way round.  Miss Helen should be brushing Elsa’s hair.  Why has Elsa come all this way?  How good a friend is Miss Helen? How do they know each other?  Are they lovers?  Would explain a lot.  And why does Elsa plan to go back the very next day? Just playwright pressure, turning the screw?  Or more?  Okay, get back to the show.)

We know Miss Helen (Rosemary Harris) is achingly worried about her plight and we know she has reached out to her far away friend Elsa (Carla Gugino) rather than to anyone in her village where she has lived all her life.  Her plight?  Her minister wants her to give up living in this enchanted house and move to  the safety of a nursing home in the village because she cannot  care for herself.  (We’re distracted again: a nursing home?  Out here?  Twelve hours from Capetown?  Has Fugard dropped another bobble?) (And trying to move an old person from her home is resonating like mad with this audience Miss Helen’s age, chiefly.  That should be good for paying close attention, right?) Elsa is still deeply troubled by the mother and baby she has given a ride to, given money to, given food to. Does our story involve this pathetic pair? No, apparently not, simply a highlighting of Elsa’s compassion and a sample of Fugardian social justice pleadings, always effective.  By the time Elsa worms out the details of what’s going on with Miss Helen, whose chief worry is the encroaching darkness enveloping her soul, we are restive; some of us are dozing, turned off. Fugard has set up too creakily, left too much for his second act, director Edelstein has remained too respectful of his distinguished playwright, his actors have pushed themselves too hard to fill the voids they feel in the play, hence the audience drifting.  Enter Jim Dale,a shot of all right.  Intermission

Intermission gentles us somewhat, we are attentive once more, delighted with Mr. Dale, ready to find out what kind of person the reverend Marius Byleveld is. Lots of fun?  A villain?  This kindly shepherd of his flock who wants Miss Helen safely in the lovely room at the nursing home he has arranged all the details for, not out here where the children throw stones at Miss Helen’s sculptures in her front yard.  They’re scary, those cement statues. They’re monsters. (And here, we run into another, major Fugard bobble.  We do not see these statues; they’re out in the yard, none in the house.  Why? We see Miss Helen struggling to carry an iron tea kettle, right at the very beginning of the show.  She could not possibly manage to move anything big enough to be called “ a monster” as Reverend Marius and flock have labeled them, monsters as parents have told their children, monsters as their pastor sees them.) Which, of course, makes for a far more engaging act two than act one.  Elsa flies to her friend’s defense.  The battle lines are drawn, yet somehow Mr. Dale stays on our good side, amuses us even as the reverend pushes all the “bad guy” buttons.  He is forcing Miss Helen to sign away her rights, he is ambivalent about what will happen to her or her house, he is the embodiment of the fears of the audience and yet, he’s funny, we like him.  It’s a tightrope of a performance and Dale juggles it to the nines, at the same time becoming far realer than Miss Helen and Elsa, two characters overwritten with dialogue, underwritten with their character histories, very difficult for both actresses.  Neither quite succeeds.  Both overact, pure defense mechanism. And director Edelstein can’t seem to help them.  Isn’t it a good thing that New York audiences love their bit of ham?

Susan Hilferty’s costumes for her three stars are absolutely right and Peter Kaczorowski’s sensitive lighting works just as it should, evoking apprehension, evoking wonder. Mr. Fugard will be enjoying a retrospective  program of his works later this season.  When he’s good, he’s very, very good.  The Road to Mecca needs work.
                        *
The Road to Mecca.  At the American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street. Tickets: $67-$117. 212-239-1300.  Tue-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat, Sun 2 pm.
                        *
The Road to Mecca.  Eccentric artist Miss Helen  reaches out for help to young friend Elsa  when her Afrikaner minister tries to help her into a nursing home for her own good.


LYSISTRATA JONES at the Walter Kerr Theater, 219 W. 48th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Hmmm. An audience filled with families, moms, pops, kids in tow in all those expensive Broadway seats.  Must mean something, right?  Everybody has to know that the show is based on another show couple of thousand years old, big Greek comedy by Aristophanes: the women refuse to grant sexual favors to their men until the men quit making war.  Subject of lots of tee shirts, too. And underlying the humor, some very cogent observations about the human condition.  Would that it were that simple today.  Which is what this show is about, right?

Wrong.  Very wrong.  This show is about cutes and energy and half an inch deep.  It’s about Lysistrata Jones ( sturdy Patti Murin)– Lyssie J. to her friends – who corrals her sister twinkie adorables at Athens University into not “giving it up” to their boy friends who happen to be the latest Athens U. all time champs at losing basketball games.  Been doing it for thirty years. ((Get the classical reference?)  However, the guys do not really care, ‘cause after the games they just party party party, all warmed up to be  constantly consoled by their ever lovin’ gals.  Life is perfect.  So – what is this side step about not “giving it up”?  Just a little more titivation, right? 

Wrong again.  Book writer Douglas Carter Beane has his work cut out following his story line but he does.  And not a single dirty word.  Which makes it a family show, hence all those kids in their expensive seats.  Does not use the “f” word or this would be a typical Broadway show, wouldn’t it...  But repeating “giving it up” –meaning you know exactly what -- over and over again, even in song, even in both acts, well, you could do that all over America right down into deepest Bible Belt and this show is built for travelin’, now that it’s got its Broadway cachet. Even though it started out in Dallas.  “Hey!  Here comes that big Boadway hit, Lysistrata Jones!”. Except it is so high school and so not Broadway and so high school and so not a hit and so high school they maintain rigorous language purity until someone says the “w” word– “whore”. Yes, they do say that word and they do work thqt profession into the plot because, well, it is a perfectly good dictionary word so it’s used over and over again and becomes a big visual joke on a shopping bag from “The Ho Depot”, so you see, it’s really smutty underneath the goody-goody and the cutesy and the hot bodies and isn’t that a dandy,  dainty little message to send to all the kids in the audience.  Certainly ought to wow them all over the country.  Yep, travelin’ show, here we come.

It opens with a bang.  Literally.  Playwright Beane has laced the show throughout with his  version of the classic Greek chorus, a huge, black mama named Hetaira (Liz Mikel).  It’s his little in-joke: the Greeks called their call girls  “hetairas” but here, she’s a goddess, the essence of sexuality, the embodiment of whoredom, and the downright brassy, belting, buxom babe you’ve come to know and love over the years as a club singer.  Costume designers David Woolard and Thomas LeGalley have swathed her enormous endowments in flowing red except for one mammoth breast upholstered in gold which catches every light lighting designer Michael Gottlieb throws on the stage to bathe the  dancers that also serve as cast and chorus and who work harder than Trojans.  The basketball players actually look as if they could really play basketball.  Each of the actors, Alexander Aguilar, Ato  Blankson-Wood, Teddy Toye, Alex Wyse and Josh Segarra is convincingly real enough, youthful enough, skilled enough to stand up to the usual Broadway depicters of college kids.  They are all talented;  Segarra is outstanding. There’s also Jason Tam who plays the nerd who gets the girl, if you please.  And Lindsay Nicole Chambers who gets the guy, even though she plays the comedy nerdess.  The girls, Kat Nejat, Katie Boren, LaQuet Sharnell are equally young, fresh, talented, particularly  Sharnell. Director Choreographer Dan Knechtges keeps them all hopping, spinning  and convoluting.  Scenic designer Allen Moyer maintains his minimal travelin’ set minimal although he puts the band on a shelf above the fray where they perform in superlative style even if the songs by Lewis Flinn go in one ear and out the other.
                        *
Lysistrata Jones. At the Walter Kerr Theater 219 West 48th Street,  Tickets: $25 - $130. Tue-Thu 7 pm, Fri, Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm. 212-239-6200 or 800-432-7250.
                        *
Lysistrata Jones. To encourage the boys to win their first game in  thirty years at Athens U, the girls refuse to “give it up”.  Which was once a good idea.


HISTORY OF THE ROBOT WAR At New Ohio Theater, 154 Christopher St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

And that’s not the whole title:  it’s Samuel and Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War.  Which informs you even less and confuses you even more, were you to ponder the title alone, regardless of the contents within the play, but you must also know that the New Ohio Theater is presenting this production created by The Mad Ones as part of their new season.  Now, you are in tip top form and  in the proper framework to contend with or to appreciate – or both – this semi sci-fi piece done with the most mundane of materials of setting, words, performance.  And then, mull.  If you will.  Too.

The New Ohio Theater has a following, remarkable for a new company, only in its third year.  These auditors come to investigate, hopefully to admire new works by new companies, new writers, new minds.  Most of them –not all, by any means – were born generations later than the objects accumulated on stage perceived as genuine antiques: all these operating vacuum tubes, all those wires and cables making up the core of the radio station, this Russian radio station we perceive, neither dated nor actually identified by creators Marc Bovino, Joe Curnutte and Lila Neugebauer. Neugebauer has directed the suspensfully unfolding play with a disciplined eye for detail on which she builds, not only employing setting, lighting and sound all crucial to its  foxhole atmosphere but also for a level of performance that leaves you in a limbo of wonder: are these people actually people, this announcer an announcer,, this reader a reader, this actress a singer?  There’s little doubt that the guitar player is somewhat a guitar player but his guitar is aggressively red, his beard aggressively present, his cap steri otypically
Russian, all a bit much.

Because these apparent Russians not only deliver the news – where does it come from? –the weather – likewise – and airy persiflage in English (for us? for their radio audience?  meant to be Russian but transmogrified for theatrical purposes?) but also sing/perform bygone American cowboy and bluegrass ditties with conviction and vigor. Then, subside into silence, motionless. Knowing their audience is not actually hearing them? Or not knowing?  The power goes off.  The power comes on.  Cryptic messages are received on the antique equipment, taken and translated with trepidation by Dr. Romanav (Marc Bovino).  Host/Announcer (Joe Curnutte) waxes with hearty, manufactured radio bonhomie to counteract the effects of the messages.  Anastasia (Stephanie Wright Thompson) sings fervently, reads from cue cards she finds on the littered control console.  All their bits and pieces of behavior seems to tell us of a life repeated and repeated under conditions of constant dread, their fear grown customary.  The Robot War outside?  Or are there robots inside this haven, here before us? And when Alexei (Michael Dalto) sings in faulty Russian, do they understand him, do they fear him?  Or his silence?  But – is he truly Russian?  Is she?  And what about the Host/Announcer?  He is referred to as Alasdair by Dr. Romanav, who is called Samuel even though his given name is Mischa?  Are we really in an early, primitively furnished, Russian radio station in a besieged Russian town or is this a construct of Samuel and Alasdair, whoever, whatever they are, surely not Russians, surely not radio station personnel, viscerally attuned to messages that come through the charged ether that seems to control them?

Director Lila Neugebauer has elicited handsome, occasionally electric performances from from her dedicated cast and supportive company.  Set designer Laura Jellinek’s array of vintage wires, tubes and drab furnishings is vital to the fulfillment of curiosity and suspense which alternates on stage and in the audience, and Stowe Nelson’s sound design, Mike Inwood’s lighting design compound the atmosphere.  I think you’ll like it.
                        *
History of the Robot War. At the New Ohio Theater, 154 Christopher Street (in the former Federal Building).  Tickets: $18. $15, students, seniors.  SmartTix.com or 212-868-4444.  Wed-Sat 8  pm.
                        *
History of the Robot War. Life – or its facsimile – in a long ago  -- or not --Russian radio station during the  continuing siege of a war by robots against humans and – robots? Chilling.



PARSONSDANCE  at the Joyce, 8th Ave. & 19th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL
Before their usual sold out audience of supporters and aficionados,ParsonsDance, the Parsons Dance Company, danced their opening night hearts out  presenting world premieres and beloved standbys, works of  giddily glowing founder/creator/choreographer David Parsons.  There were bows and bows and wows.  With an entire company of elegantly surefooted, accomplished performers including among them standout delights by several, it was a triumphant evening for the whole Parsons family whose dedicated  direction has propelled them to international renown, this in a crowded world of dance companies that find it increasingly difficult to distinguish themselves one from another, influenced as they are by each other, particularly if unique elements mark them with something worth emulating.  The  “homages” are rife.

And style worth emulating shines in ParsonsDance.  Dance, in the very essence of its name, implies artistry in  the deployment of positions and steps primarily for feet and legs while supporting and enhancing upper body eloquence and beauty, even in portrayal of ugliness and pain.  ParsonsDance seems to find more opportunity than that for the whole body in their developed movement of shoulders, arms, hands, fingertips, enriching the whole dancer, thus the whole choreography, no more so than in “Round My World”, having its world premiere. The circles of the arms of the dancers making small worlds for each other creates a chain of pleasures.   This newest of Parson’s many ballets is one of his most successful.

ParsonsDance maintains its sunny eminence not only through the security of a bank of more than eighty ballets created by David Parsons but also by constant renewal of a company that seems steeped in Parsons’ body of work although most of the dancers have been with the company fewer than four years.  In part this stems from rigorous selection, yet there is obvious security – if there can be security in the dance world --  in having the prototypical Parsons ideal dancer manifest in the company.  Though 2012 is only his fourth year with ParsonsDance, Eric Bourne’s selection to perform “Caught” the, by now, signature piece of a ParconsDance evening, puts forward the  company ideal.  Yes, every ,member of the company can perform this solo audience pleasing confection;  this dessert of a ballet captures everybody’s imaginations through its trickery and illusions. But Bourne gives it the extra buoyancy he brings to all the Parsons ballets in which he performs, a danseur’s compilation of strength, lightness, technique and confident joy.  He is not an acting dancer, although he relates to his partners;  character roles may be decades away, if ever.  He is, instead, the instant pleasure.  Can’t beat that. Music, settings, costumes, all have their roles in presenting, even shaping ballets, costumes in particular. Although they do not enhance the dancers, in color, line or shape throughout the evening, they don’t get in the way.

  ParsonsDance pieces have an effervescent sensibility relationship one to another.  Clearly chosen to add a “significant” element to an otherwise upbeat program, the darkest ballet, also a world premiere, choreographed by Katarzyna Skarpetowska, an alumna of ParsonsDance, “A Stray’s Lullaby” bears little or no resemblance  to the rest of the program.  It features Skarpetowska as a visiting artist as well as choreographer.  She is an extraordinary dancer, willing to explore quirks of movement, contortions made beautiful by her command over her body as an instrument totally in service to her vision. For once, “awesome” is the right word. Here, the music shaping the ballet is the contrasting confusion of city traffic noises versus harshly observed deep country ballads.
                        *
ParsonsDance. At the Joyce Theater, 175 8th Avenue between 19th and 20th Streets. Tickets: $10-$59.  212-242-0800 or joyce.org.  Tue, Wed 7:30 pm, Thu-Sat 8 pm,  Sun 5 pm.  Mats, Sat 2 pm, Sun 1 pm. Through Jan 22.
                        *
ParsonsDance. The world famous company presents two world premieres in an evening devoted to the pleasure principle.

FARM BOY  at 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE  PAUL

The audience is still settling in its bank of seats, having  cast curious glances  as it entered past the lovingly lighted old tractor which is sole occupant of the acting space.  But no, there’s a chair.  Occupied by an old man reading a newspaper.  And now, a young man with his tool box tinkers with the innards of the tractor, making little headway.  Has the play started?  Yes, as far ass the actors are concerned, even though the house lights are still up.  As they fade, the young man – he’s the grandson – (Richard Pryal), tries the crank at the front of the tractor.  No luck.  Yet.  Under the machine he goes..  He really likes this old pile of iron; he’s going to make it run or bust. And you can tell he really likes his Grandfather, too. (John Walters).  He thinks we would like to know how Grandfather came into possession of the tractor, seeing as how he never ran it, not in all these years.  And between Grandfather and grandson, we are taken back to the days of Joey, the war horse who came back home to the farm, Grandfather’s farm, Joey’s home, where he first met Alex, Grandfather’s father, as a boy.  The boy who loved Joey so much he went off to war during World War I to find him, even though he was under age and the war was all over the continent of Europe.  And he found him, and he brought him home.  And there they stayed.

Yes, Farm Boy  is the sequel Michael Morpugo wrote to his epic story War Horse . This time, it is Daniel Buckroyd who has written a stage adaptation and directed it, a scant little more than an hour’s worth but a world of English people lost over the years and a life style that hardly lives on.  Although it will.  Grandson loves the farm so much he has given up his city life and here he will stay.  Which brings a measure of peace and contentment to Grandfather, partly because of the continuity of the family on the farm, partly because he, too, knew Joey and worked with Joey and loved Joey and in his stories, he has communicated this love to his grandson who is already in love with the horse he never knew, before his time. Especially the story Grandfather tells of how once again, Joey saved the day.

It’s that rankling neighbour, again, Mr. Medlicott, owner of the biggest farm and the biggest belly, who brought on the bet.  Apparently, English farmers are inveterate gamblers, but then, when you think of it aren’t all farmers, betting  on the weather, on the survival of crops, of live stock, of the land, of themselves?  Gamblers, the lot. Mr. Medlicott had bought himself a new tractor and before anyone knew it, he had wrangled Alex, Grandfather’s father, into betting that he could plow a field five times faster than Joey and that old nag Zoey took to do a couple of furrows alone. Well, Alex had had a few beers, too, and the bet was on:  a hundred bales of hay against Mr. Medlicott’s tractor.  Medlicott didn’t like the sound of that but then, how could he lose? Those horses were only fit for the boneyard.

By this time you have been wrapped in the stories and all the characters that Richard Pryal and John Walters have brought to life in their spinning of the big event and the episodes leading up to it, you have been engrossed by the oldest of dramatic devices the world has known, the story teller’s art.  As much as Daniel Buckroyed has directed, as much as he has dramatized, as much as our cast has invested themselves into the stories, we are witnessing story telling, not a play as story telling, but pure story telling.  All I could wish for is a hearth with a fire welling in it, the dimness, the shadows,  the story telling voices.  And there it is, in the middle of Manhattan. And I can tell you the challenge of the details of the contest is every bit as exciting as if you  were there.   You were. You are.
                        *
Farm Boy.  At 59E59 Theaters. 59 East 59th Street. Tickets: $35. Tue-Thu 7:15 pm, Fri, Sat 8:15 pm, Sun 7:15 pm. Mats, Sat 2:15 pm, Sun 3:15 pm.  212- 279-4200. Holiday schedule varies.
                        *
Farm Boy. The “must-see sequel” to  Tony Award winner War Horse. The power of the story teller’s art at its British best.

ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER at the St. James Theater, W. 44th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL
Charitably put, On a Clear Day is the biggest disappointment of the season.  Not just the holiday season, the whole rootin’ tootin’ theater season since July started up the new one.  Of course, there’s lots more hopefuls to come so maybe something else as anticipated, as touted, as  star loaded will come along and dim memories so that you don’t see this one for ever and ever and ever more. Where to begin? In fairness, that  falls to the conceot, from which  everything flows.  Here we have a score with tried and true hits written around a concept long seen as quirky, difficult,  a theatrical challenge which rassled Hollywood to the mat as well. A psychiatrist finds a girl inside a patient’s unconscious who enthralls him and with whom ultimately he falls in love.  Trouble is, she’s English and eighteenth century English to boot.  How to keep such a romance viable?  The glow of your being is far from enough. I don’t know why they didn’t go with the flow.  Time travel works beautifully in the theater, especially with wonderful songs. It had worked for Lerner before he wrote  On A Clear Day.

This time round, director Michael Mayer “reconceived” the show.  He’d had a sensational reconception with his work on Spring Awakening so why not allow him to do some more of the same kind of  process? Re-think the show, figure out some way the hero and the heroine could have their cake and eat it and if not that, at least the audience to feel it got its just desserts. He had a star audiences loved, Harry Connick, Jr.  Trouble is, the top banana in the show was a woman, Melinda, the beautifully weird girl who was two girls,Daisy, the current one and Melinda the eighteenth century one the far more alluring of the two.. That ain’t Connick.  True, he could be cast as the shrink who hypnotizes Daisy and then falls in love with her ancestor and then we’ll shrink Melinda and build up the shrink.  Aha!  We’ll shrink Daisy even further thus shrinking Melinda: we make Daisy David.  Keep the florist bit, make him gay.  Keep the cigarette habit, but then what?  Have shrink fall in love with him?  Not in this show, bubby. No, we make him so nebbishy we feel sorry for him.  And David’s love interest, Warren, what in the world does he see in David?  Problem.  Fatten up the role, give him singing and dancing smarts to beat hell. Give him a big number.  Well, now, you have a co-star and a gay theme. Handle it.  Cast David Turner who can do anything.  And Melinda?  Get an unknown.  Jessie Mueller.  Who turns out so good you co-star her, too.  And Connick?

Connick is now your headache.  He looks better in the touched up photos than he does on stage.  He sings off key too much, saves it for the big belts.  Worst of all, he’s really an out front audience star entertainer, not an actor.  So we’ll stage him out front and up front.  And let him watch his co-stars work.  Fits the character. But he looks like an unmade bed.  So, then set the whole show in the 70’s when everybody looked like the worst they ever did.  And get that wonderful Catherine Zuber to do the costumes.  Which turn out as if she were taking revenge on everybody for the idea.  Even the wigs look like they were yanked from store window dummies forty years ago. And the sets? Christine Jones did those sets?  No, no. Not those concept sets from hell, not Christine. And the choreography, you should pardon my asking?  Joann Hunter?  Well, the dancers and the dancing fit the concept. Aw-ful. Worst wrench of all is what happens to the songs.  They are fitted into the adjusted concept so that their original meanings and reasons for being are – well, prime example: take that beauty, ”Come Back to Me”, a demon of an up tempo love song.  Now, it’s just plot purpose: Dr. Bruckner, Connick, sends out his ESP to get his patient, David, back in the office by singing this song to him.  Do you wonder he is not comfortable as he is doing so? Neither are we. You never saw an audience so tense with body English, fighting squirming.

No charm, no grace, no wit, no pace. Makes the original version a work of towering genius.
                        *
On A Clear Day…At the St. James Theater,  West 44th Street near 8th Avenue. Tickets: $35-$302. 212-239-6200. Tue, Thu 7 pm, Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun 8 pm Mats Wed, Sat 2 pm Sun 3 pm.
                        *
On A Clear Day You Can See Forever. As reconceived in every department by director Michael Mayer,  the show is the season’s biggest disappointment.

SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS  at Park Avenue Armory, 67th St & Park Ave.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL


A rainy opening night. Wealthy patrons and lean shanked students mingle in the Victorian splendor of the baroque Armory’s principal rooms now slowly being restored to haughty new life.  The great, paneled doors are swung open to the vast space of the drill hall.  We enter. Shadowy ranks of handsome chairs in three banks of bleachers frame a brilliant floor, painted in slashing patterns  by sophisticated lighting from beneath.  Far along the floor, a black curtain of a wall created by nothing.  One by one, the dancers, in stark grey tones of skin tight, streaked apparel, pants and shirts for the men, even less for the women, slowly move on silent, black clad purposeful feet, toes and heels grasping at the lighted floor.  The music: Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” crashing mostly over our heads and enveloping us.  The dancers become the music; the music becomes the dancers.  Their focused tension becomes ours, our  focused attention becomes theirs. Shen Wei, himself, choreographer, designer, inspirer, dances among them, remarkable, no more remarkable than any other dancer of his company. Two dancers over six feet tall inevitably stand out, sinewy, slender, perfectly centered, every movement part of the next making the impossible possible, believable, beautiful.  This “Rite of Spring” is the first of three dance works to be performed in their program, the last, “Undivided Divided” the evening’s world premiere, created for this enormous space in this enormous space.  Anticipation, tension, extraordinary concentration all build from one choreographed  exploration to the next.  This company is completely of a piece, as if it had been built and schooled for decades in Shen Wei’s vision of movement.  The dancers in “Rite of Spring”, incredibly sinuous, incredibly supple, retain their frozen faces even as their driven bodies sweat darker and darker.  They never touch each other; in this reading the music commands otherwise; Shen Wei commands otherwise. Each superb artist is alone even in groups, even in stillness or convolutions whose astonishing beauty would in other concepts, other hands be simply acceptable modern ugly.

“Folding” follows.  The newly prepared floor is now white, milky translucent.  From the wings, creatures, elongated heads atop bared torsos, bodies skirted in vivid red trains, float across the great floor, feet invisible, slowly sailing, may flies on a still pond.  Other double creatures, black skirted, ebb into view, divide inch by inch,, separate, but do not part.  The music: huge Tibetan chants. All these creatures with complicated red trains focus on what would be the great upstage gray wall separating them from the unknown void beyond their lighted floor. Ponderously, the great wall vanishes. A  coven of a dozen of these sail silkenly into the darkness, their red trains gently rippling.  The black gowned double creatures do not follow.  The reds return, floating.  The blacks and reds together engage in a beautiful curtain bow to us, Shen Wei in their center.  Only afterwards does one wonder at the extraordinary commitment and daring as well as beauty that we have just witnessed; a single misstep  on the demanding, beautiful trains and there would be instant disaster.  Shen Wei’s early training in Chinese dance arts has been transmuted seamlessly into  the modern world; his company has combined the trainings of East and West. Shen Wei’s many honors – he is, in addition, a MacArthur Fellow –have multiplied the gifts of many dancers.

“Undivided Divided”, created  specifically for this incredible space during his present stay as  Armory artist in residence, stretches physical dimensions, mental dimensions, emotional demotions.  The vast floor is rearranged.  Ten lighted spaces, each seven feet square, separated by ten dark spaces of like size stretch back into  an area installed with glittering plastic boxes, many small enough to serve as building blocks to be piled into towers, others big enough to be cages or traps for encased dancers.  A long, white blank, thirty feet by seven lies in their midst,  The audience has been sent out while the installation has been erected.  When we return, there are already naked bodies in the white lighted squares. No, almost naked; the dancers all wear flesh colored briefs. Out of the thunder, the percussion begins.  The audience is invited to take off shoes and walk amongst the seventy squares laid out as the dancers perform.  For the few of us who remain in our seats, the view of hundreds of slowly strolling clad men and women silhouetted against the bare, brightly lighted dancers, each confined to his or her space, is dizzying, then mystifying, then just right. The dancers , each in their own concentration, are carefully choreographed.  Suddenly, they all switch to their adjacent dark square spaces, each square containing paint..  Soon the dancers’ bodies are daubed with white, with black, with red, with blue.  Dancers in couples join on the white squares, sharing their colors.  The muddy results are a metaphor for this immense ballet, still in construction, an experience sure to grow and one to be treasured by a participating audience.  Shen Wei stands tall among the artists of the world.
                        *
Shen Wei Dance Arts. At the Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue between 66th and 67th Streets. Tickets: $35. 212-933-5812. Or armoryonpark.org.
                        *
Shen Wei Dance Arts. When an audience becomes part of a significant artistic creation, it becomes an extraordinary event.  Happening now, in New York.



BLOOD AND GIFTS at Lincoln Center’s Newhouse Theater
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

In Kabul, In Afghanistan, where the great Mughab emperor Babul insisted he be buried, the inscription on his tomb reads:  “If there is paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.”  In 1930, noted world traveler Rosita Forbes declared that “Kabul has a beauty like nothing else on earth.”  By 1950, Afghanistan’s population was 5,000,000, mostly in walled villages.  There were no roads,, no railroads, no electricity, no running water.  People lived as they had for thousands of years and looked forward, if they looked at all, to  continuation of the same.  Then, a beneficent ruler sought to bring his country into modern times and petitioned the United States for aid.  He was turned down.  He went to his neighbors, the Russians.  Who poured in, built schools, built high rise buildings, gave them refrigerators, televisions, -- but no electricity.  Still no roads either, no railroads.  Then Russian paranoia erupted.  By 1979, convinced the Afghanis were going to swing to the Americans despite decades of Russian indoctrination, the Soviets invaded.  There was resistance.  The Russians slaughtered 20 percent of the population.  And the United States saw an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: aid the Afghans and defeat the Russians, once an American ally a generation earlier.

Which is when the play, Blood and Gifts begins.  James Warnock (Jeremy Davidson) deputized by his CIA bosses to make contact with Pakistani intelligence services has orders to funnel weapons, munitions, supplies through Pakistan to the Afghani “Freedom Fighters”, the mujahideen.  He warns that no American “fingerprints” be shown.  The Pakistanis welcome the approach, have a couple of hidden agendas of their own: make Afghanistan a puppet state while they siphon huge amounts of dollars and supplies for themselves.  To further their aims, they build up a radical Islamist to  head Afghanistan, known to kill anyone opposed to his views.  His ultimate agenda is worldwide jihad.  (And he is still alive and working on it.)  Which radicalizes all the previous peaceful, separate clans, sects, tribes, cults in this area of the Muslim world into a common focus: no matter what their differences may be, their aims pour into the global jihad vision, all of them siphoning American aid along the way.  And that is where we are to day on the road to Hell.  But back in 1991, the time of the play, these were only flashes of distant lightning.

Warnock consistently overrides his British counterpart Simon Craig (outstanding Jefferson Mays) builds what he believes is a lasting, trusting relationship with Abdullah Khan (Bernard White) in Afghanistan because he does not trust his Pakistani contact Colonel Afridi (Gabriel Ruiz), and ultimately suffers inevitable betrayal, just as the Russians have long engendered and anticipated. In fact, Warnock’s relationship with his defeated Russian counterpart, Dmitri Gromov (Michael Aronov) proves better than his relationship with his own CIA boss, Walter Barnes (John Procaccino).

Director Bartlett Sher underscores playwright J.T. Rodgers’ grim take on America’s culpability in continuing and fostering the military implementation of an abysmal foreign policy while clearly establishing the dealing and double dealing of the Pakistanis and the Afghanis who all but revel in every skein of wool they pull over American eyes, while the British representatives look on dazed and amazed, not in, not out of the game, resentful of their status yet glad of it.  Let the Americans pay for everyone’s brutal follies..  Set designer Michel Yeargan, known for his insightful, poetic settings in many plays, here eschews that bent, makes no attempt to capture the dichotomy in earthly beauty being despoiled; he goes right to the simplest of devices and set pieces.  Costume designer Catherine Zuber fills this deliberate void with sharply defined costuming, for establishment, for color. Director Sher’s casting zeros to the heart of the matter:  all his Americans, Warnock (Jeremy Davidson), Senator Birch (Robert Hogan), Barnes (John Procaccino), aides, staffers, assistants, come right out of long familiarity with what we see of  Stars and Stripes Americans  on American TV, giving fine, predictable performances.  At the same time, the Russian, Pakistani, Afghani principals are just as strong, just as brilliant in performance and more believable because they are less known to us.  I also admired Pej Vahdat, Gabriel Ruiz, Liv Booth, Paul Niebanck. Playwright Rodgers makes it clear and warns of things to come: in spite of all  the years of sickening, expensive involvement, loss of lives, squandering of treasure, we know little more about this part of the world we have had our share in brutalizing than when we first ventured there.  Kabul is no longer  unspoiled, “the pure gem at the center of the Islamic world”. There is September 11, 2001, and our response. Now, none of us is pure. 
                        *
Blood and Gifts. At the Mitzi Newhouse Theater, Lincoln Center, Broadway at 65th Street.  Tickets: $85. Tue-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat, 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.




SEMINAR  at the Golden Theater, 252 .W. 45th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE  PAUL

Once upon a time in the high euphoria after World War II, Millie and Norman and June and Gene met in weekly pursuit of the literary gods in Millie’s and Harvey’s dark apartment at Eighth Avenue and 46th Street. Everybody was trying to write the Great American Play. Lots of luck.  Millie became “Young Widder Brown”, Norman became Mailer, June became gossamer and Gene turned into Zelig. And the Great American Play got away.  This cluster of self help kids, younger by far than the clutch of writers in Teresa Rebeck’s scathing play, Seminar, would have shriveled and died if they had been assaulted  by mentor Leonard, the  vastly aching conductor of the seminar in question and god knows they’d never have been able to afford the five thousand bucks Leonard charges for ten weeks of his insights  and advice in helping them become the  crashing, slashing writing stars they want to be. Well, the yearning goes on, today, perhaps more than ever. Meet Teresa Rebeck’s group of four.

  There’s Kate (Lily Rabe).  It’s her apartment.  Well, not exactly; her parents own it.  Well, not exactly; it’s rented, long time rented so it’s still under rent control. Gasp. There’s Doug (Jerry O’Connell) who is very with it, knows all, tells all, an aged adolescent.  There’s Martin (Hamish Linklater),  even older adolescent, lean, hungry, secure-insecure.  And there’s Izzy (Hettienne Park),  hottie, who makes up for lack of writing talent by having everything else.  These four, the mentored.  They have the stuff.  Or do they? They do have the bucks. Or do they?  And the hunger. Ah, yes, the hunger. Times have changed but the hunger remains. Then there’s Leonard (Alan Rickman).  Their  mentor.  Oh, god.

Well, you learn, if you have the stuff.  Or you die, you just die, even if you don’t know it.  Leonard’s great curse is that he’s dead and he knows it because he’s got the stuff and he’s still dead.  He’s been killed.  Literarily, you understand, literarily. We learn why eventually. Playwright Rebeck sees to that, as she sees to all machinations a bit too neatly even for her actors to rationalize, valiant though their efforts may be. Leonard is tainted.  He’s been in the glare of fame and smacked with notoriety, not that anybody distinguishes. No such thing as bad publicity.  If you’re killed these days, just turn it into cash; all cash flow is success.  Or die.  And some literary gotta-bes refuse to die, have more lives than LeStat, draw more blood. Leonard, bleeding, sees blood letting as a present day refining procedure and commences with Kate. He knows a lot about Kate just from her apartment, the huge, vapid painting, the easy, available bar, the easy, available exits.  She pushes back when her buttons are pushed.  Predictably. Lily Rabe’s scenes as Kate flick by like  another old movie on the tube.   Who’s next? Playwright Rebeck knows what she’s doing: the “epater les bourgeois” bits:  some bared tits,Izzy’s, some bared ass,  Kate’s, some  bared ego, Martin’s, then to bared pain, Leonard’s, all studded with guaranteed New York guffaw lines.  (God, the guffaws.  Will the desperation in New York audience laughter never cease?) Thankfully, director Sam Gold curbs his actors’ passion to milk a yuk; they play it straight. Or not, as the case may be. In fact, the androgyny factor in the show is constant, a fashionable frisson in spite of or because of the babes who are all out sexy females and work it.

But the underlying pain in Alan Rickman’s portrait of Leonard, the mentor from hell, is a work of pure art. Rickman is magnificent.  You even believe enough in his sexiness to give playwright Rebeck a pass in her parade of persona you couldn’t care less about initially, each inhabiting a cookie cutter personality so meretricious you could plotz, concealed pain or numbness everywhere.  And yuks, yuks, yuks. But – even so – is there, might there, really be a genius in this quartet of me-me’s? Hamish Linklater, as Martin, is giving the best performance he’s ever.  He makes you think, yes, perhaps, he makes you believe that under the callow there’s divine fire, that he is  a writer.  I liked Jerry O’Connell’s over the top writing whore. I loved Hettienne Park’s totally credible all sex no talent performance. David Zinn’s sets and costumes are so apt, so telling, they’re beyond literary, they perform in the play and director Gold knows it, uses them to inform us about his people. But the evening belongs to Rickman and it’s a fascinating evening.
                        *
Seminar. At the Golden Theater, 252 West 45th Street near Eighth Avenue.  Tickets: $51.50 - $136.50  212-239-6200. Student Rush $29.50.
                        *
Seminar. Alan Rickman in an award inviting performance as the mentor from hell, conducts a seminar not only in how to be a writer but how to captivate an audience.




VENUS IN FUR at the Samuel Friedman Theater, W. 47th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL
    After a year, Venus in Fur  has arrived on Broadway, fifteen minutes longer and fifteen minutes better, with a new leading man and a supercharged leading lady filling the same role in which she skyrocketed to prominence from nowhere.  Nina Arianda commands full star attention, so much so that in this, her second outing on Broadway, she gets a hand on her entrance.  Chew on that. Hugh Dancy, on stage at opening, is very good but clearly overmatched.  And, in a way, that is what the play is about: the dominating relationships of man over woman and woman over man.  None of this equal partners nonsense, no.  Different nonsense: mistress and servant, master and slave.  Thomas (Dancy) a playwright directing his own work based on the Sacher/Masoch studies and biographies, cannot find an actress to play Vanda, his leading character.  There is no one compelling enough, feminine enough, bewitching enough, commanding enough to fulfill the dimensions of the creature he has envisioned and, though he will not admit it, longs for.

Crashing her way into the rehearsal studio laden with bags, umbrella and fresh, wet air just as Thomas has given up and is readying to go out into the stormy weather is this wild, leggy, verbose, profane, fascinating jumble of a girl cursing the fates that made her late for this audition, consternated that her name, Vanda, --the same as that of the leading lady in Thomas’s play! Can you imagine!? – is not on the audition list. The wild creature strips down to black bra, black panties, black stockings with black garters, black high heeled booted shoes and is ready to rehearse before Thomas can protest.  And protest he does, exercising his authority.  But she’s exercising something much more powerful and Thomas gives an inch.  She takes the whole nine yards.  Thomas, helplessly intrigued, pretends to give in to her badgering, consents to a quick, quick audition because he’s late for meeting his fiancée, but, ah, but—who is ploying whom?  In a few minutes, he realizes she not only has a copy of his script, she knows whole scenes as if they were her own and he is easily pleased and teased into playing the scenes full out with her  instead of just reading cues for her. Before he knows it he is throwing himself heading into his play and she is no longer this crazy blonde actress, she is Vanda, the Countess who demands his total subjugation. Now, phone calls from his fiancée are irritating interruptions.  “Who are you?” he demands of Vanda as she slides seamlessly into the role of dominatrix.  And he finds himself in the world he has longed for, in his own play, in emotions bigger than life, “operatic” emotions he has yearned for and never experienced.

To say that Nina Arianda is simply bewitching is to state the obvious.  Every sinuous movement of her lovely body, even the crazy antics she  needs tp   express her own excitement in being taken seriously and in knowing she has conned this poor guy into whatever she wants is to see bewitchment.  We see a lovely, enchanting creature who has wound a man around her little finger or any other part of her amazingly seductive body she chooses. And yet, if we were to step outside the spell she has cast over us, we might be able to ask: is she really so beautiful, so alluring, so seductive? I have only seen this kind of bewitchment twice before in decades and decades of theater going.  I thought these enchantresses were gone forever. Praise heaven.  Or maybe praise its opposite. There may be witches in various theatrical entertainments all up and down the Great White Way but they don’t hold a black candle to this kid.

Yet again this season, set designer John Lee Beatty has created an environment at once stark rehearsal space  required but subtlely much more: he gives his actors a raked floor, than which there can be no more energizing environment; you cannot be static on a raked floor; it pitches you at your audience.  Anita Yavich’s costumes are so suitable – to coin a phrase – you don’t quite realize you’ve been propelled  into the feverish reality of your actors and accept them as they accept their costumes as uniquely theirs in their play within their playing. It’s all so gorgeously convoluted.  Playwright David Ives has turned the screw for this production three turns past credible but we go with his ratcheting up the sexual tensions, egged on,  no doubt, by devilish director Walter Bobbie.  Amazing how sexy putting on clothes can be.  It’s way too late to be sensible.
                        *     
Venus in Fur. At the Samuel Friedman Theater. 261 West 47th Street. Tickets: $57-$121. 212-239-6200. $27 student rush.  Tue, Wed 7  pm, Thus-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, St, Sun 2 pm.
                        *
Venus in Fur. The Off Broadway hit debuts on Broadway better than ever. With Hugh Dancy and new star Nina Arianda reprising her original role. Hold on to your hats.










SONS OF THE PROPHET at Laura Pels Theater, W. 46th St. near 6th Ave.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

If, through sheer self indulgence or the best of luck you have the good fortune to see  Sons of the Prophet and then see  Relatively Speaking the next night, or vice versa, you will not only be extravagantly entertained but royally educated by works coming from famous pros and that of a miraculously  gifted newcomer.  Provided, of course, that you are something more than a member of the laughing classes who rise eagerly to the lure of anything labeled “comedy”, ready to laugh vigorously, a needful exercise these days, more vigorously than you are permitted in civilized society.  But theater is not civilized society, it is liberty hall in the dark, the safest of places to belly laugh no matter what.  And matter, unfortunately, does matter. Sons of the Prophet is a dazzling display of virtuosity in its own right, unfettered perhaps deliberately by the usual constraints of working in the economics of the theater.  It is framed on Khalil Gibran’s “The Prophet” and wedded to the characters and the story  of these relatives of Gibran’s. One set?  Be damned. Write where you need to go and let the production follow.  Playwright Stephen Karam is blessed with wise, caring producers who give him and his play everything he needs, chief of which is a leading man. I’ve seen the marvelously talented Santino Fontana grow into this tower of charismatic intensity and wonder if there is anything that will ever be out of his reach.  He is simply wonderful. Because he gives and takes so deeply with everyone in the fine cast, he centers the play, fulfills every nuance of the playwright’s vision and makes director Peter DuBois look very good indeed. He keeps his head in spite of the laughs that old pro Joanna Gleason works for and hangs onto. He knows the laughs are not gags, that they are natural facets of character which gifted, gifted, Stephen Karam spins almost effortlessly in his deftly woven dialogue. And when Karam does indulge in a witticism, such as “You’re white in the same way a Jewish person is white”, it comes plausibly out of character Gloria’s prying into the life of her employee, Joseph.

Joseph (Santino Fontana) works as a temp for Gloria (Joanna Gleason) a literary agent foundering for having published a fake memoir; she is also awash in the sudden death of her husband, gradually losing her grip on life. She – and we – do pry at Joseph’s reticence, refusing to speak about the tragic death of his father, the result of a prank.  The story’s unusual details have roused the interest of the media.  Vin, the prankster, fearful for his athletic scholarship seeks forgiveness from the family.  He’s sorry.  And he needs permission from the school board to play in the upcoming big game. Joseph’s Uncle Bill, aging, in sorrow over his brother’s death and in fear of his encroaching feebleness, makes loud waves and moves in with Joseph and Charles, his nephews. Joseph’s medial problems compound his anguish over his dead father  and when Uncle Bill (excellent Yusef Bulos ) declares his shared suffering because they’re all together in their grief, Joseph explodes: “We’re alone!” It’s often been observed how close tragedy and comedy lie and even in such a moment, the laughing classes laugh.

Playwright Karam  stretches our attention tolerance from time to time with plot and story implausibilities such as: why must Gloria indulge in intrusive fiddlings with Joseph’s papers?  And her cell phone, her dead cell phone? Why would brother Charles (very good Chris Perfetti) take Vin, the  prankster jock (Jonathan Louis Dent) up to his bedroom then leave him there?  We know both brothers Joseph and Charles are gay and  find this apparent sexual  iteration grating, especially in the circumstances.  But why does Joseph run to Timothy, (Charles Socarides)  the reporter pursuing the  story indulge in a sexual flareup with Tim when he avoids intrusive inquiries? We accept these breaks in their broken lives because we’ve become enmeshed in these people Karam has created and these splendid actors have brought to life. Set designer Anna Louizos’s many suggestions of settings add to our involvement and director DuBois melds one scene into the next with everyone synchronized, even when we, the audience, become the audience at the school board hearing deciding Vin ‘s fate. Though we are alone – despite sharing laughter in the dark –we share catharsis, each in our own way, one of theater’s richest gifts.
                        *
Sons of the Prophet. At the Laura Pels theater, 111 West 46th Street.  Tickets: $86. 212-719-1300. Tue-Sat 7:30. Mats, Wed,Sat,Sun 2 pm.
                        *






MAN AND BOY at American Airlines Theater, West 42nd St.
Reviewed by EUGENE  PAUL

Oh, what a matinee show, intrigue, connivance, endless clever revelations, above all, a matinee idol at its center dispensing wit, charm, grace, assurance with every studied pause, every airy wave, every portentous glance, a fascinating monster of heartless –or not – evil, just right for these vile times we live in, surrounded as we are by such grotesques, but without the charm, the varm, the wow factor that is Frank Langella who proves with effortless sureness that age cannot wither.  Comforting?  As Count Gregor Antonescu, an international financial czar of enormous, mysterious money deals, teetering on the brink of  disaster and prison, Langella thrills us just being in the presence of such a figure of frightful fascination even as he reminds us over and over that our media is rife with such stories of present day colossal crooks.  But Terrence Rattigan set his play in 1934, five years into the dread days after 1929.  And he wrote this pitch perfect play in 1963.  It fits Langella like a glove.

The setting, by designer Derek McLane, is hardly fitting: it is, in Antonescu’s words, “a dump”, a basement apartment in Greenwich village, the home of his deliberately estranged son, Vassily, or Basil Anthony as he calls himself.  (Adam Driver).  Vassily is his own matinee idol and he and his inamorata, Carol (Virginia Kull) have just sated themselves in an afternoon tryst in Vassily’s bed before he goes to work playing piano at a local bar.  A man walks in, just like that.  Sven (Michael Siberry) is Antonescu’s factotum.  He is taking over the apartment, even though he has never been here before.  Vassily had no clue that his father even knew where  he was.  Antonescu has an important business meeting with another financial wizard and has chosen this totally unsuitable setting for a variety of reasons, chief of which is to keep his potential money source, Mark (Zach Grenier) off balance. And the meeting is full of surprises, not least of which is Antonescu’s completely immoral use of all materials on hand to seduce Mark as well as confuse him. Because he knows Mark is a “fairy”. Originally, when the play was first done in 1963, this was brutally shocking.  Now, the scene works because its cynicism is brutally amusing.  Of course, using his son as the  sexual dangle before Mark, he loses his son.  Again.  But – there’s a second act to come.

In act two, playwright Rattigan is having a much harder time keeping all his jugular toys in the air in spite of every nudge director Maria Aitken elbows into the proceedings.  Were it not for the colossal assurance of her star, Frank Langella, there would be much more visibility of all Rattigan’s pulleys and wires.  The fact is, that Rattigan’s intention flags.  And now we are left with our actors and their characters they have invested.  And boy Vassily, once again under the spell of his love for his father, does everything he can think of to save him, for the magical merger of the morrow that would indeed save him is not going to take place.  Antonescu’s imminent arrest is already in the papers and on the radio.

Fifty years ago, this kind of play, a staple in British theater, was already on the way out toppled from its throne by working class plays.  But even today, one tends to forgive all with a mesmerizing star.  Mind you, he has a good company surrounding him.  Michael Siberry as Sven is gruffly splendid as the faithful – to a point – retainer.  Zach Grenier breathes vulnerable powerful money man with a secret.  Antonescu’s wife, the Countess --he bought the title-- (Francesca Faridany) is as brittle and phony as she should be, Brian Hutchison’s rattled financial adviser makes an excellent fool and a foil, and Virginia Kull is lovely to look at in or out of designer Martin Pakledinaz’s clothes but out of her depth.  Adam Driver’s size and power keeps him in the frame with Langella but make no mistake, this is Langella’s show.  Enjoy.
                        *
Man and Boy. At the American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street. Tickets: $67-$117. Tue-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat, Sun 2 pm. 212-719-1300.
                        *
Man and Boy. Frank Langella filling the bill as a fascinating monster in this apparently tailor made vehicle about a mighty money man about to meet his fate.

LEMON SKY  at the Clurman, Theater Row, 410 W. 42nd St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL
 
Lanford Wilson died earlier this year rich in honors,, solid in reputation, securely a substantial personage in the Theater. Lemon Sky is not among award winning dramatist Lanford Wilson’s prize plays but it is so replete with the elements that made Wilson the writer he was that it deserves being seen at this time although it is already a period piece.  His theatrical explorations, innovative as well as borrowed but fresh for their time, forty years ago, may raise an eyebrow now and again but not two. His  play opens with a young man trying to tell us –he’s talking right out at us, eye contact and all –that he’s left where he was living in Arkansas with his mother and found his way to San Diego to live with his father.  He just couldn’t live in Arkansas any more.  Why?  He doesn’t say.  Originally, when the play was first done, he didn’t have to say a thing; one look and you could see he was one of those hippie kids.  Today, Director Jonathan Silverstein has him quite, quite ordinary, nice looking kid, ordinary clothes, ordinary hair, no beads, no piercings, no tattoos, just a kid.  But then, director Silverstein tells Keith Nobbs who plays Alan, the central character and generally acknowledged  Lanford Wilson’s alter ego, to tell us with his behavior what Wilson does not put into words until the final devastating scene: that he is gay.  He never says so;  his body language tell us.  And tells his father. Yet he hungers for family and to be part of one.
 
Doug (Kevin Kilner), has remarried; Ronnie (Kellie Overbey) is as soft and feminine as he is hard and macho.  They are eking out a pretend middle class existence by being foster parents to two girls, Penny (Amie Tedesco) who is racing as fast as she can into womanhood, and Carol (Alyssa May Gold) who is two years younger and terrified of catching up to Penny. Alan and Ronnie’s two boys, not yet teen agers, are surprisingly nice kids.  Wilson pours his observations of their life together to the point where we wish something would happen instead of all this filler.  But it’s not filler.  That Something is going on, right before us.  Little by little we see that Doug is not only the charming, hail fellow but also easily  capable of being an abuser. Ronnie fears him but sticks to him.  Alan, our protagonist, maintains a suspect innocence.  All this is not new and playwright Wilson knows it, so abruptly, Alan and Douglas step out of frame to have the play’s big dust up, only to have Alan say not now, to save it for later.  Which is flatly outside the frame of the play.  But – the device works. Wilson uses it again. We’ve been told that Something is Going to Happen. We pay worried attention to Ronnie’s defense of Doug instead of defending Alan. She is trying to protect the suburban life she’s made with him, even if it costs her her conscience.  Alan appears not to know what is happening to him or why Doug’s rage is blasted at him.  We in the audience know.  Doug is not going to let his world fall apart by being accused as an abuser. hHe fights back harder and louder and dirtier.  That’s what being a man is all about.
 
Keith Nobbs, as young Alan,  has the weight of the play on his shoulders and carries it artfully and courageously, a young, innocent gay man boy who wants to be ordinary. Kevin Kilner, as his father, brings a complex range of insights to his role; he is splendid.  Each of the actors who play the children, Zachary Mackiewicz, Logan Riley Bruner,  Alyssa May Gold, Amie Tedesco, are just fine. And Kellie Overbey is excellent as the linchpin that brings them all together as a family, no matter what its underpinnings. Bill Clarke’s scenic design and Jennifer Paar’s costumes catch enough of the flavor of forty years ago. Don’t be surprised if we see more of Lanford Wilson’s works returning.  He’s worth it.
                                                                        *
Lemon Sky. At the Clurman Theater, Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street. Tickets: $59.75. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm, Mats Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
Lemon Sky. A cold, clear look at young Alan’s journey to his remarried father’s house in search of being a part of a family group.
 
 

WAR HORSE  
at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, 150 W. 65th St.
Reviewed by
EUGENE PAUL

Photo Credit: Paul Kolnik

One of the great joys of New York theater is its audiences.  They’re the toughest, they’re the smartest, they’re the most cynical, the most jaded, the most “ seen that”, “done that”, so when a simple, all heart children’s story comes along, even as superbly performed as War Horse  there’s a very good chance these gods will turn down their thumbs because – well, just because.  And to see this super-savvy, powerful, judgmental force turn into thrilled, wide eyed, sobbing children because deep down, under all the sophisticated layers, there is a dreaming child, it restores one’s faith in the humanity of all of us.  Such is the power of theater, such is the power of War Horse, this huge, sprawling, beautiful, terrible tale. During World War I, eight million horses were killed in battle, one million of them English horses shipped to France for use by British troops.  A mere 62,000 were returned alive to England.  This is the story of one of them, Joey, the war horse of the title, sold by a drunken father who broke his promise once again to his son, the son who raised Joey from a foal.

Just to tell you in a few swift words cannot convey the vast sweep and wonder evoked by  co-directors Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris in their breathtaking production.  The huge, thrust stage of the Beaumont Theater is surrounded by an inky black curve of portentous space, above it a slash of white as if a strip of the black had been torn away and in that ragged strip, scratchy, moving sketches abet the action below on stage by the enormous cast.  It is 1912 in rural England. Farmer Ted Narracott, hapless drunk, bumbling ne’er do well, angry at the world and himself, is driven to a frenzy by his taunting, well to do brother and spends the entire mortgage money, 39 guineas, on an unknown, untested foal.  That much is story.  Earlier, we are introduced to the foal, and have succumbed to the awesome magic of watching him come alive, for the foal, and indeed, Joey, as he is later known as a full grown horse, later a war horse as well asall the other war horses, and other creatures, the birds, the vultures, the goose, all are the artistic creatures of the Handspring Puppet Company of South Africa, direct artistic descendants of Stanislavski, and geniuses who make us willingly believe in them as live as you and me. We are already enchanted, captured in Nick Stafford’s engrossing play, filled with the essence of Michel Morpugo’s deeply knowing story.

Young Albert Narracott’s passionate devotion to his baby horse – its care is forced on him by Albert’s resourceful, fearful mother, Rose – deepens and we watch the devotion returned by Joey, young, skittish, full of fun and life, then swelling to the total trust between Albert and his huge, lovely friend, Joey, even when Albert’s father, helplessly lured into wagering Joey’s life and their farm and their future is again fiercely rescued  by the mutual love and trust between young Albert and the horse, Joey.  But – war intervenes.  It is 1914.  Britain goes to war and the army offers 100 pounds for horses for cavalry officers.  And Ted succumbs again; he sells Joey to the military.  Joey goes to war.

War for cavalry officers becomes instant disaster. Joey’s proud officer is blown off him by machine gun fire.  Slaughtering cavalry is easy, common.  If a war horse and his rider survives the guns, there’s a devastating new plague coiled everywhere:  barbed wire.  Millions of horses are trapped and slowly die in the deadly steel webs. And then, Joey is trapped. But for Joey, rescue comes through  a tiny truce between combatants so that they may  free the splendid, bleeding animal they so  admire. And Joey is alone, in no man’s land.  Until the Germans find him and hitch him to a cannon.

Albert, beside himself with worry, lies about his age and joins he forces. Somehow, he is going to find his horse in all that grim chaos.  We ache at this fool’s errand.  We are trapped, enthralled, horrified by the immediate suffering, the intimate stories. It was the bloodiest conflict the world has ever seen. War is there before us, not on some remote screen.  Then, when Joey has survived the guns, survived the barbed wire, a huge monster looms before him ready to crush him.  Tanks have entered the war. 

It’s not often you read a listing of the cast of characters for a play and see among the names all those who manipulated the endearing, intelligent puppets we have come to see as equals among performers.  Here, at Lincoln Center, you will find the many names of those who give life and wit and charm to Joey as a foal, to Joey grown, to Topthorn, Coco and Heine, other war horses, to the goose on the Narracott farm.  The scavenger birds eating at dead, war torn bodies go nameless as do the swifts in the sky but they’re real, too.   The sets and costumes and drawings of designer Rae Smith, Tony Sedgwick’s created horse movement, Paul Constable’s shocking lighting, the music of Adrian Sutton.  We’ve made it all real.  I deeply admired the very large, very in tune cast, especially Boris McGiver as Ted and Alyssa Bresnahan as Rose, the parents of Albert, movingly played by Seth Numrich, and the wonderful puppeteers who create these living creatures. More than the rehearsal work, the imagination, the skills, they give the show heart. We need all we can get.  Don’t miss War Horse.
                                                                        *
War Horse. At Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, 150 West 65th Street.  Tickets:$75-$125. Telecharge.com. warhorseonbroadway.com. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats Wed,Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
War Horse. A major theatrical event. A horse raised in love and trust is thrown into the charnel of flesh and blood that is World War I. Live his adventures.  Unmissable.

SISTER ACT  at the Broadway Theater, Broadway & 53rd Street
Reviewd by EUGENE PAUL

Photo Credit: Joan Marcus

Never underestimate the power of glitter and voom.  And decibels, decibels, decibels.  Sister Act, the movie, now with Music by Alan Menken and Lyrics by Glenn Slater,  has been battling its way to Broadway for years and, with a new infusion of witch doctors and play doctors plus every yard of shiny, sequined material in the five boroughs, it looks like a hit, it feels like a hit, it blasts like a hit but it isn’t a hit.  That’s not to say it won’t be a hit because a hit is, after all , made at the box office and if you stay around long enough and promote and promote and promote, you’ll end up like a hit.  Biggest hits box office wise are  Phantom and Wicked. They are known for being hits, established as being hits and are sold as hits.  They are, therefore, hits because the box office receipts are phenomenal. Nothing succeeds like success. It’s not the reviews.  Good reviews can help but not always.  Bad reviews can hurt – but not always.  Middling reviews can be picked and pruned and culled for the words that sell and put together with clever promotion and keep a show selling enough until all of a sudden it’s been there a long time so it must be a hit and that is what works.  Reviews for Wicked and Phantom were not the greatest but cullable and saleable and – mega hit.  Sister Act has the same potential, plus a significant new star, Patina Miller, a talented cast, endless energy, and my god, that glitter.  And it’s about nuns!

Well, it gets to be about nuns in the most natural way: a beautiful, talented mobster’s girl friend (said spectacular Patina Miller) just happens to be there when he bumps off a stoolie.  She runs and has to hide.  Her high school crush, Eddy ( charming Chester Gregory) now a cop, hides her in the local convent.  Big joke.  Told you it was the most natural way.  Naturally, she doesn’t want to be there, and naturally, the Mother Superior ( somewhat at sea Victoria Clark) doesn’t want her there, either, so we have conflict and take off.  And to keep the reluctant  diva in her nunnish cell and out of sight of her murderous boy friend, they’ve got to give her something to do, right?  Can’t go making a nice, lively, talented girl do nunning all day and all night especially when she doesn’t want to do nun of it. So, Mother Superior, full of misgivings – this is a show, right –tells her to work with the choir.  Singer girl is happy,  Choir is nonplussed.  Be cause they are terrible: no voices, no timing, no talent.  And no moves, like you want them to move.  Like not a nun.  Hey, it’s a show.  And next thing you know, they’ve got voices, they’ve got timing and they’ve got spirit, lots of holy and otherwise. And moves, all the moves this talented girl singer learned out there in the real world, the real, night club world, the real, lowdown night club world. Hallelujah.

Naturally, all that new spirit and talent and zest for singing in this new nunsensical way gets them noticed.  And Deloris – oops, disguised name is Sister Mary Clarence – couldn’t be happier. Now this is nunning!  She loves them nuns and they love her and they start winning face time on the tube with their swinging gospels.  And damn…somebody spots Deloris – er -  Mary Clarence.  And thuggy Curtis Jackson, Deloris’s heavy papa ( terrific Kingsley Leggs) sings a very funny number  about what he’s going to do when he finds his baby: He’s gonna kill her.  Naturally.

But before he gets to that, there are a string of cute to show stopping numbers individual cast members get the opportunity to deliver and to shine in.  Which is nicely out of the ordinary and thoroughly enjoyable. No, not just the nuns.  The guys, that cop.  I got a kick out of the dumb mobsters John Treacy Egan, Caesar Samayo and Demond Green in the “Lady in the Long Black Dress”  number.  And the nuns got funnier and cuter.  And the play doctors got their hands into everything.  And it’s all better than the movie.  Which certainly had its admirers. Although, director Jerry Jaks lays on a chase sequence  which needs another doctor, not just him, but by that time we know we’re coming into the home stretch and the girls are gonna break it up. But who expected all those sequins?  Mother Superior, too?  Victoria Clark was not happy.  The audience was.                                                                                                                                                *
Sister Act. At the Broadway Theater, 1681 Broadway at 53rd Street. Tickets:$51.50-$126.50.
Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats: Wed,Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm. 212-239-6200.
                                                                        *
Sister Act. What happens when a mobster wants to kill his singer girl friend and she hides out in a convent and the nuns can’t sing? Maybe a hit happens.    

JERUSALEM
at the Music Box, 239 W. 45th St.
Reviewed by
EUGENE PAUL

Photo Credit: Simon Annand

Sixty years ago, there was a country wide, shore to shore, end to end movement to establish “Jerusalem” as the national anthem of England.  “Jerusalem” was the song of England, the school hymn for every great British school, the inspiring reminder of the lingering glory of the aftermath of World War II, glory among the ruins, but glory nevertheless of the victor.

                                    “And did these feet in ancient time
                                      Walk upon England’s mountain green?
                                    And was the holy Lamb of God
                                      On England’s pleasant pastures seen?”

Blake’s wildly innocent, trustingly religious poem was linked to the British layered history of magicians, trolls giants, sorcerers, woven into its animist past, and thousands of British ghosts, goblins, ghoulies and enchanted princesses, of fairies, sprites, elves, fauns, witches and all the ancient tales of kings and queens and murder and betrayal and love, the entire mystique, both human and fantastical are all haunting this huge, train wreck of a bitterly yowling play.  Of course, much of it doesn’t work for us.  We are Americans, our past is far shallower and painted in fewer colors.  You have to be British to feel the anguish in Jerusalem which you know at the start when that sad, dilapidated child in her absurd, evocative outfit sings so blankly what still stirs millions of Britons.  And us?  Leaves us flat.  In the dark. We react to their frenzy, their anomie, their utter, jaded despair.  But to the true Britons the hymn still sings, deeply:

                                    “And did the countenance divine
                                      Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
                                    And was Jerusalem builded here
                                      Amid those dark Satanic mills?”

“Rooster” Byron, over the hill wreck of a daredevil stuntman, lives deep in the lush Wiltshire woods in a rundown old Airstream trailer, its surrounds littered with the detritus of failed human living.  He is the local character.  He deals drugs somewhat, he tells tall tales his hangers-on believe – or not – he is their refuge to escape to, to escape from. He is not universally loved.   And of course, he lives on public lands, his eviction notice finally being enforced: this piece of forest is to be developed, his squat bulldozed for new housing units.  “Rooster” gotta go.  And that is the plot for the next three hours of scenes, anecdotes, antics, amusements – and nodding. True, for us, many of the characters in this charming setting (by Ultz) interest us, some have stories behind them we want to know, some have close ties, family ties, to this besotted ringleader, this numb, this aching  shambles of a man, this symbolic ruin of what is left of Britain, “Rooster”. And playwright Jez Butterworth pours every bit of it on stage, his evidence that Blighty is right blighted. But at the very last, he gives his star, Mark Rylance who inhabits “Rooster”, a spectacular spotlight in a spectacular performance, to vent the raw, long buried face of the smoldering rage of the true, old Briton, inveighing against this shoddy, humbled, empty husk inhabited by TV images and dulling drugs.  And the fierce invocation calls out to the old gods, the old spirits, the old host of spooks, still there after thousands of years,  to rise.  And something happens.

It’s a braw, brave production.  Director Ian Rickson must know what Americans respond to because he feeds it to us and if we don’t get the real play, he’ll make his splash anyway.  Amazing.  It works.  He follows the formula: blunted attention spans from decades of instant TV gratification need to be handled, here or in England.  We get scene after scene, just long enough.  Lots of them.  Among them, many with MacKenzie Crook, outstanding in a surprisingly layered performance that leaves you wondering for more.  Alan Davis makes a bright glint throughout the performance as the Professor. Barry Sloane catches fire. But the whole show is Rylance. Even his appalling, blank moments, his frequent unintelligibility, are parts of his remarkable range of physical and emotional fireworks, every bit of it brilliantly cogitated.  The flashes he allows of “Rooster”’s real self are thrilling. Planned. The moments when you sit back and question what is going on are all in other aspects of the production but not in Rylance.  What’s odd is that there isn’t a tear, a lump in the throat anywhere in this cri de coeur play.  That’s devastating.
                                                                        *
Jerusalem. At the Music Box. 239 West 45th Street.  Tickets: $61-50-$126.50. 212-239-6200. Tue, Thu, Fri, 7 pm; Wed, Sat 8 pm. Mats Wed,Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
Jerusalem. Mark Rylance in an A to Z gamut delivers one of the juggernaut performances of the season in Jez Butterworth’s blunted allegory of a play.

WONDERLAND
at the Marquis Theater, Broadway at 45th St.
Reviewed by
EUGENE PAUL

Photo Credit: Paul Kolnik

Somewhere in the bowels of the second act a character labeled “The Victorian Gentleman” appears.  It’s Lewis Carroll, Rev. Dodgson himself, unnamed, of course.   Because this version of “Alice in Wonderland” is not like anything in his Victorian imagination, which he more or less ruefully refers to in his song, “I am my own invention”,  Alice is not a little girl in this Wonderland re-created by Gregory Boyd and Jack Murphy.  Alice (Janet Dacal)  is a grown up, struggling author with a daughter of her own, Chloe (Carly Rose Sonnenclar) who is confusingly written and directed to be (a) a petulant wiseass, (b) a wistful, winsome lonely kid, (c) a resourceful self preserver when she is ludicrously captured by the mad Mad Hatter (Kate Shindle) a new character Lewis Carroll never dreamed of, who intends by hook or crook to take over Wonderland from the Queen of Hearts (Karen Mason).  Something else L.C. never knew.

All of this does not launch best foot forward, jauntily, quirkily, tastily until Alice falls asleep and dreams with eye popping visuals by Sven Ortel easing into the three top flight numbers “Advice From a Caterpillar”, ”Go with the Flow” and “One Knight”.  And then your are thinking. “Finally, things are looking up”.  The Caterpillar (E. Clayton Cornelious is a sinuous, colorful delight, especially his six sets of legs (all belonging to six knockout girl dancers) bewitchingly costumed and choreographed.  (Thank you, choreographer Marion Derricks, thank you costume designer Susan Hilferty). And thank you Frank Wildhorn, composer whose music ranges from the delightful to the ho hum, but then, so does Cole Porter’s. Home run, Caterpillar and parts.  Followed by a redone Cheshire cat (Jose Llana)  who is so hot he thinks he can do the vanishing act and leave just his smile. “Call me Che,” he grins,  It’s a funny number.  Really funny is the next number because of the tongue in cheeky performance of Darren Ritchie and his four gogo henchmen.  They’re so “kewl”  every kid in the audience  -- there are lots of them – digs them and joins their older generation in showing appreciation.

And that’s it, folks.  From then on we are on the new show book writers’  treadmill plotlines which indicate that they have lost their heads, with Alice’s adventures trying to rescue her daughter  whose own adventures are focused in trying to keep her own head.  Remember “Off With their Heads!”?  The Queen of Hearts smiles as she snarls  her famous dictum, meaning she doesn’t mean it, but then didn’t we always know that… Which is why the mad Mad Hatter, in a series of Susan Hilferty’s fetching costumes really really wants to off every head in her mad way to queendom. But costume cleverness only adds to a clever show and this is not a clever show, by a long shot, not since the first three big numbers.  One of its biggest drags, of course, is Alice.  Alice, let’s face it, is not interesting.  Never has been. And pretty Janet Dacal plays her as if she’s not even interested, which is logical but, hey, the show, Janet, the show…It’s Wonderland that was interesting when Lewis Carroll was in charge and still is; wonders have never ceased, which may be why we’re so always looking for more. Which means this Wonderland  needs to find its own wonders, and here and there actually succeeds.  All it needs is more wonders, not here and there but there and there and there and so on. If this show is meant to travel and to please audiences from Frankfurt, Kentucky to Frankfurt, Germany those wonders just can’t cease the way they do. From the handsome look of it, money  has not been spared. But a little magic mushroom sure couldn’t hurt.
                                                                        *
Wonderland. At the Marquis Theater, Broadway between 45th and 46th Streets. Tickets: $56-$139.75. $30 student same day rush.  877-250-2929 or wonderlandonbroadway.com. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed,Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
Wonderland. Alice’s adventures from a different perspective: she’s grown up. And so are many of the old Wonderland characters. Kid friendly as ever.

ANYTHING GOES at the Stephen Sondheim Theater, 124 W. 43rd St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Anything Goes opened for the first of seven times in New York on Broadway in 1934 at the Alvin Theater, which is now the Neil Simon Theater.  It is playing at the Stephen Sondheim Theater  which used to be the Henry Miller Theater.  It originally starred Ethel Merman as Reno Sweeney, William Gaxton as Billy Crocker and Victor Moore as Moonface Martin. Ethel Merman has become a legend in her own time and ours.  William Gaxton and Victor Moore prove once again how fleeting is fame although both gentlemen had substantial careers with Victor Moore’s more or less revived  in the latest edition of the show through the incomparable Joel Grey’s comparable imitation of the once incomparable Victor Moore. But enough of that. The current Billy Crocker portrayer, Colin Donnell, is a better looking version of Gaxton, sings better and dances better, has superb amplification which Gaxton had to supply on his own and blends into the scenery which Gaxton never did. Sutton Foster, the current Reno Sweeney, sounds as electrifyingly brassy as Merman ever did and all it took was decades of technology  but who cares…She dances a million times better than Ethel could ever have done and in spite of being utterly miscast is utterly delightful. The biggest two things about this production which sends the audience hysterical from time to time are (1) the old Cole Porter hit songs, and (2) the new Kathleen Marshall familiar direction and choreography which smashes through two – count ‘em – two huge numbers that stop the show and are  reasons to see the show: the first act finale full cast full set all out tap dance number, “Anything Goes” and the second act wowser night club number, “Blow Gabriel Blow”, both of them featuring Sutton Foster singing and dancing her kishkes out.  

And there you have it. Without Cole Porter there would be no Anything Goes no matter who does what with the embarrassingly ditsy story, written by more famous names, rewritten by even more famous names, and constantly tweaked, adjusted, changed in both stage and film and TV versions.  Porter numbers from other shows now appear in this Porter show but he was very okay with portering a Porter tune from one of his shows to another. As is the public.  We LOVE Porter, deservedly so, and great waves of that love for Porter float the current success. So that the following synopsis of the story should not turn you off, you hear? Or you won’t get to hear the Porter songs you’ve known and loved since - - like forever? Yes, there are also Porter non-hits in the show == this version has a purely Porter score, no interpolations of any other composer –and while we may love at least a hundred Porter songs, Porter wrote thousands..Be braced..They will in no way diminish your continuing adoration for the ones you know, just sort of make you wonder. (I think the “Be Like the Blue Bird” number must have been written for Victor Moore’s special comic skills.  It certainly needs them)  

Anyway, story:  Billy is madly in love with Hope Harcourt (lovely Laura Osnes) whose mother, Evangeline Harcourt (indefatigable Jessica Walter) is spiriting her away to Europe to marry Lord Evelyn Oakleigh ( goofily charming Adam Godley) to repair the family fortunes and social standing at one fell swoop.  Elisha Whitney, (John McMartin doing his wonderful shtik) Evangeline’s old flame, and Billy’s boss, tells Billy to stay in New York and sell all his stock while he  sails away to make a pitch for Hope’s mother.  Billy, totally nuts about Hope, instead, stows away, hoping against hope for Hope, dodging his boss as nimbly as he can in these comedy capers. But he runs into Reno Sweeney, who once had the hots for him and still does.  Also getting out of the country are gangster Moonface Martin (Joel Grey) posing as a fiddle case carrying clergyman, (you know what’s in the fiddle case), some Chinese gamblers, and so on and so on.  Does it get all sorted out with much hiding and ducking and disguising?  Are you kidding? Of course, but not before the big numbers burst on the audience and   several small ones as well. Laura Osnes has silken moments dancing and singing.  The  comic Chinamen are politically incorrect and amusing, the singers and dancers are rugged and energetic.  The period costumes by Martin Pakledinaz are as awful as they should be and beautiful when they should be, too . Derek McLane’s sets are useful, occasionally cheeky, and everybody on stage thrives in the vibes they get from a house full of Porter lovers. What’s not to love?  
                                                                      *
Anything Goes. At the Stephen Sondheim Theater, 124 West 43rd Street. Tickets: $87-$142. 212-239-6200, 800-432-7250. Tue-Sat 7 pm. Mats,Wed,Sat,Sun 2 pm.
                                                                        *
Anything Goes. Sutton Foster and Joel Grey headline this bright, brash revival of the great Cole Porter’s famous hit, back on Broadway where it began.

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN  at the Neil Simon Theater, 250 W. 52nd St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

There’s a certain look, a certain air to the Broadway Broadway musical that distinguishes it from the surprising variety of musical entertainments playing on the Great White Way generally lumped as “Broadway” musicals. Many of them aren’t. Some are compilations of songs that have sold in the millions and are now generating more bucks on Broadway from customers who have bought into the music they heard on records, be it pop, rock, country, movie musical or doo wop or whatever mix might hang together strung on a book written around the songs.  Sometimes those shows work brilliantly and if they don’t, there’s still the songs. There are , of course, the revivals, some of them better than in their earlier go round.  But the musical, the new musical made to order by top pros working together in a common undertaking, knowing how each contributes to the entire, polished creation has a gleam, a finish none of the other works of musical collaborative art achieves because the aim of the Broadway Broadway musical is first and foremost to be continuously entertaining, no matter the origins of the show to give you the biggest bang for the buck.  If they have strong stories, good, a range of emotions, laughter to lumps in the throat, good, songs you like and would like to hear again, good, and at least one smash song, great.  That alone can put you over the finish line. Catch Me if you Can may have it all if that elusive big song gets identified in its  persuasive score.

Book writer award winner Terence McNally has drawn on all his cleverness and expertise to fashion a surprisingly strong book from a  weirdly challenging story: the true tale of a teen age con man so gifted he bounced $2,000,000 worth of bad checks around the world as he frazzled the FBI  for years, finally ending up working for them for decades dispensing his expertise in their behalf,  right up until today. Young Frank Abagnale Jr. (Aaron Tveit) idolized his charming con man father, Frank Abagnale Sr. (Tom Wopat) and adored his none too faithful mother, Paula Abagnale (Rachel de Benedet) but when their love nest flew to pieces from the tempests that blew through their lives, young Frank took off.  He couldn’t bear the hurt. And it was so easy for him to slip into another, safer identity, such as – an airline pilot?  This kid had never flown a plane! It was a great way to spread rubber checks around and certainly led to FBI confusion.  They had never seen him, they knew nothing about him.  Their chief investigator in charge of nabbing him, Car Hanratty (Norbert Leo Butz) just knew that anybody this good at the con had to be an older, experienced man, someone like – well, himself, Hanratty.  When the chase got too close to the pilot identity, Frank easily took on another safe identity: a doctor.  Who fainted at the sight of blood. And gave up being a doctor for the love of Brenda (Kerry Butler) whose father was a lawyer.  So Frank became a lawyer. It’s not even fiction.

Even hopscotching through such a yarn cannot keep  us engaged unless there are characters with grainier facets than the usually  smoother musical comedy personas and here, placing a crotchety, sentimental, lonely middle aged FBI man in pursuit of a wide eyed, sassy kid, there are meaty riches that spin off the  people as well as the situations and into the songs.  Frank’s con man father sings “The Pinstripes are all they See” teaching Frank Jr. misdirection. And when things are bad, “Butter Outta Cream” is a lesson in turning hardship to your advantage. Butz brings down the house in a song and dance number that blasts “Don’t Break the Rules” and follows with a range of emotions in “The Man Inside the clues”.  Hanratty (Butz) and Frank Senior (Wopat) do a heartbreaker of a number “Little Boy, Be a Man”, paralleling their lives and that of Frank Jr. The songs, the songs are so good, sixties style music gorgeously arranged and orchestrated by composer Marc Shaiman and put to dazzling use by choreographer Jerry Mitchell and director Jack O’Brien. They have the resources of the best looking, best dancing dancers and show girls  whose sheer panache wraps you up like a security blanket and the bright, brisk confidence of  talented Aaron Tveit carrying the show as Young Frank. I particularly enjoyed the performances of Tom Wopat and Norbert Leo Butz.

 William Ivey Long has provided fetching and fitting costumes, David Rockwell’s settings help speed the show, handsomely lit by Kenneth Posner,  all of the sound by Steve Canyon Kennedy superlative. Satisfaction all around.
                                                                       *
Catch Me If You Can. At the Neil Simon Theater, 250 West 52nd Street. Tickets: $30 - $137. Ticketmaster.com or 877-250-2929. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed 2 pm, Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
Catch Me If You Can. Aaron Tveit, Norbert Leo Butz, Tom Wopat, gorgeous girls, great songs, captivating story. A gleaming  Broadway Broadway Musical.

THE MOTHERF*#KER WITH THE HAT at the Schoenfeld Theater, 246 W.45th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

If the deliberately cutesy, offensive title doesn’t make you want to stick a finger down your throat, back up, take a deep breath and smile; there are genuine pleasures in the show, which, judging from the unbridled passion for deliberately bad language on Broadway this season is pulling in customers who revel in the speech swill they wouldn’t have in their homes. The ---Hat (sidestepping the whole language issue) has some of the most remarkable performances we’ve seen and a range of emotions that are truly inspiring. Director Anna Shapiro continues to amaze with her gift of drawing substance from the thinnest materials and encouraging actors to explore depths they always knew they had but never dared expose except in class.  She has taken playwright Stephen Adley Guirgis’s best work and made it better, launching him at last on his lifelong goal, the Broadway rainbow and the pot of gold.  Director and playwright, seasoned pros, know Broadway audiences die to laugh.  They take that ready made hysteria and feed it unmercifully until everythone is helplessly captured in comic thrall and then – let ‘em have it.  Because The ---Hat, in its narrow focus,  richly displays the complexity of throwaway people.  But you ain’t gonna get there  unless you laugh yourself satisfyingly silly first as preparation for getting hooked.

Jackie, huge, gangling, explosive (simply marvelous Bobby Cannavale) bursts into his girl friend’s apartment laden with his dear, little presents and his dear, good news: he’s got a job.   Veronica, pencil thin tigress, hot, hot, hot, (seriously good Elizabeth Rodriguez) wraps herself around him, then splits to the john to get ready because Jackie is already taking off his clothes.  He leaps on the bed, turns and sees – a man’s hat.  A man’s hat? A man’s hat? In here?  He runs to it, picks it off the table, sniffs its insides, runs to the bed, sniffs the pillow, bends, sniffs the sheets and cold, sullen fury takes over.  He struggles into his clothes.  The enticing Veronica comes back to – disaster. The ensuing struggle to appease Jackie with her lies gets steamy, the language bluer and bluer, the gestures rudely spastic, the mood still funny but anxious funny instead of funny funny. Jackie storms out of the big scene they are half enjoying which we are entirely enjoying.  He goes to his sponsor.

Oh, yes. Jackie’s on parole after two years in the slammer.  The sponsor?  Smiling, reasonable, soothing Ralph D. (amazing Chris Rock).  We instantly like him –he’s Chris Rock, for crying out loud – but we instantly do not trust him the way that Jackie does. Nor does his wife (tiny, seething Annabella Sciorra) who clearly detests the easy blandishments Ralph dispenses.  We laugh and laugh. Of course we are not too surprised when Victoria makes a big play for Jackie, half anger, half sex and a little less surprised to learn in passing that the hat that precipitates this cosmic comic furor belongs to – who else? – Ralph, but we are endlessly surprised by the twists and turns of the struggle Jackie suffers in this “That’s life” learning experience, as Ralph puts it. Playwright Guirgis has given us characters whose dark sides reveal vulnerabilities that hold us silent and spellbound.  Jackie brings us to tears.  These nothing, nobody people who are, after all people, human, shaped by each other and their surrounds, are connected to us in spite of their abused, abusive lives.  We glimpse ourselves and are thankful for where we are, out here in the safe darkness.  

In  this extraordinary cast, unquestionably dominated by Bobby Cannavale and Elizabeth Rodriguez none is more unexpectedly amusing, touching, reassuring than Yul Vasquez as Jackie’s cousin Julio.  It’s comedy as high art with its lacing of pain.  Chris Rock’s astonishing performance is jarring in its cynical bleakness, a small masterpiece.  Annabella Sciorra, intense, betrayed, is somehow out of scale with the outsize performances surrounding her which unfortunately diminishes her contribution. Scenic designer Todd Rosenthal’s frequent, high tech set changes lend an energy to the proceedings early on but run out of steam, one flip too often. His striking, fixed setting is a marvel of suggestion.  Donald Holder’s lighting, Mimi O’Donnell’s costumes, Acme’s sound designs, all function appropriately. I think they’re going to be around for a while.      
                                                           
                                                                        *
The Motherf*#ker in the Hat. At the Schoenfeld Theater, 246 West 45th Street.  Tickets: $66.50-$131.50. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm. 212-239-6200.

                                                                        *
The Motherf*#ker in the Hat.  Chris Rock, Bobby Cannavale head vibrant, bravura performances propelled by  brilliant director  Anna Shapiro in this compelling debut play.

BOOM TOWN at the New Victory Theater,
42nd St. near 7th Ave.
Reviewed by
EUGENE PAUL

Photo Credit: Darin Basile

If you’ve often wondered what goes on in that splendid New Victory Theater building, you are obviously not a child nor do you have access to children year in and year out who would go wild for the theatrical fare inside.  Well, not that wild.  Never have I seen a more well behaved cadre of our little dear ones, and not because they’ve got the requisite accompanying adult.  No, it’s because they seem to think it’s their theater and nobody’s gonna mess with their theater, especially them.  (I wondered at the tired looking couple down front who were settling their three kids on necessary seat pads – the aisles were full of young theater attendants doling out armloads of seat pads).  At the same time the mom was struggling with a chest pack that consisted of still another kid barely months old.  This family starts their theatergoers early.  Nor were they alone.  There were several chest packers down front at the foot lights breathing in the life extending theater essence.  Ah me, that has grown up deprived.)

It was Oscar Hammerstein --, no, not the grand one we know but his grandfather -- who built this theater in 1900 and lived long enough to see it metamorphose  into a very successful burlesque house, which today’s customers would doubtless find educational but we’re not there yet.  The New Victory – better known as the New Vic – 3000 miles west of the Old Vic – scans the globe for child friendly productions incorporating dance, circus, music, puppetry, all or some, for the theater, to present as fare for New York’s little ones.  And their bigger baggage, of course.  Which the Cirque Mechanic’s Boom Town fulfills successfully or just adequately, depending on your height and accompanying perspective.  For instance, at curtain rise – yes! A real red velvet theater curtain! – we are confronted with a tall, skinny guy climbing down a tall, skinny  rope ladder into the scary blackness of what has to be a mine.  A gold mine. We are in the town of Rosebud in 1860 and Clem (Steven Ragatz) is an old prospector  with the longest, skinniest, fakiest beard you ever saw, so we know he’s gonna be funny and every five year old present gets it.  Just to stick with Clem for a bit, later on you’ll see such  wacky acrobatics by Clem you’ll giggle.  But wait until you meet them all.  And since most of them are graduates of Cirque de Soleil, you’ll giggle some more, even laugh out loud or gasp or both.

There are two thirty foot tall poles standing to either side of empty downtown Rosebud.  We all, young and old, accept them.  Of course. We don’t have a clue to the thrills coming.  Then, Tex (Michael Redinger) and his crew arrive and open up what turns out to be Tex’s Saloon.  Which causes Wes (Wes Hatfield) to laugh; he and his crew unfold Wes’s Saloon.  Hmm.  Tex offers a sign: “15 cent beer”. Wes whips out a sign: “10 cent beer”. And the war is on. Except Tex has a beautiful daughter (Kerren McKeeman) who is, of course, an extraordinary aerialist and Wes has a handsome son (Clint Bobzien) who’s an incredible acrobat and this Romeo and Juliet of Rosebud do all kinds of intricate leaping and balancing as their parents, also terrific leapers and balancers, try to keep them apart.  It gets very jumpy.

Director Chris Lashua and his co-director and choreographer Aloysia Gavre find every conceivable reason for this  entire cast of aerialists, acrobats, jugglers, contortionists, balancers to run, jump, juggle, do everything they can to delight and amaze their constituent audience of five year olds and everybody else younger and older and by golly, they do it.  What’s a little strange for these experienced theatergoers of five or six or seven or eight is to find their story characters stepping out of their story to ta da! finishes looking for applause after their  superb wiggles.  Pure circus.  Our audience adapts gracefully.  I also enjoyed  Elena Day as an absurdly gifted klepto-clown, Hannah French acrobat deluxe, Charlotte Greenblatt who actually balances on point in ballet shoes, Andre Nurse, super acrobat and the entire crew of riggers led by David Freitag whose rigging – remember those poles? –kept everyone flying and Duane Lashua, for fathering Chris Lashua, really making it a kid show.  Cirque Mechanic is new and building.  Gonna reach the moon.
                                                                        *
Boom Town. At the New Victory Theater, 42nd Street just west of 7th Avenue. Tickets: $9-$25 members, $14-$38 non-members.  Box office 646-225-3010 or newvictory.org. Call box office for schedule.
                                                                        *
Boom Town. In the old west mining town of Rosebud, thars gold in them thar acrobats, clowns, aerialists, jugglers and rigging machines to gladden every child’s heart, any age.

GHETTO KLOWN  at the Lyceum Theater, 149 W. 45th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

John Leguizamo in his one man show Ghetto Klown. Photo by Carol Rosegg 2011.

Of recent years there’s been a boomlet as performance art in actors talking about themselves, probably one of the easiest notions to do in this world.  Who else has his own material so immediately to hand, IS his own material, works on his own material to make it constantly viable in the market? Kind of a natural thing. Sometimes, these autobiographical delights – at least to the actor –grow into entire shows, music, lights, a formatted script, costumes, props, the whole nine yards, and sometimes, the show really is a delight.  Nobody is better at delivering just such delight than John Leguizamo.

Something’s happening to John Leguizamo and it’s all to the good and it’s rare in the theater: he’s growing up. His slash and burn observations on everything and everyone including himself are ripening into sensibilities of occasional tenderness.  But not too much.  There’s still that irrepressible kid in him, now thoroughly theater wise; he’s too much of a craftsman to allow more than a touch of treacle.  His recipes are more sophisticated now; he laces his basic hotly spiced home cooking with subtler, learned sauces, not just remembered and recalled bits of life’s thrashings but something a tad tastier.  He’s a damned good cook.

Ghetto Klown is all Leguizamo, more than ever.  Its “Me” “Me” autobiographical frame starts early and doesn’t quite finish because he knows his audience always wants “More” “More”, even after Freak, Sexaholic, and Mambo Mouth,  his other solo performances, written by him, all award winners, all torn from his own life, all avidly followed by – followers, who  else?  Who else is a good question.  Scanning the audience, it’s surprising in its diversity, from the mink and chesterfield set to men and women in sequins and leather, as well as lots of young people who threw on anything and old people who should have thrown out everything instead of wearing them again and again.  That’s a revelation of Legizamo’s wide appeal, a combination of early discoverers and recently attracted newcomers.  He shows distinct signs of becoming a brand.

LeGee enters wired – of course, literally and figuratively-- as part of Aaron Gonzalez’ projection screen mounted prominently in designer Happy Massee’s dim, tenement backyard scattered with props for working the performance.  He dances in, effervescence all over the stage, until he confronts his audience flat out announcing he’s going to feed his soul on their combined soul before he gives back some of his soul  to them.  Instant early linkage, even though it’s followed up with a rapid patter of highly spiced aphorisms such as the necessity for being brutally honest: once you can fake it you’ve got it made.  Which might cause you to take the rest of the show with a grain of salt, true, but then, there’s charm, sweat and lots of sweet and sour Latin shmooze as he savages everyone and you love it. No, not everyone; he’s kind to Lee Strasberg and it rings true, even if he’s faking it. As he rambles, he interjects – carefully – bits of Spanish which breaks up the Spanish literate.  For the others, he give this piece of advice:   “You wanna learn Spanish? Call your bank and push button two.” He sends up the stars of his first major film, Kurt Russell, Steven Seagal and Sean Penn, not gently, more like sandpaper.  His love affair with Cat, a foot taller than he,  scratches amid the laughter.  His laceration of his mother and his father propel the line of his biographical story and mellow as he goes, still laughing at them but oh, so touching in the end.  And his grandpa, how complex, how tender, how derisive, how respectful.  Leguizamo’s contradictions round out with growing maturity what he once was prone to flatten. Much more compelling. He makes his old jokes new. He makes his new jokes variations. He is never still and when he is still, it’s hilarious, deliberate showbiz savvy. He shapes and paces his life story to fit the demands of the stage performance and as both writer and performer he is more than he hoped to be, the Latin Olivier. If in future I see him in a play or movie not of his own making that’ll be fine.  He’ll be fine, super fine.  But in his solo performances, he’s unique and better than ever.
                                                                        *
Ghetto Klown. At the Lyceum Theater, 149 West 45th Street.  Tickets: $29.50 - $116.50. 800-432-7250 or ghettoklown.com. Mon, Tue, Thu 7 pm, Fri, Sat 8 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
Ghetto Klown. John Leguizamo’s electric solo performance in his hilarious, no holds barred style with a couple of touches of mellow that make it all even better.

 

DOUBLE FALSEHOOD at Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

It’s been 250 years since Double Falsehood was last produced.  Back then, Lewis Theobald’s adaptation of the long lost missing play by Shakespeare had been feverishly contested as indeed Shakespeare’s and as hotly contested as not.  Complicating the contests is the fact that the play, Double Falsehood, is believed to be the work of a collaboration by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher.  Complicating that further, the title of the original play, Cardenio, written 1612-1613, derived from a story told by Cervantes in “Don Quixote”.  We are not going to venture into the history of Shakespeare’s sources of his plays which were many and far flung or whether all the writers of his day practiced similar borrowings.  Suffice it to say, there’s enough Shakespeare in this play – apparently – to arouse present day Shakespearean scholars to be excited enough to venture “holy grail” labels and post performance chats, lectures, articles, news stories.  The Classic Stage Company has a tiger by the tail.  Or, quite possibly, a tigger by the tale.

So that, while you are attending the performance, part of you is saying, “Yes, this has characteristics and devices Shakespeare used in play after play, the frequent deployment of letters driving story, the disguises, the madness, the feigned madness, the reconciliation staged through a noble’s compassion.  But then, so might a forgery, yes?  And didn’t many of Shakespeare’s contemporaries indulge in similar devices?  Yes, in the early part of the play the language  hath a Shakespearean ring in its verb endings which are not present in the latter part of the play. Proving? That Will wrote the first act? But are we paying so much close attention to potential flashes of lightning and missing the performance?  Fie.  On to the performance.

We are struck at the outset by the exotically simple, powerful set designed by Oana Botez-Ban, who has brilliantly provided her director and cast with the almost perfect design and materials for that terribly difficult kind of staging which classicists attempt again and again, the furniture-less set.  Which means lots of sitting and lying on the floor as if it were the most natural thing in the world.  And in this case, serves directly Brian Kulik  splendidly because it surely eases the case for sitting and lying on the floor, using the floor, rolling around on the floor, when you have an oriental carpet under you.  All the carpets are Persians or pleasant copies, rich, exotic, supple, providing these textures at once and throughout.

Story? Leonora loves Julio, and he, her.  Leonora’s father wants her to marry Henriquez who has a rich and titled father whereas Julio is subservient to Henriquez , not of sufficient family or fortune to warrant being a full friend, certainly not a suitor.  Henriquez seduces, rapes Violante.  She goes into hiding, ruined disgraced, not fit for anyone any more.  Leonora’s father forces her to accept Henriquez who professes his profound love which we know is false.  The wedding is broken off as Julio goes mad, Leonora rebels, and all is chaos.  Later we find Violante wandering in the mountains, disguised as a boy, accosted by sexually depraved shepherds,  (all those sheep, you know), rescued by mad, mud streaked, lost Julio. Meanwhile Henriquez has enlisted his brother, Roderick to abduct Leonora from the nunnery in which she has taken refuge.  They smuggle her out , drugged, in a coffin. Meanwhile , again, brother Roderick has followed up on is suspicions of his brother, Henriquez, has found Violante who reveals her betrayal and her plight at his brother’s  hands.  He also finds Julio, restores his sanity and we are ready for the great denouement with the Duke assigning the proper couples their fates. Almost as if by magic, director Kulick and his company succeed in involving us in this well worn farrago but then, are we not familiar with all of Shakespeare’s plays, even as we view them again and again?  Of course.  And quite possibly, we may come to the same state with Double Falsehood in future productions.

I admired Clayton Apgar as Julio, Slate Holmgren as Henriquez, Hayley Treider as Leonora, Jan de Vries as Don Bernardo, and enjoyed Bryce Gill, Phillip Goodwin and MacKenzie Meehan too.  Oana Botez-Ban has dressed the company as distinctively as her handsome  setting, Brian Scott has designed smart lighting, Christian Frederickson weaves music and sound into the weft of the entire production – and, yes,  I vote yes.
                                                                        *
Double Falsehood  At the Classic Stage Company, 136 East 13th Street, near Third Avenue.  Tickets: $70 weekdays, $76 weekends. Tue-Sat 8 pm. Mats Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm. 866-811-4111 or 212-352-3101 or classicstage.org.
                                                                        *
Double Falsehood. In a handsome and fluid production, the CSC stages the first performance in 250 years of what may be Shakespeare’s lost play.

CACTUS FLOWER  at Westside Theater Upstairs, 407 W. 43rd St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Watch out.  If the stairs don’t get you, the show will.  And if you survive that far, the show’s anti-hero is a dentist. And if you’re really made of stronger stuff, the show started out as a smarmy French bedroom farce, now how strong are you… Yes, it was taken over by the legendary Abe Burrows, rewritten by Abe Burrows, directed by Abe Burrows.  Back then Abe Burrows was all over the place, loved and admired.  And the show ran for 1234 performances! Well, it did star Lauren Bacall who was in her salad days so that might have something to do with getting over the hump of the very opening scene, which is, as we all know from the movie remake and from the remake’s remake, said lovely girl apparently having attempted suicide because she despaired of her lover == that dentist! –ever leaving his wife and making an honest chick out of her.  You know, sort of an Abigail’s Lament without the music? Except this, this dentist! never did have a wife.  Even the three kids he told poor Toni he had were figments, all of this was super strength beard protection from getting too involved and actually having to marry the chick that that dentist, Dr. Justin Winston, was having it off with, mind you. Cad? Don’t you  think…

So what does a cad do, to get out of this situation but convince his perfectly nice but dope of an office secretary to impersonate the wife and lie badly about the kids because of course the office nurse was madly in love with her boss but never said boo and would do anything for him. Which is not riotously funny, or even a little bit.  And all the Abe Burrows funny lines are being delivered as if they were dead meat you’re heard better before – and they are – and they were. It’s hard to stay awake, even for the set changes.  Which are frequent and abysmal.  And designer Anna Louizos who is usually so deft has designed sets that look like revenge for their low budget so you might just as well snooze on.

Of course things get more complicated – it’s a farce, remember – but even with the cuts director Michael Bush has made (three characters were eliminated, may they rest in peace) the show runs on and on  and on.  Which I suppose gives you time to wonder how did his happen? Doesn’t it make perfect sense to take a one time hit show and revive it and milk it?  After all, most of Broadway is just that.  And this one has impeccable credentials. Goldie Hawn got an Oscar! Even the current movie version is in the nabes right now. With Jennifer Anniston, of course. So what happened?

Everything, that’s all.  For farce you have to cast people who are bewitching, who have the capacity to make hideous situations  charming.  It’s  extremely difficult and delicate a task.  You simply cannot cast  a cad as a cad and a dumb blonde as a dumb blonde and a bumptious boy next door as a bump and  a repulsive ham as a repulsive ham and expect the show to be witty and delightful  and great fun. No, no, no. You’ve got to give them charm.  Director Bush left charm in the fire bucket at the stage door. If there’s any wit in the show, it’s got nit in front of it. Burrows, the consummate play doctor, would just pull the sheet over the remains. 1234 performances.  Can you imagine?
                                                                        *
Cactus Flower. At the Westside Theater Upstairs, 407 West 43rd Street. Tickets:$75. 212-239-6200. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
Cactus Flower. There is really no flower. It’s all cactus and you know how cacti let you have it.

WINKIE AT 59E59 THEATERS, 59 E. 59TH ST.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

There’s so much drama going on around the world these days you don’t want to get out of bed.  It would take a jolt of Mr. Bond’s favorite ingestion to move you from out under the blues and the covers.  Hosanna: Winkie  is that jolt.  What? Putting a teddy bear on trial as a terrorist, as frivolous an idea as any spoiled brat could come up with is worth a first look let alone a second?  Yes sir/ma’am.  Yes, indeed.  In fact, Winkie may be the indispensable theatrical experience of the moment in New York and will, I suspect have a similar fate in every other city, every other venue it plays.  Oh, those of the Rush and Rove persuasions might not see it quite the same way – chortle, chortle – but to me, Winkie is the slashingest, laughingest send-up of these sick citizens passing themselves as super Americans you maybe have ever seen.  Broadway, or rather Off-Broadway, is famous, even notorious for its satirizings, mainly of its own shenanigans, but Winkie goes miles farther, using the very locutions we hear  over and over in talk shows and speeches. Yes, the convulsions brought on are laughter but, damn, they hurt.  We really are such suckers.  

Winkie, the dread terrorist, has been captured at last and instead of being locked up, key thrown away, uncharged, hidden somewhere unpronounceable as sometimes seems to happen, Winkie is given a very fair American trial, in a very fair American court before a very fair jury of his peers. Well, not exactly peers. Someone has the temerity to question whether Winkie, made of shabby mohair and old, nasty stuffing has the standing to stand trial.  He can’t even stand.  He may not even be American.  American-ish will have to do.  Judge Feeble Newman (Michael Shimkin) appoints the most inept public defender he can find, Charles Unwin (Adam Kee) to defend Winkie who has not said a word.  Natch. The Persecutor – oops – prosecutor( Sean Phillips), the wiliest litigator imaginable, lobs fervent patriot after even more fervent politican as witnesses, all full of  malignant scenarios, doom and more doom, if a bit light on the facts. All this welcomed by the judge, quashing the public defender routinely; he knows which side his trial is buttered on. The public defender bravely continues to stammer his way even with the immense burden of Winkie’s continued silence in his own behalf.  

However –and this is a big “however ‘’ all the years Winkie has been beloved as Mommy’s teddy bear – he was a girl then – and inherited by Clifford as Clifford’s teddy bear, when he became a boy, Winkie, all those years have had an effect.  All that love has made him come alive.  Whoa.  Heavy.  Poetic.  So – Winkie alive?  Could he?  Would he?  Is he?  Isn’t he?  Oh, the dilemmas.  It seems crucial for Winkie’s defense that he testify.  There’s so much to answer and to answer for.  Hundreds of charges have piled up against him.  Evidence?  Hmmm.  Haven’t really seen any but circumstantial? What, that’s not good enough for you?  Chief Reynolds (Gregory Konow) is beside himself with circumstantial and way, way patriotic.  Charge!.  And the prosecutor absolutely does not want Winkie to testify, no matter how. Our judge can’t wait.

Joe Tantalo has directed as if his life depended on it, as if all our lives depended on it and he’s right.  He has assembled a wonderful cast and wrestled them through their paces to this rousing performance, from songs to warm the sentimental cockles in every patriotic heart to fight scenes to warm the cackling cockles in every audience. It’s a terrific job. His cast is so good they each deserve praise.  Nick Paglino plays Clifford (the actual author, Clifford Chase, of “Winkie”, the book, brilliantly adapted for the stage by Matt Pelfrey) with a forlorn, stunned innocence that feeds into his additional performance as the master behind the live Winkie. He’s wonderful.  Elliot Hill is that ubiquitous TV journalist you cannot abide.  Wonderful, too.  Gregory Konow, Geraldine Johns, Michael Shimkin, Adam Kee, Sean Phillips, Erin Wheelock, Chris Cipriano, all wonderful.  Maruti Evans has designed his powerful setting simply and boldly.  Elizabeth Rhodes’ sound design is properly effective and necessary. Virginia Monte’s costumes work. And I loved the choreographed fights by Rick Sordelet.  Miss Winkie at your peril.

                                                                        *
Winkie.  At 54E59 Theaters. 59 East 59th Street between Madison and Park Avenues.  Tickets:$25.(Members $17.50). Tue,Wed 7:30 pm, Thu-Sat 8:30 pm, Mats Sat 2:30 pm, Sun 3:30 pm. 212-279-4200 or 59E59.org.                                                                       
                                                                        *
Winkie. When floppy, shabby, worn by love teddy bear Winkie is captured and put on trial as a mastermind terrorist, everything hits the fan. You laugh ‘til it hurts. 

BESHARAT at 9th Space, PS122, 150 First Ave.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Curtains are rare or non-existent Off-Off Broadway which gives you the opportunity to attempt to puzzle out Eric Berninghausen’s moody, complicated setting.  There’s an office desk here, a living room couch well over there and upstage, bulrushes, with something hidden in them,.  And behind the desk, along side, planking. Aah, it’s a pier… And the blue, shifting light and shadow,, and the ripply walls… water.  Somehow, all that comes together in  the unfolding of the play?  

The play begins..Music: a lovely, muted Hebrew chanted prayer known by every Jew. It drifts to silence. Suddenly, Samuel in his office starts clowning and rough housing with his very pregnant office assistant, Renee.  They stop abruptly when a mysterious young man standing in the bulrushes watching them enters. He behaves strangely, clearly becoming a touchstone in the proceedings. Nothing has come together coherently.  It’s a sign.  In a play full of signs.  Playwright Chana Porter needs help.  Her unbridled tzimmes  of playcraft is being given as unbridled a production by director Scott Rodrigue who encourages his actors to let it all hang out.  And, from shrieks to whispers, through Porter’s wildest swings of poetry to blather, we  get snippets suggesting golem lore and dybbuk lore and bad dreams lore and finally anti-male polemics and anti-female polemics juxtaposed  against sexual advances and sexual retreats.  Not to make it any easier on the audience  -- or the actors – there are myriad set changes within the complicated set all performed by the actors suddenly stepping out of character to become crew and back again to create mood now destroyed, mood needing recapture.

Playwright Porter has thrown a lace shawl of Jewish derivations over the whole piece for no reason connected to her story, starting with the title, Besharat. She explains the title to mean that things were meant to be.  What was meant to be that was Jewish in the play? Aha: the Mysterious Young Man?  Who knows too much about Sam’s mysterious past?  At a lake house? And—is this Mysterious Young Man really a man?  Or a golem?  Or a Dybbuk?  Or even  Jewish? Yes, Jews are fashionable on stage these days, as fashionable as gays.  And, not to miss that opportunity either, gayness rears its pretty head in the play, too, yarmulka and all.  As well as parallel unyarmulkaed female conjunction.

Shall we try to outline the goings on?  Successful lawyer Samuel Cohen (William Tatlock Green) deciding his staff, Renee (Tia Stivala) needs help in the office because she appears to be several months overdue, hires Eli (MacLeod Andrews), the Mysterious Young Man seen lurking in the bulrushes which are the back wall of Sam’s office (and where his copy machine stands hidden).  Eli knows things about Sam’s past nobody else knows, of the cottage by the lake, of what happened 25 years ago. It unhinges Sam. Sam sees someone in Eli’s face that could not be: she drowned 25 years ago. Is Eli a golem? A dybbuk?  A ghost in the wrong sex?  Or the right one?  And how could Sam express all this?  Coherently?  And to whom?  Certainly not to his lovely wife, Ruth (Olivia Rorick) who has been pining for years for him to make a baby with her.  She wants, she needs, a baby. Sam flinches away from the prospect.  So that when the Mysterious Young Man becomes an overnight house guest for some good Jewish reason, somehow Ruth finds Sam on top of her but is it Sam? And is she really pregnant? And what is this fantasy white dress that floats down from heaven to lie beside her, then float back up? We’ll surely see it again later on…

Meanwhile, vastly pregnant Renee – oh, are you sure you want to know all this? Shall we cut to the chase? Where all the actors are in white – like the dress –a baby carriage is filled with at least one bundle from heaven to the utter delight of the women, and the men, now also linked, one of them in a  white dress, find smiling contentment by the side of the lake, while at some point a Hebrew prayer is recited which would raise sacrilegious hackles for its recitation under the circumstances. This concoction does not merit the hard work  plowed into it. The straw is still straw.  There’s no gold there.
                                                                        *
Besharat. At 9th Space, PS 122, 150 First Avenue at Ninth Street. Tickets:$18. $15, students, seniors. 212-352-3101 or 9thspace.org. Thu-Sat 8 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
Besharat. When a mysterious stranger walks into the quiet, successful life of lawyer Sam knowing things from Sam’s deeply buried past, the past becomes present.

GOOD PEOPLE  at the Samuel Friedman Theater, W. 47th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

There’s a telling moment – to coin a phrase – in the second act when Frances McDormand as Margaret, the highly dominant figure in the play, delivers herself into a chair.  A “tell” as many of us have learned watching poker on TV, is an involuntary tic or action which gives away the actual underlying state a player is experiencing.  Good poker players read the “tells” of the other players and adjust their game accordingly to take advantage of the give aways.  Margaret has bluffed her way through her hard and meager life, tough she is, bright as brass, deadpan funny, angry at the hand life has dealt her, putting on the face of a good old Southie, which in Boston means living without the graces, close to the bone and proud of it. However, in this moment, Margaret, who has come to Stevie’s elegant house because she wanted to confront him as the Southie who made it big, a boy friend she dumped way back when, finds herself encountering civilities she never meets in the old neighborhood, and sits.  Like a Back Bay debutante.  Or a slinky movie star.  That supple, cross legged decline no one can master without practice, practice, practice.  Was it McDormand sitting as she’s damn well learned to sit as an actress?  No doubt. Or was it a slit of a gaffe in her superbly constructed performance, voice, gestures, speech, look, as a Southie telling us how she really felt?. But-- ,maybe it was Margaret mocking the airs and graces of her unwilling host?  Which would be a masterpiece of character color in a fleeting moment. I tend to suspect it was McDormand’s very own air and grace.  Being a Southie ain’t easy.

Nor is David Lindsay-Abaire’s play easy, not from its mordant title to its quietly bitter end in spite of all the laughs the audience felt compelled to find, and they’re plentiful. Good People runs character driven, a story of a character you might very well thoroughly dislike were it not for the charismatic presence of Frances McDormand in the role.  Her Margaret takes advantage of everyone around her and when she’s seriously late once too often for the lousy job she despises at the Dollar Store, she tries to talk her way out of being fired with her whole arsenal of tricks but  this time it’s too much for Mike ( so good, patient, sturdy  Patrick Carroll) who makes it painfully clear he feels for her but it’s his neck if he doesn’t do his job.  And Margaret is furious.  Where is she going to get a job in this sour climate? With no real skills? From this moment her job hunting drives the play.  She even goes to see Stevie (assured, cultivated Tate Donovan), now a prominent endocrinologist, shamelessly wangles an invitation for old time’s sake to a party at Stevie’s house and when the party is called off, she goes anyway.  She’s got to see Stevie’s wife.  Who is young, pretty.  And black.  That’s how far Stevie has gone from his Southie roots.  And when the wife, Kate, (engaging Renee Elise Goldsberry) turns out to be nice, caring and smart and stands up to Margaret being evil, it’s too damn much.  

Goldsberry give a lovely performance, which does not reach much past the first four rows.  Director Dan Sullivan hasn’t been able to get her to  the whole house.  Sullivan is at his kitchen sinkiest in his staging, a far cry from his splendid Shakespearean sweep earlier this season. Nor are his Southies charming in spite of his casting them charming.  Betty Ann Baker as Jean, and Estelle Parsons as Dottie are weighted down with the poison in playwright Lindsay-Abaire’s uncanny take on the starved existence these  acid funny Southies spill.  Save one: Mike. Mike’s compassion and simple decency – and bingo playing – are sensitively drawn by Parick Carroll who sees them  as good people, warts and all. Tate Donovan as the successful escapee from Southie life is fine, especially when jolted back to his roots by the confrontation with Margaret. Margaret, the damaged heart of the show, is exposed by Frances McDormand to be envious, arrogant, raging at bottom, hail-fellow funny, frightened as well as frightening in a courageous farrago of a performance. But mind the “tell”.  

In this unstintingly well turned out production for the Manhattan Theatre Club, designer John Lee Beatty continues to amaze. He has delivered several superb sets for the many scenes of the play, linked through an interpretive bricks and mortar theme.  David Zinn’s costuming is dead on, from Dottie’s quirks to Stevie’s mules. Everything’s top notch but if you’re looking for that warm glow, chalk this up to experience.                                                                 
                                                                   *
Good People. At the Samuel Friedman Theater, West 47th Street near 8th Avenue. Tickets:  $67 - $126. 212-239-6200. mtc-nyc.org. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats Wed, Sat, Sun 2 pm.                                                                     
                                                                   *
Good People. When Margaret gets fired, she turns up the heat on an old, boy friend, who’s made it big. Frances McDormand and Tate Donovan square off.

In Your Image at the 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 69th Street
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

In a play which picks at the scabrous details of desperately vacant lives, it is quite as important to have all your nits in a row for an audience to pick at because pick, pick, pick that audience will, already in the cutting swing of things with the first sight of scenic designer Kacie Hultgren’s detritus strewn hovel of a hovel. Nothing invites scrutiny like an apparently  endlessness of
rubbish.  Good lordy ugh. 4:34 PM here’s each and every drivel on everything from overslobbed sink to sump of knee highrubbish all over the floor. So—er – why are the light fixtures pristine clean? A worm of suspicion. A short, bald young nerd enters tentatively, obviously appalled. He edges carefully around piles of garbage, checks  other offstage rooms, gags, chokes overly, girds himself to get to the task of cleaning up, Apron?  No.  Gloves? No. He simply rolls up the sleeves of his nice sweater, ditto his nice shirt and starts, daintily picking stuff and stuffing said stuff into one of the too few trash bags he’s brought. He finds a used disposable camera, sets it aside. Then, another.  And another.  He’s intrigued.  He is Warren, the younger brother, played by Rob Benson, the playwright.  (He must, therefore, know what he’s doing, right?)

Enter older brother Chris (Roger Clark) who acts too obviously as if he’s seeing all this for the first time, but then, we are already suspicious. This place is Graham’s place, their dad.  Dead very recently.  The brothers have not seen him in years. They, themselves, have not been close in a long time. Chris, married, divorced, has a familiar, miserable tale to tell. Warren, still single, has managed to accommodate to his obsessive-compulsive disorders and made a life he calls satisfactory.  He was always the clever one, even as a little boy who needed to be protected by his big brother.  He continues to clean up in his odd way, shames Chris into helping.  Chris seems always to be looking for something. Warren notices.  Neither is forthcoming. Chris teases Warren into detailing his love life.  It is non-existent. Chris insists on offering constructive examples of behavior to ensure sexual encounter.  In the midst of the smelly rubbish comes a very uncomfortable lesson in how to get a girl.  From a man who lost his.  Their banter gets edgy; they quarrel. They reminisce.  They fight. Warren accumulates more, many more used cameras, Chris insists on smashing one  to break its claim on Warren, he says. He persuades Warren to do the same. They leave, obviously never to return despite protestations that they’ll be back. Chris drapes the small chain necklace Warren has found over their father’s chair.  They go out.

Act two is apparently shortly before  act one chronologically, with one whiskey bottle missing from the general mess, the Jameson; the Paddy’s is back where it was and as full as it was.  Enter Graham, obviously roaring drunk. (This play alternates between the obvious and the implicit.) Graham (John Michalski) is carrying the fresh bottle of Jameson, plonks himself into his chair, throws the bottle’s bag on the nearest pile of rubbish and proceeds to expound with the freshest, most heartfelt paean to being drunk, gloriously drunk on glorious drink I have ever heard.  He is an outrageous, seductive, rambunctious beguiler in love, love, love with his booze. Playwright Benson is at his most brilliant.  Graham ‘s intoxication never falters when his elder sol, Chris, walks in, having finally found him.  Chris is ready to get righteous and vengeful but his father cannot be shamed;  he acknowledges everything Chris throws at him and throws it back to the point where Chris wilts. But Chris never betrayed, never despised his  brother, who was just an unresponsive lump to Graham.  Why care for a brat like that? Or waste time or effort? It’s a lump. Yes, he gave Chris a chain but at least Chris was a kid. Chris runs out, vomits, returns drained. His father snaps a picture of Chris in the moment. (We recognize the camera as the one Chris smashes.)  And then,
Graham dies.  Chris, horrified, runs out.  End of play.

Is it? A surprised audience found itself vigorously applauding actors taking bows. John
Michalski is outstanding. But – why the cameras?  Why the mess? Why the clean up? Are all our lives messy, wasted? Do these characters represent us? Again, the cameras, why?  If they contain images, what will the images tell us? Why hasn’t playwright Benson used them more in his story? Why didn’t director Deborah Wolfson employ them more relating to Warren’s obsessive-compulsive disorder? Benson’s play has all its basic elements present but the distractions such as the seduction lesson just take up space/time. Well, maybe next time.
                                                                   *
In Your Image. At 59E59 Theaters. 59 East 69th Street. Tickets: $18. (Members, $12) 212-279-4200 or 59E59.org. Tue,Wed 7:30 pm, Thu-Sat 8:30 pm. Mat,Sun 3:30 pm     
                                                                  *
In Your Image.  Two estranged brothers try to sift through the rubbish of their dead father’s flat to find connections,  answers.

I DO! I DO!
At the Westchester Broadway Dinner Theater, Elmsford, NY
Reviewed by
EUGENE PAUL

In 1967, Jan de Hartog’s hit play, The Fourposter, metamorphosed into the hit musical  I Do! I Do!, with music and lyrics by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, whose The Fantasticks is still making history decades after it first opened in Greenwich Village.  I Do! I Do! opened bang on Broadway after a mere four previews and then proceeded to run for 560 performances, after which it has been running ever since all over the years and all over the world.  Such are the fortunes of Jones and Schmidt. A new musical with only two characters? Dollar signs in production savings.  And one set?  Two stars and a starring bed for fifty years of marital bliss on that bed?  And hell? And all in  between?  Such a sentimental idea for these jaded times.  One marriage lasting fifty years?  And more? Not to mention that equqlly durable bed? Was this a perfect fit for an evening out at a dinner theater, tasty comfort food on the table, tasty comfort food on the stage?  Yes, if the ingredients meld.  And meld they did.

The play begins in 1895 and follows Agnes and Michael to 1945.  Lots of changes over the years as we follow Michel and Agnes Snow and wonder with a piece of our minds how they’re going to do it, because I mean the two of them do it all, no other characters, no singing and dancing chorus, just two lovely, in tune actors who become two lovely people we get to know because they  pluck at our memory strings, again and again. Yes, didn’t that happen to us and yes, didn’t we react the same way and yes, and yes. But what about the audience members who were younger, what were their reactions?  Oh, sure, seeing the past, of course, but also seeing the future?  Couldn’t be.  We’ve changed too much. Agnes and Michael never even had television during those fifty years, let along something as exotic and far more unimaginable: an iPad. But – as people? Have people changed, too? You bet they have. Agnes may have had that glimmer of Women’s Lib but her life was her children, her home, her husband, her family.   Politics  Wars?  Strikes? Only in their fourposter.  And Michael?  No question, providing for his family came first and foremost.  You had kids, you had a family, you  had responsibility.  And that itch? Think about that later.  Or not.  Both of them felt other urges, which led to bumps in the even keel of their lives and both of them were rattled.

This natural material for Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones as song after song propels the story over the decades.  “ I Love My Wife”, “My Cup Runneth Over”, “Love Isn’t Everything”, “Nobody’s Perfect”, “The Honeymoon is Over”.  You can listen to the arc of the show in its music.  Then, later, “When the Kids Get Married”, “Father of the Bride”, “Someone Needs Me”.  And finally, as they leave the house that’s grown too big for just the two of them, “This House”.  And, it should be said, the bed stayed with the house, for newer energies.

The show runs its charmed life on charm and director Richard Sabellico has winkled a charming relationship between his two stars, crucial to any production, absolutely vital to this  simple but very tricky show. He is fortunate in his choices.  Mark Zimmerman’s  sturdy voice and sturdy presence are just what we need  as an ideal foil for the quirky foibles and mix of tenderness and guts Lauri Landry displays as  she sings Agnes beautifully. With all they have to perform, director Sabellico sees to it that there’s lots of invention and no faltering.  There’s even gain:  near the end of the show the actors become decades older right before our eyes, a challenge for them a challenge for us.  How can they get back into character after applying years in front of us?  Easily.  They become Agnes and Michael seamlessly, and we are back in their misty eyed departure from their home of fifty years, along with some misty eyes in the audience who have followed their long love story..  It’s the kind of evening that becomes rarer and rarer and WBT has pulled it off so satisfyingly, so gracefully, you know you’ll be back.
                                                                        *
I Do! I Do!. At the Westchester Broadway Dinner Theater. Reservations:914-592-2222 or BroadwayTheatre.com

OTHER DESERT CITIES at the Newhouse, Lincoln Center, 150 W 65TH ST.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Cast (Pictured Left)
Stockard Channing as Lyman Wyeth
Stacy Keach as Polly Wyeth
Linda Lavin as Silda Gravman
Elizabeth Marvel as Brooke
Thomas Sadoski as Trip Wyeth

Once upon a time, people who went to the theater knew what they were going to get: a familiar story, some bravura performances and a satisfyingly rosy finale.  There was often a grande dame, a grand old man, a matinee idol and a distressed ingénue, and just as often an eccentric relative and proper or improper servants. Everybody was from a stratum of society a cut or two above the mere mortals in the audience, additional titillation.  Modernity entered  less servants and lots of cigarettes and drink. The shows worked like the well oiled machinery they were.  They still do.  Playwright Jon Robin Baitz has adapted this theatrical comfort food, dressed it with a New York attitude and wit as a brand new old play with unerring targeting.  “For once, I got my money’s worth”, said a well satisfied customer leaving after the show.

In  one of their most polished productions, Lincoln Center has lavished a superlative cast on Baitz’s closest approximation of “the well made play” and the gamble pays off in many pleasures.  The familiarity of the story is goosed up with a cornucopia of posheries, not least of which are a bucket full of quips and epigrams distributed with care among all the characters and a whipsawing of attitudes swaying each character, their good sides, their bad, their underlying mediocrity, just normal, hyped up folks.  All of this is accomplished in one of John Lee Beatty’s best ever settings, because not only is it redolent of character, it functions brilliantly in the difficult, three quarter round space that is the Mitzi Newhouse theater and it’s handsome, handsome, handsome.

It’s Palm Springs at the retirement home of Lyman and Polly Wyeth, exquisitely, alarmingly realized by Stacy Keach at his finest and Stockard Channing at her most knowing.  Christmas, 2004.  The kids have come, of course, Brooke and Trip.   This roster of celluloid names establishes that Lyman is a retired movie star, retired ambassador, ongoing Republican/Conservative.  He and Polly know them all.  More importantly, all the big Republican shots know them.  Polly, retired screenwriter, is giving house room to her former writing partner – and actual sister – recovering alcoholic Silda Grauman who is still Jewish funny and Jewish Jewish.  Polly, however, is almost pure WASP by now. The kids, raised in the best schools money can buy, are brilliant achievers in their own ways.  Trip produces reality TV.  Brooke has arrived with her new book in manuscript.  It is an account of the life and death of her soul mate brother, Henry.  Why they were soul mates we never know.

It sure throws the fat in the fire, though. Ostensibly, parents Polly and Lyman train their barrages on daughter Brooke to protect their privileged relationships with their top echelon Republican friends.  They do not wish to have the dirty linen of the worst period in their lives dragged out in public. Their threats are emotionally murderous.  Brother Trip, apparently the only sane one among them, sides with his sister yet tries to get her to see their parents’ point of view.  And Aunt Silda, the incomparable Linda Lavin, proves her bravery by backing up  her niece even though it’s her sister, Polly, who is housing Silda and feeding her.

Of course, there’s a show down, after everyone has had his or her scene.  Playwright Baitz gives good scene.  Thomas Sadoski as Trip convinces us he’s the most brilliant. And he is.  Elizabeth Marvel as Brooke finds more ways to register angst than you thought possible. Linda Lavin’s effortless graces are allowed to wither by cautiously brilliant director Joe Mantello or the play gets seriously skewed.  But the serious skewing goes on regardless because playwright Baitz has two more foibles up his sleeve which we may have seen before but not with his lines and his cast.  There’s a surprise ending which I will not divulge although you may well be ahead of the story since you’ve seen many similar surprises.  Which then behooves Baitz to add still another ending, unfortunately also seen before but not quite in this context.  Here, playwright Baitz and director Mantello live dangerously.  They give daughter Brooke a triumphant closing, reading from the vaunted book, finally published in 2010, several years later.  Touted throughout as a brilliant writer, Brooke reads her selections lovingly, triumphantly.  We are appalled.  It’s crap. Dos the scene work?  Do you get it?  You bet.
                                                                        *
Other Desert Cities. At the Mitzi Newhouse theater, Lincoln Center, 150 West 65th Street.  Tickeets: $85. Tue-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm. 212-239-6200.
                                                                        *
Other Desert Cities. Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach, Linda Lavin, Thomas Sadoski, Elizabeth Marvel  in Jon Robin Baitz’s pleaser, directed by Joe Mantello. Your money’s worth.

A SMALL FIRE at Playwrights Horizons, 416 W. 42nd St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

When you’re handed a free Playbill at the theater, that marvelous American  compendium of the particulars of the show you’re going to see, plus lots of showbizzy ads and articles that  are even bizzier, you’ve got a blessed little theater bible in your hands which is why so many theatergoers collect them.  A good close reading can educate, amuse and sometimes startle you.  And startled I was by reading through the bio of Trip Cullman.  Cullman is the director of A Small Fire, responsible for the staging, the individual performances, the overall performance and for presenting the playwright’s voice in the playwright’s work.  Cullman’s bio is astonishing; he lists many if not all the plays he’s directed and in every case credits the playwright by name.  Like, nobody does this.  Not in ego rampant showbiz, unless it’s to boost and bolster one’s own name.  But that clearly is not what Cullman intends.  His intention is to serve, not to put his stamp on the proceedings.  This is slightly wonderful.  It would be even magna wonderful if he showed his playwright where his slightly wonderful play could be magna wonderful, too.  But Cullman is a purist.  

Emily Bridges (Michelle Pawk) is a tough, competent, respected construction boss, head of her own company, on top of everything on the job, good with her people.  Billy (Victor Williams) is twice her size – and she ain’t small –smart, able, but clearly her subordinate.  He swears by her.  At home, Emily takes her job with her with the loving tolerance of her husband, John (Reed Birney) who obviously maintains their home and family.  He’s the nurturer.  Their daughter , Jenny, (Celia Keenan-Bolger) is in the frenetic toils of getting married.  Mother Emily thinks the would-be groom is not good enough; father John says they love each other.  And into this not so unusual family stew a small fire erupts.  Emily has left a fire burning on the kitchen stove and a napkin has caught fire, smoke, stench everywhere. Emily cannot smell a thing. Bah. It’s nothing, says she. But not too much later, when she suddenly goes blind it’s not nothing any more.  And shortly thereafter, when her hearing leaves her, she’s almost totally isolated.  She is not fearful of her dark, she is – blank, still the boss. Her husband and child are wild with worry.  She insists the wedding go forward.  

Watching her husband and daughter cope with suddenly helpless Emily is disturbing, frightening, intrusive. Jenny dressing her mother for the wedding is an exercise in embarrassment and pain.  John’s determined cheerfulness at the wedding until he breaks into tears is heartrending.  Were it not for the utter conviction of Reed Birney’s belief  as John in his complete relationship with the other people in the play there would be no play.  Playwright Adam Bock has strung his scenes not dramatically but cinematically, linearly, all over the place, from construction site to bedroom, from living room to roof top, from doctor’s office to breakfast room, to wedding hall, all in designer Loy Arcena’s artfully  woven mixture of reality and mysticalness.  And Birney remains our core truth throughout.  He is the essential actor making us believe in Emily’s entire persona as well as her plagues.  Without his persuasiveness, Michelle Pawk’s performance remains just that: a performance.  Her rough boss act is an act; each debilitation is an act;  there are no connections without Birney’s constant conviction of her as his wife going through unreasoning awfulness.  But Birney makes Pawk slightly wonderful.  And he and Victor Williams together are a tower of conviction.  He makes Celia Keenan-Bolger his troubled, freaked out kid, ,not just an all right actress.  He’s remarkable.  

Playwright Bock’s closing scene between Emily and John would be a gratuitous sex scene if it were not for Birney’s transitions from profoundly worried partner to sexually aroused partner.  Emily has lost her senses save her sense of touch and engaging in sex is profoundly about touching.  “I’m still in here,” Emily reminds her husband. And we are left to ponder their fate.
                                                                          *
A Small Fire. At Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street in Theater Row. Tickets: $70. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm, Sun 7:30 pm. Mat, Sat 2:30 pm.
                                                                          *
A Small Fire.  Emily, tough, construction boss, suddenly loses her sense of smell, her eyesight, her hearing, on the eve of her daughter’s wedding

THE WITCH OF EDMONTON at St. Clement’s Theater, W. 46th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

The Jacobean playwrights fashioned their theater pieces with an eye bent on hooking their rabble of an audience with plenty of flash. Today’s Red Bull Theater, which is presenting The Witch of Edmonton, takes it name from the raucous Red Bull Theater of Elizabethan times which, unlike the Globe, whose shape we all know was an “O”, was instead a square.  And the deeply versed director of this company, Jesse Berger, has directed his splendid set designer, Anka Lupes,  to create a rectilinear acting space with half the audience on the other side of the theater’s setting.  The space, itself, inventively suggests two boardwalk areas bracketed by sturdy suggestions of contemporary Elizabethan housing and a pit of earth in the center, primarily for the lowly witch of Edmonton and her sportings with the Devil. Flash still works even as it jars our refined sensibilities not to have chapter and verse of motivation for each action.  Action itself was the thing, and playwrights John Ford, Thomas Dekker and William Rowley who put together The Witch of Edmonton went for the jugular, in this case, literally.  In April of 1621, Elizabeth Sawyer was put to death as a witch; in December of 1621, she was on stage as the witch of Edmonton, embellished and bedizened particularly with a dog that spoke  because he was the Devil and he could very well do what he pleased.  Thus, we are entertained with brutal murder before our eyes of a luscious bride by her bigamous, smiling wretch of a husband, and thus we anticipate his equally drastic demise before our eyes, but not until we have feasted on two stories, roughly interwoven thanks to the sinuous wiles of our Devil Dog. But such a dog!  His compelling lasciviousness enchants  old  crone Sawyer who offers her body and her blood and becomes indeed a witch, now able to beat back the indignities her neighbors have heaped on her until her fateful death by burning for her sins. Gore we will have and guts and rapine and our two stories entwined.

Story one: Frank Thorney, (Justin Blanchard), secretly wed to Winifred (Miriam Silverman), already pregnant by her noble master, Sir Arthur Clarington (Christopher Innvar) is pressed by his father (Christopher McCann) to marry a rich heiress to repair the Thorney’s lack of fortune.  Frank does so, marries Susan (Christina Pumariega) daughter to rich yeoman Carter (Sam Tsoutsouvas).  Once he has acquired her dowry, he murders her, intending to decamp with Winifred disguised as a page. He inflicts wounds on himself, calls for help, throwing blame on two murderers.  The hunt for the two murderers produces the two suitors for Carter’s other daughter.  Frank, however, has confessed to his wife, Winifred, and pain and misery is spread to culminate when we see Frank hanged, kicking and strangling, before our hungry eyes.

How does this play play with the witch’s story, story two? Director Berger keeps his faith with us by clearly untangling all through his devilishly clever dog who always seems to be close to those who have committed evils and particularly beguiling whenever we need him in both stories. He has directed his large, clever cast confidently, ably and it pays off, in spite of unevenness among his people. They play unstintingly all over Anka Lupes’ evocative setting, dressed by Cait O’Connor, who works a range of effects from ghost to dog to baronet to simpleton, to prelate to all in between, handsomely and ingeniously. But sets and costumes mean little unless they are well filled.  Charlayne Woodard as the witch who isn’t and then is, has been beautifully choreographed in every gesture, every utterance, a superbly crafted performance without a core.  Which may be deliberate, a choice. Sam Tsoutsouvas as Carter is  a sturdy center whose own plausibility creates security in the stories.  Christina Pumariega is striking, memorable.  I liked louche Christopher Innvar,  invincibly simple Adam Green and some of Everett Quinton. Miriam Silverman  shone. But unquestionably outstanding is Derek Smith as the Devil in dog’s clothing.  He  is crucial to the overall performance.  Justin Blanchard as murderer bigamist Frank works very hard but is gutted by the playwrights themselves who decree a charismatic  super ego that must fill all the holes they leave for their hero’s anti-heroic actions. Even director Berger cannot fill those. But the whole company fills a New York need for representing this kind of theater.  Bravo.
                                                                        *
The Witch of Edmonton. At St. Clement’s Theater, 423 West 46th Street.  Tickets: $30-$65. 212-352-3101, 866-411-4111. Tue, Wed 7 pm, Thu,Fri, Sat 8 pm. Mats, Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
The Witch of Edmonton. Murder, witchcraft, love, honor, dishonor, , hanging, burning, it’s all here, created by three playwrights four centuries ago and still fresh.

HONEY BROWN EYES at the Clurman Theater, Theater Row, 410 W. 42 St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Don’t let the title fool you.  This is a stone cold horror show.  Worse, it’s true.  The title is supposed to be ironic since it’s the name of a hit song in the emerging rock music  foment of the Balkans before the war that tore them to pieces. If it weren’t such a fine piece of work, well acted, forcefully directed, it could drive people away with its clear eyed depiction of  inhumanity rampant, humankind’s eternal dance of death, war, cruelty, brutality, stupidity, laced with moments of left over compassion.  This war, the Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Yugoslavian morass where people slaughtered people because they were the wrong side of a border – or borders --, the wrong religion as if there were a right one, the wrong uniform, hair color, eye color, speech, anything as an excuse to maim, brutalize, loot, steal, burn, kill, die.

It’s 1992. Dragan (Eduardo Ballerini, remarkable) is shrieking orders at Alma (lovely Sue Cremin) over the barrel of an AK-47.  She is, strangely, not as terrified of this frightened lunatic as she should be, in fact, she offers him her coffee.  She knows him.  She knows he knows her.  She knows he was once crazy about her when her brother, Dennis led a rock group in which Dragan totally immersed himself.  They were kids, happy kids here in Visegrad, alive with talent and optimism.  Now, Dragan screams at her as Muslim dirt, beating her with his gun, fighting their past and his fear of his superior, Branko, superior whatever he is if they are soldiers, or whatever they are.  Mostly they loot and starve.  And brutalize, and rape, and fight their own fears.  Dragan knows than Branko (Gene Gillette, frighteningly persuasive) wants another woman for him and his men to use and dispose of.  He cannot stand the thought of what will happen to Alma He knocks her unconscious to stop the flow of their reminiscences and when she recovers, rather than take her to Branko, he kills her.  To save her.  And leaves.  From the ceiling attic a child comes down, Alma’s 12 year old daughter.  She hugs the small TV set to her.  Dragan comes back for it and finds her.

In another kitchen, in Sarajevo, Juvanka (splendid Kate Skinner), surrounded by boxes holding her scant possessions, her window blocked with a mattress, prepares her lone meal. She cautiously answers a frantic pounding at her door. Dennis, fleeing soldiers, needs a breathing space.  Exhausted, starving, filthy, he is nearer to death than old Juvanka.  She lets him stay. Little by little, the tiny trust between them solidifies.  She feeds him.  She gives him a change of clean clothing, safer clothing once she learns he’s thrown his gun away, clothing from a box her children left behind when they fled to safety and left her because she couldn’t move fast enough, left her to die. She even gives him schnapps. Dennis becomes loud, a danger to them, shouts back at the bombardment which has blown open the window.  He remembers too much, his music, his sister.  (We see her corpse in the other kitchen.) The bombardments increase.  The lights go out.  Jovanka turns on her kerosene lamp.  She offers Dennis a place to sleep. He cannot. He sneaks out into the night.

In Visegrad, Branko is satisfied with the replacement of Alma by her daughter.  Twelve is old enough.  Dragan’s guilt overcomes his cowardice; he tries to give her instructions on how to escape but we remember him lying to her mother just before he killed her.  As they go out the door, little Zlata at gunpoint, we see Jovanka alone in her kitchen with the kerosene lamp.  She blows out the light.

Playwright Stefania Zadravec’s account of the mindless savagery of the war pulls it down to the level of everyday existence . No sweeping denunciations, outraged declamations. Just people. Director Erica Schmidt abets her shrewdly, carefully. Persuading us. And if you then begin to think of what it would mean for you, me, us to have to live under the constant curse of beatings, torture, abuse, murder by the very people you knew as your friends, your neighbors, playwright Zadravec has succeeded in giving you a bite of her life experience.  It’s ugly.  It’s scary.  It’s possible.  No. It can’t happen here. It must not. And so, in the vast reach of Theater, this, too, is what theater is about.
                                                                        *
Honey Brown Eyes. At the Clurman Theater, Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street. Tickets: $25.  212-279-4200. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm, Mats Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
Honey Brown Eyes. Playwright Stefania Zadravec’s prize winning play makes its New York debut with its unmistakable ring of truth of death and survival in the Balkans.

THE MISANTHROPE at NY City Center, 135 W. 55 St.
Reviewed by
EUGENE PAUL

PHOTO BY
JACOB J. GOLDBERG
From L to R: Janie Brookshire (Célimène) and Patrick Halley (Clitandre)

Oh, how Moliere would have enjoyed our miasmic age!  Alceste, his misanthrope at the core of hie great, eponymous play, The Misanthrope would surely follow an identical arc in his life, despise the present societal vices every bit as much as the scorn he leveled at the unworthy creatures he associated with four hundred years ago.  He would probably have fallen in love just as readily with one of today’s vixens just as he did then, probably suffer the same pangs and delights which deliciously artful Celimene had him dance to, then make him choose to succumb to her and her manners of the times or walk his own rigorous path.  It’s amazing how far we’ve come. Not.

The Pearl Company, one of the theatrical treasures that bless New York City, has mounted a superlative rendition of Moliere’s biting play in language rendered silken to speak and golden to hear through poet Richard Wilbur’s infallible rhyming translation, capturing rhythms, senses, innuendos, slashing, knifing, caressing, curling, a joy for the actors conveyed to a joyously receptive audience. Far from being all dessert, there’s meat there. Moliere got into hot water with the authorities time and again for his audacious send-ups of popular society’s shibboleths.  He was a skilled farceur; he acted his own disdain for the falseness and treacheries of what was thought to be the highest society and, of course, took his lumps.  He was a mere wordsmith and they were the powers that be. But he was a wordsmith who had the skills and knew enough to tickle a lot of fancies until he could get to tickle the king’s.  And once he did, he had a shield so that he never had to shut up.

In The Misanthrope his central character refuses to lie and suffers the consequences.  His biggest dilemma is that he loves Celimene who revels in the intrigues, the backbiting, the falseness of her friends, the society she lives in.  And – she loves Alceste.  They love each other.  Is love to triumph over all?  Not if you know your Moliere.  The farcical absurdities each of the characters displays does not end in farce but in that harshest light of truth.  We are to be satisfied with truth rather than the typical happy ending.  And the company rises to every occasion.  Each of the ladies, Janie Brookshire as Celimene, Joey Parsons as Arsinoe, Robin LeMon as Eliante, revel in roles Moliere created for them all those years ago, fresh as crocuses and daisies.  Each of the gentlemen, Sean McNall as Alceste, Shawn Fagan as Philinte, Matthew Amendt as Acaste, Patrick Halley as Clitandre, Kern McFadden as Oronte and Dominic Cuskern as Basque and Dobois enjoyed themselves so much pleasing us they pleased Moliere, I’m sure.

The company , elegantly staged and intelligently directed by Joseph Hanreddy, was dressed to a turn – to all turns – by Sam Fleming who wigged them out smashingly.  Special attention to Harry Feiner who designed the set: most modern productions here and abroad tax actors to excruciating lengths in deep period pieces by leaving them furnitureless so that there is much sitting on the ground as if it were the normal thing to do which it is definitely not.  Very tough on actors.  Feiner smiles; he provides them with a two tiered terrace, lots of perfectly comfortable, natural seating.  Bravo.  And all those convenient doors.  Bravo. Playwright poet Richard Wilbur’s rhyming dialogue is a charming melody of artifice which hides yet reveals the austere truths Alceste spouts and slithers around the falsities of the many artificers.  Golly, what a good show.
                                                                        *
The Misanthrope. At New York City Center, 135 West 55th Street, east of Seventh Avenue.  Tickets: $55 Fri, Sat, Sun. $45 Tue, Wed, Thu. Senior discounts, $25. Student Rush, $10. Tue, Thu, Fri, Sat 7:30 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat, Sun 2:30 pm. 212-581-1212 or nycitycenter.org.
                                                                        *
The Misanthrope. Which is greater, truth or love? Must you choose? Moliere has asked and answered this vital question delightfully, centuries ago and today.

JEKYLL AND HYDE at Westchester Broadway Dinner Theater, Elmsford, NY
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Think about this: you’re going to see Jekyll and Hyde, the sweepingly gothic musical pulled from the pages of Robert Louis Stevenson’s deeply Victorian work worrying out the niceties and uglinesses of the good and evil sides within us all and what are you going to do first?  You are going to have a companionable, or even cozy dinner right there in the theater, with good appetite.  For the show, too, of course.  Jekyll and Hyde and dinner.  Well, you didn’t come without knowing something about Stevenson’s famous story so you kind of know what to expect and it’s blood and guts, isn’t it. Now, then, why does that go with “cozy” and “companionable” and dinner and a fun night out? And maybe a tipple or two?  Because it does, you know.  We have appetites that often exceed our satiny facades.  And that’s what Jekyll and Hyde is vividly about. That’s what Frank Wildhorn’s aching score is about and Leslie Bricusse’s book and lyrics and that’s why even to this day, years after the Broadway run and longer years after the strange journey the show took to get there , there are still Jeckies among us, devoted followers of the show, just as there are Trekkies and you know who they are.

It’s the longest running musical ever at the Plymouth Theater on Broadway and Robert Cuccioli starred in it as the tortured Jekyll who was Hyde and now he has directed this pounding, over the top production.  You simply cannot tiptoe through the Jekyll and Hyde story.  Cuccioli goes bravura with his cast and company from the start, hammering everything, sets, costumes, lighting, sound  firmly into the sure, broad strokes story the author and composer have woven around good and evil and the well fed audience eats it up. Dr. Henry Jekyll, solid citizen, imminent bridegroom (Xander Chauncey) works earnestly, fervently to discover a method which will separate the good from the evil in a person and harness that evil so that it cannot corrupt a person’s life. He believes he has nearly concocted a potion which will prove his thesis , his dream, but cannot persuade the Board of Governors of his hospital to allow him to test his great thesis on a living subject. They all turn against him with the exception of his future father-in-law, they think he’s mad, incompetent, simply not good enough. What he’s proposing, it’s just déclassé. That’s all class prejudice and hypocrisy as Jekyll sees it and vows to struggle on.

Composer Wildhorn has developed a minor thread in his music which links one song to the next so that when Jekyll sings of his “Need to Know”, it relates closely to his next sung address to the Board of Governors and when he leaves them in a rage, to meet many of them at his engagement party the music still carries through. Only when his fiancée, Emma, responds to him do we hear a different melodic theme, hers, and Jennifer Babiak as Emma makes a clear, clean character shine in her songs.  John Utterson (excellent John Galantich), Jekyll’s closest, trusted friend takes him from the sniping party guests to the Red Rat, a dive, for a drink and a change of air, this time fetid. Jekyll meets Lucy (dauntless Jane Bunting) a whore and finds himself attracted.  Well, it’s not rocket science, Emma is Good and Lucy is Evil, right? That ‘s how the authors set up love interest when Stevenson doesn’t give you any and what’s a musical without a love interest or two? 

Director Cuccioli keeps everything on the boil, has everyone give 110 percent, although his writers  could have helped considerably by entering dramatic elements in his long first act instead of the linear, novelistic episode after episode, but once Jekyll injects himself with his potion and becomes Hyde, things pick up apace. How does he become Hyde? He lets loose his pony tail, he lets loose his manly posture and magnifies his lower register. And actor Xander Chauncey has a field day. As who wouldn’t. And, as Hyde, dispatching all those  who voted “No” is happy, grisly, demented work. Oh, is he evil.  And oh, is the audience rapt. And, oh, don’t we know in our bones that comeuppance is on its way. Once you get into it,, a good time is had by all. Tasty, too.
                                                                        *
Jekyll and Hyde. At the Westchester Broadway Theater, 1 Broadway Plaza, Elmsford, NY . Tickets: $50-$75 dinner and show.  Specials available. Thu-Sat Dinner 6:30 pm ,Show 8 pm, Sun Dinner 5:30 pm, Show 7 pm. Mats, Wed, Thu Lunch 11:30 am, Show 1 pm, Sun Lunch 12 pm, Show 1:30 pm. 914-592-2222, BroadwayTheatre.com.
                                                                        *
Jekyll and Hyde.  When Dr. Jekyll tries to conquer evil, separate it from good, he experiments on himself and the consequences are disastrous. A gothic musical.

A FREE MAN OF COLOR  at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Completely intoxicated with the idea of creating a play about the little known circumstance of the phenomenon of  free men of color in the United States in the year 1801, both director George C. Wolfe whose list of theatrical successes is awesome and playwright John Guare whose theatrical history gleams with the success of Six Degrees of Separation plunged head over heels into making it happen. It’s pretty much what you have to do: fall madly in love with your theater piece. They poured their love and devotion into every phase of the production, into inspiring the cast, and the cast responded magnificently, into the design, and David Rockwell’s sets were eye buggers, into the costumes and Anna Hould-Ward wrapped everybody in excesses of tacky splendor to dazzle even the color blind, into the lighting and Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer (where have they been!) pulled and pushed all the best switches.  Jeanne Tesori made delicious music.  Hope Clarke choreographed every necessary step.  The only thing they forgot was the play, which didn’t get started until two and a half hours after the curtains opened.  The rest?  Biggest damn vamp you ever saw.

The audience saw a big, splashy, far from subtle, from deep, eye popping fantasy.  Wolfe and Guare forgot to tell them at the outset that a free man of color was a fact, was real, was history.   Wolfe and Guare assumed that the audience knew such arcane historial facts. Well, Wolfe and Guare, they didn’t.  And not until formerly free man of color, Jacques Cornet (simply wonderful Jeffrey Wright) got into a colloquy with archly subtle Thomas Jefferson (John McMartin doing what he does best of he best) about why he, a free man of color, was once again a slave simply because the United States had consummated its Louisiana Purchase and got shed of those loose, louche French fallacies of dealing with people of color, which they, in turn had got from the care less Spanish when the Spanish owned the same territory and all within, only then do we have a play on which to hang all the glittering goings on – many heavily in debt to other playwrights – which preceded these all too brief minutes near the end of the show.  Wolfe and Guare just plain took their eye off the ball.

Playwright Guare borrows – in acknowledgements – from twenty three sources, but most of the borrowing  is all but pure Moliere.  Well, impure, and fun, but far from enlightening a long confused audience who kept responding to sexual braggadacio and blinding color and lovely mock outrage and one scene helter skelter on the red heels of the next and wondering what the hell was going on, when all Wolfe and Guare had to do was to tell them right up front what the hell was going on. Simply put: free man of color Jacques Cornet considered himself a free man because he based his freedom on Thomas Jefferson’s statement that all men are created equal.  And subtle Jefferson stated that Jacques  was a slave because he was in the United States and Jefferson’s phrase.” All men are created equal” was not in the Constitution, it was just a lovely phrase that slave holder Jefferson thought sounded good but it was not the law of the land..  They could even have started their play with the Jefferson-Cornet scene in the beginning.  At the end, it was too late.  Not too little, no, just too late. Coats and jackets were being donned.  Such a shame, so many wonderful actors, such a large, gifted cast,  Veanne Cox having fun, Sara Gettelfinger having fun, Triney Sandoval having fun, Mos (no longer Def) not having fun but mighty fine, Reg Rogers, Nicci Beharie, Arnie Burton, Rosal Colon, Joseph Marcell, Brian Reddy and so many more. Without a doubt, this was one of Lincoln Center’s major undertakings and worth the undertaking but why wasn’t there someone who could say,’”Listen, guys, you’re all dressed up but you’re not going anywhere”.?
                                                                        *
A Free Man of Color. At the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center.  Tickets: $70-$115.
212-239-6200 or lct.org. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats,Wed, Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
A Free Man of Color. Director George C. Wolfe mounts a huge, glittering swashbuckler by playwright John Guare about the glory days of a wealthy free man of color. 

 

WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN At the Belasco Theater, 111 W. 44th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

When a show is a marvel and it misfires, lots of times you can’t put your finger on it. Women on the Verge had everything going for it: clever, pitch perfect book by Jeffrey Lane, the best score David Yazbek has ever done, from opening chords, to final, fitting lyrics, daring, edgy, right on key direction by brilliant Barlett Sher and a cast in a million: Patti LuPone, Laura Benanti, Sherie Rene Scott, Bryan Stokes Mitchell as principals and Danny Burstein, Nikka Graff Lanzarone, Justin Guarini, Mary Beth Peil, all of them tops. I was enthralled but I could feel the unrest around me. Some people left. Why? Why didn’t everybody get it, that half crazy, jittery, light and dark mix of laughter and pain, of the ridiculous and the touching, the Latin moment to moment mood, the frivolously shallow and the hurtful deep, the sexy glow over everything? Why? Everything worked: Michael Yeargan’s endlessly active, feverish settings, Catherine Zuber’s best costuming, Brian McDevitt’s split second, dead on lighting matching every mood alteration, Gregory Meeh’s very special effects, all keyed into the exactly right tone for transforming Pedro Almodovar’s cult movie into a cult theatrical event? Well, it is. Just that. It’s a smash hit, but a small smash hit because everybody doesn’t get it. Women on the Verge, sadly, is not for everyone. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Pepa, (luscious Sherie Rene Scott), wakes up,a mess. Ivan (Brian Stokes Mitchell at his best) has left her. He doesn’t exactly say why, he probably doesn’t know, he’s just reacting to his urges and his niggling fears and his enormous ego. Lucia, the wife he left and eventually divorced nineteen years ago (outrageously good Patti LuPone) has been stalking him ever since. Women are his passion, his weakness, his strength, his food, his drink. Pepa, his adorable mistress, is a successful TV commercial spokesperson, for gazpacho. Everybody knows Pepa. Everybody. Right now, she is wiped, she is crushed, and she has to go to work. Meanwhile (there always is a "meanwhile" in Almodovar) Candela (oh god dazzling Laura Benanti), a model, Pepa’s best friend, a total ditz and gorgeous, finds the man she has just bedded because she was instantly crazy about him, is a terrorist, and she is appropriately terrified. The police are after him. Pepa has to save her. But Pepa ain’t saving anybody.

Half crazy Lucia treats her thirty year old son Carlos (immensely good Justin Guarini) like a baby. The idea of him being engaged to Marisa (marvelously supple Nikka Graff Lanzarone) is unthinkable, ridiculous. Not to them. Meanwhile (there are lots of "meanwhiles" until everybody gets entwined) Pepa tries to find Ivan, Lucia now stalks Pepa, Candela’s urges somehow entice Carlos, Pepa’s gazpacho which she has laced with sleeping pills, knocks out Marisa, then the police, Lucia has her day in court explaining why she should get Ivan back – absolutely boffo LuPone at her best –and through it all, the very blond, very exuberant Taxi Driver, (simply wonderful Danny Burstein) always at the ready. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…

Somehow, at its absurdest, director Sher stages with unfailing surety and clarity and pizzazz. Somehow, there are superb, stand out songs marvelously executed: "Madrid", "Lie to Me", "Model Behavior", "The Microphone". But if you are not overcome with that very Spanish "duende", you will not feel the "duende" vibrating in your bones, before your eyes and ears. Pepa (Scott) is too gentle in the company of these febrile Madrilenos. She should kill you, too, the way LuPone and Benanti and Burstein and Mitchell do. Director Sher hasn’t encouraged the fire in her belly, somehow and we need that to bring the whole Spanish tsimmes together. But I love the show and I want to see it again and again.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. At the Belasco Theater, 111 West 44th Street near Sixth Avenue. Tickets: $36.50-$126.50. 212-239-6200. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. A superb production, wonderful stars, music, direction, design, just miss clicking on Pedro Almodovar’s cult classic.

ELF  at the Hirschfeld Theater, 302 W. 45th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Ready or not, ‘tis the season to be jolly and Warner Bros. has pulled out its big gun from 2003, that whimsical, whapsical kidsical, Elf  in which a human baby gets snaffled off in Santa’s bag of goodies and whisked off to the North Pole and where he’s raised to think he’s an elf even when he gets to be twice the size of his little brothers and sisters. At which point he’s sent back to human country – ha! –with all his elfish innocence and trust, right to the  frozen heart of human  cynicism, the publishing business, to his real dad, who publishes children’s books.  As cold blooded a scenario as you could wish. And that is the basis for this jingly, tinkly musical with a book, music, lyrics , direction and style manufactured by Tony Award winners and nominees guaranteed to make the most jaded six year old giddy with Xmas spirit and buy a lobby full of  merchandise zeroed in on what’s gotta be everything a  kid could want – or at least demand – during the next eight weeks.  And then, Warner Bros. will tuck Elf back in their big theatrical closet and trot it out next year, and the year after that and the year after that and the – until the merchandising of Elf  companies all over the country has saturated every last kid in Christendom, whereupon versions tailored to children unlucky enough not to know that there’s always gonna be Santa and reindeer will get their own version of Elf. Maybe called Ilk.

Because that’s what this show is: ground out sausage  seasoned to taste.  And – it works.  They couldn’t all have been relatives and friends chortling at the  grown up jokes as well as the kiddy jokes.  Could they? And all that applause?  I was sitting next to a well known star and she applauded everything.  Noblesse oblige, I guess. Elf  has its own peculiar line up of performers in that the only star doesn’t play the central elf character, he plays Santa Claus.  George Wendt starts off ho ho jolly and stays that way through thick and thin of the plot, stringing merchandising jokes all along the way.  He’s got a bag of Doritos next to his TV  chair, he travels in a battery operated  sleigh run by a battery operated reindeer with a nose that lights up if you love Santa Claus and believe in him. He runs aground in Central Park because the Santa believers are mighty scarce and it’s up to Buddy the Elf to get everybody pumping belief in Santa to get things flying again.  And the kids believe again like crazy and darn if that sled doesn’t recharge and  rise up in the air and the lights go on, and the nose lights up. Santa has his I-Pad, where he keeps records of all the children he visits down through the years and all the naughty ones who doe not believe.  Oh, it’s a business..  Those dandy I-Pads. Okay, no more merchandising references, let’s get to the heart of the matter, the children’s heart.

Well, I gotta tell you, kids love the show.  They love the songs ( do you KNOW how hard it is to write a new Christmas song, do you have any idea?!! Ask Tony nominated song writers Matthew Sklar and Chad Beguelin.) Kids laugh at the funny jokes playwrights Tony Award winner Thomas Meehan and Bob Martin tickle them with, they love the dances director choreographer Casey Nicholaw stitched together, they looovvve the elfy costumes the large, energetic, nimble, smiley cast wears, and they adore the big elf, elf, that is, Sebastian Arcelus, who  gives 110 percent from start to finish, even elfier than that guy in the movie.  The kids love all the clever scenery David Rockwell flips and flies, they love Natasha Katz’s bewitching lighting, they rise to the sounds designer Peter Hylenski spills, every one of them Tony Award winners or nominees.  Warners ain’t making no mistakes this time.  The only one not nominated or awarded a Tony is hair designer Josh Marquette but then wigs aren’t too  big in Elf  and kids really don’t understand the subtleties of hair unless it’s blue and six feet high.

Will you have a good time?  Yes, if you bring the kids and enjoy them having a good time. But be prepared to buy elfin fripperies.  For the children, not for yourself.  Or, oh, go ahead, for yourself, too. I’ve seen sixty year olds in those hats.  Not the boots, though.  Yet.

                                                      
Elf. At the Hirschfeld Theater, 302 West 45th Street near Eighth Avenue.  Tickets: $39-#152. 212-239-6200. Tue 8 pm, Thu-Sat 8 pm, Sun 7 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat, Sun 2 pm.
                                                                        *
Elf. Based on the movie, this musical  chronicles Buddy’s adventures discovering he’s not a real elf to wooing his real family into believing in Santa Claus.  Child-centric fun.

MORE LONDON NOTES
EUGENE PAUL

THE RAILWAY CHILDREN inside Waterloo Station

If the star of this show could travel across the Great Briny to the Great Shiny, Broadway that is, he’d wow crowds for as long as he wanted to.  Mostly, that’d be kids but is there a parent alive who wasn’t once upon a time in love with a locomotive? Because that’s what the canny producers of this elegant adaptation of Edith Nesbit’s 1905 book about a family’s travails has fashioned.  They’ve created a theater smack dab at Waterloo in the vast wing which once served as the Eurostar terminal (and doubtless will again once new services to Europe go operational ) so that they could bring in on its own steam power the most beautiful steam locomotive you ever saw for crucial moments – aren’t they all – in the story. Wow.  Wow, wow, wow.

The story, or stories, center around Roberta, Peter and Phyllis, the children of Mr. and Mrs Harker whose tranquil, privileged, Edwardian life is suddenly shattered when Papa has abruptly been taken from his family leaving them all but destitute.  Why, we and the children do not know.(We do find out, never fear.)  They leave their finery and the pretty comforts of their posh, city life and go far into the countryside to a tiny town where life is very different, very immediate and plain, to become immersed in adventures on the railway tracks.  Designer Joanna Scotcher has set the action of the play on two railway platforms 150 feet long.  Moving sectional platforms between, which roll on the tracks, become playing areas with scenery changes.  At one end of the platform is the railway stair crossover common in country stations.  At the other end is the station house itself.,  Audiences sit rank upon rank on both sides of the railway.  It’s prodigious.

The stories, the episodes, are sweetness and light and a breath of old fashioned fresh air in these noxious times: rescuing the trapped boy in the tunnel, the prevented crash by the heroic children, story book reminders of moralities we still believe somehow, somewhere, hanging by our fingernails.  Apparently it is very good for business, too: you ought to see the sweet shoppes and the things you can buy in specially designed and operated kid oriented merchandise gauntlets you have to pass through before entering the railway theater.  (And, of course, waylaying you on the way out.) I loved every inch of the railway, the bursts of steam, the throbbing roars of the trains,  the  platform crowds and their Edwardian finery, and most of all, of that beautiful, beautiful locomotive pulling behind it the most beautiful wooden parlor car you ever, ever saw, all lit up, with passengers! It’s its own vertical enterprise and could probably run forever.  Especially if that locomotive sticks around.

FLASHDANCE.  At the Shaftsbury Theater.

A cotillion of American producers and show business entities are using London as  a tryout town for the next big Broadway musical built around the  current hottest public pleaser – dance – and wondering if they’ve got their bets placed on a sure thing after all. Billy Elliott was a movie about working stiffs and a dancing kid, Flashdance was a movie about working stiffs and a dancing girl, and dancing girl beats dancing kid, right? So, okay, Billy Elliott  was a terrific movie but Flashdance had a terrific girl in that movie and there’s a terrific girl in the show so that checks out all right, right? Okay, the Brits had a strong story line about mines and workers, but this American setting, steel mills in Pittsburgh, that’s strong , too, isn’t it?  And this girl works in a mills and that kid, he just danced.  So, we’re ahead, right?

We are in panic mode.

We have this big dancing show and we start out in a steel mill?  No, maybe we should start out with dancing.  Okay, we’ll get  one of those fantastic break dancers to do a solo before we go to the steel mill.  So what if it doesn’t make sense, it sets the dance tone, right? Break dancing sets a dance tone? Are we gonna get a beautiful girl doing break dancing which is strictly  street punk stuff no matter how slick, no mater how good, no matter how spectacular.  Different muscles.  And besides, she doesn’t do break dancing, she does her own break- from- the- mill dancing, that’s different.

Or should be. With an Oscar winning song, to boot, going in, and with a wildly gifted choreographer (Arlene Phillips) staging  at least two knockout ballets, we’ve got to have a winner, right?  Well, you need a few other things.  A coherent sense of story.  Well, a  story that is  at least coherent enough on which to hang a musical.  And a director’s sense of pacing so that numbers just don’t follow numbers.  And the big build-up to the flashdance girl’s audition – yes, there’s an audition in this show, too, for the dancer – is not undercut by other dance numbers so that her big moment falls flat – and having the bad guy’s go-go club look better than anything else in the show -  - and having the heroine’s mom shot dead by another bad guy who’s not really so bad just hopeless – put it all together and you have mish mash.

This is not to say that it can’t all be straightened out if someone took hold and straightened it all out but then you have to ask yourself, why?  The knockout ballets are not enough.  There isn’t a fresh story line in the show.  The break dancers are terrific.  The girl is spectacular to look at but a dynamite dance she is not. But – there’s always hope. Without it there’s no show business.

LOMBARDI at the Circle in the Square Theater, W. 50th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Why?  Why am I going to see a play about somebody named Lombardi?  Somebody named Vince Lombardi?  Why?  Why did somebody write a play about somebody named Vince Lombardi?  Did he get the Nobel prize?  Or a Pulitzer? Or the Newberry?  Or something?  He cured cancer? He invented a new diet you can eat all you want and never get fat?  What? What? He was what? A football coach? ..Alll riightt… That’s nice… The Green Bay Packers?  Wait a minute here…You are talking ancient history, at least back into the `1960’s.  That Vince Lombardi?  And now, now there is this play? Okay shut up and pay attention….

And that’s how I fell in love with Vince Lombardi .I mean, it wasn’t even Vince Lombardi, it was Dan Lauria playing Vince Lombardi and I was hooked, hooked.  And I looked around at the audience and there were so many solid looking citizens in the same condition who looked as if they were there on purpose who looked as if they knew who they were coming here for that I felt—good. They weren’t there to see a show, they were there to see Vince. And watching them  (when I wasn’t watching the play) (which was hardly ever) I saw they were seeing Vince.  And Marie, his ever loving, incredible wife.  And Paul Hornung, and Dave Robinson and Jim Taylor and this weirdly wonderful young reporter Michael McCcormick.  And yes, I knew we were watching a play in the round which can be disquieting, less forgiving than other theatrical forms, because you always see audience as you are seeing beyond the stage, but this time, it was all right because they were all in the play, they were all Vince’s friends, no, devotees, no, family is the way you have to put it. And they loved him, too.

How can that be? Yes, Dan Lauria has obviously poured his guts into performing this man who he understands and fulfills but he’s not Vince Lombardi, and yet, there he is, Vince Lombardi.  In the fresh shirt and the explosive temper and the fanatical mission to make the Packers the absolute best, totally demanding, totally unreasonable, totally right even when he was the biggest pain in the ass.  And there is this kid reporter pulling out all this stuff even when Vince didn’t want or expect anything more than good press.  This was more. Somehow playwright Eric Simonson gets past the flashback bumps to keep the character flow intact, somehow director Thomas Kail pulls his own Lombardi in demanding the best from his cast and getting it, somehow, Chris Sullivan becomes so Dave Robinson you know he’s Dave and yet even as you do, you also know you are watching superb acting.  Judith Light as Marie is giving the performance of her distinguished career.  Keith Nobbs as that dedicated kid reporter gets past the costumes which remains a costume on him because he doesn’t understand that kind of clothing but underneath, he’s real, he’s an enthralled reporter doing his best work and you know it.  Yes, I admired Bill Dawes giving Paul Hornung a sexy dimension and Rpbert Christopher Riley being so completely a ball player but ultimately it was Dan Lauria who made Lombardi Lombardi.  And he did.  Even that actorish whiff you got once in a while, that became pure Vince.  How I wish I’d paid more attention all those years ago. But never too late: Lombardi is here and you gotta love him.
                                                                        *
Lombardi. At the Circle in the Square Theater, West 50th Street near Eighth Avenue.  Tickets:$115. 212-239-6200 or telecharge.com. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats Wed,Sat 2 pm, Sun 3 pm.
                                                                        *
Lombardi. Vince Lombardi and his making the Green Bay Packers champions.  A wonderful cast in a wonderful tribute to a wonderful guy.

 

THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS at the Lyceum Theater, 149 W. 45th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

The collaborative art that is the theater functions – or does not function – without rules. If something is good and works, the way to make it better is this. Or, maybe we’d better leave it alone. Or, mind if I try something? Or, here, try this, I know I can do this better. No rules. Hard work? Yes. Inspiration? Yes. Genius? Yes. Dumb luck? Yes. But wedded to hard won knowledge, expertise, knowing that this has to happen now, not later, and that has to happen right after this and there must be increasing inventiveness as the show develops or stasis sets in. The process is always alive, always challenging, always demanding the best, always demanding devotion. And when it all works, a good show becomes a better show and then a great show. Such as the current iteration of The Scottsboro Boys. It’s a marvel.

Several months ago, when I first saw the show I knew it was good. But I didn’t know it could be great. I knew the Kander and Ebb score was good, but I didn’t know it could be superlative. I knew David Thompson’s book was a fine, clever piece of work but I didn’t know it could be turned into something like a masterwork. And I didn’t know that director choreographer Susan Stroman was the
genius to turn it all into the extraordinary, searing, provocative, emotionally challenging tightrope of laughter and rage it has become.

To begin with, telling the story of the Scottsboro Boys through the antique racist device of the minstrel show is such a bold, shocking idea that something had to happen no matter what, awful good or awful awful. We don’t see minstrel snows any more for lots of reasons, most of them having to do with a learned sense of civilizing shame, so that the sheer confrontation with the minstrel show which is the format of The Scottsboro Boys is a jolt of wrongness we know is there for a reason of rightness. And throughout the entire show, we bounce between this wrongness and this rightness, especially when the cast of nine black boys and men play white women and white men as they unfold their still emotionally charged story. There is only one white person in the entire show and that is Mr. Interlocutor, the leader of the minstrel show, fulfilling all his traditions. John Cullum used to play him with a layer of unconscious evil which charged him with an apparently affecting energy that threw the play’s focus too much in his direction. Now, his evil is so banal he’s almost a pussy cat. Almost. It’s a beautiful balancing act which shapes the show’s focus more finely to where it is now, where it is supposed to be. That marvelous, marvelous collaborative magic of theater.

Now, the songs are sixteen gems, all but perfect in their Tiffany settings. Now, the dances, the movement, the deployment of designer Beowulf Borwitt’s amazingly flexible, amazingly versatile set pieces, flow together, adjusting to the pacing of the flow of years. Now, the maddening march of time rasps through the show, not simply illustrative installments. And it all happened in the minds and hearts and guts of the collaborative art that is theater, that is this brilliant brilliant mojo The Scottsboro Boys. Colman Domingo, Forrest McClendon, Josh Breckenridge, Derrick Cobey, Jeremy Cumbs, Joshua Henry, Rodney Hicks, Kendrick Jones, James Lane, Christian Dante White, and lovely Sharon Washington. But they are all lovely. Especially Susan Stroman.

The Scottsboro Boys at the Lyceum Theater, 149 West 45th Street. Tickets: $39.50-$131.50.
212-239=6200. Scottsboromusical.com. Tue-Sun 8 pm. Mats, Sat, Sun 3 pm.

The Scottsboro Boys. Spellbinding. A searing combination of laughter and righteous rage set to one of Kander and Ebb’s finest scores.

DRIVING MISS DAISY at the Golden Theater, 252 W. 45th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

One of the finest moments in the ultimately luminous and moving performance of Driving Miss Daisy in its Broadway debut is the courtly, gentlemanly courtesy shown by James Earl Jones and Boyd Gaines to their co-star, Vanessa Redgrave, in their bow before a standing, applauding audience at the end of the evening’s satisfactions. It was of a piece with their superb interaction throughout the play. Vanessa Redgrave is hardly the likeliest choice to play Miss Daisy but the ways Boyd Gaines treated her as his mama and the ways James Earl Jones believed in her as his eccentric
employer made Miss Redgrave’s performance the achievement it ultimately became. I’m sure they earned her eternal gratitude. The interplay fed perfectly into the rare kind of star studded evening Broadway theatergoers love. To see this Driving Miss Daisy is an Occasion. And the audience reflected the sentiment.

Alfred Uhry bears the distinction of being the only playwright who has won a Pulitzer Prize, an Oscar and two Tony Awards. The Tonys were not for Driving Miss Daisy which was not eligible, it being an Off-Broadway sensation. (The Tonys were for Parade and The Light Night of Ballyhoo). Driving Miss Daisy won the Pulitzer and the Oscar, as a film. Set in the Deep South in 1948, its story seems like simplicity itself: the gradual growing of a deep bond between two unlikely individuals. Which, in its way, makes a highly unlikely play, no melodramatics, no dramatic arc, no spectacular scenes, no wisecracks. The play rests on the building of character and of characters to be funny, to be moving, to be profound.

Middle aged Boolie Werthan, Miss Daisy’s son, with a family business to run and mightily concerned by his mother’s idiosyncratic driving; – she’s 72, very senior in 1948, – hires Hoke Coleburn, a man of mature years and sobriety, to be her driver, something she emphatically does not want in any way. But she can’t fire him; he’s working for her son. She can ignore him and does her darnedest. Hoke waits her out. He’s prepared for this ornery white lady. White Jewish lady, which makes her a mite more curious then other white ladies in addition to her attitude toward him. He knows it’s not because he’s black, it’s because her freedom is being cut back. He understands her. And, eventually, she gives in, not very graciously. Hoke is smooth as silk as he cajoles her, sweet talks her, knows when to be quiet, knows how to take her remonstrances and turn them into butter smooth agreement. Not that there aren’t bumps along the way. Director David Esbjornson makes the most of them, almost, it seems by letting these amazing actors do what seems like the natural thing to do. Yet it couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth is that each of them has worked diligently, brilliantly to create the characters their playwright has wished them to create. Which is why the gorgeous generosity of Miss Redgrave’s two co-stars woos her into a performance she simply could not have given on her own, being so much Redgrave Diva. And it all works wonderfully, most of all, most satisfyingly for its rapt audience, who are there to see stars. And they do.

Scenic designer John Lee Beatty’s minimalist set, along with projections by Wendall Harrington provide all the space and focus on these three stars as the years go by and the relationship between Miss Daisy and her dearly dependable Hoke becomes closer than either would have expected, until she sees him as her only friend. And friend he remains, to the end. Lump in the throat? You bet. James Earl Jones’ simply wonderful performance is so right you don’t even marvel, you just accept. In his way, he creates Miss Daisy, he creates Boolie, even though Gaines and Redgrave give full
performances of their own. It’s the giving that makes them all great. Don’t miss Driving Miss Daisy.

Driving Miss Daisy at the Golden Theater, 252 West 45th Street. Tickets: $65-$125. Mon 8 pm, Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat 2 pm. Telecharge.com. Student rush $26.50 day of show at box office.

Driving Miss Daisy. In a star studded performance, Alfred Uhry’s Pulitzer winning, Oscar winning play makes its Broadway debut

SHINE! at Theater at St. Clements, 423 W. 46th St.W. 47th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

One of the most ambitious, certainly the most populous and elaborate of the frenetic outpouring the New York Musical Theatre Festival pours into the current theater season, Shine!,The Horatio Alger Musical, is devoutly old fashioned and determined to make that a virtue. Virtue, in fact, is the message and the thrust of the show, as the Horatio Alger name in the subtitle should inform you and once you know Shine! Is based on Horatio Alger’s uplifting books for boys you’ve pretty much got the gist, the feel, the esthetic of what is being mounted on St. Clement’s welcoming stage. You know what you’re in for, you’re there because you want to be. And in my case, having read every single volume in the Horatio Alger oeuvre and been inspired by them each and every time the hero won out, I couldn’t wait to see Shine!. Because the musicals of the New York Musical Theater Festival have such a crowded schedule -– NYMF has turned out 232 musical in six years! – there was a stampede for Shine!. Who knew so many Horatio Alger fans had grown up in Manhattan? Of course, there is also the fact that Shine! has been trying to put its best foot forward for more than fifteen years.

Well, darn it, Shine! needs more than a dab of spit and polish to shine, best foot or no. It’s got dozens of pleasant numbers, dapperly produced, as polished as director Peter Flynn and his talented, eager cast can deliver, loads of energy nicely supported with mikes and lights and clever, thrifty settings and setting suggestions – and not a single surprise in the whole shebang. Or a single cliche left undisturbed. Which, in its way, may be the whole point: that the good old days of 1876, when a nickel was really a nickel and you could rent a room for seventy-five cents a week, maybe those good old days are what we’re looking for these far from halcyon days. And then again, maybe not.

Our hero, Ragged Dick, (Andy Mientus) down on his hands and knees in the bowels of an effervescent Wall Street with a cheery word and a cheery smile – and, of course, a cheery song -- for every customer he can get, is building his way to fame and fortune a nickel at a time, a shine at a time. He is dimly aware that this is going to be a long an slow process so when he hears opportunity knocking in Snobdens’ haberdashery shop – there’s a spot for an office boy! – he leaps at the opportunity. He’s on is way! Only to fall into the toils of his wicked stepfather, Luke Gerrish
(Michael Halling), freshly out of prison and looking for the odd chance to make a killing. And not a nickel at a time. Dick sidesteps potential peril, avoids Luke like the plague and continues his way to the top, making friends right and left, picking up market tips, making up market tips, busy, busy, busy. But everything comes crashing down when the darling son of a noble banker who has befriended Dick is kidnapped by none other than his stepfaher, Luke. Suspicion and hatred, none of which Dick deserves,, force him out of his job, back into the streets, back to his shine box. If you want to know how Dick overcomes these tribulations -– but then, you already know, don’t you. There is always a happy ending in Horatio Alger’s stories.

There are splendid voices aplenty amid the vigorous performances and MIchael Halling’s is one of the best. William Ryall as haberdashery proprietor Silas Snobden is also fine. A collection of biddies, not all of them Irish, have a grand old time swigging beer to the tune of " A Handful of Hops", and the nontaxing choreography they engage in hints at possibilities cheerfully. Well, it’s a nice thing to be cheerful these days, isn’t it. Or in 1876.

Shine! The Horatio Alger Musical At Theater at St. Clement’s. 423 West 46th Street. Tickets: $20. Call 212-3101 or nymf.org/shine for times and dates.

Shine! The Horatio Alger Musical Onward and upward from rags to riches, one nickel at a time, lots of jolly singing and a happy ending, Horatio Alger style.

THE PITMEN PAINTERS at the Samuel Friedman Theater, W. 47th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Pitmen – coal miners – worked in the coal mines of Britain 12 hours a day, six days a week. The black never left their hands or pores or lungs. Boys and men worked the coal all their lives until they couldn’t work any more. Coal was their bread. Coal was their life. One million men slaved in the mines. Proudly. Today there are no coal miners in England. In 1934, it was just as proud for a small group of them to hire a teacher to give them insight into a foreign world: art appreciation. The teacher arrived with his black and white slides of Renaissance masterpieces and realized they didn’t understand a thing he was talking about. It wasn’t just his plummy accent; they simply could not comprehend the how, the why, the impetus of these images. These were hands on men. He gave them hands on work to do: paint. Paint what they knew, paint what they saw. Explain what they were doing to their fellow tribesmen of the mines and argue, discuss, laugh, wonder, learn. The result was beyond his dreams. The men dubbed themselves the Ashington Group. The result was understanding. The result was fame. The Ashington Group lived for fifty years. The result was change, as one of them put it: art changes you. Lee Hall, the playwright of The Pitmen Painters has found art in the pitmen before. He wrote Billy Elliott the story of a boy of the coal mines who wanted to dance. The movie, the musical were and are wildly successful hits. The art of the theater serves its greatest purpose: it changes you.

The entire British cast of The Pitmen Painters is here intact and they are splendid. Director Max
Roberts has knitted them into a company that makes you laugh, touches you to tears, teaches you as it entertains. Of the twenty to thirty men who became the Ashington Group, playwright Hall has chosen five – all real -- to shape his play: George Brown (wonderful Deka Walmsley) self appointed leader of the group, stiff necked, strait laced, rules, rules, rules. He takes their teacher to task for
arriving late. Pitmen are punctual. There’s Harry Wilson (Michael Hodgson, fiercely fine), not well enough to go down in the mines, Jimmy Floyd (splendid David Whitaker) deliberately and not so deliberately funny, Oliver Kilbourn (outstanding Christopher Connel), full of latent talent and insight, and Young Lad (Brian Lonsdale) who comes in out of the cold. They’re full of respect but not awe for Robert Lyon, their instructor; he’s real, too (Ian Kelly in a beautifully shrewd performance.) Lyon gets them to work and we see their works in overhead screens in Gary McCann’s dourly evocative setting of the mining town YMCA Hall. And Lyon is stunned at what the men accomplish, even if they, themselves do not see the fullness of their accomplishments. He pushed them further: he hires a
model, Susan Parks ( excellent Lisa McGillis) who horrifies George by proceeding to undress. He has never seen a naked woman in his life, not even his own wife, will have none of it. Not all the men are of the same mind. Lyon invites Helen Sutherland (Phillipa Wilson, subtly delicate) a shipping heiress and collector, to see the men’s work. She buys a painting for two pounds. It’s too much; Jimmy wants to give it to her. She makes it three pounds. Done.

The men go to Newcastle to museums. They go to London to the major galleries. Helen introduces them to Ben Nicholson (Brian Londsdale again in a charming cameo) who turns out to be a pretty good bloke for a famous nob. She finds Oliver’s company more and more compelling; she sees that he can really understand not only his own work but theirs and the work of artists. He is more than a pitman he is indeed a painter. She offers him a stipend. He will not have to go down in the mines any more. The men are sharply divided as to whether he should accept her largesse. He knows she has feelings for him. His perverse pride as a pitman keeps him from accepting, even though he knows that the money means nothing to her. Rebuffed, she exercises her status, knowing that their class differences are the real trouble between them, just as proud as he. Instructor Lyon, having created this difficulty finds he own solution protecting his own butt: he accepts a much more elevated position, his reward for the work he’s done with the miners. He’s used them. He feels guilty but they’ve benefited far more. And so have we. Art appreciation has never been so engrossing.

The Pitmen Painters.
At the Samuel Friedman Theater, 261 West 47th Street. Tickets: $57-$116. 212-239-6200, 800-432-7250, mtc-nyc.org. Tue 7 pm, Wed-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat, Sun 2 pm.

The Pitmen Painters. In a brilliantly instructive production, Playwright Lee Hall and the original company bring a chapter of British eccentricity to vivid, moving life.

MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION at American Airlines Theater, 227 W. 42nd St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

In its sixth Broadway production over the past 104 years, the indestructible Mrs. Warren shows signs of having met her morality level at last. Instead of Shaw’s iron inflexibility at close, we find ourselves disappointed not to enjoy another expected Shavian paradoxical upending of the usual.  But no, this time – well, think 1905 – Shaw gives us the ultimate paradox: what we deserve. Director Doug Hughes bangs us over the head immediately.  We are presented with a scrim, its design an impenetrable maze scrawled large, accompanied by loud, tinkly, jolly music.  Scrim lifts on an elaborated garden corner of Mrs. Warren’s house, the impenetrable scrim wildly different from designer Scott Pask’s lavish period settings over each of four acts.  The scrim punctuates these splendiferous settings with jolts of modern primitivism.  And loud tinkly music.  Go figger.  In the garden, a slip of a girl, Vivie, being bookish.  But no, second glance says she’s not a young girl at all nor is her manner adolescent one whit,  Mr. Praed arrives, a devout esthete, every posture, every stitch, every word predetermined and styled.  He is a friend of Vivie’s mother.  In short order, the garden corner becomes busy with Mama’s male friends, Reverend Gardner, a handsome, decaying humbug, Frank, his son, clever, amorously confident, and when Vivie’s mother, Kitty Warren enters, she is escorted by Sir George Crofts, a self satisfied lecher and thug who puts Vivie in his sights.  Vivie handles them all.  But Mama.

Mrs. Warren’s profession, as everyone knows except her carefully distantly reared daughter is that of a very successful madame, running a string of brothels in Europe.  She has taken great pains to conceal her past and present from her daughter up this very moment. (Which does not explain why she appears in her vividest plumage to the instant recognition of everyone on stage and in the audience declaiming her trade.) Vivie, who was raised in the best schools, with the best nannies, has turned into a highly self-sufficient, pleasant looking woman, proficient as an actuary, love, romance meaning little or nothing to her.  She is the Modern Woman, Shaw’s vision a goodish bit before its time, far less conventional than her voluptuous mother, yet both are business women. Mama’s careful revelations, forced out of her, do not repel Vivie; she flies to her mother’s tentative embrace.  Shocked, delighted, Kitty thinks she has pulled it off, revealed enough and kept her daughter. But we are in Shaw country.  Once Sir George spills much more in response to Vivie’s spurning his attentions, the fat is in the fire.  George is Kitty’s backer and business partner.  He collects 35% of the profits the whores bring in.  (Shaw never uses that word or any euphemism thereof.) Vivie is sickened. (Why, Shaw never says.)  Her repugnance is so profound, so deep, she breaks off relations not only with all the men but especially with her mother.  Shaw’s obvious potential argument for the Modern Woman, that her body is hers and only hers to do with as she pleases, is never fully articulated, not by Mrs. Warren, not by Vivie, not by anyone.  Is it implicit?  Almost.  Shaw is, after all, Shaw.

The Roundabout Theater  production is one of the most lavish and handsome in years, far and away grander than any Shaw revival I’ve eve seen.  Except for that puzzle of a scrim.  The tone established demands declamation and Shaw’s lines, declamations in themselves, are  thus, far too underlined by an expert, miscast cast.  Cherry Jones is having a slightly awkward time swanning and sashaying as Mrs. Warren, perhaps because she knows the approach is wrong. It leaves her big scenes hollow instead of heartfelt.  Sally Hawkins plays too neutral, too unfeminine a female to make the point that a woman can be her own man.  Adam Driver, young Frank, has lucked into a delicious role he fills to overflowing, again where less is more, which director Doug Hughes, responsible for all the actors selected, their performances, production style, interpretation and quality of Shavian deployment has simply got off on the wrong foot and never gets it right.  He doesn’t even use the qualities of the cast he chose to their own advantages with the exception of Mark Harelik as  Sir George. Harelik is absolutely fine but his interest  as George in  Vivie is totally unbelievable or far too kinky for even Shaw. It’s not his fault; the leching after Vivie is in the script but the factual presence of the actress playing Vivie gives the lie to every word Shaw puts in his mouth.  Sally Hawkins, pivotal to the entire play, is a perfectly competent actress who is simply not alluring in any way as played.  Without Vivie’s allure, there is no center to Shaw’s play. Michael Siberry gives the Reverend Gardner whatever director Hughes calls for but he needs people he can work against and with.  They are still on the page.  Lastly, Edward Hibbert, as Mr. Praed, does what he does and has done expertly for decades: declaim, posture, wear clothes well and stay in his own world inside the one created around him.  Indeed, as portrayed, his character serves no purpose in the play.

But – It’s Shaw.  It’s full of wonderful words, wonderful word play, wonderful ideas.  And everyone looks beautifully soigné in Catherine Zuber’s costumes which remain costumes, not clothing, throughout.  Good for posing, though.  Still, can’t get enough Shaw.
                                                                        *
Mrs. Warren’s Profession. At the American Airlines Theater, 227 West 42nd Street.  Tickets: $67-$117. 212-710-1300 or roundabouttheatre.org. Tue-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat, Sun 2 pm.

BRIEF ENCOUNTER at Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St.
Reviewed by EUGENE PAUL

Emma Rice, the madly gifted director and fashioner of Noel Coward’s unforgettable Brief Encounter writes a considerable note in the playbill which, fortunately, I read after the show.  Firstly, quickly, departing the theater, I have to tell you I overheard cell phone conversations in which people were saying, “This is the best show in town” in a couple of variations, but that’s the gist.  The best show in town.  Well, everybody’s a critic and once in a while, everybody’s right.  Yes, the moon is blue.  This, the current, bright, fresh, odd, appealing Brief Encounter, knocks you sideways with its charm, its cleverness, its invention, its attitudes, its wittily wise approach to Coward’s most touching theater piece and makes it better than it ever was, because director Rice trusts the emotional honesty of the original and keeps it intact. Her playbill note doesn’t convey a fraction of the delight she has put on the stage, indeed, in the entire theater.  All of her fiddlings, all of her endearingly playful nuttiness is woven heart and soul around the love story between housewife Laura and staid, married doctor Alec who fall in love with each other because they can’t help it and are transported.  It happens, and when it happens, it affects the scenery, the sound effects, the lighting and everybody else in the cast, even, especially the music.

Oh, the music, oh boys. When it isn’t those dear songs of 1938, it’s new melodies by Stu Barker for half the Coward pieces  You come into the theater and this spiffy combo in spiffy period uniforms is playing songs your parents learned from their parents.  And are they ever peripatetic!  They’re up one aisle, down the other, across the back, thence to the stage.  Where they take up residence not only as our musicians but as our cast, the cheeky devils.  All except Laura and Alec.  Laura and Alec are our love story inviolate, magically able to move from film to stage and back, never finding a place for their love, bound, eventually to return to their dutiful lives. The Cheeky Devils have their own shenanigans going on which prove often trenchant commentary on aspects of love while scenery wheels about, flies about, everybody surges with the winds of time, the roils of passion, every bit of it keyed to Alec and Laura.  And us. We have become that most precious of theatrical commodities, conspirators.  We want our familiar love story to stay pure while we enjoy the whiskey, cherries, whipped cream, sass and silliness we didn’t know we hungered for until director Rice ladled it all over our heads.  And, yum, it’s good.

She has marvelous, marvelous servitors and I didn’t recognize but one face, Joseph Alessi’s, who is a whole cornucopia of good things all in one, lecherous station attendant, forbearing husband – each of his characterizations is full blown, even with that same face. (I never dreamed he looked like Noel Coward, too, but there he is, in the tortured flesh.) I adored Annette McLaughlin, top to startling callipygian bottom and absolutely loved every winsome creature Dorothy Atkinson created.  Gabriel Ebert is a wry catcher among other splendid accomplishments.  Hanna Yelland as Laura is pitch perfect and so good with her children you believe in the instant.  As Alec, Tristan Sturrock fills our hero head to toe; it’s more wonderment he sings and plays  Coward’s “A Room with a View” in a way you will never forget. The members of the company are so in synch with the technical connivings enhancing the production you have the eery feeling they’re all one, part and parcel with the magical workings of John Driscoll and Gemma Carrington’s projections which are part and parcel of Neil Murray’s sets and costumes, married to Malcolm Rippeth’s lighting and Simon
Becker’s sound.  How did it come together and out of Emma Rice’s mind… Oh, you’ll have a grand time, maybe even with a tear or two.
                                                            
Brief Encounter. At Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street.  Tickets: $37-$127. 212 719-1300 or http://roundabouttheater.org.  Tue-Sat 8 pm. Mats, Wed, Sat, Sun 2 pm.

                                                                        *
Brief Encounter. Noel Coward’s  classic film has new lives in what may be the most original,  earthy to entrancing theatrical musical delight the Brits have sent us.