11/21/22: Only Gold
What: MCC presents a new musical by Kate Nash, about a king of a small country who brings his wife and adult daughter to Paris in 1928 to prepare for his daughter's wedding, and the watchmaker-turned-jeweler and piano soloist whose lives are changed by the royal family's arrival.
And? If you look at this as strictly a dance piece (directed and choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler) underscored by Kate Nash songs, then this is some absolutely stellar storytelling. If you look at this as a musical, you're in a bit more trouble. The dialogue (book by Blankenbuehler and Ted Malawer) is very not good. The story itself is built entirely of tropes we've seen many times over. The use of Kate Nash as narrator who sometimes (but not always) sings the characters' thoughts, feels too arbitrary a device to be an effective storytelling move. The placement in 1928 Paris feels even more arbitrary. Why are we here? Where is the evidence of a generation lost to the Great War, of a city rebuilding? What, besides the love stories, makes any of this demand to take place in France? The only reason I can see for why it takes place in a specific year is to make it clear why Camille, as a woman, feels unable to pursue her music career.
But let's be kind. Let's look at it as a dance piece underscored by Kate Nash. Then, oh boy. After hearing the pedestrian dialogue I didn't expect to invest in any of these characters' journeys, but the dances--each feeling in a way like their own individual one-acts--are a true emotional journey, a clarity of storytelling that reminds us why we love Blankenbuehler's work. This production is a true showcase for Karine Plantadit and Gaby Diaz, who play queen and princess to Terrence Mann's king. They are both utterly transcendent and vividly alive through their numbers. Heck, the whole cast is great, I just really wanted to highlight these two. I wish I could list specific songs/dances that spoke to me, but it's hard to remember the songs that were sung under the dances, so even a title list doesn't help me here. From a theater historian standpoint, it's rather charming that though Terrence Mann is cast in one of the three non-dancing roles, he still comes from a dance background (early projects for him include OBC Cats and the film of A Chorus Line); and luckily he also gets to have a great musical catharsis singing--he may not dance anymore, but his voice is still as wonderful as ever. And the framework for the space is lovely too: Jeff Croiter knows how to light dancers to show off their beauty and grace, and they glow against David Korins's romantic coppery scenic design.
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| Hannah Cruz and Karine Plantadit as Camille and Queen Roksana. Photo by Daniel J. Vasquez. |
11/22/22: A Man of No Importance
What: Classic Stage presents a revival of the McNally, Ahrens, and Flaherty musical about a bus conductor in Dublin, closeted and enamored of the works of Oscar Wilde, trying to stage a community production of Salome.
And? I think this musical just isn't for me. The production is fine, with some flaws (the flaws: the accent work is turrible, and the sound design isn't a lot better--I struggled to hear the cast over the instruments, and I was in the front row), but it's just not for me. John Doyle is a great actor's director, giving us fully realized humans onstage, which I always value. Jim Parsons gives a subtle and understated performance as Alfie, quietly sad and quietly hopeful. Thom Sesma, always solidly good, is a hammy delight as the butcher turned theater actor. A.J. Shively is dopeishly sweet as bus driver Robbie Fay, but the orchestrations by Bruce Coughlin don't allow his big song, "The Streets of Dublin," to soar the way it needs to. A really lovely thing to note: there is fantastic body diversity in this production, and the costume design by Ann Hould-Ward outfits them all beautifully. Yes, this, more please.
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| Shereen Ahmed, Da'Von T. Moody, Alma Cuervo, Joel Waggoner, William Youmans, Mary Beth Peil, A.J. Shively, Jessica Tyler Wright, and Kara Mikula as Adele Rice, Peter, Miss Oona Crowe, Ernie Lally, Baldy O'Shea, Mrs. Grace, Robbie Fay, Mrs. Patrick, and Mrs. Curtin. Photo by Julieta Cervantes. |
11/23/22: Fiddler on the Roof
A repeat visit (the return of the Yiddish production directed by Joel Grey), this time at New World Stages. Still the best Fiddler production I've ever seen.
11/25/22: Leopoldstadt
What: Tom Stoppard's newest (and purportedly final) play, about a bourgeois family in Vienna, an extended family of both Jewish and Christian (or Jewish-converted-to-Christian) members, spanning 1899 to 1955, and how the meaning of assimilation changes with the rise of the Nazi party.
And? This is a bit of a struggle to write, because unfortunately this strikes me as the kind of play which benefits from repeated visits (or at least time with the script). I've got the script, but I may not have time to finish reading it before this post goes live. It's a complicated family structure that's hard to keep in your head, even with the help of the projected family tree and the characters' occasionally breaking down their complicated relations ("My sister-in-law's sister-in-law. I think," explains one character early on). And of course as a Jewish person facing a rise in open antisemitism in the States and globally, it's hard for me to hear these characters talk about either their optimism or fear about their place in society when we know what is to come, then and now. It's hard to not feel the ache when they list the camps, to not think of your own family slaughtered. You can't separate yourself from the experience of the moment, because yourself is always half of how that experience exists at all.
This play feels like a warning and a eulogy. A reminder that everything we're hearing now was said before, and didn't stop with words. Stoppard transplanted the family to Vienna, but they are still inspired by his family. In the final scene in 1955, with only three members of the family still standing, Stoppard's stand-in Leo, who escaped after Kristallnacht to England and remembers very little of his time being either Viennese or Jewish, reads through the family tree with the ghosts of his family behind him, all of them dead, all of them slaughtered. He has felt protected, disconnected from this genocide, safe in England with an Anglicized name, but he must confront that it's all still there, it all happened, and it didn't happen to him only by the skin of his teeth
I'm grateful Stoppard wrote this. If Hard Problem had been his last play, it would have been a real letdown (I got nothing out of that show, and I saw two different productions). Between this and Rock 'n' Roll, it is moving to see him bring his world-class mind to tell the stories of where he came from before he was England's most celebrated living playwright. He is Czech. He is Jewish. These remain immutably true even as he is also an English playwright. We learned this in Arcadia and Indian Ink, but he reminds us again and again, our histories follow us. They inform us. Whether we remember them accurately or not, they are there in our makeup.
What: The Shed hosts David Hare's play about Robert Moses, who redesigned New York City in the 20th century.
And? Matinees are rough for me these days, y'all. I was struggling mightily to stay awake all through act one. I don't think that's entirely the play's fault, but it also means I can't give this play a fair shake here. From what I was able to see with wakeful eyes, I think this was well enough put together but not for me. I found myself truly craving some kind of real physical transformation, some metaphor to the space, the scenic design (especially in a play about someone who transformed space), and I didn't get that.
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| Ralph Fiennes as Robert Moses. Photo by Manuel Harlan. |
11/26/22: Merrily We Roll Along
What: NYTW presents a revival of Sondheim and Furth's cult musical about a disintegrating friendship, told backwards.
And? This is the ticket of the season and I am counting my blessings I got to see it. But I will admit I've been confused since this was announced, as I thought NYTW's focus was on new works, and workshopping them. This not only isn't a new work, it's not a new rewrite. It's not even a new production; it's for all intents and purposes the same one Maria Friedman directed at the Menier and on the West End, with a scenic design modified for the narrower space (and fantastic costume design by Soutra Gilmour and hair and wig design by Cookie Jordan). Sure, this is blatantly a backdoor tryout to see if New York would welcome a commercial run, if Merrily can at last be a commercial success in the city it was written for, but this is an odd theater to host that tryout.
Still, I had a great time. Jonathan Groff is so perfect as Franklin Shepard you'd think the role was written with him in mind. Lindsay Mendez sings her face off (to say nothing of her wonderful acting) as Mary, and I just adore her. Daniel Radcliffe had hard shoes to fill for specifically me, because my first Charley Kringas was my favorite actor, Raúl Esparza, but he still does admirably, nailing the patter breakdown of "Franklin Shepard, Inc." (but, knowing his penchant for Tom Lehrer songs, I rather suspected he would) and is impishly charming. The three of them together have believable and heart-swelling chemistry as lifelong friends, which only makes the sting of that friendship fracturing that much keener. Krystal Joy Brown has an absolutely stunning voice that she uses to beautifully texture Gussie's songs, but somehow has less diva presence in her book scenes, and she hasn't yet worked out the timing/delivery of her funnier moments. Beyond that, it is so thrilling to see such beautiful body diversity in yet another production this week, and it heartens me for continued better diverse representation on stage going forward.
11/27/22: A Christmas Carol
A repeat visit (the Merchant's House one-person performance by John Kevin Jones).
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