Margin Notes: Airline Highway

Julie White and Scott Jaeck as Tanya and Wayne.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

Airline Highway

Seen on: Thursday, 4/9/15.
My grade: B+. While not necessarily my kind of show, it was moving and very well acted.

Plot and Background

It's the very near future (May 2015, to be precise) at the gone-to-seed Hummingbird Motel, just off the Airline Highway in New Orleans, and the motel's inhabitants are throwing a "living funeral" for the not-quite-departed Miss Ruby. Most of the attendees are those who will never leave, but when Bait Boy, gone three years to a life of respectability, returns with his stepdaughter in tow, tempers fly. This play is Pulitzer Prize finalist Lisa D'Amour's Broadway debut, and has transferred to New York from its recent run at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

What I Knew Beforehand

Literally nothing but the title.

Thoughts:

Play: I don't know if everyone will like this show. There's not a whole lot of plot to it - it's more a collage, a collection of portraits, a landscape even, than a story. I've been seeing people compare it to Lanford Wilson's Balm in Gilead or The Hot L Baltimore, and it certainly has elements in kind with those - an ensemble of semi-broken individuals, clinging together while also desperately trying to break apart, break free into something else. This is post-Katrina New Orleans, and no one's very optimistic about their prospects. Musically it also evokes Wilson's work, in its overlapping dialogue and conversations - no one politely takes his turn here, and there are often two or more conversations happening at one time. So I don't know if everyone will like this show. But if theater is meant to elicit honest and spontaneous emotion from its audience, this show worked for me. I found myself suddenly crying in Act Two, and I didn't stop until the curtain call. Perhaps it was just Miss Ruby's insistence, when looking at her despairing children in the lot of a motel that's being threatened by a newly-opened Costco across the way, that despite what they think they "are not disposable." An important thing to remember.

Margin Notes: The Visit

Chita Rivera as Claire. Photo by Thom Kaine.

The Visit

Seen on: Saturday, 3/28/15.
My grade: B+. A fine production of a show that just wasn't for me.

Plot and Background

Claire Zachannasian, a widow several times over and now one of the wealthiest women in the world, returns to her former hometown, now a crumbling ruin of poverty and despair, and still clinging desperately to the hope that she will save it. However, her offered salvation comes with a price - she will pay the town a billion dollars - if they kill Anton, the man who jilted her when she was a teenager. It's been a long road to Broadway for this musical, adapted from Friedrich Durrenmatt's 1956 play; originally produced in 2001 in Chicago (still starring Chita - she's been with it the whole time), then at Virginia's Signature in 2008, then in the Williamstown festival last year, it now comes to Broadway condensed to one act.

What I Knew Beforehand

If memory serves, I performed in a scene from the original straight play when I was in college 300 years ago. And of course, I know plenty of other work by the authors Kander & Ebb, and McNally.

Thoughts:

Play: While the show itself doesn't necessarily speak to me, score or script, and the staging is often deliberately distancing (echoes of Brecht whenever the townspeople come into play), this really was a very well done production. The whole thing was eerie, vaguely surreal. From Claire's entrance, a stack of suitcases rolled in on top of a black coffin (she came prepared!), through the ghosting appearances of Young Anton and Young Claire, flitting throughout the action, to the bizarre "Yellow Shoes" number, and ending in Claire's and Anton's exit, the whole thing could feel like a dream, but a very deliberate one. One got the sense that none of the other people of the town were quite real, outside of Claire and Anton.

Margin Notes: Something Rotten!

Brad Oscar and Brian d'Arcy James as Nostradamus and
Nick Bottom. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Something Rotten!

Seen on: Saturday, 3/28/15.
My grade: C. While not a terrible show, it was largely disappointing.

Plot and Background

Nick Bottom and his brother Nigel are struggling playwrights in Renaissance England - and Nick has nothing but resentment for Shakespeare, a rock star blowhard who seems to steal other people's writing more often than he creates his own. Desperate to have a hit (and to not lose his last cent and patron), Nick finds a soothsayer to tell him what show to write - and thus the first musical was born. However, this seer's sight is a little ... cloudy. Throw in some Puritans, a cross-dressing wife, and a healthy dose of self-awareness. World premiere.

What I Knew Beforehand

Something about Shakespeare as a rock star, and a very self-aware musical about writing a musical. And that a whole mess of actors I like are in it.

Thoughts:

Play: I should open by saying that I saw the show in its first week of previews, and it is my understanding that the show has had revisions and improvements since then. After seeing all the cute viral marketing of Brian d'Arcy James and Christian Borle clowning around, I guess I expected a slightly different show than I got (for one, CB's not in it that much at all). While the show has a good heart and fun intentions, it just wasn't clever enough. Many of the nods to contemporary references, courtesy of Nostradamus, were definitely entertaining, and the portrayal of Shakespeare as a hack high on his own hype was a good touch, but the main characters and their story ultimately just weren't as compelling as the fun fringier aspects (and every time Brother Jeremiah made another "accidental" gay innuendo, I cringed. It's not funny, it's just dumb). Fun songs included the show-stopper "A Musical," the first act finale, "Bottom's Gonna Be on Top," and Shakespeare's second act number, "Hard to Be the Bard."

Margin Notes: Living on Love

Douglas Sills and Anna Chlumsky as Vito and Iris.
Photo by Joan Marcus.

Living on Love

Seen on: Wednesday, 4/1/15.
My grade: B. Good clean fun.

Plot and Background

Conductor Vito De Angelis and his wife Raquel, a soprano diva, are both facing the risk of waning careers as they age (he seeing the threat of Leonard Bernstein behind every corner; she, the risk of becoming - gasp - a mezzo-soprano). They both embark on competing memoirs ("Call Me Maestro" vs. "Call Me Diva"), with ghost writers trailing desperately behind them, trying to sort through the lies and exaggerations to find some truth. This play is based on Garsin Kanin's 1985 play Peccadillo, and originally premiered at the Williamstown Theater Festival in July 2014.

What I Knew Beforehand

Farcical farce-type shenanigans starring Renee Fleming as an opera star and Douglas Sills, who was in The Scarlet Pimpernel and therefore will always be loved by me.

Thoughts:

Play: You know, for what it was, it was fine. It got laughs in the right places, and didn't annoy too much. Is it a life-changing play, or one that is likely to have much life beyond this cast? No. But it was a fun, and not overlong evening out, fast-paced, and with some pretty good talent onstage. A friend I saw it with was less than impressed but as for me, after sitting through Something Rotten and It Shoulda Been You, neither of which were nearly as funny as they needed to be to make me enjoy myself, this gave me a pretty good time. I have no complaints.

Margin Notes: Sequence 8

Alexandra Royer. Photo by Lionel Montagnier.

Sequence 8

Seen on: Thursday, 4/16/15.
My grade: A. Wonderful, thrilling work.

Plot and Background

A combination of acrobatics, modern dance, meta commentary, absurd sketch, juggling, and anything else you can think to throw in, acts segueing seamlessly (but for applause breaks) into each other. Sequence 8 originally premiered in Lyon, France in 2012, and has performed in 15 other countries. This performance is part of its US tour. The company, Les 7 Doigts de la Main, is a Montreal-based group founded in 2002 whose "initial goal was to restore a human scale to the circus."

What I Knew Beforehand

I'd seen 7 Fingers's last New York offering, Traces, at the Union Square Theatre in 2011, and loved it. (And of course I'd seen the recent Pippin revival on Broadway, which boasted acrobatic choreography by Gypsy Snider, one of the company's founding members, as well as several performers from the company)

Thoughts:

Play: As evidenced in my review of 2011's Traces (linked above), I struggle to find a concise way to describe just what makes 7 Fingers's work special. Maybe it's related to how often they address each other by name, the feeling that there is something personal happening for each of them on the stage. Maybe it's the beautifully kept balance between the eight performers who seem to breathe as one, and the sense of spontaneity to their play. This is the first time they're doing this; they've been doing this all their lives. And because there's such a good tonal balance, the transitions between the acrobatic stunts, the group dances, the "interviews," the pantomimes, the spectacular moments are truly spectacular, gasp-worthy, the absurd moments whimsical and sweet and funny. You feel like you're watching something truly special, something unusual and not to be seen again. Standouts include (god, how do I choose?) Eric Bates's cigar box juggling, a whimsical defiance of gravity and other laws of physics; Alexandra Royer's hanging hoop dance, where she ran without touching the ground; and Devin Henderson's frankly terrifying sliding up and down the Chinese pole.