9/18/24: Safety Not GuaranteedWhat: BAM presents the world premiere of a new musical adaptation of the 2012 film, as part of their Next Wave 2024 & Emerging Visions series.
And? It's possible there's a good show underneath this. I can't tell right now. Even at just under two hours, the show feels overlong. I don't think it's currently well-staged, or particularly well-designed (except maybe Sarita Fellows's costume design), and whoever was in the booth the night I saw it rarely managed to turn performers' mics on in time for their dialog (granted, I saw the second preview, so hopefully this will improve). I also couldn't hear a lot of the lyrics over the the sound of the onstage band. Devotees of this blog will know how ornery I get about the misuse of a thrust stage. BAM Harvey has a lovely curving stage, with an equally curving audience hugging it. Why, then did I keep seeing crew members idling in the wings or pre-setting set pieces ten minutes before the next scene transition? Hide your crew, my dudes. No matter what kind of staging you're directing--proscenium, thrust, alley, arena, immersive--I think it is an absolute failure of directing craft to not spend rehearsals constantly moving through the entire range of where the audience will be, to make sure that everyone has a dynamic and interesting stage picture. If you sit dead center, you're ensuring a good view for fifteen people.
Also, I was under the impression this show was featuring an entirely new score by Ryan Miller (lead singer for the band Guster). So my jaw dropped when, at the eleven o' clock confrontation number, the two leads started belting out "Two Points For Honesty." My entire self flashed back to teenage me listening to a mixtape from my friend Malcolm.
Just. What?
What: Roundabout's Broadway production of David Henry Hwang's semiautobiographical matryoshka doll of a play.
And? I think if it were just the riff on inadvertently casting a white character in an Asian role, and then that actor adopting that stolen identity to then become an activist, the play might have gotten tired, but DHH manages to spin some fascinating twist and foils within the play, confronting his own conflicted feelings about his own activism, as well as his imposter syndrome. Solid, great work all around, and a brilliant way to recover the lost work of his flop play, Face Value.