4/11/23: A Beautiful Noise
What: It's the Neil Diamond musical!
And? As a friend of mine put it, this show knows exactly what it is. It's a jukebox bio musical about a singer-songwriter beloved by many. It knows it has to nail all the big hits, it knows the audience will feel a feral need to sing along to "Sweet Caroline" (and allows for that to hit right before intermission), it knows it needs a good actor who can sound like Neil Diamond to sing all those songs, and it knows it needs sequins. So it does all that (I assume; I don't know a lot of Neil Diamond, but Will Swenson, always so good at disappearing behaviorally into his roles you forget he doesn't always behave that way, sounds fantastic and big-voiced). The show's got some smart bits of stagecraft with hidden trapdoors, magically fast quick changes, and a vanishing-and-reappearing onstage orchestra, all of which satisfy without overtly announcing themselves. The ensemble is having a great time (and yay! we've got some body diversity!), as are the supporting players and principals (workhorse character actor Michael McCormick especially is clearly having a blast playing a mafia don). And hey, Mark Jacoby, playing Neil - Now looking back on his life through a series of therapy sessions, even made me feel things in the climax with tears glittering in his eyes as he sang "I Am ... I Said." And while Linda Powell is also great as his unnamed therapist, I do wish they weren't so blatantly utilizing the Black Woman Therapist archetype. Like. Y'all. At least Crazy Ex-Girlfriend hung a lantern on it when they did it. Anyway, some of the usual quibbles aside (it's not like it's a sparklingly brilliant book), this is a perfectly fine jukebox bio musical, and if you like Neil Diamond songs you'll probably have a good time.
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| Will Swenson and the ensemble as Neil - Then and The Beautiful Noise. Photo by Julieta Cervantes. |
4/15/23: The Wife of Willesden
What: BAM in association with A.R.T. hosts Kiln Theatre's production of Zadie Smith's playwriting debut, an adaptation of "The Wife of Bath" from Canterbury Tales.
And? Fantastic. Uses one of my favorite tropes, collaborative storytelling, to give us a lock-in at a pub in North West London, so that when the Wife of Willesden steps to the mic to tell her story, everyone there becomes a player in her narrative. Superb cast led by Clare Perkins.
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| Clare Perkins, center, as Alvita, with the men of The Wife of Willesden. Photo by Marc Brenner. |
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