# Theater reviews 2017



## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Crebel suggested that I start a new thread so that new folks will not feel like they have to go through pages and pages of my older thread.

Dinosaur Zoo Live

I sometimes tend to forget/ignore my cell phone at work. Which annoys my sister when she wants to ask me something. So she just gave up and bought tickets for this show when she got a LivingSocial offer. I didn't argue as it was in a space at NYU that I've walked by but never been in, and, well, who doesn't like life-sized dinosaur puppets?

The show was geared towards children (I think my sister and I were the only pair without a child in tow) and the host and 3 puppeteers did a wonderful job. The host interacted well with the audience and with the children (and one adult) brought up to the stage. I found the show a bit repetitive, and a bit draggy at times, and it seemed a bit longer than its one hour listed running time, but it was a pleasant enough way to spend an afternoon.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Yay!

My grandson would love it, I'm sure.  Puppets, you say, as in people inside of costumes?  Impressive looking costume in the picture above.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

crebel said:


> Yay!
> 
> My grandson would love it, I'm sure. Puppets, you say, as in people inside of costumes? Impressive looking costume in the picture above.


the dinosaurs started out small and got progressively larger. the "baby" ones were hand held. the ostrich size ones were fitted around the puppeteers' bodies, so you could see the person. after that they were inside the puppets.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

The Liar

A co-worker of mine sees a lot of off-Broadway shows as he is a donor to a lot of theater companies. He is also of the mind that if he's not enjoying a show he has the right to leave at intermission. And he is not a fan of Shakespeare. So when he told me that he really enjoyed "The Liar", a blank verse comedy at Classic Stage, I looked to see if I could get a ticket. I looked into a perfect one, 4 row, almost dead center. And I'm really glad I did, as it was absolutely hysterical.

The play is an adaptation of Pierre Corneille's "Le Menteur", translated/adapted by David Ives. I read an article in which Ives talks about how he changed the script, and I think his changes were mostly fine.The show is set in Paris in 1643, and deals with a servant who cannot tell a lie, and his new employer, who seems unable to tell the truth. The men encounter two women and Dorante (the Liar) instantly falls for one. However, the men misunderstand a maid and Dorante starts courting the wrong girl, one who is actually already engaged to his friend Alcippe. Our truth telling servant, Cliton, is attracted to the maid, but unbeknownst to him, she is 1/2 of a set of twins and he keeps coming on to the wrong one and getting smacked for his pains. In the end, Dorante and Cliton each end up with the right girl, Alcippe gets his girl, and even the maid's twin sister ends up with a partner. Oh, and in a bizarre epilogue, Dorante's father suddenly remembers that he left Dorante's twin in a donut shop. He will be recognized by a birthmark on his tongue. And viola! Cliton is the long long twin!

The actors playing Dorante (Christian Conn) and Cliton (Carson Elrod) were both wonderful and Kelly Hutchison did a great job as the twin maids, changing her posture quite well. The other men in the cast were good, although I felt that Tony Roach as Alcippe was overdoing it a bit and yelling. On the other hand, I had a lot of trouble understanding Ismenia Mendes as Clarice and found Amelia Pedlow a bit boring as Lucrece.

Once again, the theater was set up with seats on 3 sides and a decorated wall upstage. The set was simple, but the costumes were extremely elaborate. From reading the article, I knew there was a duel scene, and I was surprised that there was no fight director listed. Until the scene came along, and it turns out that it is sword fight with imaginary swords and was absolutely hysterical.

Seated next to me was a gentleman who pulled out a notebook right before the show started. Turns out they are planning on filming the production and he will be the videographer. Before the action began, I was worried that he would distract me with his writing, but I got quite caught up in the story that I didn't even notice him.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Wouldn't it be great if they put the video on DVD. Then I would get to see one of the plays you reviewed.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Big River

This musical, and the book upon which it is based, have aroused strong feelings since their creation. But I'm not really interested in the controversy over what Mr. Twain might or might not have meant, or whether the use of a word that was common in Mr. Twain's time is appropriate for the stage today. I also am not interested in why Encores! chose to do Big River this year, or in delving into any hidden motive to the selection of the show. I am going to concentrate on what was on the stage at New York City Center, as I saw it. Not as anyone else wishes to interpret the text.

The main draw for me was the young man playing Huck, Nicholas Barasch. I first saw him in "Mystery of Edwin Drood," and last year he made a great Arpad in "She Loves Me." He was excellent as Huck, with a fine singing voice and he moved wonderfully. Also wonderful was Kyle Scatliffe as Joe, and their big duet had me sniffling. Cass Morgan and Annie Golden did well in multiple small parts, but I felt that Lauren Worsham was a bit bland as Mary Jane Wilkes. I liked, but didn't love Chris Seiber as Duke, and really did not care for David Pittu (replacing the announced Tony Sheldon) as King. The ensemble were excellent, with the actress playing Alice's daughter, and the actor who sang "Arkansas" standing out (sorry, I lost my Playbill and don't know the actors' names).

The Encores orchestra was quite a bit smaller than usual, but they did a fantastic job, and I really enjoyed the female fiddler. One nice thing about having the smaller orchestra, the actors had more room on stage, and the raft effect was particularly effective. The costumes and wigs were fine, and the projection of the river on the upstage wall was okay. I was impressed that none of the actors were relying on scripts at all. This is the first Encores I saw where they were all off-book.

The plot is episodic, and the friend I was with found that a bit confusing, but I had seen a production of Big River a few years ago, so knew what to expect. It was not the best of all the Encores I've seen, but I don't think it's the worst either, so that's a good thing.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

I was not familiar with this musical and decided to look up some information.  It was interesting to learn that Roger "King of the Road" Miller wrote the 20-song score and it was considered a crowning final achievement to his long music career.  I would like to hear the music.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill: A Musical Voyage

I so enjoyed York Theatre's first Musical in Mufti of the year that I bought tickets for the remaining 2 shows in the series. But unfortunately, this show did not live up to its predecessor. Unlike other shows York has done, this show does not have a storyline, but is more of a revue. But they do try to do some kind of timeline inspired by Weill's life, which leads to them mixing up songs from different shows, even though the program lists the songs by show, as if the show will concentrate on shows, rather than his life.

Kurt Weill was a German Jewish composer, best known for "Three Penny Opera." I was familiar with his life story, and with some of his music, but not with all of it. And after a while, it all kind of sounds alike. The show utilizes a narrator, and for me, he was the weakest part. I didn't feel he connected with the material at all, and he had minimal stage presence. But he did have a decent voice on the songs he got to sing. The best singer of the lot was Rachel de Benedict, an actress I have seen before and expected to be as wonderful as she was. The rest of the cast was good, but I found the whole thing a bit boring. And I guess that the man sitting next to me during act one agreed, because he did not return for act two.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

If I Forget

We bought tickets for this show because my sister liked the titled and I was able to get two great seats at a good price (or should it be two good seats at a great price?).

The play takes place in an old house in Washington D.C. in 2000 and early 2001. It concerns the Fischer family, gathered in the first act to celebrate the patriarch's (played by soap opera actor Larry Bryggman) birthday and deal with the aftermath of their mother's death, and in the second to deal with the aftermath of his stroke. The trio of siblings, Micheal (Jeremy Shamos), Holly (Kate Walsh) and Sharon (Maria Dizzia), can't seem to be in the same room without arguing and if one tells another something in secret, you can be sure that everyone will know it soon. Thrown into this family whirlpool are Micheal's wife Ellen (Tasha Lawrence), Holly's son Joey (Seth Steinberg) and her second husband, Howard (Gary Wilmes). There are also off-stage characters who loom large in the plot, Micheal and Ellen's daughter who is traveling in Israel during the first act action, and a Latino family who are renting the space that was the father's store at one point.

The playwright layers argument on top of argument and problem on top of problem to a ridiculous level, and I very early on stopped caring about a few of the people. And I didn't like any of them. They were petty and self-absorbed and showed no support for each other. Some of the issues raised were legitimate, and would have made a good play, but having all of them in one play was too much. And I was glad to see that the second act was set in February 2001, as I am afraid that if it was set after September, the author would have thrown in 9-11 and I would have really wanted to scream.

The set was wonderful, evocative of an old family home and its rotating feature meant that the action could move smoothly into different rooms as needed. Although I did not like the characters, I felt that most of the actors did well with what they were given, with Tasha Lawrence coming off the best. I said to my sister that I didn't really think the actors looked like siblings, but she reminded me that my siblings don't look that much alike either.

Often when I'm watching a show I'll start to wonder how everything will end. This one ended weirdly, and did not wrap anything up, leaving me wondering if the author just forgot where he wanted to go.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

There's enough real life dysfunction in families without having to pay good money (or is that great money) to watch it onstage. In my family, one sister punched another sister in the nose at my aunt's funeral. That bit of dysfunction was enough to last me a good long while.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Phantom of the Opera

Back in December, I was visiting my niece and her husband, and a song came on their Pandora. My nephew-in-law recognized it as being from POTO, and I asked if he had seen it. He had not. My niece has seen it, and did not want to see it again, so I took him for his birthday (so I had an excuse to see it again).

James Barbour is still playing the Phantom and once again he did a wonderful job. Ali Ewoldt is the first Asian-American playing Christine, and she had a wonderful voice and looked great. She impressed me from the beginning right through the end with a new (to me) take on the character. Kyle Barisich was a handsome Raoul, but his voice was a bit grating. The supporting actors were mostly excellent also, with Linda Balgord standing out as Madame Giry.

One of the things that adds to live theater is that you never know exactly when something might go wrong. And at this performance something did. During the title song, there is always a minute when the actors are singing off stage while aspects of the Phantom's lair appear. During that minute, I always feel like something is wrong and the actors doubling for the Phantom and Christine missed their cue. Well, this time, I could tell that something had really gone wrong, the bridges across the upstage area did not come down correctly, so they were unusable. I mentioned it to my nephew-in-law at intermission, and as I expected, he hadn't noticed that something was wrong, just thought that the off-stage singing was what was supposed to be there. Sometimes, ignorance IS bliss.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Don't forget, Scarlet, you are a professional theater-goer. You're more likely to tell when something is wrong than most other people.

I would love to see Phantom again and I often listen to the music.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Don't forget, Scarlet, you are a professional theater-goer. You're more likely to tell when something is wrong than most other people.
> 
> I would love to see Phantom again and I often listen to the music.


sometimes i wish i could go back to NOT noticing all that I notice. I'm a bit envious of ignorance at times.


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

Watching this thread, Telracs, to see if you review _Come From Away_. Be interesting to hear your take on it.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

EC Sheedy said:


> Watching this thread, Telracs, to see if you review _Come From Away_. Be interesting to hear your take on it.


we're seeing that on Sunday. but you'll have to wait a bit, as i am 5 reviews behind.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Sunset Blvd

So, it was an Andrew Lloyd Webber week for me. POTO on Tuesday night, and Sunset Blvd at the Wednesday matinee.

Sunset Blvd was one of the first shows I saw in 1994 when I moved back to NYC. I saw it multiple times, with Glenn Close, Betty Buckley, Elaine Page, and even Diahann Carroll in the Toronto production.

The original production had elaborate sets, and a grand staircase. This production has a lot of stairs, but minimal sets and props. And projections, most of which were quite good and worked well for a musical based a film about film. The costumes were reminiscent of the original, and were the most elaborate part of the show. The orchestra was on stage, not hidden underneath, and was fun to watch. It took me a while to realize that it was a female conductor, something still rare on Broadaway.

The story tells of (and is told by) Joe Gillis (Michael Xavier), a struggling writer who gets caught in the web of Norma Desmond (Glenn Close), a former silent film star and her butler, Max (Fred Johanson). But he also finds himself also getting involved with a friend's girlfriend, Betty Schaffer (Siobhan Dillon) and everyone comes to a sad end.

While Ms. Close is touted as the star of the show, for me, the main character has always been Joe, who narrates the action. Mr. Xavier did a wonderful job, he has a great voice and a gorgeous body (we get to see him in in very skimpy shorts at one point). He plays well against all the other actors, as well as addressing the audience in a fun way. Ms. Dillon was a good Betty, but at times I felt she was a bit bland. Mr. Johanson had the great voice and imperious manner needed for Max. I also loved Paul Schoeffler as Cecil B. DeMille. I'm used to Mr. Schoeffler having thick wavy hair, so seeing him as the bald DeMille was odd. But I would recognize and enjoy his voice anywhere. The large ensemble was uniformly good, since I had seen the show before I would pick out some actors I've seen before and follow them throughout the action. However, there were a couple of people who stood out from the ensemble in a way that I did not enjoy, the way their characters acted seemed out of sync with the text.

You may have noticed that I didn't mention Ms. Close in the paragraph above. That's because for me, she was actually the weakest part of the show. I found her too brash and unpleasant, and her voice is definitely not up to the range of the show. Also, I was a bit put off by the fact that this was played so much as a diva set up for her, with her milking applause during the show and taking 3 curtain calls at the end.

I already own a number of cast recordings for this show, but would be happy to get one of this production, as Mr. Xavier had a new interpretation of the title song that I would love to own.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

It is unfortunate, or maybe fortunate, that I cannot think of this show without the Carol Burnett version getting in the way.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Dear World

This was the third of York's Musicals in Muftis. It is a new version of a Jerry Herman musical that is about a group of businessmen (all referred to as Mr. President, which got a rueful laugh from the audience) attempting to destroy a cafe in Paris that sits on an oil deposit. Opposing the drilling are an eclectic eccentric group of Parisians, led by the Countess Aurelia, Madwoman of Chaillot and including two other Madwomen, a waiter, a mute, a beautiful young woman, a sewerman, and a young man who defects from the businessmen's employ.

The main selling point for this show was that it was starring Tyne Daly (York charged more for this than the other 2 shows in the series), who seemed a bit off her game the day I saw the show. It may have been due to the short rehearsal time, but I felt like she hadn't really settled into the role and was depending on her script quite a bit and was rushing her lines at times. Also, her voice was not at its best, and it didn't soar in the places it needed to.

Truth be told, I didn't enjoy a lot of the cast in this show. Again, this may be down to the rehearsal time, but it didn't feel like the show had come together well. Ann Harada and Alison Fraser overplayed the madness of the madwomen, and seemed a bit uncomfortable in their roles. The three men playing the Presidents were cookie cutter villains, and the body language and voice of one of them were ridiculous.

However, it's not all bad news. Hunter Ryan Herdlicka was wonderful as Julian, and he played well with Erika Hemnningsen's Nina. They both sang and moved well, and had a nice chemistry. I didn't quite understand the point of Lenny Wolpe's Sewerman, but he was funny and seemed the most relaxed in his role. Kristopher Thompson-Bolden moved well as The Mute, with a funny moment in the beginning showing us his blank script, but I have a weird pet peeve. When someone is using a "sign language", I want it to look believable as one, and Mr. Thompson-Bolden's moves did not look right to me.

The York's costume department did a great job this time, with gorgeous over the top costumes for the Madwomen, and simple costumes for the rest. As usual, there was a dearth of hand props, which as usual annoyed me a bit.

Of the three shows in the series, I'd say that "Milk and Honey" was my favorite, it was the best acted and the best produced. This one would be my second favorite, and the Kurt Weill the least. I often wonder how the York picks shows for the series, and look forward to seeing where they go next year.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Glass Menagerie

I am not a fan of this play. I find it depressing and at times boring. But, my sister likes it, so when tickets for a new production starring Sally Field and Joe Mantello were available at a decent price, I bought them. But this production did nothing to increase my appreciation for the play and once again proved to me that a bad director can override the best of actors. Director Sam Gold stripped all the subtlety from Tennessee Williams' text and turned it into an intermissionless slog performed partially by candlelight
and in a pouring rain.

The show started in a bizarre manner and continued that way throughout. When entering the theater, the stage was in full view, showing an almost bare stage with a grey painted back wall, a table and a metal rack holding props. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a group of people, one in a wheelchair, moving up the side aisle. Since the house lights were still up, I at first thought it was a late-arriving group of audience members. Until I realized that one of the people was Ms. Field. The group walked up the aisle to the back of the theater, behind the last row of seats, and then down the far left aisle towards the stage. While Ms. Field, Finn Witrock and Madison Ferris stood in the aisle, Mr. Mantello walked up a set of stairs to the stage and began speaking to the audience. In a grey t-shirt and plain pants. With the house lights still full on. It was quite odd and didn't really feel like the play was starting, and we were being spoken to by Tom Wingfield, but rather as if Mr. Mantello, the actor was addressing us. When Tom introduced his mother and sister, Ms. Field dragged the wheelchair up the stairs and then Ms. Ferris (who has muscular dystrophy) pulled herself up the stairs. Extremely slowly. Emphasizing the fact that this Laura is truly disabled. Eventually, the house lights did go down, so slowly that I didn't really notice it happening.

Ms. Ferris's ability to move around the stage (she moves on all fours and in the wheelchair) while showing her determination, did not work for me in terms of the play. Laura tells her mother that she has been spending her days walking around the city of St. Louis and going to the movies and to the zoo instead of the business college she was enrolled in. And when she spends time with Jim, her disability is described as a leg brace whose sound of clumping made her feel conspicuous, but which Jim never noticed. And finally, as shown by her laborious movement up and down the stairs, there is no way the wheel-chair bound Laura would have been able to get into and out of the apartment the family supposedly inhabits. Nor is it logical that even the most loving and/or willful blind mother would describe Laura as having a "little" problem.

I know Joe Mantello more as a director than as a actor, and while I admired his ability to memorize a complex script, I never felt that I was seeing Tom, but always someone playing Tom. And I never believed the he, Ms. Field and Ms. Ferris were one family. Ms. Ferris was believably an uncomfortable teenager withdrawing from the world rather than confronting a domineering mother. Ms. Field was wonderful as Amanda, but felt as if she was in a different play than the other actors. And she was not well served by the choice to put Amanda in what looked like a little girl's fantasy princess dress (in bright pink with ridiculous frills), when expecting the Gentleman Caller. It elicited a laugh, and mad her (and Amanda) look ridiculous, something I didn't appreciate. Finn Wittrock did well as Jim, but as usual, I found the character a bit of a puzzle. But then again, I usually find the whole play a bit of a puzzle.

The physical staging of the play added to my annoyance with the whole afternoon. A small, claustrophobic apartment was played on a huge open space with minimal set pieces, and no dishes/utensils in the dining scenes. Then when the play mentions a neon sign across the alley, one is dragged on stage and plugged in. And the rainstorm outside is turned into one on stage. I was worried about the plugged in sign reacting badly with all the water on stage, not to mention the actors slipping or something. Especially because when the text says the electricity goes out, the director plunges the stage into darkness and has the rest of the show done by the light of 2 candelabras. A number of people who commented on the play on line said that due to this lighting the faces of the actors where difficult to see in the pivotal scene between Laura and Jim. Even my sister, who enjoyed most of the play, wondered how Mr. Mantello and Ms. Field were able to stay awake upstage when sitting in the dark. And she commented on one other thing, that if there really was liquor in the bottle which Tom pours on the candles to end the play, the flames probably would have blazed up, not gone out.

As I said in the beginning of this long review, I am not a fan of the play. But I respect Mr. Williams and his text and understand why other people enjoy it. Unfortunately, with this production, directorial "vision" overrode authorial text, and I felt sorry for the actors on stage and the audience stuck in the theater.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I'm guessing the director fancies himself an _artisre_ and his staging as _art_ that us mere mortals do not understand. To me, that sort of thing is just gimmicky.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

A Bronx Tale The Musical

Not surprisingly, I never saw the movie on which this musical is based. However, I did see Chazz Palminteri's one man show about his life in 2007/2008, so I knew the basic storyline of the show. It is the tale of a young man named Calogero (you can see why he took Chazz as a stage name) whose affections are torn between his hardworking father and the local gangster. Thrown into this mix is that Calogero falls for an African-American girl and tries to have a romance with her in the Bronx of the late 1960s.

The show is touting itself as a mix of Jersey Boys and West Side Story. And I'll agree that it is. Unfortunately, it's a mix of the worst aspects of Jersey Boys (the constant narration, the repetitive songs, the stereotypical portrayal of Italians) and West Side Story (the glamorization of violence, the intentional lying of a character to separate the lovers). Both acts of the show start with a song about a street, the Italian "Belmont Ave" in Act One, and the African-American "Webster Avenue" in Act Two. While I understand the creative teams desire for symmetry, "Webster Avenue" added nothing to the show, while "Belmont Avenue" gave us an introduction (although difficult to understand) to the narrator's world.

And oh, that narrator. Bobby Conte Thronton has a decent singing voice, but the accent he used during the show was sometimes painful to listen to. And he looked like a vampire. He is extremely pale, with dark hair, and dressed all in black for most of the show, and his face just faded into a white blur for me. The highlights of the show for me were the men playing the father, Lorenzo (Richard H. Blake) and the gangster Sonny (Nick Cordero), with Mr. Cordero getting two of the best songs in the show. Ariana Debose was fine as love interest Jane, as was Lucia Giannetta as Calogero's mother, Rosina. There were no stand outs for me in the ensemble, with most of the background characters fading into the background. Except for one annoying scene. When the narrator is introducing Sonny's henchmen to us, each of them stands, and there is a flash of light as if they were posing for a police photo. It looked really silly to me. Also annoying was the overwhelming use of the color red for the show curtain and backdrops. It seemed like the set designer wanted to drench the show in blood or fire.

Since I'd seen the one man show, I knew the basic trajectory of the story, so there were few surprises for me as the show went along, although I did jump when Sonny was shot. I knew it was coming, but I didn't remember the exact moment it would happen. I remember being engaged in Mr. Palminteri's one man show, but even though the musical told the same story, I really never got into it.

Although there are several things that I would like to put behind me about this show, there is one nice thing I took away from it. I have been looking for a nice heavy sweatshirt for a while, and Bronx Tale had a wonderful one. Part of me wants to take the Bronx Tale logo patch off the jacket, but for now, I'm keeping it.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I used to work with a lady named Calogera.  

I never saw the movie either and I'm not at all familiar with the story.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Kunstler

I thought this was a one man show, but it is fact a two person production. The setting is some unnamed college shortly before Kunstler's death. Kunstler (Jeff McCarthy) is giving a lecture, hosted by a female African-American law student named Kerry (played by Nambi E. Kelley). When the audience comes in, we see a white circular space with a lectern, a couple of chairs and an interesting lighting fixture. Then we start to hear the noises of people protesting Kunstler's talk, and the lights go down. When they come back up, the set is now strewn with garbage, a couple of handouts protesting Mr. Kunstler's appearance, and an effigy of Kunstler is hanging upstage. Kerry enters, and from her muttering to herself, we can tell she is not thrilled to be hosting Mr. Kunstler, and is clearly uncomfortable with the man when he appears. This is understandable, as he is played a little too "friendly" and inquisitive into her personal life. Once the lecture starts and we become Mr. Kunstler's audience, things become interesting for the most part, but at times I was a little bored. Mr. McCarthy uses the whole stage and even comes up into the seats, and has one of those voices that I could listen to for hours. I knew some of the basics of Mr. Kunstler's career, but hearing them from "his" POV was nice. There was some attempt to get Kerry into the action of the lecture, which felt a bit forced. I didn't like the points where Mr. McCarthy was playing up Mr. Kunstler's heart issues, it felt forced. And the audience didn't really need to see it. I don't know if the show is based on an actual lecture that Mr. Kunstler gave, but if so, I think his audience that day was a bit mystified by how he ended it, as I was mystified by the ending of the lecture in the play. He just seems to trail off in the middle of a paragraph and thank the audience for coming. Kerry then addresses the audience, and then, as if the two of them are talking privately, she tells him why she was uncomfortable with his being chosen to lecture. After he leaves, Kerry informs the audience that a few days after the lecture Kunstler had a heart attack and subsequently died. While I understand the playwright's desire for closure, I think the scenes after the lecture didn't work that well, and the final reappearance of Kunstler after his death really left a bad taste in my mouth.

I went to see this play because I have liked Mr. McCarthy's work in the past and he was nice to me one day after Beauty and the Beast a number of years ago. I also think I met the playwright last year at the York Theatre. So I'm glad I supported this work, but think some parts of it could have been better. And now I'm sure I've been in all three theaters at 59E59.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Come From Away

Two caveats about this play:
1. I started reading the book on which it is based, but couldn't get into it partially due to the writing style and partially due to...
2.As some people here know, I am a New Yorker. On September 11th, 2001, I was stuck on a NY subway on the Manhattan Bridge watching the Twin Towers burn. I also lost people on that day. So, hopefully it is understandable that I was a little hesitant about a musical about the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. But my sister had read the book and loved it and really wanted to see the musical.

The musical takes place in Newfoundland, and deals with the people of Gander (and surrounding towns), and how they took in 38 planeloads of people from all over the world when US airspace was closed. And it also tells us the stories a number of the "plane people" who were stranded in this tiny town on a rock on the edge of the Atlantic. We are introduced to a variety of people in town, the Mayor, the head of a bus drivers' union on strike, the local constable, teachers at the local school, an SPCA worker and her husband in air traffic control. We watch as they watch the news about the attacks and realize that with US airspace closed, they will soon be hosting thousands of people. Then we switch to the airplanes and how the various pilots and passengers handled being trapped for up to 28 hours on planes in the air and then on the ground. Eventually the passengers are deplaned and spread out among the communities.

The cast consists of only 12 people, but they do a wonderful job of portraying multiple characters, switching from locals to various passengers with just change of a jacket or glasses or hat or even just a change in body language. I was never confused as to who each actor was playing at any given moment, which is a testament to both the writers and the actors. But near the end, when we are following people back on a plane, I found it odd, because I knew that some of the characters shouldn't be on a plane to Dallas. Of course the musical cannot touch on every story from those 5 days, so the play concentrates on some of the locals along with an American Airlines pilot, a gay couple (both named Kevin) traveling together, a lady from Texas and a man from England who strike up a friendship, an Egyptian chef who is viewed with suspicion, a New Yorker who suffers from a severe case of small town culture shock, and most painfully, a mother trying to find information on her missing firefighter son. There are also briefer moments with the SPCA worker worrying about the animals in the plane holds, an Orthodox rabbi meeting a man with a secret in his past, and an African couple frightened by Salvation Army volunteers who look like soldiers.

This is definitely an ensemble piece, with most of the musical numbers performed by the entire cast. There is one solo, for the pilot, but even that is staged so that there is no moment for applause at the end of it. The most touching song for me was titled "Prayer", which started out with one of the Kevins singing a prayer of St. Francis, then incorporated a Hebrew prayer, a Hindu prayer and a Muslim prayer. A lot of fun was had in the bar scene which gave the on-stage band a chance to come to the front and shine. The music is mostly what I call Canadian Celtic which is a sound I enjoy, so I liked that aspect. However, I did not like the volume of the show. We were sitting pretty far back, and from the first notes of the show, my ears were hurting, and I left with a bit of a headache. The costumes were simple, everyday wear that would not look out of place in Gander or NY even today. The set was simple, a bunch of chairs, a couple of tables, a Tim Horton sign, and the band on stage. There was a revolving portion to the stage, which was used well, and not overused. The upstage wall was a simple wooden one, colored blue, perhaps to suggest the ocean bt which our characters were surrounded. There was one door in the wall, which was not used until so late in the show that I hadn't even realized it was there. We are never shown the events of the day, we see most things through the reactions of the Newfies watching the news and the the plane people seeing the TVs finally. The one exception is a recreation of President Bush's speech, done by one of the actors.

The show starts on the 11th, runs through the time when the planes were on the island, then shows them taking off and has a song detailing what happened right after people got home. We end back in Gander on the tenth anniversary, with the plane people returning and updating us on their lives and showing that not only did the people of Gander give to the plane people, but the plane people were kind in return and have given back to the community.

One thing I liked about this production was its humanity. There were funny moments, annoying ones, touching ones and sad ones. It showcased the good that was done by good people, without straying into melodrama or becoming maudlin. It showed that while there was some happiness that came out of tragedy (the Texan and Englishman end up married), there were also tragedies that stayed tragic (the firefighter son), and relationships that didn't survive (the two Kevins). There were moments in the show that were extremely difficult to watch, from the opening to the end, and I will admit that there were a number of times I was crying. I will also admit to a bit of an ugly emotion. I was jealous of the plane people. Yes, they were stranded in the middle of nowhere, but for 5 days or so, they had a cushion from the real world. Yes, we do see them when they are back in the real world and dealing with how what has happened has affected them, but I envy them that few days of unreality.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

What a wonderful, thoughtful, touching review - one of your best.  Thank you.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

crebel said:


> What a wonderful, thoughtful, touching review - one of your best. Thank you.


Absolutely. Without seeing the play, just reading your review, I was touched.


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

I've been waiting for your review on Come From Away, Telracs. It sure didn't disappoint. Makes me wish I could hop a plane from my island and go see it for myself. But as that's not possible, I'll have to wait for a travelling version.

The review was thoughtful and thorough!


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

C.S. Lewis-The Most Reluctant Convert

This is a production by the Fellowship for the Performing Arts (FPA), the same folks who gave us "Screwtape Letters" and "Martin Luther on Trial." Max McLean (founder and artistic director of FPA) has done his one man show of C.S. Lewis a number of times in NY, but I had not managed to catch it until now. I had a ticket for the Wednesday matinee after snowstorm Stella, and when I got up on Wednesday, I seriously debated not going to the show. It was still treacherous underfoot, it was cold, and I was really tired. And I hadn't really paid that much for the ticket. But I had been looking forward to seeing this for a while, so I layered up and off I went. Well, I really wish I'd stayed home. The show was 100 minutes, so I spent more time on the train then in the theater. The show was so boring that I kept nodding off. I mean that literally, I kept feeling my head start to droop and jerk my neck back.

Mr. McLean looks the role of an English don, but the deliberate moves and slow speech he uses failed to engage me. Part of the problem may have been that I had already read a biography of C.S. Lewis, so I wasn't getting anything new. Part of it was also that I never connected with Mr. Lewis's conflicts. I never felt that he was truly struggling with faith and that his conversion from atheism to humanism to spirituality to Christianity was all that spectacular. I guess it was life-changing for him, but the show moves too fast in time so that he seems to go from step to step immediately, with no resting time between.

The best part of the production was the set. It was supposed to be his study at Magdalen College in 1950, and the furniture fit perfectly. The upstate wall as a projection screen, with a large "window" showing the night sky at first and then switching to the scenery wherever Mr. Lewis was at that point in his tale. Around the edge of the window were a number of photographs, which would enlarge to show us the person in them when that person was being discussed.

While I didn't really enjoy the show, I did enjoy the conversation I had with two couples visiting from Texas. They picked the show because they are fans of C.S. Lewis, so I hope they enjoyed the show more than me. And I really hope they enjoyed their planned dinner at Becco, the restaurant recommended by me and another audience member.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Yawn .....


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

The New Yorkers

Followers of this thread (I know you're out there, I can see the number of views) will have seen me occasionally ponder why a certain show is chosen to be mounted. Well, with Encores! production of "Cole Porter's The New Yorkers", I knew full well why, because there is an essay in the program that I was instructed to read by a co-worker before seeing the show (http://www.nycitycenter.org/Home/Blog/March-2017/Reclaiming-The-New-Yorkers). While the essay and the New York Times review which I also was given to read had a few spoilers in them, they did not detract from my enjoyment of this show. It was light, fun and frothy, with gorgeous sparkly costumes, perky choreography, hysterical one-liners, handsome actors and beautiful actresses, a lush score, and a ridiculous plot. And to top it off, Cole Porter songs. Now, to be honest, some of the Cole Porter songs were interpolated from other shows, but I didn't really care, I was caught up in the boozy jazz age haze.

The plot deals with a society girl (the almost perfect Scarlet Strallen) falling for a bootlegger (Tam Mutu who disappears for way too long in act 2). Surrounding them are her parents (Bryon Jennings and Ruth Williamson) and the parents' inamoratas who fall for each other. The bootlegger has a girlfriend, and the society girl has a fiancé, who also end up together. Even further on the periphery are the bootlegger's lieutenant/comic relief (in the original, Jimmy Durante, here Kevin Chamberlain evoking but not imitating Durante), a rival gangster (the hysterical Arnie Burton) who keeps getting shot, but inexplicably reappearing, and has a great patter number, and a group of chorus boys. The oddest moment come due to a famous song "Love for Sale." In the midst of all this silliness, we suddenly get a song about prostitution. No clue why, no clue where this non-character comes from or where she vanishes to after her song. I felt that number could be cut, as well as one of Mr. Chamberlain's number, as the show was a bit long. Some of the length was due to the length of the production numbers, and both the friend with me, and I said we were zoning out in the middle of some of the songs. The show had great dancing, heavy on the tap, which while fun, sometimes gets a bit boring for me after a while.

The show makes no secret that it is silly and that liberties were taken with it and that it is tipping a knowing wink to the audience. The act one finale is a ridiculous song called "Wood", and at the end of it, as the cast is marching off-stage, Mr. Chamberlain turns to the audience and says, "This is how the act ended back in 1931. Crazy, huh?" It even gives a nod to the last show that was at City Center, with a mention of "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

While most of the cast were wonderful, there were some definite stand outs. Miss Strallen was a great triple threat, acting, dancing and singing wonderfully, and carrying the sparkly costumes to great effect. Arnie Burton was hysterical and milked his over the top part for all it was worth. Eddie Korbich gets my vote for most versatile actor, I can't even count all the different roles he played in this, making each one distinct and most of them quite funny. All of the costumes were beautiful, but some of them were a bit too sparkly, and I was watching the reflection on the ceiling above me. Even Rob Berman, the conductor, got into the act, being in full tails. The orchestra was huge for an Encores! production, and they had a few moments to shine and got to take a bow at the end. Sometimes Encores! goes a bit sparse on sets, but this show had a nice 1920s look with beautiful curtains and lights. And also impressive was that no-one was on book, so it felt like a full production not a staged concert.

On the line for the restroom, I was chatting with a lady who wondered what City Center intended to do with this piece, That is a legitimate question, it does seem that the is a lot of effort put into something that only runs 5 days. One of the first Encores! moved to Broadway and is still playing, but I think the shows are put on for the love of putting on shows with no thought to a future. And more power to them. And thanks to them for putting on something silly and not apologizing for it,


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

telracs said:


> It was light, fun and frothy, with gorgeous sparkly costumes, perky choreography, hysterical one-liners, handsome actors and beautiful actresses, a lush score, and a ridiculous plot. And to top it off, Cole Porter songs. Now, to be honest, some of the Cole Porter songs were interpolated from other shows, but I didnÂ't really care, I was caught up in the boozy jazz age haze.


This sounds like my idea of a good time and a fun show to see! As with books, often it's the escapist fluff that doesn't require deep-thinking angst to ponder the meanings that really hit the spot.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Okay, this is for Telracs and Crebel only. Otherwise, I might get hit with Betsy's cattle prod.



Spoiler



Telracs, do you remember when I named a character after you, Scarlet LaRouge, in _The Professor and the Bootlegger_? You're review just reminded me of that especially one of the actresses being named Scarlet.



I remember _Love for Sale_. Good song, despite the theme. Sounds like it was all good entertainment.


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## loonlover (Jul 4, 2009)

Sounds like a really enjoyable experience.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Okay, this is for Telracs and Crebel only. Otherwise, I might get hit with Betsy's cattle prod.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


of course i remember, i was thinking of you during the show.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Awww!


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812

This musical is based on approximately 70 pages of Tolstoy's 1400 page novel War and Peace and has gone from Off-Off Broadway to Off-Broadway to Broadway. It has become known for two things, Josh Groban's Broadway debut, and the complete renovation of the Imperial Theater. While both of these things look fantastic, they were not enough to save this very odd musical for me.

To me, the renovations seemed to have three purposes. Firstly, to increase the number of seats in the theater, secondly, to make the performance more immersive, and lastly, to evoke the spirit of the novel. The latter is done by the covering of all the walls with red velvet and portraits and paintings that are Russian in style and with the piping in of doleful Russian music before the show. The increase in seats and immersive nature of the show are bolstered by tables and raised banquette seats on the stage, walkways connecting the stage to the mezzanine level, walkways at the top of the stage and in front of the front row of the mezzanine and the use of the aisles in the mezzanine. The actors/musicians move around/between the stage seats, even to the point of sitting at one of the tables with audience members and at various times I had a fiddler, a clarinetist and various singers next to me. While I understand the wish to bring the audience into the show, I found this a bit of a problem, as the fracturing of the orchestra meant that there was not a cohesive sound, and the sound immediately next to me drowned out the sound of the people on stage. In addition, because the music director was in an oval pit at almost stage level, I kept watching him, instead of the action. And getting distracted by the iPad he was using instead of a paper score. I also felt that the music played before the show was a mistake, as the music in the show itself is of a totally different tone. The piped in music is slow and melancholy, while the show's itself is loud and modern in both music and lyrics. The opening number, a long affair that attempts to introduce us to all the characters in the show did not mesh with what was playing before. And was almost impossible to understand. I found that I have the off-Broadway cast recording on one of my iPods, and listening to it I was finally able to understand the lyrics which escaped me in the theater and which I felt were not period appropriate and annoying.

As might be expected from a 1400 page novel, there are A LOT of characters in this play. To me, the main character is Natasha, a young woman from the country who comes to Moscow to visit her godmother Marya with her cousin Sonya. Natasha is engaged to an Army officer (Andrey, who as we learn in the opening "isn't here") and spends some time with Andrey's dysfunctional father and sister. Even though Natasha is engaged, she becomes fascinated with Pierre's brother in law, Anatole, a real cad. Thrown into this mix is Pierre's wife Helene, Anatole's friend Dolokhov, and a sled drive whose name I heard as Malaga but after looking at the Playbill turns out to be Balaga. There is a number about him, which included some audience participation, and some wonderful violin playing by Lucas Steele but it went on way too long and served no purpose in the show.

Thinking about it, I realize that I spent more time watching the "show" then watching the story. Mr. Groban is seated in the "pit" with a trio of musicians, and I kept watching him to see if he was going to do anything. Or I was watching the various musicians scattered around the theater. Or I was watching the actors moving through the theater. I had very little interest in Natasha, the character seemed a spoiled brat who gets swept away by a pretty boy. And since we, the audience, already know he's a cad (and while Lucas Steele plays marvelous violin, he overacts as Anatole), I had no sympathy for either of them. Amber Gray as Helene (Pierre's wife) is described as a slut, but I didn't really see that, and since we get no clue why she and Pierre were married and stay married, I kept losing focus on the characters and trying to figure out why I knew Ms. Gray's voice. Josh Groban has a great voice, but his character is called a fat, old man; Mr. Groban is neither of those things. Pierre is a stay at home drinker, and when he does finally venture out into the action, I really didn't care. Lulu Fall as Marya D has a great voice but her one big song is a bit bizarre and Ashley Perez Flanagan as Sonya is sweet, but bland.

One big problem that I had with the production was the use of dialogue tags in the song lyrics. Instead of showing us things, we get lines like "Sonya turned pale...", "Natasha looked at Marya and said..." The best part of the show was the costumes, they were period appropriate (unlike the music or the sets) and quite pretty. Also quite pretty were the lights in the theater, especially the large chandelier which comes down at the end to become the Great Comet. While it was nice, it, like the renovations and Mr. Groban, wasn't enough to make me like the show. And I don't think it's really a great chandelier. Definitely not the greatest one on Broadway. That honor goes to the one at Phantom of the Opera.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Now you've got Phantom stuck in my head.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

It sounds like a frustrating show to watch (at least in that setting).  Like a book you stop reading because the formatting is lousy and you can't adjust the font -- might be a good story in there somewhere, but the production fails.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Dubarry Was a Lady

The one got thing I got out of my vist to Theater Row for the CS Lewis one man show was a ticket to the obscure musical "Dubarry Was a Lady". I vaguely remembered some of the plot, it was about a guy who falls asleep and thinks he's Louis XVI and the girl he's lusting over is Madame Dubarry. The 1943 movie version starred Red Skelton and Lucille Ball, but this version harks back to the original Broadway production which starred Ethlel Merman and Bert Lahr. Peyton Crimm as Louis does manage to evoke Mr. Lahr, however, Jennifer Evans does not bring Merman to mind at all. That's not to say she's bad, in fact she's quite good as both the modern May and the fantasy Dubarry. She has a nice voice and is a fine actress and moved well in the dance scenes. Mr. Crimm was fun to watch, but I felt he was trying a bit too hard at times. Actually, that is my feeling about a few of the actors, they were trying too hard in a small space. The small space was also an issue for me in regards to the number of actors trying to cram on to the stage. While I understand the desire to keep the cast the same size as the original, having 15 people in the cast seemed excessive with the playing area they had. The costumes were nice, but I noticed that the wigs were not as well maintained as they should have been. The sets were minimal and one piece of furniture got stuck under the piano and almost got destroyed. The best part of the show were the Cole Porter songs, three of which I knew from other shows. The best part of the whole evening was the apple pie cookies I bought in the theater bar. No, that's not fair, it makes it sound as if I didn't enjoy the show. I did, it was fun and silly and worth the 30 dollars I paid for the ticket.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Ethel Merman was one of a kind. And any time there are well-sung Cole Porter songs is a good time although you didn't say if they were well-sung or not.

Apple pie cookies are good.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Amelie

I have never seen the movie this musical is based on, so knew very little except it had something do to with a girl with a vivid imagination. A lot of buzz about this show centered on Phillipa Soo who is playing Amelie who played Eliza Schuyler in Hamilton. I didn't really care for her in that, and I liked her, but didn't love her in this. I was looking forward Adam Chanler-Berat and Tony Sheldon and both men did excellent jobs, Chaler-Berat as Nino, and Sheldon in a series of roles including Amelie's neighbor, Dufayel the painter. Ms. Soo is the only person who plays one role, with the rest of the cast doing a great job changing from character to character, everything from Amelie's parents to a garden gnome to a "rock star" to a goldfish. The first 10 minutes of this 90 minute no-intermission show give us Amelie's backstory (young Amelie portrayed by the adorable Savvy Crawford) which built up my expectations. Young Amelie's imagination shines through, and Miss Crawford engaged my interest. Unfortunately, once Ms. Soo takes over, Amelie becomes bland. She is an extreme introvert, shy and afraid of interacting with people, and after Amelie gets to Paris the only scene that shows her fantasy life is an awful scene in which she imagines herself as Princess Diana being eulogized by an Elton John-type singer. I found the use of the late princess tacky, and a fat, purple haired Elton John ridiculous.

The show also uses another musical trope that is annoying, the instant attraction between two characters before they even meet. I can't see Nino and Amelie having any future together, as they both live too much in their own heads and I don't feel any real chance at a connection between them. One good thing about the cast is their diversity, they are different sizes and colors, reflecting reality. Which I guess is kind of odd for a show that should be about imagination. The costumes are nice, but I think I would have liked a few more costume changes for the characters. The set was pretty, with a large crossover upstage that was used well. I liked the projections used in the show, for the most part they worked well.

On the subway ride home, a man saw my Playbill and asked what I thought about the show. He had his young daughter with him, and I said that if he decided to see it, he should leave her at home. There were some parts that definitely adult, with some language that the prude in me really disliked. As he left the train, my sister said that if he liked the movie, he'd be better off skipping the musical. I agree with that sentiment, I think that fans of Miss Soo might enjoy the show, but I'm not sure it will be around that long to enjoy.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I don't know the movie at all and it doesn't sound like something I would have liked to see.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Bandstand

This show is getting lost in the midst of all the other shows coming into NY this season. I was supposed to see the show in New Jersey during its run at the Papermill Theater eighteen months ago, but due to health issues I had to sell the tickets to a co-worker. He liked, but didn't love the show.

The plot is about a group of WWII veterans who enter a song-writing contest. But don't let that simplistic sentence fool you, this show has a deep emotional core. Each of the men in the band is suffering from what we today call post-traumatic stress disorder and is haunted by the ghosts of those who did not make it home (at times literally). Added into the mix is their singer, who is the widow of the friend of the bandleader.

It takes a while before we get to the contest. We first see Donny Novitski (Corey Cott) in battle, where his friend Micheal tries to keep him focused on things by reminding him of their intentions of traveling to NY via the Clevelander train. Then we watch as Donny tries to fit back into civilian life, which proves very difficult. When the contest is announced, he starts recruiting other vets (James Nathan Hopkins, Brandon J. Ellis, Alex Bender, Geoff Packard and Joe Carroll), who are all also struggling with readjusting. It would have been easy for these men to be caricatures or one-dimensional, but this show avoids cliche and I found the men heartbreakingly real. Eventually Donny gathers up his courage to pay a call on his friend's widow, Julia Trojan (Laura Osnes) and her mother (Beth Leavel), and after hearing Julia sing in church, he recruits her for the band. The band wins the local preliminary round, but find out that they are responsible for their own travel expenses to NY and that even then they are not guaranteed a spot on the national broadcast. The road to NY is not easy, but they manage it with the help of the good folks of Cleveland.


Spoiler



Although you might think that they will win the contest, they don't. Instead, after realizing that the winning band won't really win anything, they stand up for what they think is right and rather than singing a sappy love song, they bring down the house with an intense song about the men themselves and the realities of their troubles.


 The show does include one musical theater cliche, Donny and Julia fall in love. Annoyingly, they sing about it in a song called "This is Life", which states what they would do in a movie, or a romance novel, but since this is "real life", they won't do anything at the moment. I dislike songs like that, they take me out of the moment and remind me I AM watching a play.

The stage is in full view when the audience enters the theater, and has a nice set to represent various bars and clubs and Julia's apartment. But I wondered how they would use it to represent NY. Well, gotta tell you, to my surprise, the entire set disappears as the band travels to NY and is replaced by the art deco atmosphere of NY in the 1940s. Costumes were pretty, but at points I noticed that all the band members were in the same colors and I didn't love that. At times the show seemed a bit over-choreographed but that may be due to the fact that they needed to cover scene changes without big set changes.

Corey Cott is quite easy on the eyes, but not so easy on the ears. In a song in which he comments that Frank Sinatra sings flat, he was doing some very weird stuff with his voice. Ms. Osnes (who I loved as Cinderella) sings and acts beautifully, and the two leads have a good chemistry. Beth Leavel gets some great zingers as her mother, and has a song in the second act that I really liked, as it plays to my belief that things don't happen for a reason, they just happen and we supply the reason. The gentlemen playing the band members are all excellent, and not only do they act and sing, but they play their own instruments, backed up by a small orchestra in the pit. The songs in the are Big Band homages, giving us the essence of Big Band without directly copying the sound.

I enjoyed the show more than I expected, and feel that it did a good job showing the side of WWII veterans' lives that was downplayed in all the feel good movies after the war. The show has been certified by a veterans' organization (Got Your 6) and I think that speaks highly for it. Now I just hope it finds an audience and manages to play for a while so other people can appreciate it.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Sounds like a good show.  I'd like to hear the Beth Leavel song you mention as I have always been in the "things happen for a reason" camp. Big Band homages should make for a great cast recording!


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

They used to call it battle fatigue and now it's ptsd. Sounds really good and I don't think I would have minded the bit of romance.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

The Emperor Jones 

I went to this show for an odd reason. A few years ago, there was a play called "Act One," which was about Moss Hart. In it, the play "The Emperor Jones" is mentioned, as Hart played a role in a production of it. All I knew was that it starred an African-American. When I saw that the Irish Repertory Theatre was doing it during the week I was off from work, I bought a ticket.

Although the company is called the Irish Repertory Theatre, they apparently do productions of shows written by Irish-Americans. I guess. And I guess Eugene O'Neill was either Irish born or Irish-American. But I don't think anyone in the cast is (although the director might be).

The plot of the play revolves around an African-American named Brutus Jones who has convinced the natives of an unnamed West Indies island to serve him as emperor. As we enter the story, Jones has outstayed his welcome and the natives are turning against him. He has expected this, as he explains to the Caucasian (Australian? English?) man named Smithers who first gave him his start on the island. While he has not expected to be deposed quite so soon, Jones has made plans and goes into the forest to escape pursuit.

I found the show extremely racist and unpalatable. Smithers is overtly racist to both Jones and the natives, and Jones looks down on the natives as "bush *******" and derides their intelligence and religion. The first 15 minutes of the show were spent listening to Jones and Smithers talking, and Jones is such a stereotype that I was rooting for the natives to shoot him, and for them to take Smithers out too. Story-wise, things don't get better once we are alone with Jones in the forest, his conversations with himself are inane, and his "haunting" by a slave auction made no sense. But it plays to the production's one great strength, incredible puppet work. This forest truly is alive, with wonderfully moving trees, walking skeletons, Southern belles, and even a crocodile. Obi Abili is on stage almost the entire time as Jones, and works up quite a sweat, but as I said my sympathies were with the islanders. In the end, I got half my wish, the natives got their revenge, but ultimately, I was just glad to escape the theater.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Sometimes vintage works do not translate well to modern times.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

War Paint

Elizabeth Arden (Christine Ebersole) and Helena Rubinstein (Patti Lupone) were two women who both rose from humble beginnings to become giants in the cosmetic industry. They were among the first women to run their own companies, and were such fierce rivals that they never mentioned the other by name. And, in real life they never met. A fact that the writer of this musical ignores. He has the two women accidentally meeting at a gala near the end of their lives and bonding. This scene comes after a few where he has the two women in the same restaurant overhearing the other's conversations and then commenting on those conversation in song. The book also puts heavy emphasis on two men in their lives, Ms. Arden's husband and an employee of Ms. Rubinstein's who did in fact desert their first employers and move to their rival. And while I enjoy both John Dossett and Douglas Sills, I found their characters annoying and their parallel plot lines less than fascinating. Part of the problem was actually the staging of the show, there was way too much diagonal crossing of characters and then their standing downstage and singing. In fact, there were points when the actors were so close to the lip of the stage that I was afraid they were going to end up in the pit.

The show takes a while to get started. It doesn't give us much of the early life of either woman, starting in the 1935 after Rubinstein had sold and then rebought her company. Before we met the main characters, we get a song by a bunch of women bemoaning their appearance and taking themselves off to one of Arden's Red Door Salons. That's where we finally see Ms. Ebersole and Mr. Dossett as Tommy Lewis. Next we switch to a pier where Ms. Lupone and Mr. Sills (as Harry Fleming) make their grand entrance. We watch as both women extol their secret weapons, downplaying the input of the men, which eventually leads to the men stepping out on the town, Lewis with a bunch of Arden girls, and Fleming into the homosexual subculture. Oh, yes, Mr. Fleming's homosexuality is not sugarcoated, it is thrust front and center. I'm not sure why it was played up so much, because I didn't really care about the social life of either man. We follow the women through the second world war and into the 1950s and 1960s until that fictional meeting at the end. The really weird bit in that scene has Arden wearing a lipstick of Rubinstein's. Both my sister and I found that a bit hard to believe.

Both Ms. Ebersole and Ms. Lupone are wonderful singers, but in this show, Ms. Ebersole comes off better. Ms. Lupone, who can be difficult to understand on the best of days, is utilizing a very thick Polish accent and was almost incomprehensible most of the time. Mr. Dossett and Mr. Sills do the best they can with their characters, both were in fine voice and move well. Erik Leiberman as Charles Revson (founder of Revlon) and Stefanie Leigh as his muse had a couple of great scenes, but since both Arden and Rubinstein dismissed him, there really wasn't that much dramatic tension with them. I guess that's my biggest problem with the show. I never felt any tension between the women, or between the women and the world. We get some "what would I be if I were a man" sentiments and a song by Ms. Ebersole about how much she gave up for her company. We also get moments where the women feel the sting of prejudice, but there was never any real sense of urgency to any of the proceedings.

The set was effective, with shelves of bottles upstage, being hidden by doors and walls as needed. For the most part, the women stuck to one half of the stage each with only a few scenes being played on the full stage. Each woman had a signature color, the ubiquitous pink for Ms. Arden and purple for Ms. Rubinstein, and, as if we needed reminding which lady was which, we huge signs coming down and hanging above them. I guess the signs were interesting as they showed up the difference in font that were characteristic of the women. Costumes were beautiful and plentiful and I enjoyed Ms. Lupone's especially. The cast is not that large, and at times seemed lost on the stage at the Nederlander. I found the staging bland and repetitive, with only a couple of stand out scenes (oddly enough, the best one had nothing to do with the women, it was Revlon's Fire and Ice campaign).

I was aware of the stories of the two women thanks to a PBS documentary which shares the same source material as this musical and in some ways this show came across as a documentary set to music. Even though I knew how things were going to go, I had hoped that the musicalization of the story would be interesting enough to make the biographies worth examining again. But for me it wasn't. I was paying more attention to the changing colors of the lights and the pretty costumes than to what the women were doing. And to trying to ignore the annoying uber-fan who kept "wooting" at the end of every song and making me want to find him and smack him.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Of course, I had to do some research. The first article I read was very interesting. Revlon is teaming up with Amazon and bought Elizabeth Arden last June.

http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2017/02/27/amazon-revlon-team-up-on-heels-of-love-project.html?ana=yahoo&yptr=yahoo

Back to research.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

The Play That Goes Wrong

This farce is an import of the UK's Mischief Theatre Company. The premise of the show is that the Cornley University Drama Society is making their Broadway debut with a play titled "The Murder at Haversham Manor."

The fun starts almost as soon as the audience starts enters the theater. Members of the Drama Society are out and about the seats, trying to find a missing dog and then doing some last minute work on the set (with the help from an audience member).

After a brief intro from the Drama Society's President (who also happens to be the director of the play and one of its stars), the play begins. And goes wrong. And more wrong. And even more wrong. The plot of "The Murder at Haversham Manor" is a nice little detective piece, almost reminding one of Agatha Christie's "Mousetrap". But this is a mousetrap that has been laced with hallucinogenic cheese. Our murder victim ends up crawling out of the room, the single actress in the play gets conked out and her place taken by the stage manager, the sound tech (a Duran Duran fan) hits the wrong cues, one actor has his the hard words written on his hand but still mispronounces them, the romantic lead doesn't seem at all interested in women and can't keep his mind on the play and ignore the audience, and poor set is subject to much abuse.

All of the performers are wonderful, staying in their characters even during intermission. The show is extremely physical, and their movements have to be precise, and they were. I can't imagine how they managed to get to the point where they all trust each other as much as they must in order to do this. The costumes were spot on for both an English acting company and the play itself, and the set was quite nice. The play within the play was actually enjoyable, I didn't see the denouement coming, but that may have been because I was laughing so hard. Even my sister, who rarely laughs out loud, was heard to chuckle.

I mentioned the play to 2 co-workers, and both ended up going with their significant others, and all four enjoyed it. And, I almost got a date out it. I was chatting to "Trevor, the sound guy" during intermission, and told him I was also a Duran Duran fan. He said we should go out, but I had to disappoint him, I try not to date anyone IN the theater...


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## loonlover (Jul 4, 2009)

Sounds like a very enjoyable show.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

City of Angels

Contrary to popular belief, I have NOT seen every musical ever written. And "City of Angels" is one I missed on Broadway and have been waiting for a revival of for years. Well, I didn't get a Broadway revival, but we did get a production of it by the Blue Hill Troupe. I have seen a number of BHT productions, but this was the first time I saw one at the theater at El Museo del Barrio uptown on Fifth Ave. The venue was nice, the museum has a bar where we met before the show, and the sightlines in the auditorium were good and the seats were comfortable. My friend who is a member of the Troupe got me my ticket, which was last row of the balcony, but it was fine, I could hear well and see well for the most part (more on that later).

Now, a bit about the show. For those of you thinking of a Nicolas Cage move, put that out of your mind. This "City of Angels" is a detective story set in Hollywood, about the exploits of a private detective named Stone. A typical hard-boiled dick. Who gets hired by a beautiful lying woman to find her step-daughter. But as the client goes to leave the office something odd happens. All the action reverses and we get a changed line. It is then that we see a man at a typewriter. He is Stine, the creator of the detective who is now adapting his novel for the screen under the tutelage of one of Hollywood's big producer/directors. Most of the rest of the show switches back between the lives of Stine and Stone and the action around them. It gets really fun when the detective objects to what the author is doing and the two confront each other.

The innovative device when the original production was on Broadway was that all the "movie" scenes were done in black and white. I was curious if BHT would be able to replicate that, and they did an excellent job. The movie costumes were in shades of black, white and gray, and they used black and white projections. This led to a couple of annoying moments when the actors would hit the scrim and the background would flutter. Except for Stone and Stine, all the performers play two characters, one in the real world and one in the movie. This led to a quick costume change for one actress that was quite well done under a blanket. All of the costumes were good, except that the actor playing Stine had a bit of an issue with his suspenders....

Blue Hill has a great group of actors, and they didn't miss with this cast. Paul Mitchell Wilder was wonderful as Stone and Neal Young was great as Stine. I really liked Brady Lynch as a conniving secretary, and Micheal Moss as a cop ex-friend of Stone's. I liked but didn't love Jennifer Dorre as the men's romantic interest, she didn't impress me with her big number. I felt the biggest misstep was Alan Abrams as the movie producer, he just didn't sit right with me.

For the most part, the show was a lot of fun, but there were some little details that were off. The lighting people were not on cue a few times, leaving actors in darkness. There were also a couple of missed sound cues, making it hard to hear. But most annoying were hanging set pieces that blocked my vision at the top of each acts. I mentioned this to my friend, and hopefully the folks who sat in the balcony for later performances didn't have the same blockage.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Sounds like a winner! Reminds me of the Mark Sweizer books where, in between the mystery, the sheriff tries to write novels on one of Raymond Chandler's old typewriters and thinks he's channeling RC. Or maybe he is. 

I was just looking up those books when I saw a new (to me) thing on the series product page. I can hide the books in the series I've already purchased. Very convenient.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Sunday in the Park with George

It's not often that we get a new theater on Broadway, and part of the lure of seeing this show was the fact that it was at the newly refurbished Hudson Theatre. And I will say, the theater is gorgeous, the seats are comfortable, and the sight lines are good. This production was similar to the one done at City Center last fall, retaining a lot of the cast including Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford. Both have grown in their roles and once again I enjoyed them both. Penny Fuller replaced Phylicia Rashad as the Old Lady and did a wonderful job, but Robert Sean Leonard was not as good as Zach Levi as Jules. The rest of the ensemble was fine, but nobody really stood out to me.

The orchestra was on the stage as at City Center, but here they were often concealed by a scrim on to which things were projected. The costumes in the first act were meant to evoke the original painting, but I found some of them ugly. In the second act the costumes are modern and not really memorable. In the second act there is a representation of an art installation called a Chromolume. For this production, a huge hanging light set was used, which I think probably looked great from the center orchestra and mezzanine, but didn't really do much for me from our seats on the side of the orchestra.

We attended the final performance of the eight week run, so there was a lot of emotion on stage and in the audience. Mr. Gyllenhaal chocked a bit on his last song, adding to the poignancy of the moment and making the show even more touching.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Wasn't this made into a movie? I'll have to see if I can watch it without having to buy it. I just don't like having too many physical DVD's or books anymore.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Wasn't this made into a movie? I'll have to see if I can watch it without having to buy it. I just don't like having too many physical DVD's or books anymore.


if you mean "movie" as in a whole new production, no, it was not. however, there was a video made of the original broadway production staring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

telracs said:


> if you mean "movie" as in a whole new production, no, it was not. however, there was a video made of the original broadway production staring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters.


Okay, that's the one I saw on Amazon. I didn't know it was a video of the stage play. I also found it on youtube. The quality of those videos is usually pretty bad, but at least I'll see it.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Waitress (revisit)

I've been trying not to revisit productions already seen (too many shows/too little time/too little money), but when a new star comes in, and a good friend is a fan of that star and of the movie on which the musical is based, AND with that friend's birthday is approaching..well, resolutions go out of windows.

The show of course is Waitress, and the new star in it is Sara Bareilles, the composer of the songs for the show. I had seen Ms. Bareilles do one of the songs at BroadwayCon back in January 2016 and she produced a concept CD of songs from the show, so I wasn't worried about her singing the role. However, I wasn't sure how much of an actress she would turn out to be. Turns out, I needn't have worried. She brings a slightly different flavor to the role of Jenna (the unexpectedly pregnant titular waitress), a bit more laid back than Jessie Mueller's take had been. Her Jenna is a bit more sassy and a bit more forward, I could understand her relationship with Dr. Pomatter a bit better. Both of the male leads in the show have changed, and I enjoyed both Chris Diamantopoulous and Will Swenson more as Dr. Pomatter and Earl than I did the originals, although it's by a hair in Swenson's case. His Earl was slightly more menacing than Nick Cordero had been, but there was more chemistry between him and Bareilles, so I could almost understand why she was with him to begin with. There was also a new actress playing Becky who did a wonderful job belting her big song out of the theater. The rest of the cast was good and I had fun having the changes from the movie to the stage explained to me by my friend over dinner. I promised her I'd watch the movie. I really need to get on that....


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Sounds like a fun way to see a show, being able to hash it all over again over dinner with a friend.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

At first, I thought you were talking about The Tenth Month by Laura Z. Hobson (book) and Carol Burnett (movie) especially the fact that there was a doctor involved. So I checked and it's an entirely different movie.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

6 degrees of Separation

From all the ads I saw/heard for this show, I thought it was a three person play about a yuppie couple and a con man who convinces them he is the son of Sidney Poitier. Well, those 3 characters are in the play, but there are a whole host of other people as well.

We first see Flanders and Louisa (aka Flan and Ouisa) in pajamas, rushing into a disordered living room. It takes a while (and a bit of confusing dialogue and exposition) before we flash back to earlier in their evening and their meeting with, no not the con man, but rather a white South African businessman who they are trying to persuade to give them money to fund Flan's latest art deal. Into this dance comes Paul, the young man claiming be friends with their children and the son of Sidney Poitier. Who he claims he is in town to meet, as Mr. Poitier will be in town to cast the movie version of Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Cats." Paul manages to charm the trio and shows himself an excellent cook, and Flan and Ouisa offer him the use of one of their children's bedroom and all seems to go well. Until the morning when they awaken and find Paul having sex with a male hustler. The resulting chase around the apartment is what causes the disorder we saw at the beginning and brings us back to where we started. But this isn't the end of the play. Flan and Ouisa find out that other people have also met Paul and fallen for his story. They recruit their children to help figure out how Paul got all their personal info and we see their daughter's meeting with a former classmate and then flashback to his tutoring of Paul in how to pass in society. And the author goes further, showing us Paul conning a young couple from Utah with disastrous results. In the end, Paul is arrested, but we never find out what actually happens to him, to the frustration of Ouisa. And me....

I found the whole thing a bit frustrating and unsatisfying. The lead actors, Allison Janney, John Benjamin Hickey and Corey Hawkins are all believable, as is Michael Siberry as the businessman Flan is trying con (oh, sorry, persuade) to give him money. I did not enjoy any of the actors playing the offspring of Paul's victims, they were spoiled brats and the actors were too strident for my taste. The other supporting actors (the other victims, a policeman, a doorman) were good but nothing spectacular.

The set was spectacular, a lovely NY apartment with a rotating painting hanging overhead. At first all I thought there was was the living room, but over the course of the 1.5 hour no intermission play we see more of the apartment and eventually it is moved to the side and we get a bare open playing area. The costumes were classic-looking, evoking more of the society than any particular time period.

To be honest, I was bored during a lot of the play. I didn't really care about Flan and Ouisa, who I felt were just as deceitful as Paul, but in a more genteel high class way. I also disliked the fact that both of them spend a lot of time talking directly to the audience, it makes it feel like a lecture instead of a play. And the fact that we don't get closure at the end left me really annoyed. I'm glad I got the chance to once again see Ms. Janney on stage, but I have to say I don't understand why this show is such a big deal.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Babes in Toyland

I don't get to go to too many shows on Thursday nights since I work until 8:30 most nights. But I had taken some time off, and then got a discount for this benefit concert version of Babes in Toyland at Carnegie Hall. I managed to snag a pretty good seat for a pretty good price and was looking forward to the show. Unfortunately, by the end of the evening, I was, not sorry I went, but a bit disappointed in the proceedings.

The biggest issue to me was the sense that Joe Keenan and Ted Sperling who "adapted" Glen MacDonough and Victor Herbert's original script did not trust the original. Or did not trust that a modern audience would enjoy Babes as it had been written and felt the need to update it and comment on it. This commentary was supplied by Blair Brown as the narrator, and I don't really blame her, she was just reading what they gave her. But honestly, there were a number of times when I just wanted her to SHUT UP! This started during the overture. While the orchestra is playing lush, beautiful music, Ms. Brown is going on about the background of the show. And this keeps happening. Every time there is a musical interlude, we had to listen to some kind of blather. And between songs we got more blather. About chorus girls and their "patrons" and how the show had too much spectacle and not enough story. And how the Toymaker evolved from the original stage production to the movie adaptations. From what I heard at intermission, I wasn't the only one who found the narration off-putting.

When I looked at the playbill before the show and saw there was a narrator, I was actually happy, as I knew that the story line of the show was a bit confusing. And it was. The core of the story concerns two orphans (played by Lauren Worsham and Christopher Fitzgerald) whose evil uncle (over-played by Jonathan Freeman) hires a couple of henchmen to kill the kids. They fail, and the kids keep coming back and the henchmen keep trying to off them. Along the way we also meet the Widow Piper and her children, two of whom are in love/loved by the orphans. Unfortunately, Contrary Mary (the usually radiant Kelli O'Hara) is also beloved by the children's uncle. All of this was a bit bewildering, because all the actors are adults, but seem to be playing children. One of the big songs in act one has a bunch of girls singing about doing arithmetic homework, so it seems everyone is a bit young to be thinking of marriage.

Act one ends with everyone lost in the woods, with another beautiful instrumental piece ruined by narration throughout. Act two moves to Toyland where everyone eventually ends up, and we meet the sinister Toymaker (Bill Irwin, moving very oddly). Ultimately there's a happy ending, with the orphans ending up with their true loves and the uncle and the Toymaker get their just desserts.

Of the cast, the actors playing the orphans were the best. Christopher Fitzgerald got to indulge his comic side quite a bit. Lauren Worsham's soaring soprano was gorgeous as usual and she was quite charming. Ms. O'hara's voice was also gorgeous, but her acting was a bit stiff, as were Mr. Freeman and Mr. Irwin. Jeffrey Schecter and Chris Sullivan as the hired killers were fun, but there were a few instances of their blowing their lines. That happened quite a bit in this production, most of the cast were using their scripts, but were still dropping lines and obviously fumbling and at times incomprehensible. Although the acting was problematic, the costumes, while simple, were perfect for the show. Everything was color coordinated and pretty, but when simple costumes are the best part of a show, you know there's a problem.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I saw the movie with Annette and Tommy Sands but I couldn't tell you a thing about it. Your synopsis didn't even jog my memory. Sad.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Golden Apple

Golden Apple is based on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, updated to early 20th century Washington state. It is also completely sung through. These two facts seemed to have created problems for a number of audience members, if the on-line chat is anything to go by. I had a bit of an advantage, as I had the chance to attend a rehearsal of the show and follow along with the script during that. And since the show has no dialogue, I got to hear/read the entire thing.

The musical is set in Angel's Roost, where Helen (Lindsay Mendez) is bored and wishing for the excitement of the big city and long for the return of the town's men who have been off fighting a war with Spain. Just as Mother Hare, the town's spiritualist tells Helen and the other women of the town that the war will last ten years, Penelope and Menelaus (Mikaela Bennet and Jeff Blumenkrantz) arrive to say that the men will be home shortly. Once the men return, led by their captain Ulysses, things seem to perk for a bit, although the men are disappointed that Helen has married. It looks like Ulysses (the charming Ryan Silverman) and Penelope will settle happily despite the interference of Mother Hare. The celebration of the soldiers' returns is complicated by the entrance of a traveling salesman from city of Rhododendron one Mr. Paris (Barton Cowperthwaite in a silent dancing role). He gets roped into judging which of the townswomen has made the best cake, and as his reward, he is introduce to Helen. After a "Lazy Afternoon" (the most famous song of the show), he and Helen run off, and the young men are persuaded to follow. Act Two is mostly set in Rhododendron and follows the adventures of Ulysses and his men in the big bad city. The act also starts with a song by Helen, but once the men arrive, she is quickly whisked off by her husband. The action occasionally returns the action to Angel's Roost and the pining Penelope, I guess to give us a better sense of the passage of time. After 10 years away and the death of all his men, Ulysses returns to Angel's Roost and after one long scolding, the faithful Penelope takes him back and the curtain falls.

I enjoyed Act One a bit more than Act Two, as it seemed to have more of a story. Act Two resembles a series of vaudeville sketches, each having to do with some kind of sin, lead by the Mayor of the city, Mr. Charybdis (played by Jason Kravits doing a pretty good Al Jolson imitation). While Act One has a better story line, Act Two had more songs that I enjoyed, especially a weird number title "Goona-Goona". It also had an annoying duet called "Scylla and Charybdis" which had those characters as dueling financial brokers out to gyp Ulysses and his men. Mr. Kravits and Mr. Blumenkrantz didn't really impress me during the song, they didn't seem to be going in the same direction with it. While I was able to follow the story, even though my Iliad and Odyssey reading experiences were MANY years ago, and I knew that Ulysses was away for 10 years, I think the writers could have made the time passage clearer. While we get a hint that time has passed from the Angel's Roost scenes, the action in Rhododendron doesn't seem to take that long. If you asked me, I would say that Ulysses and his men spend a few months or weeks there.

The stand outs in the show for me were led by Lindsay Mendez, who seemed to have a great time as Helen and has a great singing voice. Ryan Silverman is matinee idol handsome with a fine voice, but was a bit stiff as Ulysses. Mikaela Bennett is a newcomer (she is in her last year at Juilliard) and is beautiful with a soaring soprano voice and a lovely manner. While I did have some issues with understanding her high notes (a common problem of mine), for the most part she was wonderful. Barton Cowperthwaite was an attractive and nimble Paris, and was fun to watch. The three townswomen and Mother Hare (Ashley Brown, Carrie Compere, Alli Mauzey, N'Kenge) all did double duty, taking on different temptress roles in Act Two. When I was at the rehearsal, I had difficulty understanding Alli Mauzey's singing, and unfortunately, that continued in the full production, she seemed not to be projecting as well as the others. Acting-wise, I think N'Kenge was the best, I believed her in both her roles, while I found the others a bit stiff. Sometimes I think that stiffness stems from the fact that Encores! doesn't have a lot of rehearsal time, so the performers don't get a chance to embrace their roles and relax into them. Carrie Compere was having difficulty with her lines at the rehearsal, she had them down pat at the performance, but I don't feel that her confidence was where it might have been if she'd had more time. The ensemble did their usual great job, with Nicholas Ward and Micheal X. Martin both catching my eye in smaller roles. Or maybe I should saying "catching my ears", as Mr. Ward has one of those wonderful deep bass voices that seem to come out of the basement. The Encores! orchestra was fabulous, led by the hard-working Rob Berman. This show looks like a real workout for a conductor, he was moving the whole time, whereas in a normal show he would only be conducting for a few minutes at a time and resting during book scenes.

The set and costumes were lovely. After the rehearsal, I was looking forward to seeing how they were going to do the balloon that Paris arrives in, and they did not disappoint. It was huge and colorful and would have done well for the Wizard of Oz. However, I have a bit of a quibble with one set of costumes. Our country boys have a song titled "Store-Bought Suit" in which they extol the virtues of their first ever "bought" suits. The song describes the suits in loving detail. But.... the suits the actors are wearing don't match the description at all, which I found a odd. Also, to be honest, they didn't fit the actors as well as other costumes.

This was the last of City Center's Encores! for the year, and I must say, I enjoyed all three of this season's offerings. In addition, I am looking forward to their summer Off-Broadway series which will include Stephen Sondheim's "Assassins," and their fall production of "Brigadoon."


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

When a show is done completely in song with no spoken dialogue, isn't it considered opera?


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

crebel said:


> When a show is done completely in song with no spoken dialogue, isn't it considered opera?


Hadn't thought of that.

I would probably have loved all the music but would have missed a lot of the words.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

crebel said:


> When a show is done completely in song with no spoken dialogue, isn't it considered opera?


great, now you want to get into the definitions of musicals?

well, actually, according to wikipedia, the definition of opera is "an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score".

so, any opera is a musical, and any musical is an opera...

to me an opera is something older and sung in a foreign tongue, and put on in an opera house.

interestingly, when the big batch of British sung-through musicals started (Phantom of the Opera, Les Miz, Miss Saigon), they were called pop operas.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Not every musical is an opera, but every opera is a musical?


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

telracs said:


> great, now you want to get into the definitions of musicals?
> 
> well, actually, according to wikipedia, the definition of opera is "an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score".
> 
> ...


Sure, we can get into definitions!  The wiki definition is rather broader than I thought. My mind has always sided with the Dictionary.com definition, which seems to be everything set to music:

NOUN

1. An extended dramatic composition, in which all parts are sung to instrumental accompaniment, that usually includes arias, choruses, and recitatives, and that sometimes includes ballet.

2. The form or branch of musical and dramatic art represented by such compositions.

3. The score or the words of such a composition.

I can see "all operas are musicals", but I wouldn't think of all musicals as operas. Maybe I'm too narrow-minded!


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

it's a marketing/perception thing.  if you call something modern an opera, people are going to think it's pretentious.  or in a foreign language.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Shall we talk about operettas?


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Pacific Overtures

I'm sure any writers who read my thread can relate to this. Do people ever ask you WHERE THE HECK you get your ideas? I mean really, a musical about the forcible opening of Japan to western trade? How does someone come up with that. And then, once that wonderful musical is written and performed, and then revived, how does someone come up with the idea to scale it down to its bare bones dropping one of its iconic songs, dress the actors in modern clothes, in socks with no shoes, and put the playing area so that the audience is spending a majority of the time looking at people in profile, or from the back?

I had really been looking forward to seeing Classic Stage Company's production of Pacific Overtures after really enjoying the last two shows I've seen there, especially since it was announced that George Takei would be assuming the Reciter role. But the role has been cut down and divided between other actors leaving Mr. Takei very little to do but observe. Which seems to be the mood of this piece. It starts with a young woman walking onto the stage as if she is walking into a room in a museum. Then we get the opening narration done by the Reciter as a voice-over. Hard to tell if Mr. Takei was off-stage doing it live or it was recorded. Eventually all the company enter (with Mr. Takei in what looked like lecturer's robes) and the first song begins. The company did well with that, but as I stated above, I was looking at a lot of the company in profile during it.

When the show relied on the music as written, it worked, but the whole "concept" staging didn't work. All of the performers did well, with good voices and switching between characters efficiently. The most memorable for me was Thoma Sesma as Lord Abe. I also enjoyed Ann Harada in the multiple roles she played. I didn't love Steven Eng as Kayama, he seemed a bit distant, especially in his big song "A Bowler Hat". I think distant is the word I would use to describe most of my feeling about the show. Even though the audience is pretty close to the actors physically, the modern clothing and the staging made the whole thing feel removed emotionally. I will admit that at times, I was listening to the songs and ignoring the actors.

One last note about the costumes/props. If you're doing a historical play, use the historically correct flags of the US and Russia (and Holland, France if those have changed over the years). Also, call me old-fashioned, but I really, really, really hate any flags being dragged on the floor and used to simulate contracts and having someone write on them. I find it disrespectful to everyone.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

What was the dropped iconic song?


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

When will "they" learn if it ain't broke, don't fix it.


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

Hey, Telracs. 

I'm off topic--re your last review--because I wanted to let you know my sister and her husband are going to see Come From Away tonight. (Actually, considering the West/East time change they've probably seen it already!) I passed on your review to them, and they were really looking forward to a great evening. 
Thanks,  
EC


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

EC Sheedy said:


> Hey, Telracs.
> 
> I'm off topic--re your last review--because I wanted to let you know my sister and her husband are going to see Come From Away tonight. (Actually, considering the West/East time change they've probably seen it already!) I passed on your review to them, and they were really looking forward to a great evening.
> Thanks,
> EC


can't wait to hear what they thought. hope they have a great time in NY


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

telracs said:


> can't wait to hear what they thought. hope they have a great time in NY


The had a great time in NY. My sister loves your city! They, her husband and her, are in publishing, so they often go to Book Expo. As to Come From Away, they loved it. My sister said it made her laugh, get weepy, and have . . . hope. They enjoyed every minute of it.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

In the Willie Wonka movies, I found Gene Wilder's Wonka to be a mischievous man-child with a strong sense of fairness who arranges for everyone to get what they deserve, and I found Johnny Depp's Wonka to be flat out creepy. I was hoping that Christian Borle's would be close to Gene Wilder's, but at the end of the day, I felt his Wonka was a mean, bitter old man with few redeeming characteristics.

After opening the show with an enjoyable version of "The Candy Man," Wonka goes out into the world to try and find out why he has lost popularity and sets up shop down the block from Charlie Bucket (Ryan Foust), chocoholic, dreamer and extremely poor kid. And in this version, Charlie has a connection to the factory, as his Grandfather Joe (John Rubinstein) was once a security guard there, a fact that is never utilized to any good. Wonka keeps baiting Charlie at the store, and I really wanted to smack him. Eventually the Golden Ticket idea is launched, and we spend most of the first act meeting the updated winners. All the Golden Ticket winners except for Charlie are played by adults, which may make some people feel better about how they are ultimately treated, but didn't quite work for me. We also meet Charlie's family, his overworking mother (Emily Padgett) and four bed-ridden grandparents. While the poverty of the family worked for me in the movie, it felt off and a bit excessive on stage. I was hoping that Wonka would be the one to give Charlie the chocolate with the Golden Ticket, but instead he accidentally leaves behind a dollar the Charlie uses to buy a bar from a bizarre peddler, a coincidence that irked me. Act one ends with the arrival of everyone at the factory and a wonderful quick change by Mr. Borle.

Act two is all the action in the factory, with the tour, meeting the Oompa-Loompas and the deaths of most of the ticket winners. In this version there is no doubt of the deaths of Verucca and Violet, with some doubt about Augustus. Mike survives, but doll-sized. As there is no Mr. Slugworth, the final test of Charlie is not the everlasting gobstopper but the leaving of Charlie alone with Wonka's secret notebook that he is told not to touch. A lot of the kids in the audience were yelling at Charlie to stay away from it, but in a last bizarre twist, it is writing his ideas in the notebook that Wonka wants Charlie to do in order to prove his worth as a chocolate maker.

I found the first act repetitive, and the use of the newscasters showing the winners annoying. They weren't funny enough to be caricatures and weren't serious enough to realistic. Augustus is still an overeating slob, but putting an adult in a fat suit creeped me out. Violet is still a gum-chewer, but is updated to have a media crazed father and is almost as self-centered as Verucca, who is now a ballerina daughter to a Russian mafia don. Mike Teavee is now a juvenile delinquent net addict, and if I caught the lines correctly, actually hacked into the system to get his golden ticket. The actors playing Mike, Verruca and Violet were young looking, but against the real child playing Charlie, they read as teens, not kids. The always hysterical Jackie Hoffman played Mike's mother, and while she was funny, her alcoholic take on the character seemed out of place for a musical that is geared towards the younger set. Actually, a lot of it seemed out of place for a children's musical. Violet explodes after eating the gum, and Verucca is menaced and eventually torn apart by squirrels (nut sorters, replacing the movie's geese). And her death scene was extremely long and explicit.

Most of the sets were okay, heavy use of projections that worked well for the TV scene. Unfortunately, the "chocolate room" set was a big disappointment. It should have taken up the whole stage and been the biggest thing of the show and make the audience want to rush up and eat it. Instead, it was stuffed inside a plexiglass box and looked artificial. I heard people behind me asking "where's the chocolate river?" Not a good sign. And there was one long drawn out scene that was done on a completely bare stage, as the tour was supposed to go through a series of invisible obstacles. I have great respect for the mime skills of all of the actors, but got bored of it quickly. I also have great respect for the actors portraying the Oompa-Loompas, as they did most of the show on their knees.

Now for the biggest let-down of the show. The music. According to my Playbill, four of the songs from the movie were kept. The opener "The Candy Man" and "I've Got a Golden Ticket" in the first act and "Pure Imagination" and the Oompa-Loompa song in the second. To be honest, if they used 30 seconds of the original Oompa-Loompa song, I'd be surprised. "The Candy Man" and "Pure Imagination" worked well, but I felt that "I've Got a Golden Ticket" fell flat. Of the new songs, I enjoyed Violet's "Queen of Pop" and Mr. Salt's "When Verucca Says" the most. The song that Wonka sings recounting his first meeting with the Oompa-Loompas was okay, but a bit weird in its staging. The radiant Emily Padgett has an okay song as Mrs. Bucket, but it left a gaping plot hole in my mind, what exactly happened to Charlie's father, and why aren't the child welfare and advocates for the elderly all over that house?

I had really been looking forward to this show, but in the end, while I think the kid was good and Christian Borle was okay (especially singing the two songs from the movie), I'd rather rewatch the movie.

Oh, and one funny bit almost at the beginning of the show. During the opening number, Wonka introduces himself and extols the virtues of chocolate, asking "whoever could there be who doesn't love the...taste of a sweet bar of soft milk chocolate?" Well, I wish he'd left out the word "milk", as I with a trio of vegans who love chocolate but won't touch milk.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

I've never been a big fan of Willie Wonka other than the music. It's always come across as dark and mean to me.  Sounds like that does not change in this production.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Euwwww!


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

1984

I am posting this out of order because I want to get all memory of this horrific production out of my brain as soon as possible.

I read this book in high school, so had some familiarity with the basic plot. My sister has never read the book and except for knowing it has something to do with Big Brother, had no background understanding of the story. This is a problem because the people who "adapted" the book for the stage jettisoned any idea of a linear plot or exposition. Instead we got a confused and confusing show with scenes repeated, a futuristic book club reading Winston Smith's diary, characters appearing and disappearing, scenes performed off-stage and shown to the audience via video, light effects that can give one a headache and ultimately a disgusting torture scene that has caused audience members to faint and almost had my sister walking out of the theater before the show was over.

Although I was able to follow the storyline, I did not care about either Winston Smith or Julia. Both of the actors playing the roles were stiff and there was no chemistry between them. I could not fathom either of them caring enough about anything to risk everything. Tom Sturridge's Winston seemed lost in all that was going on around him, and without some connection, I couldn't sympathize with his struggles. I love the movie Tron Legacy and remember Olivia Wilde being striking and beautiful in that movie. In this she looked like an unsexed scarecrow and in the scenes where she should be seducing/understanding Winston there was just nothing there. The actor that came across best was Reed Birney as O'Brien. I don't remember the book well enough to know if his character is as involved in the book as he is on-stage, but Mr. Birney at least seemed to be playing a real character, not a cardboard cutout. The ensemble did the best they could with what they were given, and I was impressed with their ability to remember all their lines and movement.

I've spent some time trying to figure out what the adaptors wanted audiences to take away from the show. They put in a bit of an optimistic tone near the end, but then immediately pull the rug out from under it. All in all, I have told people to avoid this and read the book instead.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

On a happier note (I hope), were you pleased with the Tony Awards this year?


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> On a happier note (I hope), were you pleased with the Tony Awards this year?


To be honest, I don't really care for/about awards shows. I don't have any money invested, so I have nothing to gain from anyone winning. And I don't have a TV and hate attempting to live stream, so I don't watch the awards live. But someone was nice enough to live chat with me about it, so I knew what was going on, and youtube had lots of videos afterwards. I liked Kevin Spacey's opening number for the most part, but it was a bit heavy on in-jokes, so I don't know how it played with people who don't get to see everything. I enjoyed most of the production numbers, and loved the a cappella in memoriam segment (which I think featured singers from the closed musical In Transit). I didn't love the Come From Away production number, I felt the actors came across too strident. 
 I didn't watch any of the actual award presentations/speeches, but I am glad there wasn't a problem like at the Oscars.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Ernest Shackleton Loves Me

I had been looking forward to this show for a couple of years after it played out on the west coast. Valerie Vigoda is an electric violinist and former member of a jazz trio called Groovelily that created the musical "Striking 12." Ernest Shackleton Loves Me is a two person piece, with Ms. Vigoda playing Kat, a single mother trying to find love on-line while in the midst of trying to find a way to make a living with her art. Wade McCollum plays all the male parts, some of them in front of a green screen off-stage. The show doesn't try to downplay its reliance on tech, part of the pre-show entertainment is watching Mr. McCollum test out the green screen. Ms. Vigoda utilizes a lot of "live-looping" in her performance which allows her to play multiple instruments in one song, but which I sometimes find a bit boring. Ernest Shackleton has always intrigued me, so the use of the real life explorer was something that interested me. Shackleton apparently took both still and film photographers with him on his journey, and the production utilizes archival footage quite effectively.

It's never clear how much of the show is meant to be "real" and how much is a dream or hallucination Kat has after being awake for 30 hours in an apartment with no heat. I was able to overlook this and just go along for the ride, but I did wonder why Kat fixated on Shackleton since she seemed to have little knowledge of the man (like the fact that he left a wife and 2 kids behind in Ireland).

It's only been a couple of weeks since I saw the show, and to be honest, I can't really remember any of the songs. I do remember that I felt the acting and set were really good and Mr. McCollum played a wicked banjo, but that the story line was a bit lacking . Oh, and one thing I really remember is how uncomfortable the seats at the Tony Kiser Theater are. I was fidgeting throughout the show, and the 85 minutes felt like the 30 hours of discomfort that Kat had endured.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Present Laughter

I saw this play with Frank Langella in the lead in 1997 and was looking forward to seeing Kevin Kline's take on the role of Garry Essendine, British actor and lady's man. It is some time before one gets to see Mr. Kline, but the wait is worth it, and the lead up is also enjoyable. We get to spend time looking at the absolutely gorgeous set and meet a number of fun characters. First is Tedra Millan as Daphne Stillington, a young lady who "lost her latchkey" and spent the night in Mr. Essendine's spare bedroom. Then we meet Mr. Essendines employees, a chain smoking Scandinavian spiritualist housekeeper Miss Erikson (a wonderfully deadpan Ellen Harvey), insubordinate valet Fred (Matt Bitner) and secretary Monica Reed (Kristine Nielsen, who I usually enjoy but found a bit over the top here). Adding to the chaos are Garry's director and producer (Reg Rogers and Peter Francis James), the producer's wife (Cobie Smulders), a young man eager to get close to Essendine (the hysterical Bhavesh Patel as Roland Maule) and Essendine's not quite ex-wife (Kate Burton).

The plot is a comedic examination of the ins and outs of various relationships between the group, with Essendine the sun around which everything resolves. We enter the action a couple of weeks before Essendine's planned departure to Africa for an extended tour and end with him and Mrs. Essendine exiting to catch the ship. An ending which feels very abrupt, as the couple leave Miss Stillington and Mr. Maule in separate rooms, each having informed Essendine that they are planning on being on the boat.

Mr. Kline did a wonderful job as Essendine, believable as both egotist and Casanova, finding humor in the role without going too far. Ms. Burton was a bit subdued, but I loved her take on Liz as the woman who really knows all that is going on and is just waiting for Garry to catch up, knowing he never really will. Cobie Smulders and Tedra Millan were both pretty as the other women coasting into the Essendine's life, but neither left much of an impression on me. I liked Peter Francis James but found Reg Rogers a bit too manic to take for long, and as I said, Ms. Nielsen was a bit over the top. In the Frank Langella production, the actor playing Roland Maule ended up nude, fortunately, they did not replicate that here, as Mr. Patel is funny, but not someone whose private parts I needed to see.

Part of the enjoyment of the show was that the production took the pauses in the action dictated by the staging for passage of time (older shows tended to be 3 or 4 acts as opposed to today's shift towards one or two) and made them fun. Messages to the audience were projected onto the show curtain, reminding us the first pause was not intermission and suggesting we say hello to our neighbors.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

So glad you enjoyed it (overall). I would love to see Kevin Kline in a role like that.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Groundhog Day

When we got to the August Wilson Theater to see Groundhog Day, we found out that Andy Karl who usually plays the lead Phil Connors, would be out.  Since I'd really been looking forward to see Mr. Karl, who I'd enjoyed in other things, I was disappointed, but we decided to stay and see his understudy, Andrew Call.  I'm glad we did, because I don't think I'd have enjoyed the show more with Mr. Karl.  This was because while Mr. Call was good in the role, good looking with a nice voice and good chemistry with Barret Doss as love interest Rita Hanson, I found the overall production slick but uninvolving.  I never got a sense that Phil actually learns anything or grows to be a better person.  There was also a lack, for want of a better word, of the sense of time passing, of how many iterations of the day Phil was subjected to.  So while I could get a feeling of Phil's desperation, I never really felt there were any stakes for him.  And since everyone else is unaware of the loop, I didn't feel that some of the changes in other characters were logical.  


While the person playing Phil has to do the bulk of the heavy lifting in the show, if he's not supported by good actors he's going fail.  And the ensemble here does not disappoint.  Stand outs were the actors playing Gus and Ralph (sorry, there was a announcement of cast changes before the show started, and I'm not sure who played what roles), John Sanders as Ned Ryerson and Rebecca Faulkenberry as Nancy.  I guess the reason they stood out was because they each got to DO something in the show.  Gus and Ralph are barflies that Phil bonds with and they get a song with him.  Both Ned and Nancy also get songs, both of which struck me as a bit odd.  For some reason, Nancy, the local "pretty girl" gets the Act Two opener, "Playing Nancy".  While it's an interesting song, she's a minor character who we have not seen much of in Act One, and a lot of people have been confused by this spotlight number.  Ned's song is a dark one, and I have to admit to not realizing it belonged to him when I listened to the CD before seeing the show.  And again, I don't understand why this peripheral character is given the big introspective song that I think would better give us an insight into Phil if it was his.  

The show relies heavily on projections, starting with multiple video images of Phil the weatherman as the show curtain and ending with a gorgeous sunrise.  And yes, the production taped Mr. Call, so the videos at the beginning show the correct actor.  There was a delay in starting the show, so we got to see a lot of the videos looping and I got a bit tired of looking at him.  As expected, there is a lot of stagecraft involved in resetting Phil back to bed for each new morning, and I will admit to missing a few of the moves, but I caught a number of them.  This does not diminish their effect, in fact, one of the few reasons I'd go back to see the show again would be to see if I can catch all the switches.

On a KB note, I will admit to going "ah-hah" when Phil admits to being A god, not The God.  I never knew where Betsy's quote was from before......


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

telracs said:


> Groundhog Day
> 
> On a KB note, I will admit to going "ah-hah" when Phil admits to being A god, not The God. I never knew where Betsy's quote was from before......


That's funny!

This might be one case where watching the movie would be more fun than watching the show. You definitely get the sense of time passage in the movie. The choices Phil makes of things to learn as his days repeat also show his personal growth. Yes, he wants to impress Rita, but he repeats much of his schedule day after day just so he can save people and use his knowledge to improve the lives of others, realizing he needs to treat others better than he has in the past.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

crebel said:


> That's funny!
> 
> This might be one case where watching the movie would be more fun than watching the show. You definitely get the sense of time passage in the movie. The choices Phil makes of things to learn as his days repeat also show his personal growth. Yes, he wants to impress Rita, but he repeats much of his schedule day after day just so he can save people and use his knowledge to improve the lives of others, realizing he needs to treat others better than he has in the past.


I agree. I will watch this movie over and over on Groundhog Day, or at least I did when TNT ran it for 24 hours. I no longer have TNT so I'll have to stream it if it's available.

I wouldn't mind seeing it as a musical. I'm thinking that Ned and Nancy got big songs because it was in the actors' contracts.

I thought everyone knew that line.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

The Little Foxes

Apparently Cynthia Nixon was approached about doing this play, but she wasn't interested in playing just one character for the whole run, so Laura Linney was persuaded to join the cast and the two actresses alternate in the roles of Regina and Birdie (we saw Ms. Nixon as Regina and Ms. Linney as Birdie). Regina is the bigger role, on stage almost the whole time, and pardon my language, a stone cold *itch. Birdie is an abused wife, self-effacing, alcoholic and yearning for the old days, while Regina is looking forward to modernity and getting away from the south. The women are surrounded by a mostly wonderful cast, with Michael McKean as Regina's brother and Richard Thomas as her husband Horace the stand outs. Francesca Carpanini (making her Broadway debut) as Regina's daughter is a bit weaker, but she comes into her own at the end. Darren Goldstein as Birdie's husband makes the best of an unsympathetic role, but Micheal Bez as Leo, Birdie's son, just seemed off. David Alford does well in a small role as a Chicago financier, and Caroline Stefanie Clay and Charles Turner do well as servants with minds of their own and some stinging comments about the Regina's family

The story concerns a deal made by Regina's brothers with Mr. Marshall from Chicago to bring a cotton mill to their un-named town. Regina is planning on benefitting from the deal, but unfortunately needs money from her husband who is in the hospital in Baltimore. In order to get her way, Regina sends her daughter to fetch him home, but he remains recalcitrant. Ultimately, the brothers persuade Leo to "borrow" some stock certificates from Horace's safe deposit box. Horace discovers the stocks missing, and confronts Regina, but before he can confront the brothers, he has a heart attack. Regina takes advantage of the situation to blackmail her brothers, but while she may gain her financial independence, she loses her daughter. I found the story pretty predictable, but was still annoyed at Horace's death. I wanted Regina to get more of a comeuppance. The final image is of her standing on the steps to the upper floor, looking worried about going near the dead body. It didn't ring true to me. She never seemed to care about Horace or anyone else, so her being fearful of a dead man seemed unrealistic. The Regina we have been watching for 2 hours would be walking up those stairs and packing her bags to leave for Chicago right after Horace's funeral.

The set is a gorgeous recreation of a Southern home, with a staircase leading up to a 2nd level, and almost floor to ceiling windows. Some of the action takes place upstairs, but we don't see it, only hear it. And I have to admit, the sound system for that section was not good, it sounded recorded. The costumes are also gorgeous, the women in amazing dresses, and the men in the formal daywear of the early 20th century.

I liked Ms. Nixon as Regina and Ms. Linney as Birdie, and I guess I could see each playing the other role, but unlike some fans, I see no need to go back a second time.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I know I saw the movie with Bette Davis in the lead, but it was a long time ago. I don't remember much of the story but I remember Davis.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Anastasia

This is one film to stage adaptation where I really know the movie (if you don't know it, the basic story is about a girl with no memory who is convinced by two conmen to pose as the Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov in order to get the reward her grandmother in Paris is offering). Since the movie was a musical, I was looking forward to seeing which songs they would keep and how they would insert new ones. They kept the iconic "Once Upon a December," "Learn to Do It," "Journey to the Past," and "Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart," although the order of the songs has been altered. "Rumor in St. Petersburg" also remains, but the lyrics have been changed significantly (to their detriment). Also changed significantly is the backstory between Anya and Dmitry and the identity of the "villain"of the piece. In the movie, it was the re-incorporated spirit of Rasputin. The revised version now is trying to be more "realistic," so it drops the mysticism and gives us a Cheka (precursor to the KGB) agent named Gleb who is tasked with hunting down the person claiming to be Anastasia. In a too obvious plot point, he encounters Anya before she meets Dmitry and is attracted to her. Ramin Karimloo is an excellent actor, and has a good voice, but I couldn't connect with his character on stage. More successful were Christy Altomare as Anya and Derek Klena as Dmitry. They had a good connection and were believable in their roles. Mary Beth Peil has a small role as the Dowager Empress, but her dignity and grace were wonderful, even if her one song was a bit of a bore. John Bolton as Vlad and Caroline O'Connor as Countess Lily were fun, but were a bit broad in their acting, evoking the spirit of the animated movie, and not really fitting in with the new, more realistic, darker mood of the piece.

Most of the songs that were incorporated from the movie were wonderfully done, and a song for the aristocrats and intellectuals boarding a train leaving Russia for the last time was quite touching (and apparently reuses some of the music from a dropped song from the movie). Countess Lily is given a new song (in the movie that character sings "Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart, here she is not in it), which could have been good, but went on a bit too long as does the song she and Vlad sing when he is trying to convince her to help introduce Anya to the Dowager Empress. The song explaining Dmitry's connection to Anastasia, "In a Crowd of Thousands" is a nice song, but I felt that the idea of him seeing her one day when she was eight and he ten was a bit of a stretch. The new songs for Gleb have grown on me since I've been listening to the CD, and I really liked the "Quartet at the Ballet" which used some music from "Swan Lake." The costumes were fantastic, and the white ones used for the Romanovs must be horrible to keep clean. I have one quibble with the wigs used for Anya. When the trio of Anya, Dmitry and Vlad arrive in Paris, her hair seems to be much shorter than in Russia. But in a later scene, it is waist length, then later back to a short bob. I don't think hair as long as hers appears to be in the nightmare scene would curl up that short at the ballet. Much of the choreography was wonderful, but there was too much walk to the edge of the stage and sing out to the audience in the solo numbers. At one point I was afraid Derek Klena was going to tumble into the orchestra pit. However, almost all the staging issues can be forgiven in light of the projections. These were the best, most realistic projections I have EVER seen on Broadway. The scene at the railway station and on the train was incredible, and I could almost feel the elevator going up at the Eiffel Tower.

I really disliked that shift towards realism, it took away from a lot of the joy of the movie and in my eyes, made the show too dark for the younger audience that the show seemed to be attracting (most likely mothers who liked the movie thought it would be a good show for their young off-spring). I heard a few people at intermission complaining about the changes, so I am not alone in my feelings. I could definitely have done without the trio of prostitutes or the scene with drunken criminals attacking Anya and Dmitry (and making a comment "if you don't want her, we'll enjoy her, Dmitry"). The killing of the Tsar's family and the shooting of an escaping aristocrat were done out of sight, but were still a bit graphic for my taste. There is an interesting scene in Paris where Gleb tries to infiltrate a Russian club and has a conversation with a doorman who recognizes him as a newly arrived Soviet. While I found the interplay interesting, I'm sure a lot of it went over the heads of the youngsters in the audience.

The CD for the show came out before we saw, and although I held off listening to it beforehand, I've been enjoying it since. I've found myself listening to Gleb's songs, which work well out of context. On-stage I found Derek Klena's accent a bit odd (he sounds extremely NY), and this is even worse on the CD. Christy Altomare sounds better on the CD than she did on stage (apparently she was getting sick at the performance we saw), and her singing voice is much better than her speaking voice both on the CD and live.

I enjoyed the show (and the CD), but this is one time I am doing a lot of comparison to the movie, and in the end, I wish they'd stuck more to the original. I really missed Rasputin.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I assume you're talking about the animated movie which I haven't seen. I saw the one with Yul Brynner and Ingrid Bergman way back when. Not a musical. I think I'll see if the animated movie is available streaming.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Yes, it's included in my Starz subscription.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Saying "These were the best, most realistic projections I have EVER seen on Broadway." is quite a statement considering the number of shows you have seen!

If you given a choice of seeing the animated movie or the Broadway version again, which would you choose now?


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

telracs said:


> Come From Away
> 
> One thing I liked about this production was its humanity. There were funny moments, annoying ones, touching ones and sad ones. It showcased the good that was done by good people, without straying into melodrama or becoming maudlin. It showed that while there was some happiness that came out of tragedy (the Texan and Englishman end up married), there were also tragedies that stayed tragic (the firefighter son), and relationships that didn't survive (the two Kevins).


I caught Come From Away when it was in Seattle and absolutely loved it (despite a lot of "I don't know if I'm ready for this" misgivings for reasons similar to yours.) It was also really amazing that the night I was there, they flew in all of the people the play was based on for a reception - so the Texan/UK couple (whom I had thought were just a placed genre trope but were REAL PEOPLE and they actually met and fell in love!) and the pilot and everyone was there. So much heart in that play!

I'm usually just a lurker on your thread, but thought I would pop my head up to say I took some of my royalty money from this whole publishing thing and invested in Puffs the Play Off-Broadway (cue Leo Bloom singing "I Want To Be A Producer"), so if you end up catching it, let me know what you think!


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Marvin's Room

I often wonder about titles of shows, and this one is one I don't quite get. We never meet Marvin, or enter his room, although we see him vaguely through a frosted glass wall upstage and occasionally hear him muttering. Marvin is the bedridden father of Bessie (Lili Taylor) and Lee (Janeane Garofalo). Bessie has been taking care of Marvin and his sister Ruth (Celia Watson) for the past 20 years at their home in Florida. Lee is back in Ohio with her two sons, Hank (Jack DiFalco) and Charlie (Luca Padovan) and has not spoken to her sister in years. Everything changes when Bessie is diagnosed with leukemia and Lee and the boys come to Florida to be tested as bone marrow donors. Bessie is a strong willed woman who has shouldered the burden of care for 20 years without really thinking of it as a burden, and is too stubborn for her own good at times. Lee thinks only of herself, and is really unlikable. Hank is a "problem" child, who recently burned down the house they were living in in Ohio and has been committed to a mental health facility for teens. Our first encounter with Lee is when she goes to visit Hank, and boy, if she were my mother, I probably would have tried to burn her at the stake as well. When Lee and the boys get to Florida, the nurturer in Bessie sees something good in Hank and the two bond, causing more of a rift between the sisters and between Lee and Hank. The younger son, Charlie doesn't really have much to do, and I felt that Ruth existed to give us a visual of all Bessie's good deeds, since we never see Marvin.

Written in the late 1980s, the play was staged off-Broadway and this is its first Broadway mounting. Apparently it was at a very intimate theater originally, and some people who saw the original feel that the American Airlines Theatre is too big for the show. I didn't feel that way, I found the use of the stage well done. There was a turntable in the center so that we could move from a doctor's office to Bessie's home, to an amusement park with minimal set changes. The lighting was evocative of Florida at times, and the costumes were such that it could be 1980 or 2017. Ms. Taylor and Ms. Garofalo did well in their roles, although physically, I never quite bought them as sisters. Celia Watson was fine as their soap opera obsessed aunt, but I felt that Mr. DiFalco was the best on stage, showing Hank's vulnerability and strength wonderfully. Rounding out the cast are Carman Lacivita, Nedra McClyde and Triney Sandoval, with McClyde doing well as Hank's psychiatrist, and Sandoval a terrible physician that Bessie is seeing. Honestly, if I was talked to/treated the way Dr. Wally deals with Bessie and the others, I would have walked out and never looked back.

The play is set in the early '90s, when bone marrow transplanting was in its infancy, so I had to give them some leeway on the medical info used in the script. But I did find it odd that they were willing to test two nephews who were both underage and one of whom was on psychotropic medication. Especially AFTER the sister had been shown not be compatible. There was a lot of laughter during the play, most of which I did not contribute to. As my sister said, the situations are funny if you have not lived them. But having gone through the death of both my parents (with my sister bearing the bulk of the care burden) and having relatives with mental illness issues, and working in the healthcare field for 30 years, I didn't find much to laugh at here. And I found the ending very unsatisfying, as there is absolutely no resolution to most of the big questions, and I really wanted some kind of closure.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

A Doll's House, Part 2

As the title suggests, this is a "sequel" to Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House. We delayed getting tickets for it because neither my sister nor I had ever seen the original play. But recently, she said that she wanted to see it because it didn't seem that one needed a familiarity with Ibsen's play. And it turns out to be true, all the info one needs is given as the play goes on. Basically, Nora (Laurie Metcalfe) is returning to the home she left 15 years ago at the end of A Doll's House. The first person she encounters is Anne Marie (Jayne Houdyshell), the woman who raised her and then raised her children after she left. I will admit to being a bit bored by the first 10 minutes or so of the show, as it takes a while for Nora to reveal where she's been and what she's been doing for 15 years and why she's returned to her marriage home. It turns out that her abandoned husband never filed their divorce papers as she thought, and she has been conducting business illegally by the law of the land where they live. Husband Torvald (Chris Cooper) arrives home early and the couple's reunion does not go well, so Anne Marie convinces Nora to try and get help from daughter Emmy (Condola Rashad) who has her own agenda when the two meet.

The play is quite anachronistic, mixing period costumes with modern language and set pieces. The costumes were quite nice, and the mostly bare stage with just chairs and tables (and a box of kleenex) worked well. The intermissionless show was broken into scenes introduced with the name of one of the characters lit up on the walls. I found the lighting a bit garish, but it worked to break up the show well.

I liked, but did not love any of the actors. Jayne Houdyshell gets some great zingers and was as enjoyable as ever to watch. Condola Rashad was good as the daughter, with a nice backbone to stand against her iconoclast mother. Chris Cooper played nicely against the women, but I felt his character was written as a bit of a doormat. Ms. Metcalfe left me a bit cold, but I think that was due to how she was directed. She delivered her lines well, but there was too much "walk downstage and lecture the audience" for my taste. And I disliked a lot of what I felt was heavy-handed writing in the play. I don't know if writer Lucas Hnath was trying to emulate something he found in Ibsen, but Ms. Metcalfe gets a number of long speeches that I found over the top. And I'm still not sure that I like Nora, or if we're supposed to root for her or Torvald. Or Emmy. In the end, I'm glad we saw this wonderful cast, but I have no desire to visit this house again.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I'm sure I read A Doll's House in college, but I don't remember a thing about it except for Nora's name. 

At least you enjoyed the performers.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Assassins

This show about the assassinations (and attempted assassinations) of US presidents has had a troubled history. The original off-Broadway production didn't manage a move to Broadway. And then a scheduled Broadway production was cancelled due to the events of 9/11. When the show finally did make it to Broadway in 2004, some believe that its run was cut short due to the Republican National Convention being held in NY. I saw the 2004 version, and felt it had great production values and acting, so was looking forward to seeing what City Center would do with it. For the most part, this version also had great acting (with one big exception) but I didn't love the staging.

The show opens in sort of a fairground setting, with a "proprietor" introducing (and in some cases encouraging) the assassins. There is also a "balladeer" who seems to be the voice of reason in this madness. He sings three "ballads", one of Booth, one of Czolgosz, and one of Guiteau. I hadn't realized it before, but it is the three men who actually assassinated their targets that get songs with the word "Ballad" in their title. In addition to the three already mentioned, we get Giuseppe Zangara (who attempted to kill FDR), Samuel Byck (who planned to kill Nixon), Squeaky Fromme and Sara Jane Moore (attempts on Gerald Ford) and John Hinckley (Ronald Reagan). The show climaxes with Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination of JFK. I had forgotten how wordy the show is after having listened to just the cast recording for so long, and found myself fidgeting a bit during the book scenes. The show does not go in chronological order and mixes people still living with those already dead in a way that if I stop and think about it, really makes no sense.

Acting-wise, I most enjoyed Steven Pasquale as Booth and Shuler Hensley as Czolgosz. Steven Boyer looks a bit like John Hinckley and did well in his one song, but seemed a bit low-key. On the other hand, Danny Wolohan as Byck, Erin Markey as Squeaky Fromme and John Ellison Conlee as Guiteau were all over the top. I felt that Victoria Clark was wasted in an almost non-singing role of Sara Jane Moore, but she was a relatively late replacement for Julie White (who is going into the Laurie Metcalfe role in A Doll's House, Part 2). Some people had issues with Alex Brightman's accent as Zangara, but I didn't. Clifton Duncan had a pleasant enough voice as the Balladeer, but I felt that his character didn't really have all that much to do. In the last production, the Balladeer becomes Lee Harvey Oswald, but here that role was played by the bland Cory Michael Smith. The ensemble (Damian Baldet, Eddie Cooper, Andrew Durand, Eryn Lecroy, Hudson Loverro and Pearl Sun) do well in their choral numbers and as supporting characters in the assassins' stories. Ms. Sun did especially well as anarchist Emma Goldman in a scene with Mr. Hensleys Czolgosz. The biggest misstep in the show was Ethan Lipton as the Proprietor. He came across as a smarmy lounge singer, in a red tuxedo and his singing was the worst of the night. Since his is the first character we see, I was worried about the show, but the rest of actors redeemed things.

As I said, the show starts with a fairground look, but then it seemed to morph into some kind of diner set, which didn't really work for me. I also didn't like the extremely graphic depiction of Zangara's execution in the electric chair (he missed FDR, but killed the mayor of Chicago who was standing next to FDR), and the hanging of Guiteau. One design choice that they made that I'm still debating is the use of life-sized target cut outs for the Presidents that were killed, with actors playing the roles of the Presidents not killed. I was sitting in the mezzanine, and since the orchestra was on a raised platform, I had a great view of them. But the view from the top meant that I could see that Steven Pasquale didn't really throw a bottle off-stage and when the sound effect came, I had to laugh. Most of the costumes were appropriate for the characters, and I have to admit that Squeaky Fromme's red caftan was quite creepy.

Since this was an Off-Center Encores production, I was expecting to see some of the cast with scripts in hand. For most of the show, however, they were off-book. Which made it very obvious when suddenly they were holding their scripts for the last 3 songs. The consensus on line is that they didn't rehearse enough through to the end and had to use the scripts for in order to get through. Encores doesn't get a lot of rehearsal time, it's true, but this is the first time that I've seen the whole cast go back to relying on the scripts at the same point.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

What a creepy premise.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Hello, Dolly!

This is going to be kind of a two part review, one part focusing on the show itself, one part focusing on the big draw of the show, the casting of Bette Midler as Dolly Gallagher Levi.

The physical production was gorgeous, with stunning costumes, wonderful backdrops, and incredible stage pieces (including a locomotive). But I really wish set designers would sit in the mezzanine when installing sets, since we couldn't see the top of a few sets from where we were sitting. The choreography was superb, and (except for one dropped prop), the dancers did a marvelous job in all the dance numbers. And there are a few long drawn out numbers in show, both dance numbers and extended songs utilizing the large ensemble. I will admit to getting a bit bored by some of these numbers, as the lyrics get a bit repetitive for my taste. I really enjoyed Gavin Creel as Cornelius Hackl, it was a nice change from his last role as a smarmy womanizer in "She Loves Me," and showed off his singing, dancing and acting skills. Also fun were Beanie Feldstein as Minnie Fay and Taylor Trensch as Barnaby Tucker. Slightly less successful was Kate Baldwin as Irene Molloy, she seemed a bit older than the others and I didn't get a sense of chemistry between her and Mr. Creel. I had been looking forward to David Hyde Pierce's Horace Vandergelder and for the most part I think he did well. He does not have the most pleasant singing voice, but it worked okay in some numbers. However, the new Act Two opener "Penny In My Pocket" was almost painful to sit through, just Mr. Hyde Pierce singing in front of the curtain. I also had issues with his transformation at the end of the show. Through most of it Horace seems to be an anti-social money-grubbing tight-fisted cut-throat (yeah, I like hyphens today), but suddenly at the end he's giving a newly established business his custom. While I'm glad this attitude about spreading around gives Horace and Dolly a happy ending, it just didn't work for me.

Now for the hard part of this review. I have to try and separate Ms. Midler's performance and its effect on me from the effect that the uber-fans in audience had on my perception of her performance. First off, let me say, I hope I'm moving that well when I'm seventy-one, and I applaud her hard work in the show. But I kept feeling that I was seeing Bette Midler playing Dolly Levi, and not seeing Dolly Levi the character. Part of this I place on Ms. Midler, at times she was over-acting, mugging too much and playing to the audience, but some of the fault was with the audience which didn't seem to let her disappear into the character, acknowledging her for being her. I really felt that people were coming to see her and not the show. While I'm glad that people are patronizing Broadway, I wondering what will happen when Ms. Midler leaves the show, and personally, I think I'd like to see Kate Baldwin step into the role at that point. She'd be believable as Dolly, but maybe with a different Horace.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Bette Middler is a bit overwhelming.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Puffs, or Seven increasingly eventful years at a certain school of magic and magic

I had put off seeing "Puffs [or seven increasingly eventful years at a certain school of magic and magic]" for a few reasons. One, there are so many shows to see and so little time to see them in, so off-Broadway shows tend to got to the bottom of my list. Second, my sister had no desire to see it, and I tend to go to shows with her. Lastly, I have to admit, I'm kind of "over" Harry Potter. I read the books as they came out, and saw most of the movies (I don't think I saw Deathly Hallows, but I may have and just don't remember).

A few weeks ago, events conspired to make my going to see Puffs a reality. I had a weekend off, my sister was going away so I would be on my own, and I was able to get a ticket at a deep discount. I'm not sorry I finally got to see the show, but on a scale of one to ten, I'd rank it about a seven, seven and one half. The show leans heavily on narration and an audience's familiarity with the books. I remember the first books well, but honestly, I can't really remember much of book five, so got lost in the middle of the 2 hour, no intermission show.

Our main character is named Wayne (Zac Moon) and for some unexplained reason, he is an American orphan (I think there is some reference to his parents being British), who ends up at an un-named school to be learn to be a wizard. He gets selected into the "Puffs" who seem to be looked down on by the rest of the school as not being smart or brave and tend to be the forgotten ones in the hierarchy of school life. Wayne makes friends with two other Puffs, Oliver (Langston Belton), a mathematics savant who is lost at the magic school, and Megan (Julie Ann Earls) who really wants to be evil and in the evil house. The core trio was enjoyable and A.J. Ditty was good as the narrator, as was Alex Haynes as Cedric, the one "cool" Puff (and as "the person whose name is not said"). The rest of the ensemble played multiple parts, and I will admit to getting a bit confused as to who was who at points. And having a female with long braids play Harry was REALLY confusing to me. But I did like the use of mops and wigs for Hermione and Ron.

As the title implies, the show goes through each of the books (or years) at the school one by one. For the most part, it was quite amusing, and the playwright did a good job of poking fun at things that I've always found ridiculous about the books (the fact that the classes make no sense in terms of teaching things people will really need to use in the future, underage drinking, and a complete disregard for student safety). While most of the action centers on our main trio, there is a subplot regarding Megan's mother escaping from wizard prison that went on too long and didn't add anything to the show for me. I didn't like the climax of the show, although I kind of understand why the author went with it (it's what a lot of people felt JK Rowling should have done). The epilogue of the play was fun, poking fun at the theatrical sequel to the books (coming to the Lyric Theater in 201.

I found the set odd, it was a lot of doors, and not even the front of doors, but rather looked like we we looking at the back of a set. The costumes were simple, and I have to admit, I liked checking out Wayne's t-shirts. The show is at a relatively small theater, and unfortunately, it was only 2/3 full on a Saturday matinee, with the last four rows empty and a few empty seats next to me. I've always thought that I would be a Ravenclaw if I ended up at this school, but after watching this show, I was once again glad that I never did, and wondered how anyone ever survived it.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

When you say underage drinking, do you mean butterbeer? It's actually a root beer or cream soda based drink.

I still binge read the books or the audios or the movies.


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

So glad that you went!  And glad to hear that someone who wasn't a hardcore Potterhead was still was able to follow it and have a good time.  I have heard their matinees are tamed down quite a bit and family-friendly for younger audiences, but the naughty bits are reinserted for evening performances.  I'm hoping on my next trip to NYC to catch both shows to catch the differences... mwah ha ha...


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

KateDanley said:


> So glad that you went! And glad to hear that someone who wasn't a hardcore Potterhead was still was able to follow it and have a good time. I have heard their matinees are tamed down quite a bit and family-friendly for younger audiences, but the naughty bits are reinserted for evening performances. I'm hoping on my next trip to NYC to catch both shows to catch the differences... mwah ha ha...


yes, the matinee was listed as "family friendly", and I can see where they would put the naughty bits, but since I'm a bit of a prude, I didn't miss 'em.

hopefully your next trip will be before the end of january, since some websites have Puffs closing in the middle of the month.

(oh, and feel free to PM me if you want to meed up whenever you hit the big apple).


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

M. Butterfly

Okay, I confused poor crebel when I mentioned this show. She assumed, logically, that since it shared the title of the opera, that it would follow the plot of the opera. But it is a variation on the theme, and while it references the Puccini story the plot has a few twists. We meet Rene Gallimard (Clive Owen) in a Parisian prison cell in 1986. He introduces himself to us and explains that he has become the toast and laughingstock of cocktail parties around the world. In the party scene, there is a hint of the twist to come, but from listening to people around me at intermission, I guess it was too subtle. Gallimard is a socially awkward loner who becomes obsessed with Puccini's opera (and its tragic heroine) at a young age. Eventually, he somehow becomes a married man working as a diplomat in China in the pre-Vietnam War era. At an embassy party, a Peking Opera singer performs the finale of Madama Butterfly and Gallimard is enchanted. He at first thinks the singer is a female, but is corrected by the singer named Song Liling that at the Peking Opera, female roles are song by males. Gallimard is challenged by Song Liling to visit the opera and learn about the Chinese version of a butterfly story and the two begin a friendship. When Gallimard tries to break off the friendship, Song Liling reveals a secret, that "he" is in fact "she", a woman who has lived her whole life as a man but feels she can be free with Gallimard. The relationship becomes a sexual one, but Gallimard never sees Song naked and he so believes in his lover that he even accepts the child that Song brings back after months away in the hinterlands as his own. Even though Gallimard is telling the story, there are points where Song breaks in and we see that Song is a spy pumping the French diplomat for info and trying to stay on the good side of the Communist Party. Unfortunately, Gallimard is demoted and eventually sent back to Paris, while Song is ends up being "reeducated". Eight years pass and Song contacts Gallimard and the couple reunite in Paris. Gallimard attempts to end the story here, but Song overrides the action and we see Gallimard on trial for espionage, still insisting that he believed Song to be a woman. Even when Song in male dress is testifying. Even when Song is graphically describing their sex acts. And even when Song strips and reveals himself in all his glory. The play does have a tragic ending, Gallimard, in a final descent into madness, realizes he himself is the butterfly and takes his own life. But the playwright (or the director) gives us a last moment of hope, showing two butterflies flying away.
I often have an issue in shows where there is gender confusion of the characters. Since I knew in advance that Song Liling would ultimately be revealed as a male, I could never quite believe that Gallimard was fooled. Jin Ha has a slight build, and a fairly high voice, but never really seemed female to me, even when adorned in a beautiful old fashioned dress and wig. I found his acting very subdued and very controlled, which worked okay. Unfortunately, I found Mr. Owens also subdued and controlled, which did not work for me. He is narrating the show but he never really drew me in, and the recitation of his early life just bored me. Except for the part with his friend Marc (Murray Bartlett), which was annoying due to Mr. Bartlett's over the top delivery. Enid Graham as Gallimard's wife Enid did the best she could with her role, as did Clea Alsip as a party girl who attempts to seduce Gallimard. Michael Countryman does well in multiple roles of Gallimard's boss and then as the judge in his trial, but the person I enjoyed most was Celeste Den as Comrade Chin, Song Liling's controller. Although her character is not a nice one, I found her the most believable and could understand her motives the best.

A lot of people who saw the original production have been making comments about Julie Taymor's scenic design for this show, but I didn't really have trouble with it. It consists of large panels that come in and off of the stage on strings, usually manipulated by stage hands all in black. Sometimes the panels are plain gray, but at other times they are very colorful and decorated to evoke the scene well. The costumes for the most part were nothing spectacular, suits and uniforms. There were a couple of times where the costumes rose above the ordinary, in the Opera scenes, and as I mentioned above, Song Liling's pre-revolution dress.

I found the show a bit draggy and long, especially in the scenes recreating the Peking Opera. And in the end, while I felt a bit sorry for Gallimard, I felt more sorry for Song Liling, since he got used by Gallimard, used and abused by the Chinese government, and ultimately abandoned and left alone in a strange city.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

I saw this in London maybe 25 years ago. I remember thinking the sets were so simple yet worked so well. Black panels and very minimal red furniture. Not furniture, but open-sided red boxes moved around to form different pieces.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> I saw this in London maybe 25 years ago. I remember thinking the sets were so simple yet worked so well. Black panels and very minimal red furniture. Not furniture, but open-sided red boxes moved around to form different pieces.


Gertie, you've mentioned seeing quite a few shows in London. Did you live there for a time, got to visit often, saw a whole bunch of shows in one visit?

I admit to being completely surprised when telracs gave me the synopsis of this 'variation on a theme' M. Butterfly. I had told her to take a big box of tissues with her for the ending.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

crebel said:


> Gertie, you've mentioned seeing quite a few shows in London. Did you live there for a time, got to visit often, saw a whole bunch of shows in one visit?
> 
> I admit to being completely surprised when telracs gave me the synopsis of this 'variation on a theme' M. Butterfly. I had told her to take a big box of tissues with her for the ending.


I was there once on a vacation. We saw M. Butterfly on the tour, All's Well that Ends Well in Stratford-Upon-Avon, and I absolutely had to see The Mousetrap.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

If Only

I was interested in seeing this because it starred Melissa Gilbert (of "Little House on the Prairie") and was an off-Broadway house I'd never been to. My sister got tickets for this and unknown to her, they were "partial view". Well, not really. They were "if the person in front of you is of even average height, you ain't seeing nothing." It seemed to me that the theater had added a section of folding chairs in order to sell more seats and didn't bother to put them on a slope. Fortunately, the show was NOT sold out, even though we were initially told it was, and we were able to move up to seats where we could see the action. Not that there really was much action to be seen. The play takes place in a townhouse in downtown NYC in 1901 and the bulk of the show is a meeting between Ms. Gilbert's Ann Astorcott and Mark Kenneth Smaltz's Samuel, a former slave who Ann befriended during the Civil War at the behest of no less than Abraham Lincoln himself. The two spend a lot of time talking around things, and while there were some moments of revelation and connection, for the most part I felt like I was eavesdropping on something very uninteresting. The sitting room set was quite pretty, as was Ms. Gilbert's dress, but at the end of the 90 minutes, I was glad to leave these people to their memories.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

With the price of theater tickets (not to mention 90 minutes of your life), I suspect you need a lot more than a pretty dress and a pretty set.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Spamilton

For a couple of decades, Gerard Allessandrini wrote off-Broadway revues that parodied Broadway shows. The revues usually ran for a couple of years before taking a break and then a new one would appear. A few years ago, Mr. Allesandrini said he was ending the "Forbidden Broadway" era and a sad sigh was exhaled by parody lovers. Fortunately, Mr. Allesandrini's resolve to not return to the genre was broken by the success of Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton" and last year we got a new show, titled "Spamilton." Unfortunately for me, the show opened at the Triad, a very small space that required one to buy drinks as well as tickets and sold out very quickly. After playing at the Triad for a year, the show moved to the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and my sister was able to get me a ticket. She decided to skip the show because she hasn't seen "Hamilton" and was worried that she wouldn't get the jokes and although there were nods to other shows, the production does mostly spoof "Hamilton" and Mr. Miranda, and I'm glad she decided not to go as I don't think she would have enjoyed it. 
The show employs a cast of 4 men and 1 woman and when I saw it, there were 2 guest stars, one male who sang a parody of "You'll Be Back" from "Hamilton" and an actress who parodied Bette Midler and Liza Minelli. Each of the regular performers were excellent, especially Nicole Vanessa Ortiz who switched between Beyonce, J-Lo and Gloria Estefan in the blink of an eye. I enjoyed the show when it was parodying shows more than when it was spoofing Mr. Miranda himself which may be because I am not really a fan of his and think he's already a parody of himself. The show was 100 minutes with no intermission, and I really wish it had had an intermission (and maybe more numbers), as by the end of the afternoon I was fidgeting in my seat. I'm glad Mr. Allesandrini has come out of retirement to write this and hope that it means that he'll restart the Forbidden Broadway brand completely.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

So glad you enjoyed it!


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> With the price of theater tickets (not to mention 90 minutes of your life), I suspect you need a lot more than a pretty dress and a pretty set.


fortunately, i didn't pay anything for the tickets (and my sister didn't may much either....)


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Torch Song

Originally, this was known as "Torch Song Trilogy" and starred its creator Harvey Fierstein. This causes a bit of a disconnect with the current production, as Michael Urie who now plays Arnold Beckoff neither looks nor sounds like Mr. Fierstein, so references to Arnold's appearance and voice don't ring true. The show opens with a long monologue from Arnold addressing the audience and introducing himself as a gay man who works as a drag queen. After that monologue, we are transported to a bar, and hear one half of conversation between Ed (Ward Horton) and another man. It took me a while to realize that Ed is talking to Arnold. The two start a relationship, but Ed is unsure of his sexuality and eventually he leaves Arnold to marry a woman. We meet her in the next scene, along with Arnold's new boyfriend, a very young model named Alan. While Arnold and Laurel (Roxanna Hope Radja) bond, Ed and Alan (Micheal Rosen) also bond, but not in a way that one would think would bode well for the relationships between Ed and Laurel and Alan and Arnold. The last part of the show takes place a few years later and introduces two new characters, Arnold's mother (played by Mercedes Ruehl) and a young man named David (Jack Difalco) who seems to be living with Arnold. Ed is camping out on Arnold's couch as he has left Laurel. Oh, and what has happened to Alan? We find out during an argument between Arnold and his mother that Alan was the victim of gay bashing and was killed. And who is David? Apparently he is a gay high school student that is now Arnold's foster child and Arnold is working towards adopting him. I found this kind of far-fetched, as Mr. Difalco does not look like a high school student and I can't quite buy New York City's Children's services placing David with Arnold. And I was very confused as to the point Mr. Fierstein had been trying to make when he wrote the play. Arnold is not a guy I would like to spend too much time with, Ed is a waffling self-centered egotist, and Arnold's mother, who I thought at first would be accepting of Arnold's life, turns into an over the top harpy who walks away from her son, leaving us with a final image of Arnold sitting alone on his couch. While I didn't really enjoy the writing in the show, I must say that the acting was great. I believed Mr. Urie as Arnold and enjoyed Mr. Rosen's Alan. The set design was wonderful, especially in the second act. But overall, the show made me sad. Sometimes I look at a show and wonder what will happen to the characters in the future. Unfortunately, looking at the characters in "Torch Song," I ear their future will include at least one case of AIDS if not more.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

It sounds a little confusing.

Was this made into a movie? I seem to remember Anne Bancroft as his mother.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Honeymooners

I was never a big fan of the TV show "The Honeymooners," and I don't think I ever watched more than a couple of episodes. But I have been looking forward to this musical adaptation for a while, mainly due to the casting of Michael McGrath as Ralph Kramden.

The trip out to New Jersey was not a fun one, it was pouring rain, and when I met my sister at Penn Station to take the New Jersey Transit train out to Millburn, I discovered that I'd left the tickets home. So, as soon as we got to Millburn, I trudged up the hill to the theater to get them reprinted, then back down to Starbucks to kill the 90 minutes until curtain (NJT trains run every hour and we catch the earlier one so that if we have issues we are still on time).

As I expected, Mr. McGrath was a wonderful Kramden, evoking Gleason without flat out imitating him. He was ably assisted by Leslie Kritzer as Alice, and Michael Mastro was an incredible Norton. Laura Bell Bundy did the best she could with Trixie, as did Lewis Stadlen as a cheese merchant but Lewis Cleale struck me as odd as an ad executive. The ensemble had quite a lot to do, and did it quite well.

The storyline tried to be a bunch of TV episodes squished together, and got off to a slow start. We meet the Kramdens on a day where Ralph is convinced he's going to get a promotion at his bus company. We get 3 songs in quick succession about this, but ultimately he does not get promoted and I wondered why we just wasted 20 minutes on this. Oh, wait, there's a punchline here&#8230;. He's too good a driver to be promoted! And I guess this sets up his dissatisfaction with his current situation. But anyone who has even ½ an inkling about the show (and the audience seemed to be full of fans) already knows this and doesn't need the reminding. After failing to get the promotion, Ralph sees an ad for a jingle contest and he convinces Norton to help him enter. Somehow, the men win the contest, and are suddenly bigwigs at the ad company. Except they aren't really and the ad guy wants to keep Norton and ditch Ralph, leading to a fall out between Ralph and Norton (what is Norton's first name?) Along the way there is a subplot involving Trixie Norton's attempted return to her burlesque roots, leading to a misunderstanding between the Nortons. In the end, with the usual help from Alice, everyone reconciles and it is made clear that the two couples move on with their normal lives. The show had a lot of in-jokes, some of which I didn't get, but which seemed to go over well with the fans in the audience.

The sets in the show were marvelous, using the Paper Mill's stage quite well. The Kramden apartment was appropriately bland, while the Norton space was quite nice. As a matter of fact, I was confused by the Norton apartment, it seemed as if Art and Trixie had a bit more money than Ralph and Alice. The costumes were good, and I loved the fact that Norton always had his head covered. At this point, I can only remember a few songs from the show, and I remember liking one half of a song that Alice had about Brooklyn Girls (or something like that). It started well but took an odd turn in the middle. The ensemble had a few nice dance numbers, especially during Ralph's high life fantasy number.

I mentioned above that Mr. McGrath evoked rather than imitated Jackie Gleason, and this was made clear in the ending of the show. Ralph and Norton do an end run around the ad guys and get their commercial on a TV show hosted by (drum roll) Jackie Gleason. The actor playing Gleason did a decent job, but the actor they had as Art Carney was too short and didn't look like him at all. I felt that having Ralph and Gleason bond and Gleason start thinking about a new show using Ralph's story was a bit of a cop out and hope that if the show moves to Broadway they rethink the "twist" ending. But they better keep Mr. McGrath and Ms. Kritzer and Mr. Mastro, as they are the truly channeling their characters.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

Ed Norton.  

Does the addition of music and dance soften the relation to a now horribly un-politically correct television show. I never cared for the television version even when we didn't regularly use phrases like politically correct. I think I'd have to consider it satire to really enjoy the characterizations if they remain the same.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

The Honeymooners was never my favorite of all the Gleason characters. My favorites were Reginald Van Gleason III and the Poor Soul. 

Art Carney was a very talented dancer and I always enjoyed the episodes when he danced, although he did camp it up. Yes, Trixie and Ed had a much nicer apartment than Ralph and Alice. I guess sewer workers were very highly paid!


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

crebel said:


> Ed Norton.
> 
> Does the addition of music and dance soften the relation to a now horribly un-politically correct television show. I never cared for the television version even when we didn't regularly use phrases like politically correct. I think I'd have to consider it satire to really enjoy the characterizations if they remain the same.


Thank you.

And as I said, I never really watched the TV show, so I'm not 100% sure how politically incorrect it was. I know there were some times when Ralph threatened Alice, and there were a couple in the show, but it was clear to me that Alice knew he'd never really hit her (and if he ever did, she'd have him in a headlock in a minute).


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

telracs said:


> Thank you.
> 
> And as I said, I never really watched the TV show, so I'm not 100% sure how politically incorrect it was. I know there were some times when Ralph threatened Alice, and there were a couple in the show, but it was clear to me that Alice knew he'd never really hit her (and if he ever did, she'd have him in a headlock in a minute).


That is so true.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Time and the Conways

When the curtain came down at intermission of this show, I could sense that some people thought that it was over, because we just watched would could have easily been a complete two scene play. But in fact it is a three act play by J.B. Priestley that Roundabout decided to with only a single intermission between acts 2 and 3 (although the transition between acts 1 and 2 is incredible, more on that later).

We start right after the end of World War One, where the Conway family is holding a party in celebration of the 21st birthday of Kay Conway while awaiting the return of eldest son, Robin, from the war. In addition to the seven members of the Conway family, we also meet Gerald, their solicitor Joan, a friend of the Conway daughters who is interested in Robin, and Ernest, a lower class businessman who was brought by the solicitor and is interested in one of the Conway daughters who doesn't seem to want to give him the time of day (although I felt she was protesting too much). The show starts slowly, with too many characters talking too loud and too fast and not really saying much of anything. We get some snippets of interest, Kay is an aspiring novelist, sister Madge is an idealistic young woman with a passion for social change (and the family solicitor), son Alan is happily living a quiet life as a clerk for the town council and Mrs. Conway (whose first name I never caught) is a snobbish self-absorbed widow. The family clearly has money, and is looking forward to a happy prosperous life in the post war world. At the end of the act, Kay is left alone, and seems to fall asleep. The youngest sister, Carol comes into the room and sits on the couch while the actress playing Kay exits. Now the Roundabout scenic design and production team did wonders transitioning to the next act. The 1919 set moves upstage, and from above, a 1939 version of the same room descends in front of it. The walls of this set are translucent gray and we are able to see the 1919 room through the upstage wall of the 1939 set including poor Carol sitting there the whole time. While some of the furniture is the same, the room has lost its color and this is reflected in the family fortune. Once again, it is Kay's birthday, but instead of a celebration, this family gathering is a depressing meeting. Kay is independent, but frustrated in her career as a journalist. Madge is a buttoned up spinster headmistress, Robin has descended into alcoholism and abandoned Joan and his family, Ernest has become a sadistic and probably abusive husband to Hazel and the Conway fortune has been squandered. Mrs. Conway is living in a fantasy world where everything is still fine, despite the admonishments of solicitor Gerald. Oh, and the reason Carol is still in the 1919 set? See died shortly after the original party. Only Alan, seems okay in all of this, still living a quiet life as a clerk and taking things as they come. After a slew of recriminations and general mean-spiritness, Kay and Alan are left together. He then tries to explain to her that his calmness comes from a different understanding of time, that it is not linear but eternal and at any moment we are only seeing a cross section of ourselves. As Kay tries to grasp this, we get the act two curtain. Act three brings us back to 1919, with Kay appearing to wake up from a dream. We then watch as the promise of earlier in the evening unfolds into events that we know will lead to the heartaches of 1939. Kay seems to have some remembrance of future events and at the end, she steps out of the party and tries to reconnect with what the 1939 Alan told her. But unfortunately, 1919 Alan has not yet read the J.W. Dunne book that is the playwright's source material and can offer Kay little comfort.

As I stated, the sets for this production were wonderful. The costumes and wigs lived up to that standard, being evocative of the periods and quite pretty (although I don't know why Kay was a brunette in 1939 after being a blonde in 1919). The actors all did a great job of acting two different ages, and after the initial rush of meeting them all, they all did a good job of inhabiting their characters. Unfortunately, while some of the 1919 characters are people I wouldn't mind spending time with, by 1939, and in the later evening if 1919, the bulk of them were too unpleasant and while the time twisting aspect was interesting, it was kind of predictable and in the end, I can understand why this play has not been revived in 40 years.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

It sounds interesting, but poor Carol, having to sit through a whole act, not doing anything. It sounds as if you mostly enjoyed it.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

The Red Shoes

Back in 2013, I saw Matthew Bourne's production of Sleeping Beauty at City Center (see review here: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,50021.125.html ) and also saw a Broadway version of The Red Shoes on Broadway using the music of Earth, Wind and Fire back in 2006 so I was happy when City Center announced that this year they were presenting Matthew Bourne's version of The Red Shoes. Even more interesting was the fact that the ballet uses the music of Bernard Herrmann (best known for scoring a number of Alfred Hitchcock's movie), which created a great atmosphere. I read the synopsis before the show which helped a lot following the action. The ballet ostensibly tells the story of a young girl who joins a ballet company and becomes the muse for both the ballet company leader and its composer and dancing the titular Red Shoes ballet before she and the musician leave the company. But eventually she returns to the company and in the end her obsession overcomes her and she goes mad (typical Hans Christian Andersen happy ending....).

Almost every aspect of this show was wonderful. The set is beautiful, and it rotates and almost becomes another character in the piece and the scenery pieces work quite well. During the actual Red Shoes Ballet number, the set changes to screens with gorgeous projections. The costumes were looked pretty and moved well on the dancers. And the dancing.... it was spectacular. Each of the dancers were distinctive, and it was easy to follow the characters and the action. Unfortunately, because there are different dancers different days, I'm not exactly sure who I saw in which role. The girl dancing the lead of Victoria Page was quite good and moved well with anyone she was paired with. The dancer playing the ballet company leader was good, but not great. I liked the look of the dancer portraying the composer, but his solo number left me cold. I especially loved the dancers who played the lead dancers of the ballet company before our heroine comes in. Especially the male dancer, who also danced the role of the boyfriend in the actual Red Shoes ballet. While the Red Shoes ballet is the highlight of the piece, there were a lot of other scenes that I liked just as much, including a scene where the two principal dancers of the ballet company each try to get the spotlight guy to follow them, and scenes which made it clear that the male dancer and the ballet master's assistant were a couple.

As I said above, the show has a depressing ending, and unfortunately, it was a bit of an abrupt one, which left me with questions. But on the whole, I was happy to increase my ballet viewing total by one, and look forward to whatever Mr. Bourne decides to bring to us next.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Yay! another winner.

I did see the movie with Moira Shearer (I think).


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

I appreciated your reviews of Time and the Conways as well as The Red Shoes.  You do an excellent job of balancing the subjective negatives and positives of the shows you see.  Marks of good reviewing, IMO, keep up the good work!


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

The Portuguese Kid

The main reason I  bought tickets for this show was to see Jason Alexander and Sherie Renee Scott on stage.  But in the end of it all, the stage was stolen by another actress, Mary Testa.  Ms. Testa plays Mr. Alexander's mother (even though she's actually only 4 years older than him) in this show that I THINK is set in Providence, Rhode Island.  Mr. Alexander is lawyer/real estate agent Barry Dragonetti, who was saved by a mugging in his teens by Ms. Scott's Atalanta.  The mugger was a "Portuguese kid" leading Mr. Dragonetti to dislike all people of Portuguese extraction.  Also in the cast are Pico Alexander as Freddie, Atalanta's current boy toy, and Parry (Aimee Carrero) who is Freddie's ex and now married to Barry.  The first 15 minutes of this 100 minute intermissionless show are a long drawn out scene between Ms. Scott and Mr. Alexander which rambles on, but we do get some snippets of info, mostly that Atalanta is twice widowed and now has to sell her house and wants Dragonetti to sell it.  They also have a history, and Atalanta has a habit of calling out Barry's name while making love.  Next we move to a scene with Atalanta and Freddie, then to Barry and Patty, and then finally a lunch scene with the four of them where lots of things are said, lots of alcohol drunk and in the end couples split up, and reconnect in different ways.  And honestly, I didn't care one bit.  Everyone talks too fast and doesn't really say much.  I never understand why Barry and Patty are together or Barry and Atalanta aren't.  The sets were the best part of the show, and the transition between scenes was fun. And while the actors tried their best with the material, in the end I was glad to escape Rhode Island and return to the streets of New York.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

So, what about the mother?


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## JumpingShip (Jun 3, 2010)

A few weeks ago, my daughter and I saw "Escape to Margaritaville" when it was touring pre-Broadway in Chicago. I'm afraid I am not a theater critic, just someone who has seen about a dozen shows, but we all enjoyed it. (my sister was also there with her inlaws.) I've never been a Jimmy Buffet fan mostly because other than the titular song, I haven't heard much. Somehow, despite being in the right age group, it wasn't on my radar. 

I thought both leads were fantastic. They brought a lot of energy to their roles and their voices were perfect for their songs. The stand out to me was Don Sparks playing J.D. If there is a Broadway soundtrack coming out, I'll be first in line to buy it just to hear his rendition of "He went to Paris". His voice is a rich bass/baritone. I've since been listening to Buffet's version (hadn't heard the song before the musical) and while still a wonderful song, I like Sparks voice better. 

Not to mention, Mr. Sparks was very kind to my 17 yo daughter when we did the stagedoor post show. She is hoping to major in theater when she goes to college next year and in the course of thanking him for his autograph, she mentioned that. He took a moment to ask her her name and told her to always keep striving for her goal, and ended with, "I'm going to be watching for you, Maggie." And he sounded sincere  (not that I expect him to actually watch for her, but as a mom, when someone like that is nice to my child, I'm a fan for life.) 

Everyone was actually very nice at the stage door, including the leads. We've found that the casts of every show we've seen on our Broadway in Chicago membership have been so fantastic and sweet when we've seen them in Chicago. We saw the cast of Hamilton a year ago, Les Mis (very young cast, but I expect them to be up and coming on Broadway in the next few years.) In fact, the lead in Les Mis, Nick Cartell has the best renditon of Bring Him Home that I've ever heard. 

So, anyway, if you get a chance to see Escape to Margaritaville, go see it. No need to be a Buffet fan--the plot was very easy to follow and the songs fun.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Glad you enjoyed the show. I'm not a Buffett fan myself, not even Margaritaville.


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Brigadoon
This is going to be something odd, an almost unabashedly positive review. I had seen a production of Brigadoon in Chicago in 2014 (see review here: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,50021.200.html ) and had always liked the movie, so when City Center announced they were doing Brigadoon as their fall show, I almost immediately asked for a favor from one of the doctors I work with in order to get tickets for the Sunday matinee. And I was extremely lucky, our seats were about 10th row, and on the aisle which made it perfect for my sister. And since there were a number of times when actors entered through the audience, it really felt up close and personal. 
For those of you who don't know the story (shame on you!) or need a brief refresher, Brigadoon tells the tale of Tommy Albright and Jeff Douglas (Patrick Wilson and Aasif Mandvi) two Americans who on a trip to Scotland find themselves lost in the middle of nowhere. But suddenly, a village appears in the distance and the men find themselves in Brigadoon on the day of the wedding of Jean (Sara Esty) and Charlie (Ross Lekites). Things seem a bit strange, and eventually it is revealed that 200 years ago, the town's pastor made a deal with Heaven so that each night that the village sleeps, they in fact sleep for 100 years. Unfortunately, while most of the townsfolk seem content with this situation, poor Harry Beaton (the incredible Robert Fairchild) feels trapped and his actions threaten the whole town. Tommy falls in love with Jean's sister Fiona (the radiant Kelli O'Hara) and eventually decides to stay in Brigadoon.
All of the acting was wonderful, with Ms. O'Hara, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Fairchild the stand outs. But also great were Stephanie J. Block as the good time milkmaid Meg Brockie, and Dakin Matthews as Mr. Lundy, the schoolteacher tasked with telling the tale to Tommy. I did feel that lines were left out of the telling, and that therefore the threat posed by Harry wanting to leave was not as great as it might have been. The dancing, led by Mr. Fairchild was incredible, especially the Sword Dance near the end of Act One. Patricia Delgado as the girl who is in love with Harry also moved well, but her funeral dance for Harry went on a bit long for my liking. All of the performers were in great voice, and I especially enjoyed Nicholas Ward, who I have seen many times in other things and his incredible deep voice. I have to say that the town of Brigadoon seemed quite multicultural for a 1700's Scottish hamlet, but then again, what do I really know about the town's population? The costumes were wonderful, although I think I would have liked a bit more variety in the kilts the men wore (and wore well!). As usual, the orchestra was on stage and I quite enjoyed watching the musicians and love when the conductor actually interacts with the actors. The production made heavy use of projections, and they were incredible and beautiful.
The plot does require a heavy dose of suspension of disbelief. My sister is never really fond of shows where the protagonists fall in love so quickly, and for some reason, the whole 100 years in one night thing doesn't feel right to me. I keep wondering what's going to happen in a week's time when 700 years have passed and the landscape has changed. Or what if World War III happens and the whole landscape is destroyed? Yeah, I know, I'm overthinking. The show traditionally starts with a choral singing of "Once in the Highlands", but this was skipped here which kind of confused me. In addition, Meg had a song that I'd never heard before and I didn't enjoy it. And as I said above, I felt that there were lines omitted (as often happens at City Center shows), and some of them were important and shouldn't have been dropped.
Whenever I watch the movie, I am happy for Tommy and Fiona and most of the residents of Brigadoon at the end of the day, but I always feel sorry for Tommy's friend Jeff. In this version, however, the final expression on Mr. Mandvi's face was so joyful that for once I believed that he too would find some kind of contentment. And that was a great way to end the afternoon.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Sounds like you seen the show often enough to know when lines are skipped. Or have you just watched the movie a lot?


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## telracs (Jul 12, 2009)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Sounds like you seen the show often enough to know when lines are skipped. Or have you just watched the movie a lot?


come on gertie, isn't there anything you've only read/seen a couple of times that you know well enough to tell what's missing?


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

telracs said:


> come on gertie, isn't there anything you've only read/seen a couple of times that you know well enough to tell what's missing?


OoooKayyy! Ya' got me.


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Saw this on FB.

Broadway HD ... Broadway your way. $8.99 a month.

https://www.broadwayhd.com/index.php


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## 31842 (Jan 11, 2011)

Gertie Kindle 'a/k/a Margaret Lake' said:


> Saw this on FB.
> 
> Broadway HD ... Broadway your way. $8.99 a month.
> 
> https://www.broadwayhd.com/index.php


I looove Broadway HD! I just finished Present Laughter with Kevin Kleine and it was an absolute delight!


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## Gertie Kindle (Nov 6, 2008)

Telracs, where are you?


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