Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

Review - Company Film with Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone

We seem to be seeing quite a bit more of these "cinecasts," i.e. Broadway shows and the like taped and presented in local movie theaters. It started with Rent, of course, and lately we've seen cinecasts of The Importance of Being Earnest, Memphis, and Fela, as well as a number of shows from London, including Frankenstein and The Merry Wives of Windsor. (Yes, technically Fela was taped in London, but it had a Broadway pedigree.)

It seems that producers are catching on to the idea that, far from cannibalizing ticket sales for the live versions of these shows, these cinecasts might actually serve as marketing for future tours (e.g. Memphis) or to maximize revenue for a show that might not tour (e.g. Fela).

Cinecasts can also expand the audience for a strictly limited engagement, as was the case with Stephen Sondheim's Company, a filmed version of a recent concert staging of the show with the New York Philharmonic, starring Neil Patrick Harris and Patti LuPone. I didn't catch the live concert, despite my numerous trips to New York, but I can't say I really went out of my way. Did I really need to see Company again, I asked myself, even with such a stellar cast? I mean, I've seen many productions of the show, and the recent John Doyle Broadway production is available on DVD. 

But I did catch a recent screening of the concert film, and five minutes into the showing, I realized that I could never really get too much of Company. It's really that good. Beyond the magnificent Sondheim score (it may even be his best), there's also George Furth's underrated book. People complain that the book is too fragmented, too cynical. But, from where I sit, those are two of its key assets. Despite the deliberate fragmentation, the show flows and builds elegantly, especially after the deft changes Furth made to the libretto for the 1995 Broadway production.

As for the headliners here, Neil Patrick Harris makes for a warm and wry Bobby, bringing to the role all of the charm that made him such an effective and entertaining host for the Tony Awards this year and two years ago. His singing voice can sometimes be a bit thin, but his intonation is strong and he performed the songs with great emotional fluency. And what more can I say about La LuPone? The woman is a sheer force of nature and vocal powerhouse nonpareil. There's a reason Patti's a living legend, and here she's at her diva-rrific best. Her rendition of "The Ladies Who Lunch" was gripping theater, and the surrounding scenes dripped with her trademark sharpness and staccato delivery. In short: fab-u-lous.

Sharing space above the marquee were some Broadway dilettantes, folks who might not elsewise have found their way onto a New York stage: Stephen Colbert ("The Colbert Report"), John Cryer ("Two and a Half Men"), and Christina Hendricks ("Mad Men"). Each had his or her own charms, especially a delightful Hendricks as the flighty flight attendant April, but what really made this concert worth watching, beyond the aforementioned Harris and LuPone, was the exceedingly strong supporting cast of stage veterans: Martha Plimpton, Craig Bierko, Jim Walton, Katie Finneran, Jill Paice, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Aaron Lazar, Anika Noni Rose, & Chryssie Whitehead. Tony winner Finneran was a hoot as the neurotic bride Amy, and Whitehead was a knockout as Kathy, dancing up a storm in the number "Tick Tock," which Michael Bennett originally created for Donna McKechnie.

The concert was directed by Lonny Price, who seems to be making a career out of directing these concert presentations (see Candide and Camelot), and that's really not such a bad thing. He always seems to bring his own individual touches to these concerts, although his Candide really lost steam toward the end. His Company seemed more slowly paced than Doyle's, but with considerably more warmth and humanity. Despite the show's length, I found that I was almost always engaged, except during Anika Noni Rose's "Another Hundred People," which just kind of sat there, and "You Could Drive a Person Crazy," which featured weak vocals and some rather limp staging by Josh Rhodes.

So, I'm all for more of these cinecasts, but the people involved need to find a way to market them more effectively, at least in the Boston area. There was a grand total of 18 people in the theater at the showing I attended. What's more, the theaters themselves need to do a better job of actually presenting these events. Each time I've attended a cinecast, the theater staff has been clueless. They're usually not even aware of the events. 

I saw Company at the Showcase Cinemas in Woburn, MA, and the movie-theater staff got nothing right. The show started 20 minutes late. Somehow the computer that was supposed to start the show didn't kick in, and nobody was paying any attention to the computer, so we had to seek out someone in charge to look into it. Then, once the film started, the house lights didn't go down, and we had to hunt someone down again. Then, at the end of the show, the lights didn't come back on, and we had to fumble our way to the doors.

When I addressed my displeasure to the manager on duty, he couldn't have been less interested or concerned, and made a half-hearted offer of some free movie passes. I don't really go to the movies, so I declined. But I've heard numerous examples of similar experiences that people have had with these cinecasts across the country. I recently read somewhere that these cinecasts could represent a bit of a boon for a struggling movie-theater industry.

Only if they take them more seriously.

Review - West Side Story on Tour in Boston

West Side Story may be the best musical that I've never actually seen work on stage. I mean no disrespect to the piece itself, which I consider to be almost a masterpiece. (Read my review of the recent Broadway West Side Story revival). I've just never seen a production that did the piece full justice.

The score, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by a young Stephen Sondheim, may be the most moving and dramatically effective theater score of all time, despite flaws that Sondheim himself has pointed out in the lyrics. (Actually, he has called his West Side Story lyrics "embarassing.") The Jerome Robbins choreography ranks among the best ever created for a musical. And the libretto, by the recently deceased Arthur Laurents, actually in some ways improves upon its Shakespearean source by changing the primary motor of the tragedy from chance to racism.

So, West Side Story is a stunning piece of musical theater, without question one of the top 10 works in the musical-theater canon. (See my list of the 100 Best Musicals of All Time.)

But on stage, the piece has two significant liabilities, the first being the incredible challenge that it presents in terms of casting. I'm not just talking about the need for triple-threat actor/singer/dancers, although that's considerable, to be sure. I'm referring to the task of finding performers for the two central roles of Tony and Maria. Interestingly, Tony and Maria don't need to be great dancers, despite this being perhaps the ultimate dance show. But it's apparently a huge undertaking to find performers who can both do justice to Bernstein's score and provide the requisite depth of characterization to fully evince the pathos of the show's central relationship.

Case in point: the current national tour of West Side Story, which I caught on Tuesday night at the Colonial Theater in Boston. The tour features Kyle Harris and Ali Ewoldt as Tony and Maria, respectively, and in terms of their acting, both performers were top-notch. But Harris appeared to be having some vocal issues, which manifested themselves in extreme vibrato and cartoonish scooping. His "e" vowels during "Maria" were risibly wide and tall. Clearly the show is taking a toll on his instrument and he's had to compensate, but it was extremely distracting. Ewoldt's Spanish accent seemed rather off, and her singing, while considerably stronger than that of Josefina Scaglinone, who played the part on Broadway, had a sort of harsh edge to it, and she ran out of breath on some of the soft high notes.

And then there are the gang members. Has there ever been a production of West Side Story in which the Jets and the Sharks were convincingly menacing? I certainly haven't seen one. I suppose it would be well nigh on impossible to find a couple dozen outstanding dancers who were also physically imposing and...well...let's be frank, masculine. I suppose if you're going to err on one side, you might as well go for the best dancers, and thankfully the entire dance corps for the current tour is absolutely first-rate.

The other huge liability in West Side Story, at least from where I sit, is the "Somewhere" ballet, which I have always found unbearably quaint and precious. The movie version wisely cuts this segment, probably because it would have seemed too theatrical. But cutting it from the show would leave Act 2 without a major dance number. The movie solves this by moving "Cool" to a later point in the story, and changing the singer from Riff to Action. (Riff being...er...indisposed at this point in the story.) The impetus for this sequence is dramatically valid, but there's something about the execution that robs the second act of momentum and throws off the tone of the show.

The recent Broadway production gave the "Somewhere" vocal solo to a young boy, a character named "Kiddo" that Laurents created for this production, but who really didn't do anything else throughout the show. Having this young child suddenly burst upon the scene to sing "Somewhere" in a boy soprano voice was treacly and shudder-inducing. Thankfully, for the tour the producers decided that having a child along for the ride would prove logistically challenging, so the solo goes to the Anybodys character, played here by the kick-ass talented, fierce beyond words, Alexandra Frohlinger. (Full disclosure: Alex is a Boston Conservatory grad, and one of my former students. But she's still pretty frickin' fierce.)

One final note, about the much-discussed Spanish added to this production. As you may know, the late Arthur Laurents brought in Lin-Manuel Miranda, composer and lyricist of In the Heights, to translate a huge chunk of the show into Spanish. (Read my review of the West Side Story CD release for my take on Miranda's work here.) When I saw the show in DC, entire scenes and songs were in Spanish, including "America," "I Feel Pretty," and "A Boy Like That." It was a huge mistake, and robbed these important scenes of their dramatic weight.

The tour cuts back on the Spanish considerably, trying to strike a balance between realism and comprehension, but you could see the effort with every line that passed, and again, it was distracting and deleterious. In the theater, we have this convention in which foreign characters speak in English, and we just assume that they're actually speaking their native tongue. It was an admirable experiment on Laurents' part, but ultimately a failed one.

The West Side Story tour is currently booking through June of 2012, including upcoming dates in Minneapolis, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Portland, and Seattle. Even with my above reservations, I recommend taking it in. You won't see finer dancing anywhere, and the score itself is worth the ticket price.

Review - Spider-Man 2.0 on Broadway

I don't know about you, but I'm definitely bored with the whole Spider-Man thing. Last week, the show finally opened after a record-breaking 183 previews, but I had long since given up paying attention. Yeah, it was great that Julie Taymor came to the opening, and yeah it was kind of condescending for Bono to say that she was looking "hot," and blah blah blah. But I'm ready to put this whole sorry mess behind me and focus on real musical theater.

As much as I've grown tired of the story surrounding Spider-Man, that doesn't even come close to the tedium of sitting through the new and "improved" version of the show. Spider-Man 1.0 was many things, but it was rarely dull, probably because you had to stay alert just to follow the wildly fractured story. Sure, Julie Taymor's vision for Spidey was bloated and pretentious, but it was at least ambitious. (Read my review of Spider-Man 1.0)

The new production team - i.e. "creative consultant" Philip William McKinley and book doctor Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa - seemed to take much of the criticism of Taymor's version of the show to heart, and set to work revamping, streamlining, and clarifying. The resulting show makes a lot more sense than it did under Taymor's ministrations. But, perversely, cutting the stuff that wasn't working only served to emphasize the mediocre-to-miserable quality of what remains.

Essentially, McKinley and Aguirre-Sacasa cut the original second act almost entirely and fleshed out the story of the first act. The much-maligned "Geek Chorus" is thankfully gone, and the bored on-stage band members have moved to the orchestra pit. The Arachne character (T.V. Carpio), Taymor's mythical and inscrutable muse for Spider-Man, and the apparent spiritual source of his power, has been trimmed to the point where it's not really clear why she's there at all. (I must admit I did sort of miss "Getting Furious," the unintentionally laugh-out-loud act-two set piece for Arachne and her bizarrely clad Furies.) The part of Uncle Ben (Ken Marks) has been beefed up in an apparent effort to make his ultimate fate more moving, but Aguirre-Sacasa seems to have confused "back-story" with "more lines." Uncle Ben appears more frequently, but he merely repeats what he's said to Peter in previous scenes.

In general, the new dialog is banal and uninspired. Mary Jane (Jennifer Damiano) and Peter Parker (Reeve Carney) bandy back and forth about wanting Peter to be her "best friend" as well as her "boyfriend." At other times, the new dialog seems taken directly from a cartoon thought balloon. (Mary Jane: "But Spider-Man would never abandon New York City.") Yes, this is based on a comic book, but what works on the page doesn't always work on stage.

The one thing that wasn't fixed, and probably could never have been in the time allotted, is the painfully dull (and piercingly loud) score by Bono and his band mate The Edge. The songs are so tedious that by the middle of Act 2, I started to dread the next song cue. ("Really, Chris? That late in the show?") The Act 1 duet for Peter and Mary Jane, "No More," is about as close as the score comes to a genuinely integrated character number, but it's still a dull song.

When will these Broadway dilettantes learn (and I'm talking to you, Duncan Sheik, Phil Collins, Elton John, etc.) that there's a huge difference between a pop song and a theater song? For musical theater, you have to write with the needs of the story in mind. The songs need to propel the action of the show, not stop it dead. They also need to be memorable, which is admittedly a far more nebulous concept, and one that Bono and The Edge seem to have lost touch with since the days of their bigger arena-rock radio hits.

The overall reaction to "If the World Should End," the song that Carney and Damiano performed on the Tony Awards (see the clip here), seems to have been, "Really? That's the best song they could come up with from the show?" Well, trust me, any of the show's numbers would have had the same soporific effect. They all just kinda sit there. What the producers should have done for the Tonys was prerecord one of the flying sequences, because that's really the only thing that almost makes this turkey worth sitting through.

Almost.

Preview - Now. Here. This. at the Vineyard Theater

This is not a review. I repeat: This is not a review.

As you may know, the fine, talented, and delightful crew that gave us [title of show] are hard at work on a follow-up, previously titled And Now This Is Happening, and now bearing the moniker Now. Here. This. I had a chance to see a "developmental lab production" of the show last Friday at the Vineyard Theatre, which was the home of [title of show]'s Off-Broadway run.

Now, technically, critics are not invited to these developmental workshops, and I think rightly so. Artists deserve the chance to work out the kinks in their shows away from the glaring eye of the critical press. In the past, I've reviewed things that were in development, under the supposition that I wasn't really a critic, and that if they were charging admission, that I was free to propagate my views of the shows in question. But now that I'm a member of the Outer Critics Circle, it's sort of hard to continue to make that argument. I am a critic, and I need to comport myself in a manner befitting same.

But I thought my readers might appreciate a dispassionate, objective account of the show, and a sense of what the authors are trying to do with it. I will do my level best to keep all of my evaluative impulses at bay. Stop me if I get too critic-y.

If you've seen [title of show], you'll no doubt recall that it's essentially the story of putting that show together. As such, it's a fairly linear account, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Now. Here. This. is decidedly non-linear, a 90-minute collage of narrative threads and snapshots. The content is autobiographical, exploring certain formative experiences from the lives of each of the four performers on-stage.

As you may know, Hunter Bell's book for [title of show] received the show's only Tony nomination for that effort. Here, Bell shares libretto credit with Susan Blackwell, although I get the sense that both shows represent the collaborative efforts of all the creative and performance staff, including composer/lyricist Jeff Bowen and performer Heidi Blickenstaff, not to mention pianist/music director Larry Pressgrove and director Michael Berresse.

Jeff Bowen's score for Now. Here. This. is a lot more complex than the one he wrote for [title of show]. Whereas the [title of show] score featured mostly discrete songs, the score for Now. Here. This. consists of more extended sequences, with dialog and action interwoven into the mix. I've made mention in the past of the distracting amount of poor scansion in Bowen's lyrics for [title of show], and I'm happy to report that that doesn't seem to be as much of an issue in his current score, at least at its current stage of development. (Is that too review-ish?)

The main attractions of [title of show] were Bell's witty and joyful book, as well as the four performers radiating excitement and camaraderie. Now. Here. This. has the potential to replicate those charms, as well as add in a few more of its own. I greatly look forward to seeing how the show progresses.

Now. Here. This. runs through June 19th. The run is mostly sold out, but tickets are still available at the Vineyard Web site for a benefit performance on the 19th. 

The 2011 Tony Award Winners - My Take

 I haven't watched the Tony Awards yet. I know that sounds strange, but I had a concert to attend last night, and earlier this year I disconnected my TiVo and got rid of cable, and I haven't had the desire nor the ambition to do whatever it is I need to do to get my TV up and running without cable. Lately, I've been perfectly content with my DVD collection and Netflix.

Of course, as soon as I got home, I fired up my computer to see who won what. Here's a breakdown of how many awards each musical production won:

The Book of Mormon: 9
Anything Goes: 3
Catch Me If You Can: 1
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying: 1
Priscilla Queen of the Desert: 1

Before I launch into my take on the individual winners, I just want to give a shout out to whoever designed the logo/poster/Playbill cover for this year's awards. I guess it wouldn't seem so remarkable if last year's poster hadn't been so heinous. Anyway, here are the winners:

Best Musical
*The Book of Mormon
Catch Me If You Can 
The Scottsboro Boys 
Sister Act
My Take: Pretty much as expected, and well-deserved. Catch Me If You Can and Sister Act were inept and lackluster, and there was no way the Tony was going to go to The Scottsboro Boys. Remember, the Tonys are about marketing, not artistic quality, and you can't market a closed show.

Best Revival of a Musical
*Anything Goes
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
My Take: You know, the more I think about it, the more I like the new How to Succeed more than the current Anything Goes. Both were immensely enjoyable to sit through, but I find that How to Succeed has lingered with me longer. I sort of have to actively think about Anything Goes to recall specific things about the production. So, on the whole, I would rather the Tony had gone to How to Succeed.

Best Actor in a Musical
*Norbert Leo Butz, Catch Me If You Can
Josh Gad, The Book of Mormon
Joshua Henry, The Scottsboro Boys
Andrew Rannells, The Book of Mormon
Tony Sheldon, Priscilla Queen of the Desert
My Take: Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells appear to have split the Book of Mormon vote, giving previous winner Butz a chance to pick up his second Tony. Don't get me wrong: Butz is great, in this show as well as in everything he does. But I kinda would have rather seen the award go to Rannells, or Gad, who both give impeccable comic performances. Why couldn't Gad and Rannells have gotten a single nomination, like those oh-so-adorable and three young men who undeservedly won a three-way Tony a few years back for Billy Elliot? Yeah, I know, the kids were all playing the same part. But Emily Skinner and Alice Ripley weren't playing the same part in Side Show, and they got a tandem nomination. I'm only half serious here, but honestly, if the Tonys can make the rules up as they go along, why can't I speculate with reckless abandon?  

Best Actress in a Musical
*Sutton Foster, Anything Goes
Beth Leavel, Baby It's You!
Patina Miller, Sister Act
Donna Murphy, The People in the Picture
My Take: Just as it should be. Sutton Foster is a gift to musical comedy. Both Beth Leavel and Donna Murphy are remarkable performers, but they're really the only reasons to see the otherwise execrable shows that they are unfortunately appearing in. Patina Miller is a very talented newcomer, and I wish her well, but I wasn't all that thrilled with her performance in Sister Act, nor indeed with the show itself. Sister Act was very deservedly shut out in every category.

Best Featured Actress in a Musical
Laura Benanti, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Tammy Blanchard, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Victoria Clark, Sister Act
*Nikki M. James, The Book of Mormon
Patti LuPone, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
My Take: Word on the street had Laura Benanti winning for a second time. But Women on the Verge appears to have left far too bitter an aftertaste for many of the Tony voters. (Not to mention me.) Plus, Nikki James, although she is wonderful in her role, clearly benefited from the Book of Mormon behemoth. I would love to have seen the award go to Tammy Blanchard, who does a wonderful job of making Hedy Larue her own.

Best Featured Actor in a Musical
Colman Domingo, The Scottsboro Boys
Adam Godley, Anything Goes
*John Larroquette, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Forrest McClendon, The Scottsboro Boys
Rory O'Malley, The Book of Mormon
My Take: A genuine surprise. The smart money was on Rory O'Malley, who's an absolute stitch as the closeted gay Mormon. (Must...resist...redundancy reference...) Godley didn't do much for me in Anything Goes. And for Domingo and McClendon, well, nomination is its own reward. Larroquette was terrific as Bigley, evincing much of the smart comic timing that won him so many Emmy Awards. I would have given the award to John McMartin in Anything Goes, but he wasn't nominated. So I guess I'm pretty happy it went to Larroquette.

Best Book of a Musical
Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Alex Timbers
*The Book of Mormon Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone
The Scottsboro Boys, David Thompson
Sister Act, Cheri Steinkellner, Bill Steinkellner and Douglas Carter Beane
My Take: Bingo. Jackpot. Straight Across. Bloody Bloody and Scottsboro were both worthy contenders, but clearly this award was going to go to the funniest book to hit Broadway in many a season. And as for Sister Act, well, the less said the better, really.

Best Costume Design of a Musical
*Tim Chappel & Lizzy Gardiner, Priscilla Queen of the Desert
Martin Pakledinaz, Anything Goes
Ann Roth, The Book of Mormon
Catherine Zuber, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
My Take: PUH-LEEZ. Predictable and disappointing. The Tony voters appear to have caught on to the American mania for more, More, MORE! Sure the costumes for Priscilla are lavish, gaudy, expensive, and over-the-top. But are they good? I kinda wish the Tony voters had gone with the Mormon momentum and given the award to Roth. At least her costumes were genuinely witty.

Best Direction of a Musical
Rob Ashford, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Kathleen Marshall, Anything Goes
*Casey Nicholaw and Trey Parker, The Book of Mormon
Susan Stroman, The Scottsboro Boys
My Take: I'm thrilled to see Nicholaw get some much deserved love. My admiration for his work has only grown over time. The man really knows how to dress a stage, shape comic performances, and get the show running at a jaunty pace. I'm looking forward to seeing his career progress, both as a director and a choreographer.

Best Choreography
Rob Ashford, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
*Kathleen Marshall, Anything Goes
Casey Nicholaw, The Book of Mormon
Susan Stroman, The Scottsboro Boys
My take: I would love to have seen this one go to Nicholaw, but really any of these fine people were deserving of this award. And Marshall's work on Anything Goes is outstanding, so it's really hard for me to gripe here.

Best Original Score
*The Book of Mormon, Music & Lyrics: Trey Parker, Robert Lopez and Matt Stone
The Scottsboro Boys, Music & Lyrics: John Kander and Fred Ebb
Sister Act, Music: Alan Menken, Lyrics: Glenn Slater
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Music & Lyrics: David Yazbek
My take: My sentimental side (and, yes, I do have one) was sort of hoping this would go to Kander and Ebb for their fine work on Scottsboro Boys. But I genuinely enjoy the score to Book of Mormon, and find new things to love in it every time I listen to the recording. Sister Act and Women on the Verge were merely placeholders this year, although the more I listen to the Women on the Verge CD, the more begrudgingly fond I become of certain numbers (especially "Island" and "Lovesick").

Best Lighting Design of a Musical - *Brian MacDevitt, The Book of Mormon
Best Scenic Design of a Musical - *Scott Pask, The Book of Mormon
Best Sound Design of a Musical - *Brian Ronan, The Book of Mormon
Best Orchestrations - *Larry Hochman and Stephen Oremus, The Book of Mormon
My take: Clearly, this year we saw the Tony momentum go to Book of Mormon. Much as The Producers got more Tonys than it deserved simply because the Tony voters wanted to set a record, so too Book of Mormon won in more categories than was probably warranted because the Tony voters wanted to congratulate themselves on finally having another smash hit on the boards. So Best Lighting? Best Scenic Design? Best Orchestrations? These fine upstanding professionals can, for the most part, thank the Book of Mormon juggernaut for their coveted little trophies.

Review - Lysistrata Jones at The Transport Group

It's funny how reasonable critics, and audience members, can disagree about the merits of a particular piece. After I sat through Lysistrata Jones last Friday night - "endured" would be a more appropriate verb, actually - I fully expected to awake this morning to a set of reviews that echoed my own nonplussed sentiments about the show. 

Nope. The show got raves. Raves. The only review that I've been able to find that even came close to expressing views similar to mine was that of Adam Feldman in Time Out New York, and even he seemed to like it more than I did. But my overall response to Lysistrata Jones can be summed up in how I felt about the show's horrendously garish logo (see right) when I first saw it: Oh, my God. Would you turn it the f#@k down?

(Explanation: The production features lots of "American Idol"-brand screaming and loud musical accompaniment. Was all that volume really necessary to compensate for the acoustic liabilities of the gym location? More on this later.)

Lysistrata Jones, previously known under the far less awkward title Give it Up during its premier run in Dallas, is the latest musical effort by Douglas Carter Beane, esteemed playwright and musical librettist, notably for Xanadu. As you might expect, the show is based on Lysistrata by Aristophanes, but for me quite a bit has been lost in the translation.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the production is that it takes place under the auspices of The Transport Group, and is the latest in their continuing series of site-specific productions. (See The Boys in the Band in a Chelsea penthouse, Hello Again in a SoHo loft, etc.) Here, the setting is a literal basketball court at the The Gym at Judson, which is appropriate considering the show revolves around the efforts of one cheerleader to get the college's historically losing basketball team to win just one game. Her solution: no sex until the boys pull one off. (Er, so to speak...)

But here's where the translation problems arise. In the Aristophanes original, the women withhold sex as an anti-war protest. Here, they're just trying to get the guys to win a basketball game. It's not entirely clear why the girls would even care about this. And, furthermore, why should we? In Xanadu, Beane infused the show with enough arch humor and sheer fun to compensate for the fact that the plot didn't make any sense. In fact, Xanadu reveled in the ridiculousness of the source material. But here, Beane hasn't included enough camp to compensate. 

The show starts off sharp and lively, ably abetted by an enthusiastic young cast and some genuinely kick-ass staging from director/choreographer Dan Knechtges. But the show loses steam by the end of the first act, veering quickly from the land of energetic farce to laconic after-school special. Beane includes a fair number of his trademark quips, including a topical nod to the recent scandal with former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. (I can't imagine that reference is going to have much of a shelf-life.)

But the show eventually slides downward into toothless melodrama, and I found myself not caring about a single person on stage. (Or on court, as it were.) A major part of the problem for me was unclear character motivations: I didn't really understand why everyone in the show seemed to be so mad at each other, or where all the misunderstandings were coming from.

Not helping in this respect are the songs by Lewis Flinn, which start off rather vigorous and clever, but eventually veer into the land of the bland. Act one ends with a rather generic ballad about Lysistrata feeling alone, having alienated practically everyone in her young life, and blah blah blah. And the score never fully recovers. Flinn's songs have a certain authentic modern sound to them, but their dramatic intent isn't always clear, for instance in the seemingly pivotal number "Lay Low." In this song, Mick the basketball captain, and central male love interest, is apparently telling his teammates that they should all respond to the girls' no-win-no-sex policy by...well...I'm not entirely sure what he was saying. But, hey, it sounded good.

That said, the cast here is game and winning, particularly Patti Murin as Lysistrata and Jason Tam as Xander, the nerd-cum-team-mascot who attempts to win her heart. And Dan Knechtges' staging is especially strong. Unlike the girly boys in the recent revival of West Side Story, the young men here actually looked like they might know their way around a basketball court, if not a street fight.

But, hey, don't just go by me. Check out the rest of the reviews, and indeed the show itself, and let me know if you think I'm just being cranky and dyspeptic. Which, actually, I'm fine with.

Review - The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World at Playwrights Horizons

Thrilling musical theater can come from the most unlikely places. As I'm forever reminding my students, there's no such thing as a bad idea for a musical, only poor execution. If you amass the right collection of forces, talents, viewpoints, and luck, even the most improbable story sources can sing.

Even if the subjects themselves can't sing, which is part of the quirky charm of The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World, a new musical currently playing at Playwrights Horizons. The show tells the ultimately haunting story about what may be the worst singing group of all time. Or one of the most influential, depending on your point of view.

Some background. In 1968, Austin Wiggin took his three daughters out of school so they could focus full-time on forming a band, which he dubbed The Shaggs after the popular hairstyle of the time. (See the album cover below.) Trouble was, the girls couldn't sing, read music, or play instruments. What followed was a woefully misguided, and abortive, 7-year effort to launch the girls into the national spotlight. The group produced one studio album, Philosophy of the World, which has since become a collector's item. Upon the album's re-release in 1980, The Shaggs became a cult favorite, garnering praise from the likes of Frank Zappa and Kurt Cobain.

You really need to hear their music to get a sense of how monumentally bad The Shaggs were. Here are a few cuts from their album, including the title song:

• "Philosophy of the World"
• "It's Halloween" 
• "Who Are Parents?"

Yeah, the drums don't match the beat of the guitars. The songs exhibit only a vague acquaintance with meter and rhyme. And the vocal tone is just plain creepy. But there's something oddly compelling about their music, and somewhat sweet about the naiveté of the lyrics.

One of the marvelous things about The Shaggs as a musical is that the creators have made what appears to be a deliberate choice not to make fun of their subjects. It would have been very easy, and wrong-headed, to create a knowing, snide, winking camp-fest about these easy targets. 

But librettist Joy Gregory, composer/lyricist Gunnar Madsen, and director John Langs have something far more ambitious, and ultimately satisfying, in mind in teasing out the real people and fascinating family dynamic that made The Shaggs possible. What emerges is a touching portrait of obsession, desperation, and unfulfilled dreams. Like Grey Gardens, but without the mansion. Like Gypsy, but without the sense of redemption.

The show starts with an uneasy opening number that makes sense in retrospect but which was a bit inscrutable at the time. Then the show sets into drawing its compelling portrait of these strange but true, edgy but real people and their lives in 1960s New Hampshire, complete with broad New England accents, which at first seemed exaggerated, but only served to heighten the sense of quirkiness to these people. The resulting show is touching, funny, and thoroughly disarming. Gregory's dialog treads a very successful line of maintaining the show's heightened sense of reality while still giving the characters' words the ring of truth. The show builds to an intense climax, deftly evoking the numb catharsis of the characters as their collective ordeal comes to an end.

The pitch-perfect casting features the wonderful Peter Friedman as Austin Wiggin, and Jamey Hood (Dot), Sarah Sokolovic (Betty), and Emily Walton (Helen) as his "musician" daughters. Part of what makes this show so haunting is the depth of the characterizations, and the unified sense of portraying these fringe people with honesty and respect. Particularly compelling were newcomer Cory Michael Smith as Kyle, the decidedly non-traditional love interest, and the always fascinating Annie Golden, as the seemingly passive mother who tries to keep the family together amid the upheaval.

It's funny, but the score didn't really stick with me, although it certainly served its purpose in the context of the show. The most remarkable thing about the songs was that the characters sang with their internal voices rather than as they do on the Shaggs recording. A musical with a score totally in the style of The Shaggs would have been a fringe prospect at best.

The best illustration of this, and one of the best sequences in the entire show, came during the climactic recording session, in which the action alternates between how the girls (and their father) think the group sounds in their heads, and the actual sound that they're producing, heard through the ears of the horrified sound technicians in the control room. But the score did have its share of sonic pleasures, including an intense solo for Dot Wiggin defending her father (and protesting too much), as well as a hypnotic a capella trio for the girls later in the show.

One major complaint I had with the performance that I attended was the excessive amount of backstage noise during, and long after, the set changes. Perhaps this was a function of the fact that I saw a relatively early preview, and the crew members were having adjustment issues. But it occurred regularly throughout the performance, and was insulting to the fine performers on stage. I can only hope that the backstage crew has since gotten its act together.

But, that quibble aside, for me The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World is the sleeper hit of the season, and a must-see for anyone who wants to witness how off-beat subject matter often makes the most compelling musical theater. The show runs through July 3rd.