Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

Review - Traces at the Union Square Theater

As I was in the process of writing this review, the producers of the new Off-Broadway production Traces announced that the show would be extending its run until January 2012. The show opened last week to some really strong reviews, so the extension was certainly no surprise. Traces was originally scheduled to play until October 9th, which means this extension will more than double the originally scheduled run for the show.

This is good news for you, dear reader, as it gives you what I hope will be ample time to head down to the Union Square Theater and catch this awe-inspiring demonstration of athleticism and showmanship. Traces was devised by that other circus group that operates out of Quebec, called 7 Fingers. (Boston readers may recall the show Psy, another 7 Fingers show, which recently played two well-received stints at the Paramount Theater.) And Traces amounts to just about the most enjoyable show currently playing New York, both in terms of artistry and sheer entertainment value. Well, the most enjoyable show you can actually get tickets to. (See The Book of Mormon. Or, well, if you could see it, that is...)

Traces is essentially a series of thoroughly impressive acrobatic acts, artfully combined with equal parts dance, multimedia, and art installation. (Watch this video for a preview.) Think Cirque du Soleil without the pretense. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Cirque. But it does seem that they've gotten a bit too big for their britches lately. The Cirque folks seem to be making each successive show bigger, splashier, and more visually impressive. And along the way they've disconnected their audiences from the people underneath the lycra, foam rubber, and Ben Nye.

Traces restores the intimacy to many of the same acts one might see at a Cirque show: the setting is comparatively small, the performers wear street clothes. And the acts themselves become all the more impressive in the process by revealing the human face and effort behind the astonishing physical feats.

For example, in Zarkana, the Cirque du Soleil show that's currently playing at Radio City Music Hall (Read my review), the first act ends with about a dozen or so performers manipulating Cyr wheels, which are essentially large rings that people stand inside and roll around the stage. (Click here to see a video. It's a lot more impressive than I'm making it sound.) On the cavernous stage of the Radio City Music Hall, the efforts of these admittedly fine performers were somewhat lost. But when you're watching one person do it up close, especially someone as skilled as Bradley Henderson, who performs the Cyr wheel segment in Traces, the effect is downright thrilling.

The same sense of immediacy benefits all of the acts, of which Traces is abundantly supplied: hand balancing, feats of strength, aerial acrobatics, banquine, and more. One of the most dazzling sequences involved Chinese yo-yos, which most of the cast participated in, but which features the astonishing skill of Xia Zhengqi. I've seen similar acts before, and Zhengqi was by far the most skillful and sure-handed performer I've ever witnessed at this feat. Simply unbelievable.

The show ends with a tumbling sequence involving an increasingly number of hoops piled atop one another, which the cast members proceed to jump through in feats of increasing difficulty. And there were actually a good number of mistakes, but somehow that added to the delicious tension as the sequence progressed. The previous errors made the sequence more unnerving as the moves got progressively more challenging. I can't help thinking that the mistakes are planned, or at least tolerated, for just that reason. And I have absolutely no problem with that.

One of the chief assets of Traces is its amiable and...well...I might as well admit it, good-looking cast. (The cast comprises six hunky males and one lithe female, all decidedly easy on the eyes.) The piece features various monologues and biographical speeches from the cast members, which add to the humanity and charm of the show as a whole. And in between the acrobatic acts, the show intersperses vibrant dance, a charming skateboard ballet, a humorous reality-show spoof, and some admittedly abstruse stage business regarding the show's central conceit. ("Traces" refers obliquely to something about what we leave behind when we're gone, and involves some vague apocalyptic references. Whatever.)

But the charm of Traces lies not in its mere suggestion of a narrative, but in its stunning physical feats. Do yourself a favor and watch the video above. I think it will convince you to grab a ticket if you're in the New York area. Hey, now you've got until January, so even if you're not in the New York area, you might want to plan a trip, or at least check the Traces Web site to see if the show is headed in your direction. I think you'll be really glad that you did.

Review - Sleep No More at the McKittrick Hotel

I missed Sleep No More when it played in Boston in 2009, under the auspices of the American Repertory Theater. There was a mix-up with my press tickets, and by the time I realized something was amiss, the entire run for the show had already sold out. I was pretty pissed.

I was in New York last weekend to see two shows on Saturday, and when I discovered that Sleep No More has late-night showings on the weekends, I fired up my iPhone to see if I could snag a ticket for late that night. Since Sleep No More is a non-linear show, it doesn't technically "start" at any particular time, and audience members are admitted in waves in 15-minute intervals. Most of the time slots were sold out, but there were still a few tickets left for 11:15 PM, so I was in luck.

Sleep No More, devised by the British theater troupe Punchdrunk as a decidedly revisionist take on Shakespeare's Macbeth, was the talk of the town when it was in Boston, and it has gone on the become quite the hot ticket in New York City as well, with A-list notables donning the creepy white masks that audience members are required to wear at the show, and fumbling their way through the McKittrick Hotel in Chelsea. The show was originally supposed to play through May, but it has since been extended to September.

I suppose it was inevitable that, after so much build up, I would ultimately be disappointed with the actual experience of Sleep No More. First, it's a bit overwhelming. When the show played in Boston, it took place at the Old Lincoln School in Brookline, where audience members wandered through some 44 rooms of play area. At the McKittrick, the rooms number about 100. But it doesn't take long to get your bearings once you enter the playing space, and realize that the action of the show tends to take place in only a handful of these rooms.

Once I caught on to the rhythm of the show, I found that, while I admired the inspiration, the effort, and the admittedly spectacular results, I didn't quite find it the transformative experience that so many people made it out to be. There's no question that Sleep No More, which was the brainchild of Punchdrunk artistic director Felix Barrett, is quite different from any other theatrical experience, but I found myself wondering what it was all supposed to mean.

No words are spoken by the cast throughout the show, apart from a few grunts, groans, and periodic interjections. Sleep No More is primarily a visual experience, and I wound up focusing on it as a dance piece. The abundant choreography, by co-director Maxin Doyle, is thrilling and energetic. And Felix Barrett's physical design for the each of the room, and for the overall piece, is an artistic accomplishment unto itself. So, in that sense, the piece also works as an art installation.

But as theater, I'm not so sure. I found the overall experience of the show to be both thrilling and annoying. I came away disappointed that I had missed certain iconic moments that others had described to me. That's both the main asset and the key liability of this kind of theatrical experience: everyone experiences the show slightly differently, and you can't possibly see everything.

I was frustrated, though, that I kept happening upon certain moments multiple times. I saw the dance in the ballroom twice and the banquet scene three times. I saw Lady Macbeth dancing naked in her bedroom/bathroom twice, but I did not happen upon the famed naked goatboy nor the mimetic abortion. I saw Banquo before and after his death, but I didn't catch the death scene. I also saw numerous individual audience members receive private audiences with cast members, but I was never called in for one of those one-on-one sessions. Again, that's both the charm and the nuisance of Sleep No More: every person who attends the show will experience it differently.

If you go, two recommendations. Once you see a cast member walk by, follow that person until he or she takes you to something interesting. Keep following cast members until you get a sense of the space. Then, once you find what appears to be an important room, and you want to take a rest, cop a squat and wait for the story of that space to unfold. The ballroom is an especially good place to hang out, as many events occur there, and there are ample places to sit. There's also Lady Macbeth's bedroom, and various other large chambers. Again, you probably won't see everything, but you'll see enough to get the sense that it isn't about the storyline. It's about atmosphere, choreography, and a whole lot of voyeurism.

Also, you might want to bone up on Macbeth before you head out. It will make it more fun as you identify each of the characters. (e.g. Duncan, Banquo, Macduff, plus Macbeth himself and and Lady M.) Plus, you'll also have fun picking out certain key plot points. ("Wait, why are they moving around all of the trees on wheels...oh, right.")

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.

Come Fly Away to Close September 5th

 
This past Broadway season was unusual in at least one respect: there wasn't a flurry of closing notices immediately following the Tony Awards, at least with respect to musicals. Which was pretty surprising considering the middling quality of the new-musical offerings this year, as well as the disappointing sales most of those shows have been experiencing.

But the first shoe has officially dropped. The Tony-less Come Fly Away will end its run at the Marquis Theater on September 5th. At that time the show will have played 187 performances and 26 previews.

Regular readers may recall that I virtually loathed the Come Fly Away when I saw it in March. (Read my review here.) I found the show beyond tedious, and not because it was a jukebox musical, nor because there was not one word spoken throughout the show. (Apart from some Spanish extemporizing from one of the dancers.)

I just didn't see any differentiation among the faceless dancers on stage, which made it hard for me to care about what happened to them on the seemingly endless night at a dance club that the show depicts. I'm normally a huge modern-dance enthusiast, and I've enjoyed much of Twyla Tharp's work in the past, but here even her energetic eclecticism wasn't doing it for me. Perhaps if I were a bigger fan of Frank Sinatra and his music, I might have been more predisposed to enjoying the proceedings, but in truth I really shouldn't need to be a fan to appreciate a well-crafted show. And, in my most humble opinion, Come Fly Away was anything but.

The closing notices for Come Fly Away promise (as these notices always do) that the show will have a national tour, which I suppose could actually materialize given the respective fan bases for Sinatra and, to a far lesser extent, Twyla Tharp. Lately, we've been witnessing a succession of tours from shows that didn't succeed on Broadway, but have enough of a built-in brand to fill touring houses, at least for a week or two. Young Frankenstein and Shrek are currently making their mediocre way across the country, and word has started to leak out about casting for a 9 to 5 tour.

Will these tours tip the financial scales for these shows toward profitability? For Young Frankenstein and Shrek, it's highly doubtful, given the profuse amounts of money the producers poured into the them. For 9 to 5 and Come Fly Away, finishing in the black may be slightly more attainable, but certainly not a guarantee.

Review - La Cage aux Folles at the Longacre Theater

Everyone thought it was too soon to bring La Cage aux Folles back to Broadway. Well, perhaps it is, in terms of the financial prospects of the current Broadway revival, which opened last night at the Longacre Theatre. But in terms of artistic fruition, this production represents a considerable improvement over both the 2004 revival and even the original Broadway production.

The Longacre is actually the perfect theater for this production; it's intimate, ornate, pink, and overall just a wee bit louche in its look and feel. What better berth for the Broadway transfer of the well-received Menier Chocolate Factory production of La Cage. What makes this version so appealing is Terry Johnson's smart and emotionally honest direction. Johnson finds the heart of the piece, crafting more believable relationships among the characters. Plus, Johnson seems to have coached his actors to do more than just perform, but to listen as well. (Listen? In musical comedy? What a novel idea...) 

Another aid in the production's artistic success is a significantly revised book by Harvey Fierstein, which seems to feature a fair amount of new material, including the scenes and dialog leading up to Albin's first entrance and number. There's also considerably more material for Jacob the butler (well, maid...), played here by the adorable scene stealer Robin De Jesus. (And no, Ben, I'm not just saying that because he's your best friend.) I do have to say that the device of using Jacob as a sort of stage manager, ushering in set changes and linking certain scenes isn't entirely successful.

The Jerry Herman score remains essentially the same. (Much to the delight of the woman sitting next to me, who made it a point to say to me, "I hope they still have the same songs." Um...) They have gotten rid of the throwaway musical sequence "Aren't We All, N'est-ce Pas?," which isn't on the original cast recording. That's fine, but the music remains as underscoring to a rather pointless scene with the denizens of the local cafe.

The dance numbers, choreographed by Lynne Page, are staged within an inch of their lives, particularly the opening. But while the dance numbers are strong, if a bit ornate, the musical staging in the non-dancing numbers is lame. Like, community-theater lame. The reprise of "With You on My Arm" is particularly clunky and joy-deprived. But "The Best of Times" features actual meaningful stage business, rather than just having the cast stare out at the audience and sway from side to side. (In the original Broadway production, even the set rocked back and forth. Even then, 27 years ago and in my musical theater infancy, I knew that such a touch was twee beyond belief.)

Again, the major assets in this production are the relationships among the characters, particularly Georges and Albin, played here by Kelsey Grammer and Douglas Hodge, respectively. Grammer more than earns his place as a musical theater performer, and brings a lovely soft quality to his interactions with Hodge. This was particularly true during "Song on the Sand," although Grammer did have a tendency to flat on extended notes. And "Look Over There" was especially well staged, laying a solid groundwork for Grammer to plumb the emotional meaning of the song.

Hodge, in a rather splashy Broadway debut, is highly mannered, to say the very least, crafting the sort of over-the-top line readings that many actors simply couldn't pull off. But somehow Hodge comes off as both affected and sympathetic. It's quite a delightful feat to witness. Plus, at times he's flat out, breathtakingly hysterical, particularly during the lead in to "Masculinity." Hodge isn't quite the Broadway belter type: he's more a classically trained actor with a reasonably tuneful, albeit wistful, singing voice. But he brings a quiet dignity to "I Am What I Am," making up for what he lacks in vocal power with heartbreaking intensity.

[MINOR SPOILER ALERT for the next paragraph.]

The two performances culminate in a simply yet astonishingly effective tag and the end of act 2. Rather than walking off into the cliche-ridden sunset together, as the characters did in the original production, Albin and Georges here sit quietly together on the stairs of the nightclub and share a simple, touching kiss as the curtain falls. Yes, that's rather obvious, and rather bald-faced in its deliberate manipulation, but, girlfriend, it works. Somehow the fact that this is admitted and confirmed heterosexual Kelsey Grammer kissing another man on-stage -- something that decidedly did *not* occur in the original production -- places a perfect piece of punctuation at the end of a wonderfully heartfelt production.

GRADE: A- (Who knows if it will make money, but the show itself is strong, sweet, and emotionally satisfying.)

Review - Come Fly Away at the Marquis Theatre

I love modern dance. I genuinely do. I'm not a big fan of traditional ballet, which I find a bit staid and predictable. But I thrill to the work of the modern masters, such as Martha Graham and Paul Taylor, and I try to catch Pilobolus and Alvin Ailey whenever they're in town.

So when I say that I found Twyla Tharp' s new Broadway dance show Come Fly Away beyond tedious, it's not that I'm some musical-theater purist who resolutely demands words and singing in order to find a show entertaining, or accept something as a musical. I've said many times that, if the creators of a particular show are calling it a musical, then I'm all for calling it a musical. The question is: is the show itself any good? 

And, as far as I'm concerned, Come Fly Away is about as far away from good as any show I've seen since Lestat. Between acts at Come Fly Away last weekend, I couldn't resist the urge to vent my frustration on Twitter. "I've never walked out of a show at intermission," I tweeted. "Come Fly Away is making me want to." One of my Twitter followers responded, asking "Well, did you like Movin' Out?"

I may be reading too much into this, but the implication that I took from the question was that one has to appreciate this particular type of storytelling to "get" Twyla's shows. Well, I didn't like Movin' Out. (Read my Movin' Out review) But it wasn't that I don't appreciate dance as a storytelling medium. It's that I didn't like the show itself. Movin' Out didn't tell me enough about these characters as people to really make me care about their stories. And the dance, I felt, reflected precious little of Tharp's trademark eclecticism. There was only one sequence that I found genuinely stirring: that of the soldier's plight in Vietnam. Otherwise. Movin' Out left me cold and bored.

Likewise Come Fly Away. The show centers around four interchangeable couples spending an eternity...er, night at a particular nightclub. And therein lies the two central problems with the show: the characters are characterless and the setting is stagnant. The entire show seems to consist of a never-ending succession of characters meeting up, splitting up, making each other jealous, and reconciling. Again and again. Pas de deux after pas de deux. Tharp hasn't included enough of a distinction among the four couples to make us care who they are or bother to make the effort to create such distinctions ourselves. Could she possibly be making some trenchant social comment about the interchangeable nature of relationships and the mind-numbing tedium of serial monogamy? If so, she's succeeded admirably.

As you may know, Come Fly Away features the song catalog -- and recorded vocal stylings -- of Frank Sinatra. There's a live orchestra onstage, as well as a female vocalist, presumably to lend an authentic big-band-era air to the proceedings. One might say, "Well, that's the problem with these songbook shows. You can't tell a good story with a series of preexisting songs." I don't buy that. I think Come Fly Away could have worked. I was told that, during previews, the show's producers knew that major changes needed to be made, but everyone was too scared of Twyla to sit her down and spell things out. Since I saw the show the weekend before it opened, I'm going to have to assume that, if any changes finally came, they were of no avail.

So, couldn't one see Come Fly Away and simply enjoy the dancing? Alas, for the most part the dance isn't interesting or distinctive enough to justify a trip to the Marquis on its own merit. There were a few numbers that, for me, almost made the show worth seeing. "That's Life" had a rough-and-tumble athleticism. "My Way" brought the various couples together into an almost fugue-like morass of energetic flow and punctuation. The highlight of the show for me was the segment with Dave Brubeck's "Take Five." It was the one number that seemed like dance for dance's sake, and didn't seem to get bogged down in conveying some labored point about the participants, which is ironic given the overall intended narrative impulse of the piece. (I'm still not exactly sure what "Take Five" has to do with Frank Sinatra. Anyone?) 

I've been toying recently with instituting some kind of rating system for my reviews. This was something that I did when I started this blog back in 2006, but for some reason I stopped. The fabulous West End Whingers have recently created their own delightfully appropriate system. A number of my blogger colleagues use a star-rating system, including Gratuitous Violins and Steve on Broadway. But since I'm an academic, it seems rather fitting that I should use the good old reliable letter-grade system. So, by way of reintroduction, I hereby bestow the following grade upon Come Fly Away: 

GRADE: D minus (Not an abject failure, but perilously close to being held back a semester)

Come Fly Away Will Play the Marquis

As closing announcements proliferate, and the remaining Broadway shows face the prospect of a bleak midwinter, we're also hearing about new musicals to step in and fill the void.

The new Twyla Tharp dance show, formerly titled Come Fly With Me, now bearing the moniker Come Fly Away, will begin performances at the Marquis Theater in March. Similar to Tharp's previous two efforts -- the successful Movin' Out and the disastrous The Times They Are a-Changin' -- Come Fly Away is a songbook show, this time featuring the music of Frank Sinatra.

Although the show itself is relatively new, Tharp actually has a long history with the music of Frank Sinatra, having created numerous pieces set to Sinatra recordings in the early 1980s, including Nine Sinatra Songs and Sinatra Suite, the latter with Mikhail Baryshnikov. But have no fear, musicians' union, for this won't be another Contact, a show that came under fire for eschewing an orchestra in favor of a piped-in jukebox soundtrack. Come Fly Away does indeed utilize recordings of the late Sinatra's voice, but the vocal tracks are backed by a live on-stage band playing some newly created orchestrations.

The show received some fairly solid reviews during its recent engagement at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, at which time it was still known as Come Fly With Me. Charles Isherwood of the New York Times called the show "exhilarating." Wendell Brock of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said "dazzling." And Frank Rizzo of Variety wrote that "even at this early stage" the show is "vibrant, engaging and, at times, thrilling." With notices like that, the producers would be fools not to bring the show to New York. Right?

Not so fast. As my friend Ken Davenport recently wrote about on his blog, The Producer's Perspective, out-of-town raves do not a Broadway blockbuster make. Ragtime got very strong reviews when it played DC, and now the Broadway production is closing at a significant loss. Finian's Rainbow got terrific notices during its Encores run last season, only to meet a similar fate to Ragtime. Perhaps the most extreme example is the now-legendary Glory Days, which came to New York almost entirely on the strength of Peter Marks' gushing review in The Washington Post. During previews, Glory Days struggled to garner an audience larger than 25% of the house, and then promptly folded on opening night. Whoops. 

Will Come Fly Away deliver on the promise of its advance notices? Will the new Twyla Tharp show be another Movin' Out or another The Times They Are a-Changin'? If it's the former, expect to see more from Twyla on Broadway. If it's the latter, well, it's probably back to the barre.

Fela on Broadway

I wasn't a fan of the musical Fela when I saw it Off Broadway at the 37 Arts theater complex. Although I found the story captivating, the dance energetic, and the music vibrant, I thought the storytelling was primitive, and the direction loose and unfocused.

But like many recent shows that have made the Off- to On-Broadway transfer (In the Heights, Next to Normal, Spring Awakening, Grey Gardens), Fela has undergone significant revisions, and the Fela that is currently playing at the Eugene O'Neill Theater in New York is a major improvement over its earlier incarnation. If this renovated Fela isn't quite the magnum opus its creators seemed to be striving for, it's unquestionably the most ambitious new musical of the season.

The show tells the story of Nigerian recording artist and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti, as filtered through the sensibilities of director/choreographer Bill T. Jones (Spring Awakening) and his co-librettist Jim Lewis. The show starts by breaking down the history of Fela's music, then relates how he himself became an instrument of rebellion. In protest against the corrupt and oppressive Nigerian regime, Fela declares his compound an independent state, with dramatic and often tragic consequences.

As was the case Off-Broadway, the story of Fela comes mostly in monologue form. Since the dramatic conceit of the show is that Fela is giving his farewell concert performance before leaving his beloved Nigeria, I guess that makes a certain amount of sense. But, hey, how about some scenes in flashback to break things up? Thankfully, Jones and Lewis have done just that by adding a new character, the student Sandra (Saycon Sengbloh), who actually has lines, which brings a bit more dimension to the story. But she's still the only other person who speaks: the mother character, played here by the marvelous but underutilized Lillias White, communicates here only through song, and somewhat obliquely at that.

Because I attended a Saturday afternoon performance of the Broadway Fela, I saw Kevin Mambo as Fela this time, which was a bit disappointing, since one of the things that I genuinely enjoyed about Fela Off Broadway was the dynamic Sahr Ngaujah in the title role. Mambo held his own, to be sure, but I would have much preferred to have seen Nguajah again in the show that may very well make him a star. Ngaujah was mesmerizing in a role in which Mambo is merely competent.

Overall, the Broadway version of Fela is a considerably more fluid and balanced than the Off-Broadway production, which bordered on hagiography. The new show reveals more facets of Fela the man, both good and bad, including more direct references to his often questionable treatment of women. The result is more dramatically cohesive and emotionally compelling. The formerly excruciating sequence in which Fela communicates with his mother in the afterlife seems to have been shortened and clarified to the point where it's merely innocuous. And Jones seems to have fine-tuned the staging, forging significant improvements in energy and showmanship. The final tags to both acts are especially stunning.

Even so, Fela remains more an intellectual pleasure than a visceral one, more admirable than enjoyable. It's certainly worth seeing, and, as I said, is likely to be the most adventurous musical to hit Broadway this season. Granted, that's not saying much, considering that the only other new musical so far has been the dynamic but conventional Memphis, and the only new shows that are definite for the coming season are The Addams Family and Million Dollar Quartet. 

What about Spider-Man, you ask. Yeah, what *about* Spider-Man?

Flashback - Michael Bennett and Scandal

I was going through an old box of my college notebooks, when I came across an issue of Vanity Fair dated November 1984. I was about to throw it away when I noticed that on the last page there was an interview with Michael Bennett, who was in the middle of rehearsing Scandal.

Theater queens of a certain age will doubtless remember Scandal. It was meant to be Bennett's follow-up to Dreamgirls, a triumphant return to his A Chorus Line form. Bennett was even revisiting the famed ACL workshop process, allowing the show to emerge organically from a 12-month rehearsal period. In the Vanity Fair article, Bennett boasts that the opening number alone -- a 20-minute, full-on, balls-to-the-wall orgy featuring stars Swoosie Kurtz and Treat Williams -- took ten weeks of rehearsals to create.

Scandal was to have a score by Jimmy Webb and a book by Treva Silverman, neither of whom had any significant theatrical experience. But then, neither did Marvin Hamlisch. Bennett apparently preferred to work with newbies -- they're easier to bully about. It's certainly no secret at this point that Bennett was rather ruthless in his pursuit of theatrical perfection. To quote Bennett from the Vanity Fair article: "I usually try to hate everything when I'm rehearsing. In a way, I like to see the show as the enemy." Apparently this applied to his co-creators and performers as well.

I must say the Vanity Fair article doesn't reflect well on Bennett. Most of his quotes are pretty facile, if not downright puerile. In describing Scandal, Bennett says "It has a story with a beginning, middle, and an end, which I like in theater...And it has a happy ending, which I believe all musicals should have. For forty dollars a ticket, it's the least they should have!" The reference to forty-dollar tickets is simply amusing in retrospect. How could Bennett know that a scant 25 years later, ticket prices would have reached a ridiculous high of $136.50? (Thank you, Roundabout.)

But then there's the beginning/middle/end thing. Well, thank you, Captain Obvious. And every musical should have a happy ending? Um, really? West Side Story? Lost in the Stars? Grey Gardens? Parade? Marie Christine? Sweeney Todd? This sounds rather naive and disingenuous coming from the man who broke the hearts of sixteen fictional "boys and girls" nightly for 15 years with A Chorus Line.

Scandal as a show died with Michael Bennett. At the time, the official word was that the show was canceled because the salacious subject matter was inappropriate with the advent of AIDS. We later learned that AIDS was indeed to blame, but it wasn't the subject matter of the show, but rather the health of its creator that was at issue.

Bennett also pulled out of the London premier of Chess prior to its 1986 opening, for health reasons, although AIDS wasn't mentioned at the time. But by the time he left Chess, he had already commissioned the show's expensive and elaborate set, which consisted of two giant walls of video monitors and an enormous hydraulic chess board that rose and spun, not unlike the tire from Cats. Director Trevor Nunn inherited the production concept, but didn't seem to know how to do anything with it, and the result was pointlessly complicated and rather inert.

It's interesting to speculate what Scandal would have been like as a show, and whether there was any decent material there that's worth resurrecting. But it seems pretty clear that without the guiding and dictatorial hand of Michael Bennett, it's very likely that there really wouldn't be any there there. If there were, wouldn't something have leaked out in the interim, a la Carrie and the many extant bootlegs of same? And it's always heartbreaking to contemplate what might have been if Bennett have lived. Those of us content to appreciate what this tortured and torturing genius left behind at least have the October 13th DVD release of the "Every Little Step" to look forward to. 

Desk Clearing: West Side Spanish, Birdie Dance, Nine Movie, and Ragtime Logo

A number of things have been making me cranky lately. Not sure if it's just my mood, or if these items are genuinely annoying. So, rather than addressing each item separately, I figured I'd just get them all out of the way in one peevish post.

Bye Bye Birdie - The New York Daily News reports that the star of the upcoming Broadway revival of Bye Bye Birdie, Gina Gershon, won't be performing the show's iconic Shriner's Ballet. The article quotes Gershon as saying the dance was cut because it was too "gang rape-y." As other commentators have pointed out, that's never seemed to be a problem before, despite being Tams-Witmark's number-one show for decades. The more likely explanation: Gershon can't handle the dance. If they're so concerned about modern sensibilities, will Gershon be performing the regressive and sexist "An English Teacher"? Will the chorus girls still be fawning and fainting to the salacious sight of Conrad Birdie's gyrating hips? The show is a period piece. If you don't like the period, don't do the piece.
Peeve Factor: 7 out of 10. If you want to see a real pro in action, click here to watch Chita Rivera perform the Shriner's Ballet.

West Side Story - According to the New York Times, the current smash-hit Broadway revival of West Side Story has changed back much of the show's much-touted Spanish to the original English lyrics and text. As you may know, director Arthur Laurents brought in Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights) to translate huge chunks of the show into Spanish. The article quotes Laurents as saying the Spanish was "an experiment." Yeah, a failed experiment. As I've written about in my reviews of the show itself and of the CD, I wasn't a fan of the Spanish text. I found it alienating and thought it robbed two terrific songs ("I Feel Pretty" and "A Boy Like That/I Have a Love") of their humor, pathos, and drama. But I also thought that Miranda's lyrics didn't match the quality of Sondheim's original work.
Peeve Factor: 5 out of 10, mitigated by the fact that they've, for the most part, reverted to the infinitely preferable original words.

"Nine" - The more I hear about Rob Marshall's forthcoming film version of Nine, the less excited I become. First, the delectable Javier Bardem dropped out, replaced by the talented but IMHO considerably less sexy Daniel Day Lewis. Now, according to Playbill, Maury Yeston has provided three new songs for the movie: "Guarda la Luna," "Cinema Italiano," and "Take it All." Which is fine, but to make room, they're cutting at least five of the original songs: "Simple," "Be On Your Own," "Grand Canal," "Nine," "The Bells of St. Sebastian's." Boo and grrr. (For a detailed discussion of the cut and added songs, check out a post by my friend Kevin at Theatre Aficionado at Large.)
Peeve Factor: 9 out of 10. Pun intended. I'm not a knee-jerk purist, but the movie is going to need to be pretty spectacular to make up for the butchering of the score. Of course, the "Sweeney Todd" film involved a tremendous amount of cutting as well, and I raved about that movie in my review. So, the jury's still out, despite my current annoyance.

Ragtime - The press folk for the upcoming Broadway revival of Ragtime have recently been touting the new visual identity for the production. (See left) Apparently, it's the work of some famous Italian illustrator. Whatever, it's washed-out, flat, and unmemorable. Plus, the physical arrangement seems borrowed from the logo to The Secret Garden. Of course, I was also nonplussed by the logos for Hair and A Catered Affair, and impressed by that of Cry-Baby. So there's no necessary connection between the quality of an individual show and that of its marketing materials.
Peeve Factor: 2 out of 10. Like many of you, I'm simply thrilled that Ragtime is getting another chance on Broadway. During its original run, it was overshadowed by The Lion King and hampered by irresponsible -- and now felonious -- producing.

Spring Awakening on Tour

I have to be honest: I wasn't exactly looking forward to seeing Spring Awakening again. There's something about certain musical tragedies that really depresses me, mostly because, although I can appreciate the stagecraft, I dread the inevitable outcome. Shows that fall into this category for me include West Side Story, Parade, Marie Christine, and Lost in the Stars. All very worthy shows, but de-ee-pressing to sit through.

It's not that I demand a happy ending: I could sit through Grey Gardens or Next to Normal again and again, and those shows are hardly carefree romps. (Yes, Next to Normal. I find I'm becoming more and more enamored of this show as I listen to the CD. A woman's prerogative, and all that.)

But since I have two former students who are currently in the tour cast of Spring Awakening, I felt I should at least do them the courtesy. Plus, I wanted to see if my initial positive reaction to the show still held true. (Read my original review here.)

In short, no. I still think the show is a worthy addition to the musical theater canon, and represents some really compelling work on the part of director Michael Mayer and choreographer Bill T. Jones. But I'm becoming less and less a fan of the score, which has music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics by Steven Sater. Sure, the songs are deliberately anachronistic, with mentions of phone calls and stereos, neither of which existed at the time when the show takes place. But I've always reconciled that, as well as the use of hand-held microphones, with the idea that the production team were trying to make the message of the show more universal, using an almost Brechtian style of presentation.

But some of the things that have soured me on the show include Sater's egregious use of slant rhyme (e.g. paring "written" with "wisdom"), the bland undifferentiated nature of many of Sheik's melodies, and the non-integrated nature of much of the score. Often the numbers seem to bear little relation to what's going on in the plot. This is especially true at the top of act two, where we have "The Guilty Ones," "Don't Do Sadness," and "Blue Wind" in succession. Although I was trying to listen to the lyrics to find some connection to the story, I eventually gave up. My attention waned almost entirely until "Totally Fucked" brought me back into the moment. And I'll be damned if I can figure out what "The Song of Purple Summer" is supposed to mean. The promise of the future, I guess, but the lyrics are so random and vague, it's really hard to care.

That said, the cast for the tour is quite strong. It's hard to live up to the dynamic Jonathan Groff as Melchior, but Kyle Riabko does an admirable job of trying to make the part his own. I actually preferred Blake Bashoff as Moritz to Tony Award winner John Gallagher, Jr. I found Gallagher unbearably mannered in the role, but Bashoff made the part simultaneously frenetic and sympathetic. (Oh, and a special shout out to my BoCo peeps Chase Davidson and Kimiko Glenn in the supporting cast. Super job, guys. And break a leg with the rest of the tour.)

Both Sheik and Sater have announced various other musical-theater projects that they've been working on. Sheik recently released the concept album for Whisper House, which is scheduled to have its premiere at the Old Globe in San Diego during its 2009-2010 season. As I said in my review of the Whisper House CD, my fear is that this new project will suffer from the same randomness and lack of integration as Spring Awakening. But, as always, I maintain an open mind, and look forward to seeing how the show comes together.

Dance Review: Garden of Earthly Delights

I've decided not to renew any of my New York theater subscriptions for next season. It's just that I only ever wind up seeing the musicals, and none of the New York non-profits have been doing more than one musical a season. And I find that, even though I have tickets to see the plays, I often (well, usually) wind up blowing them off.

Why waste the money, you ask? Well, it started because I wanted to have a regular reason to get down to the city, and I figured with a subscription, I'd have four or five reasons to carve out a separate weekend in NYC. It started with the Roundabout, and then expanded to the Manhattan Theater Club and the Public Theater because they each added musicals (Romantic Poetry and Road Show, respectively) that seemed as though they were going to be hot tickets, and I wanted to make sure they didn't sell out, like the original Assassins back in the day, or the more recent revival of The Pajama Game. Well, they didn't sell out, and now I'm stuck with tickets to a bunch of plays that I don't really want to see.

Case in point: tonight I was supposed to see The American Plan at the Samuel Friedman Theater. I was originally psyched to see Mercedes Ruehl, but somehow I just couldn't justify using one of my precious show slots to see something I wasn't all that excited about. (BTW, have you noticed that they've added a beefcake shot of Kieran Campion and references to "Brokeback Mountain" to the ads for The American Plan to get the gay boys interested in seeing the show? Pretty cheap.) So, I decided to blow it off, and grabbed a discount ticket for Garden of Earthly Delights, which had really been intriguing me since I started reading about it a few months back. 

Garden of Earthly Delights is a sort of dance/movement/theater/music piece devised and choreographed by Martha Clarke, a founding member of Pilobolus, a dance troupe that is a personal favorite of mine. The piece originated in 1984, and Clarke recently re-imagined and re-staged it Off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theater. It's inspired by the famed Hieronymus Bosch triptych of the same name, which currently resides in Museo del Prado in Madrid. Click on the image below for a more detailed view. (It's interesting to note that the dance piece came about at around the same time that Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine were creating Sunday in the Park With George, a musical based on another iconic artwork, Georges Seurat's "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." Some would call that ironic. They'd be wrong.)

The original Bosch painting may seem like something produced in a drug-induced haze -- a sort of freaky combo of Salvador Dalí and "Where's Waldo" -- but it's actually said to be a fervid expression of devout religiosity. Some art scholars consider the piece a didactic cautionary treatise from Bosch on the sins of Man, and the tortures that await the unrighteous. Others see it as lamentation of the fall of Man from the joys of Paradise.

The dance piece that Clarke has created, some 500 years later, is both brutal and sublime. It's less a literal interpretation of the painting than an exploration of its apparent themes. The work starts with amorphous figures emerging in primordial motion, then segues into iconic Biblical imagery, specifically the story of Adam and Eve. Clarke interweaves the abstract and the representational throughout, including the most literal segment featuring a virtual catalog of bodily functions (both reproductive and excretory) of a group of medieval peasants.

The piece seems most interested in all that is lusty and base, which it represents through stylized sensuality and violence, both of which are frequently disturbing. As with the painting, we're not really sure if it's meant to be a grim warning or a lament for paradise lost. Is it a celebration or a condemnation of Man's primitive urges and their expression? The piece shrewdly mixes Darwin with creationism, with the primordial ooze both the Alpha and the Omega of the piece. The question Clarke seems to be asking is, no matter what your philosophy, can Man escape his most primitive desires? Does he even want to? (Pardon the sexist terminology, but I'm using "Man" here in a deliberately archaic sense.) 

The most striking production elements are Richard Peaslee's award-winning music and the "Flying by Foy." The onstage band sport the garb of medieval monks, providing music in both chanting and instrumental form, the latter via cello, various forms of percussion, bagpipes, Jew's harp, and the occasional didgeridoo. The monks alternate between being dispassionate observers and willful participants in the proceedings. As for the flying, well, it works a lot better here than it does in Billy Elliot. (I heard they were toying with cutting the flying out of Billy Elliot, which is just fine with me. I found it unbearably twee. Anyone know whether they actually have?)

Garden of Earthly Delights was originally scheduled to run until March 1st, but has recently been extended another three months to May 31st. It's definitely worth a trip down to the Village to catch it. Plus, it's only 70 minutes long, so you'll ave plenty of time after for drinks at The Duplex.