Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

Review - Jekyll and Hyde Revival on Broadway

In his review of the current Broadway revival of Jekyll & Hyde, New York Times critic Charles Isherwood referred to Frank Wildhorn musicals as "the crab grass of Broadway." Some people thought that was unprofessional or unnecessarily harsh of him. I think he was being kind.

I like to think that Isherwood, in an earlier draft of the review, referred to Wildhorn musicals as a certain other unfortunate item that one tends to find on suburban lawns, particularly in neighborhoods that have lots of dogs and not-so-considerate neighbors.

Jekyll & Hyde is an affront to musical theater, and has been since the first commercial recording came out 23 years ago. After lurking around in regional theaters, the show finally opened on Broadway in 1997, ran for an astounding 1,543 performances, and yet still managed to close without earning back its investment. (I'm pretty sure that makes Jekyll & Hyde the longest-running musical flop in Broadway history.)

The only thing that Jekyll & Hyde has ever had going for it is Frank Wildhorn's not entirely unpleasant melodies, even if the songs are generic and their style bears no relation whatsoever to the time and place of the piece. Why, then, the powers that be involved in the current Broadway production of Jekyll & Hyde thought it was a good idea to recast the songs with harsh, steam-punk orchestrations is a mystery. Yeah, take the show's only asset and render it moot beneath a crush of heavy-metal sound and ear-splitting amplification. Sounds like a plan.

I'm not really sure what the reasoning was behind bringing this production to Broadway at all, except perhaps to take advantage of any residual audience for the fading luster of two supposed singing stars: Constantine Maroulis and Deborah Cox. (The show was supposed to play through the end of June, but has since announced that it will be closing this coming weekend.) Maroulis was actually kind of charming in Rock of Ages, but here he's an unfocused mess, all surface emoting and showboating vocalizations. (Oh, and, Constantine, about that accent. Are we talking England here? Wales? Scotland? Japan?) As for Cox, well, she sounded fine (thanks in part to a whole lotta reverb), but she didn't really command the stage in a way that the part of Lucy would seem to demand.

The production is directed and choreographed by Jeff Calhoun, and it's hard to think of him as the same Jeff Calhoun who made Newsies into such a rousing success. The staging here is lifeless, particularly for Lucy's introductory number, "Bring on the Men." Calhoun uses the notion of Spider's Web, which is the name of the club where Lucy works (which I believe was called The Red Hat in previous versions), and includes a number of bungee-cord ropes to ensnare the men in attendance, but then he doesn't really do anything interesting with the ropes. The number just kinda sits there, much like the rest of the production.

One of the many things that made the original Broadway production of Jekyll & Hyde so laughable was the infamous sequence called "The Confrontation," in which the poor actor playing Jekyll (at various times in the run, Robert Cuccioli, Sebastian Bach, Jack Wagner, David Hasselhoff, and other unfortunate souls) sang a duet with himself a while indicating the change from Jekyll to Hyde and back by whipping his hair back and forth. (Willow Smith, eat your heart out.) The results, trust me, were hysterical. (Click though the link in the title above and see for yourself.) For the current production, we have another kind of unintentional joke, with Jekyll confronting a prerecorded Hyde in the form of a risible series of projections on the back wall. The results look not unlike a 1980s MTV video from a very bad hair band.

Of course, Calhoun is hampered here by a piece that is simply atrocious from the get-go, and most of the blame for that lands at feet of Leslie Bricusse, who wrote the book and lyrics. The sad thing is that Bricusse used to have talent, at least as evidenced in his collaborations with Anthony Newley (Stop the World - I Want to Get Off, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory) and a number of solo efforts (including the movie musical Scrooge with Albert Finney). But Bricusse's book for Jekyll & Hyde is leaden and plodding. The setups for the songs are clumsy, when they even exist. The power ballad "This Is the Moment" has no setup at all. Supposedly, Jekyll has just made a big decision about how to proceed with his experiment, and he launches into the song. Only later do we learn that he has decided to use himself as a guinea pig. Belt first, ask questions later.

What's worse, one of the central plot elements in the show - the relationship between Jekyll and the prostitute Lucy - seems to come out of nowhere and is then taken pretty much as a given, without the benefit of on-stage development. Jekyll gives Lucy his card after meeting her at her place of employ, and then she shows up one night at the good doctor's home with an undisclosed injury. He basically cleans the wound and puts on a bandage, and then we're supposed to accept that she's now in love with him, and that, even more ridiculous, he reciprocates her feelings. Which would be fine if we saw the relationship develop from there, but we don't. The only other times Lucy is on-stage is to sing two more power ballads ("In His Eyes" and "A New Life"), and at both times, Jekyll isn't with her. Power ballads apparently justify themselves in Frank Wildhorn's world.

If Bricusse's book is bad, his lyrics are actually worse. If you were to listen to any of the cast recordings, you would have no idea what's going on in the show. I know this, because that's what happened to me when I first listened to the concept recording in 1990. The power ballads in particular are virtually interchangeable. When Bricusse's rhymes aren't puerile ("strife/life") they're either painfully awkward ("Murder, murder/Once there's one done/Can't be undone") or virtually meaningless ("When the momentum and the moment are in rhyme").

So, bad production, bad show. The night I attended was a press performances, and the audience was largely composed of voters from the various award processes for New York theater (Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, etc.) I could tell that the folks seated around me were having the same visceral reaction I was to the proceedings. Toward the end of the show, the character John, Jekyll's friend, confronts Jekyll with a sword to prevent Jekyll from harming the members of the wedding party. "Please," Jekyll says, seemingly inviting John to run him through. "Set us all free." The section of the audience where I was sitting, as if on cue, erupted into laughter.

"Yes, please," we seemed to say. "Put us all out of our misery."

Review - The Last Five Years at the Second Stage Theatre

There are some musicals that achieve cult status, despite - or perhaps because of - relatively short runs in their initial incarnations. Often these musicals live on through their cast recordings, as well as the occasional production by ambitious regional and college theater productions.  

Anyone Can Whistle comes to mind, as do Mack and Mabel and Merrily We Roll Along. Upon closer inspection, these particular shows do indeed have fascinating scores, while the shows themselves simply don't work in performance, despite numerous attempts at revision.

A particular sub-category of this cult-musical niche is the Off-Broadway succès d'estime, such as Floyd Collins, Violet, and The Wild Party (Lippa). For some reason, this sub-genre has a significantly higher quality-to-dreck ratio, although I'm not really much a fan of The Wild Party (either version). I think the reason there are more artistically solid Off-Broadway cult shows is that some strong musicals never make it to Broadway, and probably shouldn't even try. But that kind of leaves them with one foot in obscurity, almost from the start.

Which brings us to The Last Five Years, by Jason Robert Brown, a show that I had previously only been acquainted with through its excellent cast recording, which features Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott. The show played a two-month run at the Minetta Lane Theater in 2002, and then went on to become beloved by musical-theater mavens the world over, mostly because of Brown's rich and characterful songs, and the emotional pull of the story itself.

Well, for once, I find myself siding with the faithful on this one, because The Last Five Years in performance is simply stunning, at least as evidenced by the fine revival currently enjoying an acclaimed at extended run at the Second Stage Theatre in New York. Jason Robert Brown is also the director for this production, and based on this show I'm hoping he does more directing. His staging work here is simple but very effective. Brown creates a wonderful sense of connection and loss between the characters, and crafts transitions between scenes that enhance that larger story arc without distracting at all from the meaning of the songs themselves.

The Last Five Years is sort of a direct descendant of Merrily We Roll Along, which famously has a plot that travels backwards in time. The Last Five Years goes both forward and backward: the story for the male character, Jamie, goes in chronological order, while the story for the female, Cathy, goes in reverse. The story is essentially about how the characters meet, marry, and separate over a five-year period, and having Cathy's story run in reverse creates a touching sense of dramatic irony: we start the show by witnessing the painful end of the relationship, then we switch to Jamie's point of view at the beginning and see the sense of adventure and promise.

What's marvelous about The Last Five Years is that we never feel lost as to where we are in time because Brown has done such an effective job of showing us where and when we are, every step of the way. Also marvelous is the sense of balance we experience as to who is responsible for the difficulties that the characters experience along the way. The show's plot is apparently based on based Brown's first marriage, and to his credit, Brown paints a complex picture of the relationship. Cathy and Jamie are multifaceted as characters: sympathetic, flawed, idealistic, deluded, appealing, unnerving, and most of all real.

It's remarkable how real the characters are, and how clear the temporal progressions are, since the show is almost entirely sung-through. So Brown is conveying all of this through songs, and mostly solo songs at that. Cathy and Jamie only appear in a song together when the chronologies meet in the middle of the show. (Perhaps all of these pop dilettantes who think that writing hit songs automatically qualifies them to write the show to a Broadway show should be forced to listen to The Last Five Years as an object lesson on how to convey character and story through song.) Even more remarkable, the songs themselves work extremely well out of context, as many a cabaret artist and auditioning actor has demonstrated over the last 11 years.

Brown's score reveals a songwriter equally comfortable with both searing ballads ("Still Hurting") and comic character numbers ("A Summer in Ohio"). The score is rife with appealing melodies, such as the haunting waltz leitmotif that recurs throughout the show. Brown also shows a knack for crafting lyrics with deceptively simple turns of phrase, from "Jamie is over and where can I turn? Covered in scars I did nothing to earn" to "I will not fail to keep you comfortable. I will not lose because you can't win." And yet, at least in this score, Brown never calls conscious attention to the craft of the lyricist, allowing the erudition to appear to emerge from the characters themselves. 

The Second Stage production of The Last Five Years is blessed with two wonderfully animated yet subtle performances from Adam Kantor and Betsy Wolfe. Kantor has a slight tendency to channel Norbert Leo Butz (although in truth that may be written into the fabric of the show), but he finds many ways to make the part his own, particularly during "Moving Too Fast," one of the many highlights of the show. And Wolfe reinforces what she demonstrated earlier this season in The Mystery of Edwin Drood: that she's a lot more that just a pretty young woman with a lovely voice. She's also a hell of an actress, both in the somber moments of the show and in Cathy's neurotic character numbers.

If you can't make it to the Second Stage between now and May 18th to see The Last Five Years in person, have no fear. A film adaptation of the show, scheduled to star Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan, is apparently in the works. And the new cast recording for the show is scheduled to come out later this year. I know I'm eagerly anticipating both.

The 2013 Tony Nominations - My Take

Regular readers will know that I have a love/hate relationship with the Tony Awards, with all awards, in fact. On the one hand, I'm as interested and fascinated as the next showtune queen when the Tony nominations come out, which happened for this year's awards on Tuesday. Like you, I'm sure, I'm gratified when the shows and performances that I liked get nods, and I'm disappointed when they don't.

But I also know there's a tremendous futility in the act of setting performer against performer, show against show. The awards process is flawed, as the Tonys have demonstrated time and time again over the years. I mean, according to the Tony voters, The Music Man is better than West Side Story. Fiorello and The Sound of Music are both better than Gypsy. The Lion King is better than Ragtime.

Nome sane?

And yet, each year I get a thrill poring over the list of nominees. I think I mostly do it to be reminded of what was good about the immediate past season. Once I've made my way through the list once, I go through again with an eye toward who might have been left out, rightly or wrongly.

Below is my annual take on a select sample of the Tony nominations, with an eye toward what's right, what's wrong, who's going to win, and who deserves to win. I'm only going to comment on the awards that I actually care about, or have personal knowledge about. Since this blog is about musicals, and I didn't see many of the plays, I will only be commenting on awards that are musicals-related. And lighting, sound, and orchestrations are beyond my skill set. 

Click on the links in the show names below to read my original reviews. 

Best Musical

• Bring It On
• A Christmas Story
• Kinky Boots
• Matilda

Missing: Chaplin, Hands on a Hardbody, Motown, Scandalous
Deserves to Win: Matilda
Will Win: Matilda 
My Take: I can't help thinking of this as a deliberate slap in the face to both Hands on a Hardbody and Motown, although IMHO neither show really deserved the nomination. Then again, I don't think A Christmas Story did either. But I'm pretty happy with Matilda and Bring It On, both of which I enjoyed immensely. Kinky Boots didn't really rock my world. I'm thinking this year is going to be a Matilda sweep. At least I hope so.

Best Revival of a Musical

• Annie
• The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Pippin
• Cinderella

Missing: Jekyll & Hyde 
Deserves to Win: The Mystery of Edwin Drood 
Will Win: Pippin 
My Take: I saw Pippin at the ART in the fall, and I'll be seeing it again on Broadway tomorrow night. I didn't like it in Cambridge, but I'm open to the possibility that I might change my mind. I mean, the reaction to Pippin has been pretty off the charts, both from the critics and the public, although Ben Brantley was less than impressed. But I thought Drood was a terrific production of a show that admittedly isn't all that great.

Best Book of a Musical

• Joseph Robinette, A Christmas Story
• Harvey Fierstein, Kinky Boots
• Dennis Kelly, Matilda
  
• Douglas Carter Beane, Cinderella

Missing: Bring It On, Chaplin, Hands on a Hardbody, Motown, Scandalous
Deserves to Win: Matilda
Will Win: Matilda   
My Take: This one's tough, because the Tonys love Harvey, but I'm thinking this is gonna be a Matilda sweep. Both Fierstein and Beane turned out efforts this season that were heavy on jokes but short on real characterizations. So, Matilda FTW.

Best Original Score

• Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, A Christmas Story
• Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green, Hands on a Hardbody
• Cyndi Lauper, Kinky Boots
• Tim Minchin, Matilda
  

Missing: Bring It On, Chaplin, Hands on a Hardbody, Scandalous
Deserves to Win: Matilda
Will Win: Matilda
My Take: I have tremendous reservations with Tim Minchin's use of slant ryhme and poor scansion, but none of the other scores even comes close to the melodic invention and sheer sense of joy present in Matilda. As for A Christmas Story, I was much more impressed by the score Pasek and Paul turned out for Dogfight. I look forward to their future work, but I don't think this is their year.

Best Actor in a Musical

• Bertie Carvel, Matilda
  
• Santino Fontana, Cinderella
• Rob McClure, Chaplin
• Billy Porter, Kinky Boots
• Stark Sands, Kinky Boots

Missing: Anthony Warlow, Annie; Hunter Foster, Hands on a Hardbody; Brandon Victor Dixon, Motown; Matthew James Thomas, Pippin
Deserves to Win: Bertie Carvel
Will Win: Bertie Carvel
My Take: It's gonna be close between Carvel and Porter, but I'm thinking Carvel will benefit from the Matilda momentum. Stark Sands was dull in an underwritten role. Fontana was wonderfully sympathetic and warm as the Prince. And I'm thrilled that McClure got the nod for a dynamic performances that was really one of the only things that made Chaplin worth seeing. 

Best Actress in a Musical

• Stephanie J. Block, The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Carolee Carmello, Scandalous
• Valisia LeKae, Motown
  
• Patina Miller, Pippin
• Laura Osnes, Cinderella

Missing: Lilla Crawford, Annie; Chita Rivera, The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Deserves to Win: Laura Osnes
Will Win: Patina Miller
My Take: This one's tough, but I'm going to say Laura Osnes derserves it, but Miller will win. The Leading Player is a much flashier part than Cinderella, and the buzz this year is all about Pippin. LeKae is simply delightful as Diana Ross, but it's more an impersonation than a performance. I love me some SJB and some Carolee, but both shows have closed and Tony voters have short memories. (Oh, and how about that "special award" for the Matilda girls: Sophia Gennusa, Oona Laurence, Bailey Ryon and Milly Shapiro. Apparently the Tony nominating committee was trying to avoid another Billy Elliot debacle. "Oh, how could we choose one over the others? How could we break their itty-bitty hearts?" Also, how can voters really vote when in all probability they only saw one of these girls perform? Ergo, the end run around the voting process, saving everyone the tsouris.) 

Best Featured Actor in a Musical

• Charl Brown, Motown
  
• Keith Carradine, Hands on a Hardbody
• Will Chase, The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Gabriel Ebert, Matilda
  
• Terrence Mann, Pippin

Missing: Gregory Haney, Bring It On; George Hearn, Scandalous; Bryan Terrell Clark, Motown; Jim Norton, The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Deserves to Win: Will Chase
Will Win: Gabriel Ebert
My Take: Will Chase was as good as I've ever seen him as Jasper. A deliciously evil and mannered performance. But I'm going with momentum this year, and the two shows with momentum are Matilda and Pippin. Terrance Mann is sort of an institution in Broadway circles, so it's possible this could swing his way, but Ebert has a much more prominent and memorable role.

Best Featured Actress in a Musical

• Annaleigh Ashford, Kinky Boots
• Victoria Clark, Cinderella
• Andrea Martin, Pippin
• Keala Settle, Hands on a Hardbody
• Lauren Ward, Matilda
  

Missing: Katie Finneran, Annie; Lesli Margherita, Matilda; Jessie Mueller, The Mystery of Edwin Drood; Rachel Bay Jones, Pippin
Deserves to Win: Annaleigh Ashford
Will Win: Andrea Martin
My Take: This category may be the closest we have this year to a lock. I've always been a big fan of Annaleigh Ashford (particularly in Rent and Dogfight), but I really think it's Martin all the way. She's terrific (for the 10 minutes total that she's on stage), and the buzz has been completely in her favor even before the show played its first New York performance. Martin and Rachel Bay Jones were what really made Pippin worth watching, and I'm kind of bummed and surprised that Jones didn't get a nod. Honestly, I'd be fine with any of these fine performers winning this year. It was a great season for featured actresses.

Best Scenic Design of a Musical

• Rob Howell, Matilda
  
• Anna Louizos, The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Scott Pask, Pippin
• David Rockwell, Kinky Boots

Missing: Chaplin, Motown, Jekyll & Hyde, A Christmas Story, Scandalous, Annie
Deserves to Win: Matilda
Will Win: Matilda
My Take: The Matilda set is stunning. Just stunning. And the Tony voters love stunning. The set for Drood was impressive but conventional. The Pippin set wasn't nearly as ingenious as the Tony Walton original. And the Kinky Boots set is hideous. Hid. E. Ous. So add another to the Matilda sweep. 

Best Costume Design of a Musical

• Gregg Barnes, Kinky Boots
• Rob Howell, Matilda
  
• Dominique Lemieux, Pippin
• William Ivey Long, Cinderella

Missing: Hands on a Hardbody, Bring It On, A Christmas Story, Chaplin, Scandalous, Annie, Motown, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Jekyll & Hyde 
Deserves to Win: Matilda
Will Win: Kinky Boots
My Take: Here's one I'm willing to accede for Kinky Boots. The drag was fierce. But I'd rather Matilda got it, if only for the wonderfully creepy costume for Bertie Carvel's Miss Truchbull. Cinderella looked great but it was standard fairy tale fare. And the Pippin costumes were, from what I can recall, Tony Walton hand-me-downs.

Best Direction of a Musical

• Scott Ellis, The Mystery of Edwin Drood
• Jerry Mitchell, Kinky Boots
• Diane Paulus, Pippin
• Matthew Warchus, Matilda

Missing: Hands on a Hardbody, Bring It On, A Christmas Story, Chaplin, Scandalous, Annie, Motown, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Jekyll & Hyde
Deserves to Win: Matthew Warchus
Will Win: Matthew Warchus
My Take: Jerry Mitchell didn't direct Kinky Boots; he serves as traffic warden, and not a very good one. Paulus's new circus concept for Pippin was uninspired. Ellis took the dross of Drood and made it into a lively joy. But I think that, after the disaster that was Ghost, the Tony voters are glad to have the wonderful Matthew Warchus back in such fine form.

Best Choreography

• Andy Blankenbuehler, Bring It On
• Peter Darling, Matilda
• Jerry Mitchell, Kinky Boots
• Chet Walker, Pippin

Missing: Annie, Chaplin, A Christmas Story, Motown, Hands on a Hardbody, Scandalous, The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Deserves to Win: Matilda
Will Win: Matilda
My Take: This one is genuinely a tough call. I think the momentum could either lead to Pippin or Matilda, but I'm going with Matilda. Bring It On is long gone, and Mitchell's work on Kinky Boots is lively but pedestrian.

Review - Motown the Musical on Broadway

So, Motown: The Musical. OK, let's do this.

Yes, it's bad. But we knew that was going to be true. But the genuinely surprising thing about Motown is that it's not entirely disastrous. Sure, the show is the ultimate Broadway vanity project: it's essentially a love letter from Motown founder Berry Gordy to the person he seems to love the most: himself. And the dialog heaps one tepid cliché on top of another.

Here's the thing, though: the show is actually kind of fun, at least at times. A show this lazily conceived and poorly wrought simply shouldn't be as intermittently infectious, as periodically joyous as Motown actually is.

Part of the resistible charm of Motown lies in its rich catalog of songs. I was born at the very end of the Baby Boom, and while most of these songs were a little before my time, there's something in me that gets all warm and runny when I hear the opening chords of "I Hear a Symphony" or "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." Yes, folks, even I am susceptible to nostalgia.

Motown is staged at breakneck speed by director Charles Randolph-Wright, and in truth there are stretches of time when the frenetic pace almost makes you forget the lame dialogue and predictable plot developments. The brisk, dynamic choreography by Patricia Wilcox and Warren Adams adds a great deal to the sensory appeal of the show. The relentless momentum sputters out at the start of act two, but picks up considerably with the entrance of the Jackson Five at about the 9:30 mark.

Another huge asset here is the game and professional cast, led by Brandon Victor Dixon as Mr. Gordy himself, and the marvelous Valisia LeKae as Diana Ross. Also compelling are Bryan Terrell Clark as Marvin Gaye, and Charl Brown as Smokey Robinson. (Oh, and a special shout-out to a former student of mine, Nicholas Christopher, making his Broadway bow in the ensemble. You da man, Nick.)

As for the book, Motown is mostly fine when nobody is speaking. The narrative is never muddled, but it's also never deep. The dialogue is of the "Mr. Berry Gordy, you built a legacy of love" variety. After a prologue in which Gordy petulantly bemoans how most of the singers and groups that he made famous wound up leaving him for greener pastures, Smokey Robinson confronts him to remind him of the "dream" he started "twenty five years ago." Gordy responds, "My dream started long before that," and we travel back to a precocious young Gordy just getting his start. I almost expected the stage lighting to mimic that age-old TV screen ripple to signify the passage of time, or perhaps Wayne Campbell and Garth to enter from the wings, wave their hands, and spout "Doodle-oot, doodle-oot."

In Gordy's favor, there are some genuine attempts at making some of the Motown numbers at least somewhat contextual, for instance when Gordy and Diana Ross sing to each other "You're All I Need to Get By." In truth, the show is actually fine when it's just trying to be a catalog of hits. (I was, however, thankful that Motown didn't end with that most dreaded of modern jukebox-musical contrivances: the megamix.) It's when the book veers into facile social history that it becomes laughable. Need to represent the impact of the Vietnam War? How about a dance number to the Edwin Starr single "War"? The environmental activism of the '70s? Bring on Marvin Gaye and "Mercy Mercy Me."

Ultimately, though, the insurmountable obstacle here is Berry Gordy himself, who receives sole credit for the book, despite the presence of "script consultants" David Goldsmith and Dick Scanlan. I mean, is it even possible to write your own pre-mortem hagiography? The show doesn't really have much of a point of view, except "Here's what I built. Aren't I great?" Gordy unapologetically portrays himself as the misunderstood saint, the nice guy who only fights back when pushed. If Berry Gordy is guilty of anything, he seems to be saying, it's that he cared too much.

The unflagging devotion Berry feels for himself would be touching if it weren't so solipsistic. I'm no expert here, but I seem to recall that Gordy has a reputation for being rather ruthless and conniving as a businessman. As comedian John Mulaney says in his act, "You mean you're gonna give me a whole $100 for all of my songs? Where do I sign, Mr. Berry Gordy?" The only real attempt we get at balance is a scene in which Gordy first has sex with Diana Ross and he's unable to...rise to the challenge, shall we say?

It happens to the best of us, Berry.

 

Review - Here Lies Love at The Public Theater

Yeah, I don't get it.

I saw the new musical Here Lies Love recently at The Public Theater, and found it reasonably diverting, if shallow and repetitive. But the reviews were overwhelmingly positive, even ecstatic, and the show has been extended multiple times, most recently until June 30th.

Again, I don't get it.

I didn't have a chance to catch Here Lies Love last summer at its sold-out run at Mass MoCa, but I heard it was going to move to the Public, so I figured I'd wait until the New York run.

I had heard that the show had a score by David Byrne (formerly of The Talking Heads) and somebody named Fatboy Slim. (I figured with a name like that he would be a rapper, but it turns out he's a British DJ, musician, and producer. Go figure.) I had also heard that the show was about Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines, and that it was directed by one of the most in-demand directors today, Alex Timbers.

So, I was intrigued with, if not all that excited about, Here Lies Love. I had also heard that the show would feature immersive staging, in this case taking place in a Filipino dance club circa the 1970s. I'm not really a fan of immersive theater, so I was pleased to discover that there were a limited number of box seats, poised above the throng, one of which I was thankfully able to secure. I mean, I get the whole idea of setting it in a dance club: Imelda's life was to a great extent one big party, filled with celebrities, world leaders and the jet set from across the world. But that doesn't mean I have to spend 90 minutes bouncing up and down and being herded by a bunch of hired handlers. (My one regret here was not being able to hobnob with David Byrne, who was bopping around with the rest of crowd the night I saw the show.)

Here Lies Love really goes all out in providing what appears to be an authentic dance club experience, including multimedia projections, a spinning mirror ball, and a DJ spinning mad jams, or whatever, and the overall sensory experience is visceral and infectious. What the show fails to provide is a compelling narrative and believable characterizations. There are some genuinely stunning moments, particularly when the narrative progresses as far as the events surrounding Benigno Aquino and his tragic demise. But up to that point, it's mostly a by-the-numbers "simple country girl who has a dream" narrative that is far too reminiscent of Evita, and lacking in that show's compositional and storytelling flair.

The mostly sung-through show follows Imelda from her life as a young girl, through her beauty-pageant days, to her marriage to Ferdinand Marcos and years as First Lady. It makes for a fairly efficient history lesson, but it doesn't really give us a sense of who these people were, nor why they were motivated to do what they did. Apparently, Imelda dated Aquino when they were younger. When Aquino speaks out against the corruption and graft in the Marcos regime, he is thrown into prison. After he's been incarcerated for seven years, Imelda arranges for him to escape. Although we see bits of their earlier relationship, we don't really have a sense of why Imelda would allow this man to escape, especially when he is clearly either going to be dangerous to the regime or be killed in the process.

I wasn't really sure what to make of the Here Lies Love, mostly because the point of view wasn't clear. Is it meant to be satirical, or serious, or perhaps a bit of both? The show portrays some of Imelda's excesses, as well as hints of the human-rights abuses under Ferdinand and his autocratic rule, but I didn't come away knowing anything more than I did by watching the news in the 1980s, when the Marcoses were ousted from power.

The most effective part of the show, both in terms of the narrative flow and the immersive staging, was during and after the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, in which the hall full of dancing audience members suddenly becomes a funeral procession and a nation in mourning for the fallen Filipino hero. Here the show reveals what it could have been: a poignant and visceral document of a fascinating woman and the people around her at a pivotal moment in one country's history.

(One finale note, albeit a trivial one: a musical about Imelda Marcos and not a word about shoes? Clearly there were no gay men involved.)

Review - Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella on Broadway

I don't often get the chance to see Broadway shows twice. By the end of the season, I'm lucky if I have time to see things once. But I recently had the opportunity to see the current Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella very early in previews and again after it opened. This gave me a chance to see how much the show had changed during the preview process. (More on this later. In short, the changes were fairly significant.)

Why, of all shows, would I want to see Cinderella twice? In all honesty, I've never been a huge fan of the various versions of the R&H Cinderella. To me, they all seemed rather thin (e.g. the Julie Andrews and Leslie Ann Warren versions) or bloated (the Brandy/Whitney Houston version), but never particularly enchanting. The original songs, of course, are lovely, but the TV treatments have usually left me feeling I would have been better off listening to the soundtracks.

I was in New York one weekend and was having dinner with my friend Geoff and he was telling me about the Broadway Cinderella, which he had seen at one of the very first previews. He made it sound like the show needed a lot of work, and I became intrigued. Not just rubbernecking intrigued, but that was certainly part of it. I knew I would eventually be invited to see the show as a member of the Outer Critics Circle, but I had a rare night when I was in New York and didn't already have a show to see, so I sidled over to the Cinderella box office.

It turned out that the show was indeed in need of a good deal of work, particularly in pruning a rather bloated and busy second act, with disparate story elements struggling to come together. As you may know, the Broadway production sports a new book by Douglas Carter Beane, a man who's certainly proved himself as a playwright (The Little Dog Laughed, As Bees in Honey Drown), although his track record with musicals so far has been spotty (Xanadu = yay, Lysistrata Jones = boo).

I have heard many complaints about the liberties that Beane has taken with the story (making one of the stepsisters sympathetic, adding a subplot about a political upstart who wants to confront the Prince about the plight of the poor, eliminating the king and queen from the story, etc.). The changes didn't bother me. I mean, it's not as though the Cinderella story hasn't already changed considerably over time. The question is, does Beane do it well?

Well, sometimes. Beane manages to add some much-needed humor to the piece, although it sometimes crosses over into anachronistic snark. And, as I said, the show I saw in previews needed some paring down. The first time I saw it, the second act contained a significant subplot about an election for prime minister. Beane tried to weave this in with the whole trying-on-the-shoe thing, and the result was forced and confusing. The second act has since been cut to the point where the election is only really mentioned, not depicted.

The cuts were necessary, but the threads are showing. If you blink, you'll miss who actually wins the election. And the more expedient second act has apparently necessitated some lightning-fast costumes changes, as evidenced by the addition of some cheesy overlay costumes - Velcro numbers that barely conceal the costumes from the previous scene beneath - which many of the chorus members now wear during the finale.

What remains of the book is mostly workable, although there is some genuinely contrived business regarding a book that comes into Cinderella's possession during act one. In act two, the Fairy Godmother makes a big deal out of making sure Cinderella takes the book with her on her second trip to the palace. (Oh, yes, a book. That's exactly what an incipient princess needs to bring with her to a royal banquet. A book.) Upon Cinderella's arrival at the palace, there's some more forced business about the Prince suddenly remembering a chapter from the book that might just save the day. "Of course!" he cries. "Chapter two!" We never find out what's actually in chapter two, nor what the entire book is about for that matter, but I guess chapter two must have an election of some sort, because that's how the Prince suddenly gets the idea to hold the election.

To Beane's credit, he playfully points out some of the more ridiculous aspects of the original Cinderella story. At one point, Gabrielle asks Cinderella, "How did you ever dance in glass shoes?" I would love to have seen Beane more directly address the whole notion of the Prince insisting on trying the glass slipper on the foot of every young woman in the kingdom. I mean, why is it that the Prince isn't paying attention to something a bit more distinctive about these women, like, I don't know, their faces? Has he developed a sudden but temporary case of prosopagnosia?

The glorious Cinderella score has been supplemented here by some somewhat perfunctory R&H trunk songs. The first time I saw the show, there were six added numbers, including “I Have Loved and I've Learned” (a cut number from The Sound of Music, sung here by the stepmother and stepsisters) as well as “I Haven't Got a Worry in the World,” (a song R&H written for the short-lived play Happy Birthday, and sung here by the newly sympathetic stepsister, Gabrielle, and her activist beau Jean-Michel). These two numbers have since been cut from Cinderella, and rightly so.

Four additional trunk numbers have survived the preview cutting process. The Prince's first song is “Me, Who Am I?,” a number cut from Me and Juliet. The new Jean-Michel character sings the rabble-rousing “Now Is the Time,” a song cut from South Pacific. The Prince and Cinderella sing the plaintive “Loneliness of Evening,” also cut from South Pacific. And the Fairy Godmother sings “There's Music in You,” an R&H song from the movie "Main Street to Broadway." All these songs have a certain utility here, but none of them could be considered a newly discovered gem.

The post-preview version of Cinderella, at least for my money, comes closest to working of any of the various versions to the R&H Cinderella, although even this version is a bit diffuse. Production highlights include a sumptuous visual style, with sets by Anna Louizos and costumes by William Ivey Long. Long provides some especially clever pieces for the various transformations. Chief among the production's assets is the near-perfect casting, led by the always appealing Laura Osnes as Ella herself, an offbeat yet charming Santino Fontana as the Prince, and Tony winner Victoria Clark as an alternately dotty and delightful Fairy Godmother. (Oh, and a special shout-out to chorus member Kendal Hartse, one of my very first students at the Boston Conservatory. BoCo, represent!)

I get the sense that this Cinderella is going to be around for a while. At the first performance I attended, the Playbill was black-and-white. By the second performance, the Playbill had gone to full-color. That's usually a sign that a show has some cash in the coffers.

Review - Matilda the Musical on Broadway

I don't know how my fellow critics feel about this, but I find it much harder to write a rave than to write a pan. I guess that says something about me as a person, but I think it's also sort of endemic to the critical process, at least for me. When things are going wrong with a show, I have a much firmer sense of what to write about: two-dimensional characterizations, inconsistent plot developments, poorly integrated songs, etc.

In my criticism course at the Boston Conservatory, I usually pass out my review of The Book of Mormon as an example of what not to do in a review. I basically talk about the show without really ever talking about the show. No specifics, very little support. On the plus side, you can definitely tell how I felt about the show: it was great, and you should go. But that's more along the lines of consumer advocacy than genuine criticism.

I get the feeling that I'm going to have the same problem with Matilda, a blissful joy of a show that recently opened on Broadway after a smashing London debut, under the auspices of The Royal Shakespeare Company. The show isn't perfect, as I'll enumerate below. But it's a tremendously fun and engaging ride that has stronger stagecraft, finer performances, a bigger heart, and heartier laughs than any other musical that opened on Broadway this season.

I actually saw Matilda twice, once during previews and once shortly after it opened. During my first visit, I was sort of unmoved by the first act, although the second act really turned me around. I think my lack of response to the first half may have been partly because I couldn't understand the lyrics to many of the songs, and also because my seat on the far right of the orchestra was situated such that I couldn't see a lot of what was happening upstage center, where quite a few significant events take place.

The lyrics remain a liability for the show: it's rather difficult to understand them fresh in the theater, and I had listened to the London cast recording quite a few times prior to my first visit. Although composer/lyricist Tim Minchin is relatively new to musical theater, I've been aware of his comedy work for years. He's quirky, clever, and hilarious is his numerous comedy recordings. But his lyrics for Matilda are often too dense for immediate comprehension, particularly in the opening number, "Miracle," and the act one closer, "Bruce." Both times I saw the show, the only words I could figure out during the latter song were "Bruce" and its numerous rhyming words. Minchin also exhibits unfortunate tendencies toward errant scansion ("go fi-GURE") and slant rhyme ("miracle/umbilical"). And those two examples are just from the opening number.

And yet, the show is a joy. The same things that would turn me against a different show I was able to overlook, especially during my second visit to the show. I still couldn't understand all the lyrics, and the slant rhyme and poor scansion certainly hadn't disappeared. But I found myself transported by the story (Dennis Kelly has written the book, based on the classic novel by Roald Dahl), as well as the smart and sensitive direction from Matthew Warchus (acquitting himself more than adequately after the abomination that was Ghost). Adding to the sheer bliss of the production are Peter Darling's sharp, angular choreography, as well as the stunning scenic and costume design by Rob Howell. 

I get the feeling that Matilda would still be a delight even without the present cast, and yet they added immeasurably to my enjoyment. As you may know, there are four different girls who share the title role. (Raising the valid speculation that the quartet will indeed receive a joint Tony nomination, a la Billy Elliot. Saints preserve us.)

As chance would have it, I saw Milly Shapiro as Matilda both times. At first, Shapiro would seem an unlikely Broadway waif, with a face that seems virtually expressionless during performance. (That's her on the far right in the photo.) And yet, her stoic countenance really seemed to work perfectly for the part: neglected and put upon yet endlessly resourceful. She's not your typical uber-animated little belter. Her otherwise passive expression made the moments when Matilda suddenly responds to the kindness of her schoolteacher all the more heartrending. When I saw that I was going to see Milly again during my second visit, I was actually pretty excited. There's something thoroughly real and disarming about this talented little girl. 

Of course, the performer who's getting the most attention, and deservedly so, is Bertie Carvel executing a deliciously malevolent turn as Miss Trunchbull, the evil school-mistress. Carvel more than lives up to the expectation that comes with the Olivier Award he received for the same role in the London production. He plays the kind of role that you, by design, instantly hate, and yet you can't wait for Carvel to come back on-stage because he's just so delightfully nuanced and idiosyncratic.

The supporting cast are no less strong, including the heartwarming Lauren Ward as Miss Honey, Matilda's sympathetic, and pathetic, school teacher. Giving performances that (almost) rival Carvel's for sheer scene-stealing and scenery-chewing vivacity are Gabriel Ebert and Lesli Margherita as Matilda's callous, obnoxious parents. Because, here's the thing: Matilda is so full of joy that even the villains are oozing with and old-fashioned kind of showbiz charm.

It will be interesting to see whether Matilda can amass the kind of momentum that The Book of Mormon has, or whether the initial fervor will peter out, as it did for Billy Elliot. Clearly, I'm hoping it's closer to the former than to the latter.

Tribute - To the Victims of the Boston Marathon Bombing

Let dreamers dream what worlds they please;
Those Edens can't be found.
The sweetest flowers, the fairest trees
Are grown in solid ground.

We're neither pure nor wise nor good;
We'll do the best we know;
We'll build our house, and chop our wood,
And make our garden grow.

- Candide (1956)

Review - Kinky Boots on Broadway

I've been a bit disheartened of late by crowds going full-tilt bug-nutty during, and at the end of, shows that, at least from my perspective, are seriously deficient in quality. It happened when I saw Pippin at the ART. (And will by all accounts happen again when I see that production on Broadway in a few weeks.)

And it happened last week when I caught Kinky Boots shortly after its Broadway opening, upon which the show received strong, if not stellar, reviews. Count me among the uncoverted. There's no question that Kinky Boots has its bespangled heart in the right place. And there are some set pieces that are genuinely thrilling, most of which involve the delightful Billy Porter in what will likely become the role of a lifetime for him.

In fact, the only times when I felt Kinky Boots was working were when either Billy Porter or Annaleigh Ashford were on stage. (I likewise felt that Pippin only worked when either Andrea Martin or Rachel Bay Jones were involved.) Kinky Boots just wasn't holding me at all until Porter, as the resident drag queen and free spirit, made his first entrance, and suddenly I was in, albeit sporadically. Porter is a fiery wonder during his songs, particularly during his kick-ass 11 o'clock number, "Hold Me in Your Heart," although he had a strong tendency to overdo his line readings during his scenes. Ashford, as the unlikely and eventual love interest for the leading male character, was a spark of engaging, rich characterization in a show seriously lacking in same. Porter and Ashford almost make the Kinky Boots journey worth taking.

Almost.

There are three main culprits in the musical miasma that is Kinky Boots: librettist Harvey Fierstein, composer/lyricist Cyndi Lauper, and director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell. As you may know, if you've seen the 2005 film "Kinky Boots," the plot here involves a young English man who inherits a failing shoe company from his father. To save the company, he decides to make quality shoes for drag queens. An extremely promising setup, but one that Fierstein squanders with leaden exposition, surface emotion, and manufactured drama, although there are periodic flashes of the Fierstein wit. Characters appear, sing a big number that seems to be setting them up for a major role in the plot, and then disappear completely. (See Medda in Fierstein's Newsies.) Admittedly, there are also some very sweet, heartfelt moments along the way, particularly when drag queen Lola reveals her past, and her real name, to Charlie, our male lead.

Whereas act one of Kinky Boots is pedestrian, act two is downright preachy. I mean puh-reachy. At times it feels like there are more life lessons than sequin glimmers bursting from the stage. What's worse, the second act involves character choices that ultimately reveal that Fierstein hasn't really done his job of setting up who these people are so that we can understand the choices that they make. Charlie in particular is a cipher, with no discernible characteristics. Because we don't really know who he is, we're not really sure where, for instance, his anger is coming from. The normally remarkable Stark Sands is wasted here in a colorless role. Mitchell fails Sands here as well. In Charlie's big act-two solo, "The Soul of a Man," Sands is forced to make mindless rock-star gestures, like something left over from American Idiot, because Mitchell hasn't given him anything meaningful to do during the song.

I think the specific combination of Fierstein and Mitchell is an unfortunate one here. In the absence of a strong directorial hand, like that of Arthur Laurents (La Cage aux Folles) or John Doyle (A Catered Affair), there's no one on hand to give Fierstein focus, or to rein in his excesses. Mitchell is clearly not up to the task. After this and the equally scattered Legally Blonde, I can't say that I'm very big on Mitchell's prospects as a director/choreographer.

Cyndi Lauper's score comprises some rather dull, cliché-ridden ballads and a few moderately rousing uptempo songs. Lauper's rhyme schemes are either lazy (pairing "escape" with "case," and "hubris" with "excuses") or facile: "It's not just a factory, this is my family." It got to the point where, as soon as I heard the word "hero" at the end of one line, I knew "zero" would occur somewhere in the near future. I was actually waiting for the old "life/strife" chestnut, but fortunately that one never materialized. (Can Mayor Bloomberg, or Governor Cuomo, please pass a law that, before any further pop musicans decide that they automatically have the chops to write musical theater songs, that they have to pass a quality test or attend a BMI workshop? I'm only half-joking here.)

I can see the comments now from the Kinky Boots faithful: "Well, if the crowds were going wild, and the critics liked it, too, doesn't that mean that you're wrong?" No, it doesn't. It means that Kinky Boots didn't work for me, and I'm putting my observations out there as part of the larger conversation about the show. I'm sure than many people will disagree with me, and will thoroughly enjoy the show.

I didn't. It's as simple as that.

Review - Passion Revival at the Classic Stage Company

One of the hottest tickets in New York right now is the Classic Stage Company revival of Passion, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine. (The show has been extended through April 19th, although most of the remaining performances are sold out.)

As big of a Sondheim fan as I am, I've never really warmed up to Passion, and the current production didn't succeed in changing my mind about the show. Don't get me wrong, the CSC production is extremely professional. In fact, it's about as good a production of the show as we're ever likely to see, including the original Broadway production and televised concert version with Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone.

And yet, for me, the piece remains fundamentally flawed. Yes, the show has many sublime moments, mostly because of Sondheim's rich and cohesive score. I'm particularly fond of "Loving You," "Is This What You Call Love?," "I Read," and "I Wish I Could Forget You." These are gorgeous moments, full of melodic richness, nuance, and...well, passion. But a true appreciation of the show hinges on one key development, one that I have simply never bought in any of the show's incarnations. [SPOILERS BELOW] 

The director here is John Doyle, who crafts respectful, dynamic, and sensitive production, creating just the right atmosphere for the piece in terms of both the setting and the emotional feel of the show. One minor misstep on Doyle's part involved having the male ensemble members playing female roles by wrapping shawls around their heads and waists. It felt a tad ridiculous and inconsistent with the show's tone. 

The creators couldn't ask for a better cast for Passion, although I did see the show without Melissa Errico, owing to her extended absence from the show due to bronchitis. (Errico's illness has also necessitated a delay in the announced PS Classics recording of this production.) Standby Amy Justman made for a more-than-serviceable Clara in Errico's absence. The productions key assets are Ryan Silverman as Giorgio and Judy Kuhn as Fosca. Silverman has a golden voice, and his acting is a damn sight more convincing than that of original leading man Jere Shea. Kuhn broke my heart upon her very entrance, and she brings a far less harsh and considerably more sympathetic tone to Fosca than Donna Murphy did.

But Silverman and Kuhn are burdened by the central flaw of the show: two characters who fail to meet the authors' intentions. The main problem with the show is that Fosca isn't written as appealing enough to justify Giorgio's change of heart at the end. It's not that Fosca is physically unattractive, it's that she has few redeeming personal qualities beyond her propensity to evoke pity. She's selfish, unreasonable, and relentless. Yes, that's the point, I know. But I simply don't see anything in Fosca that would warrant Giorgio ultimately falling in love with her, or at least claiming that he has.

Likewise, the character of Giorgio feels like little more than a collection of surface characteristics, so it's difficult to discern at the end why he makes so many seemingly erratic decisions. Why, for instance, does Giorgio not tell the truth to the Colonel with respect to his relationship and intentions toward Fosca? Why the sudden stubbornness in a character that hasn't exhibited this characteristic throughout the rest of the show? Why does he turn down the transfer that comes through for him? Why does Clara's final letter prompt him to end their relationship? Why does he consent to actually having sex with Fosca?

Feel free to speculate as to answers for these questions in the comment area below. But my ultimate point is that the show, at least from where I sit, is ultimately frustrating because it doesn't make Giorgio's emotional journey clear enough to provide a satisfying conclusion. As I once heard Sondheim say in a live talk he gave at Harvard, musical-theater writers are allowed to challenge their audience members, but not baffle them.

I'm very sorry, Mr. Sondheim, but Passion baffles me. It always has and will very likely continue to do so.

Review - Hands on a Hardbody on Broadway

Who turns documentaries into musicals? Why, Doug Wright, that's who. In collaboration with Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, Wright transformed the the cult documentary Grey Gardens into an admittedly flawed but nonetheless heartrending musical. So it's certainly possible to find the human emotion and lyricism that a musical requires in the context of a documentary.

Unfortunately, Wright hasn't been nearly as successful in turning the 1997 film "Hands on a Hardbody" by S.R. Bindler into a compelling musical drama. The film tells the story of a group of people who enter a contest to win a pickup truck. All they have to do is put their hands on the truck and keep them there. The last one standing wins the truck.

How do you stage something that is, by definition, static? You put the truck on casters, or some sort of mechanism that allows the cast to move the car around the stage, which is what director Neil Pepe has done here. This allows for quite a wide range of physical arrangements, although from my seat in the far left of the front row, there were a lot of moments in the show that were blocked from my view.

But it's not the physical conceit that makes Hands on a Hardbody essentially motionless. It's the lack of fully-fledged characterizations and a score in which one number seems, with a few notable exceptions, indistinguishable from the next. The film apparently brings the struggles of these often-desperate contestants to vivid life. I haven't seen the film, but the musical Hands on a Hardbody would seem far less successful in that respect. The show is certainly never less than amiable, but it never quite crosses the line into engaging.

The score only periodically rises above the desultory nature of the book. The music here is by Amanda Green and Trey Anastasio, the latter of whom is from something called Phish, which I guess is a band. Green also wrote the lyrics. There's a genuinely rousing gospel number for one of the contestants who is a devoted Christian (Keala Settle). In additon, Hunter Foster, as the antihero who won the contest two years prior, gets a truly kick-ass 11 0'clock number called "God Answered My Prayers." Otherwise the songs seem to fade into the colorless, featureless billboard that serves as the show's sole backdrop.

Hands on a Hardbody doesn't have nearly the dynamism, nor the emotional pull, of other last-man-standing shows like A Chorus Line or The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. As I watched the show, it seemed that by the time I would up starting to care about one of the contestants, that person would soon be eliminated. And the character who winds up winning seemed to me to be the least interesting person on stage.

The show does feature a few genuinely moving moments, mostly because of the strong cast, including Foster and Settle, as well as Dale Soules and William Youmans. But their efforts are hampered by Wright's treatment of the characters as types: the redneck couple, the soldier with PTSD, the misunderstood Mexican, the two young people who predictably fall in love, the trampy mall queen who's secretly having it off with the manager of the dealership, etc. And yet it wasn't so much that the characters felt shallow as, based on what was there, I wasn't particularly interested in going any deeper.

For me, the real nail in the show's coffin was the finale, which quickly dissipated whatever emotional capital the show had accrued. The last number features a barrage of facile aphorisms that tipped the show over the edge from cloying into irritating: "If you want something, keep your hands on it." Um...that's it? This whole sad affair basically comes down to perseverance and the triumph of the human spirit? But wait, there's more: "Don't let go," "The contest goes on," "We're all on the truck," etc.

Spare me the bromides.

Kern & Hammerstein's Sunny - A Staged Reading

Dear Reader: My humblest apologies for my extended absence from the blogosphere. I've been caught up in teaching, and the semester has really gone into high gear. But one of the things that has been keeping me busy might be of interest to some of you. Here's the director's note from my staged reading this semester. The shows are Thursday April 4th at 8:15 pm and Saturday April 6th at 8 pm. If you're in the Boston area and are interested in attending, drop me a line. --C.C.

Welcome to Sunny.

This is the ninth in a series of staged readings that I launched in the fall of 2009 as part of my course in the history of musical theater at the Boston Conservatory. The idea behind the series was to expose students to historically significant but underperformed musicals as part of their overall introduction to, and immersion in, the musical-theater form. In the past four years, we’ve covered a wide range of important yet forgotten musicals, and along the way the students have been able to roll up their sleeves and delve into the respective genres that the shows represent.

Here are the shows from the series so far: Little Johnny Jones, Very Good Eddie, As Thousands Cheer, Allegro, Bloomer Girl, The Cradle Will Rock, Something for the Boys, A Connecticut Yankee, and now Sunny.

Because we performed A Connecticut Yankee in the fall, which gave us a glimpse of Rodgers before Hammerstein, I wanted to do something in the spring that represented Hammerstein before Rodgers. And I knew that the best show to do that would be Sunny (1925), Hammerstein’s first collaboration with composer Jerome Kern, shortly before they would work together on the ground-breaking show, Show Boat (1927). Beyond that historic match-up of talent, Sunny also represents a significant subgenre of 1920s musical comedy: the rags-to-riches Cinderella story.

Sunny came to Broadway in 1925, a time when musicals were fast, fun, and forgettable. Creators usually only labored on these shows for a few months, and were frequently working on more than one show at the same time. The economics of the time allowed for producers to make a profit with as few as 100 performances, and then shows would close and make way for the next disposable musical.

Sunny ran for 507 performances, which is astonishing, at least based on the criteria of the day. But then, the show pretty much disappeared like most every other musical from the 1920s, with the exception of Show Boat, Good News, and No, No, Nanette. And even these shows have only survived after major and continuous revisions.

The era of frivolous, frothy, ephemeral musicals was undeniably fun while it lasted, particularly for fans of madcap comedy and high-toned operetta. The same week that Sunny opened in New York, Broadway also saw the debuts of the aforementioned No, No, Nanette , Rodgers and Hart’s Dearest Enemy, and Rudolph Friml’s The Vagabond King. These shows joined the already-running  Rose-Marie (Friml, Hammerstein), The Student Prince (Romberg), The Cocoanuts (Irving Berlin, writing for The Marx Brothers) and Tip-Toes (The Gershwins).

Sunny itself represents a case study of sorts that illuminates how the typical show was cobbled together at the time. Frequently the shows were cast before they were written, and each of the stars would typically have his or her demands, putting the writers in the awkward position of trying to accommodate everybody and still have a workable show.

For example, the star of Sunny was the radiant Marilyn Miller, a major stage star at the time, and a favorite of Florenz Ziegfeld. Miller had scored a triumph five years earlier with Jerome Kern’s Sally (1920), and had since become Broadway’s little darling.  Legend has it that, after Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein played the score to Sunny for Miller, she replied, “Never mind that, honey, when do I get to do my tap specialty?” (Miller’s dance numbers were choreographed by a young vaudeville and stage performer named Fred Astaire. Whatever happened to him?)

Miller’s contract also called for her to appear in jodhpurs (aka riding pants) at some point in the show, even before anyone involved knew what the show was going to be about. Why? Because Miller thought she looked rather fetching in a riding habit. The authors obliged by inserting a fun but gratuitous fox-hunt scene, although admittedly the scene does bring about the show’s denouement. 

Even more ridiculous, another performer in Sunny, Cliff Edwards (who many of you may know as the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney’s “Pinocchio”) had a codicil in his contract guaranteeing that he would be alone on-stage between 10:00 and 10:15 p.m. performing his ukulele specialty. (In vaudeville, Edwards was also known as “Ukulele Ike.”) So, in the middle of act two, apropos of nothing whatsoever, Edwards would come on stage and sing “Paddlin’ Madeline Home,” which was written by Harry W. Woods rather than the Sunny team. When Edwards left the show, his bit was replaced by a harmonica specialty with Borrah Minevitch.

Somehow, the Sunny creators were able to fit everything together in workable, although uninspired, plot: an English circus performer, Sunny, encounters two American soldiers whom she befriended when she was entraining during World War I. She has fallen in love with Tom, one of the soldiers, so she stows away on the ocean liner that Tom and his friends are taking back home to America. When Sunny gets caught as a stowaway, she marries Tom’s best friend Jim for American citizenship so she won’t be deported.

And havoc ensues, as they say. In the American version of the show, Sunny divorces Jim and ends up with Tom at the end of the show. In other productions, she and Jim decide to stay with each other. (Which ending will we see tonight, I wonder…)

Sunny’s greatest and lasting significance lies in having brought about the first collaboration of Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. What’s more, the experienced Otto Harbach acted as a mentor to the fledgling Hammerstein, setting the standard for mentorship that Hammerstein would famously continue with Stephen Sondheim. In fact, Hammerstein became more than just a mentor to Sondheim. He became a sort of surrogate father. Sondheim would then continue the cycle with Jonathan Larsen, Jason Robert Brown and others. In a way, we have Otto Harbach to thank for setting this vital mentorship cycle into motion.

Kern and Hammerstein would continue to collaborate together over the years, both on full-scale Broadway productions (Sweet Adeline, The Cat and The Fiddle, Music in the Air, Very Warm for May) as well as songs for Hollywood and the hit parade (“I Won’t Dance,” “The Last Time I Saw Paris,” etc.). 

Hearing the lyrics to the songs for Sunny, one gets the impression of a very promising but still developing young lyricist in Oscar Hammerstein. (Of course, Harbach and Hammerstein collaborated on the lyrics, so it’s difficult to discern which words belong to which man.) Some of the songs feature scansion that is slightly off. The song “D’Ye Love Me” contains a line that goes “Do you promise to love me always?” with the emphasis on the second syllable of “always.” (Actually the original lyric features the archaic word “alway,” which we have changed here for the sake of clarity.)

Similarly, in “When We Get Our Divorce,” the lyric includes the phrase “interlocutory decree” (which is simply a temporary judgment from a court of law). The rhythm of the music has the singer stressing the word as “in-TER-low-cue-TOR-ee,” whereas the actual pronunciation would be more likely to be “in-ter-LOC-you-tor-ee.” There, is however, a rather clever trick rhyme in the song, paring “testify” with “best if I,”  which together with the above produces a portrait of an ambitious artist trying new things and finding his feet in the form that he would eventually revolutionize.

Yet, despite its flaws, Sunny is a delight. It’s all a bit silly, but it’s really rather fun. The show also contains some of Jerome Kern’s sprightly yet forgotten tunes, and gives us a glimpse not merely into the carefree, madcap lifestyle of the 1920s, but also into the way in which that lifestyle was reflected in the musicals of the time. We can also witness one of the masters of the form cutting his teeth and moving towards a brand of musical theater that would bring the form from mere entertainment to actual art.

In the 1920s, neither the fizzy musical comedies nor the foppish operettas had succeeded in providing relevant, credible drama beyond the admittedly appealing attributes of each genre. It would take Oscar Hammerstein, a man who had received his apprenticeship in both musical comedy and operetta, to fuse the two together and thereby create the modern, integrated musical play. 

Welcome. And please enjoy Sunny.

Review - Annie Revival on Broadway

A confession: I love Annie. Yes, it's sappy. Yes, the characters are two-dimensional. Yes, there are songs that serve no purpose except to cover a costume change. And yet it gives me joy. It was the first professional production of a musical that I ever saw, more than thirty years ago. A few years later, I played Daddy Warbucks in a local production of the show, skull cap and all. So pardon me if my critical faculties take a backseat to nostalgia just this once.

That doesn't mean, however, that I automatically adore any and all productions of Annie. No, it takes a certain kind of director and choreographer to make the show work. Unfortunately, James Lapine (director) and Andy Blankenbuehler (choreographer) weren't up to the job, at least as evidenced in the current Broadway revival at the Palace Theatre.

Lapine's direction certainly works during the show's heartfelt moments: that's really what Lapine excels at in general. I've honestly never seen a production of Annie that was this emotionally honest and touching. What's missing is the comedy. This may be the least funny Annie I've ever seen. Even two-time Tony winner Katie Finneran falls somewhat flat here, and she's as close to guaranteed comic gold as anyone we currently have working in the theater. Finneran was nothing less than hysterical in both Noises Off and Promises, Promises, the two shows for which she won those Tonys. But here she falls back on schtick and mannerisms to eke out what few laughs this production provides.

What's also missing from Lapine's direction is a sense of bringing the various parts of a big musical together. For this, Lapine seems to have abnegated too much of the staging work to Blankenbuehler. While I was watching the first act, I noted how lumbering and artificial the staging was for many of the numbers. I couldn't remember who the choreographer was, but at intermission when I checked my Playbill, it made perfect sense that it was Blankenbuehler. His recent work has made it all too obvious that he only really works well in the hip-hop style of In the Heights, The Wiz, or Bring It On. When he tries to craft more mainstream dance the results are either awkward or risible, as they were in 9 to 5, The People in the Picture, and now here with Annie.

Blankenbuehler doesn't seem to know what to do with old-fashioned musical comedy. His "It's a Hard Knock Life" was full of pointless business that upstaged the number's intent. "NYC" likewise was overly busy and lacked focus. And the title number was so clumsy and overly focused on intricate footwork, versus appealing stage pictures, that I thought perhaps my old friend Anthony van Laast had dropped in for a guest appearance. (And don't get me started on the tap-dancing criminals shuffling off to jail in the finale. Oy.) What's more, Blankenbuehler includes interludes of what appears to be interpretive dance during scene transitions, just as he did in The People in the Picture. And it's only slightly less laughable here.

The scenic design by David Korins comprises a series of fairly cheap-looking, flimsy set pieces that are already starting to show their wear. It looks as though the producers told Korins to design the show so that when this production closed they could take it right on the road. This was particularly evident in the Warbucks mansion, which is represented here by a sort of over-sized toddler's flip book. It made for an efficient way to walk Annie through the entire mansion in one broad sweep, but it also screamed "budget cuts."

The current cast members here are a bit of a mixed bag, although there are some genuinely strong standouts. Anthony Warlow as "Daddy" Warbucks is outstanding, with a strong voice and a commanding presence. When the part calls for bluster, he's got in in spades, but he can also turn on the charm and exude an appealing sense of warmth. In the supporting cast, we can usually count on Rooster and Lily for a little comic relief, but Clarke Thorell makes for an instantly forgettable Rooster, and J. Elaine Marcos is utterly incomprehensible as Lily. As for Lilla Crawford as Annie, she's got the pipes all right, but her New Yawk accent was forced and distracting. I got the sense that Lilla was only doing what her vocal coach told her to do, but the result is jarring and artificial: "Tsoo-morraow, tsoo-morroaw, I love youse, tsoo-morraow..." (O.K., the "youse" is an exaggeration. But you get the point.)

The revival includes some fairly minor changes to the book by Thomas Meehan, changes that Meehan himself contributed. There's a new newsreel prologue, setting the time as the Great Depression, 1933. They've cut a few of the comic bits, including the groaner about Warbucks buying the Mona Lisa and putting it in the bathroom. There's a neat new tag for act one that includes some mini reprises: a hopeful "Maybe" for Annie, and a rueful "You Won't Be and Orphan for Long" for Warbucks. The moment is staged with Grace Farrell, Warbucks' secretary, looking on lovingly between them, and it's a touching way to end the act. Thankfully there's no new number from composer Charles Strouse and lyricist Martin Charnin. I mean no disrespect, but this never seems to work out in these classic revivals. (See "Topsy-Turvy" from Fiddler on the Roof.)

Despite the current lackluster production, I still maintain that Annie is a solid show. It's sort of the opposite of the case with the current revival of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. With Drood, the show doesn't really work, and yet the production does. With Annie, the show works, but the production, for the most part, doesn't.

Review - The Servant of Two Masters at Boston's Paramount Theater

One of my favorite theatrical experiences last season was One Man, Two Guvnors, a British import that rollicked at the good old Music Box Theatre for 159 performances, three at which I was in giddy attendance. So when I heard that Arts Emerson in Boston would be hosting a touring production of The Servant of Two Masters (Carlo Goldoni, 1743), upon which One Man, Two Guvnors is lovingly based, I knew that I had to take it in. 

I had never had the occasion to see The Servant of Two Masters before, and it turns out One Man, Two Guvnors is extremely faithful to its source, in terms of the story, the characters, and the raucous, ribald feel of the proceedings. I'm happy to report that I had every bit as much of a grand old time at The Servant of Two Masters as I did at its British progenitor. 

Of course, both Servant and Guvnors owe their genesis to the commedia dell'arte tradition, the Italian theatrical form dating back to the 16th century. As in commedia, Servant follows the framework of a story, with certain set comic bits, or lazzi, but much of the action and dialogue is improvised. There are also familiar character types: Pantalone, the miserly merchant; Arlecchino, or Harlequin, the mischievous servant; Columbina, Arlecchino's lusty love interest; Il Dottore, the blustery pedant, etc.

It's easy to see how commedia dell'arte was able to flourish for some many years -- nearly two centuries -- especially if the original commedia were this outlandishly funny. This particular production of Servant was full of fresh characterizations, high-energy staging, and a delicious sense of bawdy, ribald goings on that were the hallmark of commedia. It was sometimes rather difficult to tell which parts were improvised and what was scripted. So much of the show seemed to be so tightly choreographed that it seems rather unlikely it was extemporized. 

But there were also numerous topical bits and local references that seemed rather clearly devised for the Boston run of the show. Some of these were a bit forced, like the reference to one character doing his doctoral dissertation on Make Way For Ducklings. Others are spot-on and appear to directly reflect the fact that the production originated at the Yale Repertory Theater. At one point Truffaldino, the Harlequin character, starts to sing a snatch of a song from The Music Man, and Pantalone stops him. "We're not doing a musical here," he says. "This isn't the ART, you know." Zing. At another point, during a bondage-and-discipline reference, one of the characters suggests that their safe word should be "Pippin." Again, zing.  

If this production of Servant does have a flaw, it's that the first half goes on about 15 minutes longer than it ideally would. The business becomes a bit repetitive, occasionally bordering on tiresome. Fortunately, the second half gets right down to the business of bringing the complicated plot to a satisfying resolution. Along the way, we're treated to a considerable number of musical interludes, including a gorgeous female trio and a full-blown opera scene.   

The director here is Christopher Bayes, who served as movement director for the Broadway production of The 39 Steps. Bayes and his cast create a world that is fresh, vibrant, and lovingly stylized. Standouts among the cast include Allen Gilmore in the Pantalone role, who has a superb sense of heightened physicality and crack comic timing.

Of course, this production really belongs to Steven Epp in the central role of Truffaldino, the Harlequin character who sets the show in comic motion by attempting to double his salary by serving the two titular masters. Epp is a comic marvel and a very appealing and sympathetic presence on stage. The fine performances from both of these gentlemen are even more remarkable considering both Pantalone and Arlecchino traditionally perform in masks. That both men were able to exude such a strong sense of character, when most of their faces are covered, is a testament to the talent and training of both. 

The Servant to Two Masters plays at Boston's Paramount Theater through next Sunday, February 10th. If you're in Boston and are looking for a rollicking good time at the theater, by all means make haste to the theater district and see some masters of the comic, the titular, and the titillating sort. 

Two final notes. This was my first time attending a show in Boston's recently restored Paramount Theater. I have to say I'm glad that we have this former vaudeville theater up and running again, but the theater looks better in pictures online than it does in person. I mean, there are nice touches in the auditorium, but you can really see the economies in the construction, including the rather twee and flat wall frescoes.

Also, you may recall that this production, while it was playing the Guthrie Theater, offered patrons the chance to sit in "Tweet Seats," in which they were encouraged to use their smart phones to their hearts' content. I'm exceedingly glad that Arts Emerson did not replicate this policy, and resolutely refuse to patronize any theater that does. Theater is a chance to become fully immersed in another world. There's quite enough in the theater these days to take me out of the moment: people chatting constantly with their neighbors, rustling through bags looking for the snacks they brought, chewing their gum with their mouths wide open, checking the scores for the big game on their phones, etc. I don't care if the Tweeters are in a different section. I'm against any such policy on principle. Turn off your goddamn phones and watch the goddamn show. 

Here endeth the diatribe. 

Review - Bare the Musical Off-Broadway

Last week, the Off-Broadway production of the musical Bare announced that it would be closing this coming weekend after 21 previews and 65 regular performances. I wish I could say I was either disappointed or surprised, but I'm genuinely neither. (I am empathically disappointed for Boston Conservatory graduate Michael Tacconi, who is making his Off-Broadway debut in this production, but I'm confident that Mike will be going on to bigger and better things.)

Since its debut in 2000, Bare has been one of those musicals that just keeps entering the periphery of my radar. The show has developed a huge fanboy and fangirl factor, despite its relatively short New York run, not unlike the cult followings that The Last Five Years or Andrew Lippa's The Wild Party have developed over the years.

But Bare has seemed to transcend even those shows in its ability to make certain musical-theater fans go all gooey in the knees. The show went on to generate a lot of regional productions, so you certainly can't blame the creators for deciding to take another crack at the show, this time with up-and-coming director Stafford Arima.

Well, for me, Bare didn't work before and it certainly doesn't work now, despite extensive revisions. (The show has a book by Jon Hartmere, Jr. and Damon Intrabartolo, with lyrics by Hartmere and music by Intrabartolo. The new production features additional songs by Lynne Shankel and Jon Hartmere.) It's interesting that the last show that I saw that was directed by Stafford Arima was Carrie, another angsty teen tragedy with lame attempts at levity. To be fair, though, Carrie has higher highs and lower lows. Bare has always been more temperate in its mediocrity, coming off as a sort of preachy morality play cum after-school special.

It's funny, because Bare actually starts out pretty strong, at least in its current form. At the beginning of the show, the characterizations have a certain richness. The dialog sounds honest, and the relationships are complex. The songs have a hard-driving, melodic appeal, and the lyrics have a truthful feel to them and aren't self-conscious or forced, at least not at first. Act one does feature one significant misstep, when a sassy gospel-singing Virgin Mary appears to one of the leads after he eats cookies laced with marijuana. You could practically hear the book creaking under the strain of the forced comic relief.

Again, Bare starts out reasonably strong. But when the primary motor of the plot kicks in, the show descends into trite melodrama, despite some genuinely moving moments along the way. Bare is essentially about two boys at a Catholic boarding school who fall in love. One of the boys is a popular jock type, and he has significant challenges accepting himself as gay.

But what starts as a believably complex scenario with three-dimensional characters becomes a maudlin pity fest. The characters become characteristics. The lyrics become cliches ("You came and kissed my broken heart"). The scansion gets lazy ("ho-PING," "get-TING") and the syntax becomes reversed ("in you, God was very pleased"). It's almost as though the creators were focusing so hard on getting the first half of the show right that they weren't quite noticing that the rest of the show wasn't going to fix itself.

The current cast of Bare features some talented and promising performers, including Taylor Trensch as Peter, the more...er...sensitive of the central pair of lovers. Trensch has an appealing vulnerable quality, although he did exhibit a tendency to come off as whiny when the stakes were high. Jason Hite as Peter's jock boyfriend, Jason, seems like a talented young man, but the material here forces him to do too much surface emoting and screlting for his characterization to be truly effective.

Again, Bare closes this coming weekend. If you didn't get a chance to catch the show in New York, don't worry. If the show's history is any indication, you should be seeing it sometime soon at an ambitious but misguided theater near you.

The Worst Musicals of 2012

Bad theater is a gift. I genuinely believe that. I know plenty of people who only go to see shows that they're already pretty sure they're going to like, or that have received strong reviews. I suppose that makes sense. But I make it a point to see every new musical and revival that opens on Broadway, and as many Off-Broadway musicals as my schedule will allow. And when you see a lot of theater, you see a lot of bad theater. That's just the way it goes. As I've said many times, quality is always the exception.

So where's the gift part? Well, I firmly believe that you need to see what's bad in order to fully appreciate what's good. So seeing bad shows helps to maximize your enjoyment of truly great shows. That's a gift, right? Sure, sometimes I get a bit testy when I'm sitting through some godawful mess of a production, but I usually just remind myself that there have always been fewer great shows than mediocre-to-bad shows. And there always will be. Sure, there used to be more musicals in general, back in the '40s and '50s, because the economics of putting on shows was very different back then. But more shows means more crap. As a percentage, great musicals are always in the vast minority.

For me, whenever I see a bad musical, I see the experience as becoming part of my continuing education in musical theater. And let's just say that 2012 gave me ample opportunity to grow in this respect, but that's really no different from what happens in any other year. (Oh, and lest you think I'm dwelling on the negative, check out my my list of the Best Musicals of 2012.) To read my reviews, click on the names of the shows listed below. 

10. Lysistrata Jones. Technically, I saw Lysistrata Jones in 2011, but I didn't include it on my 2011 Worst Musicals list because I had plenty of other candidates to write about. I include it on this year's list, partly because the show did technically play on Broadway in 2012 (albeit very briefly) and also because, the more I think about it, the more I see Lysistrata Jones as just plain bad. The book by Douglas Carter Beane is full of more one-liners than character-based humor. Beane also renders the anti-war message of Aristophanes' original Lysistrata utterly meaningless. And the score, by Beane's life partner Lewis Flinn, was just one unmemorable pop song after another. The production featured an appealing cast of fresh faces, including Patti Murin in the title role and Josh Segarra as her boyfriend. Director/choreographer Dan Knechtges created some very impressive and character-appropriate dances for the show. But, of course, those aren't the sort of things that make a show last beyond its Broadway run. I'm having a hard time seeing Lysistrata Jones catching on in regional theaters.

9. End of the Rainbow. OK, so, not technically a musical, I know. But I figured that, if I was going to include One Man, Two Guvnors on my list of the Best, I would be justified in slamming End of the Rainbow as one of the Worst. The only real reason to see End of the Rainbow was to witness Tracie Bennett's admittedly impressive, if not entirely accurate, impersonation of Judy Garland. (Although, Michael Cumpsty also had some fine moments as Garland's put-upon accompanist.) As for the play itself, by one Peter Quilter, End of the Rainbow was simply a straightforward, by-the-numbers representation of the events surrounding Garland's disastrous final concerts in London. There was no real point of view or artistry in Quilter's writing, and very little in director Terry Johnson's presentation of the play that was interesting or exciting. If you're interested in the waning years of Garland's career, you're better off watching the DVDs of "The Judy Garland Show" and reading Get Happy, Gerald Clarke's detailed and fascinating Garland biography.

8. Into the Woods. I think the Public Theater's production of Into the Woods last summer at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park was a victim of my high expectations. Word from London was strong regarding the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre production, which directors Timothy Sheader and Liam Steel were recreating for the Public run. The cast just seemed to get more and more exciting as the announcements kept coming: Donna Murphy as The Witch; Denis O'Hare as the Baker; Jessie Mueller as Cinderella; Oscar-nominee Amy Adams as the Baker's Wife. Yowza. But the production just fell flat. The emotional subtext of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's powerful show seemed to get lost in the enormous, multilevel set, and most of the actors seemed distracted by all the running around that the set required. A few of the lesser known cast members gave memorable performances, including Sarah Stiles as Little Red Riding Hood, Gideon Glick as Jack, and Ivan Hernandez as Cinderella's Prince/The Wolf. Once the reviews came out, few were surprised that the initial talk of a Broadway transfer quickly fizzled out.

7. Chaplin. I wanted to like Chaplin. Honestly I did. The show came out of the New York Musical Theater Festival, of which I'm a big fan. The cast featured some of my favorite theater performers, including Jenn Colella, Christiane Noll, and Erin Mackey, and the supremely talented Rob McClure in the title role. The show had impressive costume design by Amy Clark and Martin Pakledinaz, and scenic design by Beowulf Boritt. But, alas, the piece itself didn't come close to capturing the magic of Charlie Chaplin. The main problems were an instantly forgettable score by Christopher Curtis and over-reaching and rushed book by Curtis and Thomas Meehan. There was only so much that normally reliable director/choreographer Warren Carlyle could do with the uninspired material. Chaplin as a musical was unfortunately was as antiquated as silent film itself.

6. Something's Afoot. Here's another one that sort of pains me to include on this list. I'm an ardent supporter of the Goodspeed Opera House. I've not only seen many of their shows over the years, I'll also be attending their annual Festival of New Artists this weekend, which will be my third time attending this event. They not only put on top-notch productions of historic shows, they also actively cultivate new works, and give lots of young performers their first chance to break into the business. But, for some reason I can't quite comprehend, the good folks at the Goodspeed decided to dredge up and present Something's Afoot as part of their most recent season. Now, Something's Afoot is one of the many shows that Goodspeed has helped shepherd along the way to a New York run. It played the Goodspeed in 1973, and went on to an abbreviated Broadway run in 1976. But it's bad. Very bad. The book is as creaky as the staircase in the gloomy mansion that serves as the show's setting. And the songs are tuneless, formless, and generic. I remain a fervent fan of the Goodspeed, and look forward to attending their production for many seasons to come. As long as they don't include Something's Afoot.

5. Carrie. Carrie? Bad? The devil you say. Yeah, well, go figure. One of the most legendary bad musicals of all time got a complete makeover and turned out to be...a bad musical. For years, Carrie, based on the novel by Stephen King, has stood as sort of a low watermark for musical-theater dreck. And, for years, the authors have been thinking that their show got a bad rap the first time around. So Lawrence D. Cohen (librettist), Dean Pitchford (lyricist) and Michael Gore (composer) teamed up with the MCC Theater and director Stafford Arima to the give the old girl another go. But here's the thing: they removed the stuff that made the show legendary in the first place, the hilariously miscalculated stuff that made the original Carrie so-bad-it-was-good. And they replaced it with treacle, new numbers so earnest that they were eye-rollingly dull. But, at the heart of Carrie remain a handful of songs that are genuinely strong -- "And Eve Was Weak," "I Remember How Those Boys Could Dance," and "When There's No One" --  and the second time around those songs were just as out-of-place as they were the first time. The production did provide some top-notch performers a chance to shine, including the marvelous Marin Mazzie, and collectors finally got a professional cast recording to suuplement their...er...shall we say "private" recordings of the original.

4. How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (with Nick Jonas). What a difference a lead makes. When I saw the recent revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying with Daniel Radcliffe, I was charmed. (Read my review). But when I went back to catch the show again with Nick Jonas in the lead, the production seemed to have fallen apart. Apparently, director Rob Ashford had moved on to other projects, because the production had gotten really sloppy. Significant members of the original cast had taken their performances and made them broad beyond reason in an apparent attempt to curry cheap laughter from the audience of Jonas Brothers groupies and tourists. And the new cast members -- Mr. Jonas and Hollywood veteran Beau Bridges -- seemed to be leading the way, mugging up a storm, pushing for laughs, and abandoning all sense of moderation and dramatic integrity. Thankfully, the production closed shortly thereafter, sparing us all the indignity of witnessing Joey Fatone or Jonathan Knight running the production further into the ground.

 3. Evita. When I saw Michael Grandage's revival of Evita in London, I genuinely enjoyed the production, and was very eager to see the show when it transferred to Broadway. Elena Roger was a veritable spitfire in the title role, and I was hoping to see her again. (Read my review of the London production.) However, I mistakenly bought a ticket for a show in which Roger's New York alternate, Christine DiCicco, played the role. Something definitely got lost in the import process, because the New York production was lifeless, despite the admittedly eye-pleasing presence of Ricky Martin in the role of Che. But Martin just smiled inanely throughout the entire show, seemingly oblivious to the meaning of the words he was singing, and the rest of the production lacked the vibrancy of the London staging. I thought perhaps it might have been the absence of Elena Roger that made the difference, but I'm told that the show played pretty much the same even when Roger was in it. The show has been playing to pretty strong houses based on Ricky Martin's presence, but the producers have opted to close the show rather than attempt to replace Martin. Again, one shudders to think of who they might have replaced Martin with, but it seems doubtful that anyone short of Mandy Patinkin himself could have raised this production out of the doldrums.

2. Scandalous. If only Scandalous had lived up to its name, it might have been at least somewhat entertaining. But it wasn't. Dear Lord, it wasn't. Other than the presence of Carolee Carmello and George Hearn in the cast, Scandalous had practically nothing going for it. First, it's hard to imagine that a musical about evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson would have any drawing power. I mean, does anyone under the age of seventy five know who she is? Sure, one of the authors has some name recognition: Kathie Lee Gifford, who wrote the book and the lyrics. (The music was by David Pomeranz and David Friedman.) But Kathie Lee's fame wasn't sufficient to draw enough people to the theater to keep the show afloat. And the show itself was an amateurish mishmash of leaden dialog, inconsistent characterizations, and bland gospel anthems. After I published my review of the show, a reader contacted me accusing me of being overly harsh on the show because of its religious subject matter. Trust me, the subject matter had nothing to do with my reaction: the show itself was mortal sin enough.

1. Ghost. And then there's Ghost, a show that reflected everything wrong with modern musical theater: an over-reliance on technical production values; an under-reliance on quality songwriting and storytelling; the presence of pop-music dilettantes who assumed that writing popular songs is the same as writing cohesive musical theater scores; cast members forced to belt fortissimo over the over-amplified orchestra. Thankfully, Ghost didn't last very long, and didn't win any awards, which gives me hope that producers will think twice the next time they underestimate the ticket-buying public by bringing in another seemingly pre-sold brand name (here, the 1990 film "Ghost") with a high-profile but inexperienced writing team (Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame, record producer Glen Ballard, and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin), and hire an otherwise talented director (Tony-Award winner Matthew Warchus) for the thankless task of making it all work. Warchus will hopefully bounce back with the upcoming Broadway bow of Matilda. But I get the feeling that Ghost isn't going to stop producers from scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes to turning safe-but-tired Hollywood properties into Broadway musicals. (See Flashdance.)

Review - Pippin at the A.R.T. in Cambridge, Mass.

In the arts-criticism course that I teach at the Boston Conservatory, one of the DVDs that I've had my students watch almost every semester is Pippin. This isn't because I necessarily like the show, but rather because it's a relatively easy starting point for my students and their developing critical sensibilities. Many of my students are musical-theater majors, and Pippin usually gives them plenty to think about in terms of what's worth praising and what's worth criticizing in a musical production.

And the verdict by consensus from all of those reviews over the years -- and I'm inclined to agree -- is that Pippin is, at least in its initial incarnation, a triumph of style over substance. The show has some really strong and memorable songs ("Corner of the Sky," "Magic to Do"), but it also has some really dull ones ("Extraordinary," "Love Song"). Plus, the book represents this muddled sort of bildungsroman that seems to be about...I don't know, the meaning of life? The meaninglessness of life? The importance of not falling prey to the ministrations of a traveling group of performers and their charismatic leader?

Pippin's original director and choreographer, Bob Fosse, seemed to understand that the show itself was no great shakes, so he set about reshaping it with his own vision, despite the objections of composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz and librettist Roger O. Hirson. Fosse even famously banned Schwartz and Hirson from rehearsals to keep them from meddling. Pippin hasn't been back to Broadway since that original run, possibly because people were afraid to tamper with Fosse's vision, or perhaps thought that the show wouldn't work without the Fosse flair.

Enter Diane Paulus at the American Repertory Theater, a director who has demonstrated repeatedly (see Hair, Porgy and Bess) that she's not intimidated by the iconic status of certain productions or by audience expectations. Paulus starts by getting rid of the commedia dell'arte trappings of the original production. (Although the show includes a very clever nod to Tony Walton and his original logo for the show.) Instead, we have the rather unoriginal device of the circus tent and a band of acrobats to emphasize the notion that this is a tale that the players travel the country with, looking to tempt potential Pippins into their fold. To achieve her own vision of the piece, Paulus has teamed up with Gypsy Snider of the Montreal-based acrobatics troupe Les 7 Doigts de la Main (creators of the much-extended Off-Broadway hit Traces). 

For the most part, I found the acrobatics more of a self-conscious distraction than an additive production value, and the gleeful reaction of the crowd around me the night I saw the show seemed to emphasize this. I mean, we're talking about one number that's meant to depict thousands of people being senselessly slaughtered by the forces of Charlemagne ("Glory"), and people were bursting into spontaneous applause breaks over the admittedly impressive physical feats that were nonetheless upstaging the intent of the number. This was also apparent during "Simple Joys," a song with a lyric that I've never really been able to figure out:

Wouldn't you rather be a left-handed flea
A crab on a slab at the bottom of the sea
Than a man who never learns how to be free
Not 'til he's underground

Yeah, I get that the Leading Player is trying to get Pippin to agree to "star" in the players' nefarious show, but what do fleas and crabs have to do with anything? And the staging here for the number only adds to the confusion, with acrobats bouncing on large green balls, jumping through hoops, doing back-flips, etc. So that's what the simple joys are, huh? Rolling around on all those balls at the gym?    

The choreography for this Pippin is by Chet Walker, working "in the style of" Bob Fosse. Part of me thinks it was a mistake to retain this constant reminder that this production is based on someone else's vision, but to Walker's credit, he manages to put his own imprimatur on many of the numbers, and he's certainly not slavish to Fosse. The opening song, "Magic to Do," for instance, is staged here without the iconic white hands seemingly floating in space. The only segment that's a complete reproduction is the famed "Manson Trio," although the genders are reversed: a female Leading Player (Patina Miller) and two male back-up dancers. Also, I loved how Walker included a loving nod to Fosse in staging the orgy scene with obvious references to the dance from "Take Off With Us" from Fosse's movie "All That Jazz."

The cast here are decidedly mixed, although I must admit that, having watched that DVD of Pippin so many times, I'm a bit spoiled by the intensity and showmanship of Ben Vereen and Chita Rivera. Patina Miller lacked the captivating presence and sinister subtext of Ben Vereen, although she did occasionally find ways to make the part her own. Charlotte d'Amboise as Fastrada was breathless and flat when singing, and her dancing lacked Chita's sharp angularity. Matthew James Thomas as Pippin couldn't seem to hold my attention or inspire my sympathy, although that might be partly because of all the distracting activity in this production. But even when he was alone onstage, his presence was mostly rather bland, although there were some times when his gawkish awkwardness made him almost real.

On the sort-of plus side, we have Terrence Mann as Charlemagne. Mann found lots of small ways to make the part believably pompous and doddering, although his diction was extremely poor during his songs. I don't think I understood a single word of "War Is a Science," and then Paulus makes the mistake of speeding up the final verse to make it a patter song, which only compounded the issue, clouded over the point of the song, and buried Schwartz's erudite lyric.

The two key reasons to see this production are Andrea Martin as Berthe and Rachel Bay Jones as Catherine. Yes, Catherine. How many times do you see Pippin and have Catherine be the one who stands out? Catherine is usually as thankless a role as Hope Harcourt in Anything Goes or Sarah Brown in Guys and Dolls, but Jones brings the part a certain goofball charm and a strong sense of vulnerability. One of the highlights of act two was "I Guess I'll Miss the Man," a song that's often a throwaway, or even cut entirely (as it was from the DVD).  

And Andrea Martin is simply a force of nature, in everything she does really, but in particular here. She's the best thing in the whole show, and delivers her one and only song ("No Time at All") with enough focus, clarity, and professionalism to lift the first act out of its doldrums and propel the show toward the newly inserted intermission (after "Morning Glow"). Suddenly, I was transported, but Martin's performance only served to underscore what was missing from the rest of the production: focus and honesty. Thankfully, Rachel Bay Jones served this same function in the second act, but for me it wasn't enough. 

Full disclosure: I seem to be the only person in Christendom who didn't like this production. Most of my friends who have seen Pippin at the A.R.T. were thoroughly charmed, even amazed, and the local reviews have been strong. The show announced that it was transferring to Broadway even before the reviews came out, and the entire run at the A.R.T. is almost completely sold out. What can I say? The show doesn't quite work for me, and never really has, and Diane Paulus's production wasn't able to change my mind.

The Best Musicals of 2012

When I was in eighth grade, our class produced a little mimeographed yearbook, of which I was the editor. The yearbook contained individual student profiles, essays about class trips, a class song, and a whole bunch of other yearbook-type items. Each student profile contained a line item for the student to announce his or her future career plans, and another line for a "class prediction" of what job the student would actually end up in. At the time, I thought I was going to become a doctor, specifically a psychiatrist. (Interpret that as you will.) But my classmates predicted that I would become a critic, "because Chris is never satisfied with anything." (Kinda harsh, huh? Well, eighth graders aren't known for their tact, now are they?)

Well, I've been thinking about that prediction lately, not just because it actually came true. I think a more positive spin on the notion that I'm supposedly "never satisfied" is that I have high standards. At the Boston Conservatory, where I teach, I'm known as a tough grader. And I suppose I'm pretty hard to please as a critic as well. I don't necessarily go into shows with my arms figuratively crossed, demanding nothing less than to be blown away. It's just that I've been developing a certain aesthetic regarding musical theater for many years, and I apply that aesthetic to every production that I see. Sometimes I genuinely am blown away, but most of the time I am not, but that's to be expected. As I say to my students all the time, quality is always the exception.

Anyway, all of this is by way of introduction to my annual list of the best musical productions that I've seen in a particular calendar year. It might come as a surprise to some people (my eighth-grade classmates in particular) that, yes, every once in a while, I do see productions that I appreciate, enjoy, and sometimes am even blown away by. And here's proof: ten productions from 2012 that could even please me, the guy who's "never satisfied." Of course, I'll be following up later with my list of the ten Worst Musicals of 2012, but I wanted to post this list first as a sort of preemptive strike. Click on the show names below to read my original reviews of the shows in question. 

10. Murder Ballad. Here's a perfect example of a show that, while not perfect, had enough going for it that it tipped the scales for me in the positive direction, and I wound up enjoying myself immensely. Murder Ballad is a classic love triangle that (as it says on the tin) ends rather badly, but along the way we're treated to an entertaining mix of sentiment and snark. The show is by Julia Jordan and Juliana Nash, and I'm looking forward to seeing future work by this promising pair. Of course, much of the appeal of Murder Ballad, which played an extended engagement at the Manhattan Theatre Club's new Studio at Stage II this past fall, lay in its superlative cast: John Ellison Conlee, Rebecca Naomi Jones, 
Karen Olivo, and Will Swenson. But I get the sense that Murder Ballad is going to catch on on its own merit with regional theaters and colleges, particularly after the upcoming release of the show's  cast recording.

9. Porgy and Bess. As you probably recall, Porgy and Bess had a rather bumpy road to Broadway last season. After Stephen Sondheim's excoriating letter to the New York Times, and Ben Brantley's less-than-stellar review of the show's pre-Broadway run at the A.R.T., it was looking as though the show might not make it to New York. At issue were the efforts of director Diane Paulus and adapter Suzan-Lori Parks to "streamline" and "modernize" the show. Purists balked, but I found the show a huge improvement over previous productions of the show. There were a few times when I found the trimming to be a bit too aggressive, but overall I found the production thrilling. Much of this came from the central performance by Audra McDonald, for which she deservedly won her fifth Tony Award. (Although I do have to say that, the first time I saw the new Forbidden Broadway, it included a number called "A Diva is a Sometime Thing," poking fun of Audra's numerous and extended absences from the show. It was one of the funniest things in the show, but the number wasn't there the second time I saw FB, and it isn't included on the new CD either. Could it be that Gerard Alessandrini is starting to pull punches in his latter years?)

8. Without You. I always like to include some shows that I didn't see in New York on this list, and one of the best things I saw last year was in my hometown. Anthony Rapp brought his one-man show Without You to Boston early last summer, in anticipation of runs in London and Edinburgh, and the show was intimate, disarming, and extremely moving. As you may know, Rapp originated the role of Mark in Rent, and Without You tells the parallel stories of Rapp being a part of that production and experiencing the premature death of Jonathan Larson, as well as Rapp's own struggles with the passing of his mother. Without You mixes songs from Rent with original material by Rapp and his collaborators. Under the direction of Steve Maler of Boston's own Commonwealth Shakespeare Company, Rapp takes what could have been a maudlin exercise in self-pity and turns it into a sweet remembrance of a powerful and formative time in his life. (If you didn't get a chance to catch the show live, PS Classics recently released a recording of the show.)

7. Closer Than Ever. The venerable York Theatre Company provided a welcome respite from the overblown spectacles of Broadway by reviving Closer Than Ever, the intimate and knowing Off-Broadway revue by songwriting team of Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire. The show featured some updated material, but the real reasons that the production was a must-see were the two female performers, Jenn Colella and Christiane Noll, as well as the brisk and sensitive direction from Mr. Maltby himself. I think I also responded to the show because the material seemed so much more meaningful to me in 2012 than when the show first came out. A lot of the songs are about adjusting to aging process, and, well, let's just say I'm a bit closer to the ages at which Maltby and Shire wrote this material than I was in 1989. Anyway, I'm certainly looking forward to the show's upcoming cast recording from Jay Records.

6. One Man, Two Guvnors. OK, yeah, this one wasn't technically a musical. But, hey, it did have more songs that many musicals do, and even produced a cast recording to prove it. Whatever it was, One Man, Two Guvnors was easily one of the most enjoyable productions I saw last year, play or musical, and for that reason alone I decided to include it on this list. In fact, I had such a grand old time, I went back twice again to revel in the sheer joy of this gleefully ridiculous production. (The third time, I brought my brother and niece. We had just been to the Carnegie Deli for dinner and had half of a brisket sandwich with us. If you've seen the play, you know where this is headed.) One Man, Two Guvnors is by Richard Bean, and is a modern reworking of Carlo Goldoni's classic Servant of Two Masters, but the real attraction here was the expert cast of British hams, led by Tony winner James Corden, ably abetted by Jemima Rooper, Oliver Chris, and Suzie Toase. Add in the expert direction from Nicholas Hytner, and you have one of the most ridiculously entertaining nights in the theater to hit Broadway in many a season.

5. Dogfight. Song-writing team Justin Paul and Benj Pasek made their Broadway debut this season with the holiday run of A Christmas Story. I was not among the many people who enjoyed that production. In fact, I would much rather have seen Pasek and Paul make their Broadway bow with Dogfight, which played Off-Broadway at the Second Stage Theatre last summer. Admittedly, Pasek and Paul had some wonderful moments in their score to A Christmas Story, including some warm and intimate character numbers for the mother. But they were able to sustain that intimacy and depth of characterization throughout most of the score to Dogfight, particularly for the female lead character, Rose, played with heart-breaking subtlety by the wonderful Lindsay Mendez. Director Joe Mantello re-affirmed here his grip on crafting solid ensemble work and nuanced individual performances, after floundering over the past few seasons on mindless musical comedies and farce. I'm hoping to see some future life for Dogfight, if only in the form aof a cast recording, which to this date has not been announced.

 4. Anything Goes (starring Stephanie J. Block). Last year, I had the chance to revisit the two Broadway musical revivals from the previous season, and it was a genuine study in contrasts. Whereas How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was coming apart at the seams with Nick Jonas at the helm (watch for my list of the Worst Musicals of 2012), over at the Stephen Sondheim Theater, Anything Goes was going full guns, despite the departure of Tony winner Sutton Foster. In fact, although I had certainly enjoyed Anything Goes the first time I saw, my second viewing was one of pure joy. Somehow the Roundabout Theatre Company's revival, featuring the strong direction and fluid choreography of the redoubtable Kathleen Marshall, seemed even more sure-footed and ebullient with Stephanie J. Block. as Reno Sweeney. Unfortunately, the show closed shortly thereafter, but I was gratified to have experienced first-hand a long-running production that had gotten even better with age.

3. Carousel (Goodspeed Opera House). I'm a big fan of the Goodspeed Opera House, and last year I was fortunate in starting to cover the Goodspeed for TheaterMania. The folks at the Goodspeed always put on top-drawer productions. (Even, as we will see in my Worst Musicals of 2012 list, the shows themselves aren't always of the highest caliber.) With Carousel, the Goodspeed took on the challenge of taking a classic Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein show that's often big on production values and making it work on the Goodspeed's admittedly diminutive stage. Just as they did last season with Show Boat, the Goodspeed found ingenious ways of making Carousel work in their space, and even made an asset out of that potential liability by bringing the action closer to the audience and rendering the grand sweep of the show on a compellingly intimate scale. The cast was also a huge part of the show's success, particularly James Snyder as Billy Bigelow and Teal Wicks as Julie Jordan.

2. Bring It On. Yeah, I'm surprised, too. First, for even having Bring It On on my Best Musicals of 2012 list, and second, for ranking it so high. Make no mistake: Bring It On is fluff, but but it's extremely well executed fluff, with a smart and funny book by Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q) and a variegated score by composer Tom Kitt (Next to Normal), composer/lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda (In the Heights) and lyricist Amanda Green. Bring It On is really nothing more than "Who's gonna win the big cheerleader competition?," but hey, what's wrong with that? Along the way, we meet some genuinely likable performers (led by the adorable Taylor Louderman), witness some heart-stopping cheerleader routines, and watch choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler (who also directed) back in his pop-and-lock element at last, after some unfortunate miss-fires. (See 9 to 5, featuring pale white men in three-piece suits grooving to the hip-hop beat. Oy.) I'm fully expecting to see Bring It On catch on with high-school and college theater groups, and I'm all for that. (Although it will be interesting to see how they handle the transgender teen.)

1. Once. There are so many wonderful reasons why Once makes the top of my list this year. First of all, it's a really good show, and probably would have topped the list no matter what else had occurred. But then it went on to sweep the Tony Awards, over the crowd-pleasing Newsies, And now, it's already made back its initial investment and continues to sell really strongly. And what makes it all so gratifying is that it's such a small show: cast of 12 people, no orchestra, unit set, simple costumes. It warms my heart to think that small show like this can become a Broadway hit. Maybe this will make producers think twice about the new overblown, overproduced movie adaptation. If the show is good, people will come no matter how elaborate the sets and costumes are. Much credit here goes to director John Tiffany and choreographer Steven Hoggett for creating a seamless flow between scenes and for letting the truth of the characters speak for itself. Then, of course, there's the haunting score by Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová. And at the center, we have the nuanced and heart-wrenching performances from Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti, all of which coalesce to make Once the most heart-warming smash-hit in more than a decade.

HONORABLE MENTION: Leap of Faith. OK, I couldn't very well end this list without making one last plug for a show that I genuinely think got a bad rap. Go ahead and think less me based on my affection for Leap of Faith, but when I saw the show I was disarmed by the level of genuine characterization, the meaningful integration of the score, and the strength with which the cast members seemed to believe in the story of these appealing, yet flawed, individuals. Unfortunately, Leap of Faith wound up being the biggest financial flop in a season replete with same. Lost in the rubble were an intelligent book by Janus Cercone and Warren Leight, a rousing set of songs from composer Alan Menken and lyricist Glenn Slater, and two genuinely strong yet layered performances from Raul Esparza and Jessica Phillips. All will of course land on their feet, and in the meantime we have the cast recording to remind those of us who enjoyed the show of how much genuinely solid work went into it, and to give those of us who didn't see the show a chance to experienced what they missed.

Review - Murder Ballad at the MTC Off-Broadway

Dear Reader: With this post, I've finally caught up on my blogging backlog. I've still got some posts in the pipeline (including my Best and Worst Musicals of 2012, as well as my review of Pippin at the A.R.T.), but with the current review, I'm at least caught up on shows I saw in 2012. Of course, Murder Ballad ended its run at the Manhattan Theatre Club's new Studio at Stage II on December 16th, but I'm publishing this review in anticipation of future productions of the show, as well the its upcoming cast recording. -C.C.

I like to think that I'm pretty up-to-date on upcoming musicals and what's playing where in New York City. But I have to confess that the new musical Murder Ballad kinda flew beneath my radar. It wasn't until I got a text from my friend Geoff praising the show that I even had heard about it. (I can get rather myopic once the semester gets underway at the Boston Conservatory, where I teach full-time.)

In retrospect, I can't imagine how I could not have known about Murder Ballad, if only based on the outstanding cast of theater notables: John Ellison Conlee, Rebecca Naomi Jones, 
Karen Olivo, and Will Swenson. To many theater insiders, these names are gold, and rightly so. Of course, the names of the Murder Ballad writers are somewhat less well-known: Julia Jordan (book and lyrics) and Juliana Nash (music and lyrics), but based on their eminently solid work here, I get the feeling we're going to be hearing a lot more from Jordan and Nash.

Murder Ballad features your classic love triangle: two men and one woman. The show begins with a promise: by the end of the show, one of these characters will be dead, presumably at the hand of one of the others. The rest of the show keeps you genuinely guessing as to who's going to fall, and by whose hand. Along the way, we meet three compelling and flawed main characters, plus a sardonic narrator (Rebecca Naomi Jones).

Director Trip Cullman coaxes layered, credible performances out of his four-person cast, who are outstanding, to a person. Karen Olivo and Will Swenson emit sparks galore (I mean, duh) as a fiery, passionate couple that meet and break up, only to feel to the ineluctable pull of desire years later. The Olivo character has since settled down with a stable, sensitive, intelligent provider (the suitably low-key, yet enormously sympathetic Conlee), and the two now have a small child. An accidental encounter sets the tragic pas de trois in motion. I certainly won't reveal the ending, but I will say that I genuinely didn't see it coming, and that the authors make the denouement dramatically gratifying.

Jordan and Nash craft the show with a satisfying mix of snark and sentiment. Along the way, we're treated to some genuinely deft lyrics, that are at times chiastic ("losing is easy, winning is hard"), at other times aphoristic ("Some get all, some nothing, but everyone wants more"). Yes, there are some poorly turned phrases and clichés along the way, but as I sat watching the show, I found myself listening eagerly for the next apt turn of phrase. The appealing music has a sort of modern rock sensibility, but with melodies that often lead in interesting, unexpected directions. The authors also make liberal use of leitmotif to call back to early moments in the show (such as when the Olivo and Swenson characters first meet), or to stand in for an off-stage character (most notably, the central couple's small child.) 

Cullman's staging takes full advantage of the black-box nature of the MTC new Stage II. The setting feels like an underground, East Village divey bar, complete with fully operational bar (call it the Once effect), a pool table, and a small stage area for the band. At the start of the show, the cast floats in with the audience members. Throughout the show, the cast intermingle with the audience members seated at cabaret tables. Yes, atmospheric productions are hardly new, but Cullman's dynamic approach to environmental theater created a compelling fusion of the material, cast, and audience experience.

I get the sense that Murder Ballad is one of those pieces that's really going to catch on in small regional theaters and in colleges. The piece seems strong enough to stand on its own merit, although admittedly the original cast would be very difficult to live up to, let alone surpass.

One final note: I saw Murder Ballad at a 5 p.m. performance on a Saturday. I would love to see more Off-Broadway theaters do 5 p.m. matinees rather than 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. Of course, this is for purely selfish reasons: if there were more 5 p.m. shows, I could see three shows on a Saturday, and then still have time to catch an 11 p.m. cabaret show at 54 Below.

Problem? What problem?

Review - Giant at the Public Theater Off-Broadway

[Dear reader: The musical Giant played an extended run at the Public Theater from October 26th to December 16th, 2012. I saw the show twice, once in previews and once after it opened. Then I got caught up in the end of the semester at the Boston Conservatory, and blogging took a backseat to grading. Although Giant has closed, I'm publishing this belated review in anticipation of any future productions of the show, as well as the upcoming cast recording. --C.C.]

Periodically, I will see a show and have a negative reaction to it, only to discover that, when the reviews come out, my views on the show are at significant odds with the critical consensus. Now, I'm perfectly fine being the cheese that stands alone, but depending on the particular critical voices involved, I may decide to give the show a second chance.

This happened last year with A Minister's Wife, a show that left me cold upon first viewing. But some of my critical mentors and colleagues were far more positive about the show in their reviews, and these were people whose opinions I respect greatly. So I saw A Minister's Wife again, and developed a significant fondness for the show upon seeing it a second time. The cast recording has since become one of my favorites, and the score just keeps getting richer every time I listen to it.

Well, darned if something sort of similar didn't happen with Giant, the new Michael John LaChiusa musical that just finished an extended run at The Public Theater. The musical is based on the Edna Ferber novel of the same name (which was also made into the 1956 motion picture starring Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean.) I've never been much of a fan of LaChiusa. I generally find his shows intellectually admirable but sorely lacking in genuine human feeling. (Queen of the Mist being only the most recent example.)

I was encouraged when I heard that LaChiusa was working with a separate librettist on Giant, namely Sybille Pearson. (LaChiusa normally writes his own libretti.) Pearson did an admirable job on Baby, making what could have been a series of character types into sympathetic people. I thought perhaps that LaChiusa's artistic ambitions combined with Pearson's human touch might finally make for a LaChiusa musical that I could genuinely enjoy rather than merely admire.

Well, the first time I saw Giant, the show felt like your typical LaChiusa musical: too much ambition, not enough heart. It seemed as though LaChiusa and Pearson were trying to tell too much of the story from the original novel, and as a result the characters felt thin, the story attenuated. By the time I had a chance to start caring about a particular character, the book would introduce what seemed like an entirely new set of people, and the process would begin again. I left the theater resolved to write a review that essentially said that LaChiusa had failed me yet again.

Then the reviews came out, and I found that I was in a fairly significant minority in this respect. Many of my critical colleagues saw tremendous merit in Giant (including Terry Teachout, Steven Suskin, and Andy Propst), one of them even calling it a "masterpiece." Plus, my friend Geoff, one of my favorite people whom I've had the pleasure of meeting through my blogging experience, and whose opinion I also greatly prize, was similarly rhapsodic about the show.

So, I saw Giant again, a couple of weeks later, just to see if maybe I was missing something. However, I did not experience a change of heart about the show. I saw more to admire in terms of the craft, but I didn't become enamored of any of these people on stage, nor did I particularly care about their trials and travails. I did find myself with a greater appreciation of what LaChiusa and Pearson were trying to do with the show, but I was never transported, nor even fully diverted.

Giant covers a lot of chronological territory: from 1925 to 1952. The story involves a Texas ranch owner who impetuously marries an Eastern girl who has trouble fitting into his world. The rest of the show follows 27 years of their marriage, during which time the rancher feels pressure from various angles to allow oil companies to drill on his his land. There's also a significant subplot regarding racism toward the Mexicans that work and live on the ranch.

Clearly, Giant has Show Boat ambitions, which seems fitting, as Show Boat is also based on an Edna Ferber novel. But whereas Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern found ways of making the people real and the sweeping story comprehensible, LaChiusa and Pearson haven't achieved either. Apparently, the authors had major challenges getting the show down to three hours. (It was four hours in previous incarnations). But there are still too many characters, too many story lines, and not enough palpable human emotion.

Along the way, we're subjected to some rather stilted, purple dialog. At one point Bick (Brian d'Arcy James), the head rancher, says to Leslie, his soon-to-be wife (Kate Baldwin), "There's a stillness about you like the stillness in the Rockies." I mean, who talks like that? It's possible that line came straight from the book, but that doesn't mean it sounds realistic on stage. Later, during a moment of conflict, we hear the following interchange between the two:

Leslie: That is an unreachable horizon. I've never seen such emptiness.

Bick: That's genuine freedom out there.

Again, not exactly a free-flowing, natural interchange. And later in the show, one of the characters spouts the following line: "The easier things get, the harder it is to be a good steward to the land." Yeesh.

Again, all of this may have come from Ferber, but as I say numerous times to my students, accuracy to one's source is neither desirable nor necessary. My Fair Lady changed George Bernard Shaw. West Side Story changed Shakespeare. What matters is what's right for the piece at hand, and too often, the dialog to Giant sounds like something out of a dime novel or a spaghetti western. Perhaps director Michael Greif could have infused the show with a bit more life, but the production as a whole felt like a series of static stage pictures and vistas rather than credible human interactions.

As for LaChiusa's score, I have to say that it seemed a lot more tuneful and purposeful the second time around, not unlike what happens with your typical Sondheim score. The show starts with a rather generic opening number: "Did Spring Come to Texas?" Yes, the song serves a purpose: it both establishes time and place and reveals character, specifically that of Bick. But really all we learn about Bick here is that he loves Texas. Later, Bick sings "Heartbreak Country," in which we're supposed to understand that Bick's love for his land has been causing the tension between him and his new wife, but it really felt more like a manufactured complication. (I mean, can't he love both his land and his wife? What's the big deal here?)

LaChiusa has more success later in the show crafting character numbers, particularly those for Bick's Uncle Bawley, played here with tremendous heart and passion by John Dossett. Bawley helps Bick reach two important epiphanies over the course of the show, and LaChiusa and Dossett came together to create two of the most moving and memorable moments in Giant: "Look Back/Look Ahead" and "A Place in the World."

What's more, LaChiusa sporadically reveals himself as a deft descendant of Rodgers and Hammerstein in crafting a "Soliloquy"-like number for Bick at the top of act two, and an ambitious musical confrontation scene between Bick and Leslie for the 11 o'clock position in the show. Both numbers show the promise of what Giant could have been, or perhaps could be some day, if the level of characterization and complexity of human emotion that both of these sequences evince could be sustained throughout the show.

The cast, for me, was a bit spotty. Brian d'Arcy James was rather stiff as Bick, and his line delivery felt forced, as if somehow through sheer vocal projection he was going to make his character epic. The lovely Kate Baldwin is still in fine, crystalline voice, and both times I saw the show, she exhibited laser-sharp acting choices. Michelle Pawk as Bick's sister, Luz, gave a disappointingly one-note performance, spewing each line as though she were aiming for a spittoon. As I also mentioned, John Dossett was far more effective here than when I last saw him on stage in...yeesh...Mamma Mia. And, to give you a sense of how over-populated Giant is with characters, how often does the wonderful Bobby Steggert get lost in the crowd? This is hardly Steggart's fault: his character (Bick and Leslie's son) is woefully underwritten. But, I ask you, to cast Bobby Steggart in a musical and then only give him a fraction of a song at the very end of the show? Criminal.

So, I'm genuinely glad that I gave Giant another chance, even if my second viewing only reaffirmed my resolve. Michael John LaChiusa remains for me a composer/lyricist of irreproachable ambition, and I genuinely look forward to the day when I see a show of his that matches that ambition with the execution that his ideas deserve.