Reviews - Spring Broadway Play Roundup

Regular readers of my blog will likely know two things about me: 1) In selecting shows to see, I tend to stick to the musicals. 2) I teach full-time, and toward the end of each semester, I tend to get behind on my blogging.

However, there were many compelling choices with respect to non-musicals this season in New York, and I was fortunate enough to catch a handful of them in between musicals. Also fortunate, at least from my perspective, is the fact that most of these plays featured a healthy dose of music, to the point where two of these plays even received Tony nominations for Best Score. (Although this also represents a telling comment on the quality of the scores of the actual musicals this season. Leap of Faith, Ghost, Lysistrata Jones, and Spider-Man all failed to receive nominations for their scores.)

So, in this post, I'm playing a little blogging catch-up, while at the same time acknowledging the musical nature of many of this season's non-musicals. Here's my take on four new plays on Broadway, in descending order of preference.

I had so much fun at One Man, Two Guvnors that I went back a second time. Of course, I'm an inveterate Anglophile, weaned on Monty Python, Blackadder, Absolutely Fabulous and the like. So, I went in predisposed to the sort of smart, off-the-wall lunacy that's peculiar to the Brits. Fortunately, One Man, Two Guvnors delivered in spades. The play, by Richard Bean, is based on the 1753 Carlo Goldoni classic Servant of Two Masters, which is in turn based on the commedia dell'arte tradition. But that makes the play sound a whole lot more high-toned than it really is. Make no mistake: this is base humor. Slapstick, pratfalls, bodily functions. There's really not much to it besides having a good time, but what a good time it is. The cast is led by world-class clown James Corden, whom some might recall as the hefty boy from both the stage and movie versions of The History Boys. But the entire cast is genuinely outstanding -- particularly Jemima Rooper, Oliver Chris, and Suzie Toase -- bringing arch characterization and spot-on comic timing to a rollicking ride of a play. At the helm is director Nicholas Hytner, demonstrating a sure hand with the farcical proceedings, and interspersing the scenes with authentic-sounding and thematically resonant 1960s pop songs (by Grant Olding) from an infectiously chipper on-stage skiffle band. On the whole, highly recommended.

Unlike the other three entries in this post, Other Desert Cities doesn't really have a significant musical component. What it does have is a crackling script from Jon Robin Baitz and a tight ensemble of expert performers, particularly Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach, and Judith Light. The play concerns a fictional married couple who were once part of the Reagans' inner circle, as well as the grown-up children of that married couple. The daughter, played by Rachel Griffiths when I saw the show, has written a tell-all memoir about a very dark time in the family's past, and she's come home for Christmas to break the news and deal with the fallout. Other Desert Cities is a compelling hybrid of a show: the presentation is thoroughly old-fashioned, with its unit set and realistic time structure. But the subject matter feels modern, even forward-looking, in terms of the dynamic between conservative and liberal thought, and the search for something beyond mere ideologies. Also, it's a pleasure to see director Joe Mantello return to form with a solid, sure-handed production after his numerous recent missteps (9 to 5, Pal Joey, The Ritz).

Last year's Tony winner for Best Play, War Horse, was a triumph of stagecraft over substance. Don't get me wrong: the stagecraft in War Horse is simply stunning. But the play itself is a potboiler tear-jerker about a boy and his horse. When the Stephen Spielberg movie came out, some people wondered whether the story would work without the puppets. Well, Peter and the Starcatcher has people wondering something very similar as Disney, which owns the property, has recently announced a movie version. Will the story work without the stagecraft? To be fair, Rick Elice's script for Starcatcher seems a lot smarter, or at least a lot more smart-ass, than the one for War Horse. But the main attractions for the show are the fresh and energetic cast members, ably led by Christian Borle, Adam Chanler-Berat, and Celia Keenan-Bolger, as well as the ingenious staging from co-directors Alex Timbers and Roger Rees. It's easy to see the hand of both Timbers and Rees on the production. Timbers directed Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and there's a very similar self-conscious theatricality to Peter and the Starcatcher. And Rees appears to have remembered much of his experience as the lead in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, as he brings a very similar theatrical resourcefulness to his work here. For instance, much of the staging here comes from the deft manipulation of a series of ropes, leaving the rest to the audience's imagination. So, don't wait for the film. What makes Starcatcher worth seeing is all about what's on-stage.

A play about the last days of Judy Garland? I ask you, as a self-respecting gay man of a certain age, how could I not see End of the Rainbow? I was genuinely hesitant, however. Having dutifully read "Get Happy" and other books about Judy's tortured life and career, I knew that Judy's last days were anything but pretty. But I had heard so many wonderful things about Tracie Bennett as Judy that I figured it was worth a shot. Well, Bennett indeed lives up to the hype. Her portrayal of Judy is uncanny: layered, complex, sympathetic, infuriating. It's really a remarkable achievement that crosses over from mere mimicry into embodiment. But then there's the play itself, by one Peter Quilter, which really has no merit beyond providing Bennett with a vehicle for her bravura performance. It's a shame, because there's so much dramatic possibility inherent in the story: Judy is holed up in an upscale London hotel -- with her soon-to-be husband number five, Mickey Deans -- for a series of comeback concerts. She's a nervous wreck, and she can't seem to shake her dependency on drugs and alcohol. But Quilter does little more than set up the scenario, introduce the characters, and give them superficial things to say. So, if you go, go for the performance, not to be challenged or enlightened.

Comments

[Blake Z]

I, for one, am really glad that you are back to regular blogging. It gives me some nice, intellectual reading to do.

Keep it up!

[timothy]

Yeah. I echo what Blake Z says. I come here for the musical reviews, but I really like reading your reviews of non-musicals too. I really want to see Other Desert Cities. Wish I had time and money to get to NY this summer...Alas...

[David Pearce]

Hi Chris,
Not really a comment but a review of the World Premiere of AN Officer & A Gentleman in Sydney, Australia.
Don't remember much about the film of AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN except that Richard Gere gets the girl in the end.
The musical opens up with a scene in Manilla where our 12 year old orphan hero Zach Mayo as a kid goes to stay with his armed services father (Bartholomew John). The father is always out at the girly bars, so we have an opening number similar to "The Heat Is On In Saigon" from Miss Saigon but nowhere near as good. (In fact I went out at interval humming "The Heat Is On In Saigon" to myself. Bartholomew John plays the father pretty well. Of course we have to have a song from the young Zach, a very forgettable song. Then we move forward several years and Zach, now played by Ben Mingay gets out of bed in Manilla, he is on one side of the bed. two Manilla girls are in the middle and the father is on the other side. Our hero has no shirt on (he takes it off whenever things get sluggish plotwise) and next thing we are back in the USA at the Navy training camp. and being yelled at FULL METAL JACKET style by Sergeant Foley (Bert Labonte - very good in a rather cliched role).
Before I go on - a word about the set. There is a large curving metal staircase in the middle of the stage. It leads up to a couple of platforms and another steel staircase at the back. It is a cold very unromantic set.
Now we get to the romance. Zach meets up with local girl Paula Pokrifki (Amanda Harrison) and the doomed pair of Navy pal Sid Worley (Alex Rathgeber) and local tart Lynette Pomeroy (Kate Kendall) start their romance. It all goes on and on and on as the curving metal staircase revolves and revolves and revolves. I was getting giddy from all of this. Every now and then we stopped for a rather lacklustre song and two dance numbers. But overall it was a bit sad. Ben Mingay, straignt from JERSEY BOYS, has a great voice. Just a pity he did not have any good songs to sing apart from the song from the film, Up Where We Belong, that comes right at the end.
There is a lot of sex and topless nudity, plus some usual smutty banter from the enlisted men. But for all of its attempts to be "gritty", they are afraid to use the F word. Have we become more conservative since HAIR?
I must say I agree with the poor reviews the show has received.
Book by Douglas Day Stewart (who wrote the film) and Sgarleen Cooper Cohen. Music by Ken Hirsch and Robin Lerner.

David Pearce