Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

Reviews - Act One, Casa Valentina, Lady Day at the Emerson Bar & Grill

Regular readers will recall that I occasionally attend "straight" plays. (I prefer to call them "non-musicals.) My attendance at these belting-deprived affairs is usually contingent on the presence of some intriguing crossover from the world of musicals. Some of the actors perhaps, or members of the creative staff, might be slumming in between musical gigs.

The recently-ended season presented a fairly decent stock plays with musical-theater resonance. In preparation for the Tony Awards this evening, I'll be engaging in a little desk-clearing with this post, hoping to bring you up to speed on some of the "legitimate" offerings from the spring. (Musicals, as you know, are illegitimate, spawned disgracefully out of the holy bonds of wedlock)

Truth be told, I actually enjoy non-musicals a great deal. I try to focus my trips to New York City on seeing as many of the Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals as I can, but there's often time to add a play here or a dance performance there.

But don't worry, dear reader: my heart remains where it likely will always remain, firmly ensconced in the thoracic cavity of musical theater. (How's that for an overly specific metaphor?)

Casa Valentina has quite few ties with the musical-theater world, starting with author Harvey Fierstein, presenting his first non-musical in more than 20 years. Also present are director Joe Mantello, and a cast that features Patrick Page and John Cullum, certainly no strangers to the musical stage. The play concerns one weekend at a country getaway for heterosexual men who nonetheless like to dress in female clothing. Secrets and shame lurk behind every bush, as it were, and we eventually learn that the titular Casa Valentina is just shy of foreclosure, and desperately needs to form a seemingly unholy alliance just to stay afloat. As is typical in Fierstein's recent work, things get preachy as all hell, and there's a lot of expository speechifying. Nonetheless, Fierstein creates some vivid characterizations and crafts a setup that wrings compelling drama from the scenario. But then, at the end, he drops the ball with a denouement that is both forced and inscrutable. The show is worth seeing mainly because of two standout performances in the otherwise ensemble cast: Mare Winningham as the seemingly understanding wife of one of the men, and genial hostess for the weekend. Winningham really shows her stripes toward the end as the fabric of their little dreamworld begins to unravel. Tony nominee Reed Birney crafts a searing performance as the honored guest who knows everybody's secrets and is not above using them to her advantage.

The women who received Tony nods for Best Actress in a Musical this year can thank the fact that Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill is technically a play, not a musical, although it does contain a full complement of Billie Holiday classics. Otherwise, Audra would have picked up her sixth Tony Award in a category with mostly strong competition this season. (Mary Bridget Davies? Puh-Leez.) It almost isn't fair how stunning Audra is onstage, and how versatile she is. So far, her Tonys are in three categories: Best Featured Actress in a Musical, Best actress in a Musical, and Best featured Actress in a Play. If she wins tonight, as I think and hope she will, she will have won in all four acting categories. (Perhaps then, we should take a tip from sports and retire her number, as it were.) Audra crafts a flawless rendition of Billie Holliday, but unlike Davies with her Janis Joplin impersonation, delves deeply into the character to show us her state of mind and spiral downward. The play takes place just months before Holliday's death, and Billie has seen better days. So we see her right before the end, and yet unlike End of the Rainbow, which dredged up a squalid and pathetic Judy Garland, Lady Day allows Holliday her last shreds of dignity.

I had heard mixed reactions going into Act One. Tedious and bloated, some said. Overly long and flat, said others. I, however, was thoroughly charmed, even captivated by author/director James Lapine's loving tribute to Moss Hart, based on Hart's own Act One, considered by many (myself included) to be the finest theatrical memoir ever written. The book and the play concern Hart's early rise into the world of show business, focusing primarily on his impoverished childhood, desperate need to work in the theater, and big break landing George S. Kaufman as a collaborating on his first big hit, Once in a Lifetime. Along the way we meet many colorful characters (many of them played by the always delicious Andrea Martin). I was predisposed to falling in love with these people, partly because I'm such a fan of the book, but also because I consider Moss Hart to be one of the unsung founders of musical theater. Sure, we hear about his Kaufman collaborations, but Hart was also instrumental in bringing greater cohesion, ambition, and social conscience to the American musical, including the shows he wrote himself (Lady in the Dark, As Thousands Cheer, Face the Music) as well as the ones he directed (My Fair Lady, Camelot). Central to making Act One the joy that it is are the two central performers, Santino Fontana as Hart as a young adult (three actors play Hart at various ages) and Tony Shalhoub, who plays Kaufman, among others. These remarkably appealing performers create the emotional center of the production, and Shalhoub is a riot when wrapping his teeth around Kaufman's legendary and infuriating mannerisms.

Revisit - A Minister's Wife at Lincoln Center Theater

Before posting my recent review of A Minister's Wife, I thought long and hard about my reaction to the show. I went in genuinely wanting to like the show, but somehow it left me rather cold. (Read my review.) But, for a number of reasons, the prospect of posting my review made me uncomfortable.

First, I must confess I had moments of self-doubt as to my qualifications for judging the piece. Yes, I teach at a prestigious performing-arts college (The Boston Conservatory), and I'm certainly no slouch when it comes to musical-theater history and performance. But it seemed as though A Minister's Wife had ambitions of operating on a "higher" plane, that of chamber opera and genuinely serious, high-toned, literary theater.

I dismissed such insecurities much in the same way I placate my criticism students when they think they're in over their heads. "Your own personal response is just as valid as anyone else's," I tell them. "The most important thing is that you provide sufficient support for your views." Despite my uncertainty, I forged ahead, trusting my gut reaction, and doing my best to explicate my views fully.

Also, after A Minister's Wife opened, I noticed that, although the critical response was mixed, and that many prominent critics seemed to share my reserved response to the show, there were a handful of rapturous reviews from people whose opinions I greatly respect, including Terry Teachout of the Wall Street Journal, Andy Propst of TheaterMania, and Charles Isherwood of the New York Times. I'm fine with standing my own ground, but this particular combination of critics, and Terry Teachout in particular, made me wonder whether I went into the show with too much of a traditional musical-theater mindset. I was reminded of the first time I saw The Light in the Piazza. I left the theater nonplussed, but I have since grown to admire, appreciate, even love many particular aspects of that show.

And lastly, another reason I had for hesitation was that, full disclosure, I kind of know the composer, Joshua Schmidt. We've never actually met, but after I had posted a number of glowing reports about his brilliant musical Adding Machine, Schmidt  contacted me, and we struck up a bit of a correspondence. When I posted my original review for A Minister's Wife, I was sort of hoping that Schmidt had forgotten about me, but a few days later, I saw his name in my in-box, and my heart sank. Based on my past experience with certain Pulitzer-Prize-winning librettists, I was expecting an angry or defensive missive from Schmidt, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Josh was congenial, engaging, thoughtful, and thoroughly professional. He had contacted me merely to clarify some points about what he was trying to accomplish with the piece. This guy is one class act, let me tell you.

So, based on my respect for Schmidt, as well as for my esteemed critical colleagues, I decided to take in another performance of A Minister's Wife. I'm glad that I did. I saw much more in the show to admire this time around, although I remain more in admiration of the show than in rapture. But, whereas the first time that I experienced the score, I heard seemingly unrelated fragments and recitative, this time I heard purposeful leitmotifs and interrelated themes. Schmidt's music, while intentionally fragmented, is nonetheless subtly melodic, with frequent and meaningful repetition for dramatic emphasis. The payoff of all this deliberate setup comes during the show's final quintet, in which the various themes merge, coalesce and collectively climax. It's really a thrilling moment.

What's more, I've also been rereading Shaw's Candida, upon which A Minister's Wife is based, and I think Schmidt and his collaborators, librettist Austin Pendleton and lyricist Jan Levy Tranen, have given the story an invigorating dose of focus and passion. Shaw's characters are fascinatingly complex, and Schmidt and his team find compelling ways to illuminate the interconnections musically. The creators are aided immeasurably in this regard by an outstanding ensemble, including New York stalwarts Mark Kudisch and Bobby Steggert, as well as talented newcomer Kate Fry.

A Minister's Wife runs through June 12th at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. If you're interested in seeing some genuinely serious musical theater, with provocative ideas, a challenging score, and one of the best performing ensembles you're ever likely to encounter, I recommend giving the show a try. You don't have to see it twice, like I did. But it certainly couldn't hurt.

Review - A Minister's Wife at Lincoln Center

In a theater season replete with commercial-minded, but artistically spare, musicalizations of Hollywood properties (Catch Me If You Can, Sister Act, Priscilla Queen of the Desert), it's rather refreshing to contemplate a musical based on passion and ideas, particularly those of the great George Bernard Shaw. But just as The People in the Picture didn't quite live up to the promise of its noble subject matter, so too A Minister's Wife falls considerably short of its literary pedigree.

After his breathtaking New York debut with Adding Machine, easily one of the most uncompromising and satisfying musicals in decades, composer Joshua Schmidt turned his attentions to a musical adaptation of Shaw's Candida, a staple among dramatic actors seeking showy, talky, passionate parts to add to their theatrical CVs.

Schmidt teamed up with lyricist Jan Levy Tranen and librettist Austin Pendleton (Yes, that Austin Pendleton: "Don't you dare strike that brave, unbalanced woman!"), and the result was A Minister's Wife, which had a well-received run in Chicago a few years back. Now A Minister's Wife has settled into the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center for a limited run, and as much as I was astounded by Schmidt's work on Adding Machine, I must confess that I found his work here admirable but ultimately unfulfilling.

The story to A Minister's Wife concerns itself, as does Shaw's original play, with Reverend James Morell (Mark Kudisch), his wife Candida (Kate Fry), and young poet Eugene Marchbanks (Bobby Steggert) who enters their lives, upsets their sense of stability, and makes them question the very foundations of their marriage. Eugene attempts to free Candida from the minister's sterile world of rhetoric and metaphors. It's a compelling concept for a musical: ideas versus passion, but in execution the show exhibits too much of the former and not enough of the latter.

I haven't seen Candida in many years, but something seems to have been lost in the translation here, specifically the reasons why Eugene would be able to cause such a stir in this seemingly happy marriage. Eugene first pierces Morell's armor with a Biblical reference to King David, drawing an analogy between the Morell's relationship with Candida and David's marriage to Michal. Eugene refers to a Bible passage in which Michal "looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart."

I didn't quite get the relevance of this reference, other than that it seemed to be an attempt on Eugene's part to place doubt in the mind of the minister as to Candida's true feelings for him. A seemingly minor point, but indicative of a larger problem with Pendelton's book and Tranen's lyrics: Shaw's story is pretty much intact, but the character motivations were often unclear.

Schmidt's music could have filled the void here, illuminating emotional undercurrents and unspoken alliances, but instead Schmidt seems to have veered off on an ambitious but unrewarding quest to create a hybrid musical-cum-chamber opera. The score to A Minster's Wife contains few identifiable songs or set pieces, and the result, to my ears, sounded mostly like a progression of undifferentiated recitative. To Schmidt's credit, his musical style for this show bears little resemblance to the harsh staccato rhythms of Adding Machine. Schmidt's work here is equally uncompromising, but whereas Adding Machine was vibrant and arresting, A Minster's Wife left me cold.

I can definitely see what Schmidt was going for: musical phrases that would emerge almost imperceptibly from spoken dialog. And he certainly gets points for his idiomatic efforts, with passages of irregular meter to emphasize Shaw's patterns of speech, or block chords to underscore a particular character's ecclesiastic ambitions. The show's finale, a quintet involving the entire cast, included a soaring motif for Candida about her feelings for her husband, a thrilling moment that nonetheless emphasized what the rest of the score could have been.

I remain an ardent fan of Adding Machine, and of Joshua Schmidt in particular, and I look forward to his future projects. We need more composers who are willing to take big risks, even if those risks don't always yield the most satisfying results.

Review - War Horse at Lincoln Center Theater

The essence of theater is artifice. As audience members, we know that we're being manipulated, and yet we're eager to submit, as long as the production in question exhibits craft and genuine emotion.

It's funny, though, sometimes when we're actually aware that our collective chains are being yanked, it sort of spoils the fun. Sometimes. Other times, we know full well that the show we're watching is shamelessly tugging at the old heartstrings, and yet we succumb.

War Horse is fairly shameless. And manipulative. And, at times, cheap. And yet it works, and smashingly so. I can't remember the last time I felt so pummeled and yet so emotionally satisfied by a staged production, musical or otherwise. (Although War Horse has quite a bit of music, the show is technically a play.)

The production is the latest in a delightful succession of productions imported from the The National Theatre of Britain, and it shows every sign of becoming a smash hit: the production was originally supposed to play at the Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theatre through June, but has been extended indefinitely based on boffo box-office sales and a raft of raves from the critics.

From where I sit, the show deserves both its praise and its financial success. Frankly, War Horse is not the deepest play ever to trod the boards. The play is based on the children's book by Michael Morpurgo, adapted for the stage by Nick Stafford, and the story essentially comprises "boy meets horse, boy loses horse, boy goes to war to get horse back." The show is directed by Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris, and in lesser hands, this could have been nothing but a turgid, sappy melodrama. And, frankly, at times, it is. But Elliot and Morris bring the admittedly predictable story to vivid and often horrifying life through some simply stunning stagecraft, aided by a handful of heartfelt performances.

You may have heard about the amazing puppetry involved in War Horse, and everything you've heard is true. (The puppets are designed and constructed by Handspring Puppet Company, with horse-movement sequences credited to Toby Sedgwick.) But, here's the thing: it's not the technical wizardry that makes the horses astonishing, but rather the way the talented team of puppeteers brings each horse to life. I swear, at times, I completely forgot that I was watching puppets.

But who wants to go and watch a three-hour puppet show? Not I, I can tell you that for sure. No, the magic of War Horse ultimately lies in a simple tale, well told, and a cast of talented performers. Particularly moving is Seth Numrich as Albert, the boy who follows his beloved horse into the horrors of war. Also affecting were Matt Doyle as Billy Narracott, Albert's cousin and rival, and a wonderfully understated Alyssa Bresnahan as Billy's mother.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

As a play, War Horse stumbles a bit in its second half, when the show broadens its scope beyond the story of the boy and his horse. As the show began to put Albert's tale into the larger context of World War I, along with the technical developments that made that war so horrifying (e.g. machine guns, barbed wire, armored tanks), I found myself thinking, "Dude, it's just a horse." But when the narrative was focused on Albert, I was totally on board with what he was doing.

Also, the dialog in the second act became a bit more ham-handed, particularly the lines for the German deserter, Friedrich (Peter Hermann). The story became a bit plodding and confusing, and the writer/directors missed some ripe opportunities for pathos. The unceremonious demise of one of the show's main characters is treated in an almost off-handed way. The show forecasts many of its developments long before they arrive. ("What's that in the distance? A German regiment? Or a predictable plot twist?") And the climactic scene in particular seemed blissfully unaware of subtlety and all its synonyms. 

So, not a play for the ages, but definitely a production to be cherished, savored, and remembered for years to come. This is pot-boiler theater at its tear-jerking best. I was weeping like a little girl, practically from start to finish. And I hope to see the show again, to marvel once more in the physical production, the clean and honest emotion, and one of the most genuinely moving stories I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing. But this time, I'll bring tissues.

Review - Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown on Broadway

It sounded like a great idea. Take a beloved film, add some hotshot creatives, and throw in one of the most stellar casts to hit Broadway in years. But what could have been a scintillating delight of a musical is instead an abysmal mess, every bit as soporific as the famed Valium-laced gazpacho at the center of its frenzied plot. 

I refer, of course, to Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the unpardonable, untenable disaster of a musical that opened last night at New York's lavishly refurbished Belasco Theatre.

Again, it really should have worked. Pedro Almodóvar's 1988 film has become a cult classic. David Yazbek supplied the wonderfully tuneful and witty scores to both The Full Monty and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Jeffrey Lane's book for the latter show is funny and fresh. And Tony-winner Bartlett Sher could seemingly do no wrong after his twin triumphs directing The Light in the Piazza and South Pacific.

And then there's that cast: triple divas Sherie Rene Scott, Patti LuPone, and Laura Benanti, matched with the vocal and comedic prowess of Brian Stokes Mitchell and Danny Burstein. On paper, this show was a blockbuster in the making. 

So, what happened? I blame Bart Sher. I personally felt that his award-winning work on South Pacific was overrated, but at least that production had some sense of cohesion and focus. Not Women on the Verge, at least not when I saw the show a few weeks back. Sher seemed to be at a total loss with this material, demonstrating no flare for comedy whatsoever, not that the lame, lifeless material was doing him any favors. It really makes me wonder: Who green-lighted this mess? The show had numerous high-profile industry-only workshops under the auspices of the august Lincoln Center Theater. How was it that someone saw this show in raw form and thought it looked produceable?

As I tracked the show through its preview period, it seemed clear the members of the creative team were at a total loss. All we kept hearing about, at least at first, were the technical difficulties they were having with the set. Well, the set (designed by Michael Yeargan) is one of the most pointlessly complicated atrocities I've ever encountered, an eye-numbing barrage of moving panels, digital projections (by Sven Ortel), and a dangerous-looking glass monolith of a skylight that stagehands had to come onstage to nudge into place at the performance I saw.

To cover the Rube Goldberg-ian set changes, the show features an off-putting number of complicated crossovers between scenes, with supposedly comic business that never received a single laugh, at least not from me. So, it appears that the production staff were so concerned about working out the mechanics that they seemed to lose track of the fact that the show itself wasn't working. (Hear that, Julie Taymor?)

Later in previews, the staff seemed to realize that the show needed more help than the set, but at that point it was probably too late. The show I saw was, in my estimation, unfixable, with no redeeming qualities except for the game and professional cast. The changes that did occur have apparently amounted to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. For example, when I saw the show, the number "Madrid" opened the second act, but now it's become the opening number. Well, "Madrid" is a dull, generic song that's meant to establish time and place, but bears little specific relation to the rest of the show. When I heard they were making this the opening number, I knew they really didn't have a clue as to how to fix the show.

So, what could have been the musical event of the season has instead revealed itself as an awkward lumbering bore.