Everything I Know I Learned From Musicals

Review - The Hypocrites' The Pirates of Penzance at the A.R.T.

What's that, my friend? You say that you love Gilbert & Sullivan, but you don't have the...er... patience to sit through an entire Savoy Opera?

You're not alone. I mean, I love me some G&S, but some of those shows just seem to go on and on and on, especially in inexperienced hands. There's nothing more tedious than sitting through an amateur production of The Gondoliers or H.M.S. Pinafore. (Pacing, my friends. It's all about pacing. If it can't be good, dear God, make it short.)

Well, have no fear. The Hypocrites are here, with a fresh and zippy 80-minute production of The Pirates of Penzance, which recently opened at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. Call it Gilbert & Sullivan for modern attention spans. The Hypocrites is a Chicago-based theater troupe known for its distinctive re-imagining of classic works. The recent acclaimed production of Our Town, directed by David Cromer, originated with The Hypocrites in Chicago.

Here, the troupe has taken The Pirates of Penzance, cut it down (the adaptation is by Sean Graney and Kevin O'Donnell), and whipped up a frothy atmospheric production complete with beach balls, picnic tables, and plastic wading pools. The atmosphere is true to the playful spirit of the original show, while adding some lovingly ridiculous elements of the group's own devising.

In truth, "adaptation" here means little more than a significantly truncated version of the original with a few modern references and sight gags thrown in. The result is short, sweet, and relentlessly silly.

The real fun here comes from the spirited and arch direction by Sean Graney, and the lovingly over-the-top performances from a cast of Hypocrites regulars. Particularly strong among the hard-working crew of ten were a lovingly mock heroic Zeke Sulkes as the pirate apprentice Frederick, a delightfully dotty Christine Stulik as both Ruth and Mabel, and an amusingly imperious Matt Kahler as the famed Major General.

The cast members, who also serve as the show's on-stage band, mill about convivially among the audience members, many of whom are seated on the stage and on benches surrounding the playing area. I'm not one to automatically respond to immersive theater such as this, but thankfully the A.R.T. staff saw fit to provide regular seating away from the on-stage antics. (I crouch, squat, and scurry for no show.)

This particular production of The Pirates of Penzance is certainly not for G&S purists. As I said, the show and the score have been cut down rather severely, but this in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. G&S have a strong tendency to repeat refrains almost incessantly, most of which the production at hand has dispensed with, as well as turning much of the recitative into spoken text.

The score has been rearranged and modernized for guitar, banjo, flute, spoons, and the occasional woodwind. The musicianship, both sung and played, was for the most part serviceable, although the apostrophic "Hail, Poetry" was simply stunning, thanks to both the sotto voce singing and sensitive lighting.

On a final note, I have to say that I'm genuinely torn over the fact that this admitted crowd-pleaser comes to us under the auspices of the A.R.T. As you may know, the A.R.T. has come under fire for its overtly commercial bent under the helm of artistic director Diane Paulus. And this production of Pirates certainly ranks among the theater's more mainstream-friendly offerings. I mean, there's a certain amount of theatrical invention involved here, but it's certainly nothing you would call challenging or deep. At least it's not pretentious like Pippin, by which I mean a pretense of meaning. Pirates doesn't try to be anything beyond what it is, which is a rollicking good time.

But is that what a major non-profit, operating within one of the most august learning institutions in the world, should be doing?

So Much for Super PACs

I was saving this in case Romney won, but the point is thankfully moot.

Four more years.

Reviews - New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) - Part 4

Here's the fourth and final installment of my capsule reviews from this year's New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). Click here to read my first, second, and third installments. My sincere thanks to the good folks at NYMF for allowing me such open and ready access to all of the NYMF shows.

It's thanks to NYMF and the other new-works projects around the country that so many people who are interested in writing new musicals are able to find the support they need to bring their ideas to the stage. Whenever someone trots out that tired old bit about musical theater being dead, or on its last legs, I think of the hundreds upon hundreds of submissions to NYMF, the National Music Theater Conference at the O'Neill Theater Center, the New York International Fringe Festival, the Festival of New Artists at the Goodspeed, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre (NAMT), not to mention the numerous regional and nonprofit companies that actively seek and nurture new works. The economic model may have changed since the "golden age" of musicals, but there's still plenty of interest not only in creating musical theater, but in attending it as well.

Sure, most of these shows won't make it to Broadway, or even anywhere close to it. But if it weren't for these programs, we might never have seen such interesting and entertaining new works as Urinetown, Next to Normal, [title of show], Altar Boyz, The Great American Trailer Park Musical, Gutenberg! The Musical, Yank!, Avenue Q, Nine, In the Heights, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Children of Eden, The Drowsy Chaperone, Songs for a New World, I Love You Because, and Striking 12.

I can't wait until next year's festival.

Zapata is a rather curious concoction with music and lyrics by Peter Edwards, book by Peter and Ana Edwards. The show attempts to draw a parallel between the revolutionary activities of Emiliano Zapata and the Occupy Wall Street movement. The result, while well-meaning, is strident, clumsy, and forced. It feels as though the show had been in development long before the Occupy protests, and then the authors, spying an opportunity to give the show modern resonance, tacked on a present-day prologue and epilogue. The connection seems tenuous: Zapata's story is one of violent uprising against brutal oppressors. At one point in the show, one of the characters says, "Violence is unavoidable. It's the only language these dogs understand." So, how exactly is the Occupy movement supposed to use Zapata's story as inspiration? The best that the writers can seem to come up with is the lame blandishment to "keep on fighting." The show even gives one of the characters a ludicrous "vision" of a future righteous struggle (i.e. Occupy), along with the exhortation that "our fight made it possible." Beyond the questionable nature of the message, the show itself is a bit of a mess. The story itself is compelling, but it gets mired in clunky expository dialog, manufactured drama, contrived resolutions, and plot threads that seemingly appear out of nowhere. The characters are mostly two-dimensional, and frequently make choices that have scant justification in the events as described. The lyrics are rife with cliches ("I'd rather die a thousand deaths than let my people down") and uninspired proclamations ("Children make this life worth living"). The show's music is not without merit, reflecting a stirring sense of the Mexican musical idiom, and the movement and battle sequences (choreographed by Luis Salgado) have a certain dramatic effectiveness, including the neat theatrical device of a rhythmic dancer who appears to portend significant moments of violence and death. But Zapata has quite a few rewrites ahead of it if the show is going to have any sort of commercial future.

Another NYMF show that has a rewrite or two ahead of it is The Groove Factory, with book by Chad Kessler and David James Boyd, music and lyrics by David James Boyd. The story involves a sort of Willy Wonka-inspired quest to win tickets to the big 1999 New Year's Eve party at the titular Groove Factory, a New York City dance club. The show's central character is Chazz Goodhart (groan), a young gay man who wants to escape from the trailer park and find fame and success as a club DJ. What really kills the buzz of The Groove Factory is the whiplash-inducing change of tone at the end of the show. The first 70 minutes or so seems to celebrate the drug-fueled, superficial club lifestyle, but then, as if to expiate its hedonistic sins, the show tries to shoehorn in a tragic, cautionary tale at the end. The Groove Factory wants to have its crystal meth and eat it, too. It starts as a sort of campy romp, which is not completely without humor or appeal, and there are some interesting characterizations along the way. But once we get to the club, the show degrades considerably. We then witness a tiresome parade of songs celebrating various drugs: ecstasy, methamphetamine, Special K, etc. The show then concludes with its baleful twist and some bland moralizing ("Music is the only drug I need"), followed by an artificially upbeat final number about this being the "best of times," despite the dire proceedings we've just witnessed. Let me be clear here: I'm not objecting to the apparent message of the show. I'm taking issue with the way the show is currently executed, which doesn't come near to doing its let's-get-high-on-life credo any justice.

One of the most powerful and promising shows to emerge from NYMF this year was Shelter, with book and lyrics by Brittany Bullen, music by Brittany Bullen and Newell Bullen. As the name might suggest, the show takes place in a women's homeless shelter and weaves together the stories of a number of different women, both those who populate the shelter and those who work there. At this stage in the show's development, its key assets are the passion and power of these women and their stories, and some dynamite character ballads. The story is strong and the characters are compelling, and there's a great deal of very real, very raw writing at the center of the show. Shelter definitely needs some shaping and streamlining: there are a few too many characters for the show to adequately develop, the dramatic intent of some of the songs is unclear, and the character motivations don't always make sense. There were also some significant tone problems in the NYMF version of the show, including the character of the shelter's cook, who seemed like an artificial attempt at comic relief. Also, the number that opened act two, in which a trio of two-dimensionally perky saleswomen try to recruit the shelter women into selling Avon-like cosmetics, wasn't working at all. (The authors tell me that both the cook character and the cosmetics song have been cut.) But there's a really powerful piece at the core of Shelter, and I'm very eager to see not only how the show develops, but also how the Bullens continue to develop as musical-theater artists.

 

Reviews - New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) - Part 2

Here's installment number two of my capsule reviews for the 2012 New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF). Click here to read my first set of reviews. Watch for at least one additional installment, probably two.

The program note for Trouble promises "a show about love, finding it and loosing [sic] it." Yeah, not a very promising way to start. The show has a book by Michael Alvarez, music and lyrics by Ella Grace, and is as bland and unfocused as its title. Trouble comes off as a sort of low-rent Rent, but without the compelling drama or credible characterizations. Like Rent, Trouble wants to capture the voice of its generation. Unlike Rent, Trouble doesn't earn its pathos. Instead of life-and-death stakes, we just get hormones and personality flaws run amok. The show features four teenage couples, three straight and one gay. But these people aren't so much characters as characteristics, with manufactured plot turns to keep the them busy between power ballads. The songs are mostly generic, and often feature unclear dramatic intent, although there are a couple decent attempts at character numbers, one involving one of the gay characters who admits to stalking his class crush, and another about how one of the females sublimates her hostility though baking. The plot basically involves the four couples getting together and breaking up, or breaking up and getting together, and ultimately everything gets resolved in a forced, artificial manner. Characters far too easily forgive genuinely reprehensible acts on the part of their supposed loved ones, and make final choices that seem inconsistent with their character development and that are blissfully unconstrained by reality. In short, Trouble needs a lot of work if it's going to have any life after NYMF.

Stuck isn't quite the mess that Trouble is. The book and the songs by Riley Thomas reflect a lot more skill than those of Trouble, but the story for Stuck is forced and preachy. The show features six people stuck on a New York subway between stations. Over the course of the show, we discover essentially one big thing about each of the characters, with a lot of pseudo-spiritual mumbo jumbo along the way. Like Trouble, Stuck is populated with types rather than people, and before the end of the show, seemingly everyone makes a dark revelation: pregnancies, suicides, rotten childhoods, addiction, etc. These developments come off not so much as character motivation as they do convenient pieces of dramaturgical shorthand. There are certainly a few interesting songs and moments along the way, but the show reflects far too many tired tropes (including "Oh, isn't New York City dirty, smelly, and heartless?" and "Aren't we all a little crazy?") to be truly effective. Also, the pacing of the show is rather jarring. For instance, the drama peaks way too early with interactions and musical passages about the racism inherent in us all, even minorities. Then, immediately after, we have an upbeat comic number called "The Subway Samba" about the irritations and idiosyncrasies of the New York City subway system. The lyrics range from borderline inspired to trite, with such questionable aphorisms as "Strangers or lovers, the only difference is time." (Um...really? So, if I wait long enough, Jeremy Northam will eventually be mine?) Other lyrical groaners include exhortations to "listen not with your ears but with your heart" and inquiries as to "who completes your rhyme?" Then the show ends with pat resolutions and bromides, including the observation that "everyone wants what everyone wants." Um...OK...

He's Not Himself is easily the most promising NYMF show I've seen so far this year. (I still have seven more to go this weekend.) The show has book, music, and lyrics by Marc Silverberg, who also plays one of the five characters in this mostly amiable and madcap noir romp. The plot involves a male meter maid who dreams of the exciting life of a gangster. And whenever he gets hit on the head - which, of course, is frequently - he switches back and forth between his meek and malicious personalities. Yeah, the multiple personalities schtick is rather overused as a plot device, but Silverberg manages to find ways to keep it fresh. The Jekyll and Hyde scenario sets the stage for some rather raucous physical comedy, expertly staged by director Michael Pantone. The farcical set piece involving all five characters in a diamond heist from the local museum was downright masterful. The songs feature just a tad too much slant rhyme and faulty scansion for my taste, and I noticed at least one dangling modifier: "Dressed as a cop, she won't think something's wrong." In this scene, it's not the "she" who's dressed as a cop, but rather the "he" who is singing. But, with a little more development, He's Not Himself could become a comic gem.

Another promising show is Himself and Nora, with book, music, and lyrics by Jonathan Brielle. The piece concerns the relationship between James Joyce (played here by Matt Bogart) and his long-time lover and eventual wife, Nora Barnacle (Jessica Burrows). One of the primary plot devices involves Joyce's refusal to marry Barnacle as a protest against the Catholic church. "Marriage is a plot of the church to keep the spirit down," Joyce says at one point in the show. But the constant specter of Joyce's inner conflict with his religious indoctrination is represented by the character of a Catholic priest, visible only to Joyce. The priest provides contrapuntal commentary on Joyce's every move. But Himself and Nora is essentially a love story. Make that a lust story. Part of what makes this particular production engaging are the robust and bawdy performances from Bogart and Burrows, who bravely commit to the leering innuendo and outright vulgarity in Brielle's book and lyrics. The bawdiness gets a bit much after a while, but thankfully at that point we move on to Joyce's struggles with censorship and his sixteen-year quest to find a publisher for Ulysses. Brielle gives Bogart and Burrows reasonably vivid and compelling characters to embody, and the story flows in an engaging fashion with spirited, authentic-sounding dialog. The music is idiomatic Irish, percussive and vibrant, with a certain modern flair in the orchestrations. I was, however, unfortunately reminded of February House, another recent musical that adopts the superficial aspects of the lives of major literary figures without really giving them anything profound to say, although Himself and Nora is somewhat more successful in this respect. Even so, with a bit more work on some plot holes here and some tonal inconsistencies there, Himself and Nora could eventually make for a satisfying musical work.

Reviews - New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) - Part 1

It will probably come as a surprise to many of my readers that I have never been to the New York Musical Theatre Festival(NYMF) before this year. I mean, I've been almost singularly devoted to musical theater for well over 30 years. I've been teaching musical theater for almost ten years. And I've been blogging about it for over six years. It would seem like a natural fit for me, right?

Well, all I can say is, when I go to New York, it's usually for the purpose of seeing a particular show. I usually decide what I'm going to see before I make my travel plans, and the shows that I see are usually ones that are already on my radar, whether because they're opening on Broadway, or because the shows have people involved who pique my interest. And theater festivals, such as NYMF and the Fringe, are very frequently populated with shows by people who haven't quite made it onto my radar yet.

Plus, there are usually so many shows at these festivals that it's hard to get focused on one or a handful of works worth seeing. So the festivals have always seemed kind of overwhelming to me. And, since I live in Boston, it's kind of hard for me to pop into a show on impulse, as I would be able to do if I lived a little closer to New York.

But this year, I was invited by the good folks at NYMF to speak on a panel about theater criticism, and while I was in New York, I decided to grab a NYMF schedule and just dive right in. This was partly because I've seen everything I want to see on Broadway, and almost everything I could want to see Off Broadway. But I also wanted to cast a net for shows to consider as part of our new-works program at the Boston Conservatory. I was hoping to contribute to in a more meaningful way to this program by lining up some shows in development to consider for a workshop, staged reading, or even a full-blown production.

So, I picked two weekends and set about creating a schedule that would allow me to see as many shows as possible. I just returned from my first weekend, and will be headed back down two weekends hence. Below are capsule reviews of some of the shows that I've seen so far. I'm currently scheduled to see about 16 shows in total. Stay tuned for more batches later this month.

Rio bills itself as a sort of modern-day version of Oliver Twist. The show has book, music and lyrics by Mitch Magonet and Joey Miller, and is an ambitious, if still somewhat inchoate, musical set in Brazil. The show focuses on the street urchin Pipio in his search for his mother amid the hard and violent streets of Rio de Janeiro. The show starts on a bit of a fuzzy note with a maddeningly opaque opening number. In fact, it's not really until 2 to 3 numbers into the show that the story really kicks into gear. Once it does, the narrative is strong and compelling, although the book and lyrics vacillate between harsh truth and stilted cliché. The NYMF production features spirited and dynamic staging, and the show itself is not without talent or promise. The music has a certain buoyant appeal, although the tone of the show is inconsistent: it doesn't really know if it wants to be entertaining or hard-hitting. Perhaps most damning, the show currently features a rushed and pat resolution that ends the show on a falsely positive note that's inconsistent with the setting and tone of the rest of the piece. But there's enough promise here to warrant another draft or two.

 You'd never know it from reading the title, but How Deep is the Ocean is a would-be comedy that centers around a man who has been obsessed with chlorine and pool maintenance since childhood. When the beaches on the Jersey Shore have to close due to the pollution levels, our hero attempts to save the day by chlorinating the ocean. Yeah, kind of ridiculous, but intentionally so. The book here is by Pia Cincotti, and the music and lyrics are by Peter Cincotti, and the main problem with the show in its current form is that the score and the book seem to be from two very different shows. The book has a madcap tone, but the score is overly ballad-heavy and comes off far more earnest that the show seems to be aiming for. The situation has comic promise, but the book is only intermittently funny, and the songs rarely are. The show seems to want to be The Great American Trailer Park Musical, but the humor factor is nowhere near high enough to put in in league with that charmingly dotty little show. The essential structure of the story seems sound, although the second act drags on a bit. The show has a sweet disposition, reasonably strong characterizations, and many memorable melodies. But it needs a sure-handed comic director, like a Christopher Ashley or a Scott Schwartz to pump up the humor. (Oh, and the NYMF production features a surprise celebrity guest. I won't spoil the surprise; you can check below in the comments section if you want to know who it is. But, as fun as this moment was, it's unlikely to be sustainable. A guest star of this stature is unlikely to follow the show on its intended journey. This felt like a one-time stunt, and nothing more.)

Quite a few of the shows at NYMF this year seem to be aiming for the quirky-but-endearing mantle, and Flambé Dreams, with book and lyrics by Matthew Hardy and music by Randy Klein, is most assuredly both quirky and endearing. It's the story of a young man who want to become a maitre d' in honor of his father, who died in a freak Bananas Foster incident. For the most part in these NYMF reviews, I'm going to focus more on the works themselves than on the productions, but a lot of what made Flambé Dreams appealing was the extraordinary cast of Broadway pros: Jarrod Spector as the young man, Catherine Cox as his mother, and Jillian Louis, J. Elaine Marcos, and Kevin B. McGlynnas the various people who come in and out of the young man's life as he attempts to become a maitre d' who specializes in flaming desserts, like his father. The show provides strong and memorable characters for these able performers to embody, and gives them a number of genuine laughs and appealing songs. The show loses steam a bit at about 11 o'clock, as it were, but on the whole I'll be interested in watching how this show progresses, and what its creators produce in the future.

Most of the shows at NYMF that I've seen so far have been fairly conventional book shows. The main exception was Show Me Real, a sort of musical theater/dance/film hybrid conceived and choreographed by Clare Cook, and featuring music and lyrics by Amy Burgess, book and lyrics by Gena Oppenheim. The show concerns three female modern dancers as they work together on a dance piece, creating connections between these performers and three Ziegfeld Follies girls in the past. The result was refreshing in its execution, if a tad jejune in its conception. The themes that emerge are about how, despite the different eras that the women exist within, there are strong undercurrents of overlap regarding the struggle, the uncertainty, and the passion for performing. But what made this uninspired concept come to life were the freshness and honesty of the performers, the spirited and visually varied dance segments, and the sense of dramatic balance and closure that Cook brings to the piece. It also made me wonder why we don't see more of this kind of boundary-pushing work. Or, perhaps more to the point, why I don't seek more of it out. I guess that's what's so great about my expanding my focus beyond Broadway and Off-Broadway. Sure, the cream rises to the top. But there's a lot to be enjoyed beneath that commercial surface.

Review - Evita Revival on Broadway With Ricky Martin

How much of a difference can one performer make? That's the question I was left to ponder while walking out of the strangely lifeless revival of Evita that's currently packing them in at the Marquis Theater in New York. I had seen this production during its London run and was generally positive about it, particularly regarding the dynamic central performance from Argentinian spitfire Elena Roger. (Read my review of the London production.)

So, I was genuinely looking forward to seeing the production again, now that it has made the trek across the pond. There was, however, a bit of a bump in my road to the Marquis, as I was originally scheduled to see one of the performances that got "rained out," as it were. As you may have heard, the producers of Evita had to cancel two performances because the "deluge curtain," part of a theater's fire protection system, was accidentally triggered, which flooded the stage, necessitating a two-day clean-up process.

Since I was already in the city to see some other shows, I hustled over to the Marquis box office to exchange my ticket for another performance. Well, in my absent-mindedness, I chose a matinee performance, momentarily forgetting that the actress who plays Eva Peron historically doesn't do matinees. Which means I didn't see Elena Roger again but rather Christine DiCicco, the Eva alternate. DiCicco was never less than professional, and at times was downright impressive in terms of her energy level and vocal prowess. What she wasn't was electrifying, which Elena Roger decidedly was when I saw the show in 2006.

The experience put me in mind of seeing the recent revival of A Little Night Music both with Catherine Zeta-Jones (read my review) and then Bernadette Peters (read my review) in the central role of Desiree Armfeldt. With Zeta-Jones, the show was presentable but uninspired. With Peters, the show came to vibrant life. The cast was otherwise almost exactly the same, as were the members of the production staff. But Peters, like the rising tide, lifted all of the boats, whereas Zeta-Jones was more like an anchor dragging the show down and keeping it from achieving its full forward speed.

I genuinely hope to get back and see this production of Evita again to see if, perhaps, it was Elena Roger who made all the difference in London. That would also give me the opportunity to more fully put Ricky Martin's somewhat spotty performance as Che, the show's sardonic narrator, into context. Don't get me wrong: Martin is by far the most entertaining part of the current production. He's animated, engaging, mischievous, and boasts a genuinely strong and resonant musical-theater-quality singing voice. But he did frequently allow his mannerisms to overshadow his sense of characterization, and he noticeably flubbed his lyrics on more than one occasion. It was almost as though he was trying to make up for the lack of energy in the production as a whole. I got the sense that, if he had just relaxed a bit more and trusted the material, he could have been outstanding. (Parenthetically, I was very glad to see that, despite the fact that Martin is clearly the draw here, the production still gives Eva the final bow during the curtain call.)

But the more I think about it, the more I have trouble ascribing the listless nature of this production to the change in the central player. Something else seems to have been lost in the translation from London to Broadway. The production as a whole lacks focus and a sense of forward motion, and those deficits must fall at the feet of director Michael Grandage. The production remains visually impressive (with sets and costumes by Christopher Oram and lighting by Neil Austin), but the scenes and characterizations lack cohesion, as though there were no sure hand at the helm. Even Rob Ashford's choreography, which I found it thrilling in London, here seemed resolutely earthbound, although thematically the movements seemed more restrained and idiomatic than some of his more recent Broadway work.

One final note: it's really interesting to have the chance to see both Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita on Broadway at the same time. (Read my review of JCS here.) It's a sort of sobering reminder that, at one point in his career, Andrew Lloyd Webber actually made challenging choices and used interesting musical devices, mostly when he was paired up with lyricist Tim Rice. It makes me wonder what could happen if Sir Andrew ever teamed up again with a lyricist who actually made him think.

Contest - Win Two Tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar Revival on Broadway

As you may have read, two formidable cultural icons are making double comebacks on Broadway this season: Jesus Christ and Andrew Lloyd Webber. The former is represented by both Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar, while the latter has Evita and...Jesus Christ Superstar.

(Click through on the Godspell link above to read my review. I'll be seeing both Evita and JCS later this week. Watch for my reviews.)

I've been hearing great things about the new Jesus Christ Superstar, which has played successful and acclaimed engagements at both the Stratford Festival and in La Jolla. My sources tell me that director Des McAnuff has breathed new life into the piece, which already features one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's most ambitious and accomplished scores, not to mention the sharp and erudite lyrics of Tim Rice. I'm eagerly anticipating seeing the show again, and greatly look forward to communicating my views of the show to you, dear reader.

Now, here's a chance for you to see the show yourself. I have here a voucher two tickets to see Jesus Christ Superstar. (The voucher is good for performances from March 27th to April 26th on Tuesdays at 7 pm, Wednesdays at 2 pm and 7 pm, and Thursdays at 7 pm)

Below are five trivia questions about the show and its authors. Answer the questions as best you can and I will randomly draw a winner from all of the entries with the correct responses. (You can submit your answers via the comment link below. Don't worry: I won't publish your comment until the contest is over.) The contest ends Monday, March 19th.

Good luck!

PLEASE NOTE: The contest is over and the winner has been notified. The answers to the trivia questions are below. Thanks to everyone who entered. --C.C.

1. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice worked together on a number of shows in the early years of their careers. What are the names of their two other shows that have played on Broadway? [ANSWER: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Evita]

2. Before they struck gold with their big commercial successes, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborated on a show that wasn't actually produced until 2005. What was the name of that show? [ANSWER: The Likes of Us]

3. Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber have collaborated, albeit infrequently, since they parted ways after Evita. What was the name of the show they wrote for Queen Elizabeth's 60th birthday? [ANSWER: Cricket]

4. What was the name of the song that Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote that won them the Academy Award? [ANSWER: "You Must Love Me"]

5. What's Andrew Lloyd Webber's last name? [ANSWER: "Lloyd Webber" is ALW's technical last name, not "Webber," although one observant reader pointed out that "Lloyd" is actually ALW's father's middle name, and that "Lloyd" isn't historically part of the family's surname, but rather a relatively recent addition to same. So there.]

Review - Candide at the Huntington Theatre

I've seen Candide more times than I can really count. The first time I saw the show, it was in a fourth-floor walk-up loft in the Back Bay of Boston. It was about 30 years ago, but I seem to recall that they used the revised script from the 1974 Hal Prince revival.

Since then, I've seen Candide at regional houses, community theaters, concert halls, high school auditoriums, college black boxes, as well as on television and on Broadway. And the show has never worked for me. The score is glorious, at least on the show's numerous recordings, but no one has come up with a way to make the score work in the context of the show.

Until now, that is. The stunning new production of Candide that is now ending up its run at Boston's Huntington Theatre is easily the best version of the show that I've ever seen. Recreating her staging of the show that originally appeared at Chicago's Goodman Theatre, director Mary Zimmerman has taken Candide back to its literary roots and rediscovered much of the satiric bite of Voltaire's original work. She has also whipped the show up into a vivid froth of imaginative stagecraft that renders the show every bit as visually appealing and entertaining as it is thought-provoking.

After Candide's disappointing original Broadway run, there have been numerous attempts at rewriting the show's book, originally penned by playwright Lillian Hellman. The 1974 production featured an entirely new book by Hugh Wheeler, which has become more or less the standard version of the show. Then, in 1999, another iteration appeared at the Royal National Theater in London, with a yet another book, this time by John Caird. Zimmerman's version of Candide seems based on the Caird version, although I noticed even more changes to the script and amendments to the score.

Well, whatever Zimmerman did, it works. The current production combines a visually arresting sense of theatricality with deft modulation of the story's emotional elements. Zimmerman employs a significant amount of narration, which in the wrong hands can render a show inert, but Zimmerman makes the device compelling in a number of imaginative ways. For instance, to introduce the Lisbon earthquake, an important plot development, one of the supporting players steps forward with a tray full of small building replicas. When the earthquake occurs, the player shakes the tray and looks knowingly to the audience. It's a very simple but also wonderfully effective touch. The production is full of similarly simple but ingenious touches, including a simulated game of war, replete with playfully tossed cannonballs, and the memorable use of a luxuriously outfitted herd of toy sheep.

But Zimmerman's contribution amounts to more than just clever theatrics. As I mentioned, she's also emphasized the pointedly satirical aspects of what Voltaire intended to be a scathing attack, not merely on mindless optimism, but also the wretched excesses of both church and state. She's also brought out some of the more heartfelt moments of the show, and livened up the second act considerably. Candide can often be a rather tedious slog, but Zimmerman's version moves briskly and fluidly at all times. She's even found a way to enliven the song "Eldorado." Normally this number is a total yawn, but Zimmerman brings the song to life with interspersed dialog and lively staging throughout.

Although Zimmerman is the undisputed star of this Candide, the adorable Lauren Molina comes in a close second as Cunegonde. Some readers may not be used to seeing Molina without her cello (Ten Cents a Dance at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the recent Broadway revival of Sweeney Todd, etc.), but Molina is also a wonderfully appealing performer in her own right, with a hell of a coloratura. Molina's "Glitter and Be Gay" was an absolute joy, brimming with enthusiasm and a spunky sense of playfulness.

I had heard some rumors that there was some interest in moving this Candide to New York, possibly to the Studio 54, now the that the Roundabout has (wisely, I think) canceled the previously announced revival of Bob Fosse's Dancin'. The Candide-transfer chatter seems to have died down, possibly in light of the rather large - and growing - number of musical revivals headed to Broadway this season. Nevertheless, it would be great to see this Candide live on beyond its Boston run. I mean, we finally have a Candide that genuinely works. Surely that's something worth preserving.

Review - Follies Revival on Broadway

Someone is always trying to bring Follies back to Broadway, or at least it seems. There was talk of moving the 1998 production at Papermill Playhouse to NYC, but apparently backstage politics put the kibosh on that move. The well-received 2007 Encores production also had people calling for a Broadway transfer, but that never materialized either.

So more than a few folks (including me) were at first skeptical at talk of bringing the recent Kennedy Center production to Broadway, but, lo and behold, this time it actually happened. And the results, while somewhat mixed, are thrilling enough to warrant a huzzah or two from the Sondheim faithful (including me).

The first sight that theatergoers encounter when entering the Marquis Theatre for the current production of Follies are the various gray tarps covering all of the walls in the auditorium. A number of people have quipped that the notoriously sterile Marquis has never looked better, but the tarps create an appropriately oppressive atmosphere. Follies does, after all, take place in a decrepit theater that is about to be torn down.

Thankfully, director Eric Schaeffer has made no apparent attempt to reinvent Follies, focusing instead on bringing out what makes the show compelling: Stephen Sondheim's powerhouse of a score and the two central - though overlapping - relationships between Buddy and Sally Plummer, and Ben and Phyllis Stone. The more I hear Sondheim's score for Follies, the more enamored I become of its complexity, its leitmotivs, and the way the songs are paced to alternate showstopping uptempo numbers with heartbreaking introspective ballads.

There's really not a bad number in the mix, making it all the more perplexing that Sondheim saw fit to augment the score with a handful of fascinating, but ultimately unnecessary new numbers for the 1987 West End production. (Including "Country House," which sounds more like 1980s Sondheim than 1970s Sondheim; the delightful "Ah, But Underneath," which has become a standard of sorts with cabaret singers and drag queens everywhere; and the clearly autobiographical "Make the Most of Your Music," which is completely inappropriate for Ben, who doesn't speak in musical metaphors.)

The show is already front-loaded with concept (the ghosts of the characters haunt their modern-day selves throughout the show), so Schaeffer lets the big picture take care itself and instead concentrates on bringing out the complex emotional content with small but evocative directorial touches. Early in the show, Phyllis reaches for Ben just as Ben is walking away to put down his drink. At the end, as Sally and Buddy exit, Buddy moves to put his arm around the small of Sally's back, but pulls it back at the last second. Both moments are easy to miss, but are nonetheless indicative of Schaeffer's precision.

I've seen Follies many times, but I don't remember ever sensing the subtext as keenly as I did while watching this production. This is especially true during "The Road You Didn't Take" and "In Buddy's Eyes," which perhaps is not coincidental, since both songs feature Ben and Sally, and both emphasize Sally's as yet unspoken agenda.

If there's any justice, come Tony time, Jan Maxwell (Phyllis) and Danny Burstein (Buddy) will finally receive their long-overdue recognition. Maxwell and Burstein are always reliable, frequently inspired performers, and it's a pleasure to see them finally getting their due with this production. Maxwell brings both a stately elegance and a brittle edge to Phyllis, and her "Could I Leave You" was a national treasure. Maxwell spat out the words and raged across the stage during the number, and in the hands of someone of lesser talent, this might not have worked, but Maxwell is self-assured and laser sharp even when her character is on the verge of losing it.

Maxwell even makes some of James Goldman's clunky dialog work better than it deserves to. The script for the current production takes the 2001 version and adds in a few lines cherry-picked from the original. At the very end of the show, Phyllis turns to Ben and says, "Hope doesn't grow on trees; we make our own and I'm here to tell you it's the hardest thing we'll ever do." Oy. Who thought that was a line worth reinstating? It sounds like something from a bad, forgotten World War II Hollywood melodrama. But, again, Maxwell sold it, which is a testament to her inestimable talent.

Burstein is no less a wonder as Buddy. Schaeffer shrewdly places Buddy on the scene to witness much of Sally's attempts to rekindle her long-imagined romance with Ben, and Burstein's heartrending facial expressions vividly convey the tortured feelings of this man caught between the woman he loves and the woman who loves him (who are not necessarily one and the same).

The one misstep in Burstein's performance was actually not his doing. Warren Carlyle's choreography for "The Right Girl" seemed woefully out of place. Most of the dances, and in fact the songs, in Follies are diegetic: the characters are actually dancing in the context of the show, as Follies girls or performers, as opposed to dancing as their characters. It's not clear why Buddy would be the only character in the show to dance in a non-diegetic fashion, to break into a dance monologue, as it were. Yes, there's dance music in the song, or at least an orchestral section, but this could have been used for evocative staging as opposed to a jazz speciality.

As for the other two stars, Bernadette Peters has been getting mixed reviews as Sally, and I would be inclined to agree. There were times when Peters was a suitably frumpy housewife, but there were other times when it was just too much of a feat for her to pull it off. Her singing was mostly strong, although her breath control has lost some of its power over the years. Her final moment, however, was positively stunning. Sally stands staring out at the audience, while Buddy waits patiently to take her home. The sense of despair on Bernadette's face will remain for me an iconic moment, full of gravity, pathos, and eventually resignation. Simply breathtaking.

As Ben, Ron Raines has a rich and characterful voice, but some of his acting seemed a bit summer stock-y. He started off promising: his "The Road You Didn't Take" was remarkably powerful, yet full of restraint. But he seemed to abandon this restraint as the performance progressed. Phyllis makes numerous references to Ben's impassive nature, and that one of her key frustrations is that she finds him difficult to read. Whereas Raines wasn't difficult to read at all. In fact, he displayed his heart quite openly, on both of his sleeves, as it were.

The supporting cast was, for the most part, top-notch, from the electric Terry White to the joyous Jayne Houdyshell. A genuine standout for me was Rosalind Elias, making her Broadway debut at the age of 82 as Heidi. Heidi is meant to be an aging operetta star, and her song "One More Kiss" typically reeks of poignancy when Young Heidi enters and reminds both Heidi and the audience of the beautiful voice that this woman once had. With Elias, both Heidi and the number maintain that poignancy, but Elias still possesses a vocal control and richness of tone that women half her age would kill for. A song that often becomes a throwaway number became, for me, a thrilling centerpiece.

My one major complaint with this production lies in the "performance" of Elaine Paige. Yes, Paige, at least to some people, is a star. And, yes, she retains the great vocal power that made her a star. But Paige uses "I'm Still Here" not so much to play a character as to make a personal statement, and it left me ice cold. Paige plays the introductory scene and the song for laughs, to a distracting and deleterious extent. Her vocal histrionics produced a flat and characterless wall of sound, and her scooping was nothing less than egregious, with the musicality of Sondheim's masterful song lost amid the shtick and gimmickry. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, Paige's performance ran the gamut from Y to Z.

Follies runs through the holiday season to the end of the year, at which point a number of the stars have concert engagements, making an extension rather unlikely. Those who have never seen the show staged, or those who are still smarting from the deeply disappointing 2001 revival, will clearly want to take this production in. In fact, anyone seeking to experience a classic show, sensitively staged, and featuring some of the best performers Broadway currently has to offer are well advised to head post haste to the Marquis.

Of course, no sooner did I post this review than Playbill.com reported that Follies will indeed be extending its run by three weeks. That's what I get for reckless prognostication.

Review - Ten Cents a Dance at the Williamstown Theatre Festival

The songbook revue is both the easiest and the hardest type of theatrical show to pull off. "Easiest" because you seemingly just throw together a bunch of songs and let the audience revel in waves of nostalgia. "Hardest" because, if you don't want the audience tuning out after the first few numbers, you need to come up with some kind of through line or production concept to hold people's attention.

The best revues often find a sense of structure from within the material (Side By Side By Sondheim). Others recreate a joyous sense of time and place (Ain't Misbehavin'). Still others take preexisting songs and find a way to bring them together to tell a completely new story.

Actually, I can't think of another example from this sub-genre, other than the wistfully entertaining Ten Cents a Dance, a newly devised revue that director John Doyle has coaxed forth from the glorious songbook of Rodgers and Hart. The show recently finished up its initial run at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and is headed next for the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey. But based on the glowing review Ben Brantley gave the production in The New York Times, as well additional strong notices from The Boston Globe and other outlets, don't be surprised if the show eventually makes its way to New York City.

From where I sat, Ten Cents a Dance more than deserves its high praise. Part of the enjoyment for me was in figuring out what the relationships were among the various individuals onstage, so I'm going to bury my take on all that later in this post, in case you want to figure it out for yourself. (And, hey, who says my interpretation is right, anyway?) So, if you want to preserve the sense of discovery, stop reading here. Suffice it to say that I think the show is well worth the trip to Princeton, or worth the wait for the seemingly inevitable Manhattan production.

So, for those of you who are still with me, Ten Cents a Dance begins with a slow, pensive opening. Doyle establishes from the outset that this show is not in any particular hurry, preferring instead to luxuriate in the sounds of the music, and gradually reveal the underlying themes. The show features one male (Malcolm Gets) and five female performers (including Broadway legend Donna McKechnie and rising star Lauren Molina). Doyle also makes clear from the start that, among the emotional overtones that will emerge, the predominant feeling will be a palpable sense of loss and regret. (Not everyone will appreciate the languorous pacing. My sources tell me that, at one performance, a woman in the audience impatiently and repeatedly enjoined Malcolm Gets to "Say something!" as the opening sequence lingered on.)

Of course, when you hear "John Doyle show," you might automatically think "actors playing musical instruments," and in this instance you'd be correct. There are those who consider the whole actor/musician device a gimmick whose time has long since passed. I am not one of those people. I approach it like any other production device: Does it work for the show at hand?

And here, it works. Gets plays "Johnny," who would appear to be a bandleader of some sort, or at least a metaphorical bandleader, looking back on one especially momentous collaboration, with the women in the show become the members of Johnny's band. (Yes, this has been done before in Nine, but, hey, everything's been done before.)

The program lists the five women in the show as "Miss Jones 1," "Miss Jones 2," etc. Each female performer wears a slight variation on the same costume design. Clearly, they're all meant to be the same woman, each at a different stage of the relationship. Or perhaps the grieving process, as this is clearly a romance that ended on a sorrowful note. There's the idealistic young woman (Molina) flush with the glow of new love. The three middle females each represent some intermediate stage of regret, disappointment, and rage. And finally we have the resigned and forgiving older woman (McKechnie), who visibly intercedes when the others become too harsh.

And the wonder of all this is that the backstory comes out through the staging and the performances. The actors speak few if any words. Doyle has ordered the songs to follow the arching sine curve of the relationship. For instance, at one point the ladies join together in a rousing rendition of "To Keep My Love Alive" (from A Connecticut Yankee), which builds in bitterness until Johnny interrupts with a palliative "This Can't Be Love" (from The Boys from Syracuse). The juxtaposition succinctly reveals Johnny as a manipulative charmer, and the cohort of ladies as a bit of a survivors' group. The show as a whole features many such apt pairings and groupings, making it almost seem as though the songs had been written specifically for this show.

Of course, we know better. These are the glorious cream of the voluminous output of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The melodies remain haunting despite years of familiarity, and the lyrics reveal nuance upon nuance, from a lyricist who could sometimes be more clever than evocative. The irony, of course, is that these songs all come from an era when theater songs weren't always written for context, but rather as potential hits. That these songs genuinely seem embedded within Doyle's devised story gives testament to some latent power on the part of Rodgers & Hart to craft songs that not only resonate but also transcend.

A few minor quibbles: The musicality was a bit wanting at times, possibly because most of the cast members were forced to play multiple instruments to accommodate the arrangements. (Ms. McKechnie in particular seemed incapable of maintaining the beat when she was on percussion.) And the vocal cutoffs were wildly inconsistent throughout the show. But, for the most part, this is a haunting show, a testament to the power of classic songs and smart conception. 

Fringe Reviews - Yeast Nation and The Legend of Julie

Well, Hurricane Irene seems to have officially landed ashore in the Boston area, so much of the city has rightly shut down to keep the populace safe. In particular, all events have been canceled at the Boston Conservatory, which has given me the chance to catch up on some of my blogging backlog.

It seems oddly appropriate that I should use this weather-induced respite to finish up my report on the shows I was able to catch at the New York Fringe Festival, as Irene also precipitated the cancellation of the Festival's last day of performances and closing festivities.

This was actually my first excursion to the Fringe. I'm not really sure why I've never ventured south before (most of the shows tend to take place downtown), but I think the sheer amount of choice available usually seemed rather overwhelming. (There were 194 separate shows in the Fringe this year alone. Yikes.) Plus, the productions tend to play at odd times, like 5 PM and 11 AM. Since I don't live in the city, it's harder for me to pop by a show on a whim. I would usually need to make specific plans, and with the scattered nature of the Fringe schedule, it requires a bit more planning than seeing a show on the main stem, or even Off-Broadway.

But, more to the point, I never really knew about any of the Fringe shows beforehand. Somehow, this year, a couple of high-profile productions caught my attention: Yeast Nation and The Legend of Julie Taymor, Or The Musical That Killed Everybody. It also didn't hurt that two outstanding recent graduates of the Boston Conservatory were involved in said productions: Steven Cardona and Stephanie Gandalfo, assistant choreographers for Yeast Nation and The Legend of Julie, respectively. The combination of these enticing shows and two beloved former students proved irresistible, and I decided the take the Fringe plunge.

The runaway hit of the Fringe this year was Yeast Nation, which quickly sold out before it had even had one performance. This was due mostly to the pedigree of the creators. Greg Kotis (book, lyrics, direction) and Mark Hollmann (music and lyrics) were responsible for Urinetown, which from what I understand is the most successful musical to emerge from the Fringe in its 15-year history.

Urinetown has become a modern classic in the minds of many theater aficionados, and, I believe, rightly so. Yeast Nation is the much-anticipated follow-up to Urinetown, and has been aborning for a few years now, including an engagement at Chicago's American Theatre Company two seasons back. After Chicago, Kotis and Hollmann were unable to secure financial backing for Yeast Nation, so they decided to give the Fringe, which had worked so well for Urinetown, another try.

It's easy to see why no one deigned to open their checkbooks for Yeast Nation: it's a pale offspring of Urinetown, too similar in all the wrong ways, and not enough like it in the ways that made Urinetown exceptional.

Yeast Nation takes place three billion years ago, and concerns the first supposed life forms on earth: salt-eating yeast. The yeast are running out of food, and the ruling powers have set down rules to conserve the community's precious resources. Those who transgress the rules are destroyed. Sound familiar? Yeast Nation even includes the droll narrator and the precocious child who acts as the narrator's foil. Add in some meta references to musical theater and self-conscious jokes about the ridiculousness of the scenario, and you essentially have Urinetown redux.

What Yeast Nation fails to replicate, however, is everything that made Urinetown fresh and entertaining. The music to Urinetown is catchy Kurt Weill manqué. The music for Yeast Nation is bland, uniform, mediocre rock. And the lyrics aren't funny. At all. The songs exhibit little of the comic inspiration that makes listening to the cast recording of Urinetown almost as enjoyable as watching the show live. I can't imagine wanting to listen to any of the songs from Yeast Nation again, with the notable exception of "Stasis," a rousing mock anthem to maintaining the status quo. The song hints at what Yeast Nation could have been, and perhaps might someday become, but as currently configured the score is almost entirely expendable.

The show almost works during the book scenes, although most of the jokes are, again, recycled. Harriet Harris, who is almost always a source of pleasure onstage, is sadly underused here as the narrator. She seemed to sense this and to respond by exaggerating her line delivery to the point of making much of what she said incomprehensible. Also, toward the end, the tone of the show seemed to lose whatever focus it may have had. My best guess is that the denouement had something to do with the power of love. I'm assuming this was ironic on the part of the creators, but in performance it wasn't clear whether it was meant to be a put on. In fact, the show toward the end unraveled to the point of bewilderment.

(Although the guy seated behind me was clearly enjoying the proceedings far more than I was, in fact far more than anyone else in the audience. His hardy, forced laughter was ubiquitous, which gave me the sneaking suspicion that he was somehow involved in the production and/or was planted to "sweeten" up the audience. If so, boo.)

The other high-profile Fringe show that I took in was The Legend of Julie Taymor, Or The Musical That Killed Everybody, which boasts a different kind of cultural cachet from that of Yeast Nation. I'm sure you won't be surprised to discover that The Legend of Julie is a satirical version of the much-publicized and disastrous events leading up to the long-delayed Broadway opening of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.

The Legend of Julie seemed to be aiming for the same comedic territory as Silence - The Musical, a Fringe hit from another season that is now playing an extended run Off Broadway. (Read my review.) The shared formula: Take a story that everyone presumably knows and have a lot of fun making fun of everything and everyone involved.

But, as with Silence, the joke in The Legend of Julie is only funny for so long, and then we're stuck slogging through the details of the story. And slog we do, through all of the various plot twists and turns of events, rather slavishly and without much of a point of view, except perhaps for, "Gee, weren't these people arrogant?" The book doesn't add much of anything new or surprising to the narrative until about 80% of the way through the show, and then it rushes at breakneck speed to the finish. The final scene features some rather pretentious speechifying, then segues into a closing number that is every bit as incomprehensible as anything in Spider-Man, before or after Taymor's departure.

The book for The Legend of Julie is by Travis Ferguson, and although much of the content is mildly to moderately amusing, the show came off like a really professional student-written production rather than a legitimate contender for the professional stage. (Ferguson sat in front of me mouthing the words to every song throughout the entire show. That certainly didn't add much to my perception of the professionalism of the proceedings.)

That's not to say that The Legend of Julie is totally without its charms. The number in the second act about the first preview of Spider-Man, in which everyone in the audience was tweeting his or her impressions, was quite funny and well executed, but it seemed more like the kind of thing that would work better as a stand-alone number in a revue like Forbidden Broadway than as the justification for an entire two-act show.

But the real nail in The Legend of Julie's coffin is the fact that, by definition, the show is mired in events that have already started to recede from the public consciousness. The show was selected to become part of the FringeNYC Encore Series, in which the most popular or well-received Fringe productions get a chance at an encore. I could be wrong here, but I really don't see either Yeast Nation of The Legend of Julie having much of an afterlife.

Contest - Win Two Tickets to Follies on Broadway

I'm not really a summer person. I never really have been. I've always looked forward to the fall, partly because my birthday is in September, but also because, when I was in school, I always looked forward to the the new academic year. (Yeah, I'm kind of a dork.) And now that I'm teaching full-time, I'm filled with that same sense of eager anticipation when August rolls around.

Of course, autumn also brings the promise of the new theater season, and, I don't know about you, but I'm becoming pretty darned excited. Sure, some folks are lamenting the relative paucity of new musicals. So far, the announced crop of new tuners is somewhat thinner than last year's crop. (Watch this space for a preview of new musicals for the upcoming Broadway season.)

But last season there were only two musical revivals on Broadway, whereas this season we're likely to see at least a half dozen. Of course, there's the eagerly anticipated new production of Porgy and Bess, which I'll be seeing twice during its run at the American Repertory Theatre. Plus there's Godspell, Evita, and potentially Jesus Christ Superstar, not to mention a significantly revised version of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.

But for Stephen Sondheim aficionados, the clear favorite will undoubtedly be Follies, a show that, to date, has found greater success in its recordings and concert presentations than in open-ended, fully staged productions. Follies had a decidedly lackluster revival in 2001, which, despite direction by Matthew Warchus and choreography by Kathleen Marshall, just kinda fell flat on the stage of the Belasco Theatre. For me, the problem was partly one of casting. The four central players -- Blythe Danner (Phyllis), Judith Ivey (Sally), Gregory Harrison (Ben), and Treat Williams (Buddy) -- somehow didn't mesh to create an emotionally moving core for the production, despite the considerable talents of these individual performers.

Ten years later, we have another chance to see Follies on Broadway, under the auspices of the Kennedy Center, where this production played a well-received engagement earlier this year. The production has transferred nearly intact for a limited run at Broadway's Marquis Theatre, with Eric Schaeffer and Warren Carlyle repeating their duties as director and choreographer, respectively. Much of the stellar cast has made the transfer as well, including headliners Bernadette Peters, Ron Raines, Jan Maxwell, and Danny Burstein. The supporting cast features such Broadway stalwarts as Jayne Houdyshell, Terri White, Mary Beth Peil, Susan Watson, and Florence Lacey, not to mention London regular Elaine Paige.

Sounds pretty good, huh? Well, if you're as eager as I am, I'm sure you'd love the chance to win a couple of tickets to see the show. Well, look no further, dear reader. Below are a few Follies trivia questions. Please submit your answers as a comment below. I will select a winner randomly from all entries with the correct responses. (Don't worry: I will only publish the comments after I have selected the winner.)

Good luck!

The contest is over, and the winner has been notified. Thanks to everyone who played!

1. The original working title for Follies remains with the show as the title of one of the show's songs. Which song is it? [The answer I was looking for was The Girls Upstairs, but as many of you pointed out the name of the song is actually "Waiting for the Girls Upstairs." So I accepted either answer.]

2.  Stephen Sondheim and co-director Hal Prince were supposedly inspired to create Follies by a photo of a legendary silent-film star standing amid the wreckage of a demolished movie theater. Who was the star and what was the theater? [The film star was Gloria Swanson and it was the Roxy]

3. As often happens with shows under development, lots of songs came and went during the tryout period for Follies. Which song did the now-classic "I'm Still Here" replace? ["Can That Boy Foxtrot"]

4. Many of the original stars of Follies have passed away, but one of the original leading players is still going strong, and is currently appearing on Broadway in another musical revival. Who is this performer, and which show is he or she performing in? [John McMartin is in Anything Goes. And he's pretty frickin' amazing in it, too.]

5. Sondheim has described most of the songs in Follies as pastiche, i.e. homages to classic songs, or to particular composers and lyricists. For example, "The Story of Lucy and Jessie" was a homage to "The Saga of Jenny" from Lady in the Dark. And Sondheim intended "Losing My Mind" as "a Gershwin tune with a Dorothy Fields lyric." So, what classic theater song is "Beautiful Girls" an homage to? And in which series of shows (hint, hint) did the song originally appear? [The song is "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody," and it first appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies.]

The Fine Print: The tickets are good for Tuesday through Thursday performances between August 16th and September 29th. The contest deadline is midnight EST, Thursday, August 11th, 2011.

Review - Hair Tour Lands Back on Broadway

Dear Reader: For some reason, I didn't receive a press invite for the return engagement of Hair on Broadway. Harrumph. But I did get a chance to catch and review the touring production when it was in Boston. Here's my review reprinted here for your convenience. -- C.C.

A few days ago, the good folks at the Public Theater announced that the national tour of Hair, currently wending its way across the country, would settle onto Broadway this summer for a ten-week limited engagement at the St. James Theatre, soon to be vacated by American Idiot.

It's a welcome bit of news, even more so since I had a chance to catch the Hair tour when it was in Boston, and I can happily report that the production is holding up quite well.

This is my third time seeing Diane Paulus's production of Hair, and each time I see it, I enjoy it even more. The show emits a wondrous morass of front-loaded energy, a warm and atmospheric microcosm that welcomes audiences into the show's affirming world. I've always found the piece itself somewhat problematic, but somehow Paulus smooths over the flaws, even making some of them into assets.

For instance, the show's first act is a bit plodding, featuring a succession of rapid-fire character introductions, and it gets a bit mechanical. But the sheer energy of the cast and the melodious nature of the score more than carry the day, turning what could potentially be repetitive into a welcome rush of warmth and exuberance. The show really gains momentum in act 2, in particular during Claude's hallucination, which builds in hypnotic power, and careens the audience head-long into the show's simple but shattering climax.

For some reason, I came into this particular version of Hair show with a chip on my shoulder. I genuinely enjoyed both the Central Park (read my review) and Broadway (read my review) versions, but the musical-theater historian in me wanted to pick the show apart and find the flaws. Despite my conscious efforts to remain analytical and objective, I found that I was getting caught up in the celebration, almost despite myself.

The flaws are nonetheless manifold. My main problem with Hair remains Claude's justification for eventually deciding to go to war. The show does a great job of showing that Claude is conflicted: he wants to please his parents, but he is also haunted by visions of what the war will actually be like. But we never really see him make the decision to go, nor do we fully understand his reasoning. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with subtlety, but at least in this regard the show crosses the line into inscrutability.

Also, some of the song setups are a bit forced, particularly the one for "Easy to Be Hard." Sheila buys Berger a yellow polyester shirt, which Berger proceeds to tear in half. So Sheila sings "How can people people so heartless." Well, boo-frickin'-hoo. Couldn't we come up with something a bit more compelling, guys? For me, the lame setup robs the powerful song of its full impact. And the song "Frank Mills," while charming, is rather pointless, and seems included here only to cover the costume change before the "Be-In."

And yet the show works, and smashingly so, carried by the luminous charm of Galt MacDermot's score and the sheer force of the talented performers currently appearing in the tour. Perhaps most remarkable is Steel Burkhardt as Berger, who is every bit as dynamic and engaging as Will Swenson was, perhaps even more so. On the debit side, we have Paris Remillard as Claude who can certainly sing the role, but doesn't really have the stage presence or emotional range of either Jonathan Groff or Gavin Creel, whom I saw as Claude in the Delacorte on Broadway productions, respectively.

Depending on my schedule and what else is playing this summer, I way have to take Hair in one final time. I keep finding new things to love in the show, despite my reservations and conscious efforts to deconstruct it. I do find it interesting to note that the show's creative staff, including MacDermot and librettists/lyricists Gerome Ragni and James Rado, weren't able to replicate their success with Hair, despite numerous attempts. (Dude? Via Galactica? The Human Comedy? Oh, please, my nerves...)

And I'm starting to get the same what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? feeling about Diane Paulus, who's now in the process of shaking the venerable A.R.T. to its very core. Her last two musical-theater efforts, The Blue Flower and Prometheus Bound, left me decidedly nonplussed, but based on the magic that is her production of Hair, I'm willing to patiently await the day when she gets her groove back.

Review - West Side Story on Tour in Boston

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review - My One and Only at the Goodspeed Opera House

When My One and Only had its out-of-town tryout in Boston back in 1983, word got around town rather quickly that the show wasn't working. Avant-garde opera director Peter Sellars was originally hired to helm the show, but the result was, by all accounts, a pretentious mess. What's more, star Tommy Tune wasn't happy with Sellars' vision of a Brechtian satire, preferring something more light and entertaining. So Sellars was fired just days before the show was set to open in Boston, and librettist Peter Stone and director Mike Nichols came in to doctor the show.

The producers were going to close the show down, but Stone and Nichols asked for ten days to rewrite. Meanwhile, the cast continued to perform the show, while it was under revision, to a somewhat confused Boston audience. At one point, act one had been completely rewritten, but they were still performing the show with the original second act, and the two bore little if any relation to each other. Tommy Tune famously came out at the end of each of these transitional performances and make a curtain speech to the effect of, "Yeah, we know it's confusing, but, hey, wasn't the dancing great?" I paraphrase, of course.

My One and Only made it to Broadway and played a respectable 767 performances, or a little less than two years. Not a smash-hit run, to be sure, but certainly more than anyone in one of those in-between (not to mention full-price) Boston performances might have predicted. The show won Tony Awards for best actor (Tune himself), best featured actor (Charles "Honi" Coles), and best choreography (Tune and Thommie Walsh).

Alas, I did not get to see My One and Only during its now-legendary Boston tryout. I was but a poor college student, and the horrific word-of-mouth was more than enough to keep me away. Opportunities to see the show since its Broadway run have been few, but fortunately our good friends at The Goodspeed Opera House saw fit to dust the show off and give it a good airing.

My One and Only was a prime example of a "songbook" show, what we would now call "jukebox" musical. Although when you're discussing the like of George Gerswhin and Ira Gershwin, somehow "songbook" seems more respectful, but also historically accurate, since the term "jukebox" didn't really kick in until the 1940s. Whenever I discuss the Gershwins in my musical-theater history course, I usually ask students to name the show that certain Gershwin songs were from. They're rarely able to do so, although to be fair, I'm not so sure I'd do so well myself. And why? Because the songs are more important the the shows.

In the 1920s, musicals weren't written to stand the test of time, and they didn't, for the most part. They were meant to play for a few months, make a profit, and maybe produce a few hit songs. Funny Face certainly produced its share of hits, four of which are included in My One and Only, including "He Loves and She Loves," "S Wonderful," and the respective title songs for each show. The creators of My One and Only also interpolated other Gershwin songs, including "How Long Has This Been Going On?," "Nice Work If You Can Get It," and "Kickin' the Clouds Away."

The resulting show, at least based on the Goodspeed production, clearly reflects the hurried nature of the show's construction. Peter Stone was one of the most successful and admired librettists musical theater has ever had, but here his work shows the strain of trying to shape the book around an existing set of songs and characters. The people here become mere tropes - a Lindbergh-like flyboy, a female English-Channel swimmer, a Russian impresario, a foul-mouthed female mechanic - which I guess is pretty faithful to how they would have been portrayed in an actual Gershwin musical, but I would have preferred something a bit more nuanced and three-dimensional. But, hey, great songs, huh?

The Goodspeed production is rather complex technically, with multiple set pieces flying in and out, and elaborate digital projections, but the overall visual feel of the show was washed out and diffuse. Fortunately the production has two major assets: Tony Yazbek in the Tommy Tune role and choreographer Kelli Barclay. Yazbek, whom I have seen in numerous productions, including A Chorus Line, Gypsy, and On the Town, is quite simply the consummate performer. He's an incredibly agile dancer and a fine singer, but he also brings a very credible and appealing quality to the characters that he plays. It certainly doesn't hurt the he's easy on the eyes, but fortunately this man has the talent to back up his looks.

Barclay's work here features some of the most raucous and joyous dance currently appearing on the eastern seaboard. When Yazbek is on-stage, particularly in combination with Barclay's energetic and plentiful tap choreography, the show is a joy. When the book kicks in, it tends to grind to a halt. The finale in particular is quite an uplifting and joyous affair, in which Barclay pays tribute to the original choreography (thankfully preserved on the Broadway's Lost Treasures DVD), but Barclay thankfully provides her own individual touches.

My One and Only runs until June 25th at the Goodspeed. If you want to see one of the best performers currently working execute some of the best dance you're likely too see all summer, you might want to head on down to East Haddam, CT.

Review - Hair Tour in Boston (and Back on Broadway)

A few days ago, the good folks at the Public Theater announced that the national tour of Hair, currently wending its way across the country, would settle onto Broadway this summer for a ten-week limited engagement at the St. James Theatre, soon to be vacated by American Idiot.

It's a welcome bit of news, even more so since I had a chance to catch the Hair tour when it was in Boston, and I can happily report that the production is holding up quite well.

This is my third time seeing Diane Paulus's production of Hair, and each time I see it, I enjoy it even more. The show emits a wondrous morass of front-loaded energy, a warm and atmospheric microcosm that welcomes audiences into the show's affirming world. I've always found the piece itself somewhat problematic, but somehow Paulus smooths over the flaws, even making some of them into assets.

For instance, the show's first act is a bit plodding, featuring a succession of rapid-fire character introductions, and it gets a bit mechanical. But the sheer energy of the cast and the melodious nature of the score more than carry the day, turning what could potentially be repetitive into a welcome rush of warmth and exuberance. The show really gains momentum in act 2, in particular during Claude's hallucination, which builds in hypnotic power, and careens the audience head-long into the show's simple but shattering climax.

For some reason, I came into this particular version of Hair show with a chip on my shoulder. I genuinely enjoyed both the Central Park (read my review) and Broadway (read my review) versions, but the musical-theater historian in me wanted to pick the show apart and find the flaws. Despite my conscious efforts to remain analytical and objective, I found that I was getting caught up in the celebration, almost despite myself.

The flaws are nonetheless manifold. My main problem with Hair remains Claude's justification for eventually deciding to go to war. The show does a great job of showing that Claude is conflicted: he wants to please his parents, but he is also haunted by visions of what the war will actually be like. But we never really see him make the decision to go, nor do we fully understand his reasoning. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with subtlety, but at least in this regard the show crosses the line into inscrutability.

Also, some of the song setups are a bit forced, particularly the one for "Easy to Be Hard." Sheila buys Berger a yellow polyester shirt, which Berger proceeds to tear in half. So Sheila sings "How can people people so heartless." Well, boo-frickin'-hoo. Couldn't we come up with something a bit more compelling, guys? For me, the lame setup robs the powerful song of its full impact. And the song "Frank Mills," while charming, is rather pointless, and seems included here only to cover the costume change before the "Be-In."

And yet the show works, and smashingly so, carried by the luminous charm of Galt MacDermot's score and the sheer force of the talented performers currently appearing in the tour. Perhaps most remarkable is Steel Burkhardt as Berger, who is every bit as dynamic and engaging as Will Swenson was, perhaps even more so. On the debit side, we have Paris Remillard as Claude who can certainly sing the role, but doesn't really have the stage presence or emotional range of either Jonathan Groff or Gavin Creel, whom I saw as Claude in the Delacorte on Broadway productions, respectively.

Depending on my schedule and what else is playing this summer, I way have to take Hair in one final time. I keep finding new things to love in the show, despite my reservations and conscious efforts to deconstruct it. I do find it interesting to note that the show's creative staff, including MacDermot and librettists/lyricists Gerome Ragni and James Rado, weren't able to replicate their success with Hair, despite numerous attempts. (Dude? Via Galactica? The Human Comedy? Oh, please, my nerves...)

And I'm starting to get the same what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? feeling about Diane Paulus, who's now in the process of shaking the venerable A.R.T. to its very core. Her last two musical-theater efforts, The Blue Flower and Prometheus Bound, left me decidedly nonplussed, but based on the magic that is her production of Hair, I'm willing to patiently await the day when she gets her groove back.

The Worst Musicals of 2010

One thing I like to tell my students is that quality is always the exception. Good times, bum times, there's always a paucity of true quality, almost by definition. Sure, there have been times when the economics allowed for more productions, which seemed to give rise to more great shows. But that's partly because there were simply more shows being written and produced. It's not as though there was a higher percentage of great shows in the '40s and '50s. There was plenty of crap, too.

This, of course, is a major oversimplification. The show-development process was very different in the '40s and '50s, and there were more people who were able to make a living doing nothing but writing shows. Today, these folks are few and far between.

But that doesn't mean that people aren't writing new musicals. As I type this, I'm looking at two large boxes of scripts and CDs that I recently received from The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. This year, I'm a reader for the O'Neill's annual National Music Theater Conference, and for the past week and most of next week, I'm reading through the scripts and listening to the CDs and making recommendations for which shows should move on in the selection process. And you know what? Most of them aren't very good, at least in their current form. But every once in a while, there's a script that shows a glimmer of promise. And that's probably the way it should be.

Why am I telling you all this? Because this post is ostensibly about the worst musicals that I personally encountered in 2010, and I thought it was important to set the context: there will always be bad musical theater, as long as there's musical theater. I applaud anyone who sets about the task of putting together a new musical. But that doesn't mean I have to applaud the results. Musicals don't get an "A" for effort. What matters is what ends up on the stage and whether it works artistically.

Anyway, here's my list of the worst productions I saw in 2010. Click on the show titles to read my original reviews.

1. Come Fly Away - Quite possibly the most tedious show I've ever seen. Not because there wasn't a single line of dialog, or that there wasn't an original score. I'm not one of these purists who says that shows need to have X, Y, and Z to be considered true musicals. I'm completely open to the possibility that a show that's 100% dance could be compelling, moving, and entertaining. Come Fly Away wasn't. Part of the problem was the characterizations: I had no idea who these people were individually. But the main problem was that nothing really much happened to them. It was just a 90-minute morass of undifferentiated people and meaningless dance. There were a few times when Twyla Tharp's choreography rose above the pedestrian, but these moments were few, and not frequent enough to hold my attention. Tharp has apparently reworked the show and brought it to Las Vegas under the name Sinatra: Dance With Me. If you happen to be in Vegas, I say resist the invitation.

2. The Addams Family - As bad as The Addams Family is, I have to admit it was never boring. The credit here should probably go to the sturdy cast of Broadway stalwarts, including Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth. My main issue was that no one in the creative department seemed to be even passingly familiar with The Addams Family. Would Morticia be afraid of growing old? No, she'd throw a party to celebrate her first crow's foot. Would Wednesday come home one day and announce that she expected "One Normal Night" from her family? No. The Addamses haven't the slightest idea that they *aren't* normal. That's part of the humor. Would Uncle Fester proclaim, after the Addams ancestors have risen from the dead, that no one would return to the grave until true love prevailed? Puh-lease. The book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice produced a few choice, if nonspecific, one liners, but Andrew Lippa score was embarrassingly flat and generic. The show, however, has become a money-maker, at least until Nathan Lane leaves in March. Will the show continue to sell out under the helm of the redoubtable Roger Rees? Stay tuned.

3. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown - I hated this show. Hated, hated, hated it. But, as often happens when shows get either really bad or really good word of mouth, the second wave of public reaction has gone in the other direction. "Geez, it's not *that* bad," people seem to be saying now. Well, yes it is. The book was flat, the score didn't contain a single memorable number, the dance was superfluous, and the mechanized set overshadowed the proceedings to a distracting degree. You know a show isn't working when you have Sherie Rene Scott, Patti LuPone, Laura Benanti, Brian Stokes Mitchell and Danny Burstein on stage in front of you and you can't quite shake the feeling that you'd really rather be someplace else. That said, I was going to give the show a second chance. As a newly appointed member of the Outer Critics Circle, I was invited to the see the show next Wednesday. But, as you may have heard, the show will be closing this weekend, three weeks earlier than previously announced. All that star power, and the show couldn't even manage to sell above 50% during Christmas week. Ouch.

4. Promises, Promises - Easily my biggest personal disappointment of the season. I'm not really that big a fan of the show itself, but the cast (Kristin Chenoweth, Sean Hayes, Tony Goldwyn) and crew (director/choreographer Rob Ashford) had me practically giddy with anticipation. What happened? Well, Chenoweth was simply miscast in the role of a suicidal schlub. Hayes never let me forget for a minute that he was performing: he never quite made the transition past the mannerisms into playing the whole person. Goldwyn was stuck in the role of an underwritten, cardboard bad guy. And Ashford seemed to be too focused on the choreography - which was undistinguished - and gave the characterizations and pacing of the show short shrift. If it weren't for the scintillating Katie Finneran in an all-too-brief appearance in the second act, Promises, Promises would have been a complete washout. The show has sold rather well based on the presence of the stars, but clearly the producers understand that the show itself is a bit of a dog, since they're simply closing the show at the end of the stars' contracts.

5. The Blue Flower - The only regional entry on my list this year, The Blue Flower is currently playing at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge. While I applaud the ART for including such an adventurous show in its season (especially after recent charges that the venerable ART is becoming too populist), I really wish the show itself had been less of a pretentious bore. Neophyte creators Jim and Ruth Bauer have put together a show in which the main characters rarely if ever speak, but rather express their thoughts and emotions through painfully oblique song lyrics. The show relies on lazy narration and projections to tell the actual story. The result is an admittedly ambitious but ultimately frustrating attempt at exploring and illuminating the dynamic of art and war, and the lives of the people caught in between.

 6. A Little Night Music - Let me be excruciatingly clear here: I'm specifically referring to the Broadway production of A Little Night Music when Catherine Zeta-Jones was the star of the show. I must admit, in my review, I said that CZJ was "perfectly presentable, if uninspired" as Desiree. But then she won the Tony. The frickin' Tony. And why? Because she's a star, and the Tony voters wanted to congratulate themselves on being able to attract stars to Broadway. And then I saw A Little Night Music again, this time with Bernadette Peters as Desiree. What a transformation. (Read my re-review.) The production was virtually the same, but Peters, through the sheer force of her talent, professionalism, and genuine star presence, brought the entire production into focus and transformed the rest of the cast along with her. It was an amazing feat to witness, and the comparison brought into unflattering relief exactly how wanting CZJ's performance really was. The producers did themselves a favor by bringing in Peters: the show ran for another 6 months and probably brought them a lot closer to solvency. But they weren't doing CZJ any favors. In retrospect, I'll bet she wishes she could have simply paid the producers off to have closed the show on her departure.

7. The Burnt Part Boys - It seems unfair to pick on The Burnt Part Boys, simply because the show meant so well. It was a very serious musical about two young men who lost their father in a mining accident ten years before, and their efforts to restore honor to their father's memory. Pretty worthy stuff. Unfortunately the show itself didn't do its ambitious subject matter full justice. The bluegrass score by Chris Miller and Nathan Tysen scored points for authenticity, but the songs themselves didn't differentiate themselves from each other, and the result was idiomatic but dull. The cast was game, particularly Al Calderon and Charlie Brady as the central pair of brothers, but the book by Mariana Elder didn't really give them anywhere to go. Plus, the final plot complication was unconvincingly resolved, which left the entire show with a sort of "Why?" kind of feeling at the end. The characters and conceit for The Burnt Part Boys were more than worthy. Unfortunately, the score and the book didn't live up to the promise.

8. American Idiot - Another show that fell considerably short of its admittedly worthy ambitions. The best parts of American Idiot were the hard-rocking but melodic Green Day songs, the cast of energetic young performers, and a spectacular visual style. Where the show fell down was the story. (That really seems to be the theme of this list overall: these shows are long on concept but short on actual narrative.) Once director Michael Mayer came up with a scenario to hold the Green Day songs together, he seemed to just let it go at that and not give the characters anything to do except brood. American Idiot has been playing to really anemic houses, except for the week when Green Day front man Billie Joe Armstrong stepped into the part of St. Jimmy. So, rather than close a show that simply isn't catching on, the producers have persuaded Armstrong to join the show for an additional 50 performances, to help the show survive the winter. My prediction: the show will do extremely well with Armstrong, but once he leaves it will be back to business as usual.

9. Freckleface Strawberry - Just because you're writing a show for kids doesn't mean you get a pass with regard to dramatic structure and genuine inspiration. The show is based on the children's book FreckleFace Strawberry by the luminous Julianne Moore. But in bringing the story to the stage, the creators have failed to provide a cohesive story or a decent score. The show seems thrown together rather randomly, without thought for any kind of unity among the various elements. The energetic cast members give it their all, but ultimately they can't overcome what is essentially a hodgepodge of inferior songs and a book that's about as watertight as a colander.

10. The Roar of the Greasepaint/The Smell of the Crowd - I truly love the York Theater, and I genuinely support their efforts to both rediscover musical gems from the past as well as hone and burnish the jewels of the future. So I don't mean this to be a reflection at all on the valiant efforts of the good people at the York. I'm sure they meant well when they selected The Roar of the Greasepaint/The Smell of the Crowd as part of their fall Musicals in Mufti series. The score has plenty of catchy songs, including "Where Would You Be Without Me?," "Nothing Can Stop Me Now," "Who Can I Turn To?" and "A Wonderful Day Like Today." Listening to the cast recording, it's easy to wonder why the show has slipped into relative obscurity. But then there's that book. That pretentious, self-important, irritatingly allegorical book. I'm genuinely glad that I had a chance to experience the show, if only to give me a stronger sense of just how ponderous and annoying the shows from the 1960s could get. But otherwise I won't be in any great hurry to re-experience TROTGTSOTC any time soon.

DISHONORABLE MENTION: Million Dollar Quartet - MDQ wasn't all that awful as a show, but it does represent the increasing trend toward safe choices that give Baby Boomers exactly what they want, and nothing more. I have to admit that there's a little streak of vindictiveness lurking here. I originally hadn't planned on mentioning the show at all until last week, when I made a snide comment on Twitter about Stray Cats bassist Lee Rocker joining the cast for 12 performances in January. In the context of the show's growing list of one-night-only guest artists, including Jerry Lee Lewis, Darlene Love, Ray Benson, and Melissa Etheridge, I remarked that MDQ was becoming the next Chicago, in terms of stunt casting, and that I didn't mean that as praise. Well, a couple of my followers (no names, but we're talking really highly placed people here) took me to task for criticizing a producer's efforts to keep a show running. The implication seemed to be that, as an increasingly well known member of the theatrical community myself, I should be more positive and supportive. I bristled. My tweeted responses were as follows: "If I had liked the show, I might applaud it. But I didn't, so I don't. My $0.02," "I reserve the right to praise efforts that prolong shows I like and criticize efforts to attenuate shows I detest," and finally "And I happen to think that Broadway needs my cynicism in the face of shameless hucksterism. I'm on nobody's payroll."

Whaddya think, dear reader? Do I owe it to the Broadway community to be more supportive (i.e. mindless), or is considered criticism the best support of all?

The Best Musicals of 2010

Yes, it's that time of year again. When otherwise intelligent writers take time out of their busy schedules to create arbitrary, specious, and otherwise suspect lists of the best and worst of the year. I hate lists. But I also love lists.

Why the ambivalence? Well, I'm as much a sucker for lists as anyone else: it gives me a chance to reflect on what I loved and loathed over the course of the year. To be honest, lists drive traffic, but they also spark debate. But I also find them as artificial and unfair as, say, the Tony Awards. Why must everything be a contest? Why must we continually pit people and product against each other in the relentless pursuit of good, better, and best?

My personal hesitations notwithstanding, I nonetheless present the following as my decidedly personal, skewed, biased, and irreverent take on the best musicals - and one play with tons of music - of the year. To read my reviews, click on the title links. Sometime next week I"ll be posting my list of the worst. (And it ain't gonna be pretty, m'kay?)

1. The Scottsboro Boys - Hands down, the most powerful, tuneful, and paradoxically entertaining show of the year. How fitting that The Scottsboro Boys would cap the Broadway career of two of the most daring and innovative creators in Broadway history: John Kander and Fred Ebb. There's been a lot of moaning about The Scottsboro Boys with regard to its supposedly premature closing on Broadway. Yes, it's too bad the show couldn't find a wider audience. But here's a show that, in an ideal world, would have been better off finding a berth Off-Broadway. Unfortunately, there really isn't room for The Scottsboro Boys Off-Broadway either. Because of its challenging subject matter, it's really a show that can probably only play non-profit theaters, and there's talk of touring the show around to regional non-profits. The producers are also promising to bring the show back to Broadway in time for the Tony Awards in the spring. They're asking fans of the show to put their money where their emails are, and pledge to buy a ticket if the show reopens. Despite my reservations, I signed the pledge. Will you?

 2. Anyone Can Whistle - What can you do with a show that has a fantastic score but a mess of a book? Well, you cut the book down to a bare minimum, you cast Donna Murphy, Sutton Foster, and Raúl Esparza in the leads, and you get Casey Nicholaw to stage it. The result was the exhilarating Encores production of Anyone Can Whistle, a perennial favorite among Stephen Sondheim's many ardent followers. Foster and Esparza had terrific chemistry, but it was Donna Murphy's virtuoso turn as Cora that really carried the day. Murphy is one of the best performers we currently have on Broadway, and she dug into the part of Cora with gusto and relish. It was truly one of those performances that you carry with you throughout your theater-going career. Nicholaw's direction and staging were nearly as indelible. Anyone Can Whistle is a show that depends upon a strong directorial hand, and Nicholaw brought the entire cast onto the same page with an arch but never clownish tone. Nicholaw's work on Elf was somewhat less inspired, but he has clearly proven himself a director and choreographer of tremendous promise.

3. La Cage aux Folles - Whoever said it was too soon to bring back La Cage clearly underestimated both the strength of the show itself and Terry Johnson's honest and empathic direction. I actually sort of enjoyed the 2004 revival of La Cage, but it wasn't until I saw the current revival that I truly understood the emotional impact of the piece. This production would probably never have happened without Kelsey Grammer, but the real star of the show was Douglas Hodge, who managed to be both mannered and moving at the same time. I'll be very interested to see how the show changes under the ministrations of its upcoming replacement cast: Jeffrey Tambor and Harvey Fierstein as Georges and Albin, respectively. As we saw this season with A Little Night Music (see below), replacement casts can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of the show. Yes, Fierstein wrote the durn thing, and has a lot of drag experience. But can he bring Zaza to convincing life? I can't wait to find out.

4. A Little Night Music - I want to be very clear here: I'm specifically referring to the Broadway production of A Little Night Music *after* Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch joined up. I had very little praise for the show under the helm of Catherine Zeta-Jones (read my review). But once Bernadette and Elaine came on board, suddenly the production transformed itself into a genuinely moving and heartfelt show. Sure, Bernadette chewed a bit of David Farley's unappealing scenery. And Elaine forgot her lines to a distracting extent. (At the performance I attended, she looked at young Fredericka at one point and bellowed, "What the hell was I going to say to you?") But the sheer presence, professionalism, and warmth that these two wonderful performers exuded permeated the rest of the cast, bringing what was a ragtag bunch of admittedly talented but unfocused performers into a unified troupe. It was one of the most drastic theatrical transformations I've ever witnessed, and for that we have Catherine Zeta-Jones to thank: the show would never have come to Broadway without her, and then we wouldn't have had the chance to see a far superior performer take her place.

5. Yank - Sheer joy, both in terms of the writing and the performances. Yank was a lovely surprise for me. I'm certainly sympathetic to the subject matter: the story of two gay soldiers finding love during World War II. But what made this show work was the delightful score by David Zellnik (book and lyrics) and Joseph Zellnik (music), and a bevy of smart and moving performances, led my the terrific Bobby Steggert and Ivan Hernandez. The pair brought such credibility and warmth to their scenes together, it was quite easy to get caught up in their passion. The show was one of a number of Off-Broadway shows that were announced for Broadway this season, but Yank was later postponed, even after director David Cromer signed on to further develop the show. I'm not sure Yank will meet a more promising fate than the other shows on this list that moved from Off-Broadway to On-, but I greatly look forward to seeing this show again, hopefully with the delightful Bobby Steggert in the starring role.

6. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson - What a difference an audience made. The first time I saw Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at The Public Theater, I was a bit nonplussed (read my review). The book and direction were sharp, but I found the the score to be one long undifferentiated drone. Plus, the audience just wasn't getting it, which made it hard to really appreciate the humor. Then I saw the show after it transferred to Broadway. I still had problems connecting with the score, but the preview audience was eating it up, and I went happily along for the ride. Some people have quibbled that the show plays fast and loose with history, taking Jackson's story and forcefully wringing out modern political resonance. To those people I reply, "Yeah, so?" Name one musical that's historically accurate. 1776? Ragtime? Name one musical that's faithful to its source. My Fair Lady? West Side Story? Gypsy? Sweeney Todd? Nope. Not one of 'em. I simply don't buy the notion that shows need to be documentaries and stick slavishly to history. I'm all for that which serves the author's vision of the piece, provided it's executed with genuine wit and passion, as it most certainly is in BBAJ.

7. The Kid - This one kind of came out of nowhere for me, played for a while, and then went away. I'm really hoping to see The Kid resurface at some point, because there was a lot worth recommending in the show. The story involves sex columnist Dan Savage and the efforts by him and his boyfriend to become parents. Along the way, they meet with various obstacles, challenges, and eventually success. The show is by a talented trio of newcomers, Michael Zam (book), Andy Monroe (music), and Jack Lechner, (lyrics), and featured a charming cast, led by the always remarkable Christopher Sieber. There have been hints of a cast recording as well as future versions of the show, and I for one look forward to both, as well as to future work by these promisingly talented gentlemen.

8. See Rock City - Another pleasant Off-Broadway surprise, and one that I might not even have noticed if my friend Andy Propst at Theatermania hadn't pointed it out to me. The show was a travelogue of sorts, taking the viewer on a tour of various tourist destinations across the United States. What could have been a fragmented mess instead coalesced into a humorous and moving collation of stories and songs from composer Brad Alexander and lyricist/librettist Adam Mathias. The show was performed by an appealing cast of New York regulars, including Stanley Bahorek, Donna Lynn Champlin, and Bryce Ryness. Combine all that with wonderfully environmental staging by director Jack Cummings III, and the result was an innovative and engaging evening, one that I sincerely hope has a future life.

9. Brief Encounter - "Oh, come on now, Chris. Brief Encounter is a play, not a musical." Yeah, I know. But Emma Rice's imaginative staging of Noël Coward's play and screenplay was also chockablock with some of Coward's best songs, including "Mad About the Boy" and "A Room With a View." The show was veritably suffused with music, dotted with dance, and rife with the sort of inspired theatricality that most Broadway musicals can only aspire to. The cast strolled the aisles of the Studio 54 in troubadour fashion, and even took literal flight above the stage. What's more, the spectacle didn't detract from the human element of the story, but rather enhanced it, creating one of the most sublime and unforgettable theatrical experiences in many a season. Simply enchanting.

10. Fanny - It tells you something about the artistic caliber of the musicals on Broadway this year that I needed to list two Encores productions to fill out my top ten. But, in truth, Fanny probably would have made the list anyway, mostly because it represented an opportunity to experience what programs like Encores are all about: a rediscovered, nearly forgotten little gem of a show with a delightful score (by the under-appreciated Harold Rome), a funny and moving book (S. N. Behrman and Joshua Logan), performed by a sturdy cast of performers, both old (Fred Applegate and George Hearn) and new (Elena Shaddow and James Snyder). Encores got off to a bit of a pedestrian start this season with Bells Are Ringing, but I'm genuinely intrigued by the season's remaining two productions: the obscure Where's Charley? and the heartrending Lost in the Stars. Watch this space for my take on both.

Review - The Blue Flower at the A.R.T.

The venerable American Repertory Theater has come under considerable fire recently because of its supposedly crowd-pleasing, profit-seeking tendencies under the reign of new artistic director Diane Paulus. Well, the A.R.T.'s latest offering -- The Blue Flower -- would seem to defy that populist notion, careening instead into the realm of deliberate alienation and artistic pretense.

A.R.T. purists will no doubt be delighted. This reviewer? Not so much.

The Blue Flower is without question an ambitious and well-intentioned effort. Local Boston-area couple Jim and Ruth Bauer have apparently spent the better part of the last ten years working on the The Blue Flower. I'm told the show was quite captivating at the New York Musical Theater Festival, catching the eye of one Stephen Schwartz (yes, that Stephen Schwartz), who has since signed on as a producer.

Well, either people are seeing something in The Blue Flower that I wasn't able to, or the piece has changed considerably for the worse since its previous incarnation, because the show I saw this past Thursday at the A.R.T. was a tedious morass of obtuse stage business and oblique musical numbers. The Blue Flower seems to want to be both intellectual and sentimental; however, it serves neither of those functions effectively.

The story centers around a fictionalized foursome of artists, lovers, and free-thinkers in Germany in the very early 20th Century: German Expressionist painters Max Beckmann and Franz Marc, Dada artist Hannah Höch, and scientist Marie Curie. Set against the backdrop of World War I, the Weimar Republic, and the rise of the Nazi Party, The Blue Flower sits perched above a vein of great dramatic potential, which the Bauers, despite ten years of trying, haven't even begun to mine effectively.

The main problem with The Blue Flower is its method of storytelling. The authors seem to have made the conscious choice to have the characters rarely - if ever - speak in character, relying instead on subtitles, visual projections, and the supposed narrative power of the songs to carry the day. But often the lyrics appear only obliquely connected to the action, or are opaque to the point of inscrutability. As a result, we have the egregious and off-putting use of narration to set the scene and communicate what the characters are feeling. Ideally, the songs should be doing that, but only rarely do, which saps these inherently fascinating characters of any possible pathos.

It's entirely likely that the Bauers have deliberately chosen this Brechtian presentation style. But here's the rub: Brecht usually had something revolutionary to say. The Bauers don't, other than what appears to be the standard war-bad-art-good mantra. In case you miss the Brechtian parallels, the score here even quotes The Threepenny Opera. But whereas in Brecht the alienation devices serve to enrage, here they merely enervate.

To fill in historical holes, the authors employ the rather inert device of flashing forward 20 or 30 years and having now Professor Bauman (the fictionalized version of Beckmann, played by the remarkably protean Daniel Jenkins) deliver a lecture on World War I or expressionist art. This only serves to further emphasize that the songs aren't doing their narrative job. When the Bauman character actually does speak, it's usually in "Maxperanto," a language that the character invents and speaks as a protest against the supposed meaninglessness of existence. Again, alienating and off-putting.

As I've said, the story here is potentially powerful, but the Bauers don't seem able to evince the inherent drama, which is admittedly rife. For example, when Franz Marc joins up as a cavalryman in World War I, he encounters a gruesome scene involving a severely wounded horse. Anyone familiar with Marc's work will know that horses were a recurring motif. In The Blue Flower, Marc performs a humane act for the dying horse, the sole moment during which I was actually engaged emotionally in this show, and then a narrator steps forward and dispassionately announces Marc's own fate. What could have been a cathartic moment is robbed of any dramatic weight by taking the actual people out of the equation, a situation that happens all too frequently during The Blue Flower.

Jim Bauer's music for The Blue Flower comprises a bewildering and seemingly random mix of styles, from country and western to warmed-over Weill. When the lyrics aren't maddeningly vague, they're banal. After Marc (played by the appealing Lucas Kavner) meets his fate, Marie (a strident and dynamic Teal Wicks) sings, "This day was like no other. I climbed the Eiffel Tower and I closed my eyes and thought of you." She continues, "Things will never be the same." Yes, well, thanks for the bromide: at this point in the show, I was actually in need of a sedative.

As another lyric from the show puts it, "Oil sits on the surface of the water, annoyingly still." Well, in The Blue Flower, it isn't just the oil that's irritating. It's the whole damned painting.

NOTE: New Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations require bloggers to disclose when they accept anything of material value related to their blog posts. I received complimentary press tickets to this performance of The Blue Flower.

Review - Elf the Musical on Broadway

I'm not one of these people who automatically dismisses something just because it's part of a trend. Like, for instance, movie-to-musical adaptations. I like to think that I approach each new show with an open mind, regardless of how seemingly cynical or commercial the impetus behind the show might be.

Plus, when I heard that Elf - The Musical was in the works, it seemed like a pretty good idea to me. I genuinely enjoyed the 2003 Will Ferrell film "Elf," although it did get a bit too special-effects-dependent toward the denouement. So I was a bit crestfallen last week when the show opened to such divided reviews, especially since I wasn't scheduled to see the show until three days after it opened.

As so often happens when a show gets mixed reviews, I entered the show with a vague sense of apprehension, but was quite pleasantly surprised to find myself genuinely enjoying the show. Yes, it seemed like a bit of a rush job, and no, it's not exactly one for the ages. But Elf is a sweet and diverting show with a strong cast and a tuneful score, with plenty of fun holiday adventures along the way.

The score to Elf has music by Matthew Sklar and lyrics by Chad Beguelin, the writing pair responsible for the score to the underrated show The Wedding Singer. It's funny, but it wasn't until the second act of Elf that I realized how tuneful and effective the score for the show really is. Ironically, this came during "Nobody Cares About Santa," which actually doesn't really work as a song all that well. But it did serve to emphasize how pleasant and serviceable the rest of the score is. Even the lamest of numbers in The Wedding Singer is at least tuneful, and the same can be said for the songs for Elf. Perhaps the best of the lot is "The Story of Buddy the Elf," a terrific sequence in which the characters pitch Buddy's unlikely story as a children's book. It's a fun number, and more than adequately serves its purpose in its "11'o clock" position.

Director/choreographer Casey Nicholaw has emerged in recent seasons as someone to watch, with his terrific sense for dressing a stage, and appealing but not showy dance steps. But I get the feeling that Nicholaw didn't really have enough time for his particular brand of stage magic to reach full potency on Elf. His stage business for the annoyingly titled "Sparklejollytwinklejingly" was busy and uninspired. In this number, Buddy the elf (Sebastian Arcelus) leads a bunch of Macy's employees (product-placement alert!) in decorating the store for the holiday season. In another sequence, Buddy takes Jovie (Amy Spanger), his incipient girlfriend, skating at Rockefeller Center. Cue: ice rink! Great idea, but the rink itself is too small for the many people meant to occupy it, and the effect is more awkward than charming.

I get the sense that these things could have been worked out if the production timeline had been more accommodating. Again, the show feels like something that they rushed to finish for the holidays, particularly the amusing but spotty book by Bob Martin and Thomas Meehan. Having seen the movie, I could tell which parts of the show had been compressed significantly to accommodate the musical numbers, and the effect is often rushed and diluted.

Thankfully, there's a cast-full of Broadway pros in residence to fill in the storytelling potholes, particularly the disarming Sebastian Arcelus in the central role of Buddy. Also on-hand are stalwarts Beth Leavel and Mark Jacoby as Buddy's "human" parents, who imbue their somewhat two-dimensional roles with a great deal of humor and heart.

So, no, Elf isn't going to win any prizes, or change the direction of musical theater. But it's engaging and sweet, and certainly an appealing option for parents looking for something to entertain their vacationing brood over the holidays. It certainly had me grinning, particularly during the curtain call, during which the entire cast dons elf suits and tap shoes for a rousing finale. Cheesy? Perhaps. But I'm not ashamed to admit that the cast had me tapping right along with them.

NOTE: New Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations require bloggers to disclose when they accept anything of material value related to their blog posts. I received complimentary press tickets to this performance of Elf.