Shakespeare doesn't need any help. Knowing this, the Public Theater has a Mobile Unit, a touring production company that brings theater to the people that can't always come to it: elderly facilities, homeless shelters, schools, prisons and the like. They bring a square carpet, a few modest props and a devoted cast. As everyone from Cheek By Jowl to Joseph Papp have repeatedly demonstrated, theater-goers will eagerly bring the imagination. Instead of being a bare-bones hint at what theater can do, these spare productions can and should be theater at its inventive best.
But Shakespeare does need you to support the play. That rarely happens here. Henry V like most (all?) of Shakespeare is filled with enough wit, pathos, insight and contradictions to allow endless interpretations. But once an interpretation is chosen, every element, every performance should support that idea. You'd be hard-pressed here to know what they had in mind. And if it was to present the story as simply and powerfully as possible, they failed.
Henry V is of course the feckless Prince Hal of Henry IV, now ready to prove his lion-like nature and fitness to rule. His advisers urge war on France and an insult by the Dauphin (tennis balls! the nerve!) is enough to rouse his warrior's blood. Henry sets off to war, uncovers an assassination plot, wins his first major victory, faces daunting odds at Agincourt but proves victorious again and soon wins all of France and the hand of Princess Katherine in the bargain. While you can turn the play on its head and reveal a deep distrust of our eagerness to justify war, it's just as often used to boost morale. Here, I fear, they do neither. Newcomers will get the gist but be bored; veteran theater-goers will shrug.
The general in charge here is the director Robert O'Hara, who has done innovative, stellar work on shows like The Brother/Sister Plays (Part 2) and his own uproarious BootyCandy. But this time his flashy maneuvers serve no purpose, like marching soldiers here and there without any regard for the enemy of audience indifference. For example, I suppose the cast littering the stage at the beginning and end suggests the price of war, but the idea falls flat.
The moment of peak clarity for me came at a moment of peak directorial confusion, when Harry goes among the troops before the battle of Agincourt. Various cast-members repeat lines of text in creepy chorus, moving this way and that, leaning on each other and intoning their words to very odd effect. All the moment need do is set the scene: it's night and the French and English are camped so close to each other that the fires of one army can light the faces of the other. They are tense and nervous before the big battle to come, though presumably the English are more nervous since they are so frightfully outnumbered. That's it. It's a simple description but O'Hara stages the moment in such a weird, unnecessary manner that it takes even those familiar with the show a moment to get their bearings.
More defensible is the flurry of outrageous accents, from the Monty Python-esque banter of the French to the Caribbean accents when Harry argues with a common soldier who has no idea he's trading insults with the king. (Never has "me thinks" sounded so natural and I wouldn't have minded if "I" had become "I and I".) Still, the accents are so broad it becomes difficult to understand what they're saying. The haughty demeanor of Patrice Johnson's Montjoy told us all we needed to know; did we need an accent so impenetrable it was hard to grasp his actual dialogue? Ditto every scene with the French King (Joe Tapper) and the Dauphin (the appealing Michael Bradley Cohen, often seen in dramas and so eager to goof off here one feels like telling him "get thee to a comedy").
But it's not just the French. Zenzi Williams as Henry has so many scenes that she has the chance to land a few of them. But her two big battle speeches range from loud to louder and too often her dialogue is delivered as poetry instead of prose, losing their meaning altogether. Happy exceptions in the show include a rock solid David Ryan Smith as Exeter, et al and Ariel Shafir as Constable, et al. Surely it's telling that the best scene in the play took place between Katharine and Alice (Kim Wong). The darn thing is in French! But while Carolyn Kettig as the princess takes her cue from O'Hara and goes broad, it is simply and clearly staged and the audience immediately knows precisely what is going on.
That leads to one other moment that's quite effective. At the finale, Henry woos Katharine, a scene often presented as a romantic dessert after the rest of the play. Here however, the warlike Henry tires of Katharine's coy refusals to be wooed and nearly chokes her while demanding -- quite sweetly -- that she kiss him. It's unnerving...and would have been even better if the rest of the play had allowed us to see that brutal side of Harry present or growing all along. Instead, it's out of left field and soon passes. Still, for a moment we think, "Oh! That was interesting." A pity the rest of this production didn't build on that idea or simply get out of the way of the story.
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. Trying to decide what to read next?Head to BookFilter! Need a smart and easy gift? Head to BookFilter? Wondering what new titles came out this week in your favorite categories, like cookbooks and mystery and more? Head to BookFilter! It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. It’s like a fall book preview or holiday gift guide — but every week in every category. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day and features top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
Note: Michael Giltz is provided with free tickets to shows with the understanding that he will be writing a review. All productions are in New York City unless otherwise indicated.
What, pray tell, is a "translaptation?" It's a nonsense word made up by playwright David Ives to describe his free-flowing communion with French farce. He adapts them and translates them and ultimately transmutes them into something sort of new-ish that owes a heavy debt to the original but is all his own...and yet is not. Oh, to hell with this mania for authorship. What Ives has created with his string of translaptations is a body of work that is positively delightful.
Despite a slow start, The Metromaniacs proves to be a fine addition to that corpus delicti of playful plagiarism. The title refers to a mania for poetry and is an Ivesian translaptation of a 1738 play by Alexis Piron. Ignored by the Académie Française -- despite penning an "Ode To The Penis" which was understandably lengthy -- Piron had his revenge on the snobs. How? By celebrating another snubbed poet, a man who was himself spurned by the Académie but had his revenge. How? By publishing rustic poems and pretending to be a backwater poetess; "she" was immediately celebrated by one and all, including Voltaire, who offered to marry the little known versifier. (If you haven't guessed, the show's backstory is as entertaining as the show.) When the truth came out, Voltaire was humiliated, the once-unknown poet revenged...and then revenged once more when Piron made the scandal infamous all over again with his play.
In steps David Ives, who uses the structure of the play to create his own Shakespearean comedy. Lovers are mistaken and misused most willingly until all confusion is banished and most everyone paired off at the finale, even if the gender imbalance of five men and two women calls for some rather inventive inverting of our expectations. I will NOT outline the plot too clearly. It's a monster of conspiracy and confusion, with the show itself stopping to explain matters several times over and then throwing up its hands (script? pentameters?) and telling you not to bother. Still, let's have a go.
The Metromaniacs takes place in the lavish home of Francalou (Adam LeFevre), who has written his own play and looks forward to seeing it performed for his guests. A sylvan wood has been constructed in a large foyer/lobby/whatever as a setting. He has a lovely daughter Lucille (Amelia Pedlow) who is besotted with poetry and is himself a secret poet of some renown. Only their servant Lisette (Dina Thomas) knows the truth.
Enter various young men. The dim Dorante (Noah Averbach-Katz) would sorely love to couple with Lucille, but she will only couple with a master of couplets. The poet Damis (Christian Conn) is a friend of Dorante and offers up his own scribbles so Lucille can be wooed. Damis himself is pledged to the unseen, unknown poetess all of France is talking about, the poetess who is -- in fact -- the amiable father of Lucille. Dorante's servant Mondor (Adam Green) and Francalou's Lisette do what servants do: talk back to their masters while masterminding the stratagems to pair off lover with lover and bring about a happy ending.
And a happy ending there is, despite some modestly rough going. Act One was not the sheer delight of other recent shows by Ives, such as The Liar, The School For Lies and -- no lie -- The Heir Apparent. I was already wondering how to describe this more earth-bound, but engaging work. After the first act, I judged it was still champagne, if a little flat. Then Act Two began and somehow the show picked up steam until the bubbly finale was so fun that all was forgiven.
Each actor had their moment, with Thomas a saucy servant supreme, Pedlow pouting away, Averbach-Katz incapable of conning anyone, Green breaking the fourth wall with a well-timed smirk and Peter Kybart grousing nicely as a necessary plot device/legal aide. If the winning, handsome Conn is not precisely the lead, he certainly has the charm of one. And LeFevre as always provides such generous warmth and presence that any nonsense that revolves around him becomes immediately plausible and indeed pleasurable.
Somehow the set by James Noone didn't delight -- the forest glade in the foyer somehow wasn't incongruous enough for my taste. That's neither here nor there since it provided plenty of hide-aways for lovers to canoodle behind. All other elements were fine and it coalesced in act two with enough artistry to make me forget the pacing/plotting/something-or-othering of act one that prevented me from immediately enjoying the proceedings. So (eventual) credit to director Michael Kahn. As with all of the plays by David Ives, I look forward to seeing The Metromaniacs revived in years to come. Unlike many others, I can imagine it being improved. But even if they merely match the standard set here, it will be worth it for farcical-maniacs like me.
Well, what did we expect? Actually, all we expected were some disco balls, disco dancing and a great singer belting out some disco classics. Unfortunately, it took Summer: The Donna Summer Musical until the finale to really deliver the goods. Before that, we trudged through the admittedly interesting life of disco queen Donna Summer.
When you learn that Donna Summer was sexually abused by a preacher as a little girl, witnessed a murder and fled the country in fear of her life, moved to Germany when touring with a production of Hair, learned the language, married, had a kid and then left her husband to pursue stardom...well, you can understand why this sounds like a life worth dramatizing.
Unfortunately, Summer never moves beyond a TV movie version of that life, dutifully showing our heroine fend off an attacker in her home with an oversized fashion magazine, being born again thanks to her siblings and in the show's most egregious scene, seeing not one, not two but three daughters off to college and the world in three separate scenes that -- needless to say -- are repetitive and dull to anyone who is not actually the parent of said child. Blame book writers Colman Domingo, Robert Cary and Des McAnuff (who also handled the no-nonsense direction that keeps the 100 minute show moving).
By the time we learn she's a poor driver, loves Jesus but also loves a married man, considered suicide and then face the not-so inevitable moment where Summer defensively explains away an anti-gay comment just so all the boxes of her life can be checked, this under two hour show begins to feel awfully long.
What a pity. The knee-jerk reaction is to eye-roll over another jukebox musical. But this one had some clever ideas. Most of the cast and chorus are women, which symbolizes the female power and #MeToo vibe they were going for. Donna Summer wasn't just the Queen of Disco, they argue, but a trailblazer for women everywhere. I'm not sure switching labels from Casablanca to Geffen qualifies as such, but I would have been happy for the show to make its case more convincingly, or at least more artistically. When the show begins with Summer backed by a "band" of all-female musicians, the impact of girl power is painfully undercut by the fact that the women are almost all simply miming the playing of instruments or doing so with only rudimentary skill. Hey, they're dancers and singers and work hard nonstop throughout the show so full credit to them. But when you're trying to make a statement, simply pretending to be a musician really doesn't cut it. And that's just the start.
Another good idea? Summer begins dissecting how she and Giorgio Moroder and others created their hits: all their songs began with a bass line, she tells us. The show hints at but never quite delivers on this premise. Why not excitingly demonstrate the creative process for one of her hits, letting the audience hear a bass line and then watch as they toss in element after element, like the synths and arrangement and lyrics and give the audience the thrill of hearing it all come together. Yet these lessons in crafting a pop hit and female empowerment are never followed through. (Though Summer's signing with a new label does boast one of the better production numbers: "She Works Hard For The Money.")
At least the three leads do indeed work hard, playing Donna Summer at various ages, not to mention her mother and her children in the bargain. Storm Lever has the least interesting part as the young Donna. But Ariana DeBose does well as Disco Donna and LaChanze is the only reason this show is bearable for bringing life to Diva Donna, despite having to deliver some truly leaden exposition. She's a true pro. So is the game cast and creative team, with Paul Tazewell doing the best work with the costumes that capture an era without being jokey.
Then there are the bad ideas, like indicating the abuse Summer faced as a child early on but waiting until a late moment in the show to spell it out. Since we already understood what was happening, what's the point of delaying? Even worse, the book continually interrupts the songs for the plot. Who the heck wants to hear half of "MacArthur Park" or any of her others hits? These aren't songs that push the plot or reveal character. They are pop hits and they work best in that context. Jersey Boys managed the trick of teasing out the growth of the band in act one and then revealing their hitmaker status to dramatic effect. This show doesn't attempt that and worse, for far too long it doesn't even give us the songs. It's like a jukebox musical that keeps jumping to the next track before the last one is over.
And why the heck are we plodding our way through the life of Donna Summer and inserting lesser songs just because they work for the plot we never care about anyway? My God, we have to wait until the very end for not one, not two but three giant disco balls to finally start spinning. "Hot Stuff" is the best moment of the show -- a full-on dance number with the song presented in all its glory, backed by a big chorus of disco dancers doing their moves. That's immediately followed by "Last Dance" -- also given its due -- and you think, what the heck were they waiting for? Maybe it should have been staged immersively Off Broadway with a full-on disco floor and the audience surrounding and amidst a cast of pro dancers and maybe they should have lots of disco songs and not just Summer and a VIP section for high-paying customers where you can mingle with Andy Warhol and Liza and perhaps cocaine for the full 1970s effect and -- ok, that's not what they wanted to do here. That's just a disco party.
Like the recent Motown musical, this would have been better as the ultimate Donna Summer show rather than a tired bio-pic. Yes, Summer without her life story would just be a glorified concert. So what? At least it would be fun and we'd all remember the reason for six years no one was played on the radio as much as Donna Summer.
The bad news? A second visit to playwright Conor McPherson's scary little Christmas story confirms the suspicion that this is one of his lesser plays. The somewhat good news is that the brilliant Matthew Broderick continues to shake off the ennui that has enveloped his stage work in recent years. Friends said his work in Shining City (also by McPherson) felt like a reawakening for this talent. He doesn't quite score in The Seafarer, but it's not as good and at least his offbeat little rhythm remains anchored in the tale at hand.
That tale is a sad and shaggy one. Sharky is back at home, tending to his alcoholic, recently blinded mess of a brother Richard. They live in semi-squalor, with Richard petulantly refusing to be shaved or bathed on Christmas Eve, since surely he'll want to do it on Christmas Day and why bother doing it twice? A Charlie Brown-like tree sits sadly on a table and that's about it for holiday cheer. All Richard really wants is to drink and drink and drink. Sharky might want to drink to forget his shattered marriage and -- apparently -- a dashed romance with a married woman that he has fled home to avoid. But Sharky has sworn off the stuff, at least for a day or two, much to Richard's disgust.
The two brothers bicker and fight over nothing, joined by the equally dissolute Ivan, who would rather drink then head home (on Christmas Eve!) to face his wife and kids. She'll give him an earful for being out and drinking on Christmas Eve, so he puts off the dreaded showdown, which means she'll be all the angrier so he puts it off again and so on and so forth. Norman Rockwell, it isn't.
The tedium is broken only by the unwelcome arrival of Nicky, the man shacking up with Sharky's ex-wife and driving his car, no less. Nicky brings along a stranger named Mr. Lockhart. Whebn the others are off searching for drink or messing about with this or that, Mr. Lockhart calmly informs Sharky that he is the devil, come for a rematch. It turns out Sharky played cards with the devil and won his freedom after accidentally killing a man. But he promised to play for his soul in the future and now that the devil has tracked him down, it's time to play for keeps. And the devil has every intention of winning.
McPherson is a marvelous spinner of stories, with his ghost story The Weir perhaps the most famous. (Irish Repertory Theatre mounted a peerless revival of that one which deserved to run for years and did right by his Shining City as well, I've been told.) Here the story is fine enough, though it's like a less than scintillating story told by an old friend who is usually a dependable raconteur -- you need to indulge him a little to keep it going and don't mind, not really. He's told better stories before and will do so again.
Of the cast, Andy Murray made the strongest impression as the put-upon Sharky while the rest were quite variable, I fear. Broderick in recent years has seemed to enter Brando territory, searching for some internal rhythm or just maybe bored by the process or something to the point where one wants to shake him awake. Here, he is still delivering an odd, distant turn but it feels a little more rooted in the proceedings. I'll take hope where I can, especially in a play with precious little of it. Colin McPhillamy as Richard is overshadowed by the ghost of performances past. (More on that soon.)
The shambling set by Charlie Corcoran and stained costumes by Martha Reilly make sure we never hope for a holly, jolly Christmas. But the original music by Ryan Rumery was played at such a jarring high volume it's impossible to judge the merits of the tunes on their own. Do I blame director Ciarán O'Reilly for this and other faults? Or do I blame my memory of the original Broadway production? Even then I had reservations about the play. But Ciarin Hinds was a more menacing devil. And as the alcoholic Richard, actor Jim Norton delivered a performance so indelible, so remarkable I'll remember it for the rest of my days. He won the Tony for it and if he hadn't, everyone who saw the show would have stormed the stage like Kanye and demanded a recount.
Poor McPhillamy (hell, poor Olivier or poor Mark Rylance) could not compete with that memory. I'd suggest you might enjoy this production more if you'd never seen it before, but I enjoyed that production primarily because of Norton. Unwrapping this Christmas story a second time does it no favor.
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. Trying to decide what to read next?Head to BookFilter! Need a smart and easy gift? Head to BookFilter? Wondering what new titles came out this week in your favorite categories, like cookbooks and mystery and more? Head to BookFilter! It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. It’s like a fall book preview or holiday gift guide — but every week in every category. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day and features top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
Note: Michael Giltz is provided with free tickets to shows with the understanding that he will be writing a review. All productions are in New York City unless otherwise indicated.
On the silly and enjoyable NBC show Timeless, actor Paterson Joseph plays the owner of a company that built a time machine. But before that show debuted in 2016, Joseph had already constructed his own way of traveling through history: a one-man show about "the extraordinary Negro" Ignatius Sancho, the first Briton of African descent to cast a vote. Joseph has performed the piece all over the world (including BAM in December of 2015) and brings it back to New York for another run at the newly refurbished National Black Theatre on Fifth Avenue, home of the Classical Theatre Of Harlem.
Aptly subtitled "An Act Of Remembrance," Joseph's play about a little-known historical figure is typical of the genre -- it is gently informative, genially entertaining and offers only a modest dollop of drama. Happily, it has two key elements that allow Sancho to be worthy of your time rather than just worthy. Ignatius Sancho is a fascinating, quirky hero and Joseph is an exceptional actor who brings this man to life with the command and ease of a charismatic performer who has been showcased in London by the RSC, the National and was once the favorite to become the next Doctor. (Doctor who? If you have to ask....)
Joseph yearned to explore British history and find himself in it. Yet the very aspect of Sancho's life that made him intriguing to Joseph is perhaps what keeps the play earthbound. This life does not lack for excitement of a sort, but the journey from a child of enslaved people to a man of letters and ultimately a greengrocer who dies of gout is more curious than compelling.
Thanks to Joseph's skill, the 80 minute work flits by with ease. We see Sancho born on a ship during the horrific era of the Middle Passage, bought as a pet for a household run by three stern women, escape into a world of letters and music, become the most prominent black Briton to speak out on the evils of slavery, befriend everyone from actor David Garrick to novelist Laurence Sterne and ultimately turn into a man of property who has earned the legal right to vote. (Even white men without property could not vote at the time.)
This mounting includes co-direction by Simon Godwin, minimal but effective sets by Michael Vale, unfussy costumes by Linda Haysman and a subtle sound design by Ben Park that adds atmosphere at key moments without calling attention to itself. It is no discredit to their efforts that Joseph is what one remembers.
A one-person show can become exhausting but, as writer, Joseph has wisely employed the usual devices to break up the evening. He begins by addressing the audience, sharing why he wrote this piece, casually tucking his pants into leggings -- thus transforming before our eyes into a man from the 18th century -- and then explaining his choice of a modest lisp to portray his main character.
Joseph also smartly incorporates the work of others for flavor, such as the famous letters on slavery exchanged between Sancho and Sterne, a passage from that writer's hilarious masterpiece Tristram Shandy (a novel so meta and modern I wouldn't be the least surprised if Sterne was actually from the future himself) and an engaging chunk of Don Quixote. At one point Joseph even brings a woman out of the audience to dance with him, addressing her throughout the rest of the show to keep us alive to the moment.
If Sancho does not transcend its genre as a piece of writing the way Sancho transcended his time, one is happy to see it delivered by Joseph. The lisp, the mildly foppish manner reveal a man of social standing. But Joseph also shows the small boy abandoned by the world, the young man thirsting for knowledge and the adult who tempers his righteous anger with a keen intellect. Tilting his head, Joseph becomes the love of Sancho's life; dripping with disdain, he is the public official all too eager to deny Joseph his dignity and rights at the climactic election. If the handsome Joseph never quite suggests the jelly-like physique of the real Sancho, well, it would take a lot more padding than this production could afford.
Like me, you will be drawn to the historical exhibit in the lobby (and accessible to the public.) You will search out some of the letters and music penned by this richly talented artist, a clip of which I've embedded here. And sadly, you will find parallels in today's world, where the poor, the elderly, women, college students and people of color face roadblocks to exercising their right to vote by a demand for this or that piece of paper which white adult men of means need not provide or can easily afford.
A typo in the program states the action of the play takes place from 1968 to 1980. They meant 1768 to 1780, but for a moment, I was brought up short. Surely black people had the vote in the UK before 1968? I knew this was true. But since black people were effectively denied the vote until right about that time in the former slave states of the US, it didn't seem so absurd and, briefly, I wondered. How sad. How telling. And thus how essential to share Sancho's story again and again until it is a permanent part of history rather than also a pointed commentary on today.
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. Trying to decide what to read next?Head to BookFilter! Need a smart and easy gift? Head to BookFilter? Wondering what new titles came out this week in your favorite categories, like cookbooks and mystery and more? Head to BookFilter! It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. It’s like a fall book preview or holiday gift guide — but every week in every category. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day and features top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
Note: Michael Giltz is provided with free tickets to shows with the understanding that he will be writing a review. All productions are in New York City unless otherwise indicated.
It begins so promisingly. A simple stark stage. An actor, posed in a contorted way that somehow suggests the Kenyan elephant the show is named after. Offstage but visible, the composer and musician Justin Hicks breathes arrestingly into a microphone, calling to mind the wind and a storm and the anguished cry of a beast in distress all at once. You sit up straight.
A gorgeous moon is in the sky and that actor -- Sahr Ngaujah of Fela! -- addresses us, sharing his plight as a magnificent, tusked creature hunted for his ivory, a noble character who stays away from his family to shield them from danger. "My distance is my weapon," he says with pride and sadness mingled.
Soon we move from the elephant to the hunters tracking him and waiting for Mlima to die from the poison they've used. And the hunters lead us to the corrupt chief of police who hired them and on to the public official in Kenya who wants to blame the death of Mlima on Somalis and on to the clerk at the port, the middleman, the artist hungry to carve those tusks and right on to the wealthy wife who wants a showpiece for the entrance to her new home. This La Ronde-style chain of provenance establishes the guilt of everyone involved in the slaughter of elephants -- however much they explain away their personal choices. Mlima lived a long life but he never stood a chance.
Ultimately, neither does the show. It has style and presence and runs a nimble 80 minutes: unlike Nottage's last play -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sweat -- it does not belabor its points. But they remain lecture points and the aura of an After-School Special is heavy. After a modest amount of nuance granted to the hunters (they are doing what they've always done for generations and quickly get screwed over by more powerful people), pretty much everyone else is guilty and uninterestingly so. They may not be moustache-twirling villains, but villains they are.
That's the problem with La Ronde itself and as a structure for a work of art. The entire point becomes merely carrying the story forward person by person, link by link. You can establish a character in just a few words but when they disappear after two scenes, it's hard to develop them or make the audience care. Ngaujah is always there as a ghost-like presence to stare balefully at one and all, but the other actors -- Kevin Mambo, a stand-out Jojo Gonzalez and Ito Aghayere -- merely slip in and out of characters as quickly as they slip in and out of their clothes.
Happily, Mlima's Tale has some strong stagecraft to maintain our interest. Director Jo Bonney keeps the show brisk, despite the monologues and Kenyan proverbs flashed onto the set that might have leant the evening a portentous air. Full credit to Riccardo Hernandez for some marvelous scenic design, memorable lighting by Lap Chi Chu and the sound design of Darron L. West working in concert with the excellent score by Hicks.
They support the exceptional Ngaujah, so you never doubt for a moment his regal stature as one of the last of the long-lived elephants and a national treasure for Kenya. When he poses on stage for the various people eying his tusks, the echo of the slave trade is fitting and affecting. That works because it's theatrical and unspoken. Most everything else is spelled out and underlined for our edification, though who will feel enlightened by learning some wealthy people spend obscene amounts of money to obtain illegal works of art and don't care about where they came from? Even the closest we have to a good human -- the warden tasked with protecting Mlima -- can be qualified as merely trying to protect his job or just not wanting to look impotent.
While succinct and never quite dull, thanks to the talent involved, Mlima's Tale is a dramatically static essay that offers no specific details about the ivory trade that will astonish anyone. I was far more engaged by Mlima's life, which we hear about mostly at the start. His mother calls him handsome but this is a warning, he tells us, for his beauty will make him more appealing to hunters. He fights with another elephant for so long that they become exhausted and have no choice but to be friends. He sneezes upon first sensing the acrid stench of humans. He pursued his love -- the elephant Mumbi -- for a week before she succumbed to his charms. And it is heart-rending to see that when Mlima is poisoned and tracked by hunters he must stay away from his family. He hopes they understand why. All of this comes in the first and most potent two scenes of the show. Here is the fresh and surprising story Nottage might have told, a character we've never seen before. If only this play had ended with Mlima's death, rather than begun with it.
What a confusing, fascinating and frustrating play you'll find in the revival of Mark Medoff's one major success, the 1979 Tony winner Children of A Lesser God. Somehow it manages to be both ahead of its time, sadly relevant and weirdly behind the times all at once. Medoff and Hesper Anderson adapted and improved on the play for the Oscar-winning feature film starring Marlee Matlin and William Hurt.
Both are about a young deaf woman who refuses on principle to talk vocally and the speech therapist she falls in love with. Yet this is the original play, replete with the debate in the Deaf community about how much to accommodate the hearing world, along with office and sexual politics that come across a lot more awkwardly than they must have in 1979. It's cumbersome, generally well-acted, saddled with a dreadful set design and I doubt any of this matters. Children Of A Lesser God is more than a "problem play," but it still has problems and always will. Happily, it also has two solid lead roles and an excellent Lauren Ridloff and a solid Joshua Jackson do well by their characters.
James (Jackson) is a passionate, unconventional teacher who gets great results working with deaf kids who are learning to speak. But Sarah (Ridloff) is older than his other students, a beautiful young woman. And she has no interest in learning to speak. She doesn't want to do anything she can't do well and since Sarah was born deaf, vocalizing will never be a strong suit for her. Besides, why should she have to learn to speak? Why can't hearing people learn to sign?
James is struck by her beauty, challenged by her politics and engaged by her wit. Instead of another dull classroom session, he invites her out to dinner and soon they are mixing business with pleasure. (Rather uncomfortably so, from our current perspective.) Soon James is offering Sarah a life she never really imagined as a wife and perhaps mother, with James as her personal interpreter to the hearing world.
Her friend Orin (a passionate John McGinty) wants to agitate for more Deaf teachers and other changes at the school (or is it an institution?) where they reside. Will Sarah forget her Deaf friends? Will James get in trouble with his boss Mr. Franklin (Anthony Edwards) for fraternizing with a student, even if she is 21 years old? And deep down, is James always hoping and expecting he can convince Sarah to use her voice, to speak? And will that be a step forward for her...or a step back?
It's very, very hard to "unpack" the issues of this play. (Dreadful word, that.) The debate in the Deaf community is sadly just as relevant today as it was almost 40 years ago. Precious little progress has been made with the Hearing community, though certain technological advances (the internet, subtitling) might count as practical if not cultural progress. On the plus side, the question of assimilation, of what one gives up to be accepted will always be universal for marginalized people. Yet the minute you try and see the insight the show can offer, other pressing issues come to the fore, like the fact that James is quickly seducing a young woman he's supposed to be teaching and thus has authority over. (She lives and works at the school as a maid).
Worse, another student seems much younger, but James lets her drink beer and be sexually suggestive without truly addressing her needs appropriately. His boss (Edwards) comes across vaguely when not being a jerk, though it's hard to know if he's just being blunt or intended as the nominal villain. So you focus on the romance, but then Sarah is enraptured by a blender like any good little housewife and feels reduced, along with women in general. Her story of the sex she had with numerous men when she was younger is hard to parse in this #MeToo era. Is it more sexually liberated (which is how it plays here -- Sarah owns her sexual pleasure) or is it abusive on the men's part?
And the biggest problem of all is that the whole damn thing takes place in the mind of James. He is reflecting back on the woman he loved and lost and hopes to get back. That's all fine and a simple black box would have served us well. Yet the dreadful scenic design by the deserved Tony winner Derek McLane is a disaster: for some reason, it's lit in moody blues and hot pink and looks like South Florida circa Miami Vice. Instead of a vague no-man's land, it feels like a suburban mall and is impossible to put out of your mind. Thus no one can just pop into James's office or home -- every character's entrance feels weighted with symbolism the way a naturalistic set or no set at all would not have done. The score by Branford Marsalis (a favorite artist of mine) is a modest plus but the pre-existing music that appears throughout -- from Stevie Wonder to Paul McCartney to classical pieces -- feels oddly random and lacking in impact. Surely in a show about sound and the lack thereof, any music that is played should have major import. Not so here.
Worse, we're constantly adjusting our expectations about issues the play is raising versus the issues it had no clue would arise with future audiences. What we want is to simply follow the romance but that can't happen. Medoff keeps getting in his own way by piling on the backstory. Sarah is estranged from her mother, while her father abandoned the family over his daughter's deafness. James has his own heavy tale, with a mother that committed suicide (!) and a father he hasn't spoken to in years. Surely falling in love and navigating a new relationship should be enough, without tossing in family woes, legal battles and so much more.
On the bright side, sign language is simply a beautiful, expressive language and it's a pleasure to experience it. I can't speak to Jackson's fluidity in ASL, but he convinces as a thoroughly decent guy, if not the compelling rebel suggested in the text. Ridloff holds us from start to finish with her expressive face, body and signing. They are reason enough to see a play that makes their characters seem more confused than Medoff intended.
McGinty is also memorable as the rabble rouser Orin, though Treshelle Edmond is fuzzier as the student Lydia. She comes across as so young (is she 12? 15? 18?) that it's hard to understand James's dealings with her as anything other than clueless and thoughtless. Actually everyone other than the leads and Orin are fuzzy, from the lawyer (a fine Julee Cerda) to Edwards in the thankless role of the administrator to Kecia Lewis, who has little to do as Sarah's mother but be hurt and angry. That is surely the weakness of a play that has so very much to say but not quite the skill to say it well.
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. Trying to decide what to read next?Head to BookFilter! Need a smart and easy gift? Head to BookFilter? Wondering what new titles came out this week in your favorite categories, like cookbooks and mystery and more? Head to BookFilter! It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. It’s like a fall book preview or holiday gift guide — but every week in every category. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day and features top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
Note: Michael Giltz is provided with free tickets to shows with the understanding that he will be writing a review. All productions are in New York City unless otherwise indicated.
In theater there are first nighters and second nighters. First nighters get to see a show right before it opens. Second nighters get to see a show right after it opens. One of the benefits of being a second nighter is that you hear the buzz -- you can either get pumped up for a great night or lower your expectations. That leaves you open to a happy surprise, which is certainly the case of Mean Girls. It's a three star production of a two star work and so I chose the friendly leaning two and a half stars out of four. I'll say this: sitting in the theater surrounded by a very happy audience that broke out in chatter during the break and applause at the end, I'd happily invest in Mean Girls right now. It's going to have a good run on Broadway, a successful tour and then mop up in community theater and high school productions for years to come.
The Tina Fey-penned film (based on a young adult novel by Rosalind Wiseman) is a kinder, sweeter Heathers. A new kid in school is adopted by the school's fierce queen bee Regina, turned into a star and then all hell breaks loose when she tries to claim the throne for herself. At the end, instead of the nihilistic nightmare of Heathers, we get some girl power and the message to be nice to others.
All of that translates easily to the stage in a musical that improves on the 2004 film on every level. Some modest additions about social media (and not one but two Trump zingers) make clear our story is set today without belaboring the point. (Those two Trump jokes will date quickly but boy did the audience love them.) The Tina Fey role is wisely trimmed down. And with the young women all getting their solos, their characters are given a tad more complexity without straining too hard. And really, how much complexity do you want in a show about the new kid at school who tries to fit in? Not much, honestly.
All Cady wants to do is make friends. She grew up in Kenya surrounded by animals and home schooled by her scientist parents. Now Cady (an appealing Erika Henningsen) is exploring the hazardous terrain of high school in Chicago. (In one of the show's niftier gambits, characters break into animalistic rituals and screeches as if they're marking territory and the like.) She finds safe harbor with Janis and Damian (scene stealers Barrett Wilbert Weed and Grey Henson), who teach her to beware of Regina, the girl most likely to shred you with a vicious takedown or -- worse-- ignore you as not worth noticing. Regina's "friends" are the needy Gretchen (Ashley Park) and the dumb but not so mean Karen (Kate Rockwell) but really, she stands alone. Among the show's many painless but unmemorable numbers is the clunky tune "Apex Predator" in which Cady tags Regina as the most dangerous person around. With the help of Janis and Damian, she plans to take down Regina's dominance. But will Cady become a mean girl in the process, losing both her real friends and the dreamy boy Aaron (who -- duh -- dumped Regina because she was mean)? Of course she will! Followed quickly by the moral of the story and hugs all around, though not before a school bus kills someone dead. (No one dies, though they kind of do, actually.)
In other words, Mean Girls is thoroughly familiar territory done with enough energy to make you forget that for a while. In the thankless role of adults, Rick Younger is smoothly affable as the principal and Kerry Butler does yeoman's work as both the Tina Fey teacher and two parents (notably the dippy Mrs. George). Taylor Louderman has a blast with her Shirley Bassey-circa Bond theme song numbers and a drawling delivery. But really, everyone scores nicely, from Park's desperate need to be liked to Rockwell's lovely timing as the dippy Karen down to Selig making something out of the nothing role of boyfriend-to-be Aaron and Cheech Manohar having over-the-top fun as mathlete and rapper Kevin Gnapoor. (And props to his parents for the name Cheech!) Toss in an ensemble so cute and sharp in their dancing you'd gladly take them to prom and you can see why a show with a poor score manages to be such fun. At the center of it all is Hennginsen as Cady -- like Fey on 30 Rock, she's the straight person surrounded by a carnival of clowns. That's no easy task.
While the melodies of Jeff Richmond are awkward, the lyrics of Nell Benjamin are at best workmanlike. Its' hard to judge anyone as a singer on this show since few of the songs give them a melody worth delivering. So this is the rare musical whose book is superior to the songs -- and good enough to make you not care.
Give Fey the Most Improved award. You can also credit the nimble direction and choreography of Casey Nicholaw, who earns the school's Most Talented by taking not-bad songs like "Where Do You Belong?" "Stop" and "Whose House Is This?" (the show's best three, by far) and turning them into rousing successes with great staging and clever touches like the Busby Berkeley-like use of lunch trays. And amidst a strong ensemble, Barrett Wilbert Weed and Grey Hanson deserve Class Clown awards for their thoroughly winning hijacking of the entire night.
And a special nod to scenic designer Scott Pask and video design team Finn Ross and Adam Young. Broadway has been embracing digital projection to set scenes for a number of years now. And the technology has caught up with their needs. In the past, digital displays simply looked like a cheap way to cut corners. No more. From a brick-lined school hallway to a bathroom to a classroom to the wilds of Kenya, the sharp and utterly convincing backdrops allowed for cinematic scene changes with a minimum of props like a few rolling desks or some bathroom stalls. In the future, when a show decides to build an old-fashioned practical set, it will be a choice rather than a necessity. And video displays won't be a cheesy alternative but a tool for the artists working on the show to make wise use of -- exactly as they do here.
Sure, it's a Broadway show and you want to have fun. (Anyone who thinks critics show up ready to throw darts has never gone to the theater three times a week every week. We really, really want a show to work.) And when your expectations are a little lowered, it's easier to be pleasantly surprised. So Mean Girls is by no means a great or even especially good show. Seeing it at your kid's high school a few years from now will probably be a chore. But with this talented cast and director Nicholaw energizing the evening, who would want to be a mean girl and put it down?
After five years in development, the creative team behind The Sting got two things emphatically right. First, they hired Harry Connick Jr for this musical adaptation of the classic Robert Redford/Paul Newman flick about con artists and they made damn sure he played the piano and charmed the crowd whenever possible. Second, they didn't keep Scott Joplin at arm's length -- there's no tepid nod to ragtime and his signature tune "The Entertainer." They introduce it right at the start and Joplin songs are scattered throughout. Unfortunately, Harry Connick Jr. on the piano remains the high point of the show (rather than a pleasing bonus as in The Pajama Game) and Joplin's music is so melodically strong it leaves the original score in the dust. There's not enough Joplin to lift the evening and just enough Joplin to make you miss him when it's gone.
Since a musical version of Ghostbusters is probably right around the corner, no idea is too wacky. But unlike most movie to Broadway adaptations, a musical version of The Sting makes sense. You've got the period setting, lots of colorful characters, a rock-solid script and the music of ragtime to play with. Paper Mill has been a launching pad for Broadway hopefuls and while a first class production can send something like Newsies right into the Tony mix, it can also expose a show's many flaws. Give the top-notch talent involved, no excuses can be made for a show that wouldn't con even a tourist into thinking they're having a good time. (The audience was notably tepid.)
Have you seen the Oscar-winning film, one of the most popular movies of all time? If not, here's the set-up. Some small time con artists get "lucky" and scam a guy out of his wallet. Turns out the guy is making a delivery for the feared crime boss Doyle Lonnegan and their luck is all bad. In the blink of an eye, the elderly Luther (a charming Kevyn Morrow) is dead and the kid Johnny Hooker (J. Harrison Ghee) has fled for his life. He ends up in Chicago, searching for the one man Luther said was as talented as Hooker at the con. That's Henry Gondorff (Harry Connick Jr.), a washed up alcoholic playing piano in a brothel.
Hooker pours a pitcher of water on Henry, Henry barks at the "kid" that he's got a lot to learn and a bromance is born. With the sexy and capable aid of Billie (Kate Shindle) -- a woman who is Henry's sometime lover and full-time equal in scams -- they gather an all-star team of shysters and swindlers to pull off the "long con," fleece Doyle but good and get sweet revenge for Luther.
Henry poses as an obnoxious gambler who transparently cheats the cheating Doyle at a private poker game. Then Hooker plays the disgruntled underling who gives Doyle a chance to ruin Henry by placing a bet on the horses at Henry's (fake) gambling den. Doyle test drives the plan, enjoys humiliating Henry with his winnings and then goes all in with a massive $500,000 bet. With crooked cops and a straight arrow FBI team closing in and Doyle the epitome of a sore loser, how will they pull it off? In a sting, only the scammers get the pleasure of knowing how it's done. But in The Sting the fun for the audience is learning how they've been fleeced as well.
The con men and women are not the only ones gambling here. The Sting is also the story of its creators. Book writer Bob Martin enjoyed a rousing Broadway debut with The Drowsy Chaperone, followed only by the shoulder-shrug of a holiday offering Elf. Most of the music and lyrics are by the team of Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis, who themselves enjoyed a remarkable Broadway debut with the musical Urinetown, which famously progressed from a stag party sketch to fringe fest success to Tony-winning triumph. Like any gambler, once you get a taste of the big score, you want nothing more than to do it again (and again) and this property is the sleekest bid yet for these artists.
They're surrounded by blue chip properties: director John Rando, choreographer Warren Carlyle, scenic designer Beowulf Boritt, costume designer Paul Tazewell and on down the line can all boast impressive credits. But you can have all the chips in the world. If the cards you draw are duds, you're not going to win.
The problems start at the very beginning. As in the film, it begins with a con. But unlike the film, the show prefaces that with Luther as a sort of narrator, telling us we're about to see a show about con artists and not to trust what we see. Then we're walked through the con they're about to pull, then they fleece the guy -- all done in such a laborious "here comes the switch" manner that the fun is drained out of it. You want to be scammed and then realize it was a trick, not have the trick explained to you at length in advance.
(I have not seen the film in many years, even though it's my favorite from 1973. I preferred to give the stage version the best shot possible by not rewatching the film. If I get any details wrong, then I'd suggest that even if the film did spell out this con in advance, it was able to do so quickly and deftly. On stage, it has to be drawn out so thew punters in the back can track what is happening and the fun is spoiled.)
The problems mount. Choreographer Warren Carlyle emphasizes tap, which somehow is perfect for con artists. Maybe it's because we get so hypnotized by their feet we have the sneaking suspicion they could lift our wallets at the same time and we'd never notice? Whatever the reason, that rhythmic style feels right. But one gets the impression most of the actors are dancers first and singers second. Not that I'd make much of a judgement on anyone singing the songs here. A few have the right lyrical idea, such as "Don't Treat Your Friends Like Marks" and the cleverly done act one closer "The First Race," which allows numerous betters to pepper the song with their cheers for a certain horse while Christopher Gurr has a blast delivering the sports announcer commentary. That's the show's modest high point, along with "The Card Game," with Connick Jr. having a grand old time infuriating the gangster with his boorish manner. Everything else from "The Thrill Of The Con" to Billie's torch song "Sometimes" feels rote and interchangeable.
And while tap is surely the right style for The Sting, it's perhaps not ideal for staging chase scenes. Too many scenes involve people tapping this way and that across the stage, fine if you're staging a lark like On The Town but deadly if you're looking to create any suspense. A scene where Hooker is on a staircase trying to outrun some bad guys is especially ludicrous -- they face each other and tap up a step and down a step and you can't imagine what anyone was thinking. (Another poor choice is attempting to duplicate scenes of a mysterious assassin hunting down Hooker. That person in the movie is usually off camera. On stage, they stand around waving a gun and it just doesn't work.)
The sets of Boritt are serviceable though it wavers between the full-on realism of the casino and the more suggestive style of other scenes. (And why are the paintings on display in Lonnegan's home and elsewhere so blurry?) In another example of poor staging by director John Rando, we have six or so doors to suggest the hallway of an apartment building. One would have been plenty and when that scene is over they sort of slide over to one part of the stage, waiting for a chance to be dragged off. And why are they there? So a neighbor can spot Hooker and a waitress he's fallen for having a tryst. But since the next scene dismisses the crucial importance of that neighbor (a plot point from the movie), they never needed her or the other five doors in the first place.
These minor faults of the book can't hold a candle to the major missed opportunity. The film starred Redford and Newman in a re-teaming of their work on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. (Those two men had so much chemistry they should have followed up The Sting with Brokeback Mountain.) Yet the original screenplay by David S. Ward conceived of the younger man Hooker as black. This version jumped on that idea and cast Ghee alongside Connick. Brilliant! You can immediately introduce the blues and all other sorts of musical colors and rethinking that character gives the show a great chance to see this story anew.
The story is set in1936 during the Great Depression and a white man and a black man teaming up to defraud a gangster and some crooked cops immediately becomes more interesting if one of them is black. But other than a few throw-away lines by Lonnegan and that crooked cop (played by Robert Wuhl, who has little to do but glower) the show makes absolutely nothing of this. That might be admirable if it weren't such a wasted opportunity. Hooker's pushy manner with Lonnegan works in the movie because Paul Newman has such a twinkle in his eye even Lonnegan (played by Robert Shaw) can't help admiring his chutzpah. That would hardly be the case if it were a black man eating off his plate, a moment which is just ridiculous here. Imagine Hooker using his race to con Lonnegan: Hooker's bristling anger towards his boss could be more easily understood (though a chance for Connick to demean him racially is ignored) and Lonnegan's own prejudice would make it impossible for him to consider Hooker might be conning him. So much might have been done with this decision but book writer Martin doesn't even try.
What they do instead is bring Luther back from the dead. Morrow is immediately appealing in his opening scenes. Yet the show has no narrator and once he's dead, he's dead. In a too-long act two, however, Hooker blithely says he wishes Luther could have seen the trick he just pulled off...and lo and behold, there is Hooker for a very unnecessary musical break when what we want to do is tighten the screws and let the long con take its course.
And that brings us to the casting. Despite the thin material, some of the supporting talent bring humanity and depth to parts that otherwise lack it, including Shindle as Billie, Janet Dacal as the waitress Loretta, Gurr as Singleton and Morrow. Others with more to do can't paper over the show's deficiencies, such as Tom Hewitt as the entirely unthreatening Lonnegan, Wuhl as the crooked cop and Peter Benson as the nervous Erie Kid, a part better left out entirely. Connick is certainly up to the role of Henry and does a lot of heavy lifting to make the evening bearable. Musicals move fast but this one does such a poor job of spelling out the characters anyone who hasn't seen the movie will probably be wondering why Henry and everyone is so eager to take part in this con and be surprised when we're told Henry and Hooker have become friends. (They have.)
But the biggest problem is Ghee, who has huge shoes to fill when it comes to Paul Newman in his wily prime and doesn't come close. As Hooker he offers nothing -- no danger, no anger, no humor, no charm. It's a shock to see he played the flamboyant Lola in Kinky Boots on the road, given how tamped down he is here, so I will adamantly stick to my rule of not judging people's talent based on their appearance in a poor show. The more stage time people have, the less they shine (except for hard-working Harry) and that surely is the fault of The Sting, not the artists.
It's a dispiriting evening towards the end. Could they rescue this project? Would recasting, a little cutting and maybe another number turn it around? No, I don't think so; not even close. Gamblers know when you've tossed in a lot of chips, the hardest thing in the world to do is to fold...and that's when suckers really lose their shirts. Sometimes you just have to walk away from the game.
Thanks for reading. Michael Giltz is the creator of BookFilter, a book lover’s best friend. Trying to decide what to read next?Head to BookFilter! Need a smart and easy gift? Head to BookFilter? Wondering what new titles came out this week in your favorite categories, like cookbooks and mystery and more? Head to BookFilter! It’s a website that lets you browse for books online the way you do in a physical bookstore, provides comprehensive info on new releases every week in every category and offers passionate personal recommendations every step of the way. It’s like a fall book preview or holiday gift guide — but every week in every category. He’s also the cohost of Showbiz Sandbox, a weekly pop culture podcast that reveals the industry take on entertainment news of the day and features top journalists and opinion makers as guests. It’s available for free on iTunes. Visit Michael Giltz at his website. Download his podcast of celebrity interviews and his radio show, also called Popsurfing and also available for free on iTunes.
Note: Michael Giltz is provided with free tickets to shows with the understanding that he will be writing a review. All productions are in New York City unless otherwise indicated.
